“Only a president clinically incapable of understanding that mistakes have consequences could take the action he did today. President Bush has just sent exactly the wrong signal to the country and the world. In George Bush’s America, it is apparently okay to misuse intelligence for political gain, mislead prosecutors and lie to the FBI. George Bush and his cronies think they are above the law and the rest of us live with the consequences. The cause of equal justice in America took a serious blow today.”

So Edwards considers Bush “clinically incapable of understanding that mistakes have consequences”.

So let’s look at a clinical profile of a sociopath

Profile of the Sociopath

This website summarizes some of the common features of descriptions of the behavior of sociopaths.

• Glibness and Superficial Charm

• Manipulative and Conning
  They never recognize the rights of others and see their self-serving behaviors as permissible. They appear to be charming, yet are covertly hostile and domineering, seeing their victim as merely an instrument to be used. They may dominate and humiliate their victims.
• Grandiose Sense of Self
  Feels entitled to certain things as “their right.”
• Pathological Lying
  Has no problem lying coolly and easily and it is almost impossible for them to be truthful on a consistent basis. Can create, and get caught up in, a complex belief about their own powers and abilities. Extremely convincing and even able to pass lie detector tests.
• Lack of Remorse, Shame or Guilt
  A deep seated rage, which is split off and repressed, is at their core. Does not see others around them as people, but only as targets and opportunities. Instead of friends, they have victims and accomplices who end up as victims. The end always justifies the means and they let nothing stand in their way.
• Shallow Emotions
  When they show what seems to be warmth, joy, love and compassion it is more feigned than experienced and serves an ulterior motive. Outraged by insignificant matters, yet remaining unmoved and cold by what would upset a normal person. Since they are not genuine, neither are their promises.
• Incapacity for Love
• Need for Stimulation
  Living on the edge. Verbal outbursts and physical punishments are normal. Promiscuity and gambling are common.
• Callousness/Lack of Empathy
  Unable to empathize with the pain of their victims, having only contempt for others’ feelings of distress and readily taking advantage of them.
• Poor Behavioral Controls/Impulsive Nature
  Rage and abuse, alternating with small expressions of love and approval produce an addictive cycle for abuser and abused, as well as creating hopelessness in the victim. Believe they are all-powerful, all-knowing, entitled to every wish, no sense of personal boundaries, no concern for their impact on others.
• Early Behavior Problems/Juvenile Delinquency
  Usually has a history of behavioral and academic difficulties, yet “gets by” by conning others. Problems in making and keeping friends; aberrant behaviors such as cruelty to people or animals, stealing, etc.
• Irresponsibility/Unreliability
  Not concerned about wrecking others’ lives and dreams. Oblivious or indifferent to the devastation they cause. Does not accept blame themselves, but blames others, even for acts they obviously committed.
• Promiscuous Sexual Behavior/Infidelity
  Promiscuity, child sexual abuse, rape and sexual acting out of all sorts.
• Lack of Realistic Life Plan/Parasitic Lifestyle
  Tends to move around a lot or makes all encompassing promises for the future, poor work ethic but exploits others effectively.
• Criminal or Entrepreneurial Versatility
  Changes their image as needed to avoid prosecution. Changes life story readily.

Sociopathic behavior indeed…this is what America has been reduced to.

Irving Kristol (Himmelfarb’s husband) has written in the past about the need to exploit religious and moral concepts in order to manipulate the masses, and his intellectual North Star, Leo Strauss, has advocated — as Strauss scholar Shadia Drury documented — that “those in power must invent noble lies and pious frauds to keep the people in the stupor for which they are supremely fit” — a view Kristol has endorsed. One can see that dynamic powerfully at work in the interaction between these neoconservatives and the President. They have seized upon the President’s evangelical fervor and equated his “calling” to wage war for Good in the world with the neoconservative agenda of endless wars in the Middle East.

