When American toilet paper meets Iraqi plumbing

The US Army wants to increase its bullet purchases, ‘cuz it’s running out. It wants 2 billion a year. And that’s just one branch. Either they’re planning to kill an awful lot of people, or they can’t aim.

Molly Ivins: “It's quite difficult to convince people you are killing them for their own good. That's our basic problem in Iraq.”

The Pentagon has decided not to pay Halliburton for meals that were never served. Halliburton is increasingly embarrassing, so the Bushies have decided to funnel money to it out of Iraq’s oil revenues. Same looting, less visibility (so you might take with a grain of salt any suggestion that Chalabi is really having his funding cut off). Bremer has refused to account in any real way for how that money is spent, and no one can make him, since the R’s passed legislation exempting the CPA from investigation by the GAO.

AP says that fewer than 25,000 actual Iraqis are employed in reconstruction projects.

According to The Hill, the R’s decided to make Kerry look responsible for unemployment benefits not being extended. It needed 60 votes and lost 59-40, Kerry being out campaigning. Except it was a set-up: Elizabeth Dole voted yes to make it a 1-vote loss. Had Kerry been there, she’d have voted no. She didn’t want to help the unemployed (she is an R, after all), just to make Kerry look bad. Like he needs any help.

You probably know that Switzerland in the 1930s started labeling Jews as such on Swiss passports, giving in to German pressure. Israel today will allow people to label themselves as Jew or Arab on their id’s, or indeed as Assyrian, Samaritan, etc, but not as Israeli.

Condi Rice says of Israeli plans for mass demolition of homes, “some of their actions don’t create the best atmosphere.” Arabs will remember that devastating put-down the next time they are called upon to condemn the execution of Nick Berg.

The provincial assembly of West Sumatra, Indonesia, has just seen 43 of its 55 members convicted of corruption.

Texas executed the insane guy.

I don’t remember what they said at the time, but in October 2002, Gen. Rick Baccus was removed as commandant of Guantanamo, for being too “soft” on the inmates. When he was left (he’s still waiting for a new job), authority was turned over to military intelligence, and the rest is blood-spattered history.


The Independent
May 19, 2004
THIS HANDOVER IN IRAQ IS NOT A POLICY - IT IS A CYNICAL PUBLIC RELATIONS GIMMICK
PATRICK COCKBURN

Soon after United States occupation officials took over Saddam Hussein's palace complex in central Baghdad as their headquarters last year there was an alarming development. The lavatories in the palaces all became blocked and began to overflow. Mobile toilets were rapidly shipped into the country and installed in the palace gardens.

It turned out that American officials, often bright young things with good connections with the Bush administration in Washington, did not know that lavatories are used in a slightly different way in the Middle East compared to back home. In particular water fulfills the function largely performed by paper in the West. The water pipes in Saddam's palaces were not designed to deal with big quantities of paper and became clogged, with spectacularly unsavoury results.

It was the first of many mistakes made by the Coalition Provisional Authority, which has now ruled Iraq for a year-based on inadequate local knowledge. It has been one of the most spectacularly incompetent regimes in history. If Paul Bremer, the US viceroy in Iraq, decided important issues by flipping a coin he would surely have had better results.

At moments Mr Bremer has the manic activity and self-confidence of Inspector Clouseau as he bounces from crisis to crisis, many of his troubles of his own creation. In April he managed to turn the insurgents in Fallujah, previously regarded by most Iraqis as dangerous hillbillies, into nationalist heroes. At the same time he went after Muqtada Sadr, the Shia cleric, whose popular base was always small, and allowed him to pose as a martyr. The main feature of American policy-making in Iraq is division. Nowhere in the world is it more necessary for military and political strategy to be united than Iraq. But Mr Bremer and the uniformed army hardly seem to communicate. The civilians in the Pentagon and the Neo-Cons have their own policy as do the State Department and the CIA. The White House is mainly concerned that, whatever is really happening on the ground in Iraq, it can be presented in a way which will not lose Mr Bush the presidential election in November.

Out of this melange of rivalries it would be surprising if any sensible policy emerged and there is, indeed, no sign of one doing so. Downing Street and the White House are now both talking up the handover of sovereignty to Iraqis on 30 June and the creation of new Iraqi security forces to, in time, replace the 135,000 US and 7,500 British soldiers.

This is less a policy than a cynical public relations gimmick. The allies have been trying to build up the Iraqi security forces for over a year. But when the uprisings began last month, 40 per cent of the US-trained forces promptly deserted while 10 per cent mutinied and changed sides, according to the US army. The reality, as Dr Mahmoud Othman an independent member of the Iraqi Governing Council says, is that Iraqis will not fight other Iraqis on behalf of a foreign power.

Of course the purpose of the exaggerated significance now being given to the handover of sovereignty to an interim government in six weeks' time is to pretend that now there will be a legitimate authority in Iraq. Over the past year, the CPA has repeatedly said it will delegate power to Iraqis. It has never happened and is unlikely to happen now. The US- appointed Iraqi Governing Council found that it was expected to give an Iraqi flavour to decisions taken by Americans. They were told they would be consulted on important security decisions only to wake up one morning to find US marines besieging Fallujah. They were seen by more and more Iraqis as collaborators with an increasingly detested occupation.

The council is now to be replaced by a government of technocrats supposedly more acceptable to Iraqis than their predecessors. It will be chosen in part by Lakhdar Brahimi, the UN envoy, and is to pave the way for elections in Iraq next January.

Again the most striking aspect of this plan is gimmickry. There was a moment straight after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein when the UN might have played a role in Iraq. But at that point, as one Iraqi leader put it, the US was drunk with victory and determined to keep the UN out. Since then the UN headquarters in Baghdad has been reduced to heap of ruins and many of its staff killed.

It is unlikely that many countries belonging to the UN would at this stage want to risk any of its officials or soldiers in Iraq. Mr Brahimi, supposedly a key player in creating a new Iraqi administration, hardly dared set foot outside the heavily defended green zone, where the Coalition has its headquarters, during his recent visit. The UN also has a shrewd suspicion that all it is being asked to do is to take a share in responsibility for a crisis over which it will have no influence.

