Accounting and accountability

So while Congress did vote for $200m in aid to Palestine, much of it somehow wound up in Israeli hands: $20m to the Israeli electricity company, $50m for checkpoints, etc. At this point I would start a sentence “And to add insult to injury...” but there are too many ways to finish that sentence, too many insults. Very little money will go to the elected Palestinian government, but will be disbursed by non-governmental groups, preferably Zionist ones: for example, $2m goes to Hadassah. Another insult: $5m will go to audit the Palestinian budget; I don’t read that as meaning the audit will track only how American money is spent, but as a top-to-bottom audit. Or possibly it will be a thorough audit of precisely how much insult has been added to injury.

And you should all be ashamed of yourselves for the thought that just went through your heads: many accountants are not Jewish.

The Marine in the shooting of an unarmed, wounded Iraqi prisoner of war, the “He’s fucking faking he’s dead. He faking he’s fucking dead” incident (previous posts here and here) has been cleared by the Marine Corps (actually I thought he was cleared months ago) despite actual videotape of the shooting. Also, the LA Times tells us, as if to jog our memories, “The incident later was the basis for an episode of the pro-military television show "JAG" on CBS. In that story, the Marine was found not guilty.” Maybe the Marines put the wrong tape in the VCR.

Actually, most LA Times stories are assigned on the basis of things the editor saw on after-school specials and reruns of Matlock.

So with that, the rejection of Lynndie England’s guilty plea (which means that she will return to her military duties), and the whitewash of the Giuliana Sgrena shooting, it’s been quite a week for accountability. Also, Rumsfeld and Bush still have their jobs.