And the more unpopular the President becomes as a result, the more of a failure these policies are, the more strongly they tell him to ignore all of that, that none of it matters, that his God and history will conclude that he did The Right Thing, provided that he continues steadfastly to pursue their agenda. And the President believes that. That is why nothing will stop him in pursuing the path he created years ago when, in January, 2002, he became convinced to name not only Iraq, but also Iran, as standing members of the “Axis of Evil” (even though our relations with Iran were rapidly improving at the time) and cited the 9/11 attacks in order to all but vow war on those countries, despite their having nothing to do with those attacks. The President’s “lessons” at the feet of neoconservatives continue, and he is as faithful a student as ever.

As incoherent and scattered as bush administration policy and implementation may appear to rational people on the outside looking in the fact is he’s been remarkably consistent on this approach from the beginning, using the Straussian “noble lies and pious frauds” to keep the less observant distracted.

I bring this up because Friedman’s latest column, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Know, Don’t Help,” is yet another “the war should have worked” piece, and it’s of a sort we’re likely to see quite often in upcoming years.

What we have to remember about America’s half-baked propaganda machine is that, dumb as it is, it always keeps its eye on the ball. The war in Iraq is lost, everyone knows that, but there are future wars to think about. When a war goes wrong, the reason can never that the invasion was simply a bad, immoral decision, a hopelessly fucked-up idea that even a child could have seen through. No, we always have to make sure that the excuse for the next war is woven into the autopsy of the current military failure. That’s why to this day we’re still hearing about how Vietnam was lost because a) the media abandoned the war effort b) the peace movement undermined the national will and c) the public, and the Pentagon, misread the results of the Tet offensive, seeing defeat where there actually was a victory.

After a few decades of that, we were ready to go to war again — all we had to do, we figured, was keep the cameras away from the bloody bits, ignore the peace movement, and blow off any and all bad news from the battlefield. And we did all of these things for quite a long time in Iraq, but, maddeningly, Iraq still turned out to be a failure.

In the midst of the biggest foreign policy and military disaster of my lifetime it is depressing to find that our columnists, commentators, those tasked by the print and broadcast media to give us backstory, depth and analysis, have shown themselves to be every bit as blind to reality as is the Bush government itself. Whether it is the Friedman Unit and his endless apologia for disaster or maybe even worse those pundits who are now railing on about how this invasion/occupation has been mismanaged, as if all it would have taken to pull this off was someone who got an A in his college business courses instead of a C-, these people have shown an incredible ability to dodge reality.

Now there are a whole lot of folks, in the blogs and even in the more obscure media, who have been trying to smack them in the face with a great big ball of reality but these guys are good, really good, at dodging and ducking, bobbing and weaving, and generally avoiding taking that smack upside the head that would require them to pick up that unpleasant ball of reality, hold it in their hands, and finally admit that it has substance.

I hope it won’t take much longer for all that dancing away from reality to take its toll and for them to take one right in the kisser and maybe then we can get around to some real accountability demanding on the part of the media.

It’s a great piece but in my mind it doesn’t go far enough. There are more inconsistencies than he lists. For one thing the military supplies that are arriving from Iran are going to Iraqi Shi’a militants like Muqtada al Sadr and they are certainly causing a great deal of death and destruction, as Sadr’s Shi’a militias and associated groups are responsible for a lot of the carnage in Iraq. But most of the American deaths are coming from the Sunni militias, both former Saddam supporters (he was a Sunni Muslim, albeit not a very worshipful one), former Baathists (also Sunni) and Al Qaeda infiltrators and supporters (ditto on the Sunni thing).

Now let’s remember that even though Saddam was a Sunni Muslim and his Baathist party had Sunni roots and support he was most definitely a secular leader, despite last minute displays of faithfulness and ritual, and he was violently opposed to even Sunni religious extremists such as bin Laden and AQ and his ruthlessness in pursuing any popular clerics or fundamentalist movements in Iraq, either Sunni or Shi’a, prevented fundamentalist movements like Iranian Shiite extremists or Sunni fundamentalists like bin Laden from ever getting a foothold in his country. He perceived al Sadr’s father, the true Shi’a cleric, as so much of a threat that he had him imprisoned and killed.

