Shock and Awe ®

Bush’s judicial appointees are getting wackier. For example, William Pryor, Alabama’s attorney general, nominated to the 11th Circuit. Pryor thinks Roe v Wade is "the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history." He indicted Barnes & Noble for selling art books (which he considered child pornography). He says he became a lawyer so he could fight the ACLU. He is against the separation of church & state, supports prayer in public schools and has said “God has chosen, through his son Jesus Christ, this time and this place for all Christians ... to save our country and save our courts.” He supported Ala.’s ban on sex toys and practice of tying prisoners to “hitching posts,” supports executing the retarded, endorsed a bill to let anti-abortion lawyers represent the state against minors trying to get judicial overrides of parental notification. Naturally he supported Ala’s nutty chief justice when he put up the monument to the 10 Commandments. (Later:) the Post has an editorial against Pryor.

On the artificiality of tv views of the big statue-toppling, click here.

This is a must read, because it shows what happens to a story if you pull the cameras back just a little. The scenes of jubilant crowds becomes a few dozen people in a circular plaza with US tanks at every entrance. As the site says (it’s an exaggeration, but not by much), this was a military propaganda exercise that the world’s media lapped up. I wouldn’t make such a big deal about imagery if this war wasn’t such a massive psyop. Even the NY Times has the absurd headline “In Statue’s Fall, Vindication of a Strategy.” It’s been like this since the beginning, with Rumsfeld addressing himself to Iraqis at every briefing, and a bombing strategy described exclusively in psyops terms as “shock and awe.”

Of course for all we know it worked, since it’s only through the grace of, well, someone Iraqi, that the siege of Baghdad wasn’t the weeks-long bloodbath that the Iraqis still retained the ability to make it. In other words, we still don’t know why we won. Some are saying that the very uniformity of the withdrawal, from the Republican Guard right down to the minders for foreign journalists, suggests that some form of command & control still exists.

OK, more information, suspicious as hell: the flag that soldier draped over Saddam’s face was one that flew over the Pentagon on 9/11, which as 60% of Americans--the number is increasing--know, was the day Saddam personally attacked the US. The Pentagon claims it’s just a wacky coincidence that that particular flag happened to be there.

Speaking of being liberated through the power of symbols, the people of South Los Angeles have been freed from the stigma inflicted by the C word.

Uh, that’s “Central,” in case you didn’t catch the reference.

A letter in the NY Times complains that US troops traipsing through presidential palaces and crapping in Saddam’s gold toilets, etc., “looks less like an army of liberation and more like the Visigoths sacking Rome.” Well, like Visigoth’s sacking Siegfried and Roy’s house.

Margaret Warner on McNeil-Lehrer asked a guest why the US is picking Iraqis as leaders who are members of the old tribal religious caste. Um, because Bush and most of the Cabinet are members of America’s old tribal religious caste?

Well, the happy Iraqis are celebrating their liberty by looting UNICEF offices. We liberated them, they’re liberating office supplies. And really large truck tires. Still, Robert Fisk says that they’re actually very polite. When a looter puts his hands on an object, it is his; there are no fistfights or arguments. I said some days ago that the British were literally encouraging looting of Baath party offices as a way of demonstrating the loss of control by Saddam. Maybe today’s shopping frenzy wasn’t quite what they had in mind. Or was it? Fisk wonders how a new Iraqi government will operate when all the old government’s offices have been comprehensively denuded. It can’t, of course, but will be at the mercy of the US. Also, all the government files are gone, giving another excuse for both the failure to find WMDs, and the failure to purge the administration of lower-level Saddam henchmen, evidence against whom just vanished. US marine snipers are also shooting at cars.

Something I didn’t see on my tv (from a Guardian columnist): “Early on, a US infantryman was seen grimly returning fire over a sand dune, then turning to camera and complaining: 'They don't seem to realise we're here to help them.' How odd that they didn't.”

I have to think that our declaration of victory yesterday makes the fact that we haven’t done killing people in Iraq look a lot more like wanton bloodshed. Today they’ve been threatening finally to use that MOAB bomb on Tikrit. They won’t, but they don’t really even have the option, because how do you do that after the war is supposed to be over? I’ve even heard vague rumors of dancing in the streets, but I haven’t seen any yet (unless you count the idiot who stamped on the burning portrait of Saddam--he sort of danced as he tried to put his shoes out).

From the business pages: The day after the war on Iraq began, Sony registered the Pentagon term “shock and awe” with the US Patent and Trademark Office to use in computer games.

Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?

Say, if we build a nice statue of Osama bin Laden, and then pull it down with a tank, can we claim that the war on terrorism is over too?

The NYPD professes to see nothing wrong with interrogating arrested protesters about their political affiliations (pardon me, not interrogating, because that would require the presence of a lawyer; rather, these were “debriefings,” which evidently don’t), but will knock it off anyway.

Another day, another extreme right-wing judicial nominee. For the Federal District Court, one Dr. James Holmes, who is another rabid anti-abortion activist who believes that rape exemptions are a “red herring” because rapes rarely result in pregnancy, believes that wives should subordinate themselves to husbands, that feminism is evil and leads to contraception and homosexuality, etc etc.

Rumsfeld today once again blamed the media. He thinks that all that looting is actually one guy stealing a vase, but that tv keeps running the footage of that one guy over and over. ("The images you are seeing on television, you are seeing over and over and over. It is the same picture of some person walking out of some building with a vase and you see it 20 times. And you think, my goodness, were there that many vases? Is it possible that there were that many vases in the whole country?") Rumsfeld (aka the bull in the China shop) has morphed into the Iraqi information minister before our very eyes. The US and Britain keep saying that it is not their role to stop looting. Actually, under those pesky Geneva Conventions again, it is indeed the responsibility of the occupying power (as the Internat Red Cross pointed out today). Whose else would it be? Actually, the Kurds did a nice job of it in Kirkuk, but the US has ordered them out because Turkey doesn’t like it.

Bush may have been watching tv this week, but Blair did something much more useful: he recorded his guest appearance on The Simpsons (there is talk of a movie, by the way).

Remember before the 1st Gulf War when that story was faked about Iraqis stealing incubators in Kuwait? You guessed it, Iraqis have today looted the hospitals and stolen the incubators (and ambulances and everything else). Anyone else wondering if these people deserve “liberty”? Some of the looters were assisted by Marines. Well, the looters told them that the shopkeeper (this is in Baghdad), who was defending his store with a rifle, was Fedayeen, so the Marines shot him...

The “sheikh” the British picked to run Basra, whose name they wouldn’t even release for days (possibly the only reason he’s still alive, unlike that Shiite cleric who was hacked to death; British troops had to stop a mob going after His Sheikhiness today), turns out to be a former Iraqi general in Saddam’s army.

No relationship with Saddam

My mother sent an ad from the LA Times for the 99¢ Store chain which says that due to customer pressure, they refuse to sell the following French items: Dom Perignon Champagne, Louis Vuitton Purses, and Peugeuots.

Also a cartoon explaining the extinction of the unicorns, with security at Noah’s arc refusing to let them on because they were carrying sharp objects.

A Brit living in France named Eric Bush, age 72, decided to change his name to protest the war (to Buisson, French for Bush).

I can’t keep up with the changing roster of Republican assholes like I used to. For ex, there’s one Rep. Barbara Cubin (R-Wy) who in a debate over exempting gun manufacturers from lawsuits, said “One amendment said we couldn't sell [guns] to anybody that was on drugs or had had drug treatment or something like that. Well, so does that mean if you go into a black community, you can't sell any gun to any black person?” She was also in the middle of some point that centered around her children having blond hair and blue eyes; I’ve looked in a couple of papers and can’t find out what; possibly she was interrupted by angry black people before making her doubtless scintillating point. I have found out that she supports bear-baiting, which doesn’t mean what it did in the 19th century. The R’s backed her right to make such comments.

This follows Ed. Sec Paige’s comments which I alluded to but didn’t quote, and now will: In Christian schools, "the value system is set. That's not the case in a public school where there are so many different kids with different kinds of values." Paige used to be superintendent in Houston. Before his time, Houston was faced with a court order to desegregate, and so decided that for the purposes of desegregation, Hispanics counted as white, so they bussed a lot of Hispanic and black kids and left the white kids entirely alone (until the courts told them to stop it).

The Iraqi ambassador to the UN insists that “I have no relationship with Saddam.” Or with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.

Matthew Parris, Times columnist, on watching tv coverage of Iraq: “Looters, I suppose, cannot be choosers, and if you break into (say) the regional offices of the Ministry of Public Works, you must take what you find. Pictures of a vase of plastic gladioli waving wildly as their captor scuttled down the road with them will stay with me for life. One man who had looted a swivel-type office chair tore across a lawn with a grin on his face and the chair on his head, upside-down and swivelling.” He also comments that that statue should never have been pulled down by the US marines with a tank, but that the Iraqis should each have been given a rope and left to do it themselves, which would have been a much better symbol. “Instead the confusion about what to do became another kind of metaphor: the Stars and Stripes draped over Saddam Hussein’s head in temporary triumphalism, swiftly thought better of, but too late; a moment spoilt as liberators briefly forgot they were not invaders, or not supposed to be. That, too, will never be forgotten.”

Joe Lieberman, the prig from Connecticut, says of Iraq “History teaches us that if you leave a brutal, immoral dictator with weapons of mass destruction, eventually he will use them.” I just want to point out that Hitler had poison gas and Stalin had atomic weapons.

I’d missed that Viceroy-designate Gen. Jay Garner had signed a statement praising the “admirable restraint” of the Israeli army.

Les Jeux sont faits

The secretary of education Rod Paige thinks we need Christian values in the schools. And that diversity is bad. How did this clown get through? He does say that he’ll pray for his critics. Well fuck you very much!
Link

China stops the UN issuing a statement about North Korea. Now remind me, what was the reaction in the US when France did something similar? We aren’t going to have to rename more stuff, are we? Liberty fire-drills?

