Michael Brown has done everything he possibly could

Still refusing to admit that Brownie is an incompetent fuck-up, Chertoff spins his “reassignment” to a nice quiet office far away from where he can do damage thus: “Michael Brown has done everything he possibly could.” And the sad thing is that probably really is everything he could do. He has now been tasked to stay in his office and make paper-clip chains, which he’s been told are vitally important to the rescue work.

And of course he’ll continue to get a hefty paycheck for that vitally important work, as opposed to the people who actually haul away wreckage, restore electricity, etc. I’ll be interested to see how much play is given to Bush’s suspending the Davis-Bacon Act in order to let Halliburton (and other federal contractors) pay its workers in the storm-damaged areas less than the prevailing wage. My gift to the unions is a term I just made up that should be applied to this and future attempts to screw workers using the pretext of “national emergency”: storm profiteering.

Hunger-striking prisoners are being forcibly fed by tube in Guantanamo. Guantanamo spokesmodel Maj. Jeff Weir says, “No detention facility in the world will deliberately let their people commit suicide, so we can’t let that happen.” Obviously he’s never heard of Bobby Sands and the other 9 IRA men who were indeed allowed to starve themselves to death in 1980. This is a form of torture which is considered by the medical profession (and more importantly, by me) to be unethical when the hunger striker is not insane. The military seems to be unclear, or lying, about the numbers involved in the strike, and didn’t see fit to inform the outside world until the second month of the strike, and Weir claims not to know their demands.

Iraqi “president” Talabani says that US troops are needed in Iraq not only to fight insurgents, but also “to frighten our neighbours and prevent them from interfering in our internal affairs”.