After 30 June the US army will retain control over the Iraqi security forces in Iraq. It is unclear if Iraq will even be able to spend its own oil revenues. Nobody knows who will be in the new government. It does not even have a building from which it will function because the Coalition shows no sign of leaving Saddam's palaces. The degree to which important decisions about the handover of sovereignty have been left to the last minute underlines that, at the end of next month, real power will not change hands.

British officials who admit this say that the really important date will come in seven months' time when there is an election in Iraq. Here they are on slightly firmer ground. The occupiers should have organised an election as soon as possible after the invasion. They would then have been able to deal with elected Iraqi leaders with some claim to legitimacy.

But there were no elections before because the Americans feared Shia parties beyond American control would win. So US officials cancelled local elections. Mr Bremer certainly did not want the elections over the summer because he feared they would be won by Islamic parties, even though British and American military commanders confirmed privately that a poll could be organised.

In Najaf, the Shia shrine city, the occupying forces even managed to appoint a Sunni governor, which was a bit like giving Rev Ian Paisley a position of responsibility overseeing the Vatican. Fortunately the governor did not last long in that role. He was arrested for kidnapping and is now in jail.

The important point about the Iraqi elections is the timing. They will not take place before the US presidential elections in November. This allows Mr Bush to say that Iraq is on track towards democracy.

There will be a price to pay for allowing Iraq policy to be determined by Mr Bush's electoral needs. It is a price which will be paid in blood. I have met no Iraqis who think anything is going to change at the end of next month. More and more they believe that the only way to end the occupation is by armed resistance. If the British Government believes that 3,000 extra soldiers will really do anything to restore order then they have once again underestimated the gravity of the crisis.

Outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture

Mark Kimmitt, M.M., uses the U-word, describing what the Shiites are doing as a “minor uprising.” I think this is a first. A search for “uprising” at the defenselink.mil site, my usual one-stop shopping center for the collective horseshittery of Messrs. Rumsfeld, Myers, Kimmitt, Wolfowitz, etc., brings up a lot of denials that certain things going on constitiute uprisings--by Shiites, in Fallujah, in Iraq generally. They admit to the U-word in Iraq as readily as they admit to the T-word (torture). See for yourself.

It’s been 8 days since the Sunday Times of London reported that one of the intended 9/11 hijackers had spilled the beans to the FBI. Nothing anywhere else (well, The Sun, the Press Trust of India, a Taiwanese site, Bloomberg), no follow-up, even in the Sunday Times today. I don’t get it.

But Holy Joe Lieberman, on CNN today, evidently endorsed torture, using as an example if one of the 9/11 hijackers had been captured before the attack. No word about what you do with one of them if they turn themselves in after losing all their Al Qaida mad money at craps (score one for the Great Satan, by the way!).

Speaking of torture, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales wrote Bush a memo some time after 9/11: “As you have said, the war against terrorism is a new kind of war. In my judgment, this new paradigm renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitations on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders quaint some of its provisions”. Quaint. QUAINT.

Early this month, the House voted 376-3 to authorize war with Iran over its nuclear program. Although this may not be the month for this country to accuse any other of “continuing deceptions and falsehoods,” the resolution did just that, and said the US or other countries should “use all appropriate means to deter, dissuade and prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.” Almost the exact words that permitted Bush to invade Iraq. Kucinich, one of the three (Libertarian loon Ron Paul and John Conyers were the others; 14 D’s voted wimp, I mean “present”), notes that the resolution endorses Bush’s doctrine of preventive wars. You’d think the Congress would have learned better of giving Bush blank checks. (Note: this happened 12 days ago. Did you notice it? I didn’t)

Powell calls, I guess, for a coup against Arafat, telling Palestinians to “wrest control of the security forces from Chairman Arafat”. I think that’s in the same interview where his press aide grabbed the camera and moved it off Powell when Tim Russert, back in Washington, started to ask about his lies to the UN about Iraqi WMDs.

Powell also hectored the Arabs for not having expressed more insincere outrage over the Nick Berg murder. In fact, he has a mathematical formula: “When you are outraged at what happened at the prison, you should be equally, doubly outraged at what happened to Mr. Berg.” Well, which is it, equally or doubly? His own reaction to Israel’s plan to destroy hundreds of Palestinian homes in Gaza, and displace up to 40,000 residents of the Rafah refugee camp, was to call it “unhelpful,” which I believe is represented numerically as a milli-outrage.

Kuwait may let women vote. Don’t hold your breath though.

The WaPo on the response to Seymour Hersh’s latest article: “In a statement released yesterday, Pentagon officials harshly criticized the report, calling it 'outlandish, conspiratorial, and filled with error and anonymous conjecture.' The Pentagon would not, however, say flatly whether or not the program exists.”
Billmon.org takes the non-denial denial apart line by line.

A recent Kurt Vonnegut piece, not his best but he is 81, as he repeatedly tells us. Quote: “There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.” Another quote: “Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power.”

Oh just cut and run already

Gay marriage began today, officially, in Mass., so I’m not sure why I’m even writing this, because the world must surely have come to an end. I’m assuming the only reason I seem to be alive still has something to do with the time difference. Either that or I am dead, and in Suburbs Hell, which is probably better than Fire Hell or Upside Down Hell.

Abdel-Zahraa Othman Mohammed, we hardly knew ye.

Really, who the hell were you? Actually, according to the Guardian obit, he was part of an Iran-backed Islamic group. Which in Iraqi terms makes him a moderate, evidently.

Sarin AND the assassination of the nominal head of the puppet government, oh yeah this is going so well (assuming the sarin thing isn’t yet another false alarm, of course). Blair says there will be “no cutting and running” three times in the same speech. Do you think he knows the provenance of that term? The assassination was a triple fuck you, in that not only did they kill him, but they did it at coalition hq just to show they could, and they killed a member of a body that won’t even exist in 7 weeks.

Slate on the obnoxiousness of a favorite Bush phrase.

I know you all want to see what John Kerry’s daughter’s breasts look like (her face is startlingly like her father’s), so thank god for the British tabs.

You never hear the name Fallujah anymore, and why is that? Does the phrase “cut and run” mean anything to you?

Berlusconi wants to build a bridge between Sicily and the mainland. Actually, Berlusconi already provides in his own person a bridge between the Mafia and government. Key sentence, several years from now: “Nice bridge you got here. Hate for anything to happen to it....”

