We’ll make it rubble

A perhaps poorly phrased opening sentence in a story on the Pentagon website: “Terrorists continued to attack innocent Iraqis as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice paid a surprise visit to the country today.”

Rice evidently went in order to put pressure on Iraqis to shit out a constitution by August. Also, see if you can find the key word Ms. Subliminable is trying to get across here: “We talked about how the political process should be inclusive -- and the government is an inclusive government -- and the need for the constitutional writing process to be inclusive.”

A WaPo article about Operation Matador focuses on the American Marines’ frustrations about not finding enough Iraqi ass to kick. It quotes a major saying that if there were foreign jihadis in one village, “we’ll make it rubble.” Instead they wandered around, tore up people’s houses, stole their pillows, beat up a few of them, yelled at them in pidgin Arabic, and then went away, wondering what the hell they’d been doing there. Mission accomplished.

Craig Murray, the British ambassador to Uzbekistan fired by Blair’s government for telling the truth about human rights abuses there (they also tried to smear him as alcoholic and crazy) (in the general elections, he ran against Foreign Minister Jack Straw, and did pretty well), has a commentary in the Guardian.

Karimov is very much George Bush’s man in central Asia. There is not a senior member of the US administration who is not on record saying warm words about Karimov. There is not a single word recorded by any of them calling for free elections in Uzbekistan. ... When Jon Purnell, the US ambassador, last year attended the opening of a human rights centre in the Ferghana valley, he interrupted a local speaker criticising repression. Political points, Purnell opined, were not allowed.

I can’t wait to see if Scotty McClellan will still be urging restraint equally on the demonstrators and the government.