Right Wing Nut House

As we all know, bloggers are a pretty diverse lot. There are mommy and daddy bloggers. There are teen-age girl bloggers who post on their little MySpace sites, sharing information about tampons, boys, and whatevah. There are people who blog about food, about books, about sex, about no sex, about great sex, and sex and sex…

You can tell where my mind is this morning…

Then there are the political bloggers. One would think that these would fall into three basic categories; liberal, conservative, and moderate. Not so. There is one other category of political blogger, usually liberal but conservatives are not without representation in this taxonomic classification; the Blowhards.

The Blowhard blogger is identifiable usually after reading the first two or three sentences of any post. That’s how long it takes to discover that the writer is an idiot. Don’t believe me? Read the first two sentences in any Debbie Schlussel post and I guarantee that you’ll either be laughing at the depth and breadth of her ignorance or weeping in disgust at the vileness of her spiteful rants.

A similar reaction can be gleaned from reading the liberal blogger TBogg. The writer is one of those lefties who finds it amusing to exaggerate the beliefs of his political opponents to the point that his rants move beyond the broadly satirical and come to rest in the realm of outright lying. Being a Blowhard, he realizes perfectly well that his lies anger his opponents which is why so few of us on the right even make an attempt to answer him. Trying to knock down a hundred strawmen, plus deal with his ignorance, and on top of that attempt to point out inconsistencies in his logic all add up to what usually would be a waste of precious time - time better spent picking the lint out of my navel or perhaps clipping my toenails. Either activity is more uplifting than paying much attention to this Blowhard of a blogger.

After reading this, however, I felt that someone should say something about this misanthrope’s assault on reason and a well-ordered mind.

For instance, after gleefully pointing out that “America stayed away in droves” from United 93 over the weekend, the Blowhard links to a site detailing the estimated box office totals for the weekend films. He first fails to point out that it finished a strong second to two films with huge advertising budgets. And then he failed to include the most important information contained in the linked article:

Though unique in its proximity to the real-life tragedy it depicts, the “too soon” refrain did not ground United 93. Outside of the Sept. 11 hook, the marketing was not compelling, with its flashes of small talk and shaky camera shots, nor did the picture appear that different from the TV recreations. People go to the movies to be entertained, which includes thoughts and emotions, not just laughs and thrills, but United 93 appealed more to a sense of duty or sacrifice rather than the inspirational heroism of the passengers.

Not many more, though, chose the weekend’s ostensibly fun option, RV. It was the top-grossing picture, but it took a massive 3,639 theaters to get to its estimated $16.4 million start. Distributor Sony reported that families accounted for 56 percent of the audience.

Celebrating ones ignorance about the movie industry should come as no surprise since Blowhards are usually so clueless they mistake their ostensible cleverness for deep thought. Even a cursory analysis shows how remarkable an opening weekend it was for U-93. It took in almost a third more money per screen as the Robin Williams vehicle RV - $4506 to $6465 for U-93. For a film with no big stars, no appeal to teenagers, and a large, still unknown segment of the population who either won’t see it because it brings up bad memories or, like TBogg, don’t want to be associated with their fellow Americans who eat “goobers,” this is an extraordinary number.

The profile of a U-93 viewer also suggests strong weekday numbers will be forthcoming as well. A similar phenomena was prevalent during Passion of the Christ, especially as word of mouth swept the country. Adults are much more likely to attend movies during the week than teenagers which should push U-93’s numbers even higher in the days ahead.

The key will be how much drop off there will be in weekend #2 and #3. If the film has similar numbers next weekend, the chances for a surprise hit are very good indeed.

And what does Blowhard TBooger have to say? Anything intelligent? Anything prescient?

Ever since 9/11 the Culture Commandos of the right have bitched because “Hollyweird” has failed to give them authentic Islamojihadhiricans to hate on the silver screen and now, when they get their chance, eh…they come down with social anxiety disorder or the theater seats are too hard on their pilonidal cysts.

I’m tempted to let that idiocy stand without comment as a testament to the Blowhard’s jaw dropping stupidity but allow me one minor observation:

THE FILM HAS BEEN OPEN THREE FRICKIN’ DAYS, NITWIT!

I suppose 60 million people who voted for Bush in 2004 (plus the several million Democratic “Culture Commandos” who view what happened on 9/11 as something more than the day they interrupted programming on The Cartoon Channel) could have squeezed into the 1795 theaters where U-93 was showing by doubling up in all of those seats. But then, there are all those “pilonidal cysts” which would have necessitated countless bloody trips to theater bathrooms as one after another, they would have burst causing untold discomfort for their seating companions.

Really now, Blowhard. To make a statement like that and expect anyone to take you for anything but a clown bespeaks a hubris of truly gargantuan proportions. You’re in Bill Clinton territory there, pal.

Not content with taking down his pants in public, Blowhard then removes his underwear:

We will stop here to point out that the other film about 9/11 pulled down $23,920,637 on 868 screens in its first weekend (insert your own ‘America hates America’ comment here).

Blowhard is writing about Michael Moore’s left wing wet dream Fahrenheit 9/11. What TBum doesn’t tell you is that more than $12 million of that opening was the take from theaters not located in the United States. Byron York:

Fahrenheit 9/11 also did well in Seattle, Montreal, Ottawa, Portland, Oregon, Monterey, California, and Burlington, Vermont. In all, two things stand out from those numbers. One is that the picture overperformed only in blue states, and even then only in the most urban parts of those blue states. And the second is that it did very well in Canada. Fahrenheit 9/11 consistently overperformed in Canadian cities; without that boffo business, the film’s gross would have been significantly smaller than it was.

That’s the upside of the story. The downside revealed by the Nielsen EDI numbers is that Fahrenheit 9/11, far from being the runaway nationwide hit that Moore claimed, underperformed in dozens of markets throughout red states and, most important — as far as the presidential election was concerned — swing states. Dallas/Fort Worth, the ninth-largest movie market, accounts for 2.07 percent of North American box office but made up just 1.21 percent of Fahrenheit 9/11 box office, for an underperformance of nearly 42 percent. In Phoenix, the tenth-largest market, Fahrenheit 9/11 underperformed by 29 percent. In Houston, ranked twelfth for movies, it underperformed by 38 percent. In Orlando, it underperformed by 38 percent; Tampa-St. Petersburg, by 41 percent; Salt Lake City, by 61 percent.

The list goes on for quite a while: Las Vegas, Raleigh-Durham, San Antonio, Norfolk, Charlotte, Nashville, Memphis, Jacksonville, Flint, Michigan (Michael Moore’s home turf), and many others. And in Fayetteville and Tulsa, where Moore boasted that his movie had sold out, Fahrenheit 9/11 underperformed by 41 percent and 50 percent, respectively.

