So this all ably explains why moreso than any other General, Bush cultists have been hyping Petraeus as the second coming of Caesar as soon as Bush announced he would take over in Iraq.

They were preemptively creating the impression he was the best general there was for fighting a counter insurgency (Which begs the question of why he wasn't put in charge in mid 2004 when it was clear there was an insurgency in the first place). All this crap about him "literally writing the book on fighting insurgencies" - ha. The US Military has never successfully defeated an insurgency so it really doesn't matter who writes the book on it for the US military.

Also, I must refer our attention to the DoJ scandal: This is an administration that willfully set out to turn the DoJ into a partisan operation dedicated to supporting republican causes and conservative ideology even above the obvious interests of justice. Is there any doubt they have attempted to do the very same thing in the military? That they do not have partisan criteria for who gets promoted into the general ranks?

As Glenn demonstrated, Petraeus has been hyping the imaginary progress for years now, and lo and behold, he gets the top job in Iraq, and lo and behold he is set to declare the strategy as successful. Shocking. I'm pretty sure Westmoreland thought his vietnam strategies were fantastic even as they drummed him off the field in Vietnam.

Granted, the Military probably has better safeguards against the type of stuff Monica Goodling was doing, so the Bush administration may have been less overt or less able to fire any Generals with any kind of liberal beliefs or evidence of support for Democrats in their private views, but I guarantee they have been doing their utmost in this regard. General officers go to university, write papers and such that can be googled. Quiet words to the chairman of the joint chiefs by Rove or Sara Taylor can go a long way to ensure so and so never gets above Colonel or Maj-Gen so and so sees early retirement for his college paper opposing the vietnam war.

Oh how they hate being reminded of what cowards they are.

Digby's post on the subject was fantastic as I recall, and has some great insight into the twisted psychology of these guys that missed the sexual revolution and how that still screws them up. They know they missed out on getting laid when the getting was good, and they also missed out on what they believe to be what real men do, which is fight in wars, so their own perception of their manhood is tarnished, which is why they compensate by being so vocally belligerent at home.

Great put down, Glenn.

All these war mongers thing Iran needs to be invaded and conquered too, something the US military is not in a position to do.

So why isn't there more calls for voluntary enlistment or discussion of a draft from Bush and Cheney?

Is this the grand struggle of civilizations or not?

If it is, get drafting. What's that? It would be political suicide? I thought these people didn't "watch polls" and allow little trifles like "overwhelming public sentiment" to sway them from the right path.

Even within their own crazy world view what they're doing doesn't make sense: Iran is a mortal threat and the the US forces are not large enough to effectively defeat them. Conclusion? Status quo.

Another milestone passed towards the Branch Battle Royale.

As to Gonzales, I think they should have a special prosecutor indict him for perjury and let him make the affirmative defence that involves details of the other wiretapping plans.

At least we could ditch that irritating "no underlying crime" bullshit.

We frequently complain (rightly) that the media are unable to accept the given reasons for political actions, case in point being Feingold's censure resolution last year. That was interpreted solely in light of his presidential ambitions, and no other reasons were even considered.

Yet somehow on the subject of support for Israel or war with Iran, the media is unable to look any deeper than the given rhetoric (and they often purposely don't even look at all of that).

That is all.

Not that I don't enjoy Glenn's smackdowns of these boobs running America's foreign policy conversation, but man it is depressing how easy it is to annihilate these morons just by hanging them on their own words.

Do these guys think there are real life Winstons rewriting Time Magazine and NYT archives to make them look right in retrospect every time the official line changes course?