Teach a moron to fish...

The Polish Ministry of Health has established a committee to “cure” homosexuals.

Civilians killed by the US in Afghanistan, civilians killed by the US in Iraq, and a series of failed terrorist attacks in Britain. So many things that I don’t feel like writing about. So let’s have some more pictures of The Bushes Go Fishing, Day 2, and then another old New York Magazine competition.

Today, Not-Jenna went along, wearing her fishing/cocktail dress. Shrub wore a jacket with the number 43 and a cap with a picture of his dog. Bush the Elder wore salmon-colored pants about which the less said the better. Not-Jenna caught one fish, George caught one fish and, in preparation for Putin’s arrival tomorrow, looked into its eyes and read its soul.








New York comp, 8/17/92, Famous First Words.

“Le Tot C’est Moi” – Louis XIV

“Dada” – Marcel Duchamp

“Birth, nascency, nativity...” Peter Mark Roget

“Is that a stethoscope in your pocket?” – Mae West

“The placenta is coming!
The placenta is coming!” – Paul Revere

“Booo!” – Stephen King

“Sum, ergo, cogito” - René Descartes

“Is this a rattle I see before me?” – Macbeth

“Mommy, I presume” – Henry Stanley

“I swam in water and it was warm and good” – Hemingway

The complete collection of NY comps here.

Old Doofus and the Sea

John McCain denied yesterday that he was dropping out. “Why in the world would I want to do that? It would be nuts.” I think you just answered your own question, senator.

And look, in my inbox, there’s another email from the McCain McCampaign, with yet more “Fun Facts About John McCain.” Evidently, the McCains own a lot of pets, including 4 dogs, a cat, 2 turtles, a bunch of fish and... a ferret. Maybe he can bring the ferret to the next Republican debate and taunt Giuliani with it. Then he can tell Romney exactly what it’s like to be forced into a small cage and have to defecate on yourself. In fact, the next debate should be sponsored by PETA.

Speaking of dumb animals...

Democratic debate: Trying to get black men to understand it is not unmanly to wear a condom

There was a Democratic presidential debate tonight. I fell asleep. To show how different bloggers are from normal people, I woke up while Kucinich was speaking.


The debate was at Howard University, the questioners were black, and the camera kept focusing on Al Sharpton in the audience, nodding his head or looking very stern indeed.


I amused myself trying to decide who the whitest candidate is. I would have a poll, but I strongly suspect you people would all vote that it’s Obama. Mike Gravel may have lost some points by not being entirely au fait on the terminology, referring to “black African-Americans,” and for saying that the war on drugs “does nothing but savage our inner cities,” possibly not the best choice of verb. He’s from Alaska, you know.


On the other hand, in the HIV/AIDS segment, Bill Richardson talked about the need to “penetrate” minority communities. Biden said he spent last summer in the black sections of town trying to get black men to wear condoms. It’s nice he has a hobby. Also, he said that he and Barack have both been tested for AIDS and there’s no shame in that (Obama’s over-speedy insistence that he got tested with his wife, not with Biden, undercut that message, though he put on a big smile to prove that he was going along with a joke rather than exhibiting homosexual panic).


Kucinich said that Michael Moore is right about the need to get insurance companies out of medicine, which might get him some attention on Fox on any other week than the one when Paris Hilton got out of jail. He also called for a constitutional amendment for equality in educational opportunity. I have no idea how that would work, and I doubt he does either.


Others brought their shop-worn slogans along. Edwards tried to work race into his “two nations” thing, and Hillary reassured us that “I really believe that it takes a village to raise a child”.


About the time I was nodding off, I could swear I heard Joe Biden say that we could repeal Bush’s tax cuts for the rich because... “they didn’t ask for it,” and they’re patriots who wouldn’t mind. But that would be a supremely silly thing to say, so I probably just dreamed it. At least I didn’t dream about him trying to convince Barack Obama to wear a condom.


There will be many, many, many more debates, which is good because so many questions remain unanswered. What’s up with Edwards’ yellow wrist band? And Gravel’s pants? And will I ever mention Chris Dodd in one of these posts?

Our military is undergoing through a lot of hard work and pressure

Today Bush went to the Naval War College in Rhode Island. He figured he might as well give it a try since he likes wars, though he doesn’t like colleges, and is pretty much neutral on navels (another thing he doesn’t much like, evidently, is Rhode Island; this is his first trip to the state as president). “The Naval War College,” he said, “is where the United States military does some of its finest thinking,” adding, “kind of like I do my finest thinking on the crapper.”

I may have made up that last part.

While sitting on the crapper.


Speaking of fine thinking: “Earlier this year, I laid out a new strategy for Iraq. I wasn’t pleased with what was taking place on the ground. I didn’t approve of what I was seeing. And so I called together our military and said, can we design a different strategy to succeed? And I accepted their recommendations. And this new strategy is different from the one were pursuing before.” So it’s different, is that what you’re saying?

He had maps and everything, just like Mitt Romney. “Let me begin with Anbar province. You can see here on the map, Anbar is a largely Sunni province that accounts for nearly a third of Iraqi territory. It’s a big place. ... It was al Qaeda’s chief base of operations in Iraq. Remember, when I mention al Qaeda, they’re the ones who attacked the United States of America and killed nearly 3,000 people on September the 11th, 2001. They’re part of the enemy. They’re extremists and radicals who try to impose their view on the world.”

Yes, Bush really felt that he needed to explain, at the Naval War College, what Al Qaida is.

IN OTHER WORDS: “According to a captured document -- in other words, according to something that we captured from al Qaeda -- they had hoped to set up its -- a government in Anbar.”

Back to the maps: “To the north of Baghdad, our forces have surged into Diyala province. The primary focus is the provincial capital of Baqubah, which is just an hour’s car ride from Baghdad.” Even less if Mitt Romney is driving – that guy doesn’t stop for pee breaks. “There, masked gunmen enforce their brutal rule with prisons and torture chambers and punish crimes like smoking.”

Just like California, then.

“Extremists in many of these areas are being confronted by U.S. and Iraqi forces for the first time in three years. We can expect determined resistance. They don’t like to be confronted.”

Just like California, then.


Speaking of confrontational behaviour: “Last week our commanders reported the killing of two senior al Qaeda leaders north of Baghdad -- one who operated a cell that helped move foreign fighters into Iraq, and another who served as a courier for the same cell.”

Senior Al Qaida leader = courier.

Senior Al Qaida leader = guy who helped his friends move.

“In the mixed Shia-Sunni neighborhood of Rashid, our foot patrols discovered a wall with two Arabic sentences spray-painted on them. It’s just a small example. It certainly didn’t get any news, but it says, ‘Yes, yes to the new security plan. No difference between Shia and Sunni.’” It didn’t get any news because the left-wing media is biased against... well, possibly they didn’t want to take their lives in their hands to report on graffiti.

“[T]he Iraqis have got to be making tough decisions towards reconciliations.” What, the graffiti wasn’t enough?

“I speak to the Prime Minister and I speak to the Presidency Council quite often, and I remind them we expect the government to function, and to pass law. ... We expect there to be reconciliation. We expect them to pass law.” Hell, at this point we’d be happy if they passed gas.

Sorry.

“To evaluate how life is improving for the Iraqis, we cannot look at the country only from the top down. We need to go beyond the Green Zone and look at Iraq from bottom up.” You first, George.

Also, heh heh, he said bottom.

Sorry.

“We are also encouraged by the way Iraqis are responding to atrocities intended to inflame passions and provoke reprisals. In early 2006 -- things were going fine in 2005. ...”

Things were going... fine... in 2005.

WHAT DO WE WONDER, GEORGE? “Al Qaeda is responsible for the most sensational killings in Iraq. They’re responsible for the sensational killing on U.S. soil, and they’re responsible for the sensational killings in Iraq. Here at home, we see the bloody aftermath of a suicide bombing in an Iraqi market -- and we wonder what kind of people could do that. That’s what we wonder. We’re good-hearted people.”

By the way, that example would probably work a lot better if the US had never dropped bombs on Iraqi markets.

“And that’s their strategy. Al Qaeda’s strategy is to use human beings as bombs to create grisly images for the world to see. They understand that sensational images are the best way to overwhelm the quiet progress on the ground.” Yes, it’s the images that are the problem, not the, you know, reality. “They hope to gain by the television screen what they cannot gain on the battlefield... Our success in Iraq must not be measured by the enemy’s ability to get a car bombing into the evening news.” Bush’s secret weapon: Paris Hilton. “No matter how good the security, terrorists will always be able to explode a bomb on a crowded street.” Always?


Then, in the bit that will get the most coverage world-wide, he provided Iraq with a positive role model: “In places like Israel, terrorists have taken innocent human life for years in similar attacks. The difference is that Israel is a functioning democracy that is not prevented from carrying out its responsibilities. And that’s a good indicator of success that we’re looking for in Iraq: the rise of a government that can protect its people, deliver basic services for all its citizens, and function as a democracy even amid violence.” So our goal, after all these years of war, is a place just like Israel, only less Jewy?

DID YOU SAY... BEGINNING STAGES? “We’re involved in a broader war against these ideological killers. Iraq is just a theater in this war. ... The stakes are high in the beginning stages of this global war against ideologues that stand for the exact opposite of what America stands for.”

“It’s amazing how the Navy has been able to accomplish more with less. Perhaps that’s what you’ve been able to -- that’s less manpower, more mission, better use of equipment, the capacity to manage manpower better.” He makes it sound so... dirty.

THE LONGEST WORD BUSH HAS EVER HAD TO READ OFF A TELEPROMPTER: “Part of the strategic thought for our military is interoperability.”

The audience was invitation-only, so this was the toughest question:

Q: At the beginning of your speech -- that you said that you consult with the military. With all due respect, sir, how much do you really listen and follow them?

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, a lot.

He added, “I talk to General Petraeus all the time. I say ‘all the time’ -- weekly; that’s all the time...” Really, you’re smothering me. “...on secure video from Baghdad. There’s a lot of discussions about troop positioning; what will our footprint look like.” That’s not a metaphor; Bush calls Petraeus up every week on secure video to talk about what his footprint looks like.

It looks like the bottom of a foot.

Possibly I spoke too soon earlier. Maybe this was the toughest question:

Q: I wanted to ask you about your thoughts concerning strategic culmination. Are we --

THE PRESIDENT: Strategic --

Q: Strategic culmination.

WHAT IS OUR MILITARY UNDERGOING THROUGH, GEORGE? “And I think people recognize that obviously -- you know, our military is undergoing through a lot of hard work and pressure.”

“Our foreign policy is much more than the use of the military. I know the focus is on the military; it’s, like, on TV everyday, I understand that.” The question was about hospital ships. “It’s really effective diplomacy to help a mom deal with a child’s sickness. And we do a lot of it. We get no credit for it, but we do a lot of it.” Really effective diplomacy... that we get no credit for. And just how pissy is that “we get no credit for it”?

SOMEWHAT SUSPECT: “Well, I suspect if you look back at history they might have been somewhat suspect if someone would have predicted an American President would be sitting down keeping the peace with the Japanese Prime Minister at some point -- particularly after World War II.”

WE NEVER SAID “IDEALIST”: “I think it’s going to be very important for our country to have faith in the capacity of liberty to be transformative. Some say that’s -- you know, he’s a hopeless idealist guy.”

Talking about the dead-in-the-water free-trade treaty with Colombia, he took a shot at, I assume, Chavez: “The free trade vote has a lot of strategic implications because in the neighborhood there is a person who is undermining a democracy, and therefore we need to be concerned about the loss of democracies in our neighborhood.”

Later, he told a little joke about God and Castro and death: “It’s in our interests that Cuba become free and it’s in the interests of the Cuban people that they don’t have to live under an antiquated form of government -- that has just been repressive. So we’ll continue to press for freedom on the island of Cuba. One day, the good Lord will take Fidel Castro away (laughter) -- no, no, no -- then, the question is, what will be the approach of the U.S. government?” One approach is to make sure no more Cubans wind up in Miami: “we’re working very closely with the Navy and Coast Guard to make sure that there is not any issues when it comes between the United States and Cuba, should there be a -- when there is a transition.”

Huh, good God, what is it good for?