York had access to the industry book that the studios rely on to see how their movies are doing; Neilson’s EDI. Not only that, that “other movie about 9/11″ had a $15 million promotional budget which just happens to be exactly how much it cost to make U-93. In other words, Moore spent as much to promote his film as Greengrass and Universal spent in making U-93.

Finally, TBlech reminds me why I’m not a liberal anymore; I don’t like having Stalinists as ideological compatriots:

Of course, Michelle Malkin didn’t attend because her local multiplex refuses to make brown people sit in the balcony, so I guess that’s a reason not to go too.

Fortunately for us Special Ed took time out from his busy weekend to face the enemy close-up (okay, they were actors on a movie screeen, but come on, at least he left the house) to file this special report.

The fact that this guy gets 10,000 visitors a day who read this kind of nauseating piffle says more about the left than anything my poor efforts can reveal. And since I’ve already spent far more time debunking this diseased, insufferable, dirty necked, loutish galoot than he’s worth, I’ll quit so that I can do something more productive with my time; like cleaning the litterbox.

At least I’ll be able to throw that kind of offal into the garbage.

According to the Sunday Times of London, a senior Israeli intelligence official has recently briefed Washington on the possibility that Iran is much farther along in developing nuclear weapons than previously believed:

The attack on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who has called for Israel to be “wiped off the map”, came as it emerged that the head of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, secretly discussed the nuclear programme with officials in Washington last week.

Meir Dagan, the Mossad chief, is believed to have passed on the latest Israeli intelligence on covert Iranian plans for enriching uranium, with a warning that Tehran may be nearer to acquiring nuclear weapons than widely believed.

[...]

Dagan, a stocky former commando who was injured in the 1967 six-day war, was sent to Washington by Olmert, the victor of last month’s Israeli elections, to prepare the way for his own visit to the White House on May 23. The Mossad boss is thought to have held meetings with counterparts at the CIA, the Pentagon and national security council. “Dagan is not given to small talk and niceties,” said an Israeli intelligence source, who believes he told the Americans: “This is what we know and this is what we’ll do if you continue to do nothing.”

The Washington Times reports on the meeting with Dagan and quotes Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert who appears to be the only world leader willing to stand up and tell the truth about the fanatical Iranian leader President Ahmadinejad:

Mr. Olmert, in a weekend interview with the German newspaper Bild, denounced Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in some of the strongest language yet heard from an Israeli leader.

“Ahmadinejad talks today like Hitler spoke before seizing power,” Mr. Olmert was quoted as saying. “We are dealing with a psychopath of the worst kind, with an anti-Semite. God forbid this man from ever getting his hands on nuclear weapons.”

Olmert misspoke. Hitler spoke about Czechoslovakia exactly the same way that Ahmadinejad talks about Israel after he seized power. In fact, not since Der Fuhrer was giving his impassioned orations dripping with venom against his faux enemies before his henchmen in the Reichstag has a leader of a major power talked about wiping a country “off the map.” Clearly, the Israelis are worried.

But how significant is it that the head of the Mossad would come to Washington to brief the CIA about an accelerated Iranian nuke program?

The fact that we haven’t had any leaks about this meeting prior to this weekend probably means that it strengthens the President’s case and weakens the case of his detractors. I’m sorry for sounding so cynical but the culture of leaking at the CIA would almost by definition mean that if Mossad was telling the CIA something at odds with what the White House had been saying, it would have been in print at either the New York Times or the Washington Post within a couple of days. The fact that this leak appeared in the Sunday Times and was apparently from the Mossad and not the CIA is also significant.

As far as its significance to our Iran policy, it should add more urgency to an already urgent cause. We are far from running out of diplomatic options, but before any peaceful solution can be found, the revelations by the Israelis (which dovetail with other reports leaked from the IAEA regarding Iraqi centrifuge upgrades) should require us to at the very least insist upon full disclosure by the Iranians of their entire nuclear program, including any military parts that we believe are active. This “two track” nuclear program was almost dismissed in the leaked portions of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran’s nuclear capability that came to light last summer. Perhaps its time for our clueless spooks to take another long, hard look at that aspect of the Iranian program.

We need a little more urgency in our negotiations with the Europeans as well as trying to shake the Russians and the Chinese to stop their obstructionist policies and get on the sanctions bandwagon. It may be time to name a special emissary of some kind who could work full time on these issues.

Too bad we’re sending James Baker to Iraq…

I disagree with those on the right who are skewering Stephen Colbert for his performance at the White House Correspondents dinner on Saturday night. Much of it was actually pretty funny. It’s just a pity that Colbert, in his ignorance, never realized that people were laughing at him rather than at what he was saying.

Full Fledged Moonbattery is the only way to describe Colbert’s performance. All the canards were there; Iraq, WMD, the press as White House lap dogs(??), Bush the stupid, Bush the incompetent, Bush as Machiavelli (the stupidity of trying to show Bush as both dumb and evil genius lost on the clueless Colbert), as well as the usual jokes that liberals find funny about 9/11, religion, and ordinary Americans.

The left, of course, is in rapture over Colbert’s “speaking truth to power.” I always have to scratch my head in wonderment over this little prevarication by the liberals. Does anyone seriously believe that the “power” to shape debate, set the national agenda, color the personalities, and make or break the politicians resides with conservatives? Who are they trying to kid?

If, in fact, their little fantasy about being the underdog in our national life was true, Bush’s popularity would be soaring, no one would be questioning the rationale for going to war in Iraq, government’s response to Hurricane Katrina would be seen as a success, and Bush would have won an historical landslide in 2004.

The fact that none of the above is true gives the lie to the left’s crocodile tears about the White House and Washington press corps being lap dogs of the Administration. But it is best not to disturb the liberals when they’re on a roll. Mounting the battlements of democracy and waving the bloody shirt is so much a part of their self-image that to burst their fantasy about not possessing the levers of power that allows them to pretty much have their way may cause serious damage to their delicate, albeit inflated psyches.

What the left - especially the netnuts - are complaining about is that the press refuses to “investigate” their wacky conspiracy theories. Who did Jeff Gannon sleep with in the White House? Which of Diebold’s executives are going to be charged with rigging the election of 2004? How many anti-war activists have been put in concentration camps? What is Bush’s timetable for establishing a theocratic dictatorship? Probably the same timetable for establishing a military draft.

