May 1st, 2003, Bush announced "Mission Accomplished"

And we are STILL bogged down in the Iraq quagmire four years later, with more than 3300 American soldiers dead, still no clear purpose, no exit strategy, no nothing. We are bogged down, with a new McCain/Bush/Lieberman escalation putting more time, money and troops into the war based on lies in Iraq while Osama bin Laden is free as a bird, and al-Qaeda, the people who actually attacked us, stronger than ever.

Yeah...Mission Accomplished declared May 1st, 2003...here is what Michael Moore had to say about it:

Mission accomplished. And yet, the money and the blood keep flowing. The following is released in honor of the 4th Anniversary of "Mission Accomplished" by Americans United for Change:

One of the most disgusting tactics the Republicans have used is exploiting the 9/11 attacks for their own gains. As my wife (when she was 8 months pregnant) yelled at Republican delegates to the Republican Convention in 2004, "Shame on you for turning our tragedy into a photo op." The delegates were none too pleased being chased down the street by a very pregnant woman accusing them of exploiting our tragedy.

Well, as I reported yesterday, Rudy Giuliani (the man despised by the firefighters who were the TRUE heroes of 9/11) is the latest Republican to use this disgusting tactic. Not only was Giuliani's claim that only a Republican can prevent a terrorist attack a disgusting exploitation of a national tragedy, but it is demonstrably wrong. Clinton's administration prevented the millenium attacks. He also warned the nation that al-Qaeda was going to attack. Bush's administration ignored the warnings and the 9/11 attacks happened on HIS watch. Giuliani is wrong.

Howard Dean is taking him on and I think it is particularly important for NYC to reject "anti-firefighter" Giuliani's exploitation of the attacks on our city. This is Howard Dean's message and call to action:

Rudy Giuliani has just shown that he is as much a lying fearmonger as Karl Rove or any other Bush administration toady. From Politico:

Rudy Giuliani said if a Democrat is elected president in 2008, America will be at risk for another terrorist attack on the scale of Sept. 11, 2001.

But if a Republican is elected, he said, especially if it is him, terrorist attacks can be anticipated and stopped.

“If any Republican is elected president —- and I think obviously I would be the best at this —- we will remain on offense and will anticipate what [the terrorists] will do and try to stop them before they do it,” Giuliani said.

Ummmm...let's review some history, Rudy. Ronald Reagan and the elected Bush both SUPPORTED the Muslim fanatics that evolved into al-Qaeda. Bill Clinton is the one who first recognized them as a threat and tried to get them. The attack he ordered after the bombing of the USS Coles hit the location where bin Laden had JUST LEFT. The Clinton administration PREVENTED the millenium attacks. Clinton was so focused on getting al-Qaeda that the Republicans called him "obsessed" with al-Qaeda and he TOLD Bush that al-Qaeda would be the number one focus of Bush's administration.

Doubt the headline's premise? Check out this YouTube of audio from the Rush Limbaugh show, featuring a rendition of

Barack

Negro

by an Al Sharpton impersonator.

Hello, Federal Communications Commission?

I swear. John McCain once seemed reasonable to me. But he has become the worst, most glibly foolish war monger in the running, it seems. From MoveOn.org (the group that has recently teamed up with VoteVets.org to give our veterans more of a voice):

At a campaign stop on Wednesday, Sen. John McCain was asked what to do about Iran. His response? He sang "bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" to the tune of the Beach Boys' "Barbara Ann."

Seriously.

He says it was a joke, but the bottom line is that it is reckless saber-rattling against Iran at a time when tensions are high. Will you help us counter his message on TV?

McCain is laughing at the idea of unilaterally attacking Iran.

McCain is, in effect, laughing at this:

and this: (from the New England Journal of Medicine via The Memory Hole)

Because THAT is what his Iraq Escalation/Iran attack would produce more of. Dead and wounded American soldiers. And for what? NEITHER Iraq under Hussein nor Iraq have had any dealings with al-Qaeda. Why aren't we fighting al-Qaeda. While McCain wants to expand the Iraq quagmire into Iran, al-Qaeda is also expanding, entering Iraq thanks to us, expanding in Somalia, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Algeria, Morocco...and extremists are taking power in Bahrain. And McCain wants to make it all worse.

As you might expect, the conservative noise machine barely paused to catch its breath before beginning its effort to spin the horrible events at Virginia Tech into political gold. Instapundit was among the first out of the gate, as this DKos diary noted. The New York Sun, to nobody's surprise, takes up the same talking points, couching them on a fluffy layer of righteous talk about how America caught "a glimpse of evil" yesterday. There's a certain kind of conservative who loves nothing more than an opportunity to crow about Evil.* It allows him to trumpet his own Moral Clarity, the primary purpose of which is to aid in the process of simplifying and personalizing some difficult issue, and demonizing all those who point out that, by simplifying and personalizing it, the conservative has guaranteed that he will never do anything effectively to resolve it. Talking about "Evil," for this kind of conservative, is a ticket to a cartoon universe whose bright colors and vivid characters might just be enough to distract folks from noticing that such conservatives tend to be disastrously incompetent at dealing with problems in the real world. As for that Moral Clarity, count on it to be discarded the first time it becomes the least bit inconvenient.

