Bitter differences

Slate says exactly what I had meant to say yesterday, but forgot during an unusually slow download: “Evidently operating under the assumption that it was his call to make, Bush declared in Ireland yesterday an end to the "bitter differences" between the U.S. and Europe over the Iraq war.”

Bush also used the NATO summit to declare that he was willing to forgive France, Germany and Turkey for their unseemly displays of independence.

Isn’t it insulting when he praises Turkey for being “secular in politics”? They must know that he only finds secularism admirable in non-Christian countries.

And what luck that the Iraqi Resistance captured one of the few Muslim US marines. I’m guessing he’s not going to get the whole-hog Jessica Lynch treatment, but will be quietly ignored until his body and/or head are recovered (by the way, Fahrenheit 9/11 fortuitously has some shots of a public execution by beheading in our good ally Saudi Arabia.)

Something else I forgot to say. A message to Jack Ryan on his having to step down: remember, crying is so unattractive. You twat.

Bremer has issued 97 edicts, and put people into government jobs on long contracts, to impose his ideology on Iraq for years to come. And given that power to others in the future, like an election commission that can simply ban parties and candidates. Edicts include capping taxes at 15%, protecting intellectual property (the occupation government really is a Mickey Mouse outfit), requiring automobile drivers to keep both hands on the wheel and stop honking the fucking horn...

Some of the people Bremer hired are inspectors-general to guard against corruption, or override the puppet government, as the case may be. So it’s ironic that he lost rather a large sum of Iraqi oil money. The stories disagree on the amount, but the word “billion,” possibly in the plural, is involved. Have you checked in all your pockets? Have you checked in all of Halliburton’s pockets?

Bremer has left Iraq, appropriately, like a thief in the night, quite possibly in the trunk of a car like Chalabi did when he fled Jordan. Bremer “handed over sovereignty” two days early because he has done such a terrible job that any ceremony would have been blowed up, which tends to look bad on CNN.

I can’t seem to get the video at this site of Bush’s interview with Irish tv, which I gather is a hoot and possibly a holler. The connection keeps dropping, and has for 2 days now. Maybe your luck will be better (link below). Hasn’t shown on CSPAN either, and no transcript that I know of. The embassy made an official protest that the interviewer was rude to Mr. Sensitive. And they cancelled an interview with Laura Bush. Possibly at some time in the future, Bush will declare the end to his bitter differences with Irish state television.