WELCOME TO THE DAVID PETRAEUS SHOW TRIAL

General David Petraeus, top commander in Iraq, comes to Washington D.C. today just in time for his own show trial. He won’t be participating, of course, because no one involved in the trial is at all interested in hearing anything he has to say. In fact, half the elected representatives who earn make their living in the halls of Congress are uninterested in hearing the General, for fear of a head-on collision with the facts. But I digress.

The show trial is being presided over by Henry “Ratboy” Waxman, another one of California’s famous fruit exports, and the putative subject of the show trial is an investigation into the difference between The Official Story and the facts on the ground regarding the capture of Private Jessica Lynch in Iraq and the death of Corporal Pat Tillman in Afghanistan. These events took place in March of 2003 and April of 2004, respectively.

Misrepresentations and misapprehensions of the Jessica Lynch saga were thoroughly sorted out by the end of 2003, including one perfectly legitimate explanation for the belief that she had engaged in a gunfire exchange (Iraqi radio chatter had been mistranslated). This was all covered in detail by Time Magazine’s December 2003 issue, in an interview in which Lynch herself held that the genuine dangers involved in her rescue did not support the idea that it was all a “stunt.” The same interview correctly concludes that both the opponents and the advocates of the Iraq war had tried to use her as a poster child, and she was firmly resisting the push of either side.

The fact that Pat Tillman was killed by friendly fire was established and made public knowledge by May of 2004. Subsequent inquiries have revealed that false reports of the circumstances of his death were in this case deliberate, and promulgated with approval, if not compulsion, by persons high up the chain of command.

So, with their customary forward-looking sense of public responsibility, the reigning Democratic majority within the House of Representatives has commissioned its Oversight Committee to hold hearings into these two matters to finally (FINALLY!!!) get to the bottom of how the false stories came to be (however briefly) The Official Story.

I’m not going to comment on what this absurdly after-the-fact probe could possibly do for the participants closest to the events: the family of the deceased soldier, and the petite survivor. Four-plus years down the road Lynch seems to have adopted a rather different view of the meaning of her misadventure and the government’s role in it than she had at the time. For the Tillman family, time cannot heal the wound from their loss, but their peculiar take on the eternal phenomenon of friendly fire accidents could only have come to birth in the post-Vietnam era.

(And when did this perennial tragedy come to be called “fratricide”? — is this appalling coinage the work of Waxman, the Tillmans, some oily creep from the MSM?)

The important thing to recognize about the timing of this investigation is that it serves one purpose, and one only—a purpose which is not concerned in any respect whatever with obtaining justice or comfort for Lynch or the Tillmans: the purpose of the investigation at this time is to put out the message that when officials from the military or the Bush administration try to put any development in this war in a positive light, they are not to be believed. They are in the business of whitewashing whatever happens, you see, because nothing that happens can ever be good, or successful, or even a baby-step forward in anything resembling progress. The House Oversight Committee hearing into the Lynch and Tillman cases is the advance party for today’s testimony by General Petraeus, and ought more properly be called the David Petraeus Congressional Catch-22 Leg-hold Bear-Trap.

Impatient with the natural unfolding of events in the David Petraeus show-trial, Senate Majority Leader Harry “Vichy” Reid told CNN’s Dana Bash that he has already determined not to believe anything General Petraeus will say in his briefing to Congress—at least anything positive—because he, Harry Reid, knows better, and knows that nothing is working and everything is lost. (YouTube's version of this is edited-- HotAir is where it's at.)

There is not much to say about Harry Reid beyond the fact that he may well be the stupidest man ever to breathe the rarified air of the Senate Chamber—so stupid he doesn’t know when he is making himself look stupid on national television. I have no trouble deploring almost everything that Carl Levin or Chuck Schumer or Mrs. Clinton have to say, but I would never call them stupid people. I might not even call Ted Kennedy stupid. (Let me think about that.) But Harry Reid is just staggeringly stupid. He is also a traitor, by any definition (if it is legally possible for someone with a mental age of about 8 to be guilty of treason).

On the other hand, he could also be a great gift, if only those he has set about to denigrate and destroy would take up against him the cudgels he so kindly provides. [Ha. And then I wake up!] As usual, the Democrats show their hand by making the war in Iraq the most incendiary issue in their arsenal, and then announcing (as they did at first) that they were just too busy to hear from the General how goes the war they unanimously confirmed him to wage.

