GOP math: If Terrorists=Insurgents and Leftists=Insurgents....

[LiviaOlivia]

Monday, May 08, 2006
Crawling With Liberals
by digby
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2006_05_01_digbysblog_archive.html#114712799510326489

You can't make this stuff up. Yesterday I wrote this:

Today, the CIA is crawling with liberals. The military is crawling with liberals. The Bush administration itself is nothing but a bunch of liberals as must be the GOP congress since they signed off on everything Bush has proposed. The media are, needless to say, nothing but squishy liberals.

The country is going to hell in a handbasket. The president and the congress and all their policies are dramatically unpopular. This, then, is just further proof of the failure of liberalism.

Today, the Nationl Review writes this:

Too often the agency has performed that job miserably, the greatest example being its gargantuan miscalculations about the Soviet Union. In retrospect, this is perhaps unsurprising. The CIA has always had a leftist bent, well represented in its upper echelons even under directors of staunchly anti-Communist and pro-national-security orientation.

And in a terrific rhetorical sleight of hand they then write this:

Porter Goss, a former Republican congressman who once served as an official in the CIA’s clandestine service, was named by President Bush to head up the agency 19 months ago. His primary task was to end its bare-knuckles insurrection and policy interference, and return it to the business of intelligence collection and analysis. His tenure was marked by non-stop turmoil and bickering, as he moved to root out the insurgents and they fought back with a vengeance.

Goss’s sudden ouster is, at best, ill timed. He had merely scratched the problem’s surface. Further, the lack of a clear explanation for his departure is extremely harmful. It is certain to be spun as a coup by the insurgents. Such a perception will only embolden them, laying the groundwork for more leaks—and more damage to national security.

Leftists = Insurgents, the term that is used interchangeably by Republicans with the word "terrorist."

And by the way, it's worth mentioning again and again that while the CIA was often wrong during the cold war, it never even came close to being as wrong as the conservatives and necons were wrong, which was completely and totally and comprehensively wrong in every single case. While they continue to conduct their Stalinist purge in the CIA, let's not forget that.

~snip~

[Selatius]

1. Dehumanizing your opponent is the first step

A person is less likely to raise his hand against another if he is able to sympathize with the target and humanizes the target.

That can be corrected by portraying the target as not human or something less than that, something undesireable. This can be done through manipulating the person's preconception of the world in such a way as to make hitting the target something that makes a lot of sense. By portraying the target as the source of one's problems, one makes it that much easier for a person to strike. It's a good scapegoating tactic.

In the 1950s, threats to freedom came in the guise of anti-communism. Today, it's the guise of anti-terrorism.

[otherlander]

7. HEY YOU!!!

[Tiggeroshii]

2. Pretty sick.

I don't know how to convince the NR bots otherwise once they bought that shit, either.

[Sinti]

3. Leftists = Insurgents - these guys don't have to be "leftists"

They just have to be willing to give intel that doesn't support the plan. Scary times IMO :scared:

[HawkerHurricane]

4. Funny thing about the CIA being wrong during the cold war...

is that they almost always OVERESTIMATED Russian capabilities...
Remember the Bomber Gap?
Remember the Missile Gap?
Remember the Tank Gap?

(Bomber Gap: The U.S. had hundreds of bombers capable of hitting targets in Russia and flying back, the Russians had a dozen bombers capable of making a one way trip... this was used to justify a massive USAF buildup...)
(Missle Gap: The U.S. had hundreds of missiles capable of hitting targets in Russia, the Russians had NONE at the time...)
(Tank Gap: Russia had more tanks... but it turned out they were totally 2nd rate.)

Oh, yes, the CIA is full of liberals, providing incorrect intelligence to make the Russians look fiercer than they were so that the Military Buildup in the U.S. could continue, because we all know how the liberals are pro military spending...

[yurbud]

5. all those over-estimations were the result of earlier ideological infusion

The right didn't like the facts that said the Soviet Union was a tottering, racially divided mess, so they sent in ideologues to make stuff up. Most of the big problems are collection or even interpretation, but how much those on the receiving end like what they hear.,

[genieroze]

6. GOP math = F-

[Jack Rabbit]

8. GOP math is based on the way Katherine Harris counts

!!

[Bruden]

9. Can I be an insurgent? Please?