The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart reminded his audience on Thursday — in case they’d somehow forgotten — of the Iraq War, with its “lack of a coherent postwar plan [or] a reason to have the war.”

“But did you know that we also have this whole other war in Afghanistan?” Stewart asked. He then played a montage of television news clips calling the Afghan War “a mission politically and militarily in crisis” and reporting that “President Karzai is accused of rigging the election. … More than a million and a half ballots are suspicious.”

Stewart turned to John Oliver, saying, “Eight years into this war in Afghanistan and it appears we are now fighting an intractable war only to establish a corrupt, undemocratic state. How did this happen?”

“Really? America is having a hard time fighting in Afghanistan?” an incredulous Oliver replied. “How could that be? Especially considering Afghanistan is only the most unconquerable place on earth.”

After pointing out that both Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great failed to take Afghanistan, Oliver noted caustically, “America, you want to be different, right? The arrogance is unbelievable.”

“Even Britain was routed there,” Oliver went on. “Afghanistan is the gold standard for quagmires.”

Stewart attempted at that point to summarize Oliver’s arguments by saying, “So we are in some kind of inexorable slide to a painful and expensive defeat. We should cut our losses and get out now while we still have…”

“No!” Oliver interrupted. “You can’t give up now, Jon! Think of empire as a video game. Afghanistan is the final level. Sure, other players have made it this far. But no one has beaten it yet.”

“But even if we do win,” Stewart asked, “what do we win? Nothing of value.”

“Absolutely,” Oliver agreed. “You get nothing of value — except your initials would reside as the high score on the big board of history.”

“But whatever you do,” Oliver concluded, “do it quickly — because China is standing right behind us, and they’re jingling a handful of quarters.”

This video is from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, broadcast Sept. 17, 2009.

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Says of Rush Limbaugh, “The nation‘s asshole would know about the nation‘s hemorrhoid”

Former President Jimmy Carter’s suggestion that much of the “intensely demonstrated animosity” against President Obama is an expression of racism has been widely disputed by Republicans and some media commentators.

MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann, however, came to Carter’s defense on Wednesday. “Jimmy Carter tells the truth about some, not all, but some of the rabid rage against President Obama,” Olbermann stated, “and is thus the recipient of the automatic blowback from those whose livelihoods depend on enabling the ragers to tell themselves it is not racism that they feel.”

In introducing the segment, Olbermann claimed that he could offer “at least 37″ cases that he believes “prove President Carter to be correct.” He also noted that Rush Limbaugh had attacked Carter’s statements by saying “Jimmy Carter is the nation‘s hemorrhoid” — and retorted, “”Well, I got to defer to him here, the nation‘s asshole would know about the nation‘s hemorrhoid.”

Some of Olbermann’s examples seem fairly indisputable, like a poster used at tea party demonstrations that depicts Obama as an Africa witch doctor, or Limbaugh’s claim that Obama has made it okay for black kids to beat up a white kid on a school bus.

Others, however, appear more strained. For example, Olbermann pointed to the use of “isolated cases of abuse to portray ACORN as a collection of criminally minded African-Americans, with the president as ACORN‘s poster child.” However, Republican attacks on ACORN go back at least to the 2004 election and have always been tied more to calculations of electoral advantage than to clear-cut racism.

Similarly, attempts by Obama’s political opponents to link him to former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers appear less like an expression of racial animosity than like the standard Republican tactic of painting all Democrats as radicals.

Olbermann also pointed to an upsurge in hate crimes since Obama’s election, but here he himself appeared to be verging on guilt by association.

“It is sickening, but it is just a sampling,” Olbermann commented after noting several recent incidents. “And it shares the same obvious under-current. Just as the brandishing of the Confederate Flag during the campaign is mirrored by the Confederate Flag at the recent 9/12 protests. Just as the South Shall Rise Again sentiment associated with states‘ rights finds its way to flirtations with succession, as in Texas, with Rick Perry as governor.”

“Set against that,” Olbermann concluded, “are we to believe that the birther movement can be separated from racism? That the wild fear mongering of the deathers does not play on racist fears of a black man‘s otherness, and his stereotype proclivity to violence? … And yet Mr. Wilson‘s defenders wonder why anyone might think his outburst was even slightly racially motivated.”