An assistant secretary of state threatens Syria, North Korea and Iran with war, telling them to “draw the appropriate lesson from Iraq”. Of course according to Rod Paige, the only appropriate lessons teach Christian values. Asst secy state John Bolton was returning from the Vatican when he made those remarks, so he obviously wasn’t drawing any lessons himself. Link

Similarly, Cheney said that the war sent a clear message to “all violent groups.” And Rumsfeld threatened Syria again.

Some statue was pulled down today. CNN has it on pretty much a continuous loop.

According to CNN, Bush watched tv as the Iraqis toppled the statue. Leave it To Beaver, I believe.

The Iraqis on the streets of Basra celebrated by begging British troops for water or to get off their asses and stop all the looting. Baghdadians also celebrated by looting, breaking and burning stuff, much in the manner of residents of Oakland celebrating a World Series victory.

The US killed 11 Afghan civilians as well, but you’ll never hear another word about that.

Still no WMD’s, and it no longer matters, because if Iraq didn’t use them as it was being actually invaded, it certainly wouldn’t have used them if we hadn’t invaded.

An Indian woman gives birth at 65, setting a record...for stupidity. Yes, fertility treatments were involved. She was been married for 50 years (yes, at 15). Gold, woman, not babies!

From a Guardian columnist: For once in this war, our newspapers have spoken with the same voice. Saddam's taste in palaces is universally considered lamentable. From the Times ("part Alhambra, part Barratt home") to the Mirror ("decadent opulence"), from the Sun ("garish") to the Mail ("obscene"), war correspondents have united in merciless judgment on the dictator's interior design, apparently stunned, as they had not been by his hundreds of self-glorifying murals and equestrian statues, by Saddam's more private fondness for gilt, mirrors and marble, his love of entwined Ss and Hs, his perfectly dreadful, lottery-winner's gold taps.

Finger by finger it's coming off

Clarence Thomas in the cross-burning case: “In every culture, certain things acquire meaning well beyond what outsiders can comprehend.” Which may be the first use of “It’s a black thing--you wouldn’t understand” in a Supreme Court decision. Thomas also astonishingly claims “This statute prohibits only conduct, not expression,” displaying a complete inability to distinguish between symbol and reality. In case anyone here shares that problem, I should explain that when I call Clarence Thomas a horse’s ass, I am being figurative, not literal.

Incidentally, I was premature yesterday. Evidently the Virginia law does ban cross-burning only when done with the intention of intimidation. That makes it almost ok in my book, although not enough so to make it constitutional, since it still bans an expressive act. As I said, burning a cross on someone else’s lawn has to be a crime already, and intimidation is already a crime, for which the burning of a cross could be evidence (but not prime facie evidence, a provision of the act the Court correctly struck down), so there is no good reason to ban it in a separate act.

And I still say a burning cross isn’t quite as scary as, say, a fiberglass bloody Jesus.

A cute Jon Carroll piece on explaining ourselves (and Britney Spears) to the Iraqis. And less politically, Jon Carroll on cats, and copulating penguins.

Puppet-in-training Chalabi’s financial past. Evidently he was on 60 Minutes this week.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the US bomb al-Jazeera during the Afghan war as well? Yes we did, November 2001, I just looked it up. (Later): it gets even better. The same correspondent survived both attacks. So far only Robert Fisk (without whom the Independent would have no reason to exist) dares call the Pentagon’s literal war on the press what it is, murder. The claim that the attack on the Palestine Hotel (and on Reuters’ office) was a response to firing was universally repudiated by every reporter staying there.

Funny headline in the Independent: “UK Forces Invite Religious Leader to Help Run Area as City Is Looted.” Yup, that sounds like a religious leader all right. The British say the religious leaders has “credibility and authority,” which they wisely refrain from undermining by actually naming him.

Are we really supposed to believe that right in the middle of the pulverizing of Baghdad, Saddam Hussein decided to go out to a restaurant, and maybe dancing later? Still, at least we managed to kill a cadre of elite busboys.

Bush and Blair really did meet in Belfast or, as Ari Fleischer called it, Dublin. The Guardian seems to think the Bushies aren’t that engaged with the problems of the Northern Irelanders, as Bush called them.

The Times also makes fun of Bush: President Bush at Hillsborough Castle: “The grip I used to describe that Saddam had around the throats of the Iraqi people are loosening. I can’t tell you if all ten fingers are off their throats, but finger by finger it’s coming off.” The location of Saddam’s thumbs has yet to be revealed.

Human beings are human beings, and things are going to happen

In another stupid ruling, the Supreme Court ok’s bans on cross-burning, saying that it isn’t speech, but intimidation. 1) Nonsense. 2) Intimidation is already a separate crime (the particular case involved white guys burning a cross on the lawn of a black person, which is obviously already illegal, so no ban on cross-burning per se is necessary). 3) They’re complaining about the historical meaning of cross-burning, which is not the province of the courts--individual, present-day cases are. 4) You want to talk about the history of crosses in terrorizing people, go into any Catholic and many Protestant churches and you’ll see crosses with images of some actual guy nailed to them, so you really have to ban all non-burning crosses too, in which case, 5) The vampires win. 6) Not that they don’t have rights too. Still, what do you expect from a country whose soldiers spend all their time tearing down statues and pictures of Saddam Hussein.

Saw one General Benjamin Freakly on CNN talking about supposed chemical weapon components (or pesticides). Suddenly we’re in Dr. Strangelove.

Speaking of people with oddly appropriate names, Otto Reich threatened the Caribbean countries, telling them to shut up about the Iraq war and we’d screw them over bananas (again).

Interesting article on friendly fire. It says that with “smart” targeting systems, mistaken identity incidents tend to be a lot more fatal. Also, with advanced weaponry, there is a premium on being the one to shoot first (and ask questions never). Rumsfeld has given a pithier analysis: “Human beings are human beings, and things are going to happen.” Especially when you decide that equipping military vehicles with friend-or-foe devices is too expensive, as he did in 2001.

The chick got in the way

Whatever you can say about the “embeds,” they are often there to hear soldiers say stupid stuff, like the Marine who shot a woman for the crime of standing near an Iraqi soldier and said “I’m sorry, but the chick got in the way.”

WaPo on the Bush regime’s plans to replace all Iraqi textbooks (You have 7 doubles of Saddam Hussein. 3 are assassinated by Zionist agents...) According to one of the Post’s sources, these books teach Iraqis from an early age nationalism and “the bearing of arms and the constant readiness to fight enemies”. And we’re planning to change all that. I see where France might finally have a role. (I know, I know, but it’s so easy.)

By the way, we know that Afghanistan is now the world’s #1 opium producer. Guess who’s behind Ecstacy? Israel, evidently.

Kinda interesting Robert Fisk report, in which he goes all Sherlock Holmes on a destroyed US tank. On the barrel he finds written “Cojone EH.” Quote: “There was a little difficulty in translating cojones as "balls". We wondered why "EH" – if they were indeed the tank commander's initials – would name his tank after only one testicle. The Iraqis wanted to know why a soldier would call his tank a ball at all.”

Also today saw a BBC report on that friendly fire incident, filmed with blood on the camera lens. Yech. No doubt you can see it on their website, but the text (from a slightly later broadcast than I saw, I think) is here.

Favorite quote “I am sorry to be so excitable. I am bleeding through the ear.”

The Guardian says that the US has secretly flown future Iraqi puppet leader Ahmad Chalabi into the country. Usually when Chalabi flies secretly to another country, it’s to escape bank fraud charges, so this’ll be a nice change of pace.

I also hear that the US is planning to divide Iraq into three zones: leaded, unleaded and diesel.

The US population in prisons and jails has surpassed 2 million. I believe the 2 millionth customer got a free tattoo touting the superiority of the race or ethnic group of his choice. (The 2m. doesn’t include juveniles, illegal immigrants, people in military prisons or indeed Guantanamo).

Under cover of our war, Israel just opened the very first settlement in Arab East Jerusalem (with government approval).

Story about an army chaplain who will only let soldiers take a bath if they listen through a long sermon first and then get baptized.

Still no word as to why that colonel was relieved of his command. The more they don’t talk, the more interested I am. Too bad I can’t say the same about the journalists.

Self-flagellation, sure, but will they dance even one polka?

So we’ve renamed Saddam Hussein International Airport. Evidently we’ve gotten to the “I claim this land in the name of Queen Isabella” stage where we get to name everything. They’re calling it Baghdad International Airport, until they get around to deciding whether Baghdad will be New Dallas, New Crawford or maybe New Kennebunkport. Saddam Hussein himself has been renamed Osama bin Laden. Now that we have the airport, we’re planning to really piss Saddam off by losing his luggage. That just leaves the problem of the airport code (LAX, SFO, that kind of thing). If it’s no longer SDA, it can’t be BDI, which is taken. The Guardian helpfully points out that GWB is available.

Britain’s defense minister Geoffrey Hoon, trying to prove he can be as big an asshole as Rummy, says that the mothers of children killed by cluster bombs in Iraq will one day thank Britain.

Guardian on some of the mysteries of the war. Including what happened to the electricity in Baghdad.

Times on why we are encouraging Iraqis to loot.

The Shanghai Communist Party has resumed use of the title “comrade.” Only problem is, the term now pretty much means homosexual, a usage spread to the Mainland from Taiwan and Hong Kong.

British soldiers in Iraq are using the internet to order British flags, so that the Americans will stop killing them.

Shiites in newly liberated Umm Qasr have used their new freedom to resume traditional religious habits not allowed by Saddam’s Sunnis. Public self-flagellation at funerals, for example. Freedom, ain’t it grand.

