Thursday, September 13, 2007

Freddie not cuttin' the old mustard?

The desperate search for a Daddy to save them has prompted the foam-flecked loonies of the right to keep moving right past Frederick of Hollywood and his rented pick-up, and cast their hungry eyes to the authoritarians authoritarian...a real live four-star General!

Oh, how their naughty parts do tingle at the merest notion! They fall back onto their fainting couches with a backhand to the forehead, twitching with spasms of...something.

A week ago, the nuttier-than-squirrel-poop New York Sun ran an editorial beseeching him to seek the presidency (Save us, General Dave! You are our only hope!)

It was funny when it was just the Sun, since no one, not even the most lather-soaked conspiracy theorist takes them as a serious news source or gives them a scintilla more credence than the National Enquirer. As I said, when it was just those idiots, it was funny.

But now that we know the ambitious-to-a-fault "asskissing little chickenshit" as Admiral Fallon characterized him, has been plotting the path to the oval office for years, and was open about it with an Iraqi colleague while he was posted to Baghdad in 04-05, it isn't so funny any more.

And people accuse Hillary of triangulation! Ha! She is a piker in comparison!

Sabah Khadim, then a senior adviser at Iraq's Interior Ministry, says General Petraeus discussed with him his ambition when the general was head of training and recruitment of the Iraqi army in 2004-05.

"I asked him if he was planning to run in 2008 and he said, 'No, that would be too soon'," Mr Khadim, who now lives in London, said.

General Petraeus has a reputation in the US Army for being a man of great ambition. If he succeeds in reversing America's apparent failure in Iraq, he would be a natural candidate for the White House in the presidential election in 2012.

Now - Generals are politicians. Every last one of them. You don't get to be a General unless you are a capable politician. Accept that right now, one and all. This is common knowledge to people who have any military experience, but common knowledge that is woefully lacking in the population at large. Generals who are not politicians retire at 20 as Captains.

General Petraeus is lauded and heralded by the White House, but his actual record of achievement is a weak tea. They point to his time in Mosul - but do not talk about the fact that the insurgency hardened under his nose and then the insurgents took the city in 2004, and the police force that had been selected and trained by Petraeus either switched allegiances or simply went home. Other things get overlooked too. He was in charge of training the Iraqi Army, but the Iraqi Army is still unable to stand and fight on it's own. Then there is the question of missing firearms and millions of missing dollars.

Losing Generals do not get elected President, even when they are cast into a no-win situation by the folly of a deranged and deluded madman. Especially when they play the Potemkin game so deftly.

Petraeus for President? As a Democrat, I am tempted to beseech deities for such a development.

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