This is why the left was swooning over Colbert’s performance. Here’s a sample of reactions:

The few glimpses that we have of the audience shows that the tension was extremely high - I don’t think any of them were expecting such a pointed, hard-hitting attack on Bush camouflaged as humor.
Colbert deserves the highest possible praise.
Finally someone with big enough balls to tell it as it is - it made me ashamed of our cringing Dems in Congress.
The MSM, which was mightily indicted by Colbert, is trying to sweep the whole thing under the carpet and is at present in hiding.

That last criticism about the MSM “trying to sweep the whole thing under the carpet” has to do with stories about the dinner that highlighted the President’s performance rather than Colbert’s tirade.

That’s right. They actually believe that the performance of a comedian (and not a very good one at that) was more significant than what the President of the United States did. “Reality Based Community” indeed.

Peter Dauo writing at Huffpo:

It appears Mash’s misgivings about press coverage are well-placed. The AP’s first stab at it and pieces from Reuters and the Chicago Tribune tell us everything we need to know: Colbert’s performance is sidestepped and marginalized while Bush is treated as light-hearted, humble, and funny.

Imagine that! How dare they cover what the President did at the expense of the man who was “speaking truth to power!”

Colbert,heed my warning. Do not fly in any small planes like JFK Jr.,Paul Wellstone,or the ex governor of Missouri who was running against Ashcroft for the senate,and whose name I am blocking.

More moonbattery from people who just aren’t happy unless the whole world is against them. And, of course, risking your life to SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER!”

Oh. My. F**king. God. I would love to see some reaction photos of bush and his bitch-wife, Laura from that dinner…

On that subject, here is what “speaking truth to power” means when addressing the First Lady of the United States:

And I just like the guy. He’s a good joe. Obviously loves his wife, calls her his better half. And polls show America agrees. She’s a true lady and a wonderful woman. But I just have one beef, ma’am.

I’m sorry, but this reading initiative. I’m sorry, I’ve never been a fan of books. I don’t trust them. They’re all fact, no heart. I mean, they’re elitist, telling us what is or isn’t true, or what did or didn’t happen. Who’s Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was built in 1914? If I want to say it was built in 1941, that’s my right as an American! I’m with the president, let history decide what did or did not happen.

Unfunny, tasteless, and even though I’m being a little old fashioned here…impolite.

Much more can be found at the Democratic Underground, a site I refuse to link after they published personal information of their political opponents.

It’s really a shame that the people who are admiring Colbert’s performance don’t have a clue as to what real political satire is all about. For that, you would first of all need sense of humor, something most liberals do not possess (except in a deranged sort of way like finding it funny when a child pulls the wings off of grasshoppers). Real satire can be found in the performances of comedians like Mort Sahl, the Smothers Brothers, Billy Crystal, and the great Jonathan Winters who know where the boundaries of taste are located. None of those gentlemen would have made a joke including 9/11 and the victims of Katrina:

I stand by this man. I stand by this man because he stands for things. Not only for things, he stands on things. Things like aircraft carriers and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message, that no matter what happens to America, she will always rebound — with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world.

A good satirist would never include the victims of tragedy - especially such soul searing events like 9/11 and Katrina - as props for an attempt at humor. Pretty sickening.

All in all, Colbert’s scattershot performance (some of his jokes were indeed, quite funny) fell flat as satire because he couldn’t get past his obvious hatred of the President. He came off mean rather than funny.

And no one likes a meany. Even one who “speaks truth to power.”

UPDATE

Goldstein:

My thoughts: the fawning reaction coming from many on the anti-Bush bandwagon is, unfortunately, par for the course these days—as is the celebration of Colbert’s “bravery,” especially when there are no real consequences for engaging in meanspirited political humor other than, say, being thought a dick.

Ends justify the means, man. Ends justify the means…

Billy Sol Estes we’re proud of ya son.
Hey! Billy-Billy, Hey! Billy-Billy, Billy.
Ya had to be Texan to do what you done.
Hey! Billy-Billy, Hey! Billy-Billy Sol.

While other kids saved up their nickels and dimes
For ice cream, candy, and fudge.
Well Billy saved too and when he had enough,
He bought him a fed-er-al judge.

(”The Ballad of Billy Sol Estes” by Phil Ochs)

Face it friends, they just don’t make scandals like they used to.

For all of Bill Clinton’s antics in the oval office as well as his, shall we say, questionable business practices (wish I could deduct $25,000 in interest on a loan I never paid back), his kind of scandalizing was pretty routine; a little venality here, a little immorality there. In the end, it proved hardly enough to inspire a great folk artist like Phil Ochs to write a song in homage to the sheer brazenness and utter amorality of his rather mundane adventures.

No, Ochs needed scandalizing of truly titanic proportions. And in the last 100 years, there is only one man in or out of government that can claim the mantle of scandal magnet extraordinaire. That man was Billy Sol Estes.

Estes’s scandalizing wasn’t just shockingly corrupt. It was sublime in its evil excesses. Stealing, influence peddling, bribery, and even murder was connected to Estes and his cotton schemes. Using his influence gleaned from being a friend of Vice President Lyndon Johnson (how close a friend is debated to this day) Billy Sol Estes swaggered around Washington like a Texas Don, a cowboy mafioso who, the evidence tells us, bought at least 3 Department of Agriculture employees - perhaps even the Secretary at that time Orville Freeman - as well as throwing his weight around on the hill.

Here are some details courtesy of Wikpedia and are generally confirmed by other sources:

In the late 1950s the US Department of Agriculture began controlling the price of cotton, specifying quotas to farmers. This limited overall production and Estes’ businesses suffered. He responded by expanding into cotton production himself. Over the next few years he developed a massive fraud, claiming to grow and store cotton that never existed, then using the cotton as collateral for bank loans. During this same period he became involved in Texas state politics and made political contributions to US senator and later Vice President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

On June 3, 1961, Estes’ local contact at the Agricultural Stabilization and Conservation Service, Henry Marshall, was found dead in his car (reportedly with five gunshot wounds) on a remote part of his own ranch. Attributing Marshall’s death to carbon monoxide poisoning brought about from a hose attached to the exhaust pipe of his car, local Justice of the Peace Lee Farmer ruled Marshall had killed himself and the body was buried without an autopsy. The suicide verdict was later overturned.

On April 4, 1962 Estes’ accountant, George Krutilek, was found dead from carbon monoxide poisoning. Krutilek had been questioned by the FBI about Estes the day before.

As a result of these deaths and an investigation into his business practices, on April 5, 1962 Estes and several business associates were indicted by a federal grand jury on 57 counts of fraud. Estes was accused of swindling many investors, banks and the federal government out of at least twenty-four million dollars through false agricultural subsidy claims on cotton production and the use of non-existent supplies of anhydrous ammonia fertilizer as collateral for loans. Two of Estes’ associates, Harold Orr and Coleman Wade, were also indicted but died of carbon monoxide poisoning (apparent suicides) before they went to trial. Estes was found guilty of fraud and sentenced to eight years in prison. He was eventually found guilty of additional federal charges and sentenced to fifteen years in prison.