With Saddam gone and our failure to recognize that the breakdown in Iraqi society that came with our inwillingness to secure the country for the citizens would fuel dissatisfaction and create a rise in fundamentalism, the increase in Sunni fundamentalism, both homegrown and AQ fueled, is understandable and predictable. But while the Shi’a are basically waging a sectarian war against the Sunnis, a true Civil War, they are not responsible for most of the attacks on American troops, Fallujah notwithstanding. (a point Rich makes in passing) The vast majority of American casualties come from Sunni militias in Baghdad and the predominantly Sunni provinces around it and there is no way in Hell, literally, that Iran is supplying sophisticated weapons and support to Iraqi Sunnis. It ain’t happening.

So if protecting the troops is the reason for going after the Iranian suppliers of weapons and training then the troops aren’t going to see much benefit from it because the Iranian weapons aren’t what’s killing them.

So where are the troop-killers getting their supplies? A lot of it is recycled stuff from all the armories we also failed to secure after the invasion and from which recently fired Iraqi army and Republican Guard troops (Sunni again) helped themselves to thousands of tons of munitions and weaponry. But there is now evidence that a lot of the newer stuff is coming from Saudi Arabia, either directly or indirectly.

So, more misdirection from Bush, who apparently wants to find a pretext, any pretext, to attack Iran. This is an instant replay of his Iraqi maneuvering when he created phony reasons to invade that country. But it isn’t Iran, it’s Saudi Arabia and if the reality of that also seems like instant replay you’d be right. It’s the instant replay of 9/11, which was planned by a Saudi and carried out by Saudis and Yemenis operating out of Afghanistan. Not an Iraqi in sight.

But just like then, we are now ignoring the very real involvement of Saudi Arabia, our “good friends”, to focus instead on someone else we don’t like by creating excuses for misdirection.

Interestingly, if Bush really means “it’s about protecting the troops” not whether the Iranian government itself actually ordered attacks on US troops, then one would think he’d respond to the actual threats to the troops. But that would only be if you thought it was about protecting the troops. From his actions, which belie his words, it isn’t about protecting the troops, it’s about creating yet another front in his neverending war.

Because, as we all know, Oceania is always at war with Eurasia, unless it’s at war with Eastasia.

Frank Rich touches on this a bit in his piece but the broader implications concerning Saudi involvement are left out and I think they are important.

I saw a quote today and figured it was as good a candidate as any for a bit of a test. We’re hearing so much these days from the reactionaries on the conservative side about how Democrats and other assorted anti-Iraq Fiasco types are “emboldening the enemy” simply by pointing out the endless failures of this administration’s policies. It amazes me really. We can throw out the old Teddy Roosevelt quote (he being a noted America hater you know) where he said:

The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole.

Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

but the fundamental message in this quote is apparently so abhorrent to the current conservative mindset that I’ve yet to see anyone actually address the substance of it. They merely do the virtual equivalent of sticking their fingers in their ears and squawking loudly so they won’t have acknowledge it.

Then of course there was the recent phony “Lincoln” quote drummed up by J. Michael Waller and regurgitated by Frank Gaffney in his Washington Times column to which I would link except it has now been removed from the WashTimes site because the glaringly obvious fraud it contains was apparently too embarrassing even for them. But that didn’t stop Rep. Don Young (R-AK) from repeating it on the floor of the House the other day. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, I always say.

But, like I said, I ran across this particular quote the other day and thought I’d post it so everyone (all three of you who might be reading this thing) could spend a day or so trying to guess who it might be. I have taken a slight liberty which will be explained later:

As to the mode of terminating the war, and securing peace, the President is equally wandering and indefinite. First, it is to be done by a more vigorous prosecution of the war in the vital parts of the enemy’s country; and, after apparently talking himself tired on this point, the President drops down into a half despairing tone, and tells us that “with a people distracted and divided by contending factions, and a government subject to constant changes, by successive revolutions, the continued success of our arms may fail to secure a satisfactory peace.” Then he suggests the propriety of wheedling the Iraqi people to desert the counsels of their own leaders, and trusting in our protection to set up a government from which we can secure a satisfactory peace; telling us that “this may become the only mode of obtaining such a peace.” But soon he falls into doubt of this too; and then drops back on to the already half abandoned ground of “more vigorous prosecution.” All this shows that the President is, in no wise, satisfied with his own positions. … His mind, tasked beyond its power, is running hither and thither, like some tortured creature on a burning surface, finding no position on which it can settle down and be at ease.

