Gunfighter: A Modern Warrior's Life

Dear Mr. President

Dear Mr President,

I would think that one of the toughest things about being President of the United States, is being the leader of your party. It isn't like you don't have enough to do running the country... you also have to ride heard on a bunch of elected officials, Cabinet members, and other office-seekers who try to use you or your office to help them get elected.

In normal times this would be difficult, but considering what is going in in this country these days, it really must be awful!

It's been a rough couple of weeks for you, hasn't it?

I mean, first, your main political advisor, Karl Rove...



...is forced from office resigned under a cloud for his roles in the exposure of an active CIA operative, and for his involvement in the questionable firing of eight U.S. Attorneys for political reasons. Next, you had to fire your Attorney General...



...resigns because every time he opens his mouth, he lies to the United States Senate... and got caught doing it.


Then the most recent National Intelligence Estimate tells us that, despite your claims of success for the troop surge in Iraq, that country's government will become more precarious, not less, over the next six months.

Next on the hit-parade is a soprano-singing, staunch conservative GOP Senator...



...who gets caught trying to do the nasty with an undercover cop in an airport men's room, tries to use his position as a U.S. Senator to interfere in the investigation, pleads guilty to a lesser charge... then conceals whole arrest/guilty plea from the Senate ethics committee. The incident forcing him to announce his resignation (nice mug shot, Senator).

As if all of these things weren't bad enough, John Warner, a well-respected moderate GOP Senator (from my own Commonwealth of Virginia) has decided not to seek re-election, severely jeopardizing the chances of your party holding on to that Senate seat next year.

I'll bet you are sure glad that August is over.

Now for the good news: The General Accounting office will be putting out it's estimate of the situation in Iraq soon. Rumor has it that the picture that they paint will be none too rosie. Rumor has it that portions of the report have been leaked so that your purple kool-aid swilling minions have the chance to doctor it.

THEN you embark on a secret trip to Iraq, Seemingly to give General Petraeus a copy of hie report that YOUR PEOPLE wrote confer with General Petraeus on "the way forward in Iraq".



I'll bet months like this one make you look forward to getting out of the White House.

I'll tell you one thing, the folks here at Casa Gunfighter are really looking forward to that happy day a great deal.

Sincerely,

Your pal,

Gunfighter



I hope you enjoyed the trip!

The Department of Revisionist history (I)

So... eminent historian George W. Bush now believes that the United States should never have left Vietnam?

Am I the only person left open-mouthed at the brass of that historically ignorant, dumb sonofabitch?

Recently, the current occupant of the White House had this to say about the American withdrawal from Vietnam:

"then, as now, people argued that the real problem was America's presence and that if we would just withdraw, the killing would end..."

"Three decades later, there is a legitimate debate about how we got into the Vietnam War and how we left,"

"Whatever your position in that debate, one unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens, whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'boat people,' 're-education camps' and 'killing fields,"

So... is there really a legitimate debate on how the United States became embroiled in Vietnam?

Was there really a wide-spread belief that if U.S. forces left Vietnam, that there would be no more killing? Or was the prevailing belief that if our forces remained in Vietnam, more Americans would die for nothing, militarily propping up a corrupt government, with a corrupt, weak, dispirited, ineffectual military?

Am I alone in thinking that it is rather crappy of the President to make these remarks considering his questionable military service and his refusal to serve in Vietnam?

President dumb ass is the same guy that actually had the nerve to compare the successful occupation of Japan to the failing occupation of Iraq. This guy must be getting his advice from a psychic that he found on the back of a matchbook cover.

Idiot.

GF

Cooking The Intelligence?

As reported in the Sunday Washington Post, it appears that two separate assessments from the National Intelligence Council, in January, 2003, predicted that the invasion and occupation of Iraq could lead to internal violence and provide a boost to Islamic extremists and terrorists in the region.

Apparently, the reports, which were delivered to White house officials, went on to discuss the fact that in post-Saddam Iraq, domestic groups would fight each other and former Iraqi military could merge with terrorist groups.