Meet Mitt

Mitt Romney’s 1983 family vacation seems to be some sort of metaphor. A 12-hour drive illustrating the motto of all driven (get it? driven? get it?) presidential candidates that it’s the destination not the journey that’s important, he told his five children, the oldest of whom was 13 or so, there would be no stops except for gas, so they’d better coordinate their bodily functions with the station wagon’s mechanical ones. Oh, and the dog was in a carrier strapped to the roof the whole way. And you just know the Mittster insisted on doing all the driving himself.

A shiny quarter for the first person to spot a cartoon depicting an Irish setter in a carrier strapped to the roof of Air Force One.

You can pick through the Boston Globe series for other telling details, like his wedding being officiated by the Mormon church elder “after whom teenage Mitt had patterned his hairstyle.”

The writers, as others have been pointing out, bestow odd praise on Romney, for instance for his “emotion-free crisis management” in quick-thinkingly borrowing a hose after the dog shit down the rear windshield, and for “eschew[ing] the trappings of wealth” by not hiring a cook or a full-time maid after he became a millionaire, which sharp-eyed readers will have already noted affected his wife’s way of life rather more than his own.

However, we are also told that he thinks his wife is way better than him (in that creepy George Bush “I married above myself,” “my wife has so much patience” sort of way), and permitted her to take bathroom breaks during family drives even when no bathroom breaks were scheduled!

In comments, if you are so minded, decode the metaphor that is The Romneys Are Going To Canada. What does Seamus the dog represent? Or the five children, trying desperately to restrain their bladders? Or the shit dripping down the rear window?

Also, is anyone else reminded of Terry O’Quinn in The Stepfather?

And should Romney just go ahead and alienate cat- as well as dog-lovers by naming Bill Frist as his running mate?

Enriching civilization for centuries

This morning Bush rededicated the Islamic Center of Washington, because who better to rededicate an Islamic center. Really, anyone, who better?


He said that freedom of religion is growing in every region of the world except the Middle East. Er, China? And he trumpeted the US’s freedom in this regard, pointing out that “The freedom of religion is the very first protection offered in America’s Bill of Rights.” I believe that’s a dog whistle message for the Christian Right, who claim to discern in the sentence structure of the First Amendment some sort of proof that freedom of religion is prior to, and the basis of, all other rights.

He said, “We come to express our appreciation for a faith that has enriched civilization for centuries.” Although, oddly enough, he said the exact same thing a few hours later at the annual White House Tee Ball Game.


Not an hour before that photo op with the kiddies, Bush was in the Roosevelt Room denouncing Democrats for a dastardly scheme: “they are trying to expand Medicare to younger citizens. ... If their proposal becomes law, S-CHIP [the State Children’s Health Insurance Program] would expand its reach to include children from family that earn as much as $80,000 a year”. He warned darkly, “Their goal is to take incremental steps down the path to government-run health care for every American,” adding “It’s the wrong path for our nation, and besides, Michael Moore is fat.” I may have embellished that quote a little.

A clean, safe and humane place for enemy combatants

On his last full day in office, Tony Blair held a press conference with Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Terminator and the Terminated, the British press uniformly called it.



(As I write, Blair’s last Prime Minister’s Questions is going on. Someone just asked him, apropos of that meeting, what Blair would do, if he came back from the future, to save the planet. Blair, as was his wont, ignored the question.)

It wasn’t enough that Gordon Brown will become prime minister tomorrow, he had to bring a trophy: MP Quentin Davies has defected from the Tories to the Labour party. And is there a single British newspaper able to resist mentioning that Davies was once fined for cruelty to sheep?

That was a rhetorical question.

Military Moron of the week, Col. Morris D. Davis, chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo military commissions, for his op-ed piece in yesterday’s NYT, entitled, “The Guantánamo I Know and Love.” Evidently Guantanamo “is a clean, safe and humane place for enemy combatants”. It’s a clean, safe and humane place for them to be tortured and driven slowly insane, but hey, it’s clean. Glenn Greenwald has already effectively dealt with my favorite part, where he proves that Gitmo is nothing like Soviet gulags because David Hicks, the Australian captured in Afghanistan, “stipulated he was treated properly.” As Davis knows full well, because either he or one of his underlings negotiated the plea agreement, they required Hicks deny his earlier claims to have been tortured as part of that agreement, without which he’d never have gotten out of Guantanamo. This is Col. Davis’s gold standard for evidence. Did I mention that he is the chief prosecutor at the military commissions?

In fact, he says that hearsay and other forms of evidence considered too unreliable to be used in US courts can be used because “the Constitution does not extend to alien unlawful enemy combatants.” Whoa! Alien unlawful enemy combatants, wouldn’t want to meet one of those in a dark alley! He could beat you to death with the adjectives alone!

Davis says, “Some imply that if a defendant does not get a trial that looks like Martha Stewart’s and ends like O. J. Simpson’s, then military commissions are flawed.” Yes, I’m pretty sure that’s exactly the standard we were going for. Conversely, if Martha Stewart and O.J. Simpson were waterboarded, I think I could live with that.

I’m confident that we can continue to be a nation that assimilates

This morning Bush gave a comprehensive speech on the comprehensive immigration comprehensive legislation.

Er, sorry. He used the word comprehensive a lot, is what I’m saying. This sort of thing: “The problem that this bill recognizes, the bill recognizes that we’ve got to address the problem in a comprehensive fashion.”

Repetition was the order of the day: “It’s a powerful incentive to be a mom or a dad to make sure your children don’t suffer. That’s an incentive. That’s an incentive for people here in America; it also happens to be an incentive for people around the world.”

When not repeating his vocabulary words, he rephrased the same things over and over in as many different ways as he could come up with: “The first thing that we’ve got to recognize in the country is that the system isn’t working. The immigration system needs reform. The status quo is unacceptable.” And what, oh what, do we need to do to change that? “Our view is, if the status quo is unacceptable, we need to replace it with something that is acceptable”. That’s why he’s the president and you’re not.

Why is it unacceptable, and not working, and in need of reform? “the system has also fostered illegal operations that prey upon the human being”.

Illegal operations that prey upon the human being. That does sound scary. But so does this: “And I’m confident that we can continue to be a nation that assimilates.”

Tell us more about assimilation, George. “The bill recognizes that English is a part of the assimilation process and wants to help people learn the language in order to be able to take advantage of America.” I don’t know: Chimpy manages to take advantage of America without ever having learned the language. In fact, in the very next sentences, he forgot what the word amnesty means: “You know, I’ve heard all the rhetoric -- you’ve heard it, too -- about how this is amnesty. Amnesty means that you’ve got to pay a price for having been here illegally, and this bill does that.”

Meanwhile, Laura and Jenna were in Dakar picking vegetables, doing the work Senegalese aren’t doing.

For too often and too long that bar wasn’t set high enough (updated)

From the London Times: “Immigration officers should wear pastel-coloured clothing when attempting to deport families, so that they are less intimidating to children, Home Office officials have recommended.” Yeah, that’ll do it.

Today Bush (not wearing pastel-colored clothing) met with a bunch of “Presidential Scholars,” of whom he said, “It’s a neat occasion to be able to welcome the 2007 Presidential Scholars.” He spoke about education and No Child Left Behind. It would be all too easy to pick up my blue pencil and mark all his mistakes, but my monitor would be covered with squiggly lines, and the resulting post would be way too long. He is, however, begging for it: “You know, part of the problem we’ve had in our school system is for too often and too long that bar wasn’t set high enough”.


“It’s amazing what happens when you hold people to account,” he said, not speaking from personal experience.

WHAT OUGHT YOU EXPECT? “If you believe a child can learn to read, then you ought to expect a child to read. That’s what you ought to expect.”

WHAT IS BECOMING CLOSED? “We had an achievement gap in our country and that’s not right to have an achievement gap in America. And this achievement gap is becoming closed”.

He says we need 30,000 “math and science professionals to go into classrooms to stimulate interest”. Oh, I am so not going there. “Because in order for us to make sure the best jobs are in America requires us having mathematicians and scientists and historians and engineers and physicists and poets. And the best way to stimulate that interest is from people who actually know what they’re talking about.” So why are these kids listening to you?

And yes, I may have added a couple of items to that list of professions. See if you can guess which ones.

“Whether we like or not, we’re in a global world.” Or possibly octagonal.


IN OTHER WORDS: “No Child Left Behind is working. In other words, we’re making good progress.”

IN OTHER WORDS: “In other words, people say, well, you can’t be for No Child Left Behind, it’s the federal government telling you what to do. Quite the opposite. ... We’re just going to insist that you measure”. Telling you what to do is quite the opposite of insisting.

IN OTHER WORDS: “Measuring results helps teachers spot problems. In other words, you can’t solve a problem until you diagnose it.”

Caption contest:


(Update: it seems that 50 of the 140 presidential scholars signed
a letter, which they handed to Bush personally, opposing the use of torture, renditions, and calling for adherence to the Geneva Conventions. Bravo. Bravo. (Also, Bong Hits 4 Jesus.) Bush read the letter (possibly asking them for help with some of the bigger words) and told them that in fact the United States does not torture. These kids have ideals and they know what it’s like to have the president of the United States lie to their faces. If they aren’t prepared for the future, I don’t know who is.)

Seeing a better future because of the form of government that’s changed

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that it was okay for a high school principal to rip down a student’s “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” banner. Roberts wrote in the majority opinion that schools have a compelling interest in deterring drug use (he’s assuming the verb-free banner is pro-drug use). He cited the Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act of 1994, which required schools to “convey a clear and consistent message that ... the illegal use of drugs [is] wrong and harmful.” In other words, Congress authorized censoring the expression of any opinion that contradicts the legally mandated official line. So that’s okay then. Roberts says that “failing to act would send a powerful message to the students in her charge, including Frederick, about how serious the school was about the dangers of illegal drug use.” This is the First Amendment under the Roberts court: state censorship is a protected form of expression (“sending a powerful message”), but a banner is not.

This morning Bush met with the president of Estonia, which Bush described as “a country which has emerged from some really dark days. And having been in Estonia, I can report to my fellow citizens that people now see the light of day, and see a better future because of the form of government that’s changed.” So if I understand him correctly, the sun did not shine in Estonia, possibly because of a spell cast by an evil witch, until George went there. Yes, I’m pretty sure that’s what he was saying.

I’ve decided I was wrong in a previous post to call him Herman Munster. Actually, he looks like the actor Edward Herrmann.

Speaking of the form of government that’s changed, off to the side during this meeting was none other than Dick Cheney, glumly contemplating his liminal status, neither in the executive branch nor in the legislative, not fully man nor wholly machine...

Enveloped into a kill sack

Military jargon of the day: evidently, “Al Qaida” fighters in Iraq are being “enveloped into a kill sack.” Charming.

Another New York magazine competition, from 11/23/92: greeting cards.

So you drew a suspended sentence!

Sorry you’re having a bad hair day.

So you’re a lame-duck president!

Have a happy Yom Kippur.

Yo, condolences!

A special wish for you on your deathbed.

Sorry you’ve lost the ability to accessorize.

Condolences on the breakup of Communism.

You missed my birthday. Burn in hell.

Sorry I missed your beatification.

You put the lite in elite!

Thanks for not confusing really great sex with love.

Happy birthday to your inner child.

Congratulations on being out of the loop.

So you’ve been enveloped into a kill sack.

That last one’s mine, obviously.

We will not acknowledge this reporter’s attempt to stain the engagement with the misnomer “killings.”

NATO spokesmodel Nick Lunt responds to Afghan PuppetPrez Karzai’s criticisms of all those NATO bombings that have killed civilians in large numbers recently, sounding like one of those infuriating oh-so-calm customer-relations phone reps. Karzai, he says, “has a right to be disappointed and angry,” and NATO will try to “do better.” He added, “But unlike the Taleban, we do not set out to cause civilian casualties, and that is a critical difference.” Not to the civilian casualties, it isn’t.

Headline of the day (AP): “Man Throws a Log at a Bear, Killing It.”

Today’s must-read: the NYT has excerpts (I want to see the whole thing! I want it I want it I want it!) from a memo written in response to emailed questions from Time magazine reporter Tim McGirk, who would break the Haditha Massacre story by Marines on Col. Chessani’s staff, including the egregious Lt. Mathes. Actually, I’m just going to reproduce all the excerpts. I love the one bit that goes off in increasingly paranoic terms on the need to avoid runaway sergeant storylines, My Lai, and “Platoon” analogies.