Again, it is a singular omission in this message that it nowhere intimates when the President expects the the war to terminate. … As I have before said, he knows not where he is. He is a bewildered, confounded, and miserably perplexed man. God grant he may be able to show there is not something about his conscience more painful than all his mental perplexity!

Have fun, I’ll post the correct answer in a day or so.

This is what the world sees when they look at bush. His behavior the other day towards Chancellor Merkel of Germany would be reprehensible if he did it at a church social but it is even more so at a meeting of world leaders (and no, I don’t include him in the list of world leaders, he gets included in their meetings by dint of luck, not because he has anything of value to bring to the table)

See the rest of Bob Geiger’s roundup of Saturday cartoons here.

The comments about the outcome of “regime change” in Iraq that we heard just prior to and during the initial invasion from people like Cheney, Wolfowitz, Perle, et al as well as Kristol himself saying how we’d be welcomed by the Iraqi people grateful for us having rid them of their horrible dictator turned out to be, shall we say, less than prescient. It seemed those damned ungrateful Iraqi people not only hated Saddam they actually loved their country and did not take kindly to all those tank tracks and craters we kept leaving all over it as well as the unsightly litter of dead Iraqis clogging up the streets. So they did what all people do when the country they love and live in is invaded by outsiders bent on plundering it, they fought back, and continue to fight back even as we’ve turned their country into a haven for sectarian viciousness not seen during Saddam’s reign, as bad as that was.

So now, fresh with this new perspective on the impact of nationalism on gratitude for forced regime change this crowd is now singing a new tune about the potential outcome of an invasion of Iran:

the Iranian people dislike their regime. I think they would be – the right use of targeted military force — but especially if political pressure before we use military force – could cause them to reconsider whether they really want to have this regime in power.

OK, so it sounds exactly like the old tune. Hmmm, these idiots really don’t understand this stuff all that well. They think if we lob some cruise missiles (after having practiced “diplomacy” which, if it is anything like the runup to Iraq, will consist of “do what we want or the kid gets it”) drop some smart bombs which apparently still need remedial education to really hit what they are aimed at, and destroy some strategic targets we can’t really identify with certainty (they might be elementary schools but, oh well), that the first response from these people, whose entire history in the region dwarfs the history of our nation to the point of insignificance, will be “oh goody, those kindly Americans with their bombs and missiles are shining the light of truth upon us so that we might realize how horrible our leadership really is. We shall welcome the liberators with open arms”.

Right.

It never occurs to the bushites and neocons that people who live in other countries might actually have a sense of loyalty to the nation of their birth, the nation of their entire family’s birth, their homeland if you will. No these idiots in Washington actually seem to believe that the entire world reveres America, that they would do anything to be just like us with a real gold plated whomping good democracy and a benevolent leader like Good King George, and that they simply cannot wait to be shown the error of their ways, preferably at the point of a gun. Why, nations around the world are just lining up eager to have their governments overthrown by Dear Old Uncle Sam so that they too might become just like Iraq, a beacon of democracy lighting the way in the Middle East. (and you can tell already how well that example is being emulated in Lebanon by our good friends the Israelis)

It is no wonder that Vladimer (I saw his soul) Putin felt quite at ease rhetorically bitch-slapping Junior Bush the other day in St. Petersburg. The more we behave like this the more irrelevant we become to the rest of the world and the more vulnerable we are to hostile actions on the part of others. There would be no need for missile launches from N. Korea or Russia or China, a simple calling of our loans would do it. And I hardly think the EU would rush to our defense if we keep up this foolishness because our actions threaten the entire world and the sooner we get shunted over to the sidelines the better off the world will be.