YOU HAVE TO BREAK A FEW...OH FORGET IT: Le Parker Meridien hotel in New York, evidently even more pretentious than the “Le” implies, now offers a $1,000 omelette, with lobster (a whole lobster) and caviar. No one’s ordered it yet.

As they release some of the Ab Ghraib prisoners, US soldiers hand them some cash and a note that says “You have not been mistreated.”

Zell Miller agrees, saying “No one ever died from humiliation” and comparing it to the first time he had to take a shower in gym class, and everybody laughed at his tiny, tiny penis. (I’m inferring the last part, but feel free to pass it along to everyone you know).

Extreme

“Camp Redemption”? You have to be fucking kidding me.

Latest congressmorons to defend torture: Zell Miller (natch) and Steve King (R-IA).

And Bush uses the Berg beheading (to the question, what the hell was Berg doing in an orange jumpsuit, I have to add this one: when they found his body, where was the head?) to retroactively justify the war, “proving” the Iraq-Al Qaida connection: “The person responsible for the Berg death, Zarqawi, was in and out of Baghdad prior to our arrival, for example.” You claimed that before. You also said he had one leg amputated in Iraq. Evidently it’s grown back.

And Bush on Iraqis: “They're glad to be rid of Saddam. And they obviously want to run their own country. If I were them I'd want to run my own country, too.” He makes it sound like a model train set. Which to him, it probably is.

Reuters headline: “Bush Vows No More Iraq Abuses, Hits Low in Poll.” One can only hope that’s not cause and effect.

Wondering about the conflicting reports over whether Saddam will be handed over to an Iraqi “government”? It’s a ploy to soften Saddam up, according to the Telegraph. Good cop, puppet bad cop. And after the last two weeks of revelations, you’ll be surprised to hear that we’re the good cop.

Why actors should never be allowed to breed: Gwyneth Paltrow’s new daughter...Apple.

Speaking of badly named, the punishment/torture group at Guantanamo is called the Extreme Reaction Force. Isn’t “extreme” like so two years ago? About the time they opened Extreme Pizza in downtown Berkeley (never eaten there, never will). Anyway, the ERF filmed everything they did....

And see the latest Sy Hersh piece, which makes clearer than ever Rumsfeld’s responsibility for little torture centers being franchised all over the world like Taco Bells.

Israel has bulldozed over 100 homes in Gaza, 1) just because they can, 2) because they are looking for the remains of 5 dead Israeli soldiers. Israel gets very strange about the bits of dead soldiers.

The pundits keep saying that this year’s election will be decided in Ohio. I don’t think I want this country’s future decided by people who didn’t know enough to leave Ohio.

Commoners

Corp. Charles Graner, an MP at Abu Ghraib, will be charged with conspiracy to maltreat detainees, dereliction of duty for woefully failing to protect detainees from abuse, maltreatment of detainees, assaulting detainees, committing indecent acts, adultery and obstruction of justice. Adultery. Trust the military to put things in their proper perspective.

Bush supports edukashion: “See, if you can't read, these jobs of the 21st century are going to go begging.” Fortunately for Bush, his job was created in the 18th century.

On the CIA’s central role in the International Union of Torturers, and the American archipelago, read this (link will work until approximately next Friday):
http://www.newstatesman.co.uk/nscoverstory.htm

The Independent notes that the crown princes of Spain and Denmark have just both married commoners, which is what happens when you let them marry whomever they want. I wouldn’t mention this except as a hook for saying that the Danish prince married an Australian, and you can’t get any commoner than that. They met in a bar, but you knew that when I said she was an Aussie, didn’t you?

Probably coerced / I'm a survivor / snot from the nose of the Great Buddha

“OH YES, HERE IS JOHNNY, GOODNESS GRACIOUS ME.”: Just what India needs: an Italian widow as prime minister. Still, better a corrupt dynasty than the Hindu-supremist BJP party, which ran on the slogan “India’s Shining,” presumably intended to refer to India’s recent economic success rather than to invoke the image of a Bollywood remake of the Stanley Kubrick film of the Stephen King novel, only this time with a lot more signing and dancing. One of the congresscritters who saw the prison photos, Rep Trent Franks (R-Ark), who doesn’t know much about art but knows what he likes, disapproved of a photo of a prisoner sodomizing himself with a banana. “My conclusion,” Rep Franks concluded, “is that that was probably coerced somehow.” Ya think? The London Times has a headline that encapsulates an irony I might have missed: “Rumsfeld Visits Prison at Centre of Storm to Tell Troops 'I'm a Survivor.'” Of course he never had to survive--for instance--being coerced, somehow, to sodomize himself with a banana. I think. The Indy article on this just drips sarcasm. One detail I hadn’t heard: when the US reopened Abu Ghraib, they hung a sign “America is a friend of all the Iraqi people.” I guess it’s better than Arbeit macht frei. I imagine we’ll find out that those troops survived an ideological screening process. Certainly their questions to him were at the trivial or Larry King level. Link, but don’t bother. Rummy also says that if it were up to him, he’d certainly release all the pictures, but those darned lawyers won’t let him. Lynndie England is claiming that she was ordered to pose for those photos. She’s not a callous sadistic bitch, she just plays one on television. The European Commission’s envoy to Slovakia, a Dutchman, suggested that Roma children be removed from their parents and placed in boarding schools so that they learn “normal social values.” Like racism. The Dutch tv interviewer asked about the morality of this; and Eric Van der Linden said that the parents could be given a few bucks to overcome their resistance. He has been reprimanded, but not fired. From the Telegraph: “Priests at one of Japan's most famous temples have taken steps to block the sale of a sweet marketed as the "Snot from the nose of the Great Buddha". Tuesday Texas is due to execute a paranoid schizophrenic, whose yelling during his trial caused him to be excluded from most of it, and who will not speak to his lawyer because he does not understand “hell law” (is there any other kind?) and thinks he has received a pardon from Satan, not understanding that Satan is no longer governor.

A voice of reason who’s killed, like, 20 dudes

Who is John Kerry?

Bush: “we're not backing down” from No Child Left Behind. It’s always a test of manhood with him, isn’t it?

Cheney defending stonewalling the inevitable release of more prison torture pics: “It's not just a matter of sort of whetting people's appetites to see sensational stuff here.” Congresscritters who saw them today said they’re icky, but no one mentioned pictures of guards doing “inappropriate things” with, to, near, on, under, over or next to a dead body.

