The greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century

The US military has completely exonerated the soldiers who shot at the car of Italian journalist/hostage Giuliana Sgrena, killing the secret service agent. The army says that they were only acting according to the procedures for checkpoints, which evidently involve shooting anything that moves several hundred times. Anyway, this report was conveniently released (but not to the public yet) while Berlusconi was busy putting together a new government.

The last nail in John Bolton’s coffin: last summer the British foreign secretary complained to Colin Powell that Bolton was sabotaging European negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. And Newsweek says that two years ago Britain demanded that Bolton be kept off the team negotiating with Libya over its nuclear program. In both cases (and North Korea) Bolton preferred regime change to nuclear non-proliferation, which was supposed to be his job. Actually, the person I really blame is Colin Powell, who let Cheney & the neo-Cons foist this turd on him, and didn’t insist that he be fired when he proved so wholly incapable of doing his job.

On the front page of the NYT this morning was this headline: “Rice and Cheney Are Said to Push Iraqi Politicians on Stalemate.” Rice and Cheney, not exactly the poster children for compromise themselves, are they? The interesting question is who leaked this and why. If a deal is suddenly made tomorrow, it will look like it was done in response to American pressure, which will just undercut the legitimacy of the government. So now they’re damned if they do, damned if they don’t. If it was leaked from the American side, possibly the idea was to show that the US still calls the shots, given that any deal will probably leave former American golden boy Iyad Allawi out in the cold.

Putin today called the collapse of the Soviet Union a catastrophe, but doesn’t say what should have been done to keep it together. Possibly the sorts of things he does in Chechnya to keep it within what remains of the Russian Empire.