One of the assessments suggested that an invasion of Iraq would give a boost to political Islam.

The article says that when these assessments were given to senior officials of the Department of Defense, the DOD said that the assessments were "too negative" and ignored.

Even George Tenet, the disgraceful ex-Director of Central Intelligence (and Medal of Freedom recipient) said, in his recent book, that the NIC papers on Iraq said that "Iraqi political culture is so imbued with norms alien to the democratic experience... that it may resist the most vigorous and prolonged democratic treatments."

Great. This was said before the war.

Let me get this straight:

The NIC tells the national leadership (President Pinhead) that the Iraqis will resist democratic reforms; that the Iraqis will start fighting each other; that former Iraqi soldiers will join with terrorists and foreign fighters; that occupation by western nations will be widely unacceptable in Iraq; and that an invasion/occupation will cause a boost for political Islam, and exacerbate terrorism... and the leadership goes ahead with the invasion and occupation anyway?

As Shakespeare's Hamlet would have said: "That would be scanned"

Our government, no... the President, said that the invasion of Iraq was about "weapons of mass destruction" democratizing Iraq, but had already been told, months prior, that the invasion would not likely produce said democracy, and indeed, would lead to sectarian violence, and increase political Islam and terrorism?

Does that sum it up?

The President, is the same guy that gave us his Top Gun moment on an aircraft carrier, and told us that our mission was accomplished, even though it wasn't. This is the same guy that was told, before the fact, that the war would have the precise results that we have been seeing since 2003... This is the same guy that, despite what he was told by the leaders of the National Intelligence Council, launched a war that has caused the deaths of over three thousand Americans, and untold numbers of Iraqi civilians. This is the same guy that created the failed-state of Iraq. This is the same guy that has caused a number of my colleagues and a few of my good friends to be separated from their families, sent to war, and in the case of two of them, to be wounded in combat.

He knew all along, what was likely to happen... and he did it anyway.

Nice.

Mr. Bush, I am a firm believer that someday, everyone will have to account for themselves before their maker.

You have a lot of explaining to do... and somehow, I don't think that your excuses are going to fly.

Paranoia and The FBI

Most Americans know how our national security apparatus went berserk after 9/11. We can see the results of this in all of our airports as well as on television every night when we watch the news of our current debacle in Iraq.

Those of you in the Washington, DC-area, got to see our city turned into a fortress.

Ghastly concrete barriers were erected all over the place... the U.S. Capitol building had it's beautiful tree lined entrance dug up and destroyed (which still breaks my heart) in order to build a monstrous underground boondoggle visitors center... many of our beloved monuments were encircled in concrete, protected by Police officers... armed with rifles!



The Headquarters building of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (the J. Edgar Hoover building) was no different. It was already fortress-like (and damned ugly) to begin with... it only got worse.

Nearly a year after 9/11, a journalist of my brief acquaintance was about to interview a senior FBI official, and while he was about to enter the building from the E street side, he noticed that the huge American flag that had been draped across the building, looked odd.

He began counting the stars in the blue field, and concluded that the flag only had 48 stars. That's right, the FBI had trotted out a flag that was made before Alaska and Hawaii were admitted to the union as states.

What a bunch of boneheads.

But, wait... it gets worse!

While he counted and re-counted the stars, trying to make sure he was right, some people in the Hoover building noticed his intent observation and notified the FBI's uniformed police (didn't know they had them, did you?), and as he was about to enter the building, he was "detained" for quite a while, and had his journalist credentials for the building revoked (albeit temporarily).

All for counting the stars on a flag.

Paranoia is a bad thing.

The Perfidy of Paul Wolfowitz(2.0)

Once again, gentle readers, a special guest blogger with words of wisdom about disgraced (and disgraceful) World Ban President Paul Wolfowitz. Please welcome my comrade, fellow blogger, and all-around mensch, DJ Black Adam.