Bush and Blair will have a summit next week on how to bring peace and tranquility in Iraq, and then the Middle East. The summit will be held in Belfast, and I couldn’t possibly have made that up.

Can you believe that the Bushies still haven’t decided who’s going to run the Iraqi puppet government? The WashPost says no expatriates, while the Telegraph in the same day (Saturday) says expatriates will run the whole thing, starting with the convicted bank fraud.

Tina Brown has a piece somewhere in which she comments that GeeDubya, even when he’s trying to be charming, has the permanently pissed-off look of the dry drunk. I don’t know about that, but I increasingly think that Bush is a textbook sociopath, unable to believe that other people have existences of their own. The pissed off quality is brought on by people not acting out their supporting roles according to his script. All that talk about how much he values loyalty--nope, he actually doesn’t think other people are real. If he hadn’t been born rich, he’d be living in a cabin in a woods filled with shallow graves for the bodies of drifters and hitchhikers.

Gentlemen, Iraqis and Neo-cons prefer blondes

Astonishingly, the US is once again dropping food packages in the same color as its cluster bombs, just like we did in Afghanistan. Cluster bombs, in case you haven’t been following along, have a failure rate variously reported as between 10 and 16%, which means they leave unexploded bombs that look to children like bright-yellow toys. If anyone actually needs another reason not to use them, at least some of them (those used by the Brits, don’t know about the US ones) are manufactured by Israel.

The State Senate of N Dakota votes to keep the state’s ban on unmarried heterosexual couples cohabiting. Gays are ok.

US soldiers have gotten down to the really difficult work: destroying statues and pictures of Saddam Hussein. I mean, there must be millions of them.

In a story I was only skimming, I ran across a quote that made me stop. A female soldier was saying of her enthusiastic reception, It must be because of my blonde hair. Sadly, she turned out not to be Priv. Lynch, of whom we have heard so much, and about whom I had had a similar thought, that if it had been that black woman who was among the first POWs, the media wouldn’t have gone into quite such raptures.

Not quite so much publicity about the failed attempt to rescue those 3 CIA agents taken prisoner by Colombian guerillas, in which 3 American soldiers died.

An article about the Christian missionaries that will follow our troops into Iraq. The first sentence: “It could only happen with an American invasion - poised behind the troops are the evangelical Christians.” If it’s not called Operation Ann Coulter, it should be (invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity)(and speaking of people who wouldn’t have gotten anywhere without blonde hair).

Guardian headline: “Chirac Apologizes to Queen for Graffiti.” In a British war cemetery in France, but it’s still kinda funny.

This time

Tacky tacky tacky.

The “media war on Saddam” drinking game.

When office supplies attack (people with too much free time).

Ari Fleischer, doing that thing he does: “I think that, as the president has always said, and members of the administration have said when asked 'is Saddam alive', we say we don't know, because we do not know. The fact that he failed to show up for his scheduled appearance today raises additional questions. But I think it's also fair to say, given the fact that we don't know if he's alive or not, when the president refers or other people in the administration refer to Saddam Hussein this or Saddam Hussein that, it's almost now a generalised term for the Iraqi regime, because we don't know if he's alive or dead ... we don't know how Saddam is feeling today. We don't know how he's been feeling for a couple weeks.”

The British have been distributing leaflets around Basra. Key phrase “This time we won’t abandon you.” This time.

That was a fast backlash. Yesterday I mentioned the plethora of stories throughout the British press comparing their own soldiers’ methods to those of the cowboy Yanks. Today there’s this piece suggesting that they’re trying to pretend that the British are clean, caught between reckless Americans and sneaky wogs.

Mr. Funk, the humorously named conscientious objector, now also claims to be gay.

We are the chemotherapy

It seems those night-vision goggles Rummy claimed Syria was sending to Iraq don’t actually exist either.

Onward Christian soldiers.

Saving Corporal Ryan: "The Iraqis are sick people and we are the chemotherapy," said Corporal Ryan Dupre. "I am starting to hate this country. Wait till I get hold of a friggin' Iraqi. No, I won't get hold of one. I'll just kill him."

Article on the US military’s introduction of free market capitalism to Iraq: gouging destitute Iraqis for water.

After three months, the CIA has given up its program of attempting to get Iraqi military and political leaders to defect, after getting exactly none of them to do so.

The US military has been taking out ads in Indian newspapers for workers for military bases in Kuwait. Applicants must speak English, be under 35, and not be a Muslim.

These stories are typical of ones in every British newspaper, of whatever political stripe, about the differences between British and American soldiers in their approaches to Iraqi civilians.

I mentioned Saturday that Robert Fisk had found the serial number of the missile that hit the Baghdad market. The number has been tracked back to Raytheon.

The US is still trying to find Iraqi WMD’s, like anyone in the world would believe anything “discovered” now. They have pissed off Hans Blix again by trying to hire some of his inspectors.

For a few days I’ve wanted to write something, but it just hasn’t jelled. I wanted to compare the assumption that Iraqis would be shocked and awed into, well, not just surrender, but actively welcoming the Americans, with those letters I keep reading in the NY Times, and interviews on tv, in which mothers of soldiers or POWs (it’s always the mothers, which suggests to me that they were prompted by someone in the Pentagon), saying that protesters should just shut up to honor their boys who volunteered to protect us from the Iraqi hordes and make the world safe for democracy.

Out on a jolly

The Hersh story. Here’s a good quote about the Iraqis, marred by the fact that it’s from an anonymous “senior Administration official”: “They’re not scared. Ain’t it something? They’re not scared.”

Iraq has begun using shock and awe...oops, pardon me...terror tactics. The family of the first suicide bomber is given $34,000. I believe we pay $6,000 for a dead soldier. A lifetime discount at Exxon would also be appropriate.

I should have given more of the quote from the British soldier fired on by a US plane (if only so I could use it in a subject line). He called the pilot a cowboy “out on a jolly.” Given the use of amphetamines in the Air Force, he may be more right than he knows.

Still, the British are having some fun. They’re currently engaged in Operation James, named after James Bond. Don’t know what the Iraqis think about their positions being designated as “Pussy” and “Galore.”

Ari Fleischer fan club. Be afraid, be very afraid.

The US is starting talking about non-uniformed Iraqi fighters as “unlawful combatants,” to be sent to Guantanamo. The International Red Cross and indeed the British say that all such people are to be treated as POWs, but the US is not doing so. Here we go again.

Colin Powell repeats Rummy’s threats against Syria and Iran. And guess what diplomatic place our chief diplomat chose in which to make that announcement: AIPAC, the pro-Israel lobby. He did, however, also say that settlements were a bad idea, and that Israel shouldn’t humiliate occupied Palestinians quite so much. They hissed him.

The firing by NBC of Peter Arnett for un-American activities has gotten rather more publicity than the expulsion of Geraldo Rivera from Iraq for being generally obnoxious and giving away the position of troops. Also in war reporter news, the correspondent for Swaziland’s state radio turns out to have faked his broadcasts; he never actually left Swaziland.

This is perhaps cuter than it needs to be.

Compare and contrast the following. First, from the 1st story in the British news section of the Guardian: “Senior British military officers on the ground are making it clear they are dismayed by the failure of US troops to try to fight the battle for hearts and minds. They also made plain they are appalled by reports over the weekend that US marines killed Iraqi civilians, including women and children, as they seized bridges outside Nassiriya in southern Iraq.”

Next, the 1st story in the US news section of the WashPost: “Girding against Iraqi attackers who have blurred the line between what's military and what's civilian, U.S. commanders have instructed troops to assume the worst and employ a range of tougher tactics aimed at weeding out and hunting down Iraqi militia, defense officials said yesterday.” The next paragraph says that civilians with their hands in their pockets are to be shouted at (that is how American tourists communicate in foreign countries, by speaking, in English, very loudly), and then shot. Says someone at the Pentagon “Everyone is now seen as a combatant until proven otherwise.” Thus the 7 women and children shot dead in a car today. Remember when we didn’t have anything against the Iraqi people? Someone else (loads of unattributed quotes) says that we’ll win hearts and minds by winning the war. This is roughly what officials said about the rest of the world, that once we won they will say they supported us all along. Forget about the sheer cynicism; what world do they live in where everyone likes a winner?

Incidentally, that car they shot up was told to stop by a “Psychological Operations loudspeaker team,” of all things. Must be strict Freudians.

Back in the Guardian article, General Sir Mike Jackson (who used to go by Michael Jackson and for some reason has changed it), says “We have a very considerable hearts and minds challenge. We are not interested in gratuitous violence.” Oh yeah, he is so not an American.

Unable to find Saddam Hussein, American officials have taken to taunting him to appear in public so that we can shoot 50 or 60 more cruise missiles at his head.

Along similar lines, Kim Jong Il hasn’t been seen, or his location mentioned in the N Korean media, in 7 weeks. North Korea thinks it’s going to be attacked, has even been trying to provoke it (my guess is that they think another Korean war is a done deal, and were trying to ensure it happened at the same time the US was fighting another war), and a NK that feels threatened is a very dangerous thing indeed.

So if this war is being fought by a “coalition,” how is it that the post-conquest Iraqi government will consist of 23 departments, headed by 23 Americans? Colin Powell has said that this will happen with the “full understanding” of the international community. And how do we impart full understanding to foreigners? As I said earlier, by speaking very loudly in English to them, and shooting them.

This proconsulate will be advised by Iraqis, including such darlings of the Pentagon’s right-wing as Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, who hasn’t lived in Iraq since 1956 and has been convicted of fraud in the collapse of a bank in Jordan (he fled before the trial).

A list of American atrocities.

Several British soldiers have refused to fight any more. Only one American conscientious objector, whose name is, um, Funk.

Goodness has nothing to do with it

I alluded to the Texas sodomy law case in my last. Thing is: the state of Texas was prepared to send somebody into the Supreme Court to argue in favor of the law.

