Gen. Petraeus’ decision to appear with Tinkerbell on the Clap Louder Radio Network is not that all that surprising.

It’s been quite clear to anybody paying attention that Bush chooses Generals based upon their willingness to be part of the Cheney’s disinformation campaign. Petraeus is no exception.

When he tells us in September that “we’ve turned the corner” for the millionth time he won’t be changing anyone’s mind, this is simply part of their plan to stall out the war until losing it can be blamed upon someone else.

His appearance with Hewitt is an acknowledgement that the “rank fiction” they are creating is so far the reality in Iraq that a good portion of the public no longer believes anything that they say.

Their well-oiled propaganda machine may be working just as it always did [1], but it is no longer having the same effect. It isn’t changing opinions, and it isn’t building support for the war, and that isn’t going to change.

These “talking points” are now solely for the benefit of those still in the Bush fantasy bubble and a last ditch effort to keep them in it and to keep them clapping – loudly – that’s their plan.

Do they even have a plan for a political solution in Iraq? Surely not. Now that Petraeus is claiming that Al Qaeda is our main enemy there they don’t need one. They can just pretend, like Bill Kristol, that our troops “are not in the middle of a civil war. It’s not true.”

There’s also no need for a real plan when you want to blame anything and everything that’s going badly on Iran, which they’re already doing. What Petaeus did on the radio with Hugh – catapult the propaganda - is their plan for Iraq.

[1] http://mediamatters.org/items/200707120007

(This is one example of an impression that Patreaus is leaving that is not factually correct.)

I’d like to point out that this “warped view of our republic” - the denial of prosecutorial independence, and the idea that Executive Branch employees are beyond the reach of the law, emanated from the Reagan Justice Department in 1984 – when none other than Bruce Fein worked there.

Did he have anything to say back then about this radical viewpoint? What about other Republican legal scholars at the time – did they speak how about Olson’s outrageous legal opinions?

If no one did, and they were silent just as Republicans in Congress are today, isn’t it fair to conclude that the contempt for the law and our checks and balances inherent in these legal opinions is not a Bush phenomenon, but a long-held Republican Party agenda?

I don’t have access to Nexis-Lexis, so I would love to see someone who does research the reaction to Olson’s legal theory back in 1984.

If Bruce Fein was silent, were there other prominent Republicans who stood up for the rule of law and prosecutorial independence? Who was upset that Olson was putting Reagan’s employees outside of the reach of law?

If this were a rational world, and we were dealing with rational people, you would think Bush-loving conservatives would be frightened to death of a Democratic President and an entire executive branch that was above the law and not accountable to Congress or the Courts. But that doesn’t seem to disturb them.

Indeed, some of them have convinced themselves that this is exactly what our founding fathers wanted when they wrote the Constitution.

On National Review’s “Ship of Fools” the author Hari asked those on board why liberals were like they were, to which a man named Dave responded:

"The liberals don't believe in the constitution. They don't believe in what the founders wanted – a strong executive," he announces, to nods.

I’m simply unable to process this sort of thinking. I attribute that to still being in what the Bushies refer to as “the reality-based community” where we “believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.''

Obviously, they’ve not only created their “own reality” they’ve also created their very own Constitution.

Bond:

The strategy we had before was not the right strategy," he told reporters at midweek. "We should have had a counterinsurgency strategy." and then:

While I agree that we had the wrong plan for three years, we now have the right one, and the right man to lead it.

Does Bond even realize that Petraeus, now the “right man” to lead us is not engaging in a counterinsurgency strategy against the Sunni insurgents, but rather is now arming the insurgents to fight “Al Qaeda”?

When asked on Fox News: "How do you know, or do you worry, that they are going to end up using those weapons to either attack US forces or to fight their civil war against the Shiites?"

Petraeus replied, "Those are legitimate concerns."

So now the right counterinsurgent strategy is to arm the insurgents.

Blowback anyone? I think we should ask the French about this. Their track record on these issues is much better than ours.

http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Gen._Petraeus_concerned_about_U.S._arming_0617.html

that anyone who questions any of this is either brainwashed by the war-hating media…

Bob Geiger points out that the “war hating media” (for Bond) apparently includes the Stars and Stripes military newspaper, Marine Corps Times, and the The Wall Street Journal all of whom published stories that either contradicted what he was saying or reporting that he denounced as false.

http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/geiger/54053/#more