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And show you’re a “true patriot.” This is what the GOP wants you to do.

Petraeus grants a big interview with Murdoch’s newspaper The Australian, in order to help John Howard in upcoming elections, who is in trouble largely because of his continued support for the Iraq war. He tells the people of Australia this:

General Petraeus told The Australian during a face-to-face interview at his Baghdad headquarters there had been a 75 per cent reduction in religious and ethnic killings since last year, a doubling in the seizure of insurgents’ weapons caches between January and August, a rise in the number of al-Qa’ida “kills and captures” and a fall in the number of coalition deaths from roadside bombings.

Some of this is incredibly deceptive, dishonest distortion. Some of it is outrageous omission. But it’s also intentional outright falsehood and lying. All you have to do is read the recent AP report on Iraqi civilian deaths nearly doubling since pre-surge levels to understand that Petraeus wants to mislead people in the worst possible way. He is being totally dishonest, and it’s for partisan political reasons inside another country. I don’t care how many Democratic Senators praise Petraeus as a great general, brilliant man in a tough job, etc. He has transformed himself into a willing political tool. It’s sickening.

This just happened, how do you come back and report everything was great when this happens?

The lawmakers said their plane, a C-130, was under fire from three rocket-propelled grenades over the course of several minutes as they left for Amman, Jordan.

“It was a scary moment,” said Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., who said he had just taken off his body armor when he saw a bright flash outside the window. “Our pilots were terrific. … They banked in one direction and then banked the other direction, and they set off the flares.”

Sens. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., and James Inhofe, R-Okla., as well as Rep. Bud Cramer, D-Ala., were also on the plane.

“We were jostled around pretty good,” said Cramer, who estimated the plane had ascended to about 6,000 feet. “There were a few minutes there where I wondered: ‘Have we been hit? Are we OK?’”

Those “terrific” pilots have to put up with this shit every day. Why?

Juan Cole has the scoop from “a well-connected friend in Washington.”

They [the source’s institution] have “instructions” (yes, that was the word used) from the Office of the Vice-President to roll out a campaign for war with Iran in the week after Labor Day; it will be coordinated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Wall Street Journal, the Weekly Standard, Commentary, Fox, and the usual suspects. It will be heavy sustained assault on the airwaves, designed to knock public sentiment into a position from which a war can be maintained. Evidently they don’t think they’ll ever get majority support for this–they want something like 35-40 percent support, which in their book is “plenty.”

It’s called DCS-3000, you’re going to hear that term a lot in the future I predict.

Take that, CNN. Let’s hope there are more stories that go in this direction.

When is the last time you even saw the US media do an in-depth report on the day’s list of violent attacks there? Meanwhile, the GAO report is leaked out of fear that the results will be censored by the Bush administration. It shows that all of the “benchmarks” that were the goal of the surge have failed across the board, and the Bush admin is lying about most of them.

Which he fully deserves. By being “unable to come to a consensus,” Bush will be put in a situation where the final major decision of the war will be entirely his, and even he will be able to blame no one himself for the results. It protects the generals from being the victim of scapegoating, and it protects the Pentagon as an institution from blame for the disastrous war-for-no-reason policy.

Richard Jewell has died at age 44. He died a young man, but in his short life at least once he was able to frustrate the mass-murder dreams of a fanatic terrorist driven by religious hatred. Jewell actually did what these men and women wanted to do, but were never able to, he saved Americans from those who would murder to justify their dreams of intolerance and division of humankind. Where are his medals, his 21-gun salute? Will the President who sent so many to die fighting the “war on terror” say anything about this man who risked his own life to save many others from terrorism? Why is he instead being remembered because of the failed attempt to frame him?

Let the free market decide, that’s their motto. Adam Smith and Mao are both rolling in their graves.