We now know that the inquisitors were allowed to use sensory deprivation, “stress positions,” “dietary manipulation” (is that like eating with your fingers?), threatening with dogs, etc. Rummy says these techniques are ok because they’ve been checked by Pentagon lawyers. Yes, if you want to find out if something is wrong, you ask the most moral people you know. Lawyers. Who work in the Pentagon. Other legal opinions allow outright torture if the prisoner can be said to be in the custody of another country (does that include Guantanamo?).

One thing about all this focus on torture, is that we’ve completely forgotten all those soldiers getting killed.

Science at its finest.

General Wiranto, under indictment for crimes against humanity in East Timor, is, as you know, a candidate for president in Indonesia. Today he chose as his running mate the deputy chief of the Indonesian human rights commission. Very Oscar and Felix.

I wish some blogger would transcribe the Daily Show every day, but here’s a bit from Tuesday:

Jon Stewart: Stephen, what do you think about this idea that we are hearing from Rumsfeld, and now Sen. Inhofe, that the press was somehow irresponsible for releasing these photos of abuse?

Stephen Colbert: Jon, I agree entirely with Secy Rumsfeld that the release of these photos was deplorable, but these actions of a few rogue journalists do not represent the vast majority of the American media.

Stewart: The journalists did something wrong?

Colbert: I'm just saying those journalists don't represent the journalists I know. The journalists I know love America, but now all anybody wants to talk about is the bad journalists--the journalists that hurt America.

But what they don't talk about is all the amazingly damaging things we haven't reported on. Who didn't uncover the flaws in our pre-war intelligence? Who gave a free pass on the Saddam-al Queda connection? Who dropped Afghanistan from the headlines at the first whiff of this Iraqi snipehunt? The United States press corps, that's who. Heck, we didn't even put this story on the front page. We tried to bury it on "60 Minutes II." Who's on that--Charlie Rose and Angela Lansbury?

Stewart: Stephen, what do you think is at play here?

Colbert: Politics, Jon, that's what. Pure and simple. I think it's pretty suspicious that these tortures took place during a Presidential campaign. This is a clear cut case of partisan sadism. You know, come to think of it, I'm pretty sure those Iraqi prisoners want Bush out of office too. You know I wouldn't be a bit surprised if a pile of hooded, naked Iraqis has a job waiting for them in the Kerry Administration.

Camp Slappy??? / Outraged by the outrage

One of the private companies that DOD contracted with to provide inquisitors for Abu Ghraib, CACI International, also sells the Bush admin ethics training tapes.

Nick Berg’s death will be used as an excuse not to release the rest of the photos of Iraqis being tortured. One possible obstacle to this tactic: his parents, who are blaming not the guys who cut his head off but the US government, which arrested him for no particular reason (more to come on this, I’m sure) until they filed suit, at which time they released him and he disappeared. The story is odd in many details, as is his appearance in an orange prison-type jumpsuit in the film, and a 12-hour gap in the tape. And they’re lying about who beheaded him. The beheading-on-video thing, by the way, while new to Iraq, is common in Chechnya. Video-CDs of Russian soldiers being killed in that manner are common on the streets of Baghdad. For whatever that’s worth.

No one is giving the URL for the site with the video of the beheading. I wouldn’t have watched, but I want the option.

At the risk of joining a partisan version of the dump-Rummy movement, I “signed” the Kerry petition anyway.

Sen. Inhofe is outraged by the outrage. Well, I’m outraged by his outrage at the outrage. I don’t see what he could possibly say in response to that...

There is an undersecretary of defense for intelligence, did you know that? It’s a new position under the Bush admin. He’s Stephen Cambone, and he said today that military intelligence was given command of the facility of Abu Ghraib, but not the guards, so don’t blame him. Cambone was the one who sent the commandant of Stalag Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib to instruct them in how to soften up prisoners. Both should be fired, but won’t be, any more than Rummy, who as Bush said yesterday is a very good secretary of state, yes you are, who’s a good secretary of state, you’re a good secretary of state, would you like a Milk Bone?

Speaking of stalags....Camp Slappy? (Kandahar)

Joe Conason asks an interesting question: “When George W. Bush grudgingly apologized for the crimes committed in our name, who believed that he was sorry?” Think about this seriously for a second--do any of you believe he was actually sorry? Answers on a postcard please.

I do enjoy a good parliamentary sketch. Monday the minister of defense went before Parliament. The Guardian’s sketchwriter, Simon Hoggart, said this: “Short of pulling a hood over his head and jeering at the size of his genitals, the Commons could not have been much more humiliating to Geoff Hoon.” “He became the latest minister to offer an apology - for this administration "sorry" seems to be the easiest word, whether for the Irish potato famine, slavery or the Dome.”

The sound of freedom

The world’s tallest building will be built in Dubai. One of the contractors bidding on it is Osama bin Laden’s father. In the business world, they call that vertical integration.

Putin appoints as deputy leader of the Chechnya the 27-year old son of the guy who was just blowed up. Ramzan Kadyrov is already in charge of the secret police and so is quite the shit in his own right. His appointment is thus a double fuck-you to Chechnya.

Another quote I missed, in February, Mark Kimmitt, M.M., asked by an Arab reporter about low-flying US helicopters frightening Iraqi children [for best effect, play Ride of the Valkyries while reading the following]:
“What we would tell the children of Iraq is that the noise they hear is the sound of freedom. ... We would recommend that you tell the same thing to the children of Iraq, that that helicopter noise you hear above you ensures that they don't have to worry for the future.”
That could be taken two ways.

Tony Blair met with the Chinese premier today. Guess who got all the questions about human rights abuses?

Sometimes you err to one extreme: According to US News & World Report, last April (which could mean 2004 or 2003), the FBI accidentally put on the daily “threat matrix” one Don Emilio Fulci, a millionaire who formed a terrorist group. He turned out to be a character in a video game.

And sometimes you err to the other extreme: This was front-page news in the Sunday Times, but oddly no one else seems to have picked it up, not even British papers. You’d think it would have raised the shitstorm to end all shitstorms. I give it unedited.

Sunday Times (London)
May 9, 2004

Briton trained as 9/11 hijacker
Christina Lamb

A FORMER waiter in a Manchester curry house was recruited by Al-Qaeda and trained as a hijacker in preparation for the September 11 attacks.