And have you seen the stories about the public school in Arkansas harassing a gay 8th-grader, phoning his parents to tell them he’s gay, teachers (science teachers yet) and vice principals and so forth reciting bible verses at him and making him recite them out loud, etc etc. There must be much more detail on the Arkansas ACLU website.

As you gloat while reading the leaked stories blaming Rumsfeld, don’t forget that the leaks are part of the never-ending fight by the generals to free themselves of pesky civilian control. One theory, which I’m agnostic on, is that Rumsfeld wanted to prove that this sort of war was cheap and could be fought with relatively few troops in order to 1) get to do it a lot more times, 2) be able to do more than one at the same time (as in Rummy’s threats against Syria and Iran, which really upset the British, as it undermines their claim about what this war is about). The Sy Hersh (terrorist journalist at large) New Yorker story will no doubt shed light on this, whenever it shows up online. I’ll provide a link at that time, of course. Rumsfeld: “Oh goodness, we’ve never had a timetable.” Well heavens to fucking Betsy.

There’s a cute AP story about 2 soldiers who got stuck in the Iraqi desert... for a week. Their vehicle broke down and a staff sgt told them someone would be back for them. Oops.

And the Monday British papers are full of reports from really pissed off British soldiers after an American pilot tried to kill them (well, did kill one). The word “cowboy” was used.

Here’s a surprise: reports of the capture of an Iraqi general were false.

This story says that despite all the talk about how Saddam Hussein is evil because he gassed his own people, evidently the US has made absolutely no preparations for protecting anyone except American soldiers if he uses chemical/bio weapons in this war. Here’s a paragraph: “Kurds have been able to watch television reports on how pets in Israel and Kuwait are being fitted with masks and suits, while the pleas of their leaders to the US for protective clothing and detection equipment have been ignored.” So gassed Kurds only matter in propaganda, not in the real world.

After the body of the former Serb president turned up, Slobo Milosevic’s wife has rather suddenly gone on “vacation” in Russia.

Striking a blow

Even knowing what Fox News is like, this is a bit OTT.

Dissenter of the week: Blair’s first foreign minister Robin Cook: "I have already had my fill of this bloody and unjust war. I want our troops home and I want them home before more of them are killed."

Co-dissenter of the week.

With the US contemptibly trying to blame the bombing of the Baghdad market on the Iraqis, an unembedded reporter on the ground goes and finds a piece of the missile’s fuselage, and gives its serial number. And, hey! it’s not in Arabic.

Also, we just bombed Saudi Arabia. Oops. And possibly Kuwait a couple of days ago, and Iran a week ago. Smart bombs.

Independent headline that gets it just slightly... wrong: “Supreme Court to strike a blow for Texan gays.”

Just in case anyone on this list is looking for a job right about now, here’s a good one: inseminating a pissed-off white rhino. But at least it doesn’t involve dealing with the general public. Oh, and pedantic note to the Observer: its “bated breath,” not “baited breath.” If you don’t click the link, here’s information you can use: rhinos fuck for an hour, elephants for 40 seconds.

One casualty of the war: a whole bunch of movies that needed to be shot in countries that now hate us even more. Including Mad Max IV. Darn.

I have nothing more to add to that

15 war stories the media got wrong.

Note that all 15 were about how well the war was going. In other words, the problem is journalists’ lack of scepticism towards the lies being told them by the military. As I write, there is a story that Iraqi militias--or death squads as the Pentagon likes to call them--are firing on civilians trying to flee Basra. The Guardian points out that there were also British troops in the vicinity, who may have been the actual target. (Later), and in the Saturday paper, gives much greater detail on how the false stories got spread. One reason the coverage is so surreal is that the mistakes aren’t admitted. When I went to bed Wednesday, a gigantic column of Iraqi tanks was streaming south to attack; I spent most of Thursday trying to figure out why no one was saying what had happened. Now I know: there were 3 vehicles. Read both articles.

Just (Fri. morning) saw Rumsfeld berate a reporter who dared ask him why the US is reporting 28 dead but only 14 wounded, which is not a credible proportion.

When that general said that the enemy he’s fighting in Iraq is different than the one they war-gamed against, I didn’t realize (and the media didn’t enlighten me) that he meant a $250 million exercise involving thousands of troops. In fact, I know I mentioned those particular games at the time (last summer), because a retired general running one of the teams quit in the middle and leaked to the Army Times that the results were rigged.

Tony Blair made some enemies this week. He announced that Iraqis executed two captured British soldiers, without offering any proof. The army, it turns out, told the families of the soldiers something else, and one family feels the whole thing is a horrible stain on their honor, I guess for being captured rather than dying in battle. I also keep seeing stories about the Bush-Blair press conference yesterday, where Blair was articulate and actually addressed the questions, and Spurious George’s best answer was “I have nothing more to add to that.” Quote from a Guardian editorial: “George Bush, who at Camp David this week seemed to be asleep while standing up, insists a relentless America will prevail "no matter how long it takes". Down in Tampa, that sounds like leadership. But it is actually an amazing admission that the US military behemoth no longer entirely controls the timetable or pace of a war begun at a moment and in a place of its own particular choosing.”

Meanwhile, British deaths are nearly as high as American, in case you hadn’t noticed, (as any Frenchman can tell you, most Americans think the US won WW II single-handed, although Russia inflicted 3/4 of German casualties). How helpful those 23 deaths are is open to doubt, given that all but 4 were accidents or friendly fire (today, an American plane shot up some Brits on patrol).

Oh dear, Sharon’s coalition may break apart unless they resume prosecuting shops that open on the sabbath. Evidently a government fell in 1976 when a ceremony for the delivery of fighter jets went a bit long. Hey, wait a damn minute! What about the Sabbath inspectors? When do they work, if not on the sabbath?

Not much has been heard from one of the most vociferous of COW countries just a couple of weeks ago, Spain. Possibly because polls now show opposition to the war topping 90%. And those are the government’s own polls. I’m less sure about Italy, whose government just broke its promise that Americans wouldn’t be using Italy as a launching pad for offensive operations. Wouldn’t it be nice if this war provoked a shift back from the right in Europe? Chirac, yeah ok a slimy rightist, but opposed to the war, is also getting a 90% approval rating for his Iraq policy.

The body of a former president of Serbia, missing since August 2000, has been found, and I have absolutely no recollection of this. Ivan Stambolic. Don’t even remember the name.

Milosevic ordered it, of course.

The UN votes to resume oil-for-food. I was still right on this one.

Rumsfeld told the Senate that the US has no responsibility for reconstruction in Iraq.

Reuters just said that the US is halting operations for 4-6 days. If that isn’t an admission of a massive miscalculation (or misunderestimation in Bush-speak), I don’t know what is.

However long it takes

Iraqis are being called terrorists for practices such as threatening soldiers who don’t fight with execution. Presumably nobody’s looked at the US military code lately, although we haven’t actually executed a soldier for cowardice since Priv. Eddie Slovik in WWII (played by anti-war activist Martin Sheen in the tv movie). Also, Texas executed a mentally ill person yesterday, so again, let’s not be pretending too much moral superiority.

The Independent’s Robert Fisk on the Baghdad market bombing.

Funny how all those Republicans are planning to press a liberal agenda on Iraq. Bush’s $75b slush fund includes provisions for universal health care in Iraq, to Sen. Hillary’s bemusement (Actually the universal health care will be administered by some lucky American corporation, lowest bid or no bid, so Iraq is about to be introduced to the horrors of managed care). Pat Robertson came out in favor of the separation of church and state--in Iraq. Where R’s have been berating D’s like Daschle for daring to dissent mildly in time of war, Iraqis are being downright encouraged to do so. And of course they are encouraging Iraqis to engage in dancing, a practice John Ashcroft considers Satanic when engaged in by Americans.

That, sadly, was my last joke on the theme of dancing in the street. I thought I’d have more ideas, but too much viewing of CNN has reduced my brains to mush.

A drum-beat is emerging from the administration that the oil-for-food program needs to be restarted. Some, like France, object to this as legitimizing the Anglo-American condominium over Iraq. Actually, it’s worse than that, since it entails using the resources of Iraq without regard to the government of Iraq, which is theft even if used for humanitarian purposes: it is not our right to distribute Iraq’s wealth, nor the UN’s, but in practice any UN workers would have to be accompanied by US troops and be under their control and not go anywhere the US didn’t want them to be. And this at a time when we are conducting a siege (Basra) and may wind up conducting another one (Baghdad); denying food, water, electricity, etc to some people while feeding others is to use food as a weapon, like the Zimbabwean government does.

Richard Perle’s official government job was in theory unpaid and advisory only, so let’s not crow too much over his resignation. The Prince of Darkness can continue to fulfill the same function without the honorary title. (Later): oh, for fuck’s sake, he isn’t even leaving the board, he’s just stopped being the chairman of it.

Because of some superstition, all triplets born in North Korea are removed from their parents to state institutions.

Rumsfeld says the announcement that US forces are to be doubled is certainly no indication of anything not going to plan.

Still, the single worst answer I’ve heard was from Dubya this morning, and I don’t know that I can convey why to anyone who didn’t actually see it. He was asked at the press conference (three questions, if that counts as a press conference)(I just looked it up at the White House website--they call it a press availability) with Blair how long the war would last, months or days, and he said, several times, “However long it takes.” The thing is, he was asked a serious question and gave a piece of rhetoric in response, as if it were a real answer. My problem with it is that he doesn’t think he evaded the question (which is what the reporter doubtless expected), he thinks he answered it. No, I really can’t convey it. Actually it reminds me of when a 6-year old asked him what the White House was like, and he told her, with a smirk on his face as if he was saying something clever, that it was white. And then never actually answered her question.

