Bush’s General

Looks like Petraeus’s direct boss doesn’t think much of the General:

WASHINGTON, Sep 12 (IPS) – In sharp contrast to the lionisation of Gen. David Petraeus by members of the U.S. Congress during his testimony this week, Petraeus’s superior, Admiral William Fallon, chief of the Central Command (CENTCOM), derided Petraeus as a sycophant during their first meeting in Baghdad last March, according to Pentagon sources familiar with reports of the meeting.

Fallon told Petraeus that he considered him to be “an ass-kissing little chickenshit” and added, “I hate people like that”, the sources say. That remark reportedly came after Petraeus began the meeting by making remarks that Fallon interpreted as trying to ingratiate himself with a superior.

[...]

The policy context of Fallon’s extraordinarily abrasive treatment of his subordinate was Petraeus’s agreement in February to serve as front man for the George W. Bush administration’s effort to sell its policy of increasing U.S. troop strength in Iraq to Congress.

In a highly unusual political role for an officer who had not yet taken command of a war, Petraeus was installed in the office of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, in early February just before the Senate debated Bush’s troop increase. According to a report in The Washington Post Feb. 7, senators were then approached on the floor and invited to go McConnell’s office to hear Petraeus make the case for the surge policy.

Fallon was strongly opposed to Petraeus’s role as pitch man for the surge policy in Iraq adopted by Bush in December as putting his own interests ahead of a sound military posture in the Middle East and Southwest Asia — the area for which Fallon’s CENTCOM is responsible.

The CENTCOM commander believed the United States should be withdrawing troops from Iraq urgently, largely because he saw greater dangers elsewhere in the region.

Maybe the ad isn’t far off the mark, after all.

UPDATE: Here’s a great point-by-point take on the whole MoveOn ad and today’s successful Senate resolution against the ad — which passed with too many Democrats voting against their base.

Bush & Co. Working in 9/11

I’m a huge fan of this guy. Here’s his take on Petraeus’s sales job of Bush’s Iraq escalation…. seems about right to me.

Fox News: Propaganda Arm of the Bush White House

Just more evidence that Rupert Murdoch’s Faux News is the propaganda arm of the republican party and of Bush’s White House, via TalkingPointsMemo.com:

It’s 9:13 PM (September 10, 2007). If you have a chance, flip on Fox News at least for a moment. It’s Gen. Petraeus’s (and Crocker’s) one hour “exclusive” with Brit Hume on Fox. The chyron actually reads “A Briefing for America.” And that’s really pretty much what it is. It’s another briefing. It’s not an interview. It’s a continuation of today’s bamboozlement but in prime time on Fox with the expected soft-ball questions and credulous analysis.

Late Update: The “exclusive” is also helpfully interspersed with commercials from the White House-organized pro-Iraq War astroturf group Freedom’s Watch.

Later Update: As around 9:45, Hume is walking Petraeus toward explaining how the Iraq War is really a “war against al Qaeda.” Petraeus is playing along.

UPDATE: TPM.com has a video clip up.

What Do We Have to Show in Iraq After $500 Billion Tax Dollars?

By now you’re either convinced that Bush’s Iraq misadventure is the biggest cluster-fuck in US history, or you still cling to the illusion that Bush & Co. knew what they were doing when they decided to invade that country. Then again, there’s some evidence that Bush & Co. knew what they were doing when they decided to privatize the war effort. Of course, many of these private, no-bid, "cost-plus" contracts were given to Bush administration cronies and political supporters — such as Halliburton and others; and, now, with little in terms of reconstruction to show and billions of dollars later, we’re getting a better picture of how these private contractors have raped and pillaged the US Treasury.

Again, if you know what a cluster-fuck Bush’s Iraq misadventure has been from the start, then this article from Rolling Stone will only add fuel to your rage. The article describes in appalling detail the war profiteering by private contractors, and the utter lack of oversight by the Bush administration.

Here’s the opening of the article:

How is it done? How do you screw the taxpayer for millions, get away with it and then ride off into the sunset with one middle finger extended, the other wrapped around a chilled martini? Ask Earnest O. Robbins — he knows all about being a successful contractor in Iraq.

You start off as a well-connected bureaucrat: in this case, as an Air Force civil engineer, a post from which Robbins was responsible for overseeing 70,000 servicemen and contractors, with an annual budget of $8 billion. You serve with distinction for thirty-four years, becoming such a military all-star that the Air Force frequently sends you to the Hill to testify before Congress — until one day in the summer of 2003, when you retire to take a job as an executive for Parsons, a private construction company looking to do work in Iraq.

And the inevitable conclusion, after examing the evidence:

According to the most reliable ­estimates, we have doled out more than $500 billion for the war, as well as $44 billion for the Iraqi reconstruction effort. And what did America’s contractors give us for that money? They built big steaming shit piles, set brand-new trucks on fire, drove back and forth across the desert for no reason at all and dumped bags of nails in ditches. For the most part, nobody at home cared, because war on some level is always a waste. But what happened in Iraq went beyond inefficiency, beyond fraud even. This was about the business of government being corrupted by the profit motive to such an extraordinary degree that now we all have to wonder how we will ever be able to depend on the state to do its job in the future. If catastrophic failure is worth billions, where’s the incentive to deliver success? There’s no profit in patriotism, no cost-plus angle on common decency. Sixty years after America liberated Europe, those are just words, and words don’t pay the bills.

Photographs: Injured in Iraq

Via HuffingtonPost.com, portrait of Marine Staff Stg. John Jones by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders:

You can visit the photographers site for more portraits.