GOP helps al Qaeda get guns right here in the USA

Really? If the shoe were on the other foot, that's what Republicans would claim.

Even al-Qaida gloats about what's possible under U.S. gun laws. In June 2011, a senior al-Qaida operative, Adam Gadahn, released rallying people to take advantage of opportunities those laws provide.

"America is absolutely awash with easily obtainable firearms," Gadahn says, explaining that "you can go down to a gun show at the local convention center" and buy a gun without a background check.

Then a faint smile crosses Gadahn's face. "So what are you waiting for?" he asks.

Under current laws, if a background check reveals that your name is on the national terrorism watch list, you're still free to walk out of a gun dealership with a firearm in your hands — as long as you don't have a criminal or mental health record.

Republicans in the Senate really did block any tightening of background checks - including measures obvious to anyone who actually wants to keep deadly weapons away from violent people. Read the whole (short) NPR story from Ailsa Chang. It's really effing unbelievable.

The honest truth is that nearly all Republican legislators are willing to allow felons and people who are dangerously mentally ill to own guns. Why should potential terrorists be any different?

The Republican Party's leaders think the only point at which we can stop violence is once it has already started - every school, every theater, every political rally an O.K. Corral.

Even rank and file Republican voters know that this is utter madness. You'd think they might do something about it.

Asleep at the switch

Bushists and neocons might have given their best efforts and still not prevented 9/11. But they didn't even try, despite many warnings:

The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be “imminent,” although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.

But some in the administration considered the warning to be just bluster. An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous.

Unconscionable.

Thank god

Thank god we don't have any armed lunatic wingnuts here in America.

Police identified the suspect as Anders Behring Breivik, 32, a right-wing fundamentalist Christian, while acquaintances described him as a gun-loving Norwegian obsessed with what he saw as the threats of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration.

Hmm, lots of familiar grievances... Unemployment, however, is below 4% in Norway and not part of Breivik's grievance list. Damn socialist economy!

Will this attack damage Norway's social democratic consensus, as 9/11 and the Bushists' exploitation of it did ours?

Thomas Hegghammer, a terrorism specialist at the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment, said the manifesto bears an eerie resemblance to those of Osama bin Laden and other Al Qaeda leaders, though from a Christian rather than a Muslim point of view. Like Mr. Breivik’s manuscript, the major Qaeda declarations have detailed accounts of the Crusades, a pronounced sense of historical grievance and calls for apocalyptic warfare to defeat the religious and cultural enemy.

It's worth noting that 93 dead (known so far) from a total population of under 5 million has close to twice the demographic impact of 9/11. In their awful grief, Norwegians now have the chance to show resoluteness or panic, just as we did ten years ago. Most likely, they will show a mix, just as we did.

See no evil

Click image for full Randy Bish/Pittsburgh Tribune-Review cartoon.

The next wingnut contrive-versy

Sharia burial!  Give it a few days...  The birthers need a new so-called issue.

Never mind that the consensus seems to be that burial at sea accords with some Muslim customs and not with others.  The wingnuts don't care about facts.  They have an entire disinformation apparatus to make up any bullshit they need.

And they need to go through the day in a constant state of outrage and alienation from everyone who's not in their tribe.

Yesterday morning, they resented Osama bin Laden continuing to breathe.  Today, they resent that President Obama directed the effort to find and capture or kill him.  And they're thanking Duhbya, whose every major move and attitude gave punishment of al Qaeda the short shrift in his failed geopolitical game of Risk.

The next penis bomber

When we fly, we have to take off our shoes because of the Shoe Bomber.

When we fly, we have to show our junk or let it be felt up by the TSA because of the penis bomber.

Memo to al Qaeda: Please don't put a charger up some moron's ass, as in Man on Fire, and send him onto a plane. (As if please ever worked...)

The terrorists sometimes get more effect from not blowing up a plane.

Update (11/24): Patrick Smith of Salon has two more examples:

The scanners are also the latest turn in what is an unwinnable arms race. First came Sept. 11 and suddenly pointy objects are contraband. Then came Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber," and TSA decreed that all passengers must remove their shoes. Next we had the London liquid bombers, and suddenly your shampoo and toothpaste are consigned to 3-ounce containers. Then came the Christmas Day underwear bomber, and as a result we're being body-scanned and groped.