Although never accused of killing anybody, it is rather strange that Ole Billy seemed to leave a trail of dead bodies from Texas to Washington.

Bill Sol was also rumored to have set up a “love nest” where Congressmen could come and relax, have their pick of some truly exotic beauties (including an East German spy that President Kennedy eventually dallied with), probably enjoying a little Texas barbecue washed down with copious amounts of bourbon and branch.

Evidently, no one could throw a party like Billy Sol.

I bring the adventures of Billy Sol Estes up because the corruption scandal involving disgraced Republican Congressman Duke Cunningham has taken a bizarre turn as the FBI is now apparently investigating “hospitality suites” set up at the Watergate Hotel by Cunningham accomplices, all the better to “entertain” Congressmen and their staffs. Indications are that the “entertainment” included prostitutes and could extend back 15 years, involving dozens of Congressmen.

I daresay that the spate of revelations in this matter has several members sweating, perhaps even leading to some belated apologia to their wives. The fact is, there have been rumors of several such operations around Washington for years. If true, I would think that others (if there are any others) would shut down pronto.

My understanding when I worked around the Hill was that lobbyists would rarely offer such “perks” to members in Washington. Rather, such offerings were made on junkets and other trips like speaking engagements and the like. The reason is becoming obvious to Mr. Cunningham’s associates; the chances of keeping a secret in Washington is directly proportionate to how juicy the information is and what the potential is for getting back at your enemies.

The news that Porter Goss may be caught up in this sex sting is both interesting and not surprising. Goss is rattling a lot of cages at the CIA, not to mention carrying out an aggressive campaign against leakers.

Now before you lefties have a knipshit, I have every reason to believe any investigation of Goss is probably genuine. What I question is the speculation regarding his “activities” being leaked at this time. Pretty damned convenient, no? In fact, if I were the suspicious sort, I’d mention that it’s damned peculiar timing and that the hint regarding his involvement (”including one person who now holds a powerful intelligence post”) seems to be the only mention of someone specific being investigated in the whole operation.

Even Tim at Balloon Juice points to a possible alternative name; Goss’s #3 at the Agency:

Porter Goss inexplicably chose Kyle “Dusty” Foggo, a close friend and business associate of MZM’s Brent Wilkes, as his #3 man in CIA with a portfolio including appropriations. That seems like quite a boon for a firm whose niche consisted of inappropriately influencing lawmakers towards awarding it black defense- and intelligence-related contracts. Where did Goss meet Foggo? The shortest path between the two passes through MZM’s Watergate bacchanialiae.

Sorry Tim, I’m not drinking that much kool-aid. Foggo oversaw CIA contracts in Iraq which is no small potatoes. It’s no more a surprise regarding Foggo’s upward mobility at the CIA than Mary McCarthy’s meteoric rise from analyst to NIO. Politics seems to trump smarts at the CIA even under Goss which is disappointing but hardly earthshattering news. And the fact that the CIA IG has been investigating Foggo and his ties to the dirty contractors since early March would seem to indicate that he is the target mentioned in the article not Goss.

If this scandal pans out, it should prove to be pretty sordid but hardly the stuff of legend. For that, we would need to resurrect the memory of old Billy Sol Estes and his Texas sized malfeasance. To date, we’re not even close on this one.

After I wrote my review of the film United 93 this morning, I was pretty drained emotionally. In fact, I didn’t think there would be anything that would be able to pique my interest and motivate me to write about for the rest of the day.

Good thing I happened to run across Slate’s Dana Steven’s review of the same film. There’s nothing like reading full blown, to the max idiocy to get the blood pumping to my brain and get my fingers itching to do a little keyboard solo on someone who exhibits as much jaw-dropping cluelessness as Stevens.

If you are one of those who saw United 93 and are keenly disappointed that Director Greengrass failed to turn his project into a 90 minute brief to prove the incompetence and evil of the Bush Administration, you would think Ms Stevens a genius rather than the pouting philistine that she appears to be. In truth, Stevens review is illustrative of a view quite prevalent on the left that, in essence, boils down to this: Things would have been different if you know who had been President.

The convoluted reasoning behind this notion rests with the hypotheses that 1) 9/11 was Bush’s fault; 2) the situation was made worse by the incompetence of the President; and 3) the government worked much better the previous 8 years and the gaffes, goofs, confusion, and panic were solely the result of the government going to hell and a handbasket during the 8 months of the Bush Administration.

Oversimplification?

I hope I don’t sound like a cynic with a heart of lead when I say that United 93, as grueling as it was to sit through, left me feeling curiously unmoved and even slightly resentful. At some point, Greengrass’ exquisite delicacy and tact toward all sides—the surviving families, the baffled air-traffic controllers, even the hijackers themselves—began to smack of political pussyfooting. What is Greengrass actually trying to say about 9/11? That it was a terrible day on which innocent people suffered and died? That the chaos and shock of that morning’s events (skillfully evoked via hand-held camera and real-time pacing) kept anyone, even the air-traffic controllers who watched the hijackings unfold, from understanding what was going on until it was too late?

First of all, yes Dana you “sound like a cynic with a heart of lead” since you asked. And that “political pussyfooting” (nice touch including the hijackers although one gets the impression you have more sympathy for them than you do the controllers) which we take to mean the director’s reluctance to assign “blame” was, of course, the entire rationale for the film. Sorry you missed it.

As politicized as the 9/11 Commission eventually became in its public sessions, the final report had much to say about why the entire United States government froze up into one massive ball of ice. Much of it was institutional. Some of it, like FAA protocols for dealing with hijackings were hopelessly inadequate to deal with what happened on 9/11. From the report:

“In sum, the protocols in place on 9/11 for the FAA and NORAD to respond to a hijacking presumed that:

* the hijacked aircraft would be readily identifiable and would not attempt to disappear;
* there would be time to address the problem through the appropriate FAA and NORAD chains of command; and
* hijacking would take the traditional form: that is, it would not be a suicide hijacking designed to convert the aircraft into a guided missile.

On the morning of 9/11, the existing protocol was unsuited in every respect for what was about to happen.” (emphasis mine)

“In every respect” would seem to take in the alternative history scenario of Bill Clinton to the rescue although people like Stevens never seem to let such mundane details like, you know, actual facts get in the way of a good anti-Bush rant.