McGirk: How many marines were killed and wounded in the I.E.D. attack that morning?

Memo: If it bleeds, it leads. This question is McGirk’s attempt to get good bloody gouge on the situation. He will most likely use the information he gains from this answer as an attention gainer.

•

McGirk: Were there any officers?

Memo: By asking if there was an officer on scene the reporter may be trying to identify a point of blame for lack of judgment. If there was an officer involved, then he may be able to have his My Lai massacre pinned on that officer’s shoulders. ...

In the reporter’s eyes, military officers may represent the U.S. government and enlisted marines may represent the American People. Given the current political climate in the U.S. at this time concerning the Iraq war and the current administration’s conduct of the war, the reporter would most likely seek to discredit the U.S. government (one of our officers) and expose victimization of the American people by the hand of the government (the enlisted marines under the haphazard command of our “rogue officer.”) Unfortunately for McGirk, this is not the case.

One common tactic used by reporters is to spin a story in such a way that it is easily recognized and remembered by the general population through its association with an event that the general population is familiar with or can relate to. For example, McGirk’s story will sell if it can be spun as “Iraq’s My Lai massacre.” Since there was not an officer involved, this attempt will not go very far.

We must be on guard, though, of the reporter’s attempt to spin the story to sound like incidents from well-known war movies, like “Platoon.”

In “Platoon,” Sergeant Barnes, the movie’s antihero, is depicted as a no-nonsense, war-haggard platoon sergeant who knows how to get things done in the bloody jungles of Vietnam — and it ain’t always pretty. During one scene, Sergeant Barnes is shown on the verge of committing war crimes in front of his platoon by threatening to kill women and children as a means of interrogation. This is a classic “runaway sergeant” storyline wherein the audience is supposed to be sickened by the sergeant’s brutality and equally sickened by the traumatic effects war has on soldiers. This schema is especially fruitful for Mr. McGirk because if he tries to adapt our situation to this model it simultaneously exposes a “war crime cover-up” and shows the deteriorative (albeit exaggerated) effects of war on U.S. marines (the best of the best), which could be expanded by the general press as a testament for why the U.S. should pull out of Iraq.

[Colonel Chessani later shortened this answer to “No.”]

•

McGirk: How many marines were involved in the killings?

Memo: First off, we don’t know what you’re talking about when you say “killings.” One of our squads reinforced by a squad of Iraqi Army soldiers were engaged by an enemy initiated ambush on the 19th that killed one American marine and seriously injured two others. We will not justify that question with a response. Theme: Legitimate engagement: we will not acknowledge this reporter’s attempt to stain the engagement with the misnomer “killings.”

•

McGirk: Were there any weapons found during these house raids — or terrorists — where the killings occurred?

Memo: Again, you are showing yourself to be uneducated in the world of contemporary insurgent combat. The subject about which we are speaking was a legitimate engagement initiated by the enemy. ...

•

McGirk: Is there any investigation ongoing into these civilian deaths, and if so have any marines been formally charged?

Memo: No, the engagement was bona fide combat action. ... By asking this question, McGirk is assuming the engagement was a LOAC [Law of Armed Conflict] violation and that by asking about investigations, he may spurn a reaction from the command that will initiate an investigation.

•

McGirk: Are the marines in this unit still serving in Haditha?

Memo: Yes, we are still fighting terrorists of Al Qaida in Iraq in Haditha. (“Fighting terrorists associated with Al Qaida” is stronger language than “serving.” The American people will side more with someone actively fighting a terrorist organization that is tied to 9/11 than with someone who is idly “serving,” like in a way one “serves” a casserole. It’s semantics, but in reporting and journalism, words spin the story.)

Don’t they just.

A symbol of our resolve

Military code name of the day: Operation Phantom Thunder. One of the elements of Operation Phantom Thunder: “aggressive shaping operations.”

Name of the day: a 16-year old in England suing her school for banning her wearing a “purity” ring is called Lydia Playfoot.

Mitt Romney vows that if elected he will make some totally meaningless changes in the structure of the military for the sake of looking like he’s doing something different. It’s called leadership, people. Specifically, he will establish a Special Partnership Force to fight... oh, who cares what it would do, it’s the acronym I like.

There’s even a PowerPoint presentation, including this delightfully Magrittean slide:

He also said that “Guantanamo is a symbol of our resolve.” So Gitmo is a bumper sticker?

To celebrate Black Music Month, George Bush, who is all about the black music, forced some African-American violinist to kneel before him.

They’re looking for power vacuums into which they can move their ideology as well as their strategies

From the London Times: “The Pakistani government minister [Religious Affairs Minister Ijaz ul-Haq, son of 1970s military dictator Zia ul-Haq] who claimed that the award of a knighthood to Salman Rushdie could justify suicide bomb attacks announced yesterday that he plans to visit Britain on a mission to promote interfaith dialogue.”

By the way, note to the Muslim world: these days knighthoods are purely honorific; they aren’t actually required to put on armor, get on a horse and join the Crusades.

The Pakistan Ulema Council responded by giving the equivalent of a knighthood, the title Sword of God to Osama bin Laden. That may very well require putting on armor, etcetera.

Poland is demanding greater voting rights in EU councils once they are restructured to account for new members. Currently, it has disproportionate power, but the new system will match population. Poland says it deserves votes proportional to the population it claims it would have had if not for World War II (66 million versus its actual 38 million), although it is proposing voting being weighted according to the... wait for it... square root of a country’s population.

Yesterday, Bush attended a fundraiser for Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions of Alabama. He said to the attendees, “I thank you for your hard-earned money, which will make it clear to the people of Alabama that this guy is the right man to represent you in the United States Senate for six more years.” Because nothing makes someone’s senatorial fitness clearer than money. We know Republicans believe that, they just don’t say it in public as often as they did under, say, McKinley or Eisenhower.

Bush loves to talk about Al Qaida and vacuums, and it’s always comical gold: “And remember, al Qaeda and the extremists love chaos. They’re looking for power vacuums into which they can move their ideology as well as their strategies.” And then they’re all, hey dude, can you help me move my ideology as well as my strategies into my cool new vacuum, and I’ll like order some pizza?

For a man with a not-very-large vocabulary, he doesn’t actually know the meanings of all that many of the words he does use. On Democrats: “Well, first of all, you can’t raise enough money on the rich to whet their appetite.”

Do you think Bush would like a knighthood, a horse and a suit of armor? Would that Cervantes were alive to chronicle the adventures of the Knight of the Simian Countenance.

You’ve really put yourself on the wrong metric

Secretary of War Gates and the alliterative Peter Pace held a press conference today.


Gates, asked if ignoring (as he plans to do) the recommendation of a Pentagon study on the mental health of combat soldiers that soldiers who go through 90 days of heavy fighting then be rotated off the front-lines for 30 days won’t increase the number of serious mental-health problems, said, “Well, we’ll just have to wait and see.” Won’t we just. He then added that we’ll just have to have to have more resources to treat them.


Asked about the possibility of seeing violence in Iraq actually go down, Gates said, “Well, I think, first of all if you try to define this in terms of level of violence, you’ve really put yourself on the wrong metric. It isn’t about X number today, Y number tomorrow, because the enemy gets a chance to vote in that. And he will take a look at what you’re measuring and try to defeat that measurement, so to speak.” So the reason violence is the wrong “metric” is that the enemy can commit as much violence as they want. Isn’t the point supposed to be to stop them doing that?

So what’s the right metric? “The metric really should be for Iraqi citizens, do they feel better about their lives today than they did yesterday? ... If you had zero violence and people were not feeling good about their future, where are you?” Alive?

So it’s about perceptions. It’s also about denying perceptions. Gates says that “the security environment is providing what it should be providing” if Iraqis “see that their country is moving forward without regard to the specific instances of violence”. You know, progress, except for all the killing and explosions and shit. How are they supposed to look at the state of Iraq without regard to specific instances of violence? Repression. Earlier in the Q&A, Gates showed how it’s done:

Q: Yes. Mr. Secretary and General Pace, it’s been a pretty bad couple of days in terms of losses -- American losses in Iraq. I think it’s 12 in the last two days killed. Is this something we’re going to expect and to be bracing for in the coming weeks and months as we have the tempo of operations increase and we have the surge forces on the ground?

And if I could also, just picking up on the question about the 1920s Brigade, do you have some concern or pause about working and joining forces with groups that so recently had been aiming some of their fire power or affiliated with those that have been aiming their fire power at American forces?

SEC. GATES: Remind me again what your first question was.

Q: It was about the 12 deaths in the last few days.

See? It only takes him 12 seconds to forget all about 12 deaths. Oh, he’s good.

Safe

Subject line of a spam email I did not read: “Big your piano, be a real man.”

Bush’s budget includes a quintupling of funds for “democracy” programs in Cuba. An effort in the House to keep it at the old level was easily defeated. The White House issued a statement: “The reduction would have the United States step back from supporting independent Cuban civil society...” They must be using a definition of the word “independent” with which I am not familiar.

Today, George Bush went to Browns Ferry Nuclear Power Plant. “Nuclear power is safe,” he said. Here he is inside the control room of a nuclear power plant.


Does everyone feel safe?

Is it just propaganda for their alleged kindness?

We’re sending troops back into combat who are on lithium or Prozac?

I don’t know much about this (but when has that ever stopped me from commenting?) (that was a rhetorical question): evidently there is a big problem with child abuse among Aboriginals in the Northern Territory of Australia, which the government blames on alcohol and pornography. So John Howard will ban both for Aboriginals in the territory, restrict how welfare recipients can spend their money, abrogate Aboriginal self-government, etc etc. Child abuse is bad, of course (I feel silly having to start a sentence by spelling that out), but Howard has practically built his career on expressions of racist contempt for the original peoples and is simply not to be trusted with the degree of control over Aboriginals’ lives he plans to grab on the pretext of protecting their children from them. He will make welfare payments dependent on children going to school, but in the past, before all this alleged abuse came to light, he advocated conditioning welfare on children washing their faces twice a day.

Maybe we can make that one of the benchmarks in Iraq. We’re not withdrawing troops until every single Iraqi child washes their faces, including behind the ears, twice a day. The US army reported that it found 24 children aged 3 to 15 in a Baghdad orphanage who were being starved (while food was piled up in a stock room), tied up, naked and covered in shit in a windowless room. (The announcement by the US military came ten whole days after the discovery, with no explanation offered for the delay, at least that I’ve seen.) Said Gen. Vincent Brooks: “We’re very fortunate to have the kind of soldiers we have who are willing to take action, even at personal risk, to save the lives of others. These soldiers in a literal and figurative sense are the best chance for Iraq, just as they were for these boys.” Yes, the entire occupation is now justified. As social work. Although the orphanage was run by the government we put in charge.

A government that includes Labor and Social Affairs Minister Mahmoud Mohammed al-Radi (SCIRI), who said the whole thing was propaganda. “Are they really concerned about how well the children are treated in that shelter, or is it just propaganda for their alleged kindness?” he asked. Er, both actually. We can be complicated that way. Radi claimed the real brutality was the invasion of the orphanage by US troops in the middle of the night. The middle of the night!




Speaking of children, remember the seven killed by an American air strike in Afghanistan Monday? NBC, citing anonymous military sources, says that the military knew there were children present, contrary to what they’ve been saying, but considered the target, some Al Qaida guy you’ve never heard of – no doubt the #3 guy in Al Qaida as per usual – was worth the deaths of a few children. No word on whether they succeeded. Bush said yesterday, “Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical.” He didn’t pronounce on the ethicality of destroying human life in order to destroy other human life.

That was a fun post, wasn’t it? Abused and dead children, and lots of them. Some days the news is just like that. A palate-cleanser is called for:

This time, why not the best?

Correction

Yesterday I reported that Bush called Palestinian IAPM Fayyad “a good fellow.” I have reviewed the tapes, and Bush in fact called him “a good fella.” I apologize for the error.

