Robert Freeman: (to Huey) How many times have I told you, you better not even dream about tellin’ white folk the truth!  You understand me? (walks away)  Shoot!  Makin’ White people riot!  You better learn how to lie like me!  I’m gonna find me a white man and lie to him right now!  The Garden Party

The truth is everything this administration tells you is a lie.

Remember The Pentagon Shill Scandal?  A month ago.  The Scotty Show?  Two weeks.  Phase II?  Today.

Another important story that is getting ignored in favor of arguing about teeth are the lies regarding our status of forces arrangement with the Iraq.  Are we blackmailing Maliki? This is clearly a fundamentally bad deal for Iraq, we demand over 50 bases, control of the airspace under 29,000 feet, ability to arrest anyone and take any military action without consulting any Iraqi and with no consequences under Iraqi law.

It’s hardly a secret to the Iraqis, a majority of parliament has already sent "a letter to members of Congress that rejected the idea of a US-Iraq agreement unless the United States agrees to a specific timetable to get out of Iraq".  Former Iraqi President Rafsanjani says- US trying to "enslave" Iraq with security agreement.

What about Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the most influential man in Iraq?  From Juan Cole–

Al-Hayat writing in Arabic reports that Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, the leader of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq (the leading bloc in parliament and keystone of the government of Nuri al-Maliki) is saying he spoke to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani about the security agreement with Washington. He says that Sistani laid out four points to which any such agreement must adhere:

• National sovereignty
• Transparency
• National consensus
• Parliamentary approval of it

Al-Hakim met with Sistani Wednesday evening, along with some journalists. The journalists reported that the grand ayatollah stressed national Iraqi unity in the face of challenges, expressed his concern about the lack of services for citizens, including electicity and water, and said the water shortage was especially harming farmers. He also urged haste in the rebuilding of the Askariya Shrine in Samarra.

Al-Hakim said that his own party felt the current American draft detracts too much from Iraq’s sovereignty and fails to protect Iraqi wealth. He said that Sistani did not go into details but stressed general principles. He maintained that in general Sistani shared the concerns of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq.

Frankly, if it’s unratified by the Senate it’s not an agreement the United States is obligated to honor.  I can only imagine what a patriotic Iraqi thinks of it.

Reported by David Kurtz at Talking Points Memo the Senate Intelligence Committee has released its “Phase II” report on pre-War Iraq Intelligence-

Report on Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government officials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information

Report on Intelligence Activities Relating to Iraq Conducted by the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group and the Office of Special Plans Within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy

Both .pdf.

David also attaches portions of a summary press release from the office of Senator Jay Rockefeller.

• Statements and implications by the President and Secretary of State suggesting that Iraq and al-Qa’ida had a partnership, or that Iraq had provided al-Qa’ida with weapons training, were not substantiated by the intelligence.

• Statements by the President and the Vice President indicating that Saddam Hussein was prepared to give weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups for attacks against the United States were contradicted by available intelligence information.

• Statements by President Bush and Vice President Cheney regarding the postwar situation in Iraq, in terms of the political, security, and economic, did not reflect the concerns and uncertainties expressed in the intelligence products.

• Statements by the President and Vice President prior to the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate regarding Iraq’s chemical weapons production capability and activities did not reflect the intelligence community’s uncertainties as to whether such production was ongoing.

• The Secretary of Defense’s statement that the Iraqi government operated underground WMD facilities that were not vulnerable to conventional airstrikes because they were underground and deeply buried was not substantiated by available intelligence information.

• The Intelligence Community did not confirm that Muhammad Atta met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in 2001 as the Vice President repeatedly claimed.

Bush lied.

People died.

You know, at one time I aspired to Journalism.  I think any politically active child of an age to have experienced Watergate did as soon as they gave up on being an Astronaut (which I did young because of my poor eyesight ó–ò).  Since l’affair Lewinski though I have become really radicalized about ‘The Press’ and now view 98% with a pure passionate contempt which while white hot is but a dwarf compared to the Rigelian levels they deserve.

The press is a gang of cruel faggots.  Journalism is not a profession or a trade.  It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits – a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.

(I)t (is) a low trade and a habit worse than heroin, a strange seedy world full of misfits and drunkards and failures.  The business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs.  There’s also a negative side.

Objective journalism is one of the main reasons American politics has been allowed to be so corrupt for so long.- Hunter Thompson

The transcript of last night’s Hardball is up and it does Gregory no more credit today than his video last night.

Finally the Vilage media is being forced to confront some of their sell out stenographic sycophancy.  McClellan’s book, What Happened, is definitely making some of them very uncomfortable.  David Gregory had a melt down of umbrage on Hardball tonight which I hope to write more about tomorrow after the transcript is posted, but here’s a YouTube of it-

Bullshit.

I’m not sure if all of you have seen George Packer’s New Yorker piece, The Fall of Conservatism.  Even though it’s datelined today, it’s been floating around the blogosphere for a couple of days now.

What struck me about it is how transparently and cynically based on greed, ignorance, racism, misogyny, bigotry, intolerance, and fear Republican.  Party.  Conservatism. is.  It is an anti-democratic in the little ‘d’ sense ideology of a sado-masochistic society where all you get is abuse and the only satisfaction you can have is in your ability to abuse others, a frantic ass chasing dance to see who you can stick the boot in before your butt is kicked.

At it’s heart is a pessimistic view that things will never again be as good as they once were, a backwards looking denial of change except for the worse.  If insanity is repeating the same actions and expecting different results as a political philosophy it is clinical.

As Packer’s interview with Buchanan shows, Republicans have been pushing the fear button really hard for a very long time now.  Communists and Crime, Guns and Gays, your life is spiraling out of control so you should hate and envy those who are different.  Why should they feel any better than you, what right do they have not to be panicing?  Conservatism is about making everyone’s life as miserable and empty as yours is.

It’s all about the self loathing.  They want to be able to express their shameful prejudices in public and force the rest of us to applaud.  They project their own base crimes and secret sins as the general human condition and it almost never occurs to them that perhaps one should aspire to better.  Instead they celebrate their coarse nature, wallowing in the nakedness and audacity of their con games, scams, and lies.

What’s more below is a few quotes that illustrate the shallowness and bankrupcy of Republican Party Conservatism.  I can only count it a good thing if the coming election reduces it to regional irrelevancy along with the 30% at the bottom of the Bell curve who still believe in phallic fairytales of American Exceptionalism.