A couple of quotes: The Iraqi people understand what this crisis is about. Like the people of France in the 1940s, they view us as their hoped-for liberators' - Paul Wolfowitz, Deputy Defence Secretary, March 11. `I really do believe we will be greeted as liberators' - Vice-President Dick Cheney

In diplomacy/kindergarten news, the US ambassador to Canada threatened that country for not joining our little war, the British foreign secretary pissed off Israel by noting that the Arabs get pissed off when UN resolutions against Iraq but not Israel are enforced by the West, the US ambassador to the UN huffed off in the middle of an Iraqi speech....

Israel is to suspend the work of its religious police in enforcing the Sabbath (at the expense of all the rest of the country’s labor laws).

Maybe those of you who follow sports are familiar with this, but it was new to me: laser eye surgery to increase vision to 20/10, twice as good as perfect. Golfers like Tiger Woods have this done, but so increasingly do military pilots, Navy Seals and the like (it also greatly improves night vision).

Would it bounce or would it explode?

Memo to Iraq:

There may be trouble ahead,
But while there's moonlight and music and love and
romance,
Let's face the music and dance [in the streets].

Before the fiddlers have fled,
Before they ask us to pay the bill [$74.7 billion], and while we still have the chance,
Let's face the music and dance [in the streets]...


From a cute Guardian story about tv coverage of the war: “From New York, in the tone of a woman returning a faulty pair of shoes, one correspondent said, "We'd been led to believe that a lot of officials were desperate to get rid of Saddam." At the very least, she seemed to want an apology.” The author suggests that when this is over someone should set up a 24-hour war channel; who needs a war, as ratings show “that viewers can be satisfied with quantities of faintly unsavoury debate among men who describe weapons as "stunning", interspersed with contributions from dishevelled reporters shouting in front of either a) the command HQ prefabs in Qatar; b) a nameless, gritty landscape with plumes of smoke in the distant background or c) a landscape, ditto, without plumes of smoke.”

From the Daily Telegraph: Austria bowed to international pressure yesterday and stripped an alleged Nazi euthanasia doctor and child killer of the country's highest award for "services to science and the arts.” The research that got him the award (in 1975) was done on body parts from children.

Zimbabwe’s government is taking advantage of the distraction of war to launch a wave of arrests and repression against the opposition. Zim is rapidly becoming a full-scale fascist state, complete with indoctrination camps for teachers.

Here’s a story you wouldn’t see in most countries: Drug dealers in Copenhagen's hippy colony, Christiana, went on strike yesterday to protest against proposals to bulldoze the alternative "free city".

Some idiot in Haaretz says that the American bombing of the Baghdad market (a story that disappeared from the war coverage really really quickly) should make the US more sympathetic about the Jenin Massacre.

Tide turning

http://theonion.com/onion3911/us_forms_own_un.html

Footage I would kill to see. Can anyone help?: If the White House is still furious with the BBC for showing 90 seconds of President Bush’s preparations for last Wednesday’s address, then let’s hope they don’t find out what Portuguese TV did. It showed a full 15 minutes of the President’s rehearsal. A presenter gave a sniggering commentary as Bush repeated the same lines of his speech over and over again.

The British Press Association has a story that “Tide May Be Turning Against Saddam.” Too bad he’s in a desert, then.

It’s bad enough when the Americans can’t tell the difference between a British Tornado and a missile (especially when Iraq’s air force isn’t flying), but the crew of one British Challenger II tank fire a shell at another Challenger II tank. Even my cat knows better than to attack a mirror.

America’s best and brightest.

Bush’s new executive order delaying the declassification of old materials was, the NY Times points out, announced in a way intended to sneak under the war radar. What else is? Dunno, except for the release of some of the Guantanamo prisoners, including a teenager whose arrest they’ve known was a mistake for a year. One of the others say he was only interrogated twice in 14 months. All 18 were dumped in Kabul, most hundreds of miles from home, without any money. Still, they’re lucky they weren’t locked up the rest of their lives: precisely because there is no impartial system of fact-finding associated with these detentions, they depend for what little legitimacy they have on a belief that the government never makes mistakes. Consequently, it’s not in the government’s interests to admit its mistakes, and the Bushies are more disinclined than most to accede even to the possibility that they’re capable of screwing up. Can’t wait to see how they handle Iraqi generals, if they ever succeed in capturing one.

The US finally bombed Iraqi tv, as so many have demanded. I know that the Pentagon has gotten used to thinking of the media as a sub-branch of the military, but under the Geneva Conventions, it is illegal to attack civilian targets. The British defense minister claims that Iraqi tv stations are part of the command and control structure. Nonsense. Amnesty International has correctly identified this as a war crime.

Sy Hersh on just how bad that forgery about Iraq trying to buy uranium from Niger.
He thinks the forger was MI6. Given that it was truly an egregiously bad forgery (one signature was of someone who hadn’t been in the office attributed to him for 11 years), and that it was mentioned in the State of the Union Address and many other places, while the retraction has been a blip, this constitutes either a lie or deep incompetence on the part of the CIA. It requires investigation. Oh, and how’s that committee investigating the 9/11 intelligence failure going? Picked out all the furniture yet?

Halliburton gets a billion-dollar no-bid contract in Iraq. Don’t they even care how this looks? Cheney still gets a pay check from Halliburton.

That's what it's all about

Message to the Iraqi people: OK, one more time. You put your right foot in. You put your right foot out. You put your right foot in. You shake it all about. You do the Hokey-Pokey. You turn yourself around. [This is joke #534 on the theme of dancing in the streets. And yes I intend to pound this theme into the ground, and dance (535) on its grave.]

Ah, the American attention span. If a war lasts more than a week, they start looking for someone to blame. But it’s nice to see the analysis--for example, here ,
saying that the problem is that Secretary of War Rummy planned the war on the assumption that the Iraqis would welcome an American occupation. I’ve been making fun of this assumption for weeks, but it’s finally dawning on commentators that there are consequences to such arrogance. So too few troops were sent, pursuing the wrong strategy, and in the absence of the ability to get into hand to hand fighting, they muddled into a siege of Basra that will kill civilians.

Scalia said that the US Constitution only sets minimums for civil rights, and that most of what we consider to be our rights are merely optional extras that can be removed at any time at the will of the government. He didn’t use those exact words, but pretty close, actually.

Bush this morning demanded that his request for supplemental war funding of I believe $74 billion not be loaded with items not related to the war. Of course he’s included a bribe to Israel in that 74.

Icky war pictures.

Morris dancing? Break dancing? Not even a nice minuet?

This is the Apache helicopter the Iraqis are claiming was shot down by an elderly farmer with a rifle. It wasn’t, of course.


Somebody talk to whoever writes the news crawls for CNN about their use of metaphor. When they said that the US blasted Al Jazeera for showing that footage, I wasn’t quite sure what had happened. 2 minutes later, they had Michael Moore blasting Bush in his Oscar speech for a film about the American gun culture, which is an irony Moore would appreciate, an infinitely subtler irony than his speech contained, I’m afraid.

If you watch the Academy Awards on tape, you can cut it down to its essential 12½ minutes. Actually, Steve Martin was pretty good again. I notice they took no risk of having a lot of black people win again: the best actress category was mostly inhabited by albinos (Nicole Kidman, Renée Zelwegger, Julianne Moore). Fortunately Denzel stood behind Nicole as she accepted, or you wouldn’t have been able to see her at all, which would have been no bad thing.

You like me, you really like me: speaking of acceptance speeches, Saddam gives another one. Did I mention that the US government keeps one of his old mistresses on the payroll specifically to distinguish between Saddam and his doubles?

Much of the fighting yesterday was in towns the Pentagon had already declared liberated, against Iraqi units it had already declared had surrendered. Oh, and led by a dictator the US claimed to have killed last week.

Say, whatever happened to the Iraqi government(s) in exile?

In the continuing battle against the evil French, Montana’s state pension fund is selling off its French shares. An article in the Guardian asks whatever happened to vilifying the Germans, and notes that the Bushies stopped attacking Germany--you’ll remember Rummy lumping them in with Libya and Cuba--after a visit to DC at the end of February by the opposition leader, who told them to knock it off because they were just making Schröder more popular.

George Monbiot suggests that the US POWs being subjected to vicious and inhumane photography by the Iraqis are just lucky they’re not prisoners of the Americans, reminding us not only of Guantanamo, but what happened to POWs in Afghanistan.

A cute Israeli story: we know they aren’t distributing gas masks to Palestinians, but there’s also a problem with foreign workers, most of whose employers retain their passports, which you have to show to get (buy; they’re not free) a gas mask. So the employers are extorting them, and so far 240,000, 80% of the foreign workers, are unprotected.

Flowers or guns?

As I write, Tony Blair is on the BBC accusing Saddam of crimes against petroleum.

And there’s an awful lot of bitching about showing American POWs on tv. Which has certainly intimidated CNN et al from showing them, so I’m not sure what the big deal is, especially since I saw Iraqi POWs on tv just yesterday. Maybe American soldiers all believe that cameras steal their souls. Whatever, I don’t think a country experiencing massive bombardment is really going to worry about such princess-and-the-pea sensibilities. This is also a country that still has Iranian POWs held since the 1980s (and vice versa), so maybe being asked some sarcastic questions (“Did Iraqis greet you with flowers or guns?”) isn’t the worst that could happen, is all I’m sayin’. At least they don’t have Joan Rivers shouting Who are you wearing? at them.

That said, I want to see the goddammed footage that the rest of the world can see, and which US generals and Rumsfeld and Tony Blair and everyone else bitched about endlessly. *That* made it news. Someone at CBS said that they have to be careful not to be used for propaganda purposes. A little late for that, bucko. Have you yet seen anything that resembled news come from one of the “embedded” (up Rumsfeld’s ass) reporters, anything that illuminated the situation in any way at all? And someone at ABC that footage of the dead soldiers isn’t newsworthy. There may be other perfectly legitimate reasons not to show it, but that isn’t one of them (actually, I could give the dead ones a miss myself). Al Jazeera’s website is curiously unavailable.