We stand on your side in an ethically responsible way

Bush again vetoed stem cell research, then talked to the press, using as props a spina bifida patient and someone who “has whipped cancer twice by using adult stem cells. In other words, adult stem cells have saved her life.”


“America is a nation that leads the world in science and technology. Our innovative spirit is making possible incredible advances in medicine that could save lives and cure diseases,” he said, and he plans to put a stop to all that. Why aren’t these scientists out finding ways to run Hummers on switch grass?

Actually, he claims to be supporting scientists, only, you know, ethical and moral scientists. “We want to say, we stand on your side in an ethically responsible way.”

“Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical,” he said, obliviously. Possibly he’s afraid embryonic stem cells can cure hypocrisy.


Or condescending assholery.

A different hope (updated)

George Packer (The Assassins’ Gate) has a blog (2 entries so far) at the New Yorker site.

Military code name of the day: Operation Arrowhead Ripper.

Yesterday Condi Rice held a press conference about events in Palestine, which gave her the opportunity to use the words “responsible” and “legitimate” over and over and over, as in “the United States supports [Abbas’s] legitimate decision to form an emergency government of responsible Palestinians” and “Our view, very strongly, is that what President Abbas has done is legitimate and it is responsible and we’re going to support that action.” By legitimate, she doesn’t mean democratic or constitutional, of course. Indeed, “I think we will leave to the Palestinians issues of how they work through their own constitutional issues.” That’s one way to describe it. Of course, Abbas’s side will be “working through” those constitutional issues with weapons we provided.

Since Abbas’s coup is blatantly illegal, from whence does that legitimacy derive? Good old-fashioned organic nationalism. Said Rice, “there is one Palestinian people and there should be one Palestinian state” and that “Mahmoud Abbas is the President of all of the Palestinian people”. Ein volk, ein reich... you get the idea.

Today, at a press conference with Israeli How-The-Hell-Is-He-Still-Prime-Minister Olmert, Bush also, twice, called Abbas “the President of all the Palestinians” (now that I think of it, that also sounds like True Czar of All the Russias), adding, “He was elected; he’s the President.”

(Update: Eli of Left I on the News points out in comments that the roughly 3.5 million of exiled Palestinians didn’t have a vote in that election. Of course the point Bush was trying to make with the phrase “President of all the Palestinians,” which Olmert also used, was that he claims authority in both the West Bank and Gaza. Now, there’s a word for “both the West Bank and Gaza,” and that word is Palestine. Since Bush and Olmert would sooner kiss the corpse of Yasser Arafat on the mouth before uttering the word Palestine, they’re stuck with a phrase, “President of all the Palestinians,” which does not have a geographic referent.)

Bush also said Abbas is “a voice that is a reasonable voice amongst the extremists in your neighborhood.” And he called Illegally Appointed Prime Minister Fayyad “a good fellow”. He says that when the President of All the Palestinians and the Good Fellow are “strengthened,” they “can lead the Palestinians in a different direction, with a different hope.”

Bush also spoke about the great work he’d be doing with Olmert “to promote a alternative ideology, based upon human liberty and the human condition.” An ideology based on the human condition, that would be novel. Honestly, I have no idea what Bush means by that. He added that Olmert “said he’s willing to have discussions with the forces of moderation in the Palestinian Territory, laying the groundwork for serious discussions.” So he’ll have discussions laying the groundwork for discussions. “That’s -- that is a statement that shows that the Prime Minister is willing to move with a -- to promote an alternative vision.”


Olmert made it clear that his vision is alternative to that of “the Palestinians”: “We have been very, very attentive to the needs of the -- humanitarian needs of Gaza... Israel will not be indifferent to the human suffering in Gaza. Israel will be different from the Palestinians, themselves, because the reality is that all this suffering is caused by Palestinians against their own people.” He could have said Hamas or extremists. I don’t think it’s going to far to say that his choice to blame “the Palestinians” is a racist one, indicating that they’re all barbarians.


The reporters’ questions were all about Palestine, except one about Iran. But Bush kept talking about Iraq, because he sees the two things as exactly the same problem, you know, the one where “We face extremists and radicals who use violence and murder as a tool to achieve objectives,” and we have to spread democracy because “You can only defeat them so much militarily.” Indeed, in this bit, one can’t be entirely sure that he remembers whether he is talking about Palestine or Iraq:

Matt, what you’re seeing now in this part of the 21st century is going to be played out over time. This is an ideological struggle. We’re looking at the difference between a group of people that want to represent the Palestinians who believe in peace, that want a better way for their people, that believe in democracy -- they need help to build the institutions necessary for democracy to flourish, and they need help to build security forces so that they can end up enforcing what most of the people want, which is to live in peace -- and that’s versus a group of radicals and extremists who are willing to use violence, unspeakable violence sometimes, to achieve a political objective.

Bush & bathing suit

At an event in the White House yesterday with NCAA teams, Bush was presented with a bathing suit. And now I present you with the pictures. You’re welcome.


Please leave any caption suggestions and/or death threats in comments.

Nefarious activity was occurring at the site

US bombed a “compound” in Paktika province, Afghanistan, in which, they say, “nefarious activity” was occurring. The bombs killed 7 or more children, so if there wasn’t nefarious activity occurring before, that pretty much counts. The Independent comments, “The statement gave no indication what such nefarious activity might be”. One might add an additional note of skepticism about intel that is evidently capable of detecting nefarious activity but not children.

The children were killed in a school. The US military says it didn’t expect there to be any children in a school (they used the word madrassa). C’mon, they said, it was Sunday, shouldn’t those kids have been in church?

Military spokesmodel Major Chris Belcher belched spoke: “This is another example of Al Qaida using the protective status of a mosque, as well as innocent civilians, to shield themselves.” Protective status? Shield themselves? Fat chance of that working. Burping Boy continued: “We are saddened by the innocent lives that were lost as a result of militants’ cowardice.” Nefarious cowardice. Or possibly cowardly nefariousness. Al Qaida fighters probably aren’t taking any advice about bravery from a man with a funny name whose job is to talk to reporters. Or from people who drop bombs on schools from airplanes high in the air.

The story the US is putting out is that the fighters kept the children with them by force. If true, then they’re shits too. Although, as Eli at Left I on the News asks, “wouldn’t that only work if the shields were, you know, visible?”

The War Against Nefariousness (TWAN) continues.

Destiny

Nouri al-Maliki was interviewed by Newsweek Friday (link, other link) .

He claimed that the people who attacked the Shiite Samarra mosque would probably also go after Sunni mosques in order to provoke rioting. Sure they would. He took credit for the relative lack of sectarian violence in the aftermath of this week’s attack, due to the “quick and wise reaction” of his government.

He said of the parade of American officials coming to pressure him this week that “Iraq is an Arab country and it is an Arab tradition to welcome guests, so, everyone is welcome to Iraq,” and would they please stop using the word pressure, he really doesn’t like that. And it’s not even necessary because “I am the person who most believes in national reconciliation.” He says he needs more time so that his work will be “written in stone.” That does tend to slow down the steno pool.


Evidently, every time he and Bush speak, they try to one-up each other by denouncing their respective elected legislatures: “Every time I meet President Bush through the videoconference I tell him that I have a hard time dealing with the Parliament or the political blocs. He says, ‘I have a worse time dealing with the Congress.’ And when he says, ‘I have aggravation in the Congress,’ I say, ‘I have bigger aggravation with parliament.’” They do this for hours. Good times, good times.

Maliki denounced the new US policy of arming Sunni sheiks slash warlords slash death squads in Anbar, saying “I believe that the Coalition forces do not know the backgrounds of the tribes” and “They make mistakes by arming tribes sometimes, and this is dangerous because this will create new militias.” I wondered how long it would take him to respond publicly to the news that the US was supporting military forces not subordinate to the central government. And then only to an American magazine.

He described the American invasion and occupation of Iraq in this way: “Destiny wanted to bring together two people who strongly stick to their principles.” Destiny has a sick sense of humor.

Fashion

Now Lou Dobbs is complaining that Mexican lepers are coming into this country and taking jobs away from American lepers, or something.

Secretary of War Robert Gates has made a “surprise” visit to Iraq. How does he stack up against previous surprise visitors?

more at twiigs.com...

There is terror going on

Romney on Bush: “Everything he does, he does from the standpoint of what is best for the American people.”

Romney channeling Bush: “If you look across the world you can recognize that there is terror going on.”

I just found some old clippings of New York Magazine competitions from the ‘90s (and one from 1982!). I’ll type up selected entries from some of them and post them every so often. I did this in old posts, and have collected those comps here.

This is from the 4/20/92 issue, songs from the crap musicals based on a good book, movie etc. You’ll have to guess the original source; New York didn’t list them because its readers are soooo literate that, unlike me, they didn’t have to google the entry
“Can’t This Be Our Little Secret?” – Arthur Dimmesdale
because they’d already know that that referred to The Scarlet Letter. If I had to figure them out, so do you. If I didn’t figure them out, I didn’t bother typing them up. Some have multiple songs, which I’ve grouped together. You’ll get the idea.

“If I Were a Hit Man” – Michael Corleone
“We’re Going to the Mattresses, They’re Sleeping With the Fishes” – Entire Company

“Can’t We Get Some Ice Cream First?” – Lolita

“A Lovely Day for a Ride in the Cah” – JFK
“Waiting for President K to Come Our War” – Oswald and People of Dallas
“The Grassy Knoll” – CIA and Mafia
“Oh, My Suit, My Poor Pink Suit” – Jackie

“How Can We Ignore the Guy Next Door?” - Nick
“What’s New, Old Sport?” - Jay
“Is This Absolutely Where You Live?” – Daisy
“Shirts, Shirts” - Jay
“East Egg, West Egg, All Around the Sound” – Entire Cast

“Look at Me, I’m Madame B!” – Emma

“Honey, I’m Home” - Agamemnon

“The Silence of the Lambs When You Are Gone.”
“Hey, There’s a Moth in Her Mouth” - Clarice

“Decisions, Decisions” – Solomon

“I Hate Spunk” - Mr. Grant
“Hey, Mare” - Rhoda

“My Mama Done Ptolemy” - Cleo
“It’s Only a Papyrus Moon” - Antony
“B-A-D-D- A-S-P-P, Bad Asp” - Cleo

“Here’s Atticus” - Townspeople
“Boo Who?” - Arthur Radley

“Don’t Cry for Me, Oklahoma” - Ma Joad
“I’m Gonna Wash That Dust Right Outta My Hair” - Rose of Sharon

“Call Me Ish, My Game Is Fish” - Ishmael

“There is Nothing Like a Thane” - Chorus
“I Enjoy Being a Churl” - Macbeth
“Greymalkin’s Gonna Clear Up, Put On a Happy Face” - Three Weird Sisters
“Ripp’d Untimely Rag” - Macduff
“Into the Woods” - Macduff

“Boo” - Voice on the Battlement
“Are We Having Fun Yet?” - Gertrude, King
“I’ve Got Those Uncle-Killed-My-Father-Stole-the-Throne-and-Married-Mother Blues” - Hamlet
“Nothing Could Be Finer Than to Be in Asia Minor” - Agamemnon
“Oh, the Hoplites and the Helots Should Be Pals” - Achilles and Myrmidons
“The Last Time Paris Saw Me” - Helen
“A Big Wooden Horse, of Course, of Course” - Priam and Trojans

“A Suitcase Full of Dreams” - Willy
“Attention Must Be Paid” - Linda
“What Am I, Invisible?” - Happy

“We Got Trouble, Right Here in Theban City” - Mr. Oed
“It’s a Wise Child” - Oedipus
“Break the Jinx, Go See the Sphinx, You Little Minx” - Village People
“I Know Something You Don’t Know” – Tiersius
“Uh-Oh” - Jocasta
“I’m A – What?” - Oedipus
“It’s Funny Till Somebody Loses an Eye” – Creon

Or not at all

Bush, in his weekly radio address, called for the abolition of the American government. “The American people expect us to spend their tax dollars wisely, or not at all”. “The American people do not want to return to the days of tax and spend policies.” No taxing, no spending, no government, no problem.

Wherein your humble blogger’s motives are reconsidered

Headline of the day: “Rushdie ‘Humbled’ by Knighthood.” Er, isn’t that rather missing the point of the whole knighthood thing?