We’re in debt up to our eyeballs and our economy more and more resembles that of a third-world country, with ever more massively rich at the top, ever more working or non-working poor at the bottom and an ever shrinking middle class more likely to fall down to the bottom than ever climb to the top.

We’re falling deeper into a hole we may not soon be able to climb out of and these clowns think Iranians will be just delighted if we invade their country, and it will make everything better because it is yet another chance for them to prove to us that they really are right about everything. Because the other stuff they did to prove how right they are hasn’t, you know, really worked out all that well just yet.

[update]

A friend pointed out to me what I already knew but didn’t elaborate on in the above, that Iraq is an artificial construct of the British. True enough, but that region is also the birthplace of modern civilization and regardless of boundaries which have fluctuated for millennia many of the tribes that live there have lived there for millennia as well. The history of the region is exceedingly long and rich and the attachment of the people to the land no less intense or heartfelt because the current political boundaries are arbitrary. Yet another outside invader and conqueror coming into to remake the political landscape yet again, especially in the 21st century, is no welcome sight to the Iraqis regardless of the motivation for the invasion.

Here’s an excerpt from an op-ed he wrote for the Boston Globe.

What I found provided a personal epiphany. Authoritarian conservatives are, as a researcher told me, “enemies of freedom, antidemocratic, antiequality, highly prejudiced, mean-spirited, power hungry, Machiavellian and amoral.” And that’s not just his view. To the contrary, this is how these people have consistently described themselves when being anonymously tested, by the tens of thousands over the past several decades.

Authoritarianism’s impact on contemporary conservatism is beyond question. Because this impact is still growing and has troubling (if not actually evil) implications, I hope that social scientists will begin to write about this issue for general readers. It is long past time to bring the telling results of their empirical work into the public square and to the attention of American voters. No less than the health of our democracy may depend on this being done. We need to stop thinking we are dealing with traditional conservatives on the modern stage, and instead recognize that they’ve often been supplanted by authoritarians.

Dean has hit the nail on the head. Let’s hope it’s not too late nor too easily dismissed.

Now, ostensibly driven by revenge for the kidnapping of first one soldier and now two more (and even more to come, most likely) they have lashed out at anyone in their neighborhood who even blinks. The Jordanians and the Egyptians need to, as Ari Fleischer famously said of Americans post 9/11, “watch what they say, watch what they do” lest they prick the beasts of Israel into looking in their direction too.

Apparently Israel is stopping all pretense of being anti-terror and is now employing it as the weapon of choice in their overreaction to their enemies, real or perceived. Granted it is much better armed terrorism than one usually sees but I doubt the people being killed and driven in fear from their homes appreciate that distinction.

Israel has a lot of reasons to be fearful in that region and has been subject to plenty of terror attacks in the decades of their existence, but it is one thing to be driven by that reality into making their part of the world better and safer and another entirely to use it to justify becoming terrorists themselves.

Of course they have George Bush and his cabal to thank for that rationale (or maybe he simply borrowed it from the rightist Israeli political parties and ideologues like Netanyahu and then cranked it up a few notches). Bush and his apologists regularly use the “we’re fighting terrorists” excuse to justify throwing democracy and human rights out the window, thus becoming de-facto terrorists themselves.

The entire mess in the ME right now can be laid firmly and squarely at Bush’s feet and no one else’s. It is his policies, his militarism, his criminal invasion of Iraq and policies of torture and murder, that have opened the door for what we are seeing right now.

The fundies to whom Bush kowtows will get their Apocalypse, or at least the outward appearance of one, and they can all dance naked around that Maypole in celebration now that it approaches. It makes me wish the Rapture were real so we could get all those bastards the hell out of this world and give it back to those who love it, cherish it, and will work to make it better for all human beings. The Raptured can rot in their own unique Hell for all I care.

[UPDATE] An interesting and related article on Common Dreams by Rupert Cromwell.

Iran meanwhile seems less inclined than ever to give up its nuclear ambitions. Yesterday, the world’s major powers referred Iran back to the United Nations Security Council after its failure to reply to the West’s offer last month of incentives to halt is uranium enrichment activities.