I’d like to thank my future Secretary of defense /Security for the Republic of Liberia, Gunfighter, for allowing me the honor of filling in for him today as guest blogger. He picked a topic that I had been following, so I know about Mr. Wolfowitz, but, even with the wisdom of SHAZAM, I didn’t know what “perfidy” meant, so I looked it up on dictionary.com ;-)

perfidy \PUR-fuh-dee\, noun:

“The act of violating faith or allegiance; violation of a promise or vow; faithlessness; treachery”

Well, lets see how Paul got to the “violating a vow” and “treachery” ....

Paul Dundes Wolfowitz was United States Deputy Secretary of Defense during the administration of President George W. Bush and he was one of the principal "architects" of the Iraq War (which you’d think would disqualify him for being in charge of future things he could mess up). He was appointed president of the World Bank Group 01 June 05 and officially resigned on 17 May 07 though his resignation is effective 30 June 07. He resigned after an investigation by the World Bank Group's board of executive directors, which accepted his resignation, "ending a protracted and tumultuous battle over his stewardship, sparked by a promotion he arranged for his companion."

Mr. Wolfowitz’s appointment was very controversial, though by tradition the US appoints the World Bank president as the US is the largest donor, the current administration (in typical Bush/Cheney fashion) didn’t really give a rat’s tail on considering what other governments thought of their choice.

Surprisingly, even with the controversy, Mr. Wolfowitz accomplished a few good things in his short tenure, such as: the Multilateral Debt Relief Initiative, the Clean Energy Investment Framework, the Africa Action Plan, and the Avian Flu Initiative. In 2006, there was record lending to Africa (unfortunately he didn’t lend me anything to hire mercenaries or rebuild the infrastructure when I take over Liberia, but I won’t hold that against him).

What I do have to hold against him, is what we like to call in Cook County - Chicago Illinois, good ole fashioned “look out for your peoples” politics, as they say elsewhere “patronage” hiring. Now of course, they get away with it a lot here in Illinois (not as much thanks to Patrick Fitzgerald). But ole Paul was already skating on thin ice. What he did specifically was arrange for his “girlfriend’s” separation package from the World Bank and arrange for her a position in the State Department under Dick Cheney’s daughter, with a salary increase of roughly $70,000.00.

Supposedly, the reason he did this was to deal with a conflict of interest pointed out by the Ethic’s committee for the World Bank, as it had come to light that Mr. Wolfowitz had a relationship with Shaha. This relationship caused a problem with Mr. Wolfowitz as World Bank employees are subject to an ethics rule that does not allow personal relationships between bank employees and their supervisors, including indirect supervision through a chain of command. He felt that if he recused himself from all personnel actions or decisions that involved her Shaha, that should be sufficient, unfortunately the ethics committee disagreed with Paul.

Soooooo, Paul decided to dictate the terms of how this lady would leave the world bank and compensation she should receive (in essence, he determined what his girlfriend would get in her good bye package). Bad move # 1, followed by Bad move #2 getting her the hook up with the US State Department.

Don’t get me wrong, the lady is an Oxford graduate, clearly very capable of the positions she has been given, it is the circumstances that cause the questions. Ultimately, Paul did like he learned fro Bush, ignore the rules and do what you want to do to hook up your people, however, unlike G.W., Paul’s card has been pulled and he will just end up getting some 7 figure job in the private sector (Poor Paul).

Do you think he should have gotten the boot, or should the WBG done like the Cook County Board of directors does, look the other way?


Many thanks, DJBA!

Friends, some of you already read DJBA's blog... but those of you the haven't, ought to go give him a few minutes of your time. If you do, I'll bet you go back.

GF


www.myspace.com/djblackadam

Absent WithOut Leave (AWOL)

This picture of the extended Bush clan was taken in 2005.



Please note the ages of the people in this picture.

To date, NONE of the age-eligible people pictured here, have ever served or have volunteered for military service.

I guess it is only your kids or mine that have to do the heavy lifting.

I can't heap enough venom on these people.