Kurt Waldheim, in a document released after his death yesterday, still denies having committed any war crimes, but does acknowledge having taken an “unambiguous position far too late on Nazi crimes,” because, he says, of the “hectic pace of an overloaded international life.” Busy busy busy, what with running the UN and covering up his past, there just weren’t enough hours in the day. He even reached out to the people who hounded him: “I pay respect to all those who confronted me critically and ask them to reconsider their motives and, if possible, grant me reconciliation.” Hmm, let me reconsider my “motives.” Reconsidering... Reconsidering... Reconsidering... Nope, I still don’t like Nazis or torture or mass murder, so I would have to say no, Kurt.

Current UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon managed to come up with this to say about his predecessor: “He was a man who had lived history.” Yeah, that was kind of the problem.

Speaking of war crimes, the Haditha hearings continue. Sharratt’s lawyer says he should get a medal. Sharratt says the reason he went into the house with guns blazing was that he saw male Iraqis repeatedly “turkey peeking” at him over a wall. Clearly they were asking for it.

The Haditha massacre is the subject of a forthcoming motion picture by the director of the documentaries (although the Haditha film is a dramatization) “Kurt & Courtney,” “Biggie and Tupac,” and “Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam.” Which may just make him uniquely qualified to make sense of the Iraq war.

Plus ça change...

Holy Joe Lieberman has another Wall Street Journal op-ed article on Iraq. He insists that in the five months between his trips to Iraq in December 2006 and May 2007, “almost everything about the American war effort in Baghdad has changed”. Except for Joe Lieberman’s Wall Street Journal op-ed pieces, which haven’t changed in the slightest.

He castigates critics of the war for failing to understand, um, something:

Some argue that the new strategy is failing because, despite gains in Baghdad and Anbar, violence has increased elsewhere in the country, such as Diyala province. This gets things backwards: Our troops have succeeded in improving security conditions in precisely those parts of Iraq where the “surge” has focused. Al Qaeda has shifted its operations to places like Diyala in large measure because we have made progress in pushing them out of Anbar and Baghdad.

Yay! Al Qaida is killing people in Diyala province! That means we’re winning!

Lieberman doesn’t say if he’s planning another trip to Iraq, perhaps to Diyala to explain the good news to them.

I’ve been told I’m done

The alliterative Peter Pace explained that he had refused to just retire, he made Gates fire him. Because it would be a bad message to the troops if he “voluntarily walked off the battlefield. That is unacceptable as a leadership thing, in my mind.” How does this thing called leadership thing work?: “I need to be told that I’m done. I’ve been told I’m done.” So, having made some point, now he’ll be retiring. In other words, he’d have happily stayed in the military another two years as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but (and I guess this is a good message to the troops) give him anything less than the top job and he’s outta there. By the way, Pace may have convinced himself that this is a leadership thing, that he’s acting all manly and leadership-y, but one way or another he was going to be out of a job in September, so all he’s actually doing is spinning a decision made by others. If he had known the difference between those two things, maybe he’d have been a little better at his job.


This morning, Bush attended the National Hispanic Prayer Breakfast. “This prayer breakfast has come a long way since it started five years ago. We could have held it in a little tiny closet. And now, as Luis tells me, it’s oversubscribed the minute it gets announced. It’s a good sign for our country, isn’t it? People want to come together in prayer.” 1) Why does he assume it’s the prayer part and not the breakfast part that is popular? Who doesn’t like huevos rancheros? 2) Yes, there is something about the last five years of your presidency that makes people want to pray, in a no-atheists-in-foxholes kind of way. Good sign for our country, though? Not so much.

This is Bush afterwards, in the White House Rose Garden, clearly uplifted by all that national Hispanic praying.


Little known fact about Rose Garden protocol: one must sieg heil the white roses, but never, ever, the pink ones.


Then he hopped to Air Force One


for a trip to the Boys & Girls Club of South Central Kansas, which he called “a beautiful facility full of beautiful people,” where he was amazed by an exhibition of levitation. Or maybe the Secret Service took away their jump ropes.

Astonishing signs of normalcy

John Negroponte, now in the State Dept, says that the enemy in Baghdad is “increasingly desperate.” As I said in some old post, for four years now the enemy has always been described as becoming more desperate, never once as getting a little less desperate. So that’s pretty desperate, is what I’m saying. Here’s a 2003 Billmon post on this particular cliché, which was getting old even then, and now just seems a little, um, desperate.

Negroponte called the bombing of the minarets at Samarra both “a deliberate attempt by al Qaeda to sow dissent and inflame sectarian strife among the people of Iraq” and “further evidence of the enemy’s indiscriminate violence”. Dude doesn’t know what the word indiscriminate means.

You know, even if Petraeus is right that “If you drive around Baghdad, you’ll find astonishing signs of normalcy in perhaps half to two-thirds of the city,” he’s probably missing a sign of lack of normalcy: the convoy of armored vehicles that is the only way he can drive around Baghdad and live to tell the tale.

Bush gave yet another damn speech, to the Associated Builders and Contractors, and I only skimmed it, so there.

PAST TENSES ARE NOT HIS FRIEND: “Since I’ve took office...”

Most of the speech was on the immigration bill, because if there’s one thing builders and contractors can’t stand, it’s illegal alien workers. “And so the bill we’re talking about says, okay, enough is enough when it comes to document forgery”. This is Bush’s new favorite phrase. In the past couple of weeks, he’s declared that enough is enough in Darfur, and enough is enough for Kosovo independence.

In Iraq, he says, “The population is tired of al Qaeda. They’re tired of murder.” As Samuel Johnson said, when you’re tired of murder...

ON THE SURGE, THE DECIDER DECIDED: “The sectarian violence was getting more severe. And I had a choice. It’s what Presidents do. They make decisions. And that’s what you do. You make decisions. I made a decision.”

CAPTION CONTEST:





And here’s a bonus – if that’s the word I’m looking for – picture of Bush & Cheney in the Oval Office this morning.

An unqualified success

Tonight Bush went to the aptly-named and no doubt delicious “2007 President’s Dinner,” of which he said, “The only way to call this dinner is an unqualified success.”

In his speech, he only found two things “interesting”: 1) “It is interesting that David Petraeus, our commander on the ground, has declared that al Qaeda is the number-one enemy to the people of Iraq.” 2) “Isn’t it interesting, my dad fought the Japanese, I’m making peace with the Japanese.”

If you’re wondering about that last one, no, he hasn’t started and ended a war with Japan without you noticing. He means that 60 years after World War II, he can sit down with the Japanese prime minister and “talk about peace in the world.” Which isn’t really the same thing as making peace. But then they also, he says, “sit at the table talking about making sure that the leader of North Korea doesn’t get a nuclear weapon.” Um, has no one told him that North Korea has had nukes for a while now?

Anyway, now he’s making peace with the Japanese. “Something happened. What happened was, liberty took hold in Japan. Liberty has the capacity to convert enemies into allies.” You know what else happened? We “converted” two of their cities into charcoal. Somehow in all these anecdotes about Koizumi and Graceland and “Japanese-style democracy” that he tells over and over and over, that part always gets left out of his little just-so story. Maybe Japan isn’t really a template for how the United States should, in Bush’s words, “spread freedom far and wide across the globe.”


But for Bush, it is. Elsewhere in the speech, he says, “Our strategy is, in the short-term, to take the fight to the enemy and defeat them where we find them. In the long-term, the way to defeat an ideology of hate is with an ideology of hope.” Got that? Short term: mass slaughter; long-term: ideology of hope. How could that possibly fail?

He doesn’t see why, correctly and repeatedly and simply explained, that policy wouldn’t be tremendously popular in this country: “And I believe if our candidates take the message of doing what is necessary to protect the American people, and take the message, the hopeful message of helping others realize the blessings of liberty, that we will retake the House and retake the Senate, and hold the White House in 2008.” Can’t wait to see the bumper stickers. 2006 elections or no 2006 elections, dude still thinks his policies are wildly popular.


Speaking of wildly popular, it does seem as if Bush’s surprisingly cheap Timex was not stolen, that he really did take it off because he was afraid some Albanian would steal it. This action has made him just a little bit less popular in Albania than he was.

The price is worth paying

Bush issued a statement about the latest attack on the Samarra mosque. He’s against it. The US will send troops to the area to guard the rubble, and to “restor[e] calm and security to the area.” The Samarranians will no doubt be interested to hear that their area was calm and secure right up until this morning. Bush also said, “The United States also stands ready to help the Iraqi people rebuild and restore this holy shrine.” As I said last year, when he made the same offer about the dome, the Shiites really don’t want your infidel fingerprints on their holy site.

Iraqi PM Maliki, who just yesterday said, “we have eliminated the danger of sectarian war,” has an op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal today, suggesting that “Americans keen to understand the ongoing struggle for a new Iraq can be guided by the example of their own history,” specifically, the American Civil War, which “took hundreds of thousands of lives but ended in the triumph of freedom and the birth of a great power.” And Iraq is just like that. Well, the taking of hundreds of thousands of lives part; obviously not the triumph of freedom part or the birth of a great power part.

He gives a little history of Iraq. Under the Baathist Party, “Countless people were put to death on the smallest measure of suspicion.” Thank god that could never happen in Iraq today. Also, “Wars were waged by that regime and our national treasure was squandered without the consent of a population that was herded into costly and brutal military campaigns.” I can’t even imagine what it would be like to live under such a regime. Oh, wait.

He uses the word “national” a lot, as if repetition will convince us that Iraq isn’t irreconcilably fragmented: national army, national government, national interests, national ideas, and, most laughably, national reconciliation.

He says that freedom “is never cheap but the price is worth paying if we are to rescue our country.”

He doesn’t say precisely what that price will be.

Also, I don’t recall Iraq being a whole lot of help during our Civil War.

Where we know what to do...

Bush today received the report he commissioned after the Virginia Tech shootings. The key to preventing another such event seems to be “information sharing,” a phrase Bush repeated three times in a single sentence.


From the grins on these clowns’ faces – Jeebus, just look at Gonzales, he looks like a 5-year old just told he’s getting ice cream and pony rides – I can only assume that the information that 32 people were slaughtered at Virginia Tech less than two months ago was not shared.

This picture from the White House website shows how serious Bush is about the report. He has his special readin’ glasses on and everything.


My favorite recommendation in the report: “Where We Know What to Do, We Have to be Better at Doing It.”

Meanwhile, the House passed a bill that would require states report to the federal government people who aren’t supposed to buy guns because of mental problems. Veterans receiving disability benefits because of mental-health problems, however, will have their gun-purchasing rights restored automatically. Oh good.

He’s the Understander

Polls show that if Fred Thompson entered the presidential race, he would be preferred by Republicans over everyone except Giuliani. Does that mean Republicans think that “9/11” is a better tv show than “Law and Order?”

Bush met with Republican senators today, to push them not to block the immigration bill, which he ominously called “the product,” saying he hoped Harry Reid “has that same sense of desire to move the product that I do”.


In his brief statement after the meeting, he used the word “understand” twice. He uses it often, and in two distinctive ways. Applied to himself, it is meant in the usual cognitive sense. Today, for example, he said, “Some members in there believe that we need to move a comprehensive bill, some don’t, I understand that.” Often he says that he “fully understands” something. That’s usually good for a giggle. But when applied to other people, he quite often means that they agree with some opinion of his. Because he does not acknowledge the legitimacy or often even the existence of other people’s opinions, he treats his own opinions and preferences as if they were factual statements about the universe. Thus this peculiar construction: “I want to thank those senators on both sides of the aisle who understand the time is now to move a comprehensive piece of legislation.”

Our spirit is not broken. Although everything else is.

Haditha massacre hearings update: last week Lt Col. Chessani tried to call an expert witness on Islamic culture, to prove... well, what exactly we’ll never know because the court decided hearing from a Benedictine monk would look bad in Iraq. This week we’ve learned that Corp. Justin Sharratt said in a 2006 statement that he believed the entire Haditha area (pop. of city 90,000) was hostile, so he was free to “use any means necessary and my training to eliminate the hostile threat.” For example, after shooting one armed man (or so he says), he took out several others. That’s the “any means necessary” part. Here’s the “training” part: “I could not tell while I was shooting if they were armed or not, but I felt threatened.” Of course he felt threatened; after all, there were Iraqis around, and he considered every single Iraqi to be hostile.

