Dick Cheney–not the guy I would want to be giving me a character reference, given his in-the-teens favorability ratings–came out on CBS news giving his vote of confidence to “Al” Gonzales today. According to CBS news correspondent Mark Knoller, Cheney tells us “I think Al has done a good job under difficult circumstances.” And then adds, as everyone who works for the White House seems compelled to when talking about ol “Al:” “The key,” he said, is whether Gonzales has “the confidence of the president, and he clearly does.”

To which I cry “Bullshit.” Gonzales is the Attorney General of the United States, and the head of the United States Department of Justice. He took an oath to uphold and protect the Constitution of the United States of America, and he serves us, the people of the United States. He has lied, committed perjury, and done any number of things that protect Bush, the Bush Administration, and his own precious ass. He is not doing his job, which is overseeing the Department of Justice. Rather, he is protecting George W. Bush.

Cheney is wrong, Bush is wrong, the Bush Administration is wrong, their pathetic mouthpiece Tony Snow is wrong: The key is not that Gonzales has “the confidence of the President.” The key is whether Gonzales has the confidence of the American people whom he serves, and he clearly does not. If the government was not run by a gang of–let’s face it–criminals who think that everything they do is above the law, Gonzales would have resigned months ago, after his first disastrous appearance before Congress. But because Bush and his cronies know that if Gonzales were to resign, their rampant law-breaking would come to light before they could leave office, they are hanging on to him like grim death, even though to do so means they are doing severe damage to the Department of Justice, and to Americans’ confidence in the justice system. Quite simply, they don’t care. So long as they can leave office without being impeached or sent to jail, they simply don’t care.

So in response to Dick Cheney I say: on this issue, like on so many others (e.g., the WMDs in Iraq, the insurgency being in its “last throes,” etc.), you are dead wrong. But of course, like on so many other issues, you will never admit it.

Something Andrew Sullivan said in one of his posts really struck me about the current Iraq mess, and started those ol’ neurons a’firin’:

Whatever David Petraeus says next month – and we know it’s going to be a glowing report of massive success – the reality of Iraq endures. That reality is that there is no Iraq. The “government” is paralyzed between sectarian factions none of which wants a national, political settlement any time soon.

I didn’t have any new ideas about Iraq–I’m not a brilliant international diplomat, I’m just a technical writer with a big mouth and lots of opinions who reads a lot–but I started to put some things together in my head. Consider these facts:

• Kurdistan, i.e. northern Iraq, is currently the most peaceful portion of Iraq by far. Further, the Kurds are the only ones who actually want the United States there.
• The current “head” of the “national government,” al Maliki, let slip a few weeks ago that the American military could leave any time, so far as he was concerned. He quickly recanted (presumably after a good talking-to in one of his daily video conferences with Bush), but that doesn’t change the fact that it slipped out.
• The Sunnis and the Shiites have been fighting each other, no kidding, for centuries. They have been holding grudges about things that have happened hundreds of years ago. Imagine, if you can, Notherners still being mad about the Battle of the Crater and Southerners still holding a grudge about Antietam 600 years from now, and people from Atlanta wanting to shoot people from Boston about it. In Baltimore. And doing so. That’s Iraq right now. Do we really believe that these people are going to paper over their differences and form a unified democratic government in a few months? Who are we fooling?
• Despite diplomatic pressure, the Iraqi government went on vacation anyway.

So the Doug theory, for what it’s worth, is that the Iraqi “unity government” doesn’t give a damn about actually doing anything. They know that Bush is leaving office in January, 2009. They know the American people have had it with this idiotic war. They know that the next Administration, no matter who it is run by, will start to withdraw American troops.

Until that time, they are marking time. They are accumulating weapons and training. They are killing as many of the “enemy” (Shia or Sunni) as they can get away with. They are engaging in low-level ethnic cleansing. And once we’re out of the way–which is bound to happen sooner or later–Iraq will break up into Kurdistan, a Shiite state, and a Sunni state. The Shiite state may align with or be completely taken over by Iran; I have no idea. There will probably be some pretty ugly ethnic cleansing in various cities. A huge battle for Baghdad.

I could be wrong, obviously; like I say, I’m a technical writer, not a diplomat. But why on Earth should we expect tribes that have been fighting for hundreds of years to get together and create a “national government” in a country that was created by colonialists out of nothing in particular, just for our convenience? It’s insane, not to mention delusional and stupid.