But I digress. The Sun shines its dim light on the shootings in hopes of illuminating its argument about the actions of New York's own Mayor Bloomberg, who has continued Rudy Giuliani's strategy of cracking down on illegal guns. It's a strategy that has helped make New York the safest big city in America, but the balls-to-the-wall gun crowd, of course, don't care about that. The NRA has been demonizing Bloomberg for a while now, and the Sun's editors eagerly use the Va. Tech shootings as an opportunity to pile on:

The shooting erupted as a little noticed legal war was gathering between Virginia and New York over our city's legal maneuvering to stem the sale of what Mayor Bloomberg calls illegal guns. The smell of cordite hadn't cleared from the Virginia Tech campus when the declared candidates for president began addressing the shooting, ending, as Mr. Hope put it, "what had been seen as an unwillingness to fully address gun issues so far in the campaign."

More after the break.

Hotline makes an interesting observation: FabricatedCrapMax.com Newsmax.com, the online journal for wingnuts with brief attention spans, has deserted Donna Hanover's ex-husband in favor of a new darling, Multiple Choice Mitt.

For watchers of Wingnutdom, that's an interesting development. The site, which also publishes a magazine by the same name, is a Mellon-Scaife affiliated cesspool of just-barely-believable froth; think Fox without the subtlety, superb editing or good taste.

If they're shifting to Romney, as the above cover would seem to indicate, it could herald a seismic shift in the republican primary, with the extreme right finally burying its distrust of the former Massachusetts governor. And it may be a coincidence, but the newest Zogby Poll out of New Hampshire has Romney at 25%, even with John McCain and ahead of Mayor Benito at 19%. Something's going on here.

Ok, here we go: The New York Times reports that Rudy Giuliani, lately running for President, was briefed about the mob ties of his freshly nominated police commissioner-to-be, Bernie Kerik.

Rudolph W. Giuliani told a grand jury that his former chief investigator remembered having briefed him on some aspects of Bernard B. Kerik’s relationship with a company suspected of ties to organized crime before Mr. Kerik’s appointment as New York City police commissioner, according to court records.

Mr. Giuliani, testifying last year under oath before a Bronx grand jury investigating Mr. Kerik, said he had no memory of the briefing, but he did not dispute that it had taken place, according to a transcript of his testimony.

Kerik, if your memory isn't serving, is the sleaze who carried on an affair with Judith Regan in an apartment set aside for rescue workers overlooking Ground Zero. She later resigned as publisher of her eponymous imprint after making one anti-Semitic remark too many while trying to publish O.J. Simpson's If I did it memoir.

But back to Rudy Giuliani, Saint. Let's just say this: if you're told that the guy you're nominating for police commissioner has mob ties, you have several courses of action. None of these include forgetting about that little piece of information; that is, if you even extend him the benefit of the doubt on forgetting it while under oath in the first place. People forget dinner reservations, not being told that their nominee for police commissioner has mob ties.

We keep hearing from the Republicans about how somehow the McCain/Bush/Lieberman escalation of the Iraq quagmire will somehow bring us victory and solve all of our problems. My main questions I have had to date is just why are our soldiers dying in Iraq in the first place, what do they MEAN by victory (no exit strategy has yet been formulated!) and just where is Osama bin Laden, the guy who actually attacked America and who has never set foot in Iraq?

But now I have a new question. Just who is it who is winning? From what I can see, it sure as hell isn't us.

In Afghanistan, things have deteriorated so badly, that Republicans like Bill Frist are practically begging the Taliban to help us out. Remember the Taliban? Our enemies who are allied with Osama bin Laden? Well, Bill Frist wants us to patch things up with the Taliban and get them to pull our asses out of the fire in Afghanistan. So, Osama bin Laden is still free, al-Qaeda still operating in both Afghanistan and Pakistan, and we are begging the Taliban to rejoin the government. Who's winning in Afghanistan?

Urban Elephants alerts us to a new movie available on Google, titled 'The Great Global Warming Swindle'.

Might we suggest turning this into a series? The next entry could be 'The Holocaust: It Never Happened'; followed by 'Iraq, the Model Melting Pot'; then, perhaps, 'Earth: Still Flat, Still Suspended on a Giant Turtle'.

Seriously now, silly wingnuts: global warming isn't up for debate anymore. Time to move on.