One might ask why government was so unprepared for the disaster but this would bring up some royally uncomfortable verities about the way the United States snoozed its way through the entire 1990’s (George Bush #41 included), something Stevens and her ilk have no stomach for doing. It is much easier to simply blame it all on Bush with any alternate telling of the myth akin to breaking a commandment (that is, if lefties believed in such things).

Stevens’ complaints don’t end there:

United 93 is no Schindler’s List, relying on characterization and storytelling to draw viewers into identifying with an otherwise unimaginable horror. If anything, Greengrass’ agenda is an anti-identificatory one. If the Spielberg of Schindler’s List is a wheedling seducer, Greengrass is a chillingly precise archivist. He never cuts away to the families of the Flight 93 passengers, arriving home to listen to their heart-rending voicemail messages. He never visits the inside of the three planes that did crash into buildings that day; we’re aware of their fate only through the words of the air-traffic controllers, some clips of CNN news coverage, and one terrifying stock shot of the plane hitting the second tower. He barely even names the passengers—an hour into the movie, I still hadn’t figured out which one was Todd Beamer—and makes a point of stressing their utter unspecialness, their glazed stares and dull in-flight chatter. The suspense, such as it is, is purely negative—we know in advance what will happen to Flight 93, so the maddeningly slow burn of the film’s first hour (Businessmen heft suitcases! Flight attendants chat about condiments!) serves only to torment us with the anxiety of the inevitable.

Note to Dana: MAKE YOUR OWN GODDAMN MOVIE ABOUT FLIGHT #93 IF THAT’S THE WAY YOU FEEL ABOUT IT!

There is nothing more annoying than a “woulda, shoulda, coulda” critic who doesn’t possess an ounce of talent to actually make a film themselves but who is more than willing to tell a director how he should have made his. The movie Stevens is proposing Greengrass make is so far removed from the director’s vision that it makes her pouty, foot stomping tirade about what’s missing from U-93 sound like someone running their fingernails across a blackboard. Absolutely hopeless.

It’s fair game to criticize a director for an unfulfilled vision or a lazy vision, or even for having no vision at all. But to actually posit the notion that a critic’s judgement on what vision the director should have had as legitimate criticism smacks of pure politics to me.

And if that doesn’t convince you of the political motivations of Steven’s disguised critique of U-93, try this:

In the last five years, “9/11″ has become a generic brand name for terrorism, its sky-high recognition quotient useful for ginning up support for any and all manner of belligerent causes. The closest this film ever comes to a political statement—and possibly the only laugh line in the movie—is the snappish question of a beleaguered official: “Do we have any communication with the president at all?” Greenglass may not want to come right out and say it, but the audience’s weary chuckle made it clear: As we slog into the fourth year of the war being waged in 9/11’s wake (and, at least in part, in its name), there’s still no satisfactory answer to that question.

Yes, “9/11″ (the quote marks are a nice touch - as if only a few deluded souls care about it in any context at all) is very useful for “ginning up support” for “belligerent causes” - kinda like war except you and the other misanthropes on the left don’t really believe in that kind of nonsense. To you and your ideological brethren, what happened that day was more about skewering Bush than anything untoward that happened to the United States. It’s sickening.

As far as the “joke” about communications with the President, here’s more from the 9/11 Commission:

The NMCC learned of United 93’s hijacking at about 10:03.At this time the FAA had no contact with the military at the level of national command. The NMCC learned about United 93 from the White House. It, in turn, was informed by the Secret Service’s contacts with the FAA.225

NORAD had no information either. At 10:07, its representative on the air threat conference call stated that NORAD had “no indication of a hijack heading to DC at this time.”226

Repeatedly between 10:14 and 10:19, a lieutenant colonel at the White House relayed to the NMCC that the Vice President had confirmed fighters were cleared to engage inbound aircraft if they could verify that the aircraft was hijacked.227

The commander of NORAD, General Ralph Eberhart, was en route to the NORAD operations center in Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado, when the shootdown order was communicated on the air threat conference call. He told us that by the time he arrived, the order had already been passed down NORAD’s chain of command.228

It is not clear how the shootdown order was communicated within NORAD. But we know that at 10:31, General Larry Arnold instructed his staff to broadcast the following over a NORAD instant messaging system: “10:31 Vice president has cleared to us to intercept tracks of interest and shoot them down if they do not respond per [General Arnold].”229

More inconvenient facts regarding what was happening in the government that day. The answer to the question “Do we have any communication with the President at all?” was a resounding yes. The coordination between NORAD and the FAA was, as shown earlier, entirely inadequate to deal with the situation. The audience chuckling is much more indicative of the success that Stevens and others have had in perpetrating the myth of Bush incompetence that day than what really happened, something that Greengrass wasn’t interested in portraying anyway.

Yes we should be upset with our government for the way 9/11 was handled. It was incompetent. It was negligent. It was without question a disaster. But the exact same thing would have happened regardless of who was President. To say otherwise isn’t speculative, it’s a deliberate falsification of what we know from history.

If Stevens didn’t like U-93 that is her right. But to turn a movie review into a diatribe against the Bush Administration only makes her look like an idiot who doesn’t know what she’s talking about.

While the film United 93 has opened to generally good reviews, there appears to be some pouting among many critics that there was no “cathartic moment” of release and that the film offers viewers little more than a “thrill ride” with little in the way of context or judgement.

It is the nature of criticism to find fault although some critics fall so in love with the sound of their own cynical, scratchy voice that their critiques are little more than lame attempts at being contrary. Critics by and large are also a notoriously jaded lot and films that purport to show something as emotionally charged as September 11 almost by definition fail to live up to their expectations.

That said, here are a scattering of reviews from several different sources.

BRIAN LOWRY IN VARIETY

Taut, visceral and predictably gut-wrenching, “United 93,” Paul GreengrassPaul Greengrass’ already much-debated look at Sept. 11, trades in some emotional impact for authenticity, capturing the overwhelming sense of chaos surrounding that day’s harrowing events. The result is a tense, documentary-style drama that methodically builds a sense of dread despite the preordained outcome. While media attention has focused on reaction to the movie’s trailer, strong ratings for earlier Flight 93 TV projects suggest there will be considerable curiosity, morbid or otherwise, about “United 93″ that should translate into robust box office.

KIRK HONEYCUTT,< em> HOLLYWOOD REPORTER

In years to come, United 93 may enter our mythology in ways unimaginable. But for now, we have a starting point. “United 93″ is a sincere attempt to pull together the known facts and guesses at the emotional truths as best anyone can. Then, in the movie’s final moments, the impact of the heroism aboard United 93 becomes startlingly clear.

