FADED CELEBRITY IN CHIEF BARRY O'S BUTT WAS YET AGAIN SAVED BY CLOSET CASE JOHN ROBERTS WHOSE WORLD WEARY WIFE SIGHED AND SAID, "OH GET A ROOM!"
MEANWHILE
CRANKY CLINTON ADVISED THOSE WHO DO NOT LIKE OBAMACARE TO "MOVE ON."
MORE SPECIFICALLY, SHE SAID:
SOMETIMES YOU HAVE TO MOVE ON. LOOK AT ME. I WAS KIND OF HOMELY, KIND OF PUDGY, KIND OF MEAN AND ANGRY, AND THAT WAS BEFORE I CAUGHT BILL WITH MONICA. I COULD HAVE CARRIED THAT HATE AND ANGER FOREVER. INSTEAD I TORTURED SOCKS THE CAT AND, AFTER, FELT GOOD ENOUGH TO MOVE ON. MOVE ON! SO YOU'RE OLD AND UGLY AND YOUR SPOUSE CHEATS ON YOU BECAUSE YOU'RE OLD AND UGLY. MOVE ON!
FROM THE TCI WIRE:
This afternoon, a House Armed Services Committee held a hearing.
The Subcommittee Committee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities managed
to do something every group holding a hearing longs to do -- establish
clearly where the problem lies.
And the hearing did exactly that, the Subcommittee documented the Emerging Threats.
I'm not really sure though that they grasp that they did.
Appearing before the Subcommittee were the New American Foundation's
Brian Fishman, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy's Michael
Eisenstadt, RAND Corporation's Linda Robinson and the American
Enterprise Institute's Frederick Kagan.
All four offered testimony and -- to one degree or another -- waived the Fifth Amendment.
It was a long hearing but, more importantly, it was a soul draining hearing.
While madmen sit up building bombs
And making laws and bars
They're gonna slam free choice behind us
Last night I dreamed I saw the planet flicker
Great forests fell like buffalo
Everything got sicker
And to the bitter end
Big business bickered
And they call for the three great stimulants
Of the exhausted ones
Artifice, brutality and innocence
Artifice and innocence
-- "Three Great Stimulants," written by
Joni Mitchell, first appears on her
Dog Eat Dog album
And when Robinson and Kagan especially competed to be 'smartest in the
room,' you longed for them to stop cooperating with the Subcommittee and
instead reply, "I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may
incriminate me."
We often mock Fred Kagan here as being the "arm candy" of Kimberly Kagan.
We do that for two reasons. One, when we started the joke, it was the
rare press piece on Kimberly that couldn't work in 'she married to
Frederick Kagan!' while the pieces on him could sail right by without
ever noting her. (That's sexism, for those of you on autopilot.)
Second, he's seen -- by some -- as so intelligent. But he's not.
Kimberly Kagan is not someone I agree with very often -- we're on
opposite sides of the political fence -- but she generally speaks -- I'm
not talking soundbytes, I'm talking testimony, speeches, papers -- in a
manner that acknowledges humanity. For that reason alone, she's the
smarter of the pair.
When Fred Kagan speaks, we're all just ants in his ant farm that he
seems ready to toss in the trash, so bored has he become with humanity
and living.
After nearly two hours, the hearing was finally drawing to a close when Kagan, baited by , had to show just how ugly he can be.
Yes, Kagan insisted, the US government did have a problem with the
current plan or 'plan' for combating the Islamic State in Iraq.
The problem?
Too much effort was being made to not kill civilians.
Think I misheard?
Here's the exchange with US House Rep Doug Lamborn. Let's listen in with horror.
US House Rep: Doug Lamborn: Thank you all for being here and I'd like to ask you about our targeting of ISIS' assets. The New York Times reported
on May 26th that "American officials say they are not striking
significant and obvious Islamic State targets out of fear that the
attacks will accidentally kill civilians. But many Iraqi commanders and
some American officers say that exercising such prudence with
airstrikes is a major reason ISIS has been able to seize vast territory
in recent months in Iraq and Syria." Dr. Kagan, would you agree with
that assessment? And-and is it possible to step up aistrikes while
still, uh, to the degree possible, uh, preserving civilians lives?
Frederick Kagan: Uh, I think that there is a trade off between
deciding that you're going to have a more effective air campaign and
accepting a higher risk of civilian casualties. I think if your standard
for civilian casualties is low, you're probably going to have a very
hard time increasing, uh, the intensity of the air campaign --
especially as long as you're not prepared to put forward air controllers
on the ground, uh, which would be something that would mitigate that.
But I think that we have too high of a standard, uh, for -- from the
standard of collateral damage for civilian casualties. I think that,
uh, the truth is this is a war and, uhm, we always try to minimize, uh,
collateral damage and civilian casualty but, uhm, a standard of
effectively zero has done enormous harm to our ability to prosecute this
war with the tools that we have at our disposal.
To make a few things clear . . .
When Kagan made his puzzling remarks to US House Rep Trent Franks that
the US government had poor relations with the Sunnis in Iraq because of
the US government's support for the Kurds in Iraq, I disagreed. (Like
Franks, who quickly changed the subject, I couldn't grasp what Kagan was
attempting to say or the basis for that bizarre call.) But as strongly
as I disagreed, I could write it off as just disagreeing.
Second, Kagan is not just right wing, he's a neocon. Part of one of the
biggest neocon families (his brother Robert Kagan, his sister-in-law
the dreadful Victoria Nuland, his father is Donald Kagan, etc.). But
his remarks are not a neocon attitude -- or not solely a neocon
attitude.
The allegedly left Foreign Policy In Focus was arguing the same points Kagan was -- we called them out in the
June 4th snapshot as well as in "
Iraq: Failed follow ups and whining that bombs aren't being dropped quick enough"
-- a point worth remembering for those of us on the left who might want
to write Kagan's remarks off as something 'only the right could say.'
Third, the
New York Times article was written by the Washington-based Eric Schmitt so we never took it or Schmitty to seriously.
"Many Iraqi commanders"?
Did you phone 'em, Schmitty?
Or did you maybe just put a finger on each temple and 'psychically' connect with them?
(I'm sure many Shi'ite commanders in the Iraqi military feel there's too
much restraint when it comes to bombing Sunni areas. We've seen, in
Tikrit most recently, what Shi'ite forces can do in the name of
'liberation' to Sunnis and Sunni homes. I'm just as sure that Schmitty
himself did not speak to "many Iraqi commanders" -- though he did feel
the need to 'give voice to them' -- or maybe just put words in their
mouths?)
And for those who might want to insist that Schmitt got the byline but
others could have spoken to Iraqi commanders? Ben Hubbard was in Urfa,
Turkey, Anne Barnard and Maher Samaan were in Beirut. Only Omar
al-Jawoshy was in Iraq (Baghdad). No, I'm not picturing him rushing to
and from commander for comments.
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THIS JUST IN! CRACKER CRACKS UP!"
Joe Lauria
Christopher Hayes
