GWOT remainders bin

[we vs us]

And in the Tying Up Loose Ends of the Bush Administration category, we have today's revelation that Rumsfeld and Ashcroft pushed Tom Ridge to raise the color-coded terror alert levels during 2004 election for political purposes.

Please listen to Tom Ridge explain:

"A vigorous, some might say dramatic, discussion ensured. Ashcroft strongly urged an increase in the threat level and was supported by Rumsfeld," writes Ridge. According to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Ridge's aides carried the message to the White House that an Election Eve threat escalation "would court accusations of politicizing national security." In the end, the terror alert level was not raised. Ridge himself writes that he was "incredulous" about the whole debate and acknowledges "we were on the verge of making a huge mistake."

There's more slowly trickling out from Ridge, and most of it confirms the suspicions a lot of us had back during those halcyon days of 2003-2005 or so, when the Bush Administration was showing us how to expertly use pretty much every element of the GWOT effort to bolster their political power.  I include this mostly as a footnote, so that we can all refer back to it when we need to research the Bush years. 

Oh wait, here's one more:  the CIA hired Blackwater (now Xe) to assist and or execute a secret program (which it, coincidentally hadn't briefed congress about) to hunt down and assassinate Al Qaeda chieftains.  Supposedly the program was shut down before any killings were actually carried out -- but then, this was a program that existed completely outside any sort of oversight structure, so there's no particular reason to believe anything about it. 

(Relevant footnote?  The CEO of Blackwater/Xe, Erik Prince, is under indictment for a series of pretty stunning crimes:  "may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company . . . transporting "illegal" or "unlawful" weapons into the country on Prince's private planes . . . destroy[ing] incriminating videos, emails and other documents and have intentionally deceived the US State Department and other federal agencies . . ."  More exciting:  Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life."

" . . . Mr. Prince intentionally deployed to Iraq certain men who shared his vision of Christian supremacy, knowing and wanting these men to take every available opportunity to murder Iraqis. Many of these men used call signs based on the Knights of the Templar, the warriors who fought the Crusades.

    Mr. Prince operated his companies in a manner that encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life. For example, Mr. Prince's executives would openly speak about going over to Iraq to "lay Hajiis out on cardboard." Going to Iraq to shoot and kill Iraqis was viewed as a sport or game. Mr. Prince's employees openly and consistently used racist and derogatory terms for Iraqis and other Arabs, such as "ragheads" or "hajiis." )

In any event.  At the risk of sounding shrill or socialist or like a Nazi or whatever those of us in the reality based community are being called these days, I'd just like to say:  man, who DOESN'T miss the oughts?

[Cats Cats Cats]

File this under more stuff we all knew

[Conan71]

Wevus, you Godwinned yourself in your own OP