MANOHLA DARGIS, NEW YORK TIMES

In its vivid details and especially its narrative pacing, the account of the United 93 hijacking in the 9/11 report reads like a nail-biter, something cooked up by Sebastian Junger. Drawing on different sources, including the report and family members, Mr. Greengrass follows the same trajectory as the report, with most of the screen time devoted to the period between takeoff and the excruciating moments before the plane crashed. The film carries the standard caution that it is “a creative work based on fact,” yet Mr. Greengrass’s use of nonfiction tropes, like the jagged camerawork and the rushed, overlapping shards of naturalistic dialogue, invests his storytelling with a visceral, combat-zone verisimilitude. And yet at the same time, beat for beat, the whole thing plays out very much according to the Hollywood playbook.

LISA SCHWARZBAUM, ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY

Movies are the perfect medium for this exercise in gratitude — they always have been, with the screen so big and the audience so huddled together. And the world has never felt more precarious, or the distinctions between the lucky and the unlucky more tenuous, than they did on the day the World Trade Center fell, the Pentagon was attacked, and one Boeing 757 crashed near Shanksville, Pa., diverted by doomed passengers who died yanking control away from their captors’ hands.

DAVID ANSEN, NEWSWEEK

“United 93″ is a memorial built of shattering, indelible images. This is first-rate, visceral filmmaking, no question: taut, watchful, free of false histrionics, as observant of the fear in the young terrorists’ eyes as the hysteria in the passenger cabin, and smart enough to know this material doesn’t need to be sensationalized or sentimentalized. Wisely, Greengrass has avoided casting recognizable faces, and many of the flight controllers are played by the people who were actually on the job that day, including FAA national operations officer Ben Sliney. Though you know the outcome, you can’t help hoping (as you would at any thriller) that things will turn out differently, that the military will intervene, that the president will be found, that someone will define the rules of engagement.

ANN HORNADAY, WASHINGTON POST

Ambivalence seems to be a painfully inadequate, mewling response to the courage of United 93’s passengers who, according to Hemingway’s definition of the term, acted not in fearlessness but despite their fear. This is a film that demands a different vocabulary, one that conveys both misgivings about our need for these fetishistic cinematic rituals, and admiration for the discipline and dignity with which an artist has brought the incomprehensible into lucid and uncompromising focus.

“United 93″ is a great movie, and I hated every minute of it.

RON ROSENBAUM, SLATE.COM

But is the fable of Flight 93 the recompense that it’s been built up to be? Does what happened on Flight 93 represent a triumph of the human spirit, a microcosmic model and portent of the ultimate victory of enlightenment civilization over theocratic savagery, as the prerelease publicity about the new film insists? Or is the story of United Flight 93 a different kind of portent, not “the DNA of our times,” but rather the RIP?

This review originally appears in The American Thinker

There is a moment in the film United 93 where director Paul Greengrass takes a small step backward from the unrelenting intimate universe into which he has boldly thrust the audience and allows a glimmer of the larger truth of September 11 to be revealed.

Having committed themselves to their heroic effort to take back the cockpit, the passengers are in position in the back of the plane, the larger, stronger men occupying the first three rows closest to the terrorists. Then, it hits you. The look on their faces as they steel themselves to make the attempt mirrors exactly the looks on the faces of the hijackers just prior to their attack as the terrorists also had to summon up the courage to carry out their dastardly deed.

Whether intended or not, Greengrass reveals the faces of men at war. And even though there are no grand, overarching truths about humanity, or good and evil, or the superiority of one set of beliefs over another in U-93 (there is a short scene toward the end of the film that shows both passengers and terrorists praying), the singular fact that “they” attacked us and “we” fought back cannot be denied, cannot be hidden despite the desperate attempt by some over the last 5 years to do so. We are at war.

And for those who insist that we are not, that the War on Terror is some gigantic plot of the Bush Administration to win elections, or seize power, or exercise some kind of monarchical control over the American people, United 93 at bottom, shows this kind of 9/10 thinking to be seriously deluded.

Indeed, there has been an attempt by many on the left to make war on the War on Terror itself, as if the enemy is not thousands of fanatical Muslims hell bent on killing Americans but rather a domestic ideology that seeks to prevent such a catastrophe. For at bottom, what many on the left seek to obscure is the simple necessity of acknowledging that a conflict exists in the first place. On an existential level, they can deny the reality of war by turning cause and effect on its head by justifying terrorism as a logical outgrowth of US policies in the Middle East or toward Muslims in general. It is this intellectual dishonesty that is successfully countered by U-93 in its brutally simple yet deeply emotional subtext; a reminder of what it was like to be an American that day.

There is no overt political context to the film which is why it succeeds so brilliantly. Its unflinching look at the failures of government on that day points no fingers, takes no names, assigns no blame. Instead, the almost documentary nature of the movie allows Greengrass to explore a particular theme that the 9/11 Commission tried to bring out but failed miserably in doing so due to the intrusion of partisan politics in its public hearings: The United States of America was fast asleep on September 11. And the wake up call found us all in a state of denial so profound that the resulting paralysis by the military, by the government - by all of us - contributed in no small way to the scope and dimension of the tragedy.

This is where the psychic pain for the audience is at its worst; watching first the disbelief, then the concern, then the near panic of total confusion as the FAA, air traffic controllers, and even the military all watch helplessly as their operations sputter and limp, eventually grinding to a muddled halt. The Air Force Colonel’s plaintive cry to his superior, “I have two planes to defend the entire east coast” while watching the Twin Towers burning on the wall sized monitor in front of him elicits empathy for his plight while at the same time engendering outrage that our $300 billion military could be reduced to such impotence.

Similar feelings are evoked watching as the FAA tries to understand what is taking place in the skies over America that morning. Operations Manager Ben Sliney (playing himself in the movie) does not stint in portraying himself as befuddled as the rest of his staff as reports start coming in from all over the country about hijacked airplanes, whether or not they are still in the air, and where they are. There are times when their confusion becomes almost farcical as they are first unable to talk to anyone at the “Hijack Desk” except a janitor who happens to be cleaning the conference room and then their all important military liaison is nowhere to be found.

But it was in the air traffic control rooms in New York, Boston, and Cleveland where the confusion was at its most chilling. The New York controller handling United 175 that eventually crashed into the second tower grew more and more frustrated as the drama unfolded, the tension in his voice rising the closer the plane got to the city. As the plane dropped off the radar, the audience knowing it had plowed into the North Tower, he pathetically kept trying to raise the plane on the radio, unaware of the enormous tragedy that had just engulfed the country. Similar scenes in the other control rooms were equally heartbreaking as one by one, the aircraft dropped off the radar screens, the full import of the aircraft’s disappearance from their flickering monitors lost in their disbelief and utter confusion.

