Leave Freddie Alone, He Knows His Symbolism - As Good As The Red Paint On An Old Pick-Up Truck

Well, he is an actor, and he does know how, and when, to hit his marks.

The Aqua Velva Man, in all of one day of being - finally - an official candidate for the Republican nomination for President, poked a stick into The Commander Guys', as well as the entire right-wing freak show, beehive, on the latest videotape from the still-hanging-on-the-wall Wanted Poster, Osama bin Laden, by characterizing it as;

"Bin Laden is more symbolism than anything else," Thompson said while campaign in Iowa Friday. "I think it demonstrates to people once again that we're in a global war."

WOW!

That's enough to get kicked out of the RNC, and have your bathroom stall privileges revoked.

But they need to lay off Freddie.

He's a pro at symbolism ... Just ask'em about his red pick-up truck...

Bonus Big Guy Links

Media Matters: Wash. Post, CNN reported on Thompson's pickup truck without noting it was a leased campaign prop

Glenn Greenwald: Chris Matthews on Fred Thompson's sexiness and smells

Boston Globe: Not all would put a heroic sheen on Thompson's Watergate role

Breaking News! Thompson Responds To FEC Charge, Claiming He's Now Moving Into "Testing Executive Privilege" Phase; Also Invokes "The Cheney Principle", Saying "He's Not Part of The Campaign"

Juan Cole: Bush's incompetence gives al-Qaida new life

Newsweek: The Ongoing Hunt for Osama bin Laden; Into Thin Air

The Aqua Velva Man

The Real Rudy

Robert Greenwald does it again.

The site, The Real Rudy, is chock full of information America's Mayor is running - and lying - away from.

Glenn Greenwald (no relation) says of 'The Real Rudy';

"The Real Rudy," presents a truly devastating indictment of Giuliani's placement of New York City's Emergency Command Center in the World Trade Center ..."

"I believe, what appears quite clearly to be Giuliani's blatant and deliberate lying when asked repeatedly by Chris Wallace about what happened and why ..."

Check this out and bookmark it ... It will most interesting to watch Hizzoner clomp along the campaign trail with this around his neck.

Bonus America's Mayor Links

Wayne Barrett: Rudy Giuliani's Five Big Lies About 9/11

Alex Koppelman: After 9/11, Rudy wasn't a rescue worker -- he was a Yankee

Retro Rudy ... When The Emperor Has No Clothes, I Guess, We're Supposed To Compliment His Hair ...


The REAL Rudy: Command Center

"And Now We Come To The Sanity Clause ..."

Now, The Garlic has long known the Bush Grindhouse's affinity to the Marx Brothers as the inspiration for their breathtaking polices, but this is really, really stretching it ...

We've heard - for months, on end - the expected manna from heaven that would fall in Washington this September ... The great warrior, General David Petraeus, would speak his words, sprinkling the ground with golden wisdom ...So hushed would the nation's capital become, it could be mistaken for the shooting of a remake of 'The Day The Earth Stood Still'.

But then, a ripple in this militarized Norman Rockwell moment ...

Petraeus wouldn't be writing the report, the Bush Grindhouse will pen the way forward ...

And we've endured now, the whizzing of reports, flying overhead like a food fight in a middle school cafeteria ... The GAO... The NIE, pundits on the right, pundits on the left... A Former Secretary of State... Embassy Reports...

And today - drumroll please...

Think Progress: New Twist In Saga Over ‘Petraeus Report’: There Will Be No Report

Joe Gandelman: Shifting Goalposts Dept: Now Petraeus Report Won’t Be Written Report

John Cole: Report? What Report?

As Keith Olbermann said the other evening, of The Commander Guy; "You have no remaining credibility about Iraq".

Now, if we can get a Congressional Democrat, or two, to morph into Klaatu, and his gigantic robot, Gort, and toss around a few "Klaatu barada niktos", maybe something can get done to end this madness.