I think the sooner we recognize the real situation and deal with it, the better off we’ll be. (Hey, the Kurds want us there! Isn’t one of our goals to have an ally in the Middle East? How tough is this? Duh!) But unfortunately, we’re stuck dealing with the boneheads in the Bush Administration for the next 17 months. God help us all.

I sometimes get emails or phone calls asking me to take polls, and I always struggle with the question, “Are you a Democrat or a Republican?” And while I have never voted for a Republican, and find it hard to imagine ever voting for one, I don’t consider myself a Democrat.

“How can this be?” you might ask. (Or you would if anyone was reading this blog!)

Well, partly it’s the excesses of what the parties “stand for.” The Democrats are not so much a party any more as a collection of special interests all at war for what they can get. Labor. Minorities. Latte-sipping left wingers. Gays and lesbians. Anti-war folks. Farmers. Not that I don’t support some of those causes (personally, I prefer mochas to lattes); but it doesn’t seem to be a party of “what unites us,” but rather a party of “What’s in it for me?” And I just can’t get behind it.

Not to mention that when they’re in charge, they seem so friggin’ incompetent. Look at them now; they’re in the majority, and they’re still the gang who can’t shoot straight. Somehow the Republicans are stopping them with filibusters, and it’s the Democrats who are being accused of obstructionism! That’s lame. I should be a part of a party that’s that lame?

Obvious proviso and caveat: all Democrats are not like that; we’re speaking in broad generalities here.

The Republicans, in my view, are even worse. They’re only a party of “What’s in it for me.” Even more, they’re spectacular hypocrites. They’re all for federalism . . . except when it serves they’re own best interests (e.g., Bush v. Gore). They’re all for “staying out of your personal life” . . . except that they want to go into your bedroom and tell you how to run your personal sex life, and tell you what you can watch on your TV (including which swear words you can and can’t hear), and tell you what books your children can and can’t read at school, and so on. They’re for a strong national defense . . . so long as they don’t actually have to be the ones to suit up and go overseas and fight.

(And even worse, in my book, all the moral stuff they try to shove down our throats, they do “for the children,” when what they’re really doing is a clear attempt to force their religious values on everyone else. But by the cynical ploy of hiding behind “the children,” they can make it seem noble.)

And finally, they come across as just plain mean. “I don’t care about what happens to other people so long as I get my tax cuts.” “I don’t care what happens to other people so long as my programs are put through congress.” “I don’t care what happens to the 12 million immigrants and their children who are already here; I just want them gone.” Etc. The level of plain old meanness behind some of the things the spokespeople for the Republicans espouse is simply staggering. I can’t be a part of a party that is so doggone mean. (Think Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and their hate-spewing brethren.)

Again, we are speaking broadly here; not all Republicans are like this, of course.

Which brings us to the completely absurd and false dichotomy between “liberal” Democrats and “conservative” Republicans.

Today’s Republicans are not “conservative” by any stretch of the imagination. Anyone who supports the huge increase in government that is the Department of Homeland Security, that is the Medicare Drug Bill, is not a conservative. Anyone who supports the trampling on the Constitution that is warrantless wiretapping and the elimination of habeas corpus is not a conservative. (What can possibly be more conservative than habeas corpus? It goes back to the Magna Carta, for crying out loud!) Anyone who supports the economic policies of this Administration, which has spent money like a drunken sailor on shore leave and run up debts that we can never replay, is definitely not a conservative. And anyone who supports the absurd theory that is the “unitary executive” is most certainly not a conservative. I have no doubt in my mind that if you got a single member of the Constitutional Convention, pulled him forward in time, and told him this theory, he would recoil in horror. They fought the Revolution to get rid of a King; the “unitary executive” gives you a king. It is a radical position, not a conservative one.

So like many Americans, there is really no party for me, I’m afraid. I support fiscal responsibility. (Supply-side economics doesn’t work. We’ve tried it in three different Presidential administrations now, and it’s been a disaster all three times. Isn’t that enough?) I support a strong national defense (but not one that’s ridiculously out of proportion to the threat that is posed by the rest of the world–how many aircraft carriers and submarines do you need to fight terrorists hiding in caves in Afghanistan?). I am socially liberal–I think gays should get married if they want, for example. (All you right-wingers bleating about gay marriage are being silly. How do gays getting married threaten your marriage? They certainly don’t threaten mine. And if gays get married, doesn’t that make society more stable? Your arguments are absurd.)

