All the bad guys all gone now

The level of lying is increasing. The US is claiming that in Samarra, 125 rebels were killed and no civilians. None. Zero. They’re not even bothering to come up with half-plausible lies anymore. Area hospitals of course tell a different story. The Iraqi interior minister also tells a story, a children’s story to judge by the vocabulary: “We cleaned up the city from all the bad guys and terrorists.”

David Avery, running the Afghan presidential elections for the UN, says that there will be many irregularities, but not enough to undercut their legitimacy or affect the outcome. Of course the elections and the irregularities haven’t happened yet, so Avery is obviously prepared to overlook any amount of violence or chicanery.

Yes, I used the word chicanery. Everybody should use the word chicanery once in their lifetime.

When the Germans occupied France, they set up an internment camp. It was kept going secretly until 1949, evidently mostly housing foreigners it would have been embarrassing to release because to do so would be to admit that French guards had collaborated with the Germans. So the French government effectively kept collaborating with Nazis who were no longer there because they had been defeated 4 years before. Shows real dedication to the fine art of collaboration.

Israel’s invasion of Gaza (the 5,934th invasion, I believe) is being called Operation Days of Penitence, which just seems obnoxious to me.

Tim Dunlop is right: the voices that wouldn’t let Bush finish were not in an earpiece, they were the voices in his chimp-like head.