Two stories this week of Bush politicizing ecological science. A report, the product of 12 years which said that caribou would be harmed by a pipeline in Alaska, was replaced by a two-page jobbie cobbled together in 7 days which said they wouldn’t. And the US is not supporting the American who heads the UN body looking at global warming, because he believes it exists, and is instead supporting a pliable Indian.

To the increasingly long list of things about His Fraudulency, add sentences with the word “needs” in them. “Saddam Hussein needs to go.” “Arafat needs to say, in Arabic...” No, Georgie, this is what you want, not what they need.

Sharon has decided to treat Colin Powell’s arrival next week as a deadline before which he needs to commit as many atrocities as he can, like one of those game shows where people run around supermarkets trying to throw expensive items into their cart within 60 seconds (which I seem to recall is how Kevin used to earn his living). I’d like to think this isn’t what Bush had in mind, but I can’t seem to make myself think that.

I was going to remark at some point on the fact that while no Palestinian leader seems to believe that terror tactics are bad (or Palestinians period, including parents of the suicide bombers) (although it should be said that at least the bombers volunteered; Bush talks about Palestinians who dragoon children into these missions, but it’s not like Israel doesn’t have a draft), neither has anyone resigned from the Sharon government in protest. But then, I haven’t noticed anyone protesting the torture through forcible feeding of the POWs, or the fact that Rumsfeld says he intends that that alleged Al Qaeda leader will tell everything he knows, which can obviously only come about through some form of torture or threat of death (but most likely sleep deprivation, which is considered by experts to be the most invidious form of torture, but doesn’t leave scars).

Bush would be more believable if he named specific practices he didn’t approve of: shooting Palestinian civilians through doors in front of children, for example, leaving old women to bleed to death in the streets while ambulances are blocked, that sort of thing. I read an account by the head of a clinic who was made to enter every room in front of the soldiers, who quickly realized that he was being used as a human shield.