The British Muslim was enlisted at a mosque in Oldham and attended terrorist training school in Pakistan. But he had second thoughts about his suicide mission as he flew to America and surrendered to the police after gambling away thousands of pounds given to him by Al-Qaeda.

The FBI’s counter-terrorism taskforce questioned the 29-year-old man for three weeks at Newark, New Jersey, in the spring of 2000. There, agents refused to believe his claim that terrorists were planning to fly passenger jets into buildings, even though he passed lie detector tests.

Other hijackers were entering the United States at about the same time and enrolling at flight schools to learn the skills that they would need, only 18 months later, to carry out the world's most audacious acts of terrorism.

The failure to investigate the Briton's claims was one of a startling series of missed opportunities that have emerged in inquiries by a US commission examining the September 11 attacks. His case has now been reopened amid wrangling between the FBI and British authorities.

The man, whose name is being withheld by The Sunday Times because his life is under threat from militants, was brought back to Britain in 2000 by two FBI agents and handed to British security officials at Heathrow airport.

He was then questioned by Special Branch and released. The FBI believes that the British authorities failed to follow up the case or to pass on any relevant intelligence. An urgent request to find the man after September 11 was ignored, although Special Branch officers have said they went back to him and took "appropriate action". The FBI has now asked for him to become a witness in its investigation.

Born in Britain, he grew up in his family's home village in Pakistan before returning to Oldham when he was 16. After sixth-form college he worked at a restaurant but became addicted to gambling, running up debts of £15,000.

He was approached at his local mosque by a recruiter who offered him money in return for carrying out "a job". He accepted, even when he realised what was involved.

"If your life has no colour and a mullah says you can be a hero by dying, why not?" he said in an interview. "I think there are a lot of frustrated Muslim youths in Britain who feel the same way."

He travelled to Lahore, where he was taught how to carry out a hijacking and was familiarised with the inside of a Boeing cockpit. "I knew they wanted me to do some kind of operation in which I would die, but my life was such a mess that in my mind I was already dead," he said.

"At that time, if they had told me to strap a bomb to my body and blow myself up I would have done it as easily as taking a glass of water to drink."

On his return to Britain he was given a further £5,000 and then sent to New York, where he was told that he would be met at the airport.

But he had got married and during the flight thoughts of his wife and baby helped to change his mind. He gave his contact the slip and instead of going through with his mission, he took a bus to Atlantic City, where he lost his money in casinos and then gave himself up.

Debt of gratitude

I commented a couple of days ago about Rumsfeld tarring the critics of torture with his own pragmatic amorality. I didn’t really expect the same from the Rev. Dubya, but: “Those responsible for these abuses have caused harm that goes well beyond the walls of a prison. It has given some an excuse to question our cause and to cast doubt on our motives.” An “excuse?”

Bush has clearly decided to keep Rumsfeld, praising him before journos. “Our nation owes you a debt of gratitude,” he said. Uh, yeah, the check is in the mail. Another example of Bush inflexibility creating a no-win situation. In office, Rumsfeld is damaged and damaging. But throw him out, and look weak and faltering. Either decision calls into doubt Bush’s judgment, which it wouldn’t if he were capable of even hinting that his judgment is less than god-like. Billmon notes that the decision to do, basically, nothing concrete to deal with the scandal means that the Bushies have to keep repeating how shocked, shocked, they are to find that gambling is going on, keeping the story going (and giving journalists the official permission they now seem to need to follow such stories) rather than downplaying it.

A letter in the WaPo suggests that the Pentagon’s request that CBS delay broadcasting the pictures was done because of the Supreme Court cases on indefinite detention of “enemy combatants,” depriving oral argument in those cases of some much-needed relationship to reality. The justices did ask what would prevent torture, and were told, “where the government is on a war footing, you have to trust the executive.”

Katherine Harris forgot to sign her absentee ballot in March’s local elections. Harris said she’s never had trouble before. “I know how important voting is.”

thepoorman.net clears up some of those nagging questions about responsibility (edited): “Here are some interesting facts about the President of the United States... 1) He is the President of the United States. 2) His job is to do the job that the President of the United States would do. ... He's not the National Brush-Clearer, he's not the Official Mascot of Sturdy American Manhood, and he's not a little kid you need to protect from mean partisan bullies. He's a grown man with all of the responsibilities of the President of the United States. ... A lot of people like Lindsey Graham are now complaining "oh, you just want to damage the President." That's not true, because it's impossible. Before I make up my mind about damaging a President, I want there to be a President. I want someone who is actually responsible for national policies and their successful execution. I have been led to understand that George W. Bush is handling this job these days, and often - when an aircraft carrier flight deck needs prancing on, for example, or when gay marriage threatens to rend the fabric of space time asunder - it appears that he may, indeed, be the President I am looking for. Sometimes, the signals are mixed, such as when he appeared in front of the 9/11 commission on the day the President of the United States was scheduled to testify, but had to be accompanied by Dick Cheney, who, as Vice-President of the United States, has been granted by the Constitution official responsibilities rivaling my own. And other times - times when things aren't going so well, usually - questions about what George Bush has done or is doing about things a President would be responsible for are met with scandalized protestations that we should not be politicizing the process. If George Bush is not, in fact, the President, he needs to stop squatting in the President's house.”

Isolated pockets of international hyperventilation

Cheney: “Don Rumsfeld is the best secretary of defence the United States has ever had. People ought to get off his case and let him do his job.” As for the 1st sentence, there have been 20 and it certainly isn’t the most savory group of characters ever.

For the second, have you ever heard such disdain for the notion of accountability, such contempt for Congressional oversight?

Karl Rove was the commencement speaker for the lucky graduating class of Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University. Rove, the “boy genius” who never graduated from any of the 3 colleges he went to, received an honorary doctorate in the humanities. Rove has a true outsider’s perspective on the humanities. His advice to the...holy shit, 2,041 graduates, is when you go on job interviews, "don't act like you're smarter than the person you're interviewing with. Even if you are." No comment.

Sy Hersh has another piece on Abu Ghraib, with another photo. Drip drip drip. Can’t wait to see what the inappropriate thing was that someone did with or to a dead Iraqi. Hersh has a quote from Rummy from early 2002, describing complaints about US treatment of prisoners as “isolated pockets of international hyperventilation.” I’m sorry to say I missed it in ‘02.

A bomb snaps the puppet strings of the Chechen “president.”