A large part of the film’s success can be attributed to Mr. Greengrass’s spare and unemotional script. By writing and filming in cinéma vérité , Greengrass avoided many pitfalls that a more traditional approach would have opened up, not the least of which would have been the temptation for including declaratory speeches by hijackers and passengers alike. As it was, the sheer ordinariness of both the characters and the dialogue contributed immensely the horror of what was happening on the plane as well as the heroic nature of the passengers.

From a technical standpoint, the film succeeds brilliantly on several levels. The extensive use of the hand held camera by cinematographer Barry Ackroyd often gives the unsettling feeling that the viewer is in the middle of the action on the screen. This is especially true at FAA Headquarters and the various air traffic control rooms in Boston, New York, and Cleveland. As the controllers struggle to understand what is happening in the skies over America and desperation begins to creep into their discussions, the audience finds themselves in the middle of these conversations as the camera pans quickly back and forth, focusing on the puzzled faces of the technicians as the horrible reality of what is happening begins to dawn on them.

The editing by Clare Douglas and Christopher Rouse is clean and crisp, approaching a sublime level of near perfection during the attacks on the cockpit by first the terrorists then the passengers. The claustrophobic setting of the film - the inside of a commercial airliner - presented enormous problems, especially sequences filmed in the cockpit. It is a testament to the editors’ skill that both attacks elicited searing, emotional responses from the audience.

The percussive and synthesized score by John Powell was mostly unobtrusive, jarring us awake at appropriate places in the film with hammer-like percussion blows to the heart as when the terrorists rose from their seats to begin their attack - a perfect low-key compliment to the film’s intimate setting.

And it is that intimacy that draws us in and nails the audience to their seats. We do not get to “know” any of the characters in any traditional sense. There is very little exposition since everyone knows what the outcome will be. Instead, Greengrass allows the events themselves to simply unfold in as close to real time as possible, making no judgements about either the hijackers or the passengers. Even the one passenger who sought to warn the terrorists, fearful that any attempt to take back the plane would kill them all, is portrayed in a neutral manner (although the fact that the gentleman spoke with a vaguely European accent is an interesting aside nonetheless).

In the end, Greengrass lets the story do all his talking. A wise choice since the it would have been a relatively simple matter to have made a histrionic, flag waving spectacular instead of the intensely personal drama U-93 turned out to be. For some, that intensity will open old emotional wounds from 9/11 making it very difficult for them to see this film. I would urge them to make the effort anyway. For United 93 will not heal the hurt but rather recall in a vividly personal, emotionally charged manner who and what caused our souls to be scorched that terrible day.

The farther we get from 9/11, the more urgent that reminder becomes. We’ve already had one wake-up call. Is it necessary for the fanatics to give us another?

UPDATE

Libertas has an excellent review of the film, echoing many of the themes I touch on here, although the reviewer is disappointed that Greengrass failed to provide much in the way of a moral context.

The following is fiction and meant as satire. Any resemblance between what is written and real, live, people is entirely coincidental except, of course, when it isn’t.

ONCE UPON A TIME there was a King named Berrywart. King Berrywart ruled the people of Unis, a relatively small kingdom located somewhere near France. Where exactly the French won’t say having been defeated in battle many times by the King’s small, but vicious army of armored marmosets and pike carrying ostriches. Many a battlefield had been well fertilized with the contents gleaned from French pantaloons left behind in retreat after retreat by the Grand Armée.

But French bashing is not really part of our fable. I just threw it in there because it’s fun.

King Berrywart had enormous problems. Some clever lad had constructed a vehicle that used turnip juice as fuel. The turnipmobile changed everyone’s way of life in Unis. No longer did people walk to the market. Now they drove their vehicles. This presented difficulties because parking became a bitch downtown plus have you ever smelled burning turnips?

Needless to say, with the immense popularity of the turnipmobile, the production of turnips became a top priority in the Kingdom. Several very clever peasants banded together in a loose alliance and essentially took over the entire production of turnips. They forced other peasants who were growing turnips out of business by charging a pittance for turnip juice, thus making it impossible for the smaller turnip growers to make a profit. They were absolutely ruthless.

These clever peasants also controlled the process which turned turnips into turnip juice. And while they competed amongst each other for customers, they were able to keep the price of turnip juice stable by refining just enough juice to satisfy the ever growing demand of the people for fuel.

The peasants became very rich. They wore rags imported from France. They lived in the finest of mud huts with floors made from the softest straw. The results were predictable. Other peasants who did not produce turnips and were forced into wearing old rags imported from Uruguay and living in small, dank, mud huts with dirt floors were jealous. They grumbled darkly about “conspiracy” and complained about the smell.

Now there were two political parties in Unis. For a long time, the Demon party controlled the Commons with the Pibble party in opposition. And while the Demons took campaign contributions from the rich peasants, they enacted all sorts of laws to make their lives and livelihoods difficult. First, in order to improve the parking downtown, the Demons imposed a tax on juice at the turnip press. The Demons built several parking garages (which almost immediately began to fall apart thanks to bid rigging, payoffs, shoddy materials, and an incompetent builder whose only qualification was that he was the brother in law of the head of the Demon party). Then they passed regulations that forced the rich peasants to remove the bad smell from the turnip juice when it burned. This proved to be easier said than done and their costs to refine turnip juice skyrocketed.

Of course, the rich peasants were forced to pass on these increased costs to the people of Unis. Not only that, they were forced to cut back production of turnips due to other regulations passed by the Demon controlled Commons. They were told they couldn’t grow turnips in certain fields because it spoiled the view of the mountains for some wealthy friends of the Demons. This forced the rich peasants to increase their yield per acre of turnips which added to the cost of the juice.

Then, a group of poor peasants petitioned the Commons to have the rich peasants remove several of the refining facilities because they were unsightly and smelled very, very bad. Always willing to pander to the voters (it’s how they stayed in power for so long), the Demons forced the refineries to close. And when the rich peasants asked if they could build other refineries to replace them, the Demons laughed them out of the Commons.

Needless to say, the rich peasants had to keep raising the price of turnip juice just to maintain their profits.

Finally, a new day dawned in Unis as the Pibble party wrested control of the Commons from the Demons. Seen as the rich peasant’s best friends, the Pibble party promised all sorts of relief for the their friends in the turnip business. They promised to let them grow turnips in fields that blocked the view of the mountains for some of the Demon’s wealthy contributors. They promised to ease up on the smell regs. They promised a lot but nothing ever came of their promises.