This video is from MSNBC’s Countdown, broadcast Sept. 16, 2009.

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The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart took a caustic look on Wednesday at the endless Congressional merry-go-round of demands for apologies by members of the opposite party.

When the House of Representatives passed a resolution of disapproval against Rep. Joe Wilson for his outburst during President Obama’s address last week, some Republicans were quick to label it a time-wasting distraction from more important issues.

“At least Republicans weren’t wasting time demanding meaningless apologies,” Stewart noted with seeming approval.

Stewart then played a clip from last July of Rep. Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI) introducing a resolution “calling on President Obama to retract and apologize for his remarks regarding the conduct of Cambridge, Massachusetts police sergeant James M. Crowley, Jr.”

“These apologies keep going around and around,” Stewart explained. “It appears our Congress is trapped on a Jackass Carousel. One party demands an apology, the other party declares it a waste of time — time better spent demanding their own equally pointless apology, which in a beautiful pas de deux the first party then declares a waste of time.”

To illustrate his point, Stewart noted that in 2006, when current White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was in Congress, he called out Ann Coulter for attacking the 9/11 widows and insisted that “she should apologize to all of us who’ve lost our fellow citizens on 9/11.”

“But of course if there is to be an actual Jackass Carousel, the circle must be completed,” Stewart noted reflectively, “so let us call back to our opening jackass, Joe Wilson.”

Wilson complained earlier this week that “there are far more important issues facing this nation than what we’re addressing right now.”

But in 2004, Wilson got up before Congress to declare, “Thirty-three years ago today, John Kerry appeared before the Senate to talk about Vietnam. John Kerry accused American soldiers of rape, torture, murder, and even offered up comparisons of Genghis Khan. … John Kerry owes them an apology.”

“Jackass!” Stewart exclaimed.

This video is from Comedy Central’s The Daily Show, broadcast Sept. 16, 2009.

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Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele insisted on Wednesday that Rep. Joe Wilson’s interruption of President Barack Obama’s address on health care to Congress last week was not racially motivated and that former President Jimmy Carter is “ignorant” in suggesting that it was.

In an interview Tuesday with NBC Nightly News, Carter had bluntly indicated his belief that much of the opposition to President Barack Obama is racist in nature.

“I think an overwhelming portion of the intensely demonstrated animosity is based on the fact that he’s a black man,” Carter stated. “That racism inclination still exists, and I think it’s bubbled up to the surface … because of a belief by many white people … that African-Americans are not qualified to lead this great country. It’s an abominable circumstance and grieves me and concerns me very deeply”

“I think the president, with all due respect, is just plain wrong,” Steele commented, “and, quite frankly, ignorant as to matters of race, if he thinks that what we heard in that chamber that evening was somehow stoked by or stems from racism. I think it’s unnecessary. I think it ‘colors,’ if you will, this debate on health care in a very unfortunate way.”

“Barack Obama has an opportunity to shut this part of the conversation down,” Steele continued. “I’ve seen a racist heart first hand. I don’t know if Jimmy Carter has or has not. … The president has an opportunity now to correct former President Carter.”

In contrast with Steele, political analyst Lawrence O’Donnell has no doubt that Carter’s observations are accurate. “I’m from the south side of Boston,” O’Donnell told MSNBC’s Keith Olberman, “where when I grew up, that was a very racist precinct to be from. … When you hear someone who grew up in the Deep South, as President Carter did … you have to take this very seriously.”

“They’ve been up there trying to slander Barack Obama and talk about death panels and talk about things that aren’t even in the bill — because they’re afraid of something other than the bill,” O’Donnell went on. “I’ve never seen that before in opposition to legislation.”

Other network analysts, however, were less inclined than O’Donnell to take Carter’s remarks seriously. NBC White House correspondent Chuck Todd somewhat dismissively commented, “President Carter is not the first supporter of President Obama to invoke the issue of race when trying to give a reason as to why there seems to be such a heated opposition. … President Carter is making it seem as if a majority of the opposition to President Obama is driven by race, and that is really going to upset a lot of folks.”

