Forward into the 10th century

From this past Sunday's Meet The Press with guest former CIA spook Gary Schroen, author of "First In: How seven CIA officers opened the war on terrorism in Afghanistan":

MR. RUSSERT: On September 1, 2001, you began a 90-day phaseout retiring from the CIA. Then came the horrific day of 8:46 AM, September 11, 2001. All our lives changed. You were asked to stay on at the CIA. On September 13th, you were summoned to the office of Cofer Black, the head of counterterrorism for the CIA. What did he tell you? What was your mission?

MR. SCHROEN: The mission was to--the first part of it was to go in and link up with the Northern Alliance, formerly headed by Ahmed Al-Massoud, and to win their confidence and their agreement to cooperate militarily with us. They were the only armed force on the ground in Afghanistan opposing the Taliban. The second part of it was, once the Taliban were broken, to attack the al-Qaeda organization, find bin Laden and his senior lieutenants and kill them.

MR. RUSSERT: Kill them?

MR. SCHROEN: Kill them.

MR. RUSSERT: Wasn't it illegal for us to kill foreign leaders?

MR. SCHROEN: I don't think at that point that the--I think the administration had gotten to the point where bin Laden and his guys were fair game.

MR. RUSSERT: As part of war?

MR. SCHROEN: As part of war.

MR. RUSSERT: Mr. Black gave you specific instructions on what he wanted you to bring home.

MR. SCHROEN: That's true. He did ask that once we got bin Laden and killed him, that we send his head back in a cardboard box on dry ice so that he could take it down and show the president.

And what was Fat Tim's reaction to this shocking revelation of barbarism by our government and bloodthirsty, ghoulish, and sick desire of our President to be presented with the severed head of his enemy?

MR. RUSSERT: Where would you find the dry ice in Afghanistan?

MR. SCHROEN: That's what I mentioned to him. I said, "Cofer, I think that I can come up with pikes to put the heads of the lieutenants on," which is the second part of what he wanted done. "Dry ice, we'll have to improvise."

Needless to say, Shroen, Rumsfeld, and the American military blew capturing Bin Laden by trying to do things on the cheap, giving supposedly sympathetic warlords planeloads of cash to block escape routes out of Tora Bora. They were only too happy to take the cash and give Bin Laden safe passage out of Afghanistan. Brilliant.

And Tim Russert, top of the heap of the "serious" journalistic elite. Who published a self agrandizing book in the guise of a tribute to his father in which he praised his tough, fearless interviewing skills.

Tim Russert, who has attacked Democratic guests with embarrassing tenacity, for instance once hectoring Howard Dean for about 10 minutes because he didn't know the EXACT number of troops deployed to Afghanistan at that precise moment. (Dean was only off by a few thousand.)

And now this guy tells Timmy that the CIA wanted to present the severed head of Bin Laden to Bush as if it were a damn Labrador retriever bringing back a dead rabbit and dropping it at it's master's feet in hopes of a pat on the head. And all this sham pantload of a reporter could come up with was "Where would you find the dry ice in Afghanistan?"

And to my knowledge, this shocking revelation never got any further mention in the press. This story is illustrative of the difference between liberals and conservatives. Liberals likely find it shocking, disturbing, and indicative of a truly blood-thirsty barbarism, a giant step backward in civilization. Conservatives likely think it's cool, and sit in their Laz-e-boys and get some sort of vicarious woody over Bush being like Conan the Barbarian.

Liberals in general want society to evolve and improve and to work towards common goals of peace and prosperity for the greatest number of people possible. The conservatives think war is cool, and that power is always it's own reward, have no problem with it being concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, and that it should be gained and exercised with impunity and arrogance and used indiscriminately and unapologetically.

Liberals want to work for a better future, conservatives gleefully ignore all of world history. If an idea was proved disastrous in the past, that doesn't stop conservatives from believing whole-heartedly that it will somehow work if they try it again. And for a large number of Republican elites, the idea of going back to the pre-union, pre-workers rights era of the robber-barons is their ultimate wet-dream. And the Bush eaa has moved them increasingly closer to that goal by erasing the line between corporate interest and government power.

End of sermon.