Although, to be fair, I don’t imagine Sharratt is the most popular guy in Haditha.

There has been a parade of Americans visiting Maliki to tell him to, you know, accomplish something. Anything, really. Maliki, while saying that “There are lots of difficulties that are not well understood from outside,” also claims that there have been many successes that aren’t well understood from outside Maliki’s head. He says that Petraeus’s report in September “should list the accomplishments.” For example, “Our spirit is not broken.” I’m not sure “accomplishment” is the precise word for “our spirit is not broken.” What else’ve ya got? “Another success is that no one is above the law.” Or below it, because, really, what law? Also, and I’ll reprint in full the every-so-slightly sceptical NYT sentence containing the quote, “Without providing evidence, he added, ‘we have eliminated the danger of sectarian war.’”

Bush in Bulgaria: I call him George

Bush went to Bulgaria today.


He met with its President Parvanov, of whom he said, “I call him George. He calls me George.” Parvanov probably calls himself by his actual name, which is Georgi.

He praised Bulgaria for joining the EU and NATO: “These are big achievements for this country, and the people of Bulgaria ought to be proud of the achievements that they have achieved.” Cuz they’ve, you know, achieved them.


The forthcoming confidence vote on Alberto Gonzales made George positively incoherent with rage: “I, frankly, find it interesting that in -- a so-called important subject they need to get to would be to pass a political resolution on my Attorney General that’s going to have no bearing on whether he serves in office, or not. ... this process has been drug out a long time, which says to me it’s political.” You know, because of the drugging. “[H]e -- they haven’t said, here’s -- you’ve done something wrong, Attorney General Gonzales. And therefore, I ascribe this lengthy series of news stories and hearings as political. And I’ll make the determination if I think he’s effective, or not, not those who are using an opportunity to make a political statement on a meaningless resolution.”


Sounds like he needed a little something to take the edge off. Fortunately, there was a lunch, with toasts,


and that got him in a more mellow mood. “And I care deeply about the Bulgarian nurses,” he said.

Don’t we all, George, don’t we all.

The Sopranos conclusion (no spoilers)

I have a few thoughts. But so anyone who hasn’t seen it yet and plans to do so won’t accidentally read about the thrilling series finale – who expected Furio to come out of nowhere and throw himself in front of the bullet the Russian from the Pine Barrens meant for Carmela? – I’ve put it here.

We cannot let them get away with it

An Orthodox rabbinical court has placed a curse on anyone who participates in a gay pride parade in Jerusalem. And the cops guarding the parade. “[T]hey will feel in their souls a curse, a bad spirit will come over them and haunt them, they will never be cleansed of their sins, from the judgment of God, in their bodies, their souls and their finances.”

Ousmane Sembene, Senegal’s most famous novelist (God’s Bits of Wood) and film director (I especially like “Ceddo” and “The Camp at Thiaroye”) has died. Yes, it’s a small country to be the most famous novelist and director from, but he was still pretty good.

Holy Joe Lieberman went on Face the Nation (pdf) (or video if you can bear it) and called for bombing Iran, because if we bomb Iran, everything will be fine in Iraq. In a five-minute interview he said that Iranians and/or people trained in Iran are: “killing American soldiers and Iraqis,” “killing Americans,” “killing Americans in Iraq”, “coming back into Iraq to kill our soldiers”, “coming in and killing Americans”, “have killed as many as 200 American soldiers”, and “come in and kill Americans”.

“It’s just--we cannot let them get away with it.”

I’d say something sarcastic, but it’s time for The Sopranos.

They love him in Albania (they can keep him)

Thomas Ricks of the WaPo writes of Pentagon plans for Korea-style bases in Iraq, “One of the guiding principles, according to two officials here, is that the United States should leave Iraq more intelligently than it entered.” Talk about setting the bar low.

Speaking of WaPo journalists, Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s “Imperial Life in the Emerald City” will be made into a movie. With Matt Damon.

George Bush is in the only country in the world that actually likes him, the only country where he could risk going out in public,


the only country whose prime minister would describe him as “the greatest and most distinguished guest we have ever had in all times” (well, almost the only country, but Tony Blair’s out by the end of the month).

Oh, sorry, it’s Albania, which Bush called “a country that has casted off the shackles of a very repressive society”.


(And by the way, headline of the day, from the White House website: “President Bush Makes Toast in Albania.” White or wheat? No, wait, I’ll bet it was raisin.)

Bush uttered a prime example of the “in other words” genre: “I commended the Prime Minister for the progress that Albania has made in defense reform -- in other words, part of becoming a member of NATO requires a reformation of the defense forces.” Followed two sentences later by another: “In other words, you’re just not accepted into membership; you just can’t say, I want to join”. He suggested that, “The politicians have got to work together now to meet the standards. They’ve got to set aside political differences and focus on what’s right for Albania.” It’s generally considered bad form to lecture condescendingly to politicians in other countries as if they were Democrats and to accuse them of partisanship.


On the subject of Kosovo, a rather sputtering “in other words”: “In other words, I put a sense of -- I made it clear that -- two things, one that we need to get moving; and two, that the end result is independence.”


A reporter began a question, “Yesterday you called for a deadline for U.N. action on Kosovo...” Bush responded, “A couple of points on that. First of all, I don’t think I called for a deadline. I thought I said, time -- I did? What exactly did I say? I said, ‘deadline’? Okay, yes, then I meant what I said.” Here is what he did say yesterday:

Q: And the deadline for the Kosovo independence --

PRESIDENT BUSH: What? Say that again?

Q: Deadline for the Kosovo independence?

PRESIDENT BUSH: A decline?

Q: Deadline, deadline.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Deadline. Beg your pardon. My English isn’t very good. (Laughter.)

For example, as with Iraq, he literally does not know the meaning of the word deadline.

Here Bush is seen arriving at Tirana Airport and receiving the traditional gift of flowers and a 12-year old girl.

And I was in awe, and it was a moving experience for me

Condi Rice explained in an interview that the thing about Iraq being like Korea is a metaphor, not an analogy. So that’s okay, then.

Bush had a brief press conference with Italian PM Prodi (who thinks that all American high schools offer Italian classes) (which may not be true, but many of us have picked up some practical Italian from The Sopranos).


Mostly, Bush talked about his meeting with the pope (sadly, the two did not have a joint press conference), who he again called “His Holy Father.” When they met, he called him “sir,” which is evidently such a breach of protocol that people gasped. “First, I’ll give you an impression. I was talking to a very smart, loving man. ... And I was in awe, and it was a moving experience for me.”


Pope Benny evidently expressed some concern about Christian Iraqis – or as Bush put it, “he’s worrisome about the Christians inside Iraq being mistreated by the Muslim majority” – but none about the non-Christian Iraqis dying every day – “We didn’t talk about ‘just war.’” What exactly is the point of a pope, if when meeting a man in charge of an unjust war, he doesn’t even bring the subject up?


Bush said that the decision not to renominate the alliterative Peter Pace “speaks to the U.S. Congress and the climate in the U.S. Congress.” Cloudy with a slight chance of oversight?

The president talked a lot about what we talked about

Yesterday at the G8 summit, Bush finally showed up, not looking hung over at all:


“I keep telling you, I’m Felipe Calderon, the president of Mexico.” “I don’t care who you are, Pepe, just get me a beer, pronto.”
“You’re a genie, aren’t you, genie? Get me a beer, genie.”
Then he went to Gdansk, to meet tiny Polish President Kaczynski, or possibly tiny Polish Prime Minister Kaczynski (they’re twins, you know).


Said Bush, “We really thank you for inviting us to Jurata. Thank you for the walk in the woods.” I’m pretty sure Kaczynski tried to ditch him in the woods, but couldn’t out-run him with those stubby legs.

Bush said, “The president talked a lot about what we talked about.” The way he describes it, it’s almost like you’re there.

“One thing I do want to do is praise this good country for being so strong for freedom.” He hasn’t learned a new adjective since he was five years old, has he?

By the way, ask gay Poles how strong they feel Kaczynski is for freedom.

He thanked Poland for sending troops to Iraq; “The people of Iraq will never forget it.” Because they never knew it in the first place.

“We discussed, as well, the efforts by Poland to help people who are -- need to be free from governments that are -- darken their vision. I thank you very much for your leadership for Belarus”. Either he’s saying that the little twin is leading Belarus, or that Belarus’s government needs to be overthrown. Possibly both.

He affirmed plans to piss Putin off by installing missile interceptors that won’t work on Polish soil to “enhance... the security of the entire continent against rogue regimes who might be willing to try to blackmail free nations. That’s the true threat of the 21st century.” In case you were wondering what the true threat of the 21st century is.

“All in all, we had the kind of conversation you’d expect strong allies to have. It was candid, it was over a really good meal...” You know, the kind of meal you’d expect strong allies to have. Not with brussel sprouts. Strong allies don’t eat brussel sprouts. “...and I’m looking forward to bringing you back, Mr. President, to the White House.” Er, I don’t think you get to keep him.

A divisive ordeal

Secretary of War Robert Gates had made a momentous decision: saying that “a divisive ordeal at this point is not in the interests of the country or of our military services, our men and women in uniform,” he has decided to replace the alliterative Peter Pace as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff because his confirmation hearings would have been “contentious” and “backward-looking.” So the divisive ordeal Gates wished to spare our men and women in uniform was... the sight on C-SPAN of Pace being asked some questions about his previous job performance, possibly in a harsh tone of voice. His replacement is, Reader points out in comments, the alliterative Michael Mullen.


Gates makes it clear that he thinks Pace the better man for the job, and that it is solely the contentious hearings at which he balked. Not the vote, which he knows he’d win. He also said he made his decision after he was warned about the hearings being all contentious-y by senators. Of course it’s obvious that the Democrats would be a problem, and I’m sure the prospect of listening to Joe Biden go on and on makes us all feel tired, but I suspect what Gates was told that made him bail on Pace was that the Republican senators weren’t prepared to cheer-lead for him this time.

What happens in Heiligendamm, stays in Heiligendamm

Sheriff Clark, the white supremacist responsible for so much violence against civil rights activists in Selma in the 1960s, has died. I must say, I didn’t know he was defeated for re-election in 1966, or that he went to prison for marijuana smuggling in 1978. Read the NYT obit.

It will be interesting to see how big a scandal BAE Systems’s bribing of Prince Bandar develops into. On the one hand it’s a case of graft on a massive scale, and Tony Blair intervened personally to quash a legal investigation, but on the other hand it’s not exactly news that arms companies and Saudi princes are corrupt. Caught red-handed, Blair could only pretend that nothing serious had taken place. Hell, bribing foreigners wasn’t even illegal in Britain until 2002, and, he said, those contracts provided thousands of jobs for British workers in the arms trade. Of course, anyone who pays a bribe to secure a contract can say the same thing, but usually don’t have Tony’s self-delusion.

Headline of the day: “Cops Raid Wrong Place, Kick Man in Groin.” Is there a right place to kick a man in the groin?

Okay, as I wrote that, I realized some of you would read that and instantly go to comments to answer, “The Oval Office.” I know how you people think.

So you’ll just have to settle for watching Bush get shit-faced:

“Thanks, fraulein, that’ll do for a start.”

“Heh heh, I got ‘em all fooled in ta thinkin’ this’s a non-alcoholic beer.”

“One more beer an’ I go in for the neck rub.”

“What Laura don’t know won’t hurt me.”

“An’ another thing...” Bush says as he goes into Cliff Claven mode.


Oh, I know these are cheap shots, but they’re satisfying. So you people want a caption contest so you can join in, don’t you? (I said I know how you people think).

Also, what on earth is going on with Sarkozy?


(Update: the next morning, Bush missed meetings and was said to be “resting in his room with a stomach ailment.” Mm hmm.)

And the missile defense system should say, we can work together

While in the Czech Republic, Bush was presented by Defense Minister Vlasta Parkanova with a CD in which she sang (she used to be a jazz musician; the former president was a playwright: it’s a Czech thing) a song in praise of the missile defense base to the tune of an old Communist-era song, “Good Afternoon, Mr. Gagarin.”