But Russia and China have shown no sign of willingness to adopt tough sanctions against the Islamic regime in Tehran. And in the end America may be faced with a choice akin to the one it faced over Iraq: either acquiesce in doing virtually nothing – or bypass the UN and form a new “coalition of the willing” to take tougher, conceivably even military, action.

To these two flashpoints, a third has now been added: Israel’s reprisals against the Palestinians over one of its soldiers taken hostage last month on the border with Gaza. Some 50 Palestinians have now been killed.

The crisis spread to confrontation yesterday with Hizbollah guerrillas, backed by Syria and Iran, in southern Lebanon, after incidents in which three Israeli soldiers were killed and two others captured.

The White House insists that its policies are on track. If there are “a lot of issues in motion,” according to Stephen Hadley, Mr. Bush’s National Security Adviser, “in some sense, it was destined to be. We have a president that wants to take on the big issues and see if he could solve them on his watch.”

More probably an administration whose energies have been consumed by the war in Iraq, on which Mr. Bush has staked his presidency, may be simply overwhelmed. The separate crises amount to “a perfect storm,” Madeleine Albright, who was Secretary of State under Bill Clinton, told The Washington Post last week. “We have not been paying attention to a lot of these issues.”

In the latest flare-up between Israel and its neighbors, Washington has been almost silent.

And to think we used to be leaders in the tough struggle to achieve peace in that region. Now we invade and occupy and then sit silent as the blowback inflames surrounding countries.

Pathetic.

The basic premise of the book is that the current crop of self-described conservatives have long since abandoned Goldwater conservativism, to which they may still pay lip service, for a worship of authoritarianism and he backs this up with research that shows conservatives today have a natural tendency to give themselves over to an authoritarian mindset, preferring to be led blindly by power rather than by an understanding of, and concern for, the issues of the day. Sounds about right to me.

Then there is this gem, written a few years back by a Maine sixth-grader about the flag.

The American flag stands for the fact that cloth can be very important. It is against the law to let the flag touch the ground or to leave the flag flying when the weather is bad. The flag has to be treated with respect. You can tell just how important this cloth is because when you compare it to people, it gets much better treatment. Nobody cares if a homeless person touches the ground. A homeless person can lie all over the ground all night long without anyone picking him up, folding him neatly and sheltering him from the rain.

School children have to pledge loyalty to this piece of cloth every morning. No one has to pledge loyalty to justice and equality and human decency. No one has to promise that people will get a fair wage, or enough food to eat, or affordable medicine, or clean water, or air free of harmful chemicals. But we all have to promise to love a rectangle of red, white, and blue cloth.

Betsy Ross would be quite surprised to see how successful her creation has become. But Thomas Jefferson would be disappointed to see how little of the flag’s real meaning remains.

And then of course there’s this gem from Think Progress:

LEAHY: The president has said very specifically, and he’s said it to our European allies, he’s waiting for the Supreme Court decision to tell him whether or not he was supposed to close Guantanamo or not. After, he said it upheld his position on Guantanamo, and in fact it said neither. Where did he get that impression? The President’s not a lawyer, you are, the Justice Department advised him. Did you give him such a cockamamie idea or what?

BRADBURY: Well, I try not to give anybody cockamamie ideas.

LEAHY: Well, where’d he get the idea?

BRADBURY: The Hamdan decision, senator, does implicitly recognize we’re in a war, that the President’s war powers were triggered by the attacks on the country, and that law of war paradigm applies. That’s what the whole case —

LEAHY: I don’t think the President was talking about the nuances of the law of war paradigm, he was saying this was going to tell him that he could keep Guantanamo open or not, after it said he could.

BRADBURY: Well, it’s not —

LEAHY: Was the President right or was he wrong?

BRABURY: It’s under the law of war –

LEAHY: Was the President right or was he wrong?

BRADBURY: The President is always right.

Which for those of us around during the Nixon administration rings especially loudly because it echoes so closely Nixons’ statement to David Frost “Well, when the President does it, that means that it’s not illegal.,” which we all fondly remember as the beginning of the end for Tricky Dick.