Thank God we didn't have those Democrats at the Alamo

The US has started a tv station in Iraq, but indefinitely postponed it having a news program, after the “administration” tried to have it pre-censored by the wife of a Kurdish leader sponsored by the US.

The military denies a NY Times report that it had given new orders to shoot looters. OK, only the Times knows the source that leaked it the original story, but simple logic can tell us what happened here. First, they were never going to implement such a policy, because it would look bad, because some of the looters are taking food because they are starving, which is our fault, and because how would the Iraqis hear of the policy change. That tv station interviewed the head of the electricity dept and I imagine the first question was, why are we bothering interview you when no one has electricity to run their tv’s. So what they must have done was leak the false story of a shoot-to-kill policy in order to frighten the Iraqis. All the reign-of-fear benefits of an actual shoot-to-kill policy without the opprobrium, and it’s all deniable. Governance by rumor.

Another suicide bombing in Chechnya, sadly narrowly failing to kill the head of Moscow’s puppet government. Putin is trying to claim that this is linked to the bombings in Saudi. About the only link is that last week he said the war in Chechnya had been won and last week Bush said that Al Qaeda is “not a problem any more.” Bombs don’t kill people, smug pronouncements of victory kill people.

Or maybe paper cuts do. Condoleeza Rice said last week that the US is hoping to find incriminating documents in Iraq rather than the actual WMDs. The British however, are saying that the discovery of mass graves justifies the war, retrospectively, and we should all ignore the rationales they gave at the time.

US Rep. Sam Johnson (R-some bit of the US stolen from Mexico) accused the Texas legislators-in-exile of being deserters. "Thank God we didn't have those Democrats at the Alamo." Yeah, because then it might not have gone so well. The D’s are probably regretting their choice of Oklahoma, having spent part of today in a basement after a tornado warning (there was no tornado). Somebody (not clear who) asked the Department of Homeland Security to trace an airplane one of the legislators owns. The Guardian warns “Hunting renegade politicians across the prairie has bipartisan appeal for an electorate with a generally low opinion of its representatives and a fierce attachment to guns and field sports. This idea could catch on, especially after the Clinton ban on Uzis and AK-47s expires next year.” And Molly Ivins...well, click here.

After the “rescue” of Priv. Jessica Lynch, the Pentagon released a very edited film of the operation. It now seems that the Iraqi soldiers had pulled out of the hospital days before--and the Pentagon absolutely refuses to release the unedited footage.

In my last, I mentioned Jeb Bush trying to appoint a guardian for a fetus. A detail: when a reporter used the word “fetus,” the Jebster interrupted and insisted on the word “baby.”