So am I conservative, or liberal? Neither. Both. It’s a false dichotomy. And the silly choice I have to make between the two parties doesn’t exactly make it easier. How about you?

In a previous post, I mentioned why I feel like I am neither a Republican nor a Democrat. Even so, I have always voted Democratic, mostly because I’ve felt it was the lesser of two evils. (For one thing, I have too many gay friends, and too many illegal immigrant friends, to vote with a party that demonizes both groups.)

Living in Austin Texas now, as I do, in a post-Tom Delay redistricted world, means that I am in the same position as our pre-Revolutionary War forebears: I have taxation, but no representation. My governor is Rick Perry, a Republican who is a typical party wheel, i.e. he’s for pretty much everything I’m not. Of our two Senators, Kay Bailey Hutchison is not too bad, but she’s still a Republican, and has voted with the Republican caucus on every single issue of importance to me, especially the Iraq war. And John Cornyn is, quite simply, your typical right-wing asshole.

Since the redistricting and the election following, “my” representative is Lamar Smith, which is, as Bugs Bunny would say, “A revoltin’ development.” Rep. Smith is very much a Republican in the mold of Delay, and needless to say he doesn’t “represent” me in any way whatsoever. His stance on basically every issue is the polar opposite of mine. I find it completely repugnant to be “represented” by this man, but this is the situation that I am stuck with.

It is further galling, because Rep. Smith is the ranking Republican on the House Judiciary committee, so not only is my “representative” someone who stands up in Congress on a regular basis and casts votes in exactly the opposite way I would have him do, but he also has a powerful platform on an important committee, where he espouses opinions on a matter that I find extremely important, i.e. the politically-motivated firing of the U.S. Attorneys by the Bush Administration. He has given arrogant speeches to the committee about this matter in which he, my representative, spewed the Republican party line about there being “no scandal” and “they serve at the President’s pleasure” and similar absurdities that, not to put too fine a point on it, make me livid. My Representative.

It is bad enough that the Republicans in Congress and the Senate are sticking to their absurd and transparently bogus arguments about these firings. They are intelligent men and women, and I know that some of them are just as aware as I that these firings stink to high heaven. But I cannot even say how galling it is to me that my representative, on the Judiciary Committee, is spewing this bullshit.

Hell, that’s not “taxation without representation;” that’s “taxation with negative representation and we slap you in the face, too.” Let’s just say that it makes me understand why me forebears in Boston heaved tea into the harbor, picked up flintlocks, and started taking potshots at Redcoats. I don’t own a gun, but believe me, I’m pretty tempted.

The new spokesman for the U.S. Military in Iraq is a Brigadier General (i.e., a one-star) named Kevin Bergner. As is typical with Bush Administration appointees, Bergner’s news from the front is filled with happy-happy/joy-joy talk, but even more so for him than most, as Digby points out in Salon and Dan Froomkin notes in the Washington Post.

Lots of journalists have noted that Bergner went straight from being a member of the White House’s national security staff to being the spokesman in Baghdad. But I’ve been wondering about his career trajectory, honestly. Let me ‘splain:

My Dad was a naval officer. The common wisdom in the Navy is that if you don’t make Captain by the time you hit 20 years, you should just go ahead and retire, because you’re not going to advance much more. In the Army, the equivalent is Colonel. To move from Colonel to General requires a Presidential nomination, and approval by the Senate.

So I got to wondering: how old was Colonel Bergner when he was tapped for Brigadier? And who was it who tapped him? What was his first assignment as a General?

Call me a crazy conspiracy nut, but here’s some interesting facts from the good General’s biography: he’s a graduate of Trinity College in San Antonio, Texas, Bush’s home state (and we know how much more comfortable Bush feels with friends from Texas). In May of 2003, as a full Colonel, he was assigned as the Deputy Director for Politico-Military Affairs (Middle East), J-5, The Joint Staff, in Washington, D.C. He was promoted to Brigadier General in November of 2004, in the middle of that time. He put in about a year in Iraq in 2005 as Deputy Commander of the Multi-National Force-Northwest before heading back to Washington to become the Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Iraq for the National Security Council at the White House.

