Game, set and match

The Post decides to become the official propaganda organ of the Bush administration publically today in their editorial section:

A Good Leak
President Bush declassified some of the intelligence he used to decide on war in Iraq. Is that a scandal?

PRESIDENT BUSH was right to approve the declassification of parts of a National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq three years ago in order to make clear why he had believed that Saddam Hussein was seeking nuclear weapons. Presidents are authorized to declassify sensitive material, and the public benefits when they do.

Then Jane at Firedoglake pulls out the big guns to bitch slap Fred Hiatt soundly for it. Of course the big guns in this case would refer to things like facts and actual quotes that dispute the editorial up one side and down the other. Really, has the Post staff no shame? No shame at all? Or do they just take us for the brain dead sheep many of us have been acting like for the past 5 years?

Digby reminds us why we have to stay on top of this shit and make sure Republicans own each and every single misstep, lie, scandal and death that's occurred on their watch:

Get ready to hear a lot of this whining now that the Republicans may be at the end of their looting spree. They made their money, got their judges, their tax cuts and their wars. Now it's time to put the past behind us and make nice nice. We're supposed to end to all this nastiness and forgive and forget. For the good of the country, of course.

I have written this before, and I'm sure everyone is tired of reading it, but the Republicans must be held accountable for their actions or they will come back like the undead and do this again. We failed as a country to properly discipline this corrupt rogue faction when they tried this executive power grab in the 70's and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and others came back to try it again. We need to drive a figurative stake through the heart of this pernicious philosophy.

Hell, we need to cut the damn head off, stuff the mouth with garlic, and burn the whole kit and kaboodle while we're at it. It's the only way to be sure...

Your Department of Truthiness!

Your tax dollars at work:

For the past two years, U.S. military leaders have been using Iraqi media and other outlets in Baghdad to publicize Zarqawi's role in the insurgency. The documents explicitly list the "U.S. Home Audience" as one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign.

Some senior intelligence officers believe Zarqawi's role may have been overemphasized by the propaganda campaign, which has included leaflets, radio and television broadcasts, Internet postings and at least one leak to an American journalist. Although Zarqawi and other foreign insurgents in Iraq have conducted deadly bombing attacks, they remain "a very small part of the actual numbers," Col. Derek Harvey, who served as a military intelligence officer in Iraq and then was one of the top officers handling Iraq intelligence issues on the staff of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told an Army meeting at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., last summer.

In a transcript of the meeting, Harvey said, "Our own focus on Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature, if you will -- made him more important than he really is, in some ways."

via Rising Hegemon

El Gilead

This piece on El Salvador's militant pro-life laws is just horrifying:

"El Salvador, however, has not only a total ban on abortion but also an active law-enforcement apparatus — the police, investigators, medical spies, forensic vagina inspectors and a special division of the prosecutor's office responsible for Crimes Against Minors and Women, a unit charged with capturing, trying and incarcerating an unusual kind of criminal.
[...]
...then the uterus is sent to the Forensic Institute, where the government's doctors analyze it and retain custody of her uterus as evidence against her."

The logical end to the pro-life perspective for all the world to see. The sad thing is there are far too many folks in this country who are probably applauding this article.