As I understand it, the provision of the Geneva Conventions is something about being protected from insults. Being put on tv? Americans will do anything to get on tv. How could it be more insulting than Survivor?

The US has managed to take down a British Tornado, because an aeroplane looks so much like a Scud missile. Actually, I read months ago that the British hadn’t done enough to prevent friendly fire incidents, i.e., to properly identify themselves electronically to the Americans. MPs were saying this would be a problem. So this was foreseeable, and foreseen.

The US has also evidently killed ITV correspondent Terry Lloyd, tanks opening fire on him. It was a mistake. They were actually trying to kill surrendering Iraqi soldiers instead.

Still no dancing in the streets. Maybe seen through those green night-vision thingies. Line dancing to please their new Texan overlords, and lap dancing for the soldiers.

It’s Day 4 (Day 5, surely, but CNN says Day 4, so it must be true) and when Rumsfeld spoke today, once again suggesting to Iraqi soldiers that they might want to be good little boys and surrender, I saw a certain annoyance at their failure to do so, and the idea beginning to penetrate, oh so slowly, that maybe they don’t actually see us as liberators. Because the Bushies have actually fallen for their own rhetoric, as the very best con artists so often do, which is why Rummy could keep talking about Iraqis surrendering as acting with “honor” and why they assumed (as in Bush’s botched ultimatum Monday, as I previously discussed) that all Iraqis see Saddam exactly as they do, and would invite American occupiers in the minute he left. I’m worried that Iraqis will at some point validate this delusion by actually dancing in the streets, not because this is a re-run of the liberation of Paris but because 1) the bombing has stopped, 2) after many years of sanctions someone may actually feed them, 3) they’ve had years of experience sucking up to dangerous well-armed rulers and know what is expected of them.

Watched a bit of the Basil Fawlty Oscars (don’t mention the war), but once you’ve seen Jennifer Lopez’s nipples, the evening’s pretty much done, isn’t it?

How green was my war

For more censorship, here’s a site which complains that Google wouldn’t show its ad (anti-war bumper stickers) unless it censored not only the ad, but its actual website.

Maybe we’ll be hearing a little less about the unprecedented precision of US weapons, since we just bombed a village in Iran, which is a whole country away from the right one. Oops.

I’ve read that the media have taken to referring to those who oppose Bush’s war policy as “dissenters” rather than, say, critics. Can’t say I’ve noticed myself, but let’s be on the lookout.

It’s also surprisingly hard to get a list of who voted against the House’s pro-war resolution, although I know ½ of the 11 represent the Bay Area. The R’s wrote the resolution so that no one could support the troops without also expressing “unequivocal support” for Bush’s “firm leadership,” manly good looks and beautiful singing voice. It also insists that this war is part of the war on terrorism. The R’s just couldn’t help themselves, could they? OK, got the list now. The no’s are also mostly black.

Turkey is sending in troops, despite the US telling them not to. In public at least. Germany has threatened to pull its planes currently defending Turkey, but no one else has suggested any serious consequences.

I want a new codicil to the Geneva convention: all camera crews are to be deprived of night-vision equipment. I’m tired of all our wars being sickly green.

I was promised dancing in the streets. Where’s the dancing?

Late this year is the 100th anniversary of the flight of the Kitty Hawk. NASA engineers have been trying to get a replica of the plane to work, and come to the conclusion that the Wright brothers should by rights have broken their fool necks. Of course, what do NASA engineers know about getting something to fly?

A bit of a geography lesson for Richard Perle, who earlier this week called the UN the “chatterbox on the Hudson.” It’s on the East River, doofus.

Honor, my ass

Long piece by Chalmers Johnson on Daniel Ellsberg’s new memoirs. It is most interesting for its discussion of the constant lying about Vietnam, and how the mere possession of secret information breeds arrogance in policymakers. Also note that even anti-war people like Sens. Fulbright and McGovern were unwilling to make the Pentagon Papers public.

A detail I’d missed in the stories of massive sexual harassment at the Air Force Academy: the investigation is being conducted by the Pentagon’s inspector general Joseph Schmitz, who must know all about it given his siblings. His father was John Schmitz, the Orange County congresscritter who literally thought that Reagan was a communist and who fathered a couple of kids out of wedlock as well as, in wedlock, Mary Kay Letourneau, the teacher who got pregnant twice by her 6th-grade student, to the joy of late night talk show hosts everywhere.

In Britain, the closure of certain local schools has put distinctive regional accents at risk. One group has just received a £25,000 grant to help it preserve the Georgie (Newcastle) accent. In sign language.

The news accounts of the war are full of reports about how wonderfully precise American weapons are. Of course we have never heard this before, and we certainly won’t get reports later of hospitals and schools being bombed.

Saw Rummy’s press conference. He keeps talking to Iraqis, like he thinks there are Iraqi soldiers on active duty watching CNN. He also must have used the word “honor” five times in telling them to surrender. He is so incapable of seeing things from any perspective other than his own that he doesn’t get that even anti-Saddam Iraqis (who I really think are a smaller percentage of the population than everyone assumes; tyrants are often quite popular, and he gave his country stature as someone who successfully stood up to the Americans and survived) don’t want to be bombed and occupied by the US military.

The Brits sent over a representative (the hapless Clare Short) to try to dissuade the US from running an occupation regime all by themselves, with their private contractors, shutting out the UN and, by the by, the British. She failed.

Back home, business as usual, only more so. Massive tax cuts pass Congress, and new plans to encourage car manufacturers to make larger cars.

From a New Statesman competition, rewritten lines that destroy the meaning of the original:

If you can’t stand the heat, don’t sit so near the fire.

I have a dream--but heck, it’s just a dream, probably never happen.

It is a far, far better thing that I do than I did last Tuesday.

A rose is a rose is a rose is a daffodil.

Put out the light, and then put out the cat.

Man is born free and everywhere he is in chain stores.

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. WLTM petite blonde with own income and GSOH.

I think, therefore I am in the minority.

I Hate the French Vanilla

Speaking of Saddam’s doubles.

A good piece on US propaganda about Iraq, suggests that the use of the term “weapons of mass destruction” is intended to confuse doltish Americans into believing that Iraq has nukes, when we’re actually just talking about chemical weapons.

Bush had to send a letter to Congress justifying the war. Here’s a bit of it:

acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

Note that the word “including” doesn’t actually make the disproved assertion that Iraq has anything to do with Al Qaida. In fact, I defy anyone to read that sentence and tell me what Bush is accusing Iraq of. (This was pointed out by a blog, wastedirony.com, which I hadn’t seen before, but which looks worth keeping an eye on).

I forgot to mention. There had been plans for Bush to speak to the European Parliament, but they were called off when the Europeans refused to meet his demand to guarantee a standing ovation. I swear I’m not making that up.

If you were looking for the Conservative answer to Ben and Jerry’s, http://www.starspangledicecream.com/. Flavors include I Hate the French Vanilla, Smaller GovernMINT. Sheesh.

Bush on tv Wed. night said the missiles had been launched “on my orders.” Britain has suddenly realized just how junior a partner they are.

Saletan comments on Rummy’s press conference, which was mostly addressed to Iraqi officers:

Rumsfeld advises Iraqi leaders to "act to save themselves." He says this war will be scarier than anything they've seen. He invites Iraqi officers to "ask themselves whether they want to die fighting for a doomed regime." He has a long list of dos and don'ts. "Do not follow orders to destroy dams or flood villages," he says. "Do not follow orders to destroy your country's oil." Next he'll issue injunctions against mixing fabrics and eating animals with cloven hooves.

By pure coincidence, just two days after Canada decides not to send any troops to Dubya Dubya II, the Air Force decides not to try the amphetamine-addled pilots who bombed Canadian troops in Afghanistan last year. They chalk it up to the fog of war--evidently the pilots were distracted trying to find shapes in the fog--“Dude, I see an elephant.”

Monica Lewinsky is to host a dating show on tv.

If you can stomach it, here’s an op-ed piece by Richard Perle called “Thank God for the Death of the UN.”

Turkey has decided not to allow US troops to use their country as a staging post, although they were offered nearly $100,000 per soldier ($6b for 62,000). They do, however, decide to send their own troops into Iraq. But only for humanitarian purposes. The Turks being well known for their humanitarianism.

A list of all Czechs who cooperated with the communist gov’s secret police (1 in 130) has been posted to the web.

Here’s a frightening thought: half of all dentists in Italy are imposters.

From the WaPo: “The State Department's top lawyer said yesterday that legal authority from the U.N. Security Council exists for war against Iraq, even though the Bush administration failed to win explicit council approval for the use of force.” In other words, they approved it, they just don’t know they approved it, and didn’t know it at the time.

Bush the careless underestimated your values

Colonel James Naughton of US Army Materiel Command said Iraqi complaints about depleted uranium shells had no medical basis. “They want it to go away because we kicked the crap out of them, OK?,” he told a Pentagon briefing.

No, they want it go away because their crap now glows in the dark.

The British refuse to rule out using cluster bombs in Iraq, but they won’t be using landmines. Saint Di won that one.

Evidently Clear Channel, which owns pretty much every radio station that isn’t NPR--and I’m told that there are in fact many such stations, who knew--has been sponsoring pro-war rallies.