NBC’s Matt Lauer also suggested. “We talk about political divides, ideological differences that sometimes turn ugly. … Why can’t we say this is what this is about right now? Why does race have to be made part of it?”

“It doesn’t have to be made part of it,” Republican pollster Frank Luntz agreed, noting that his polling indicates the real problem is that Americans are “afraid of the future and we are angry with Washington and Wall Street.”

Lauer then turned to Michael Eric Dyson, a liberal sociologist and expert on black culture, and asked, “Is it worse if, in fact, some of this opposition to President Obama is fueled by outright racism — or is it worse if some liberals, in an attempt to defend President Obama and his plans, invoke the charge of racism to discredit the critics?”

“Clearly the first would be the problem,” Dyson replied without hesitation. “You don’t ask the person who’s been the abuser what the status of the progress is.”

Obviously frustrated by Lauer’s and Luntz’s claims that racism is playing no part in the health care debate, Dyson pointed to the many blatantly racist depictions of Obama by protesters. “How much evidence do you need?” he asked in exasperation. “It amazes me that white Americans are incapable of acknowledging what is before our faces.”

This video is from Fox News’ Happening Now, broadcast Sept. 16, 2009.

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This video is from MSNBC’s Countdown, broadcast Sept. 15, 2009.

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This video is from NBC’s Today Show, broadcast Sept. 16, 2009.

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Breaking: US Embassy fires guards shown in lewd acts

Earlier this week, a watchdog group revealed flagrant misbehavior by employees of the private security contractor ArmorGroup North America assigned to guard the US Embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. Photographs received from whistleblowers showed “hazing” that included simulated sex acts and guards urinating on one another.

The US Embassy in Kabul stated on Friday that it had already fired eight of the guards shown in the photographs, while two others had resigned, and that the contractor’s local management team was also being replaced. ArmorGroup’s parent corporation, Wackenhut Services, responded to inquiries by stating that it is “fully cooperating” with the Department of State in investigating the incidents.

However, according to the executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, which broke the scandal, Wackenhut’s cooperation with the State Department investigation may be less than wholehearted.

Danielle Brian told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Thursday that one of the whistleblowers has already been forced to resign, whole those who were involved in the incidents are being let go quietly and without being held responsible.

In addition, Brian has received a copy of an email sent to the ArmorGroup guards in Kabul “that told them … they are not allowed to speak to a State Department investigator without a supervisor being there with them.”

“So I don’t have a lot of faith that the State Department’s going to be able to dig up much on their own,” Brian emphasized. “The good guys are still the ones who are really in danger and are taking the fall. The bad guys are not yet being held accountable.”

It also turns out that both the State Department and the Senate investigated the ArmorGroup contract in 2007. The State Department twice issued stern warnings but still renewed the contract in July 20008.

“I’ve got emails today from a guard who’s still there,” Brian stated, “showing that in 2007 he was raising concerns about some of these supervisors who were over in training in the US, and he was saying … ‘These guys are weird. They are doing weird, deviant hazing. We need to do something about it.’”

This supervisor at ArmorGroup who received these emails quickly passed the information on to the State Department — and was fired as a result.

This video is from MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast Sept. 3, 2009.

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John Dean believes Ridge was ‘pressured’ to back down on threat alert claims

Either former Bush officials are being pressured to backtrack, or recent flip-flops are just more evidence that they had no convictions in the first place.

In a story entitled Gonzales backtracks on support for CIA probe, The Washington Times‘ Ben Conery reports, “Former Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said Thursday that his previous assertion that it was ‘legitimate to question and examine’ charges of CIA abuses of suspected terrorists did not mean he endorsed such an investigation.”

“Contrary to press reporting and based on the information that’s available to me,” Mr. Gonzales said during an interview Thursday with The Washington Times, “I don’t support the investigation by the department because this is a matter that has already been reviewed thoroughly and because I believe that another investigation is going to harm our intelligence gathering capabilities and that’s a concern that’s shared by career intelligence officials and so for those reasons I respectfully disagree with the decision.”