Apparently they thought better about that, and will now be showing up for the briefing (minus Granny Pelosi), to be at least present in the room while Petraeus speaks (though if they could plug their ears and sing “la-la-la-la…” while he’s talking, they probably would). It’s kind of a shame that the stupidity of their original posture dawned on them at last—we will now miss the delicious prospect of the impression it would have made on the average Amurrican. Lord knows, if we’d waited for the Republicans to shame these people into behaving like adults, we’d have to camp out with lawn chairs and sleeping bags longer than it takes to get Stones tickets.

While on the moderately-hot-seat with Dana Bash, “Vichy Harry” defended his pronouncement that the war is lost by extracting a few words from a comment by General Petraeus to the effect that “the war can’t be won militarily.”

Damn, I bet that felt good— tasted real good in the mouth while it slithered out. He’s been saving it up, and it was a thrill to let it rip.

One problem: you'd have to be really stupid to think that the rest of us are so stupid we don’t recognize when you’re quoting someone out of context, Harry. What the General said was that “military action is necessary…but not sufficient.” Stuff that under your tinfoil hat and see if it seeps in. It is noteworthy that this same context-free quotation was embraced by one of Vichy Harry’s brothers-under-the-skin, our friends at English Al-Jazeera.

Two people I do NOT want to be preached at by, thank yew:

Separated at birth??

IN THE MIX

Don Imus affair
Why doesn't anyone care that he compared the Rutgers Girls B-Ball team to the Toronto Raptors? Where is the outrage? (I think that's an insult to the girls, not the Raptors...but I've received no help on this.)

A Veteran Speaks
here ....and coins a wonderful phrase for the Left-blog-nutroots/Democratic Party/Mainstream Mediac Kabal: America's Axis of Idiots.

A Marine speaks

It was only a matter of time-- folks in the military are supposed to try and keep out of politics while in uniform, but Pat Dollard, a former self-described "Hollywood pimp" [agent] who sold his stuff, self-embedded in Iraq, and started the documentary tape rolling on our "Young Americans", has become a conduit for a couple of Marines blowing off steam at Vichy Harry Reid.

DUCK! INCOMING!!!!! Read it and WHOOP. Money quote:

yeah and i got a quote for that douche harry reid. these families need us here. obviously he has never been in iraq. or atleast the area worth seeing. the parts where insurgency is rampant and the buildings are blown to pieces. we need to stay here and help rebuild. if iraq didnt want us here then why do we have IP’s [Iraqi police] voluntering everyday to rebuild their cities. and working directly with us too. same with the IA’s [Iraqi Army]. it sucks that iraqi’s have more patriotism for a country that has turned to complete shit more than the people in america who drink starbucks everyday.... and the sad thing is after we WIN this war. people like him [Reid] will say he was there for us the whole time.

Sheryl Crow Kicks Butt
I for one am quite willing to buy that Crow was kidding when she opined on the Puffington Host that we should be limiting ourselves to a single square of toilet paper in order to save the planet. You be the judge. Sure it was a joke-- but the point is, mostly when she opens her mouth it's a joke, even if it's not.

The jig is up on Crow's personal hypocrisy, though, once The Smoking Gun got hold of her backstage requirements when on tour with her band. It's the usual giant sheaf of spoiled brat demands, including an alcohol inventory that means, if nothing else, there's going to be enough peeing to go through many, many single squares of TP.


For Once I'm Kind Of With Alec Baldwin
I could get as disgusted as anyone with Alec Baldwin when I heard the way he savaged his 11-year-old daughter on voicemail-- that is, those brief bits that I heard, because I kept clicking it off every time (and there were many) I ran into it on the tube. It was a revolting [and weirdsmobile] display of what it sounds like when an 11-year-old has a father who's only 7...(even younger than Vichy Harry)

But I can think of something even more damaging than having your father leave a message like that on your phone, and that's having the message played to hundreds of millions of strangers around the world as a news item, either as tawdry gossip or as an opening for self-righteous pundits to lure psychologists into rank malpractice by publicly analyzing people they've never met.

And the person responsible for that happening can only be Mom-- Kim Basinger. Will somebody please take this kid away from these two morons before she is permanently brain-damaged from being their personal tennis ball? Oh, and let's not forget all the media jerks who, fresh from delivering us the mad ramblings of Crazy Cho, decided to humiliate a little girl for the same reason-- "so we can all take a lesson from...." Right.

Road apples. Meadow muffins. BS.