Not totally outrageous

In Africa, Bush said that the average American "cares deeply about the fact that people are dying in record numbers because of HIV-Aids. That's really the story that I want the people of Africa to hear, and I want the people of America to know that I'm willing to take that story to this continent." No help, you understand, just stories. Bush the griot. Actually, pretty much as he said this, Republicans in Congress were cutting 1/3 of the AIDS spending Bush promised from the 2004 budget. Which would be fine if it were the 1/3 Bush wanted to spend on abstinence propaganda.

At a photo-op, two elephants started mating right in front of Bush. I want pictures, and I can’t find them. This demonstrates everything that is wrong with the media. Well, maybe not, but I want to see Bush in front of the fucking elephants. Or squashed by them, but that’s really too much to hope for.

From the AP: “Arnold N. Nawrocki, the man widely credited with bringing individually wrapped slices of cheese into the homes of millions of families in the 1950s, has died at 78.”

The Bushies are passing around the blame over the Niger/uranium fiction less like a hot potato and more like hot uranium. And lying, lying, lying. I did like Colin Powell’s defense that the claim was “not totally outrageous.” Condi is blaming DCI George Tenet (a Clinton appointee) for failing to object (the CIA, State, DOD & her own NSC all had at least 10 days to do so), although it does seem the CIA insisted that Bush attribute the claim to British intelligence (the British are having the same blame-fest, but they scream at each other in classier accents). By the way, I mentioned that by treaty all this “evidence” had to be turned over to the IAEA? When it eventually was, the IAEA took exactly one day to decide it was crap. Ari Fleischer, the slimy toad that he is (I understand Bush likes to rub his bald head, possibly hoping he’ll turn into Pierre Salinger), claimed that the ambassador who went to Niger just found out that Niger denied it, which is not true. There’s lots of talk about who learned what when. If we take all the denials seriously, giving them the benefit of the doubt that they didn’t pass on a really feeble, easily disproven lie for the hell of it, that is if we choose to believe that no one saw the ambassador’s report, no one checked the fake document, then we have a picture of utter incompetence and no one sharing information--exactly the situation that created the 9/11 intelligence failure.

And no one seems to be even trying to get to the bottom of the forged Niger document. I suggested Israel some time back, others are saying Chalibi, which given the sheer incompetence of the forgery is probably the better bet.