Boys and girls, listen up:

In the next few weeks, Bush is going to start playing one of his famous mind games, and the press is likely to fall for it.  We can't let that happen.

So many times, I've started to do a post entitled, WHERE ARE OUR HOWLERS? About the right-wing Howling Machine that raises high holy hell over something like one of their own going to jail, but remain strangely silent about such trifles as an unjust and illegal war where almost 3,600 young American men and women warriors have died to date.  (This does not count, of course, Iraqi civilians or our own private contractors, many of whom were soldiers or Marines who survived deployments only to get killed for God and Halliburton.)

Every time another Republican outrage occurs, all we seem to get to hear are anemic comments by the likes of Harry Reid or statements released by various presidential candidates--but we have no HOWLERS.  The air waves don't reverberate with the vibrations of outrage the way they do on the Right, and even when protests do get made in the press, somehow they wind up framed by Republican talking-points.

You can READ howling, places like here, and Huffingtonpost, and Daily Kos, but somehow, the outrage just does not seem to register on the righteous richter scale that, say, called for Clinton's head did back in the 90's.

In order for online howls to register to the same decibel in the mainstream media as the radio howls do, we have to have many many more voices to add to the chorus.  We may have a Keith Olberman, but he's got to compete with Rush and O'Reilly and Coulter and on and on ad nauseum.

It only takes one venomous reptilian soundbite from the likes of Ann Coulter to be replayed on every newscast on TV and the Internet for a solid week, whereas with us, we've got to have a Josh Marshall slogging away in the hinterlands about nefarious firing of U.S. attorneys for MONTHS to even rate a couple of bored newspaper articles.  Takes months more to make the evening news.

I'm sick of this state of affairs, so I'm going to call for HOWLS whenever I think bullshit is piling up, and believe you me, I can smell the stink from the Washington barnyard all the way here to my desk, and I am warning you now to pull on your boots and be prepared.

Couple weeks ago, General Petraeus, who is working every bit as hard on a PR campaign for his new tactics as he is the tactics themselves, apparently invited Joe Klein of Time magazine along for a little Baghdad joy-ride.  I expect he and his minions considered Klein a liberal they could bedazzle a bit, and were hoping he'd accept at face value whatever he was told.

You know, like Michael Gordon of the New York Times.

(Tom Ricks of the Washington Post has yet to be wined and dined by the Petraeus cruise line, even though he's been to Iraq numerous times in recent months.  That's my boy!)

But I've gotta give Klein his due.  The piece he wrote for the July 9 issue of Time, "In Iraq: Operation Last Chance," seemed to me to be entirely fair.  By "fair," I don't mean it was a hatchet-job on Petraeus--far from it.  Petraeus is a fine general who should have been put in charge of this war back in March of '02, rather than that rattlesnake Tommy Franks--if he had, we might not be in this mess, at least not to this extent--and I wish him well.  (It's not his fault that it's just too damn late.)

So, he was fair to Petraeus, and complimentary where compliments were due.  BUT, Klein asked around.

He asked around the kinds of questions that needed to be asked, and he got honest answers--most of which could not be attributed for full credit, for obvious reasons--but THAT is what makes this piece fair, in my book.

Like, when he mentions the "Broken Army" clock.

You remember how Petraeus likes to talk about "two clocks"? The Washington clock and the Baghdad clock?

And how he seems to be plowing the fields to sow the seeds, come September, to bring Washington around to that Baghdad clock with a little political harvest?

Well, Klein finds out that there are THREE clocks, and one of them is the clock that I have been tirelessly trying to convince my conservative friends exists.  I tell them, "You can keep throwing around words like 'surrender' and 'retreat' and 'cut and run' all you want to, but the truth is that, no later than April of '08, the Army is going to HAVE to start drawing down troops, no matter what Bush or Congress has to say about it.  They will have no choice.  They simply can't sustain these escalated troop levels beyond that point without putting such severe strain on the American military that it might never recover."

I tell them:  "Come April or thereabouts, the Army is going to start drawing down up to 50,000 troops NO MATTER WHAT."

To my husband, I say, (frequently): "Nobody ever listens to me.  And I am always right."

(Once, in a movie, I saw two kids fighting, a brother and sister--can't recall the movie--but the brother screamed in an insulting tone: "HOW DOES IT FEEL TO ALWAYS BE RIGHT???"  And his sister's eyes filled with tears and she whispered, "Terrible.")

But don't take my sad little word for it.  Here's Time magazine:

There is another clock, not often mentioned, that sits in the Pentagon.  It is the Broken Army clock, the service timeline for an exhausted force...

According to the Broken Army clock, troop levels will begin to wane in March 2008, no matter what Congress decides in September; THE CURRENT 20 BRIGADE COMBAT TEAMS WILL BE REDUCED TO 15 BY AUGUST 2008. (emphasis mine)

But this is not where the howling begins.  THIS is where the howling begins:

THERE IS GROWING SPECULATION IN THE MILITARY THAT BUSH WILL TRY TO PRE-EMPT THE PETRAEUS TESTIMONY BY ANNOUNCING A GRADUAL DRAWDOWN FROM 20 TO 15 COMBAT BRIGADES LATER THIS SUMMER.  "As if that isn't going to happen anyway," a senior officer told me.  "But it may give us some political breathing space"--THAT IS, IT MAY SUBVERT THE DEMOCRATS' CALLS FOR A MORE RAPID WITHDRAWAL--"IF THE PRESIDENT MAKES A BIG DEAL OF ANNOUNCING WE'RE DRAWING DOWN." (emphasis mine)

Now, I just read something about this on the Election Central page of Talking Points Memo, which is great, but like most humongous warnings that get glossed over by progressives, the tone of the write-up was factual, journalistic, and accurate--as well it should be.

I'm not suggesting that howlers on the left co-opt the tendency of howlers on the right to make stuff up out of whole cloth and to state as fact scurrilous rumor and scandalmongering.

What I AM suggesting is that WE DO NOT GIVE GEORGE W. BUSH THE THUNDER!

WE DO NOT LET HIM GET AWAY WITH TAKING A FACT KNOWN TO MILITARY CIRCLES AND ANNOUNCE IT AS A BIG POLICY OF HIS, THUS CATCHING DEMOCRATS WITH THEIR PANTS DOWN AND THE MEDIA ASLEEP AT THE WHEEL AGAIN.

Because if Harry Reid comes out five minutes later and states, calmly, in that soft voice of his, that this is no big deal, but has been known to military circles and to Congress for some time IT WILL BE TOO LATE.  HE WILL BE DROWNED OUT BY THE HOWLERS AND THE MEDIA WILL PUT THAT FACT IN TINY SCRIPT IN A FOOTNOTE TO BUSH'S BIG CHANGE OF HEART AND GENEROUS GESTURE TO THE DEMOCRATS.

I'm telling you now.

Start howling.

He will NOT call down the thunder.

NOT THIS TIME.