Olbermann to Bush: ‘Your hypocrisy is so vast’

A reaction to Thursday’s press conference: the president was the one who interjected Gen. Petraeus into the political dialogue in the first place

Countdown
SPECIAL COMMENT
By Keith Olbermann
Anchor, 'Countdown'
MSNBC
Updated: 9:59 p.m. ET Sept 20, 2007

So the President, behaving a little bit more than usual, like we would all interrupt him while he was watching his favorite cartoons on the DVR, stepped before the press conference microphone and after side-stepping most of the substantive issues like the Israeli raid on Syria, in condescending and infuriating fashion, produced a big political finish that indicates, certainly, that if it wasn’t already – the annual Republican witch-hunting season is underway.

“I thought the ad was disgusting. I felt like the ad was an attack not only on General Petraeus, but on the U.S. Military.”
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“And I was disappointed that not more leaders in the Democrat party spoke out strongly against that kind of ad.

“And that leads me to come to this conclusion: that most Democrats are afraid of irritating a left-wing group like Moveon.org or more afraid of irritating them, than they are of irritating the United States military.”

“That was a sorry deal.”

First off, it’s “Democrat-ic” party.

You keep pretending you’re not a politician, so stop using words your party made up. Show a little respect.

Secondly, you could say this seriously after the advertising/mugging of Senator Max Cleland? After the swift-boating of John Kerry?

But most importantly, making that the last question?

So that there was no chance at a follow-up?

So nobody could point out, as Chris Matthews so incisively did, a week ago tonight, that you were the one who inappropriately interjected General Petraeus into the political dialogue of this nation in the first place!

Deliberately, premeditatedly, and virtually without precedent, you shanghaied a military man as your personal spokesman and now you’re complaining about the outcome, and then running away from the microphone?

Eleven months ago the President’s own party, the Republican National Committee, introduced this very different kind of advertisement, just nineteen days before the mid-term elections.

Bin Laden.

Al-Zawahiri’s rumored quote of six years ago about having bought “suitcase bombs.”

All set against a ticking clock, and finally a blinding explosion and the dire announcement:

“These are the stakes - vote, November 7th.”

That one was ok, Mr. Bush?

Terrorizing your own people in hopes of getting them to vote for your own party has never brought as much as a public comment from you?

The Republican Hamstringing of Captain Max Cleland and lying about Lieutenant John Kerry met with your approval?

But a shot at General Petraeus, about whom you conveniently ignore it, was you who reduced him from four-star hero to a political hack, merits this pissy juvenile blast at the Democrats on national television?

Your hypocrisy is so vast that if we could somehow use it to fill the ranks in Iraq you could realize your dream and keep us fighting there until the year 3000.

The line between the military and the civilian government is not to be crossed.

When Douglas MacArthur attempted to make policy for the United States in Korea half a century ago, President Truman moved quickly to fire him, even though Truman knew it meant his own political suicide, and the deification of a General who history suggests had begun to lose his mind.

When George McClellan tried to make policy for the Union in the Civil War, President Lincoln finally fired his chief General, even though he knew McClellan could galvanize political opposition which he did when McClellan ran as Lincoln’s presidential opponent in 1864, nearly defeating our greatest president.

Even when the conduit flowed the other way and Senator Joseph McCarthy tried to smear the Army because it wouldn’t defer the service of one of McCarthy’s staff aides, the entire civilian and Defense Department structures, after four years of fearful servitude, rose up against McCarthy and said “enough” and buried him.
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The list is not endless but it is instructive.

Air Force General LeMay—who broke with Kennedy over the Cuban Missile Crisis and was retired.

Army General Edwin Anderson Walker—who started passing out John Birch Society leaflets to his soldiers.

Marine General Smedley Butler—who revealed to Congress the makings of a plot to remove FDR as President and for merely being approached by the plotters, was phased out of the military hierarchy.

These careers were ended because the line between the military and the civilian is not to be crossed!

Mr. Bush, you had no right to order General Petraeus to become your front man.

And he obviously should have refused that order and resigned rather than ruin his military career.

The upshot is and contrary it is, to the MoveOn advertisement he betrayed himself more than he did us.

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But there has been in his actions a sort of reflexive courage, some twisted vision of duty at a time of crisis. That the man doesn’t understand that serving officers cannot double as serving political ops, is not so much his fault as it is your good, exploitable, fortune.

But Mr. Bush, you have hidden behind the General’s skirts, and today you have hidden behind the skirts of ‘the planted last question’ at a news conference, to indicate once again that your presidency has been about the tilted playing field, about no rules for your party in terms of character assassination and changing the fabric of our nation, and no right for your opponents or critics to as much as respond.

That is not only un-American but it is dictatorial.

