Good days and bad days

The bombing of the Iraqi parliament building’s cafeteria killed one MP each from the National Dialogue Front and the Sunni Accordance Front, which tells you as much as you need to know about the state of national dialogue and Sunni accordance (what does that even mean?) in Iraq. The security scanner that should have detected this bomb was not operating today, which I will wildly speculate indicates an inside job. The head of the parliament’s media department was in the cafeteria at the time and later made the sort of statement that is not in the job description of the heads of media departments other countries’ legislatures: “I saw two legs in the middle of the cafeteria and none of those killed or wounded lost their legs — which means they must be the legs of the suicide attacker.”

Bush had some comments. “First of all, I strongly condemn the action.” Was it strictly necessary to say that? He went on: “It reminds us, though...” I’m interrupting to point out that tell-tale word “though,” which indicates that, for George, there is a positive side to the bombing, which is that he can make use of it for his own propaganda purposes: “It reminds us, though, that there is an enemy willing to bomb innocent people in a symbol of democracy. In other words [!], this assembly is a place where people have come to represent the 12 million people who voted.” However, while the Iraqis might foolishly think that this incident is about them, it’s not: “There is a type of person that would walk in that building and kill innocent life -- and that is the same type of person that is willing to come and kill innocent Americans.”

Condi had some comments: “we’ve said there are going to be good days and bad days concerning the security plan.” I’m guessing this would be one of the bad days; I’m also guessing there have been no actual good days. “I don’t think anybody expected that there would not be counterefforts by the terrorists to undermine the security progress that we’re trying to make.”

John McCain, who was next to her (see the not at all awkward pictures below), had some comments, calling the bombing “tragic and yet... not unexpected” and said it shouldn’t “change the larger picture, which means that we are achieving some small successes already”. So it’s, you know, too bad that two Iraqi MPs were blown up, but at least it wasn’t, say, a visiting American senator.




I made it through this entire post without a single joke about cafeteria food.