Slippage?

I'm starting to wonder if the tide is actually turning in D.C. I could be totally thwarted on this, but I think when Bush announces the bullshit drawdown of 30,000 troops that were scheduled to come home at that same time next year anyway (and if he and Cheney attack Iraq we'll see who comes home really), a force reduction that would just put us at pre-surge levels anyway (a wasted 12 months?), no one is going to believe him.

Because we all stopped believing him a long time ago.

Because we are all now trained to read his customary expressions and mannerisms as duplicitous.

Or, occasionally, duplicitous and stupid.

Here's some odd signs that the bruising Senate committee hearings yesterday were actually a potential turning point in the national debate. When Petraeus accidentally told the truth, and maybe historically will because of the slip have redeemed himself beyond what Colin Powell will have achieved, it was the other shoe hitting on the side of reason. There's just no truth to the neocon policy, and in reality no tangible security element, so we must take an approach radical to the current policy if we have any hopes of reversing course towards a more secure Earth.

Hopeful signs include all the GOP Senators wailing on the mission -- Lugar, Hagel, Warner (the latter two definitely able to go conscience now that they've announced retirement) -- as well as announced Democratic leadership plans to fight whatever Bush proposes and instead legislate a true withdrawal strategy.

Another hopeful sign is Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) taking a hard rhetorical line against Cheney/Bush machine, even mentioning Iran. Richardson and Dodd, his Presidential nomination rivals, have whacked at his speech, but I think it's a welcome move in the right direction for the national debate.

There's also an Action Alert out on Iran. Per Crooks & Liars:

Call the Capitol switchboard at 202-225-3121. We need to let our representatives know that Bush cannot attack Iran.

And then there's a couple tragic events unfolding that make me think the narrative could, with surprising speed, slip from the Pro-War establishment:

- Oil law compromise in Iraq got torched today (and Bush buddies from Texas, Hunt Oil, look plenty responsible -- amazing). Could this undermine the President's rhetoric enough, even get publicized enough?

- Two of the seven soldiers who recently authored a pro-withdrawal op-ed in The New York Times were killed in a vehicle accident today. Really icky karma for WarCheney and WarBush.

Oh, and after Pat Tillman, I'm not ruling out murder, i.e. political assassination.

Do you?

Whodunnit?

The Cheney/Bush Administration is using their favorite criminality dodge, "executive privilege" (not in the Constitution), to keep us, America, from knowing what they did in the Pat Tillman death incident.

Tillman was a role model, a young, impossibly handsome NFL football player who selflessly put his career on hold to enlist after 9/11. When he was killed in Afghanistan the Iraq War-hungry Administration spun it as a brave death by enemy fire.

Then they stonewalled his family on the truth.

Turns out not only is it obvious at this point that Tillman was killed by friendly fire, but new documents reveal it was at a lot closer range than previously thought:

"The medical evidence did not match up with the scenario as described," a doctor who examined Tillman's body after he was killed on the battlefield in Afghanistan in 2004 told investigators.

The doctors — whose names were blacked out — said the bullet holes were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.

The Defense Department launched no criminal investigation. So what else has just come to light:

• In his last words moments before he was killed, Tillman snapped at a panicky comrade under fire to shut up and stop "sniveling."

• Army attorneys sent each other congratulatory e-mails for keeping criminal investigators at bay as the Army conducted an internal friendly-fire investigation that resulted in administrative, or non-criminal, punishments.

• The three-star general who kept the truth about Tillman's death from his family and the public told investigators some 70 times that he had a bad memory and could not recall details of his actions.

• No evidence at all of enemy fire was found at the scene — no one was hit by enemy fire, nor was any government equipment struck.

This is obviously bad for democracy, bad for the military and bad for the republic. But what's starting to get creepy is that it turns out Pat was nothing like the GOP-policy supporting stereotype they fabricated. He was against the move into Iraq, even planning to meet with noted anti-war/anti-imperialism thinker Noam Chomsky and evidently supported John Kerry for President.

So now that it appears to have been friendly fire that killed him, the looming question is whether this was an accident, or was Pat Tillman murdered?

And if he was, and the Administration knew, all the way up to President Bush, aren't they all guilty of covering up the crime?

Is that what this "executive privilege" is all about -- finally a very vivid grounds for impeachment of both Mister Bush and President Cheney?

And while some might even wonder if an order to kill Pat Tillman came from the executive branch, it sure cannot be true.

It just can't.

Can it?

Festival of Lies

Is it wrong to think of our government as a cheap sham?

Ask the brave Americans who testified today in Congress.

Try Private Jessica Lynch, who got railroaded into fake marine hero-dom, in order to bolster support for the liars' war. She's so shockingly eloquent. The wounded soldier girl next door, patriot, truth-teller. Which these days feels like a rebel.

They staged everything, exploiting her pain and dignity.

Then check out Pat Tillman's family. They destroyed his uniform, for God's sake, to cover up the friendly fire tragedy with a b.s. story, straight to his family's face.

Brother Kevin: “Fraud–deliberate and calculated lies.” Calls out for Congress to investigate. Wildly compelling, justice.

And his poor mother. Institutionally lied to about her very own son for White House political advantage, and then told she isn't Christian enough to do so. Told her son is "worm dirt".

Smells like treason.

Eye into the army: Specialist Bryan O'Neal, U.S. Army. Another brave guy who will have a clear conscience tonight. Didn't make the changes in his reports, must have been done higher up. His climactic description of Pat's killing...this is what really happened, from the guy who could have been hit in Pat's place.

As one regular reader wrote to me this evening, incensed to obscenity over what this says about the officers in our military bureaucracy:

What the officer class acceded to w/ Tillman & Lynch is f*cking disgraceful. Besides the obvious examples, here are 3 more:

1) they delayed a rescue attempt on Lynch for over a day because they didn't have the right equipment to videotape it; they knew that their "rescue"would be a success since they knew she was being treated in an unguarded Iraqi hospital, not shackled and tortured in some fortified structure

2) they ordered Tillman's closest army pals to LIE to his brother -- ANOTHER US ARMY RANGER -- about the circumstances of his death

3) Everyone understands now that all of the docs regarding Tillman's death were fabricated, yet none of these "men of honor" will stand up and say "I did it," or "I ordered it."

Fuck them.

So how high up does this go? From The NY Times:

Democratic members of the committee devoted much time to an urgent memorandum sent by a top special operations commander, Maj. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, to other high-ranking commanders a week after Corporal Tillman’s death. General McChrystal is now a lieutenant general.

The memorandum said a preliminary investigation was likely to find that American fire caused the death. The message urged them to pass on the information to President Bush, the secretary of the army and others.

The Tillmans said they believed that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld must have known the truth early, a contention that Army investigators said they had failed to establish. “It’s a bit disingenuous to think that the administration did not know about what was going on, something so politically sensitive,” Kevin Tillman said. “So that’s, kind of, what we were hoping you guys could get involved with and take a look.”

Bush knew.

Which means he had to have approved of it.

Isn't that the story here?