Welcome To Hell, Petraeus Style

jmac already pointed it out, but does the difference between these and Iraq really need to be spelled out to you?

 

Gee, I wonder if oil has anything to do with this?
Naw.
Can't be.
Freeance is on the march!

 

Freeance? Freeberty? Liberdom?

"We're kicking ass!"

 

Look people, it is my belief that, in 2028, we will be greeted as liberators.

 

Help me with the math, my calculator won't take that many zeros.
We've spent $750 billion in roughly six years, so that's $125 billion a year.
If he's saying 20 more years, like I said, I'm not familiar with those many zeros, but doesn't that work out to roughly $2.5 trillion or $2,500,000,000,000 or do I need another set of zeros?
But on the flip side that means only 12,000 more Americans will die in the most stupid, pointless war of choice in the history of the world.
If you could pick to kill the national media member most responsible for the sham that was the 2000 election coverage that got us into Iraq who would you go with? Ceci Connelly or Kit Seelye?
For more read the Vanity Fair report or the Daily Howler.
Breathtaking.

 

Bush wasn't kidding when he said we'd all be gone before we'd know if the war would be worthwhile.
End it now.

And I read the VF story, simply breathtaking. I hope they (and their editors) have a hard time living with themselves.

 

This might be the best Daily Howler ever (and that's saying something):

http://www.dailyhowler.com/dh090707.shtml

As a nation, we will make disastrous decisions as long as the shit-for-brains Washington press corps leads our discourse.

And note to DNC: Hire Bob Somerby as a media consultant. Now.

 

Stories like this make me wish I owned stock in Halliburton, KBR or Blackwater USA.

 

I can understand a reporter writing a story that gets spun out of control like the "invented the Internet" thing, but doesn't a reporter owe it to his or her craft to set the record straight or at least make up for the mistake? Yet, these two seem to have relished their role in bs and have done no such thing. I'd like to think their covering a knitting circle in Dubuque, but I figure they've already secured a book deal.

 

Doesn't a reporter owe it to his readers to stop writing something when it has been pointed out to you by middle-schoolers that it was bullshit? And, "I'm writing this on the fly" doesn't cut it, either. It was a morning event and you had six hours until your deadline. Try writing a gamer and a side in 20 minutes, lady.

 

Several years ago Sarah Vowell, in her book A Partly Cloudy Patriot, wrote a great essay -- one of the first -- about the whole Love Canal incident. It's well worth reading.

 

And, from Fedora Boy today:

Following their testimony to Congress, General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker will appear exclusively on FOX News Channel on Monday at 9pm EDT for a one hour live interview with Brit Hume... Developing...

I, for one, am shocked.