Goodness has nothing to do with it

I alluded to the Texas sodomy law case in my last. Thing is: the state of Texas was prepared to send somebody into the Supreme Court to argue in favor of the law.

And have you seen the stories about the public school in Arkansas harassing a gay 8th-grader, phoning his parents to tell them he’s gay, teachers (science teachers yet) and vice principals and so forth reciting bible verses at him and making him recite them out loud, etc etc. There must be much more detail on the Arkansas ACLU website.

As you gloat while reading the leaked stories blaming Rumsfeld, don’t forget that the leaks are part of the never-ending fight by the generals to free themselves of pesky civilian control. One theory, which I’m agnostic on, is that Rumsfeld wanted to prove that this sort of war was cheap and could be fought with relatively few troops in order to 1) get to do it a lot more times, 2) be able to do more than one at the same time (as in Rummy’s threats against Syria and Iran, which really upset the British, as it undermines their claim about what this war is about). The Sy Hersh (terrorist journalist at large) New Yorker story will no doubt shed light on this, whenever it shows up online. I’ll provide a link at that time, of course. Rumsfeld: “Oh goodness, we’ve never had a timetable.” Well heavens to fucking Betsy.

There’s a cute AP story about 2 soldiers who got stuck in the Iraqi desert... for a week. Their vehicle broke down and a staff sgt told them someone would be back for them. Oops.

And the Monday British papers are full of reports from really pissed off British soldiers after an American pilot tried to kill them (well, did kill one). The word “cowboy” was used.

Here’s a surprise: reports of the capture of an Iraqi general were false.

This story says that despite all the talk about how Saddam Hussein is evil because he gassed his own people, evidently the US has made absolutely no preparations for protecting anyone except American soldiers if he uses chemical/bio weapons in this war. Here’s a paragraph: “Kurds have been able to watch television reports on how pets in Israel and Kuwait are being fitted with masks and suits, while the pleas of their leaders to the US for protective clothing and detection equipment have been ignored.” So gassed Kurds only matter in propaganda, not in the real world.

After the body of the former Serb president turned up, Slobo Milosevic’s wife has rather suddenly gone on “vacation” in Russia.