Bonus Links

Juan Cole: A surge of phony spin on Iraq; Bush's backers are peddling a sunny view of the president's strategy -- despite Iraq's political chaos and soaring death counts

Nir Rosen, in conversation with Amy Goodman: Iraq No Longer Exists

Sidney Blumenthal: Bush knew Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction


A Night at the Opera (1935) - The Contract

He Should Have Used "The Google"

Maybe he's just trying to drum up some buzz for his new book...

One has to think, that someone on The Shakespeare Guy's travel contingent would have a laptop that he could use to look up "The Google" and get his info straight.

Gesh ... And we still have more-than-a-year of this stuff left to deal with ...

Links

Raw Story: Dazed Bush forgets what country he's in, what summit he's at

AP: Bush has bad day at Sydney Opera House

CNN: Fake motorcade causes summit stir

Bonus Links

Sidney Morning Herald: Some verbal gymnastics, and Bush is in Austria

New Garlic Song: Bush Could Write A Book

Tough sledding on the Legacy Front these days.

Was it put out there to pick up more donations for the Bush Library? You know, like a PBS kind of thing, where, if you pledge so much, you get this, bump up to the next level, get that ...

Can't imagine they're offering a tote bag - those must all be deployed in Iraq, to lug around the cash to pay for the "success" in Al Anbar.

No, none of that liberal stuff ... Gotta go with a book ... Yeah, a book ... That'll get it out there ... Show that I'm tough ... Show that I'm sensitive ... Determined ... Resolute ... Yeah, a book will do it ...

Trouble is, speaking on the Legacy Front, when you write that kind of book, with more that a year left in your administration, and you start spinning the history ... Well, you need to fire the guy that forgot to tell you that there's a whole boatload of people out there - former staffers, colleagues, et all - that can, pretty much, blow you out of the water.

Ahhh, but so it goes.

And, as we, so often, have offered song to accompany The Commander Guy, in his stumbles, today we provide the soundtrack that will surely be used in the video loop that will play on at the Bush Library ... Or maybe his Freedom Institute ...

It's a standard, so sing along, loud and strong ...

Bush Could Write A Book

A B C D E F G
He never learned to spell,
At least not well.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7
He never learned to count,
A great amount.

But his busy mind is burning to use what little learning it got,
He won't waste any time,
He'll lie while the iron is hot.

If they asked him, Bush could write a book
About the way they shock, and whisper, and mistook.
He could write a preface
On fabricating the threat
And the world will never forget.

And the simple neocon secret of his plot
Is just to tell them "you're with us, or not".
And the world discovers
As his book ends,
How to make two disasters
That he defends.

And the simple neocon secret of the plot
Is just to tell them "you're with us, or not".
And the world discovers
As his book ends,
How to make two disasters
That he defends.

Bonus Links

Listen To A Clip of George Shearing and Mel Torme on I Could Write A Book

Keith Olbermann: Pres. Bush's inconsistencies - A new biography about President Bush, “Dead Certain,” reveals many inconstancies in his public and private statements. Author Robert Draper discusses what to make of Bush.

Baker-Hamilton To Say “Start Over”; Reinstall Saddam And Retake Country, This Time With Plans; First Step Is To Reconstruct Baghdad To Pre-2003 Invasion Look; “Maintain a public front of “victory in Iraq”

Top Ten Cloves: Difficulties DC Comics' Batman May Have Fighting Osama bin Laden

Libby Trial Update - The Scooter and Cheney Show Theme Song

Top Ten Cloves: Reasons How Air Force Mistakenly Flew 5 Nuclear Warheads Across Country

News Item: Nuclear Bombs Mistakenly Flown Over US

10. Was going to ship them by truck, but FEMA has them all tied up, toting ice all over the country

9. Condi Rice is behind it, just testing out if she still has power or not

8. Two Airmen where in adjacent bathroom stalls .. .One started tapping his foot and next thing you know, the bombs are loaded and the plane takes off

7. Air Force thinks it happened on the day they had Kid Nation working for them

6. Incident has just been adopted by Vice President Cheney's Energy Task Force, so now classified and can't be discussed

5. The RNC set it up, to threaten Fred Thompson to make his god-damned announcement, already!

4. General David Petraeus wanted some props when he testifies before Congress next week

3. President Bush went on one his crying jags and ordered a hit on Iran to cheer himself up

2. Barbour Griffith and Rogers bought them, for leverage in their plans to install Ayad Allawi as the ruler of Iraq

1. Cheney's Cheney David Addington couldn't wait any longer to take out the FISA Court

Minced Garlic ... New Keith Olbermann Special Comment ... Lying, Lying, Lying!

"As he deceived the troops at Al-Asad Air Base yesterday with the tantalizing prospect that some of them might not have to risk being killed and might get to go home, Mr. Bush probably did not know that, with his own words, he had already proved that he had been lying, is lying and will be lying about Iraq."

So began an energized, animated and angry MSNBC Countdown anchor Keith Olbermann, in his Special Comment "Bush just playing us with 'troop withdrawal'".

Ranting against The Commander Guy's surprise Photo Op in Iraq yesterday, teasing the troops about possible troop withdrawals, yet, already laying out his legacy strategy, now released with his new book, 'Dead Certain';

“I'm playing for October-November," Mr. Bush said to Draper. That, evidently, is the time during which, he thinks he can sell us the real plan, which is “to get us in a position where the presidential candidates will be comfortable about sustaining a presence."

Comfortable, that is, with saying about Iraq, again quoting the President, “stay... longer."

And Olbermann didn't hesitate to call him out on it all.

War today, war tomorrow, war forever!

And you are playing at it! Playing!

A man with any self respect, having inadvertently revealed such an evil secret, would have already resigned and fled the country! You have no remaining credibility about Iraq.

Read Keith Olbermann's Special Comment Bush just playing us with 'troop withdrawal'; Night is day, and death is life, and enraging the world against us is safety

Watch The Video of Keith Olbermann's Special comment on Bush’s surprise Iraq visit

''Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in ... another stall.''

Mitch McConnell, and the Republican Leadership must be burning overtime this evening ... Photoshopping Larry Craig with a couple of Congressional Pages .... They'll be taking off the gloves and piling up bodies ...

This is not what they wanted, when they Thunderdomed the Idaho lawmaker/breaker last week;

UPDATED 7:25 p.m. -- Craig may not quit after all if he's cleared of charges, spokesman says

This is going to be soooo, soooo good to watch ...

Bonus Restroom Leg Syndrome Links

Top Ten Cloves: Things About Admitting You Have A Wide Stance

This Is Just Too, Too Rich ...

Breaking News! Another Bombshell - Craig To Enter Rehab; Cites Suffering From 'Restroom Leg Syndrome'

Today's Hysterical Must Read: White Flour!

In an effort to welcome everyone back from the lazy, hot summer, we have another pointer post.

This comes from Hullabaloo, where the incredible Digby has done it again ...

It is a fall-on-the-floor, hysterical, tears-running-down-your-face tale of a Knoxville KKK rally that gets stymied by ... Well, you gotta read it ...

White Flour!

Photo Op Accomplished - Hooah!

Sans the flightsuit and aircraft carrier deck landing ...

While the Bush Grindhouse billed this as a "stop-by" for The Commander Guy, on his way to an economic conference in Australia, it was anything but ...

It was the continued roll out of the "Petraeus Reportpalooza", complete with the soldier-in-uniform backdrops, with the well-timed "Hooahs" to urge this charade on ...

We've already had, over the past few weeks and months, the steady stream of Congressional Delegations coming over to Iraq, with the fervor of the Kanamits loading the dimwitted citizens on to airplanes in the Twilight Zone's 'To Serve Man', and with the expected results;

Republicans - The surge is working, it's a big success story.

Democrats - We're fucked ... And the longer we stay here, the more fucked we'll be.

So Anbar province now sits in the Extreme Makeover spotlight ... The bell-ringing success story to validate the Bush Grindhouse tenet that everything about invading and occupying Iraq was the right thing to do ...

And it gave the Decider Guy yet another opportunity to ring that al Qaeda bell;

"You see Sunnis who once fought side by side with al Qaeda against coalition troops now fighting side by side with coalition troops against al Qaeda. Anbar is a huge province. It was once written off as lost. It is now one of the safest places in Iraq. (Hooah.)

The very people that you helped the Iraqis defeat in Anbar swore allegiance to the man that ordered the attack on the United States of America. What happens here in Anbar matters to the security of the United States."

But a funny thing happened on the way to the public relations bag of tricks.

The visit today, and the strategy that lead to the "safety" of the stop-over goes completely against the strained strategy of the ever-so-hailed surge, and what the surge was supposed to accomplish.

"The surge of operations that began in June is improving security throughout Iraq. The military successes are paving the way for the political reconciliation and economic progress the Iraqis need to transform their country."

They bought and paid for Anbar Province, with arms, and money (and, perhaps, some of those missing AK-47's that General David 'Rifleman" Petraeus kinda lost).

Security throughout Iraq is not improving and Michael Vick will probably be back in the NFL before there is political reconciliation.

After all, the "Petraeus Reportpalooza" is running to counter the "reality" coming out of Iraq;

• A corrupt government
• A virtual complete failure in reaching the benchmarks set out by Congress, as detailed by the latest GAO Report
• A NIE Report showing (drum roll, please) more violence, violence violence

And how's this for a ringing endorsement of those Sunnis-turned-soldiers;

"Bush's visit to Anbar province is a strong message to the Maliki government in Baghdad and a rebuke to the Shiite opposition to arming the tribesmen to fight al-Qaeda in Iraq," said Farhan Jassem, a sheik from the Dulaimi tribe. "I believe the tribesmen have fulfilled their promises which they had made to the American forces. We have achieved in four months what the United States could not do in four years, destroying al-Qaeda in Anbar."

Doesn't sound like they're ready to sing "My Country Tis of Thee" anytime soon.

And, as this has happened so often, anybody whose anybody, knows, as soon as U.S. Forces pull out of Anbar, it will go south, just like all the other "success stories".

Perhaps, the best the Bush Grindhouse can spin out of this is that The Uniter Guy didn't go to the market, or rug shopping.

They must be saving the flightsuit and aircraft carrier for the spreading of democracy in Iran.

Cue up Que Sera Sera...

Bonus Petraeus Reportpalooza Links

MUST READ! Firedoglake: Bush/Cheney in Iraq: Winning By Failing

Juan Cole: A surge of phony spin on Iraq; Bush's backers are peddling a sunny view of the president's strategy -- despite Iraq's political chaos and soaring death counts.

Lawmakers Describe 'Being Slimed in the Green Zone'


The Three Amigos

Good Post Alert - Edward Copeland's Review of 'No End In Sight'

Certainly, not unrelated to the above-post of The Commander Guy swooping into Anbar Province, in Iraq, for a victory lap, we want to point you to a good post today, over on Edward Copeland on Film (and he also writes the blog Copeland Institute for Lower Learning).

Copeland reviews the new documentary, "No End In Sight", a tale of those early, heady days of the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

"No End in Sight is remarkable for its "Just the facts, ma'am" approach. There's no need for ratcheting up the rhetoric: The film's recitation of the facts, many of which are well known, are assembled in such a way that viewer provides his or her own sense of outrage or disbelief without any prompting from the filmmaker. Interviewing a wide assortment of officials involved in the initial invasion as well as journalists, troops and others, what's so astounding about this Iraq documentary, and there certainly have been no shortage of documentaries on the subject, is that those involved believed in the mission. They wanted to succeed and they wanted to leave an Iraq that was better than the one they invaded. Unfortunately, the people making the decisions either because of arrogance, incompetence, indifference or some combination of all three, let the opportunity for a success story to slip through their fingers and everyone is paying the price to this very day."

Of interest, Copeland opens his review with a great quote from former Ambassador Barbara Bodine, who appears in the film.

Bodine was also just on 'Real Time with Bill Maher last Friday, who offered some of flavor of what's in "No End In Sight";

BODINE: I don’t – I honestly don’t think that they were trying to egg on the insurgency. But I do think that they were so blinded by their ideology, so convinced of their – their right, their ability and their right to transform a society. They basically approached Iraq as if it was a blank slate. And there were – there were some in the reconstruction – the political side of the reconstruction – who actually said that they thought that the looting of the entire infrastructure was good, because it was a way of downsizing the government.

GRAVEL: I heard that.

BODINE: And – well, it did.

MAHER: Right. It seemed like they were trying to—[laughter]

BODINE: It did. It did. I mean, it zeroed everything out, brought it down to, you know, that sort of basic Stone Age level of no electricity, no water, no sanitation, no law and order. Sort of, you know, a “Lord of the Flies” almost kind of a thing. And – but the problem was – it wasn’t that they wanted the chaos. I think even the worst of them did not want the chaos. They didn’t understand the kind of forces that they were unleashing. And they had this—

MAHER: But, they—

BODINE: [overlapping]—arrogant idea that the Iraqis would be passive to all of this; that we could go in with our ideas and our plans and our way of doing things, and that the Iraqis would just simply sit there and wait for us to come forward with our plans. And it was going to be this Petri dish of every single one of their political philosophy ideas – you know, flat taxes, complete privatization—

And there was this gem, as well;

MAHER: And they had free health care over there.

BODINE: They did.

MAHER: Right. And when the guy—

BODINE: [overlapping] But it was – but – but—

MAHER: [overlapping]—the Bush people put in there, he was aghast at that because, you know, we don’t have that here and our system works so good. [laughter]

BODINE: Well, it – the health – the health system in Iraq was a disaster, but there were ways of fixing it. The guy who came in wasn’t a doctor, had never done public health. And the very first thing that he decides that has to be done on public health in Iraq is a “no smoking” campaign. [laughter] This is the major threat to the Iraqis, is cigarettes! Not guns, not bombs, not anything, but cigarettes.

Links

Take a spin over and read Edward Copeland's "A confederacy of dunces"

Visit the website for "No End In Site"

Barbara Bodine - IF WE LEAVE: Iraqis Will Learn to Deal

Ambassador Barbara Bodine

Katie ... Now, Just Click Your Heels Together Three Times ...

When I first saw the post, I had to do a double-take ... Katie Couric is with CBS now, right?

Yet there it was, the intrepid anchor of the CBS Evening News, rambling on in her 'Couric & Co.' blog of her trip to Baghdad ("Greetings From Baghdad") that played out like a cue-in from a commercial on her old 'Today Show' for an intro to "Where In The World Is Matt Lauer?"

And ever the digging journalist our little Katie is, she cuts to heart of where she intends to find her scoop ... To put her finger on the pulse of what's going down in Iraq;

"I'm anxious to talk to General Petraeus, to other top military brass, to some of the soldiers, and to Ambassador Crocker to get a better handle on the political situation."

And, Walla, here it is today - "Measuring The Road Ahead" - that reads as if General David Petraeus was whispering the words in her ear ...

She could have saved CBS the budget, sitting in front of a green screen and reading reports out of the Bush Grindhouse, especially after this;

Think Progress: Couric Admits Her Rosy Report From Iraq Is Based On ‘What The U.S. Military Wants Me To See’

Fear not Katie ... Though, you missed it this go-around, another chair on "The View" is likely to open up soon ... Or, you can always follow Dennis Miller, over to the Game Show Network ...


Bonus Katie Links

Taylor Marsh: Is Katie Kidding?

Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman: Katie Couric Versus Amy Goodman

Editor's Note - Another Mea Culpa For Absence and Low Posting

Good Evening Garlic Fans ...

We lower our head to offer another apology over the lack-of-posting the past three-days ... It was, very much, an unplanned absence, due to the on-going situation on the home front, that required our complete (and exhausting) attention ...

We are - hopefully - getting back-on-track today with some posts and, if all goes well, will be able to continue ... There's just too much going on to be regulated to the sidelines ...

Thank you again for your understanding, as well as visits to The Garlic!

Peace
JTD