Speaking to the conservative-leaning Washington Times newspaper during a Tuesday radio broadcast, Gonzales said that the Bush administration “worked very hard to establish ground rules and parameters” of the torture program.

“[If] people go beyond that, I think it is legitimate to question and examine that conduct to ensure people are held accountable for their actions, even if it’s action in prosecuting the war on terror,” he added on Tuesday, as Raw Story noted.

At his blog The ‘Skeeter Bites Report’, former newspaper editor Skeeter Sanders wrote, “Gonzales’ comments marked a dramatic reversal from remarks the former attorney general made in his earlier interview in Lubbock, Texas with the AP, in which he said that any such investigation ‘could discourage’ CIA operatives from ‘engaging in conduct that even comes close’ to department guidelines.”

“Gonzales said at the time that he had talked to CIA attorneys who had heard from the spy agency’s operatives,” Sanders added. “‘They’re very, very concerned about the legal liability and legal exposure,’ he told the AP. ‘And that’s the danger with launching some kind of investigation. But, again, this is a decision that’s got to be made by the current attorney general.’”

John Dean believes Ridge was ‘pressured’ to back down on threat alert claims

Author and one-time Nixon White House counsel John Dean believes that former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge may have been “pressured” to back down from the assertion in his new book that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft pressed him to raise the terrorism threat level just before the 2004 election for political reasons.

“He did indeed imply a rather serious criminal charge if this conduct indeed had been undertaken,” Dean told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on Wednesday. “So I think there’s a lot of reasons he probably has backed off, and political pressure from the Bush clan is probably part of the reason.”

Ridge attempted to explain to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Tuesday that he wondered at the time if the motive might be political, but “at the end of the day” he concluded that “politics wasn’t involved.” He also insisted that both the jacket copy and the publisher’s website misrepresent what is actually in his book.

Dean, however, is not convinced by Ridge’s protestations. “It is quite clear,” he told Olbermann, “when you listen to him on Rachel last night, he’s saying, ‘Read my book, read my book.’ You read his book and he’s saying exactly the opposite of what he’s saying now.”

“I would suspect the fact that Rumsfeld and Ashcroft came out and hit him pretty hard has affected his thinking on this whole matter,” Dean added with a chuckle. “He doesn’t seem as clear on what he wrote now that they’ve spoken out on the issue.”

“It’s difficult for me to believe that Ridge was not sent this copy and did not approve it before it went on the jacket,” Dean added. “So I’m kind of baffled by him backing off of it — other than the fact he’s being pressured to back off of it.”

When Olbermann asked whether Ridge should have been aware that the statements in his book amounted to claims of a criminal visolation, Dean pointed out that Ridge is a former US Attorney, and that “theoretically, he would know about Title 18 371, which is the conspiracy to defraud the government by abusing or misusing its agencies for, in this instance, political purposes.”

“It’s what happened to a lot of people in Watergate,” Dean commented. “It’s what happened in Iran-Contra. And it’s difficult for me not to believe he didn’t know about it, and I think this is one of those ‘oops, maybe I shouldn’t have said that’ — and so he’s recalibrating now and backing down from it.”

But, as Michael Scherer points out at the Swampland blog, that doesn’t amount to “backpedaling,” as at least one newspaper described it.

Scherer says Ridge may have simply been side-swiped by his publisher’s marketing strategy.

He points out that “in a press release on its website, Ridge’s publisher, Thomas Dunne Books, announced that the book would reveal: ‘How Ridge effectively thwarted a plan to raise the national security alert just before the 2004 Election’.”

“Did Ridge backpedal? No. What occurred was a classic sales job by a publisher trying to sell books. The press fell for it, embarrassed itself, and is now blaming Ridge for all the confusion, which makes everything more embarrassing,” Scherer writes.

At Swampland, Scherer argues that Ridge’s suspicion of political motivations was blown up by the media into an assumption that he had been pressured to raise the threat level — a claim Ridge never made.

This video is from MSNBC’s Countdown, broadcast Sept. 2, 2009.