I have some pictures from yesterday to burn off:


“Ew, he’s sniffing his hand again.”
“Oh please mein Gott, not another back rub.”
At the G8, Bush and Blair met for the very last time of Blair’s premiership. So many memories, all of which Blair will spend the rest of his life trying to repress. Unsuccessfully, if there is any justice in the world.


Someday, he’ll be a real boy.
The main subjects were AIDS in Africa and global warming. Bush bounced back and forth between them disconcertingly: “And as we discuss global climate change, it’s really important we don’t forget those who are dying.” “Over the past three years, anti-retroviral drugs has been extended from -- to over a million people, up from 50,000. So it’s important to debate the environment and discuss it.”

On global warming, Bush said, “I view our role as a bridge between people in Europe and others and India and China.” There’s a joke about rising water levels in there somewhere, but not a very funny joke.

He said the US will reduce its use of gas by 20% in 10 years, “And the way you do that is through technologies and ethanols and battery technologies”. Many technologies and many ethanols.

There were other issues discussed. “But enough is enough in Darfur.” Although, “I don’t know how long it’s going to take for people to hear the call to save lives.”

Blair also spoke, defending his decision to quash an investigation into the massive bribes British Aerospace Engineering paid to Saudi Prince Bandar – “my job is to give advice as to whether that [the investigation] is a sensible thing”, what with the strategic interests and British jobs. Not even a hint that corruption might be a, you know, bad thing at all.


On the missile defense system, Bush laid out the fact: “In other words, the facts are, is that -- the fact is this...”

What’s important? “[I]t is important for Russia and Russians to understand that I believe the Cold War ended”. Well, pretty sure anyway, he was kind of drunk that year.

“I repeat, Russia is not a threat. They’re not a military threat. They’re not something that we ought to be hyperventilating about.”

Oh, who wouldn’t hyperventilate?
What should we be hyperventilating about? Some people would say, talking missile defense systems: “And the missile defense system should say, we can work together.”

The process and progress move at different paces and different places

Austria has lowered the voting age to 16. Will this be followed elsewhere?

Bush had a press conference at the G8 summit. Before he took questions, he felt he had to say something about his speech yesterday: “The purpose of the speech is to remind our allies and those who are wondering as to whether or not the United States is firmly committed to democracy that we are.” So that clears that up.

He previewed his upcoming chat with Putin about the missile defense stations: “And we’ll have a good dialogue about how we can constructively work together to deal with -- modernize our capacity to deal with the threat to the -- the true threats.” Yeah, that’ll be a good dialogue, all right. He says it’s okay that Putin is threatening to re-target missiles on European targets, because, “I don’t think Vladimir Putin intends to attack Russia -- I mean, Europe.” In fact, he twice says that Russia won’t attack Europe. It will not escape Russia’s notice that Bush doesn’t consider Russia to be part of Europe. He says we don’t need to respond militarily to any re-targeting “because we’re not at war with Russia.”

He explained the necessity of a missile shield: “I mean, if somebody pops up with a weapon and says, hands up, people will say, well, how come we didn’t have a shield?” They’ll also be wondering why someone with a nuclear missile is saying “hands up.” “And so it’s -- I think we need to do both. I think we need to protect ourselves of what might happen, and then work collaboratively to make sure it doesn’t happen.”

Protect ourselves of what might happen? Prepositions are really not his friend. He also warned about the dangers of “cells moving through our societies with the intent upon killing”.

He managed to portray Putin’s threats of nuclear confrontation as a positive sign. A reporter asked if Putin had some “political purpose.” Bush responded, “It’s interesting you would ask the question, do you think he is trying to position himself at home -- thereby meaning that he is concerned about public opinion, which is a sign that there is a -- when public opinion influences leadership, it is an indication that there is involvement of the people.” So war-like threats are a sign of a vibrant democratic process. Tell me again, why are we “firmly committed to democracy”?

Of course, there’s firmly committed, and there’s firmly committed. About Musharaf: “And in terms of the democracy issues, he’s going to have to deal with it. ... democracy is -- it’s a lot more established in Pakistan than some of the other nations I mentioned. And there’s upcoming elections. And what you’re seeing is a lot of posturing about the election process, and it’s not perfect. Either was our democracy perfect for 100 years when we enslaved people.” Posturing about the election process?

He warned against demanding changes “overnight,” touting “incremental reforms” in Saudi Arabia. He said, “The process and progress move at different paces and different places”. Let’s stop for a moment to marvel at the sophistication of that sentence, with its not one but two internal rhyme schemes. Oh sure, he screwed up when he said “and” instead of “in,” and he’s excusing despotic states, but, hey, two internal rhyme schemes.

He continued, making the point that while democracy is all well and good, there are more important matters at stake: “and the role of the United States is to help encourage them along, while at the same time achieving certain national objectives. It just so happens that the key national objective in the beginning of the 21st century is to make sure we don’t get attacked again and innocent people get murdered. And so we can do both. We can say that in the long run, the best way to secure your society is through liberty. In the short run, let’s work collaboratively to protect ourselves.”

On Iraq: “it should frighten the American people that al Qaeda is active in Iraq looking for a safe haven from which to launch further attacks.” Dammit, why aren’t you people more frightened?

About the Iraq-South Korea comparison: “It’s not to say that the cultures were the same, or the difficulties in the different countries are the same. It is to say, however, that the U.S. can provide a presence in order to give people confidence necessary to make decisions that will enable democracies to emerge, and say to other people, step back and let the democracies emerge.”

Says cellulosic ethanol “will help nations once that becomes able to compete in the market.” Bush can mangle a sentence that badly but somehow they taught him to say “cellulosic ethanol.”

On carbon emissions: “I said I’m for sitting together with the nations to sit down and discuss a way forward.” So there’ll be sitting involved.

And it will be at a table: “you’re not going to have greenhouse gas emissions that mean anything unless all nations, all emitters are at the table.” And you do not want to be near the table with all the emitters, if you know what I mean.

Always end on a flatulence joke, that’s my philosophy.

Republican debate: Press 1 for English, my friends

I was multi-tasking during the debate, so this is somewhat sketchy. The pictures in this post illustrate the many hand gestures of the Republican Party.

Transcript.

McCain, who kept calling everyone “My friends” (9 times), because he’s very very lonely, castigated Hillary for calling Iraq George Bush’s war, says that he never called Bosnia and Kosovo Bill Clinton’s wars. Says presidents don’t lose wars, nations lose wars. By electing idiot presidents, presumably.


Giuliani says it’s not a bumper sticker, it’s a real war. Of course if the bumper sticker said “Giuliani in 2008,” it would be both. He seems to be the biggest advocate of going to war against Iran now, and twice said that there was a danger of Iran giving nukes to terrorists. But pretty much everyone would use our nukes to prevent Iran having nukes.


About The War Against Terror (TWAT), Huckabee says about the terrorists it’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog. He’s from Arkansas, you know.

No one is in favor of allowing gays in the military.


Tancredo would ban all new immigration until we no longer have to press 1 for English.


When pre-screened audience members asked questions, one woman talked about her brother who died in Iraq. Brownback called his corpse an “incredible gift.”


Huckabee said pro-life philosophy shouldn’t just be about abortion but include concern for people after they leave.. and here you could see panic on his face as he realized where he had led himself, and he actually gulped... the womb.


They’re asked what job they would give George Bush. Tommy “Thomas” Thompson says he certainly wouldn’t send him to the United Nations, ha ha, but would send him on a lecture circuit talking “to the youth of America about honesty, integrity, perseverance, passion and serving the public.” Sort of like community service, like Robert Downey Jr. having to give talks about why drugs are bad, that kind of thing. Brownback wouldn’t use Bush, but might send him if there were tragedies overseas. Bush knows a lot about tragedies overseas, having caused so many. Tancredo would tell Bush to fuck off because that’s what Rove told him to do.


Unfortunately, the other candidates weren’t asked that question. In comments, what job do you think McCain would give Chimpy?

Bush in Prague: It’s beginning an important trip to Europe

Secretary of War Robert Gates said that if the “surge” is not progressing as fast as was promised, it’s because “al Qaeda and others are trying to make as much difficulty as possible for us and for the Iraqi government.” Isn’t it funny how wars go so much slower when there’s a, you know, enemy?

Irving “Scooter” Libby has been sentenced to 30 months in prison:


Bush is in the Czech Republic, or as he put it, “It’s beginning an important trip to Europe.” Is it? “Obviously, I’m off to the G8 later on this evening. I think it’s important for the people of the Czech Republic to know, however, that my first stop is here.” It’s also important that they know he had eggs for breakfast. And why does he bestow this honor on the Czech people? “People in this country took risk necessary so that the people could actually live in a free society.” “I find it inspiring to be in a country where the leadership and the people are willing to say, we listen carefully for the voices of those who have been imprisoned.” Scooter Libby?


On the stationing of Star Wars systems in the CR, which is deeply unpopular with the general public there, and even more with Vladimir Putin, he said, “Let me first talk about a general principle when it comes to relations with Russia. The Cold War is over. It ended.” See, and you didn’t think there was a general principle when it comes to relations with Russia.

“And so my attitude on missile defense is, is that this is a purely -- it’s not my attitude, it’s the truth -- it’s a purely defensive measure, aimed not at Russia, but at true threats.” You know, if there’s one thing Russia hates more than being thought of as a true threat, it’s not being thought of as a true threat.

“And my message will be, Vladimir -- I call him Vladimir -- that you shouldn’t fear a missile defense system.” Well, if being called by his first name doesn’t win him over, I don’t know what will.

Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek noted that in addition to missile defense and the visa issue that pisses off every country we’re supposed to be friendly with, “We talked about Southern Ossetia, Abkhazia, and Transdnestria conflicts.” I’m sure George had many deep insights to share on those subjects.


Bush also gave a little speech. On freedom. Which is in a war. Like that Cold War thing. The one that’s over, it ended. “Like the Cold War, it’s an ideological struggle between two fundamentally different visions of humanity. On one side are the extremists, who promise paradise, but deliver a life of public beatings and repression of women and suicide bombings.”


“The most powerful weapon in the struggle against extremism is not bullets or bombs -- it is the universal appeal of freedom.” That’s why Bush claims to like freedom so much: he thinks it’s a weapon. Also, if its appeal is universal, who are we using this weapon against?

Speaking of universal appeal, Bush says that “The communists had an imperial ideology that claimed to know the directions of history.” Bush would never be that arrogant: “Freedom is the design of our Maker, and the longing of every soul.”

So freedom is a weapon designed by God. What else is it? “Freedom is the best way to unleash the creativity and economic potential of a nation. Freedom is the only ordering of a society that leads to justice. And human freedom is the only way to achieve human rights.” Just in case you thought that human slavery was a way to achieve human rights.


He says “some” (Natan Sharansky, actually, who was in the room) have said that his goal of “ending tyranny in our world” makes him a “dissident president,” and “If standing for liberty in the world makes me a dissident, I wear that title with pride.” No it doesn’t make you a dissident. Vaclav Havel, also in the room, he was a dissident. Ask him what a real dissident experienced. In fact, you’re actually at a conference that’s lousy with real dissidents.

He has issued an order to all our ambassadors in “unfree” countries to meet with dissidents. I can’t wait to see if this policy of promoting freedom in unfree countries actually extends to issuing a list of countries we consider unfree.

He does name several, including Venezuela, where “elected leaders have resorted to shallow populism to dismantle democratic institutions and tighten their grip on power.” As I’ve mentioned before, the Bushies seem to think “populism” is a word that will make us gasp in horror. I’m not sure if shallow populism is better or worse than regular populism.


He says he will even ask “valued partners” like Egypt and Saudi Arabia and Pakistan to move toward freedom, but then praises them for their “steps to expand liberty and transparency.” He doesn’t say what these steps might be.

He says that Russian reforms have been “derailed.” He doesn’t say by whom.

Gumption!

We’re back. Evidently this isn’t a spam blog after all. Who knew?

Karzai says that in Afghanistan, “the war has been won. It is the finishing touch that we are getting at now.” And Afghan institutions will be “standing on their own feet in a few years.” Maybe you’d get to that finishing touch faster if you weren’t sitting down.