Return of the zombie lies

No wingnut article of faith is ever surrendered. WikiLeaks did not reveal that Duhbya was right about WMD, but that won't stop Fox from lying to its viewers and claiming that it did.

The existential danger to our country is not from al Qaeda. It's from our own schlerotic inability to break through denial and accept reality.

(h/t Atrios)

Another day, another Republican lie

It's what they do. Dana Perino (on Fox, natch) claims:

• The shoe bomber in 2001 and the penis bomber in 2009 are "apples and oranges" even though both were goofball al Qaeda terrorists who smuggled explosives on board airplanes in their clothing, only to be subdued by passengers, Mirandized, and tried in civilian courts.
• If only the Bushists had had their military tribunals set up, they would have tried the shoe bomber in one of them. They learned their lesson on José Padilla, never mind that he wound up back in a civilian court too, insane to boot.

If there's a more obvious case of do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do, I'd like to hear about it, so I can call it bullshit, too.

Perino has a smooth pink complexion, blue eyes, and blond hair. She lies for a living. She's packaging - a spokesmodel. She and Fox are a perfect fit.

Update: Glenn Greenwald had another case of Republican bullshit yesterday. Don't you dare do as I did! says Michael Mukasey.

Thought experiment

Click image for full Bruce Plante/Tulsa World cartoon.

Messed with the Zohan

Click image for full Mark Streeter/Savannah Morning News cartoon.

Play Cheney for me

Mitt Romney is so desperate to be President that he's willing to whore himself out as the handsome second coming of Darth Cheney.

The truth is that the Bushists pissily and irresponsibly dismissed the concern the Clinton administration had about al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden. (Note to wingnut trolls: Sure, Clinton could have succeeded against these enemies, and he didn't, but he at least identified the priority problem, where Mayberry Nero told his briefers that they had covered their asses.) The Bushists were focused instead on redeeming Bush I's PNAC-deplored failure to depose Saddam Hussein.

Romney's varmint-huntin' (see, really a country boy despite the $5000 suit!!!!!) is so lame he's going to need to shoot a friend to prove he's really the NRA's boy Cheney successor.

As a bonus, he's happy to defend the so-called free market's allocation of life-saving to those who can pay the most for it. Hey, works for him (and screw you).

Mitt Romney is the perfect expression of Republicanism - willing to say any bullshit, filled with rhetoric that misrepresents reality, a whore for the ruling class. He is the most obviously insincere politician since... Man, I'm having a hard time coming up with a politician who's more insincere than Mitt. Mostly, it's talk show hosts. Except John Boehner! Strom Thurmond, maybe - staunch racist shtupping the colored help but still making his black daughter come in through the back door.

I was slow to see the essential dishonesty of Romney, but I'm making up for lost time.

Torture for politics

Not national security. To provide political cover for the Iraq war, which the Bushists wanted from the beginning, the entire military and foreign policy apparatus of Duhbya's maladministration sought torture to justify assertions they knew were bullshit.

Repeated torture of bad men sought a predetermined answer, not even intelligence. It was a series of war crimes in either case, but it is much more awful that it had no practical national purpose, only the craven goal of staying in power. It was about breaking the prisoners, not about learning what they knew.

The Bushists knew what they were doing. That's why they were so careful to put in place their bullshit get out of jail free cards from the Office of Legal Counsel.

There have to be consequences for these despicable people.

Asking the right questions

Some interrogators refused to torture. They learned what they needed. Here are the conclusions of one of them:

I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq. The large majority of suicide bombings in Iraq are still carried out by these foreigners. They are also involved in most of the attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. It's no exaggeration to say that at least half of our losses and casualties in that country have come at the hands of foreigners who joined the fray because of our program of detainee abuse. The number of U.S. soldiers who have died because of our torture policy will never be definitively known, but it is fair to say that it is close to the number of lives lost on Sept. 11, 2001. How anyone can say that torture keeps Americans safe is beyond me -- unless you don't count American soldiers as Americans.