Download video via RawReplay.com

The Obama administration appears to be pinning its hopes for passing health care reform on President Obama’s speech next week before a joint session of Congress. However, political analyst Lawrence O’Donnell believes that Obama is acting “from a defensive posture” and is unlikely to succeed.

“Obama is giving a speech they never intended to make,” O’Donnell told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow on Wednesday. “September was supposed to be the signing ceremony in the Rose Garden for this legislation. … So they’re doing something now that was not in their script. They’re doing this from desperation.”

When Maddow asked whether there is any chance that Obama’s speech can “reclaim the possibility of health reform this year,” O’Donnell replied firmly, “Speeches do not drive legislation.”

O’Donnell was chief of staff for the Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee when President Bill Clinton tried and failed to put through health care reform in 1993-94. He believes that President Obama is “actually in a much worse place” than Clinton was then, because Clinton at least had Republicans who were willing to negotiate with him and “there was much, much, much more possibility.”

O’Donnell also suggested that the Obama administration may have drawn the wrong lessons from Clinton’s failure, such as concluding that they should “not send the Congress a written bill .. because then the Congress will just have to rip that apart and do its own thing.”

“So now we’ve seen the opposite tactic used,” O’Donnell told Maddow, “and the opposite tactic is no better.”

Maddow attempted repeatedly to ask what the Obama administration can do to salvage its health care reform proposals, but O’Donell had no answers for her. He suggested instead that if only the Democrats had “just shut up about this for about two years after 1994 and then started very seriously proposing Medicare for all … the country might be ready for it [today].”

But as things stand now, O’Donnell concluded, “there’s no one in any kitchen table around Ameerica who can explain to you what any of these bills are.”

This video is from MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, broadcast Sept. 2, 2009.

Download video via RawReplay.com

Author and one-time Nixon White House counsel John Dean believes that former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge has been “pressured” to back down from the claim in his new book that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft pressed him to raise the terrorism threat level just before the 2004 election for political reasons.

“He did indeed imply a rather serious criminal charge, if this conduct indeed had been undertaken,” Dean told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on Wednesday. “So I think there’s a lot of reasons he probably has backed off, and political pressure from the Bush clan is probably part of the reason.”

Ridge had attempted on Tuesday to explain to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow that even though he wondered at the time whether Rumsfeld’s and Ashcroft’s motives might be political, “at the end of the day” he’d concluded that “politics wasn’t involved.” Ridge also insisted that both the book’s jacket copy and the publisher’s website misrepresent what is actually in the book.

Dean, however, is not convinced by Ridge’s protestations. “It is quite clear,” he told Olbermann, “when you listen to him on Rachel last night, he’s saying, ‘Read my book, read my book.’ You read his book and he’s saying exactly the opposite of what he’s saying now.”

“I would suspect the fact that Rumsfeld and Ashcroft came out and hit him pretty hard has affected his thinking on this whole matter,” added Dean with a chuckle. “He doesn’t seem as clear on what he wrote now that they’ve spoken out on the issue.”

Dean also noted, “It’s difficult for me to believe that Ridge was not sent this copy and did not approve it before it went on the jacket. So I’m kind of baffled by him backing off of it — other than the fact he’s being pressured to back off of it.”

When Olbermann asked whether Ridge should have been aware that the statements in his book amounted to claims of a criminal visolation, Dean pointed out that Ridge is a former US Attorney, so “theoretically, he would know about Title 18 371, which is the conspiracy to defraud the government by abusing or misusing its agencies for, in this instance, political purposes.”

“It’s what happened to a lot of people in Watergate,” Dean pointed out. “It’s what happened in Iran-Contra. And it’s difficult for me not to believe he didn’t know about it, and I think this is one of those ‘oops, maybe I shouldn’t have said that’ — and so he’s recalibrating now and backing down from it.”

This video is from MSNBC’s Countdown, broadcast Sept. 2, 2009.

Download video via RawReplay.com

Author and columnist Dan Savage believes that Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) is “a big problem for the Republican Party.”

“They began 20-30 years ago pandering to the religious right,” Savage told MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on Tuesday. “And the religious right realized that it could just run its own candidates, elect its own people, and put the nuts in charge, and that’s what they’ve done. Michele Bachmann is a religious extremist and a nut.”

