The poster formerly known as Hornet Driver until he forgot his password (I'm sure glad you aren't handling any heavy equipment, amigo) but is now known as HornetDriver chirps in: "Oh, and Glenn? Stick to pissing in your pants. You can't do the humor thing." I think we'll leave the 'pissing in one's pants' (is it just me or isn't that about the dumbest, most irrelevant, and just plain silly you've read all day)to the Dick Cheneys and other fear-mongers. But the humor thing?? Humor isn't easy. For some folks it's a natural thing, for others it's a hard row to hoe. James Wolcott is funny, even droll. Michelle Malkin is funny, but unintentional. And you sir, are no judge of funny IMHO. Stick to pissing into the wind, my friend.

Wait a minute sys. It's different when Bush Does it. When Bush does it, it's a model for sucess. When Obama talks about doing it, it's the end of the world.

Hornet, our resident pacifist, of course has a horror of attacking Pakistan. He's against unilateral attacks by the US.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/18/AR2008021802500_pf.html

Tuesday, February 19, 2008; page A-1
Unilateral Strike Called a Model For U.S. Operations in Pakistan

In the predawn hours of Jan. 29, a CIA Predator aircraft flew in a slow arc above the Pakistani town of Mir Ali. The drone's operator, relying on information secretly passed to the CIA by local informants, clicked a computer mouse and sent the first of two Hellfire missiles hurtling toward a cluster of mud-brick buildings a few miles from the town center.

The missiles killed Abu Laith al-Libi, a senior al-Qaeda commander and a man who had repeatedly eluded the CIA's dragnet. It was the first successful strike against al-Qaeda's core leadership in two years, and it involved, U.S. officials say, an unusual degree of autonomy by the CIA inside Pakistan.

Having requested the Pakistani government's official permission for such strikes on previous occasions, only to be put off or turned down, this time the U.S. spy agency did not seek approval. The government of Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf was notified only as the operation was underway, according to the officials, who insisted on anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities.

Officials say the incident was a model of how Washington often scores its rare victories these days in the fight against al-Qaeda inside Pakistan's national borders: It acts with assistance from well-paid sympathizers inside the country, but without getting the government's formal permission beforehand.

It is an approach that some U.S. officials say could be used more frequently this year, particularly if a power vacuum results from yesterday's election and associated political tumult. The administration also feels an increased sense of urgency about undermining al-Qaeda before President Bush leaves office, making it less hesitant, said one official familiar with the incident.

Independent actions by U.S. military forces on another country's sovereign territory are always controversial, and both U.S. and Pakistani officials have repeatedly sought to obscure operational details that would reveal that key decisions are sometimes made in the United States, not in Islamabad. Some Pentagon operations have been undertaken only after intense disputes with the State Department, which has worried that they might inflame Pakistani public resentment; the CIA itself has sometimes sought to put the brakes on because of anxieties about the consequences for its relationship with Pakistani intelligence officials.

U.S. military officials say, however, that the uneven performance of their Pakistani counterparts increasingly requires that Washington pursue the fight however it can, sometimes following an unorthodox path that leaves in the dark Pakistani military and intelligence officials who at best lack commitment and resolve and at worst lack sympathy for U.S. interests.

Top Bush administration policy officials -- who are increasingly worried about al-Qaeda's use of its sanctuary in remote, tribally ruled areas in northern Pakistan to dispatch trained terrorists to the West -- have quietly begun to accept the military's point of view, according to several sources familiar with the context of the Libi strike.

[...]

The officials stressed that despite the occasional tactical success against it, such as the Libi strike, the threat posed by al-Qaeda's presence in Pakistan has been growing. As a senior U.S. official briefed on the strike said: "Even a blind squirrel finds a nut now and then. But overall, we're in worse shape than we were 18 months ago."

- - Washington Post 2/19/08

The Swift Boat defamation of character ploy was easy to understand. The thugs were smearing Kerry with bullshit, but it was about something he had actually done, not some speech he once listened to someone else make.

Maybe I'm missing a nuance of some sound byte, but it seems like there's absolutely zero substance at the core of this flap over Wright. I'm seriously at a loss to even identify what the punkits think is so "incendiary" about Wright's opinions. Has the corporate media simply decided to dispense with pretending to "strongly disagree with what you have to say, but defend to the death your right to say it"? That's my working theory at least.

Or maybe they're so brainwashed they've forgotten what everyone used to call this kind of racket: red-baiting guilt by association. When someone's record was as clean as Obama's, and they couldn't pin anything on him directly, old-school fascists would try to claim he was a "fellow traveller" who associated with "known Communists". Any excuse to pummel him with lying accusations and intimidate him into jumping through their hoops.

Jeremiah Wright is now infamous for being belligerent, I get that. Like Paris Hilton was famous for being a celebrity. Funny thing how cute white women are so often cast in the role of celebrity, while big black men can pretty much count on getting the role of boogieman.

You can post or "google" a million f'ing links of the same Obama speech and you will never find the words "invade Pakistan" transcribed as having come out of Obama's mouth.

-- Kitt

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/01/AR2007080101233.html

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama issued a pointed warning yesterday to Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, saying that as president he would be prepared to order U.S. troops into that country unilaterally if it failed to act on its own against Islamic extremists. ... "When I am president, we will wage the war that has to be won," he told an audience at the Woodrow Wilson Center in the District. He added, "The first step must be to get off the wrong battlefield in Iraq and take the fight to the terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan."

I know you're just so in love with Obama, but you can deny reality for only so long, Kitt. Your man is a big-talking empty suit, and the MSM kissed his ass for six months, so you have nothing to complain about now that they suddenly realize he's not the saint they think he is.

Oh, and Glenn? Stick to pissing in your pants. You can't do the humor thing.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article2182955.ece

Barack Obama, a leading Democrat candidate in the US presidential race, provoked anger yesterday by threatening to send troops into Pakistan to hunt down terrorists — even without permission from that country’s Government. ... “There are terrorists holed up in those mountains who murdered 3,000 Americans. They are plotting to strike again . . . If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will" ... Obama said that as commander in chief he would remove troops from Iraq and putting them "on the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan."