There's no way this can be allowed to slip down the memory hole. It's an extended commentary from Keith Olbermann, responding eloquently to the continued outrage that is Donald Rumsfeld, who in true evil form, wants to sow fear and keep his grip on power.

I want to write scores of thoughts about this, but Olbermann's words do it better. The only thing I want to add in is it boggles my mind how veterans (who consider themselves superior to everyone else) can accept being lied to so easily.

Click on the image below and it takes to you to original video file.

I can't stand to hear Bush talk. It's not much his voice, but rather his piss-poor delivery (always struggling with big words) and the level of inane stuff that pours out of the presidential pie-hole that drives me to distraction.

NBC's Brian Williams decided that yesterday—the solemn one year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina—was the perfect time to help shore up his man in the White House with an extended interview. I don't see how people who support this man can't admit that he's the worst public speaker in quite some time: lots of ridiculous, meaningless comments about sacrifice, the need to build, struggle and hard work when it comes to rebuilding New Orleans. His words are almost a cliché of a cliché, you know? He speaks like some disinterested person touring a foreign country and just shocked at how bad certain people are off.

Never mind, of course, that not only was Katrina a disaster, but the recovery effort is about as impressive as achieving stability in Iraq. In fact, haven't we spent more money on that country than our own? Do we even care that so many of New Orlean's residents haven't come back, or that homes are still standing, totallly wrecked and festering as another hurricane season is upon us? I mean, do we love the darkies of the Middle East more than our own?

Absolute failure has proven to the tonic for success for this administration. And scores of red-state losers just keep standing by their man, blinking like feckless beggars to their own demise. Where's all the moral brow-beating these fuckers poured on the country during the last presidency? You know, those endless homilies about righteousness and taking responsibility and screaming for impeachment if Clinton rubbed his nose the wrong way? This administration has a string of costly, and fatal failures as its legacy (which Bush seems to believe, according to last night's love fest with Brian Williams, that history will be good to him) that will be felt for years to come. Decades, even.

But, why am I complaining? That doesn't matter so long as we have faggots to fight and their Wiccan-loving abortionist/evolutionist boyfriends.

Well, well, well, when push comes to shove, it looks like the Europeans, who always pride themselves on being superior in every manner to the United States, can't make the cut.

All the screaming and yelling over Israel's punitive destruction of Lebanon has amounted to what? A stinky cease-fire agreement (already violated by the Jewish state, no surprise there) and a lot of dithering. A whole lot of dithering. The European Union and the U.N. have officially become the Arab League: good on paper, worthless in real life.

France, of course, is always trying to ingratiate itself with the Arabs because it has the largest Muslim population in Europe. So it quickly condemns Israel but when needed to come up to the plate, there's the typical Gallic two-step: oh, well, we really need a clear mandate or instruction and rules of engagement and we won't be disarming Hizbullah. Translation: we really are cowards who are good at mouthing off and absent at following up.

As it goes with France, so it goes with the rest of Europe: a lot of people standing around, trying to distract themselves with lint on their shirts or a sudden fascination with what their shoes look like. Immediately, apologists run to the fore, talking about memories of Serbia and Bosnia, blah, blah, blah. Back them, I don't remember Western Europe exactly rushing to the airwaves to condemn anything, but had to be prodded to do so. I suppose we can conclude that Europeans have no stomach and no will to fight. If they can't face Hizbullah, then they certainly can't face the Israelis, who despite the humiliation of not accomplishing a damn thing with their savaging of Lebanon, still remain the most powerful military force in the region.

So, dear European bitches and weaklings, do go on and pay lip service to the people of Lebanon and try to muster up this phantom international force. And to you, France, give up your worthless imperial dreams of faded glory and either put up, or shut the fuck up.

It didn't take long.

I suppose that now, thanks to the panicky fucks in the media who want to prolong the mass hysteria created by the current Administration, we can look forward to all the racism that's bubbling under the surface to appear as scores of everyday folk declare war on anyone who looks weird or speaking what they think sounds like Arabic.

I still am waiting for more details that the people arrested in Britain for allegedly planning to blow up planes en route to the United States. I saw, buried in the news yesterday, that another of the 24 suspects was released.

Are we winning yet?

The U.S. government has created a climate of fear and panic, and now the British are starting to succumb to what Americans have lived with for the past several years. I guess it was just a matter of time.

By the way, 16 Shiites were killed by a sniper today in Baghdad. Just in case you didn't hear it on the news.