And in pimping General David Petraeus and in the violation of everything this country has been assiduously and vigilantly against for 220 years, you have tried to blur the gleaming radioactive demarcation between the military and the political, and to portray your party as the one associated with the military, and your opponents as the ones somehow antithetical to it.

You did it again today and you need to know how history will judge the line you just crossed.

It is a line thankfully only the first of a series that makes the military political, and the political, military.

It is a line which history shows is always the first one crossed when a democratic government in some other country has started down the long, slippery, suicidal slope towards a Military Junta.

Get back behind that line, Mr. Bush, before some of your supporters mistake your dangerous transgression, for a call to further politicize our military.
© 2007 MSNBC Interactive

Mukasey as next Attorney General?

or

How do you write an editorial on the man
when his motivations are so deeply stacked under outrage
for his stand on Jose Padillo?

<<:>> <<:>> <<:>>

First a comment that appeared in the Daily Kos:

Judge Mukasey (1+ / 0-)

Recommended by:

luckylizard

He's a close friend of Rudy Giuliani.

I suspec6t he's "down" with the Israel-first, dual national neocon types like Wolfowitz, Dov Zakheim, Richard Perle et al.; he is in any case an Orthodox Jew. No, I don't see being Jewish, or Orthodox, as a disqualification, but we don't need more high-level federal officials who believe American foreign policy should be dictated by the Israeli extreme right. His views on those matters ought to be questioned.

He certainly has a reputation as a "hanging judge" in criminal matters.

I -- a civil attorney -- tried one matter before him. He has a first-rate intellect, undeniably, but is also arrogant as all hell, and utterly convinced of his own rectitude, if not his infallibility.

He is also one of the most humorless men I have ever met in my life.

But there is much more to be concerned about this man becoming the next legal beagle, BuZh apologist for the White House, "stuff" that is incredibly hard to find out as it is buried on the internet under compilations of urls on the Jose Padillo case, a case that it appeared he would do the right thing, and then capitulated after being seen PRIVATELY by US officials, without Padillo's legal person being present. There went civil rights (and never forget that Jose Padillo is an American citizen ..)

So here comes the latest for the Daily Kos in its entirety ...

Now if this allegation below (no reason to think it isn't) is TRUE, it could well be an additional reasoon that Mukasey is the pick .. being PRO Labor racketerring (he covered it up) which is USEFUL if the North American Union comes into being!!! He is accused of helping CONGRESS cover up dirty money ... (which could explain why Congress would let him in AND further the NWO agenda at the same time ...

QUESTION FOR EXAMINATION
Did the Mukasey Panel by and through their Summary Order 03-3117 filed
January 14, 2004 (attached) continue a systematic pattern to hide documented Judicial Fraud and Extra Judicial Acts of Misconduct committed by District Judge Janet C. Hall – doing so by intentionally avoiding the procedural process of a 28 U.S.C. 455 affidavit and motion (the premise of the appeal) in order to circumvent the standard of review fora 28 U.S.C. 455 motion, that being: "Impartiality might reasonably be questioned"?"

And this is from a blog, facts about his son .... interesting CONNECTION. BINGO!!

Marc Mukasey - Partner at Bracewell & Giuliani where he "focuses on the defense of white collar criminal and regulatory cases." The firm also states: "Recently, Mr. Mukasey has been successful in persuading Department of Justice prosecutors to close an antitrust investigation against a major corporation without the filing of charges, and to drop securities fraud and mail fraud investigations of his business clients. He also successfully argued a downward departure motion that secured a favorable outcome for his client in the face of vigorous opposition by the Department of Justice." Marc's father, Michael Mukasey, former chief judge of the Southern District of New York, is also a member of Giuliani's Justice Advisory Committee.

And this is a great OpEd showing how Mukasey's brand of justice shown in the Padilla case will totally decimate the US Bill of Rights ..

Now I believe that there is FAR more to be seen about Mukasey. I will not stand corrected if I am wrong; for I know I am correct in this. The other four nominees were bandied about hoping we would be lead off the 'scent' .. and we were. This is massive political trojan horse project in the making on the part of the Administration. At best, it is simply a stall tactic . . . just as the announcement that Gonegonzales was delayed to give anyone the satisfaction of knowing that Alberto made a poor showing before Congress. The decision was made but took a month to be announced. Karl Rove's dirty paws seemed to be involved in the TACTIC. We can expect, eventually, that this will be as wildly unpopular as putting in Harriet Myers turned out to be.

So this Mukasey appointment may be just another of the stall, delay, obfuscate tactics of which we all have such intimate familiarity. But today is the day we earnestly begin our dedicated research.

It's a good day for taking out those pens and beginning to write away about our disgust. These letters and emails, they are not tactics; they are calls to continue a freedom loving lifestyle ... with certain inalienable rights ...