This is the Bushist legacy.

(h/t Philosoraptor)

Bogeyman under the bed

The Republican ticket will make every effort to scare us. Fear is the only emotion strong enough to contend with the hope of better days offered by Obama and the Democrats.

The Republicans have tried the tiresome terrorist scares, but those have lost potency. An honest national policy should include well-tempered fear of al Qaeda and other sources of terror, but the Bushists have so often used that fear, for reasons related only to their power and not to our safety, that we're even more immune to it than we should be. Country first, my ass!

Now they're trying to scare the narrow-minded economics-illiterate with the John Birch shibboleth 'socialism'. They don't make any bones about whether a policy is fair or just or a good idea. They just want you to fear the bogeyman under your bed so that you'll run cowering to the Republican strongman.

Their problem - thank goodness - is that Obama looks calm and strong, while McCain looks scattered and panicky and unsure of what to do.

Rescued

Great thing about a dog is she'll get you out of the house and away from the TV, in tonight's case the Presidential "town meeting." I put "town meeting" into quotes because I've been to town meetings, and they're nothing like this format, although some moderators are as mumble-prone as Tom Brokaw.

So I missed most of the debate, and the part I saw didn't really hold my interest. Obama gave a pretty lackluster performance in the few minutes I did see. McCain was a little better relative to expectations.

Reading is a better way to get real information than sound bite manufactured for the still indecisive middling, muddled, mediocre voter who only turns out every four years. McCNN reports this:

"We will kill bin Laden, we will crush al Qaeda," [Obama] said.

McCain responded in equally strong terms: "I'll get him. I know how to get him. But I am not going to telegraph my punches as Sen. Obama did."

Now that's comedy! No difference in content or intent, except for the chip on McCain's shoulder. Yep, that silly Obama - he revealed the intelligence assets he'd use to find Osama. Not.

Out of sight, out of mind

The apparent al Qaeda attack on our embassy in Yemen is part of a series of attacks that I don't remember getting much attention.

The State Department ordered the departure of all non-emergency American staff from the embassy, along with their family members, in April, after attacks against the embassy and a residential compound. That order was lifted last month.

In March, three mortar rounds landed near the embassy, wounding Yemeni students at a nearby school and Yemeni government security personnel, the State Department said.

What's that again about no terrorism since 9/11? Sadly, the list of exceptions grows.

But when Obama suggested it...

... airstrikes in Pakistan to kill al Qaeda personnel was evidence that he didn't have foreign policy smarts. Now? Down the memory hole.

Al Qaeda is just not a priority

Here's the stark admission:

"The chairman of the Joint Chiefs has said time and time again Iraq is a mission we must do. Afghanistan is a mission we do as we can," [Pentagon spokesman Geoff] Morrell said.

The people who had nothing to do with 9/11? Enemy! The people who attacked us on 9/11? No big deal.

How long until the White House backtracks on that?

Update: I mean, really, they're saying that they're willing to let the situation in Afghanistan totally go to hell. What a craven bunch of shitheads.

Impunity

Does Duhbya even know what 'impunity' means? Of course he does! He's lived all his life without consequences.

I would think that at least he would be outraged that a parvenu like Osama bin Laden would have the same deal. Duhbya's granddaddy didn't give a shit about Jews before there even was a (modern) Israel. It's pretty rich that Duhbya gets to lecture the Knesset about how traitorous the Democrats are (h/t Eschaton), when Duhbya couldn't smoke Osama if he were a cigar.

Natural heir to Duhbya

Though he already has the Republican nomination sewn up and thus presumably doesn't have to be insincerely moronic any more, John McCain still appeals to the ignoramus vote for the best of all the straight-talking reason reasons - he is one, too:

[T]he presumptive Republican presidential nominee repeatedly said Iran was supplying al Qaeda. Iran is predominately a Shiite country and is not aiding the Sunni dominated Al-Qaeda.

Really, how could anyone but a dimwit not know this by now? If you've loved Duhbya's inability to think with anything larger than his appendix for the last 7 years, you'll love McCain. He's making a case for hostility, and he can't get the most basic fact right.