Kamen at the Post has an amusing story about a DOD memo telling staffers that the prison abuse report is still considered classified, so they shouldn’t download it from the internet. It’s unclear when the Pentagon plans to declassify it.

The true nature and heart of America

AP: “Danes sent emergency relief to their Nordic neighbours in Norway yesterday to help eliminate a toilet paper shortage.” I dunno, seems to me the Vikings have become a little...dainty.

Perspective.

Specialist Sabrina Harman, responsible for the guy-standing-on-a-box-with-wires-attached-to-his-genitals thing, says the problem is they never showed her a copy of the Geneva Convention to read. Before going into the military, Harman was assistant manager of a pizza parlor. You don’t want to know what she did to employees who put too many pepperoni on the pizzas.

A French writer has produced a novel without verbs. 233 pages.

TORTURE, WHAT TORTURE? WaPo: “Mark Jacobson, a former Defense Department official who worked on detainee issues while at the Pentagon, said that at Guantanamo and the Bagram facility in Afghanistan, military interrogators have never used torture or extreme stress techniques. "It's the fear of being tortured that might get someone to talk, not the torture," Jacobson said. "We were so strict."” Strict may not have been the best word to use. But here’s my point: if you threaten torture, you are using torture, just like if you point a gun at someone and threaten to shoot them unless they do what you want, you are using a gun. The story is on Pentagon’s approval of a specific program of abuse.

Someone dragged out this Bush quote, 3/23/03, addressed to Iraqis: “I expect them to be treated, the POWs, I expect to be treated humanely, just like we're treating the prisoners that we have captured humanely. If not, the people who mistreat the prisoners will be treated as war criminals.”

A Bush quote I missed: “I told His Majesty I was sorry for the humiliation suffered by the Iraqi prisoners. I told him I was as equally sorry that people seeing those people didn't understand the true nature and heart of America.”

Eric Idle comment on Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ: “I gather Mel doesn't handle the comedy too well, and he seems to totally ignore the singing opportunities of the crucifixion.”

The problem at that point was one-dimensional

The Daily Show’s take on Bush’s “not the America I know” semi-apology non-apology, is that maybe we should have invaded Iraq with that America, because the America we did use is something of a prick. Bush said that Iraqis “must understand” that this doesn’t represent America; they have 48 hours to understand this, or we’ll light them up again like a Christmas tree. The US shouldn’t be judged on the actions of a...well, we shouldn’t be judged on actions. It’s our principles that matter, our inspiring abstract notions. Just because torturing prisoners is something we did, doesn’t mean it’s something we would do.

Which is all pretty much what I wrote Wednesday, but funny.

Watched some of Rumsfeld’s testimony. Goes much faster if you don’t watch the questions, although I gather I missed an especially egregious performance by Holy Joe Lieberman. The Rumster wasn’t all that forthcoming, despite having been “softened up” by being dragged around on a leash, naked, with a hood over his head, by a young woman, but of course that’s just a typical Thursday for Rummy (it’s the optimal way to watch “Friends”).

I think he was the first Bushie to apologize to the tortured detainees themselves. Their response: “We can’t hear you. There are hoods over our heads.”

He says he won’t resign as long as he can remain “effective,” which is a completely amoral standard for what constitutes a resigning offence, the same sort of standard, in fact, that led to the use of torture to extract information. He said, “I would not resign simply because people try to make a political issue out of it.” Don’t know if anyone asked him who he was accusing of this, but they should have. I’d appreciate if he didn’t ascribe his own pragmatic amorality to his opponents’ reactions to the torture that occurred under his watch.

Actually, at times he seemed much more miffed about the fact that the pictures were released and the (illegally) classified report leaked, than about their contents. And he didn’t bother informing Bush because “The problem at that point was one-dimensional. It wasn't three-dimensional. It wasn't photographs and video.” The images mattered; the reality by itself wasn’t even worth mentioning (or maybe Shrub just doesn’t pay attention unless there are pictures; we know he can’t read). Rummy has admitted in as many words that had there been no pictures, nothing would have happened. Although so far the only thing that has been changed is that they put signs up all over Abu Ghraib: no cameras.

Rummy also said worse pictures were to come, without making it clear that they would come over his dead body--the Pentagon intends to sit on the pictures, but with CDs floating around, figures it won’t work. But the policy is still to stonewall.

The FDA, overruling its advisory panels for political reasons, decides not to allow the morning-after pill to be sold over the counter, claiming that under-age girls couldn’t be trusted to follow the instructions. The media (at least the NYT) failed to do the obvious and tell us what those instructions are, so I just had Long’s print me out a copy. Take a pill. Take another pill 12 hours later. If you can’t be trusted to follow those instructions, good luck raising a baby.

Divorce is legalized in Chile (in 6 months, anyway).

Maybe he's reading as fast as he can

More Abu Ghraib photos. There are over 1,000, but not here.

Today is National Prayer Day (and International Tuba Day)(no, sorry, that’s tomorrow), honorary chairman Oliver North. His theme is “freedom,” by which he means prayer in schools, the 10 commandments in public buildings, etc. North owes his freedom less to God than to an ill-considered grant of qualified use immunity by the Congress.

Pull-quote for Maureen Dowd’s column: “Fire Rummy, or make him read faster.”

The NYT reports that one of the Abu Ghraib guards who appears in the photos was recruited from a Pennsylvania prison renounced for beating....and humiliating...its prisoners. Whether this guy participated in that is kept secret by privacy laws, would you believe, although the fact that he beat and stalked his wife, threatened her with guns, etc, not so much. He had 3 restraining orders issued against him, but that raised no red flags for the US military, or indeed the state pen, which continued to employ him. Abu Ghraib isn’t the only American-run prison system with serious problems.

So Bush finally apologizes for all the, ya know, torture and sodomizing prisoners and such. He apologizes to the king of Jordan, in private, and then tells everyone he did so, because he just can’t bear to apologize in public. Why apologize to the king of Jordan? I’m not actually sure if it’s because Abdullah is a Muslim, and one Muslim is the same as any other Muslim to Shrub, or because Abdullah is an Arab, and ditto. “Hey, you’re from Muslimia, you must know Akbar...”