So what have we? We have a Texan who was promoted to General by Bush, given his first highly-visible, political D.C. assignment by Bush, moved by to an even more visible assignment by Bush, and is now the military spokesman in Iraq. Who do you reckon his loyalty is to? The American people? Or the person who famously (and jealously) surrounds himself with loyal minions (and fires and punishes those who are disloyal), and is further responsible for his promotion and current position?

I know which answers gets my vote. How about you?

I have often felt over the last four years that the press (not to mention the government) strains mightily not to compare the mess in Iraq to Vietnam. Sometimes they do it, of course, but I often feel that Vietnam was such a trauma that to mention it in comparison to Iraq is the journalistic equivalent of dropping a nuclear weapon. It’s too harsh for ordinary reportage. Aside from which, we have to bear in mind some key differences: the draft, and the much higher number of American deaths.

However, as we march on through this absolutely insane, idiotic war, the parallels become too stark for me:

• Johnson lied to get us into Vietnam with the Gulf of Tonkin incident; Bush lied to get us into Iraq with WMDs and an al Qaeda/9/11 link
• The war has gone on much longer than the government said it would
• The government has said innumerable times that we had “reached a turning point”
• The population of the country that we were purporting to save want us, most urgently, to leave
• As the war has gone on, the country has turned against it in vast numbers
• The war has been run with incredible incompetence by the civilians in government, who keep over-ruling the military commanders

What I suspect is going to happen, honestly, is that we are not going to learn from history, and we are going to follow the who weary mess right through to the bitter end (sans the helicopter leaving from the roof of the embassy). Here’s what I see:

Like in Vietnam, the President who started the war will leave office without ending it. As in Vietnam, we will be forced to leave Iraq in some condition short of “victory” (whatever the heck “victory” means in this situation; I would argue we’ve already been “victorious”). Like Vietnam, Iraq will be split into multiple countries, perhaps two, perhaps three. (I envision an independent Kurdistan in the north, and a big ol’ mess in the south. Will there be a Sunni region and a Shiite region? Will there be a separate region, and Iran will absorb their coreligionists? I don’t know, but it will be ugly.)

If we’re smart, and the next President appoints a good team–and let’s face it, he or she could hardly appoint a worse one–we could leverage the situation and perhaps come out with some positives. For example, the Kurds, heaven forbid, actually like us; wouldn’t it behoove us to use that fact? Maybe set up an embassy there? One would think so, but the Bush Administration isn’t “reality based,” so it’s not going to happen in the next 17 months.

In any event, as someone who grew up outside Washington D.C. during the Vietnam era, it fills me with a painful combination of sorrow and rage to see history repeating itself so closely. Will we never learn? (Perhaps we would have if we hadn’t elected a couple of men who did their best to duck out of their Vietnam service.)

In Doug’s ongoing effort to call your attention to baloney-filled right-wing talking points, another one is surfacing, so add it to my helpful list:

• The Iraq government going on vacation in August is no big surprise because it’s so durn hot in Iraq in August and/or the U.S. Congress goes on vacation in August, too.

Tony Snow has used both these reasons in an attempt to wave away how insulting and infuriating it is for the Iraq government to go missing while U.S. forces are fighting and dying to “give them the space” to create that government. But hey, I’m a reasonable guy; I’ll take a few seconds and deconstruct this insanity:

1. It’s even hotter for the U.S. troops outside, in their body armor, in the Humvees, while getting shot at; the Iraqis bureaucrats can deal.
2. Yes, the Congress goes on vacation. We’ve had a stable government for 2.25 centuries; the Iraqis don’t have a stable government yet.

Our founding fathers worked through a Philadelphia summer without air conditioning in those heavy outfits and ridiculous wigs; the Iraqi “founding fathers” are taking a vacation. Forgive me if I’m a little irked at Tony Snow’s flippancy.

I might add that there is something else surfacing from George Bush, but it’s not a talking point; it’s a blatant, flat-out lie: “The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th,” he remarked at his press conference last week. The regular newspapers and mainstream press use terms like “misleading” and “an oversimplification,” but the fact is, it’s a flat-out lie. First, “al Qaeda in Mesopotamia” is a completely different organization from the al Qaeda that is run by Osama bin Laden, and only loosely affiliated with him. Second, “al Qaeda in Mesopotamia” didn’t exist on 9/11.

