Paul Rieckhoff, head of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, at TPMCafe:
I am extremely pissed off about the recent news out of Walter Reed Hospital. And you should be too. Turn off the non-stop coverage of Anna Nicole Smith and let’s have a little talk about how we treat our returning heroes.
Read Rieckhoff’s opening thoughts and jump into the thread. He’ll be with us all day for the discussion.
Ahhh, this is fun. Whackjob member of Congress Michelle Bachmann, it turns out, has discovered that there’s already a plan in place to divide Iraq. Iran will get half the country. And they’ll set that part up as a “terrorist safe haven zone.”
Says Bachmann: “And half of Iraq, the western, northern portion of Iraq, is going to be calledâ¦. the Iraq State of Islam, something like that. And Iâm sorry, I donât have the official name, but itâs meant to be the training ground for the terrorists. Thereâs already an agreement made.”
I can’t wait to hear Juan Cole’s reaction to Bachmann’s scoop.
Shi’a Iran is going to run Sunni western Iraq as a terrorist safe haven. And the new terror country’s official name will be the Iraq State of Islam.
Aren’t the Shi’a Arabs in southern Iraq going to be a little bummed?
Yesterday we reported that the Justice Department appears to be stonewalling queries from the Congressional Research Service looking into the US Attorney purge. Now DOJ says they’re working on coughing up the information. It’s just taking them a while.
How many times did Sen. Lieberman say he wouldn’t switch parties? Let us count the ways. See our tally here.
So Vice President Cheney is keeping up his criticism of Speaker Pelosi, saying the Democrats’ preferred policy would “validate the al-Qaeda strategy.” I don’t know how many times this needs to be said: stop complaining that he’s questioning anybody’s patriotism. 
Or Pelosi’s judgment. Or any of it. I know it’s a dicey phrase, especially when it’s being employed against a woman. But I think explanatory value outweighs other sensitivities. This is a perfect example of the GOP’s bitch slap theory of electoral politics. Cheney criticize; Dems, Pelosi, whoever says it’s unfair.
The point of the whole exercise is not the underlying issue of Pelosi but what the exchange is supposed to demonstrate about both players — that Cheney is strong (he hits) and Pelosi is weak (she complains when attacked.)
Why complain about anything Dick Cheney says? The man is simply too big a fool to hold any job of responsibility in the national government. Think of his history of failure, terrible judgment, reckless endangerment of the country. It’s hard to imagine that there’s anyone in this country not under active federal surveillance who has done more to advance the al Qaeda agenda than Dick Cheney.
I know that seems like hyperbole or a throwaway line. But it’s actually very true. Is America stronger now than it was before the Cheney era? Does al Qaeda have more fertile ground for proselytizing or less? Are we in a stronger or weaker position vis a vis Iran? Just one factoid you may have missed of late. A recent poll shows that since 2002 the percentage of Arabs who say their primary identity is as Muslims rather than as Arabs or members of their specific nationality has almost doubled — now it’s at 45%. That’s in just four years.
It’s true. So say it. Don’t whine. Don’t complain. The idea that Dick Cheney is telling anyone what helps or harms al Qaeda is comic. Bleak comedy, but comic nonetheless. Say so.
Lieberman just said it: He won’t switch to the GOP! Or did he?
TPM Reader TY responds to Dick Cheney’s latest goofball lies …
I think the main thing Cheney is doing here is making the point that the Iraq war is about al-Qaeda, when in fact al-Qaeda is only a very small part of the war, as the NIE indicates. The only was to validate the war is to constantly tie it to al-Qaeda (as they have done since 9/11). Pelosi and the Democrats should respond by knocking down the al-Qaeda canard. Perhaps they are tired of fighting this uphill battle but Cheney and the administration should be held accountable for continuously spreading misinformation. Even the media (yeah, sure) should question this assertion. But every time he says it, people believe it. The old trick of repeating a lie tirelessly and and it “becomes” true.
True. But the thing is, the bigger we screw-up in Iraq, the more unpopular we get in the region, the wider the pool of potential recruits for jihadist groups like al-Qaida. So, yes, it’s a canard. But the scope and magnitude of Cheney’s screw-ups and incompetence are so vast that they actually can increase the danger we face from al-Qaida, even though at the outset they had little to do with each other.
TPM Reader PR looks out his window …
I’m looking out my downtown Austin office window at Auditorium Shores where a huge crowd has been growing since the gates opened at noon to see Sen. Barack Obama speak. It’s been raining lightly now for the better part of an hour and the crowd shows no signs of letting up.
On line ticket requests totaled about 16,000 and the park looks pretty full right now. They say the capacity for the park (which holds the statue of Stevie Ray Vaughan) is 20,000.
I know Austin is the bluest dot in a really, really red state, but this turnout in this weather (even here) is amazing.
He’s hot. There’s no denying it.
The New Republic goes biweekly.
“A Weekly Journal of Opinion,” as the masthead said, since 1914.