So if Rummy does have to go--heh, heh--who replaces him? You could ask the same question about Powell, and realize how badly this war has tarred the reputation of everyone associated with it. Condi can no longer be secretary of state--can you imagine the confirmation hearings? Wolfowitz of Arabia can’t be secretary of war. And so on. You can see this over in Britain, where Blair just appointed the guy who compiled the “dodgy dossier” on Iraq as the next head of MI6, to universal condemnation, for which, if you care, click.

Here’s a lovely Indy story: “Sexual slavery involving girls as young as 11 has grown into a massive industry in the Balkans, because of demand for their services from the 40,000 international peacekeepers from Nato and the United Nations in Kosovo.”

The UN voted 140-6 (4 Pacific Island states, Israel, and yes of course the US) that Palestinians have a right to sovereignty.

A guy is on trial in Australia for killing a guy, and eating his leg and penis. (Near Darwin, by the way) The trial answers the age old question: penis tastes like...chicken. If any of you already knew that, I don’t wish to know.

The America that I know

Bush goes on Arab tv, says the torture thing does not represent “the America that I know.” Like Bush knows anything about American from inside “The Bubble.” As we understand from a million stories, including this week’s, which you must have seen, about the World War II veteran turned away from a Bush rally after being questioned about who he’d voted for in 2000, the America that Bush knows has been very carefully screened (Kerry’s crowds are also screened, according to www.campaigndesk.org).

Of course the America that most of us are allowed to see is increasingly being carefully screened. Disney has blocked the release of Michael Moore’s film Fahrenheit 911 (of course that name derives from a Ray Bradbury book about a future in which all books are burned to screen the people from subversive ideas) because Jeb Bush might retaliate against the tax breaks Disney World (speaking of carefully screened realities) gets. Really, that’s too much irony packed into a story for even my tastes. What isn’t clear to me is whether Disney can also block it being released by any other distributor.

Some of the rhetoric used by Bushies, focusing on “rules,” must be especially annoying to Iraqis. An example: Powell: "What they did was illegal, against all regulations, against all standards.” Considering that it was done to people who were herded into Abu Ghraib (which is Arabic for Manzanar) according to no particular standards or regulations, this talk is downright insulting (even the internal US Army report says that 60% of the prisoners are innocent). It also focuses on how things work on paper, rather than in the real world. Iraqis know about nice words on paper meaning nothing; Saddam’s constitution (1990, I think) is quite a nice little document. Actually, all this language shows an un-Bushlike trust in rules and regulations. Of course that’s all he had to give the Iraqis, an investigative process, since he wasn’t willing to fire Rumsfeld or anyone else. In fact, he had nothing. He went to them, on Arabic-language satellite services, and didn’t bring so much as a bundt cake, much less someone’s head on a platter.

Sometimes a piece of rhetoric nags at me, and I’m not quite sure why, then 3 days later I’ll write 250 words on a six-word sentence uttered by Chimp Boy (see my 2002 essay on “No wonder I think they’re evil,” which anticipated that LA Times piece a few days ago on Bush’s management style by 2 years). Today, it’s the line from Bush and others that the Abu Ghraib pictures “do not reflect,” “do not represent” the American people (or as Bush characteristically put it, the “hearts” of Americans). All I can think is that it has something to do with the Bushies’ obsession, much stronger than Clinton’s, with image, or more accurately images, like the flight deck landing, the statue toppling and all the other carefully stage-managed moments, as if they’re constantly auditioning for a postage stamp. It was often said of Reagan that once he had made a good speech on a subject, he thought he was done; Bush, who is less fixated on words, for obvious reasons, thinks that once he has the right visual, he’s fixed in place the meaning of an event. Ironically, it was the two words Mission Accomplished that really turned Flight Suit Boy’s million-dollar photo op into a sick joke, and it was the photos of the prisoners that made torture into a live issue.

Bush also referred to torture and sexual humiliation as “mistakes,” as in “It is also important for the people of Iraq to know that in a democracy everything is not perfect; mistakes are made.” You know how it is when you accidentally put a bag over a prisoner’s head and force him to masturbate. I suppose we should just be thankful that Bush finally found a mistake, although not one he made, of course, nor yet one he felt obligated to apologize for, or refer to in the active voice (I know it was Reagan who said “mistakes were made”--can anyone remember the context?).

There’s a good analysis of the Bush interviews at Slate. It notes that he spoke consistently from a position of arrogant superiority. “It is not Bush's place, especially when speaking humbly on Iraqi television, to claim that American soldiers are doing "great work on behalf of the Iraqi people." That's for Iraqis to decide.” “Too often, the president began a sentence with the words, "People in Iraq must understand ..." or "The Iraqi people must understand …" or "People in the Middle East must understand … ."” The piece also notes that the report on Abu Ghraib (which is Arabic for the Black Hole of Calcutta)(I’m now officially retiring that one) was classified, although it is illegal to classify an official investigation into illegal conduct.

From the Guardian: “The US-led coalition in Afghanistan has distributed leaflets calling on people to provide information on al-Qaida and the Taliban or face losing humanitarian aid. The move has outraged aid organisations who said their work is independent of the military and it was despicable to pretend otherwise. Medécins Sans Frontières, the international medical charity which passed the leaflets to the Guardian, said the threat endangered aid workers. Fourteen aid workers were killed in Afghanistan last year and 11 so far this year.”

Guess what, there’s more film. I haven’t seen it, but here’s Robert Fisk’s description: “As a wounded Iraqi crawls from beneath a burning truck, an American helicopter pilot tells his commander that one of three men has survived his night air attack. "Someone wounded," the pilot cries. Then he received the reply: "Hit him, hit the truck and him." As the helicopter's gun camera captures the scene on video, the pilot fires a 30mm gun at the wounded man, vaporising him in a second.” Evidently the footage has been shopped around for 2 weeks, and only ABC, the CBC and Canal Plus in France have run it. Shooting a wounded man is a war crime under the Geneva conventions. The incident occurred last December. There is no evidence in the film that the 3 dead men were doing anything remotely suspicious.

Technically different from torture / The system works

Tom Tomorrow has posted something on his blog that only occurred to me after turning off the computer after sending my last, juxtaposing the Powell quotes about our troops being in Iraq “to help, not hurt” with his assertion in his My Lai massacre cover-up report that “relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent”.