Bachmann told a cheering audience on Monday that to stop health care reform, “What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass. We will do whatever it takes to make sure this doesn’t pass.”

“She’s the kind of person who once upon a time the Republicans could count on her vote and her support for saner, more middle-of-the-road Republican candidates who could work with Democrats and weren’t bat-crap crazy,” Savage emphasized. “And now she’s the one who’s in there, and they’re stuck with her and her extremism.”

“I reallly do think that the Michele Bachmanns of this world and the Glenn Becks of this world are actively and consciously — or subconsciously — trying to get — I’m just going to say it — trying to get the president killed,” Savage stated angrily. “That’s why they’re setting this up as kill-or-be-killed arguments. ‘He’s going to kill your grandma.’”

“Somebody’s got to put the brakes on it, and unfortunately in the Republican Party, there are no adults left in the room,” continued Savage. “There are only the Michele Bachmanns and the Glenn Becks and the Rush Limbaughs running the show.”

Olbermann disagreed with Savage to the extent that “I think some of them who oppose [health care reform] are not of that thinkiing … but, unfortunately, a lot of who you’re talking about, you’ve nailed them perfectly.” He then turned the discussion to the ways in which even mainstream Republicans in Congress are attempting to sabotage any possibility of health care reform.

“The Democrats need to call their bluff and go it alone and not be suckered,” Savage suggested in a closing flurry of metaphors. “They need to man up themselves. … The Democrats have to get up off their knees and push it through.”

This video is from MSNBC’s Countdown, broadcast Sept. 1, 2009.

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A Wall Street Journal op-ed proposing that if another terrorist attack were to occur the Republican Party might be “wise” to run Dick Cheney for president in 2012 inspired MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann on Tuesday to offer a “rough cut” of a Cheney campaign commercial.

“No one knows more than me about fighting al Qaeda,” the parody Cheney snarls. “I fought when Richard Clarke tried to get my attention on al Qaeda. I fought to get our boys away from al Qaeda when I discovered WMD in Iraq. I fought al Qaeda for longer than it took Democrats to fight Mussolini, Tojo, and Hitler combined.”

“I know, I know,” Olbermann commented. “How could he run again when he’s already served two terms as president?”

Olbermann then turned to Democratic consultant Chris Kofinis and asked about the report by Huffington Post reporter Sam Stein that “several of the party’s most well-regarded strategists and pollsters are actually taking the idea deadly seriously.”

“I believe the Republican Party has lost — and please insert your favorite expletive here — their minds,” a laughing Kofinis replied. “Dick Cheney is one of the most unpopular politicians in America, if not the world.”

“If he is one of the best for the Republican Party, who’s their worst?” Kofinis asked. “In all seriousness, if this wasn’t such a joke it would be insulting.”

“What’s amazing is the Republican Party, and Dick Cheney in particular, has an incredible ability to rewrite history and ignore their own record,” continued Kofinis. “They tend to make this argument that ‘we kept this country safe’ because there wasn’t another terrorist attack. Well, there wasn’t another disastrous hurricane after Katrina, but I’m not about to credit Dick Cheney for controlling the weather.”

Kofinis did suggest that even if the idea of a Cheney candidacy is a joke, the Republicans may be serious about preparing the groundwork, so that “if we get hit, they’re going to go out there and immediately say, ‘See, we told you so.’”

Republican strategist Craig Shirley, for example, wrote to the Huffington Post, “”In 2009, there are few absurdities left in American politics. Anything is possible and the mere fact that Cheney’s name is being floated accomplishes several things including striking fear in the heart of President Obama.”

“It is a really sinister and I think despicable argument to be making,” Kofinis commented.

Kofinis shared a final chuckle with Olbermann over the possibility of a Cheney-Palin ticket running on the slogan “Vote for us, we’ll screw up America worse.” But he added more seriously, “It is not going to happen. He is not a viable candidate. Even the Republican Party, as suicidal as it sometimes seems, isn’t about to go down that path.”

This video is from MSNBC’s Countdown, broadcast Sept. 1, 2009.

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