Late but did Bushco:
Attack Iraq unprevoked
Attack Iran unprevoked
Attack Afghanistan unprevoked
Attack Pakistan unprevoked
Attack Russia unprevoked
Where is his CENTCOM logistics and war plan?

First, do you mean provoked or prevoked? The latter is, alas, not a word in modern standard English, but given that you use it five times you must have something in mind for it. At least, that’s my guess.

Second, Bushco did indeed attack Iraq unprovoked. They made up some bullshit about mushroom clouds and WMDs and Iraq’s complicity in 9/11 but the overwhelming consensus of informed judgment, assembled (regrettably) too late to stop the war, is that Iraq possessed none of those things. Although we do not have the fine young actor Matt Damon on record making this pronouncement in, say, 2002, we do have the Democratic nominee for President on record making some incisive remarks on the topic.

Although incursions into Iran and Pakistan appear to have occurred since 9/11, they have yet to sufficiently emerge as analyzable matters of historical record. Attacking Iran is a wet dream of the neocons, and it has been since the mid 1990s. Attacking Pakistan was “officially” ruled out by both Bushco and McCain as risky and destabilizing, especially as such attacks were suggested by Obama during the primary campaign. As it turns out, Obama was better at reading the tea leaves than any of the candidates, republican or democrat, with regard to our immediate strategy toward Al Quaeda.

The attack on Afghanistan was the one true thing that surfaced after 9/11 as a relevant use of US military force in response to Al Quaeda. And what would be your point, for god’s sake, in asking this?

And, finally, you speak of attacking Russia? Matt Damon, fine young actor though he is, does not mention any such thing. John McCain, an AARP member for 23 years, has indeed invoked this scenario in his trumped up rhetoric regarding Georgia’s attempt to assert its will in South Ossetia. Within the span of one week, while Bush schmoozed the US athletes in Beijing, McCain talked as though Georgia was “already” a member of NATO and engaged in threatening rhetoric toward Russia, a country who has been an economic ally and anxious potential ally in dealing with Iran and the spread of nuclear technology. The US military is spread so thin that National Guard forces are barely able to address the needs of Gulf Coast States bracing for the next round of tropical storms. Yet McCain was waving his finger in Putin’s face–as though we had the available ground forces to take on the Russian army. We did not have the ground forces in the 60s and 70s, during the height of the Cold War, and we certainly do not have them now. McCain talked the way a drunk talks when he perceives some sharpie is making a move on his woman.

Finally, I will boldly take the liberty of speaking on behalf of the fine young actor, Matt Damon. He has not–to my knowledge–communicated with CENTCOM and thus has, alas, no war plan. Now, that having been said, I fully believe that this same assessment can be made of Senator McCain. If he has communicated with CENTCOM, I cannot for the life of me imagine that he has much of a mastery of the logistics of forward planning. (His primary military expertise during the Viet Nam war was 1) in flying and crashing planes, and 2) getting captured. Five and a half years inside the Hanoi Hilton can indeed strengthen a man’s character, but it does not do much to sharpen one’s war fighting strategy in an entirely different part of the world, like, say, in Mesopotamia.)

Matt Damon is articulating the fear that many of us are experiencing at the sights and sounds of McPalin. Unfortunately, at this point in time, we seem to be in the minority. Gobs of Americans seem to be just giddy with the possibility of a McSame/Barbie administration. I’m with Matt — I don’t get it.

As disturbing as the notion of a two dimensional adult version of Reese Witherspoon in Election being president is; isn’t the adult in the collective us hammering the alarm bell about McCain? I thought well of the candidate I saw in 1999. Maybe it was in comparison to bush who even then I knew to be a coward and fraud. But things change. My judgment as a person who needs to read people for a living, is that he is unfit for the presidency. That is not hyperbole. He will not be capable of performing. Which means that GOP bootlicks will run a shadow government or we get the Harpy.
Damon articulates the fear and frustration of most of us. I cannot believe that more than a third of the nation embraces these miscreants either. If you weren’t cynical about the electorate before, you must be now.

Damon’s been hanging out in teh blogs! Very nice.

And Lori? ‘Gobs’ don’t vote.

“…we seem to be in the minority.” Which really puts this whole “democracy is the best thing for everyone involved” thing into some terrifying perspective. If the Palin lovers out there really are the majority, then the rules of the game say they should be allowed to have her. The problem of course is, her stupidity will affect all of us — both the ignorant sheep who seem to think wolf slaying and speaking in tongues are signs of greatness, the cocktail circuit pundits, and those of us who have the alarm bells ringing (as moondancer says) so loudly that we can barely think of anything else than: “what the f**k kind of a future is this going to be for my kids? What did they do to deserve this — and what can I do to prevent it from happening?”

Indeed, we’re all going down the tube together if complacency and flatulent disinterest allows Bush/Cheney’s reign of terror to continue with two new cardboard cutouts in place of real leaders. If that does indeed happen as Damon fears, then the first eight years of this shit were no mistake, no aberration brought on by a confluence of bad; it was the will of the American people. And that says more about the current state of “We, The People” as a collective entity than anyone really wants to know.

What a bright young man. He really does boil it down to a very simple couple of questions that no teevee journo is going to ask. And it’s not because they’re too smart or too sophisticated: they’re more concerned with looking dumb or mean to their peers. Journalism itself seems to have become a mediocracy: this is the only profession enshrined in this nation’s founding documents as essential to democracy and look what they’ve done with it.

Props to you for saying it, Matt. And while you may feel like you’re in a beleaguered minority at home, let me assure you that outside America the rest of the whole fucking world doesn’t get it, either.

As if they and their families won’t have to live with the consequences of their navel gazing do-nothingness since nothing bad ever happens to the happy inhabitants of the Village Green Cocktail Society.

Given the insulating capacity of great wealth, they are probably correct in that assessment.

Sad, but true. No matter who is in office, the Brokaws and Matthews and O’Reillys and all the others will still schmooze at the same parties and get invited to all the best places to pontificate as though they actually know something. The folks in power will let them go on pretending to be learned and important and their children and grandchildren will not be measurably affected by the disaster that befalls the rest of the country.

They don’t care what rot they allow to fester. They think it’s fun, and it keeps them in business to have a lot of bad things happening.

They think it’s fun, and it keeps them in business to have a lot of bad things happening.

Death is my business and business is good, eh?

Matt Damon grew up in Cambridge, MA. Howard Zinn was a family friend. He went to Harvard. Obviously, he is unAmerican to the nth degree besides being a stupid actor who should keep his mouth shut.

Unless he’s a Republican. Then he should run for office.