Time passed. The world changed. Now everyone was driving turnipmobiles. The rich peasants were forced to import more and more turnip juice from abroad just so that the people of Unis could be supplied with the vital fuel. But the supply from abroad was unreliable. Some peasants in far away Dinnerplate were willing to pay more for turnip juice so more supplies from abroad went there rather than Unis. Since the rich peasants had to buy turnip juice at the inflated price, the cost of juice at the press in Unis started to skyrocket.

This proved too much for the poor peasants in Unis who demanded that the Pibble party do something - anything - to bring the cost of turnip juice down. The Demons, seeing an opening, skewered the Pibble party for allowing the rich peasants to make enormous profits. Rather than try and explain that the rich peasant’s profits were necessary so that more domestic turnips could be grown and refined, the Pibble party turned on the rich peasants and demanded an investigation. The rich peasants were a little bemused. After all, it was the Commons that had forced this situation on everyone with their stupid, shortsighted, and ignorant turnip policies.

King Berrywart was befuddled. A former turnip grower himself, he sympathized with the rich peasants but was also sympathetic to his friends in the Pibble party. “We must give the people relief!” he cried. “We will give one hundred wartmarks (known as “wammers”) to all taxpaying citizens of Unis to help in this crisis.”

The kingdom’s economists did a double take when Berrywart made that announcement. They tried to follow the logic of Berrywart’s thinking but were unable to do so. Berrywart wanted to collect the tax on turnip juice, have the Kingdom’s tax bureaucrats count it, and then have them issue one hundred wammers to each taxpaying citizen? The economists figured such a program would cost at least 133 wammers per citizen which would add to the already ballooning deficit being run by the Kingdom. Why not just suspend the tax, they wondered?

Meantime, the Demons had a better idea (politically speaking, that is). If the Pibble party could pander to the people then the Demons could up the ante. “Let’s tax the excess profits on turnip juice,” they cried triumphantly. This had the advantage of playing to the ignorance of the people of Unis about how turnips are grown and refined while making them sound like they’re “doing something about the problem.”

Of course, all the scheming and planning by the Pibbles and the Demons did not produce one additional drop of turnip juice. So the price remained high. And the people?

The people of Unis took out their frustrations at the polls in November. And which party do you think suffered the most?

UPDATE

Powerline has the skinny on the Republican “plan” to save the nation.

The votes are in from this week’s Watchers Council and the winner in the Council category is Rhymes with Right for “Arrogant District Refuses To Protect White Students.” Finishing second was “Hate Central” from The Sundries Shack.

Finishing on top in the non Council category was “Do We Need Religion? Part 1″ by Wolfgang Bruno.

If you’d like to participate in the Watchers Council weekly vote, go here and follow instructions.

There are indications that in addition to aggressively pursuing leakers inside the CIA, Director Goss is also looking at retired agency personnel who may be facilitating the leaks to reporters:

The Agency has issued warnings to former employees that they are still bound by secrecy rules regarding classified information and that violating their oaths may lead to unfortunate consequences:

The attempt to silence former employees extends beyond those who still have consulting contracts. Larry Johnson, a former CIA official who blogs at www.TPMCafe.com, said he recently received a “threatening” letter reminding him about his confidentiality agreements.

Mr Johnson – who has criticised the White House for not aggressively investigating the outing of Valerie Plame, a former covert operative, said it was the first such letter he had received despite regularly commenting in the media on intelligence matters since his retirement in 1989. He said other former employees also received letters.

He said the CIA was also “very forceful” in intimidating a retired official who maintains ties to the agency after he signed a letter criticising the administration over the Plame leak.

One can only guess which “retired official” Johnson is talking about but there is little question as to what letter is being referenced. The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) sent this “open letter” to the President regarding the outing of Valerie Plame signed by several VIPS members. Of course, the point wasn’t that it was critical of the Bush Administration but rather that VIPS has proved itself a partisan organization.

Our favorite ex-spook at In From the Cold gives us some background on what Goss is trying to accomplish:

But in today’s “leak culture,” the retention of former staffers as contractors and consultants has a clear downside. Consider this e-mail that I just received from a staffer on Capitol Hill, who spoke with an employee at an unnamed “three-letter” intelligence agency. It seems that some of the anti-Bush cabal are using contractor or consultant positions to stir up more trouble on the inside. My contact on the Hill reports:

“I got a call from inside the government. Someone wanted me to let people know that the people who were fired by Goss and/or have left the government to write books have gone to work for intel outside contractors where they have just put on their badges and go right back into the agency and hang around just like before. I am told that they are in the lunch room talking to GS-10s and11s, and 12s to stir up a revolt.”

If this report is accurate–and I have no reason to doubt its validity–then Mr. Goss needs to redouble his house-cleaning efforts at Langley, and his fellow agency directors might want to start hanging around the cafeteria as well. No one would deny any employee their right to free speech; but this sounds like an effort to foment rebellion within the agency, and that is not a right guaranteed by the First Amendment. There are clear prohibitions on certain types of political activity by federal employees, and the reported actions of these former officers would appear to fall under that category. I think it’s time to start firing some contractors and cancelling consultant deals. These former spooks were hired to do intelligence work–not instigate a palace revolt.

That’s pretty amazing. Mac has been getting pretty much the same thing from his sources as well:

Since last year when I got into the Plame Game and began to contact people back at the farm about what in the heck was going on I was told that this whole thing was much more than met the eyes. Again, supporting the Iraq regime made a lot of people very wealthy. Small wonder that so many “ideologs” have been in opposition, less of a wonder why they are running so scared now.

I can’t tire of telling you how important it is that Mary Loose Lips has been brought down. More than just a random ‘discovery’ - she is the key to the lock. Guys at the agency and the DOJ knew exactly where to target - and they hit it dead on. In the coming days you will see why Senator Rockefeller HAD to make such an emergency visit to Syria in 2002. For a little tip, read here.

Mac may be referencing a connection with Saddam’s Oil for Food program and Rockefeller’s jaw dropping visit to Syria where he bragged on national television to have tipped off the Syrians about George Bush’s determination to go to war. The inference is that networks related to OIF would start rolling up, tying off loose ends, and destroying evidence. The Russians went to work immediately in this regard evidently not only destroying thousands of OIF documents but also evidence that they were supplying Saddam with banned weapons. (See Bill Gertz’s book Treachery for the whole sickening story).

With the DCIA now targeting leakers both inside and outside the agency, might he also stumble across a connection between the two? And given the friendliness of many in the media to several VIPS members such as Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson - including some of the most influential national security correspondents in the business - might there come a time when a possible circle of deceit that runs from Langley, to VIPS, and to the press is revealed and the nest of partisans given their just desserts?

Faster please…

UPDATE

I didn’t include any links to AJ Strata’s stuff because frankly, he’s got so many goodies it was hard to choose. Start here and keep scrolling.