In my last, I commented that the Bushies had changed the meaning of Bush’s televised ultimatum twice in under 24 hours. Here’s the amazing part: almost no one noticed. FAIR has, pointing out that headlines like the NY Times’s “War Imminent as Hussein Rejects Ultimatum”, the Post’s "President Tells Hussein to Leave Iraq Within 48 Hours or Face Invasion”, etc. are wrong, since Iraq will actually be invaded and occupied even if Hussein (or one of his doubles) leaves. But a deadline was so dramatic, wasn’t it, so macho? MSNBC even has a little clock, on the screen all the time, the seconds ticking away. Actually, it didn’t have seconds yesterday, just hours and minutes, before the Daily Show sarcastically suggested it add them, and maybe the theme music from Mission Impossible, to ramp up the drama. Today, it added the seconds.

The military launched a couple of dozen million-dollar missiles in an attempt to assassinate Saddam Hussein. A lot more expensive than the CIA’s old exploding cigars, but equally effective. Then Bush came on tv. William Saletan at Slate notes that he was obviously speaking from the White House, not in an “undisclosed location,” so he wasn’t particularly worried about retaliation, which might lead one to wonder how much of a threat Iraq ever actually was. It’s a bit of a mismatch, like putting Mike Tyson in a boxing ring with Pee Wee Herman, or Adam Sandler in a movie with Jack Nicholson (that one’s real; I saw a billboard today). Hell, Saddam kept talking about swords. To paraphrase Sean Connery in The Unwatchables, trust an Iraqi to bring a sword to a cruise missile fight.

Saddam goes on tv and says “Bush the careless underestimated your values.” Shouldn’t that be “misunderestimated?”

Here’s something I didn’t know, or possibly forgot: some Algerian Muslimist types in the mid-1990s were thwarted in an attempt to hijack an airplane and fly it into the Eiffel Tower. Guess the CIA doesn’t read Le Monde or they might have taken that as some sort of warning.

Wire taps have been found at European Council hq. No proof yet of who put them there, but 3 guesses.

For the sake of a short war, one can only hope that the US has been lying to the UN inspectors all this time, or who knows what we’ll be bombing. Says one inspector, “None of their hot tips were ever confirmed. I don't know about a single decontamination truck that didn't turn out to be a fire engine or a water truck.”

I gather Ollie North, “reporting” for Fox “News,” accidentally gave away the planned start time for the war. He’s also rumor-mongering about the French.

The list of the countries allegedly helping us in our crusade has puzzled some people. Even Colombia has no idea what help Colombia is supposed to be giving. And Eritrea? A Guardian reporter called up the various embassies.

That depends on what the meaning of "48 hours" is

US ambassador to the UN John Negroponte, back when Resolution 1441 was passed: “There's no 'automaticity' and this is a two-stage process, and in that regard we have met the principal concerns that have been expressed for the resolution. Whatever violation there is, or is judged to exist, will be dealt with in the council, and the council will have an opportunity to consider the matter before any other action is taken.”

So they lied. They always lie. Or just change the rules so many times even they don’t know that they are. After giving a 48-hour ultimatum, they still had time in the next 24 hours to change the rules again. Twice. 1) We might invade in less than 48 hours if Hussein refuses to leave (here’s Ari Fleischer on that: “Saddam Hussein has to figure out what this means.” So Ari doesn’t know either). 2) We’ll invade even if he does leave. The latter flabbergasts me, it really does. I can’t figure out if they literally changed the policy after putting the figurehead-in-chief on tv in prime time to announce a different policy, or if they meant to say that troops were going in no matter what, and just phrased it in such a way that no one in the world knew that’s what they meant. And I don’t know which of those options would show greater incompetence.

My theory: I think what happened is that they’ve got a preconception that is so clear to them they didn’t think it needed to be said out loud, which is that the Iraqi military is only there to defend Hussein, not the country, and that Iraqis would be so happy to be “liberated” that if Hussein was around, there would be literally not a single hand raised against an American occupying army. Well good luck with that.

Still haven’t found out which insurance company pulled the rug out from the inspectors. I suppose we can’t blame them, a private company isn’t designed to act in the public interest. Which makes you wonder about all those companies lining up to provide services to the Iraqis. The US is going to be contracting out the Iraqi school and health systems to the lowest bidder.

Here’s a cute piece on various ways Iraq will be made more like the US (Hussein winning by 100% v. Florida; right hand cut off for theft v. 50 years in California for stealing videos, etc). My favorite: 6. Saddam has been universally seen firing his gun indiscriminately and menacingly. Under the second amendment, this right would be extended to everyone.

Moo: Colin Powell issues his list of 30 COW countries, and what an odd coalition it is. Even one of the biggest allies, Spain, is unwilling to send the much-feared Spanish army into fight, but basically any country willing to say that it might offer a paperclip at some point during the war gets on the list. Hey, the Philippines gave us overflight rights, isn’t that helpful? No, really, I’m asking, is it?

The US gave permission to Turkey to invade Iraq, by the way.

Legs of responsibility

Incredibly smug comment of the hour by Dubya: "The U.N. will definitely need to have a role [in running post-conquest Iraq]. That way, it can begin to get its legs of responsibility back." Although actually he plans to screw NGOs and just parcel the job out to American corporations.

Since writing that, I’ve seen The Smirking One’s address to the nation, and I wish to point out another piece of smugness he’s been doing, and which is spreading. The traditional obnoxious ending of such addresses, “God bless America,” or “May god bless the American people” has been expanded to “May God continue to bless America,” because of course we are god’s faves. Actually, my computer’s dictionary says “bless” comes from Old English, “perhaps originally in the sense of mark or consecrate with blood,” which is pretty fucking appropriate.

Of course blood isn’t Chimp Boy’s liquid of choice. In the part of the address aimed at the Iraqi people, he warns them not to use WMDs, but only after telling them not to harm one drop of our precious, precious oil. He can no longer even be bothered to pretend that oil isn’t his first priority. He also said “It is not too late for the Iraqi military to act with honor. Do not fight for a dying regime that is not worth your own life.” That’s not honor, that’s self-interest. William Saletan at Slate notes that Bush is demanding courage and resolve from the American people, and the complete opposite from Iraqis.

Speaking of self-interest, since there was never a Security Council vote, do whichever countries we bribed to vote for us still get those bribes?

The CBC says that GeeDubya has given up on diplomacy, the Bushies are saying rather that diplomacy has failed. My computer’s dictionary defines diplomacy as “skill and tact in dealing with people,” so I’d ask when diplomacy was ever actually employed.

Robin Cook, who was my choice to lead the Labour Party in ‘92, despite the garden gnome look, resigned the British government today, taking a shot at Bush that was really a shot at his favorite lapdog (one British anti-war chant: “Blair is a poodle, Bush is a noodle”). He said that if the hanging chads had gone the other way, we wouldn’t be at the brink of war. What he is implying is that His Tonyness would have toadied up to the policy of whoever happened to be president. Cook is given a standing ovation. I don’t think I’ve ever seen clapping in the House of Commons before. Here’s his statement.

The supreme court of our other ally Spain has voted to ban the Basque separatist party.

George Monbiot says that international aid is being shifted from every other country in the world to Iraq, to ensure that the US isn’t embarrassed by the entire country starving to death between the time we invade it and the time the camera crews leave. For example, the UN has received 2.5% of the money it requested to deal with the severe drought in Eritrea, 1.2% to deal with the effects of the civil war in Liberia, etc etc. Afghan puppet Karzai was in the US begging for money this month, and was promised a whopping $50 million, but the US insisted that $35m. of that be spent on a 5-star hotel in Kabul.

For all your pimp hat needs.

La too-qaa-wim

Bill Frist, evidently the first doctor in Congress in many decades, just keeps showing us why we don’t elect more of them. Just keeps rubbing everyone’s nose in it. Now, being a heart surgeon doesn’t really qualify you to give informed opinions on abortion, which he considers to be bad medicine. What, you may ask, is good medicine? His WashPost opinion piece Sunday is headlined “When War is the Best Medicine.” So take two, and call him in the morning.

The Israeli army says it was an accident that one of its bulldozers ran over an American activist trying to stop it destroying a Palestinian house. And then reversed, and ran over her again. By accident.

Bush was holidaying in the Azores this weekend, in a conference labeled as designed to find a path to peace. The only people invited were those who supported the war, which certainly makes agreement a lot easier to reach. The Times notes, “Behind the leaders hung an impressive row of flags, but each national flag was represented three times, somehow reinforcing the smallness of the coalition against Saddam.” Azores is Portuguese for “hawk.”

The US military has been warning that the Iraqis may use “suicide prisoners,” that is send people to surrender with explosives strapped to their body. Oh yeah, this war is gonna be humane. Also, in case you need it, the phonetic Arabic for “do not resist” is "la too-qaa-wim."

In a referendum, 64.3% of Liechtensteiners vote their prince near-absolute powers.

The Raelians, that weird sect that claims to have cloned humans, has been getting lots of requests from Israelis and Palestinians to clone children killed in the Intifada.

The UN inspectors stop most of their work, and lose most of their helicopters, because their insurance company (which none of the stories name) pulls out. Just in case you were wondering who’s really in charge in this world. Now if we could just get State Farm of Baghdad to pull its policies on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and this whole thing would be over.

In repression news, the Spanish courts let the government ban a Basque newspaper, the Turkish government is banning 2 Kurdish parties, and Germany is trying to ban the largest neo-Nazi party, but it turns out that most of the members who testified against it were actually agents provocateurs working for the intelligence services, while the press have discovered that the gov has been deliberately under-reporting the number killed in neo-Nazi violence, 99 since reunification (not 39, the gov figure). Also, Santa Cruz Public Library, followed by others, has put out signs warning that the FBI can get patrons’ records.

Speaking of Nazis, CBS is making a mini-series based on Hitler’s early life. But they’ve decided that Hitler--Adolf Hitler, mind you--isn’t that interesting, so they’re going to spice it up a bit. Ian Kershaw, whose biography of Hitler they were supposed to be basing this on (which I’ve read), has walked off and demanded his name be removed.