The President is lying. He is lying because his war is a disaster, his policies are a disaster, and he is betting that his fear-mongering–which has worked for him so many times before–will work for him again. Don’t let it. And don’t be afraid to call a spade a spade; this isn’t a mis-statement; it’s a lie.

If you read my review of the iPhone, you know that I really like the durn thing, and think it’s an extremely solid effort for a Release 1 device. That said, it does have some bugs, some of which I’ve found, but a lot more of which the Apple Hound has found. He has compiled a list of iPhone bugs, if you want to be warned in advance before you buy. Here are some that I’ve found that I didn’t see on the Apple Hound’s list (I’ve used the same divisions that he has; thanks, AppleHound!):

Calendar:

• UI/Usability: The calendar syncs inconsistently when attempting to sync with Outlook that uses a Microsoft Exchange server. Entries created on the iPhone are synced correctly to Outlook, but entries created on Outlook are not synced to the iPhone.

Phone:

• Crash/Hang/Data Loss: The phone application becomes unresponsive/slow when the amount of data on the iPhone approaches the maximum limit of 8Gb. This was noticed at approximately 7.725 Gb of used space. Workaround is to remove enough data so that there is more free space.

Mail:

• UI/Usability: POP3 mailbox folders are not copied/synced to the iPhone.
• UI/Usability: There is no way to create mailbox folders on the iPhone. With the above bug, this is a serious lack.
• UI/Usability: Email text cannot be read in landscape mode. This is inconsistent with many of the other utilities on the iPhone (e.g., Safari).

Safari:

• Crash/Hang/Data Loss: Similar to the same problem in the Google Map utility, Safari may crash during zooming and scrolling actions. To reproduce, surf to a lengthy web page, zoom in and rotate to landscape mode, and scroll down multiple times (preferably in excess of 10 times). If this happens when listening to music, the music playback stops, Safari crashes, and you are returned to the “Home” screen.

Honestly, not bad for Release 1 hardware with a bunch of Release 1 software apps. Apple should be proud of themselves.

For those so interested, you can read my (unbelievably long) iPhone review at Gear Diary.

“Stonewalling” is a term that is used to describe when the White House refuses to surrender information to another branch of government, generally Congress, when that other branch is investigating suspect conduct. The most famous example is, of course, Watergate, but it’s hardly uncommon; Reagan with Iran/Contra, Clinton with the whole Lewinsky nonsense, Johnson during Vietnam, and for all I know Jefferson avoiding questions about Sally Hemmings.

But the Bush Administration is bringing this to a whole new level such that the wall is not made of stone, in my opinion, but steel. “Steelwalling.”

First and foremost, of course, we have Dick Cheney, who has invented a new stamp for basically every piece of paper in his office: “Treat as Secret.” This stamp is applied even to press releases, in other words information he wants to disseminate is stamped “treat as secret.” He fought like a lion to keep deliberations of his “energy task force” secret. Even his daily locations are a secret from the press. (This is a public servant, and we don’t even know where he is most of the time, and can’t find out!)

But under new White House counsel Fred Fielding, the Bush Administration has used the “Executive Privilege” rubric to cover, well, basically everything. And yesterday brought news that they are using this to block Congress’ investigation into the details of the death of Pat Tillman, the former football player who gave up his career to join the army and was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan several years ago.

Yup, that’s right: the White House is asserting “executive privilege” to block Congress from investigating something the Pentagon did.

It’s bad enough that Bush has plunked us into this moronic war in Iraq in which he adamantly refuses to face reality. It’s bad enough that he has done his level best to cut out the other two branches of government. It’s bad enough that he issues “signing statements” that assert he can ignore laws, that he yanks American citizens off of American soil and imprisons them without cause or trial for years, that he fails to account for any of his actions, and that he lies–constantly–about his reasons for doing things. But now this, too? What next? He’s going to assert “executive privilege” to block DC police from issuing parking tickets when his White House aides double-park when getting a latte from Starbucks? His office staff need donuts and don’t want to pay, they say “executive privilege” and just grab them out of the store? Who the hell does this guy think he is? (The answer is clear, of course; he thinks he is King. He thinks he has unfettered power.)

I hope to God that congress has the huevos to stand up to this latest heinous power grab. The only way to stop types like these, as Churchill once observed, is to step on their toes until they apologize. It’s time for Congress to do some serious toe-stepping with these clowns.