At the Wyoming Boys State Conference, a group dedicated to the eradication of the apostrophe, Dick Cheney, who attended the conference as a lad, answers a question: “How is my relationship with Harry Reid? Well, it’s better than my relationship with Pat Leahy.”

He also said that what we need in Iraq is “gumption.” “[W]e’ve got to have the gumption to stay in the fight and to get the job done.”

Can’t have too much gumption.

If you’re playing a Little League game in 1926 in the field behind Old Man Potter’s place.

There was a little dust-up at the OAS General Assembly today, with Condi Rice attacking Hugo Chavez for shutting down RCTV. And just because she more or less agrees with me on this one doesn’t mean she shouldn’t shut the fuck up. Venezuela responded by mentioning the border fence and Guantanamo. She said those issues are fully discussed on American tv, adding, “That is the point of press freedom, that in a democracy, the citizens of a country should have the assurance that the policies of their government will be held up for criticism by a free and independent press, and then we’ll just fucking ignore them, because who gives a shit what a bunch of pansy journalists think, George is the Decider, the Decider I tell you!” I may have made up that last part. Then again, I may not have.

This is the picture the NYT is using for a story about Romney’s business career:


Separated at birth?

A pure and absolute democrat

A prisoner in Texas due to be executed later this month is asking people to send him jokes he might use for his last words. He won’t work blue, though.

A Palestinian group, Righteous Sword of Islam, has issued a statement that puppies are nice.

What? It could happen. Just because they’re called the Righteous Sword of Islam doesn’t mean they don’t think that puppies are nice.

Oh, all right, in fact they ordered women appearing on Palestinian tv to wear veils or else they would be killed. “If necessary, we will behead and slaughter to preserve the spirit and morals of our people.” Gosh, there may be some sort of contradiction in there somewhere, but I just can’t put my finger on it...

Speaking of unclear on the concept, Vladimir Putin told reporters, “Of course, I am a pure and absolute democrat. But you know what the problem is – not a problem, a real tragedy – that I am alone. There are no such pure democrats in the world. Since Mahatma Gandhi, there has been no one.” I think he just wants Ben Kingsley to play him in the movie.

Democratic debate: There’s a teachable moment here

Transcript.


Edwards: The war on terror is a bumper sticker. We are not safer.


Clinton: The war on terror is not a bumper sticker (but it is one of those Garfield dolls stuck to a car window). We are safer.


Kucinich: There’s a teachable moment here.

Biden, yelling (he seemed to be yelling a lot of the time, as was Gravel): We’re not funding the war, we’re funding the safety of the troops until we can get 67 votes to end the war. So that’s okay, then.


Hillary tried to avoid have to admit that she didn’t read the National Intelligence Estimate before voting for the war. But when pressed (good for Wolf Blitzer, by the way) she tried to claim it was irrelevant and that she was “totally briefed” (also: “thoroughly briefed”) (insert your own “boxers or briefs” joke here). By whom she did not say (and it’s important, since the question is whether she knew of the dissent in the full report that she failed to read, and since the dissent turned out to be correct). She also blamed “the Iraqis” for failing to take advantage of the “opportunity” we gave them.


Hillary: Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was a transition policy. She really can’t admit that anything she or the Clinton administration did was a mistake.

Biden: “No one asked anyone else whether they’re gay in those holes – foxholes!”

Asked how they would use Bill Clinton, every single one wants to send him out of the country. Especially Hillary. Indeed, Hillary says, “I believe in using former presidents.” No one asked what job she would give Chimpy.


Edwards was a little worrisome on foreign policy issues. He talked about driving a wedge between the Iranian people and its leaders, but seemed to support Pervez Musharaf as being better for us than the results of democratic elections.

Hillary said that Musharaf has “become” anti-democratic. I was going to ask what her first clue was – his seizing power in a military coup? – but then realized this was another example of her refusal to admit past mistakes, since Musharaf came to power when Bill was in office.

Bill Richardson suggested pressuring China to pressure Sudan by threatening to boycott the Olympics. People tend to forget how damaging to his reputation Carter’s decision to boycott the 1980 Olympics was. I’d go so far as to say he would have been re-elected but for that.


Asked what they would do in their first 100 days, several of course said pull troops out of Iraq. Richardson would establish pre-school for every American. Well, I’m looking forward to that. I haven’t finger-painted in a really long time. Edwards would travel the world re-establishing America’s moral authority. He didn’t say how. Gravel would yell at people. Dodd would restore constitutional rights. Yay, Dodd!

Everything you need to know about the Democratic debate

CNN’s deputy political director Paul Steinhauser reports this on CNN’s blog on the Democratic debate: “MANCHESTER, New Hampshire (CNN) — You didn’t see it on TV, but Dennis Kucinich just dropped his pen. The congressman from Cleveland quickly bent down and quietly picked it up. I doubt any tv cameras caught him in the act, but we did. Call it a quick comeback by Kucinich to reclaim his pen.”

I’m recording it and may even watch it and might possibly even blog about it later, but now that you know about the pen thing, really, isn’t the suspense ruined?

I’d do lots of things

WIIIAI in exile, day 3. Now I know what RCTV feels like.

From the Haditha hearings yesterday, possibly the most nauseating sentence yet, from Major Sam Carrasco: “Why would we leave one of our fallen angels out in the street unless you’ve had a lot of contact?” The argument he’s making is that the fact that the Marines didn’t remove the body of the, um, fallen angel who was killed by the IED proved that they believed they really were in a firefight with insurgents. Alternately, it proves that they gave a higher priority to exacting revenge.

Fred Thompson has been doing interviews. Asked by the AP what his priorities as president would be, he responded “I’d do lots of things.” He did not elaborate. And he told the NYT that he’s just testing the waters about entering the Republican primary, but “The waters feel pretty warm, to tell you the truth.” Must... not... make... McCain... incontinence... joke...

A spitting contest, and the Iraq War. But I repeat myself.

Injury of the Week: “A 43-year-old German man was taken by helicopter to hospital in a critical condition after he fell off a second-storey balcony during a spitting contest with his 12-year-old son. The man lost his balance after thrusting too far forward, according to police.” (Reuters)

A point I’ve made repeatedly about the Haditha massacre cover-up, is that the military higher-up’s decided not to look too closely at the story that the civilians were all caught in cross-fire ignored the fact that that story came only after the first story, that they’d been killed by an IED, fell apart. Now we find out that many were not killed by grenades as Marines “cleared” houses, as was previously reported, but were shot execution-style, close enough to leave powder burns.

Haditha residents tried several times to inform the US military what had really happened. One did so the day after the massacre to a Capt. James Haynie, who “explained to him that whoever had told him this had lied, that Marines do not execute innocent civilians.” Haynie was the battalion’s... wait for it... “information” officer.

Acting democratically

Seems like not much more than a century that we were at war with Spain over who got to tell the Cubans what to do. And today Condi Rice was is in Spain, which she chided for not shunning Cuba like the anti-democratic pariah it is. En route, she told reporters, “I think democratic states have an obligation to act democratically, meaning, to support opposition in Cuba.” “Acting democratically,” is that what they’re calling it these days?

She also met the king, who she said “obviously is an important historic figure in the role that he played in allowing the transition of Spain from authoritarianism to dictatorship.” The transcript explains that she meant to say democracy, but I suspect that little glitch arose because she couldn’t remember the current official position on Francisco Franco, a dictator the US supported. Might get that straightened out before the plane lands and you start lecturing Spain about acting democratically, Condi.

In Spain, she held a joint press conference with Spanish Foreign Minister Miguel Moratinos, shown in this not-at-all-awkward picture,


and in this I-don’t-know-what-the-hell-is-going-on picture,


who said that he thought that over time Condi would become more convinced that the Spanish approach could work. According to the AP, “As Moratinos continued to speak, she looked at the crowd of reporters and silently mouthed what appeared to be the phrase, ‘Don’t hold your breath.’” Our chief diplomat, ladies and gentlemen.

From that press conference, here’s Condi pleasantly responding to a question,


but as scary as that picture was, I think if you stare at this next one for several seconds, you’ll agree that it’s quite a bit more disturbing.


If you accidentally looked at that picture for more than a few seconds, breathe steadily, in through the nose, out through the mouth, and click here.

Bush calls no fair

Bush on the immigration bill: “If you want to kill a bill, then you just go around America saying, this is amnesty. In other words, there are some words that illicit strong reactions from our fellow citizens. ... For those who call it amnesty, they’re just trying to, in my judgment, frighten people about the bill.” And if there’s one thing George Bush cannot abide, it’s politicians using words that illicit strong reactions in order to frighten people.

So many stupid Bush quotes, I can’t choose one for the post title, I love them all equally

Bush will be traveling to Europe soon, so he did a
bunch of quicky interviews with the European press yesterday.

“I am looking forward to my democracy speech,” he said. “I feel very strongly that the United States must take the lead in promoting democracy around the world -- even in places where it may not look like it could -- that it’s very hospitable, because I believe, ultimately, it is hospitable.”

He pooh poohed Pooty Poot’s objections to missile defense systems being installed in Eastern Europe: “My friend, Vladimir Putin, is making this to be a case where somehow this is going to jeopardize relations in Europe”. Somehow? You do know that the president of Russia has some say over the state of relations in Europe, don’t you? “The reason one advocates and works for a missile defense system is to protect free peoples from the launch of a missile from a hostile regime. Russia is not hostile. Russia is a friend.” Quod erat demonstrandum. “He thinks it’s aimed at him. It’s not. It’s aimed at rogue regimes that would use a missile to achieve political objective or to create unrest.” And in another interview: “and my personal message to Vladimir Putin is, there’s no need to try to relive the Cold War. It’s over. And we don’t view Russia as an enemy. We view Russia as an opportunity to work together.” And he castigated his old enemy, Mr. Some: “you know, some have suggested, well, there’s no need to have relations with Russia. Well, I strongly disagree with that.”

He also assured Poland that stationing Star Wars systems there won’t put it in danger: “I don’t view Poland as being under any military threat. I would hope the Polish people don’t, either. Obviously, there are differences you have with Russia over meat, and I’m very aware of that.” Very very aware.

He’s going to see the pope, who he called “His Holy Father.” “Sometimes I’m not poetic enough to describe what it’s like to be in the presence of the Holy Father. It is a moving experience. And I have not been in the presence of this particular Holy Father.”

He wants to talk to the pope about Cuba. He says that when Castro dies, “the world ought to work for freedom, not stability” and for “elections and free press, free prisoners.”

He wants to talk to the pope about China. “I would remind him that I have been to church in China, and actually found it to be a spiritual experience. It wasn’t, like, fake; it was real.”

He will also see Italian Prime Minister Prodi. “I can remember, fondly remember riding my mountain bike as hard as I could as he was jogging along the beaches in Georgia, needling him on the way by -- a sign of close friendship.” With Chimpy there’s a thin line between close friendship and bullying assholery. Speaking of bullying assholery: “He’s having to make difficult decisions in Afghanistan and I hope my visit will help boost his courage in doing the right thing in Afghanistan.”

Says former German Chancellor Schröder’s criticisms of the Iraq war “didn’t cause me to say, well, Germany isn’t worthy as a worthy ally.”

But Angela Merkel is better, of course: “she’s the kind of person that can get a fellow to talk freely and candidly”. Ewwww.

On energy: “My goal is to make us nearly totally independent from foreign sources of oil. And that ought to be the goal of a nation that worries from sole-source supplier, that you ought to figure out different ways to do it.”

An Albanian tv interviewer asked, “What is the reason of including Albania in this European tour this time?” Bush: “That’s a fascinating question. First of all, I want to make sure the Albanian people understand that America knows that you exist”.

Asked about whether there was a Plan B for Kosovo when Russia inevitably vetoes the plan for independence, Bush reflexively responded, “Well, plan A is to try to make plan A work.” I don’t think anyone’s explained the whole “veto” thing to him, or at least that other people than himself have the power to veto things. He also complained that the reporter was “asking me to think hypothetically.” Chimpy brain hurt.

Speaking of thinking hypothetically, he said of Iraq, “I think the people will look back 50 years from now and say, oh, I understand now why they were doing what they were doing, because democracies and liberties help yield peace”. It’s sort of the opposite of a Friedman Unit, isn’t it, the period of time it will take for everyone to understand what a genius Bush was.