Someone at the State Dept has leaked a report trashing Bush’s hilarious “domino theory” idea that “regime change” in Iraq will create a cascade of democracy throughout the region. The problem is that what State is essentially saying is that these towel-heads aren’t up to the task of democracy, that it isn’t suited to them, and best stick with the authoritarian regimes we know and love. It’s hard to know which is more dangerous, Bush’s optimism, or State’s pessimism.

One of the countries Bush needs to get a Security Council vote from is Cameroon. The big news in that country is that the government is threatening to arrest people who drink their own urine. For medicinal purposes. And note to Chris: it’s supposed to restore hair too.

Fresh off its victory on victims of medical malpractice, the bastards, the Bushies are now trying to make it easier to deny coverage to Medicare patients by, for example, replacing judges as the persons who hear complaints about denials to employees of the DHHS. Astonishingly, they don’t need to go to Congress to do this.

The Observer today runs the silliest op-ed piece ever, someone saying that while Martin Sheen may oppose the war, Jeb Bartlett wouldn’t.

From AP: Procter & Gamble has agreed to include a disclaimer in a Metamucil commercial featuring Old Faithful to mollify the National Park Service. The commercial shows what looks like a Yellowstone National Park ranger pouring a glass of Metamucil, a laxative, into the geyser to help it stay regular. It will now say, "Dramatization — Please Obey Park Service Rules."

Israel has answered Bush’s “road map” with the environment-friendly response that it won’t be taking any road trips soon. Specifically, it refuses to dismantle even the illegal settlement outposts or freeze settlements, and that any movement from the first stage will be “conditioned upon the complete cessation of violence and terrorism, full disarmament of terrorist organizations, their capabilities and infrastructure, the complete collection of illegal weapons and the emergence of a new and different [Palestinian] leadership.” The road map as leaked to the NY Times was hilariously vague, although I did like the false equivalencies, such as the Palestinian leaders are supposed to urge the end of violence against Israelis, while the Israeli government is supposed to urge the end of violence against Palestinians. The falseness of the equivalency, of course, lies in the fact that most of the Israeli violence is committed by agents of the government. By the way, the shooting of 2 Israeli guards by Israeli troops, one killed by a missile shot from a helicopter while he was fleeing, shows, if more proof was needed, that the IDF shoots first and asks questions later, if then.

I commented about the administration watching its language with Security Council nations it has tried to overthrow. Bush’s comment about bringing the resolution to a vote no matter what the whip count is reminds me: he might also avoid talking about whips around nations like Guinea that we used to import our slaves from.

Headline of the day: Man Gets Prison for Pogo Stick Murder. The story, naturally, isn’t quite as funny.

Runner-up, from the Guardian: Tories Say Touch Typing Will Help Fight Crime. Turns out to mean that the police would get more actual work done if they typed their reports faster, which is sensible. Once again, it would have been better to stop after reading the headline.

The Oscar people are scared shitless that someone will use the platform to denounce the war. So they’ve resorted to that time-honored remedy, the blacklist. That may work for presenters, but what about winners, especially if Michael Moore wins one?

The Italian Supreme Court rules that interference by an “overbearing and intrusive mother-in-law” is grounds for divorce. The wife got the house and kid, and the husband moved back in with, you guessed it, his mama.

Somebody has decided to create an opera based on the BBC Newsnight program. Next up: Stephen Sondheim’s “McNeil-Lehrer,” with Mandy Patinkin as Jim Lehrer.

The new Lithuanian president, Rolandas Paksas, is being advised by an astrologer and mystic healer (she wraps people in toilet paper), who has been screening candidates for office. The Catholic Church is not pleased. The phrase “pact with the devil” has been used.

The news from Condoleeza

Congresscritter Ginny Brown-Waite (R-Fla), has introduced a bill to allow families of World War II dead to go to France and dig them up. She complains that the Frogs have forgotten that if we hadn’t helped them, they’d be speaking German now. Evidently compound nouns are a fate worse than death. The French could, of course, respond that if they hadn’t helped us during the Revolutionary War, we’d have a president who speaks English.

Incidentally, for those of you who have suggested that I lobby to change the excessively French name of my town, I’ve finally come up with an alternative: Condoleeza.

Longish piece on Bush admin secrecy, media complicity, and the likely restrictions on coverage of Dubya Dubya III.

And here’s another piece on the supine press. It has a phrase I like, calling Bush’s use of 9/11 to somehow justify war on Iraq as bait-and-switch.

Most of the American press has been lauding Serbia’s assassinated PM as the savior of his country, which should automatically make you suspicious. Here’s another view, perhaps going too far in the other direction, which says that Djindjic was a Quisling who worked for the US, sold off his country’s assets, and would have been cheerfully assassinated by pretty much any Serb. The story has a greater significance, since it suggests what happens when the US imposes “regime change.”

I’m told the French have taken to calling Rumsfeld Dr. Follamour (Dr. Strangelove). You won’t be surprised if I start doing the same.

Thankfully, the anti-abortion ideologues wrote their bill against “partial-birth” abortions in such a way that it will be struck down by the courts, unless of course Bush gets to appoint someone to the Supreme Court.

ttp://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n05/print/ande01_.html

This is scripted

I had a joke in mind I forgot to insert in my last, about the House cafeteria changing french fries to freedom fries, which is that if it’s anything like the cafeteria food at Santa Cruz, they’d have served their purpose better by keeping the name. Remember Saga’s Swiss Steak? Swedish meatballs? At the time I said Switzerland wouldn’t keep its neutrality long if it inflicted that food on the rest of the world.

The idiots on the DC Circuit Court say that Guantanamo detainees have no legal rights whatsoever, including access to the courts. Evidently they’re supposed to appeal to the Cuban courts. What I want to know is how if the judicial branch has no authority over these people, the executive branch can.

On the growing belief that Pakistan staged a fake arrest of retroactive-mastermind Khalid Mohammed, see this.

Read a piece complaining that in the staged Bush press conference the reporters playacted their parts, waving their hands even though Bush was clearly calling people from a written list, not even looking up, so the reporters were just giving credence to the masquerade of this being an unscripted event. Indeed, it has been noted elsewhere that many news sources’ transcript of the event have Bush saying “This is unscripted...” at a point where he actually said “This is scripted”.

Speaking of scripted events, the US is getting ready to set up France for the “failure” of the UN (to do what the US wants). The word you will hear most frequently applied to Jacques Chirac is “bully,” and not in the Teddy Roosevelt sense. Well, if the US can castigate Iraq for not obeying the UN and invading other countries and having weapons and so forth, I guess it can call France a bully. Although it might want to refrain from doing so in the Security Council, where so many of the swing voters (Angola, Mexico, Chile, etc) are countries whose governments the US has overthrown or tried to overthrow (in Angola’s case, the 25-year old civil war was started by the CIA when it was headed by Bush the Elder, which the US may have forgotten about but I can assure you Angola has not)(another country on the Security Council whose elected government Bush overthrew: the United States)(Mexican prez Vicente Fox fakes a back operation so he doesn’t have to make a decision publicly).

Yesterday on the Daily Show, they said that there was a debate in the Bush admin over how many hoops to make Saddam jump through, Powell opting for 2, Rummy for 3, but they all agreed the hoops would be flaming. Today, Britain introduces 6 new “conditions” to impose on Iraq, including that Saddam go on tv and read, in Arabic, a statement Britain will write for him to the effect that he has been a very bad boy, has hidden weapons, and will never ever do so again. As if any leader would just go on tv and robotically read something written by...well, yes, ok, but George did go off-script when he said “This is scripted.” The conditions also include surrendering weapons that Iraq may not actually have, like mobile chemical/biological weapons facilities, and drones (did you see the fearsome drone on tv today? it was actually made of balsa wood).

Speaking of things made of balsa wood, Tony Blair isn’t looking too good lately, not helped by the accidental groin-kicking given him by Secretary of War Rumsfeld yesterday. Blair, who will never be called boyish again, is probably sacrificing his political career to Bush’s war, only to have Rumsfeld casually say that it wasn’t really necessary. Still, at the end of his career, Tony finally finds something he has a conviction about, and it turns out to be killing people. Guardian columnist Simon Hoggart asks,

Wouldn't you be spooked if he turned up at your door, just as you were sitting down to tea, all smart in his suit and tie, briefcase full of leaflets? "Hello, I'm here to tell you the good news about going to war with Saddam Hussein."

"Sorry, we're all Jehovah's Witnesses in this house."

Ah, Hollywood. Sigourney Weaver has evidently staged an elaborate wedding for her dog, an Italian greyhound. With a pre-nuptial agreement.

An AP story says that Italian schoolchildren will have to be multilingual. Evidently, talking with their hands doesn’t count. They will be learning English from the 1st grade.

The Serb PM is assassinated. Fortunately, assassinations in the Balkans never have significant consequences. The government immediately blames organized crime, which is possible, but there is no evidence for it, so they’re clearly going the cover-up route. It may have been related to his efforts to capture Bosnian Serb Ratko Mladic, a bit of left-over business from about 20 wars ago.

Wisconsin is moving towards not releasing election results until the polls close in the West. They should be encouraged, and everyone else follow.

Molly Ivins, in the current column, says exactly what I said yesterday about the NY Times perhaps needing to focus in its coverage on those areas where the American people show huge ignorance in the polls.

The Rolling Stones are going to China. Which has asked them not to play any songs with s-e-x in them.

Republicans are trying to turn Rep. Moran into the new Trent Lott for his semi-anti-Semitic remarks about Jews and American foreign policy. At the same time, the FBI is “investigating” the fake evidence the US cited linking Iraq to attempted uranium purchases in Niger. They say it may be the work of some foreign nation that wants to instigate a war between the US and Iraq. Of course, they mean to imply Israel.