No, honestly, really, I do not subscribe to conspiracy theories because there is nothing else to do, but I stumbled across this Keith Olbermann report from last year over the amazing stack of coincidences that occur when the current administration gets bad news: more terror alerts!

It's good and it's to the point: notice how a whiff of bad press meets the stench of terror alerts and more panic. Trouble is, it's too early to tell if the current terror scare is a bona fide thing or what. While I have always maintained in this blog that I take the threat of terrorism seriously, I also take the crass manipulation of said threat for political gain just as seriously.

But the American government would never do that, right?

Like students not wanting to put down their pencils before the exam bell rings, the Israelis did their best to destroy more of Lebanon before the cease-fire took effect today at 8 a.m. Even as much as fifteen minutes prior, strikes hit the southern section of Beirut.

Now, I wonder exactly what has been wrought here? I heard last night, unverified as I write this, that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was considering a prisoner exchange with Hizbullah. If this is true, then I have to ask again: what has been wrought here? A whole lot of destruction and death and chest-thumping by the Israelis about how they're gonna wipe out the Hizbies and make Iran and Syria sorry for using them to fight a proxy war. Then one week stretched into two, then three and four. Still no clear-cut victory which must have been infuriating to the Israelis, who continue to revel in their invincibility myth despite the debacle of their first Lebanon Expedition.

And if it's true, according to Seymour Hersh, that this attack had been planned before those two soldiers were kidnapped in the north, well, then, I fully expect to see the Israeli government fall, as it should. And it reminds me that no matter how shitty the neocons in Washington have fucked things up, they continue to push their ugly global domination fantasies forward and get Israel to go along with it all. If any of that is true (smacks of a deadlier version of the 1956 invasion of Egypt by Britain, France and Israel), then Israel got the spanking it wanted to give to the Arabs.

But governments don't like a whiff of defeat or anything in the neighborhood of being wrong, so I expect denials from the White House and a victory speech by Olmert.

And a lot of funerals.

I have never doubted the reality of terrorism or the potential for terrorist strikes. But I don't know what was more disturbing today: the alleged plot or the panicky coverage of it in the mainstream media.

You would think that this event, the details of which we really don't know, was the harbinger of the fall of Western civilization. You would think that we might as well eat our young, because the media was all over this with speculation and endless repetition. This is just full-fledged panic, and oh, what a lucky coincidence, it comes right after Ned Lamont bitch slaps Joe Lieberman and the Republicans try to spin the primary result as proof that Democrats are against the war and soft of national security.

Mighty interesting, no?

You'll notice that I don't make wild-ass assertions that the plot was bogus. Or that I dismiss it. After all, London was bombed just over year ago, so there's plenty to be concerned about when it comes to home-grown terrorism. But, just imagine how fortuitious it is to have the alert jacked up all the way to orange (red for flights coming from the U.K.) just a month before 9/11 and, well....

Not that Republicans would ever exploit 9/11 and make sure Americans remain afraid.

Except for the low-brow fucks in the red states, as well as College Republicans, is there any doubt that our foreign policy is one big failure?

I mean, come on! I defy anyone not to see that our entire foreign policy is one colossal failure, destined to be studied in history books of Where It All Went Wrong, or, What Happens When Idiots Run a Government.

I don't know what Condoleeza Rice thinks she's doing, but like so many other failed appointees of Bush, it's gotta be a heckuvah job. It's one incredible, phenomenal failure after another, starting with the biggest failure of all: 9/11. Aside from a string of stunning reversals, we have one fuckup after another trotting across the stage that is the Bush Administration, dancing to a faster tune of death and destruction. See also: Katrina. See also: Israel and Lebanon.

Of course, that entails a media that want to, you know, actually inform the public of the gross malfeasance committed in its name. But no; instead, CNN continues to ask the stupidest question of all when it comes to Iraq (Is this civil war?), to its runner-up covering the Israel-Hizbullah war (Is this World War III?) and goes about interviewing the two authors of the insanely popular and outright insane science-fiction known as the "Left Behind" series like they're experts on the Middle East. Instead of taking a hard look at what our foreign policy has cost us, we get clip after clip of weepy Israeli whie Lebanese children are being killed left, right and center. The coverage of the conflict in southern Lebanon isn't a conflict in the American media: it's just a big question mark about what we call it.

My mind is just reeling over how out of control all of this is.