Today Rumsfeld referred to the actions at Abu Ghraib (which is Arabic for Bastille) as “un-American.” Un-American, huh? That shows a singular lack of understanding of American history, to say nothing of our penal system. Senator Jefferson Beauregard Sessions was on McNeil-Lehrer today on this very subject, but was not asked to enlighten Rummy as a Southerner who “used to think the Klan was all right until I learned they smoked marijuana.” Rumsfeld also said that what happened was abuse, “which I believe technically is different from torture... And therefore I’m not going to address the torture word”. So that’s all right then.

Condi Rice told Al-Jazeera today, “We have a democratic system that holds people accountable for their actions...The president guarantees that those who did that be held accountable.” Uh, yeah, funny thing, about that accountability: we found out today that a soldier was convicted for shooting a prisoner to death last September (the shooting, I think, it’s unclear when the court martial was), and was discharged from the service with no jail time. And a prisoner was killed by a private contractor in Abu Ghraib (which is Arabic for Lubyanka), for which no action was taken because the military didn’t have jurisdiction (it can lock up thousands of Iraqis it just grabbed off the street, but when one of them is killed suddenly they’re worried about jurisdiction). As Rummy said today, “The system works.” Actually, given that neither he, nor Gen. Myers, nor Shrub, have actually bothered reading the report on the abuse-not-technically-torture, which was released in February, “work” may not be a word you want to use, you lazy sanctimonious [word that would make Chris’s work computer pull up its petticoats, squeal loudly, and faint]. A bunch of other prisoners died in custody (25, including in Afghanistan), some “natural causes,” some still under investigation. Britain has had 6 prisoners die.

Berlusconi has become the longest-serving Italian prime minister since World War II. Too bad he’s a crook.

You can just see the body language between them

Ah, Germany, Germany: “German plans to fine firms that fail to hire apprentices will also apply to legalised brothels. The legislation drafted by the Social Democrats and their coalition partners, the Greens, will fine companies that do not have one apprentice for every 15 workers.”

According to the WaPo, the secret of eternal life has been discovered. Either that, or their headline writer is an idiot. “Breastfed Babies Less Likely to Die, Study Finds.”

Ok, this is hilarious, now the Pentagon is actually denying that it pulled the Marines out of Fallujah, something every reporter could see happening, and handed it over to Gen. Saleh. Saleh has now been replaced with another of Saddam’s generals, who they think was exiled by Saddam, but again, they’re not entirely sure. But that’s ok, because the Marine commander says, “He is very well thought of, very well respected by the Iraqi general officers. You can just see the body language between them. And if I had to guess at this point, when we have this brigade fully formed, he demonstrates a level of leadership that tells me that he could become that brigade commander.” Body language. Good enough for me.

I’m curious: when Bush gave Sharon’s little plan his 100% approval, did he realize that Sharon intended to put it to a vote of Likud party members? Because a) leaving the fate of Palestinians up to a vote of right-wing Jews would have looked bad no matter how the vote went, b) such a vote was obviously always intended to fail, meaning that Bush got out-smarted yet again. The alternative is that Sharon didn’t tell him, and was allowed to get away with it, which is almost worse.

To help, not to hurt

Massachusetts is working on a new death penalty. The important thing about it, which has so far gone unremarked, is that it calls for a higher standard of proof than “beyond a reasonable doubt.” It requires no doubt. To me this sounds like an admission that the criminal justice system in Mass. isn’t good enough.

CBS delayed its report on Abu Ghraib 2 weeks (and who knows how much longer it would have waited had Sy Hersh not been about to break the story). Anyone tortured in that period should sue Dan Rather. There were actually hints of torture here and there on the web over the past few months, and of course that military report, but it took just one idiot with a camera to make sure attention would be paid. I’m telling you, investigative reporters are all very well in their place, but the moron who wanted some pics to show around the bars back home did more good accidentally than Hersh did.

The problem in Abu Ghraib was structural: military police guarding the prisoners were put under the authority of military intelligence, which made human rights violations inevitable and predictable. Anyone could have looked at the organizational chart and said “Here there be torture.” What I’m saying, to make it very plain, is that what happened was so predictable that it had to have been intended, except maybe the pyramid thing. Contra Monty Python, everybody expected the Spanish Inquisition. The command structure pretty much proves it, to a life-imprisonment-in-Massachusetts standard if not to a death-penalty-in-Massachusetts standard. If more proof were needed, we’re told that several Grand High Inquisitors were sent from Guantanamo to instruct the MPs in the finer points.

Colin Powell says, “the acts of a few, I trust, will not overwhelm the goodness coming from so many of our soldiers,” who are there “to help, not to hurt.” No response of mine could be as sarcastic as that happy horseshit deserves.

Sharon responds to his “defeat” in a referendum, which he did not have to call, of the 2% of the Israeli population that is the Likud party membership by promising to scale back his plans to slightly reduce settlement activity while permanently grabbing a large proportion of the West Bank. Quel surprise! It’s now official: George Bush was rolled. I knew it when the referendum was announced. How naive are all those news sources claiming Sharon was “rebuffed” or “snubbed” by his party? Did anyone think Likud would vote to withdraw from Gaza? Of course not.

Kerry doesn’t have to be rolled, he rolls all by himself. "The security of Israel is paramount. . . . We will also never expect Israel to negotiate peace without a credible [Palestinian] partner. And it is up to the United States in my judgment to do a better job of helping the Arab world to help that partner to evolve and to develop." Now we have to wait for some sort of evolutionary process, developing Palestinians that can fit into 40% of the space? So it’s not really “targeted killing,” it’s just helping along the Darwinian process, survival of the fittest and all that?

Like, what am I going to miss? The chicks?

AP headline: “Yale Taps Kidney Expert to Lead Med School.”

From a London Times story on the Fallujah pull-back: “"Yeah, goodbye Fallujah!" a California gunner exclaimed brightly. "Like, what am I going to miss? The chicks?"”

Diebold machines are banned from California, finally, but The Nation suggests that the racial purge of the electoral rolls we saw in Florida is now mandatory for the other 49 states.

Seymour Hersh on Abu Ghraib. You’ll be surprised to hear it’s worse than the photos suggested.

On the other hand, the pictures of British troops beating and urinating on an Iraqi are very probably fakes.

I’m not entirely sure the military actually knows who that Iraqi was to whom they just turned over Fallujah. Mark Kimmitt, M.M., says, “I don’t know his background.” Yesterday I said he showed up in his old uniform. It was a Republican Guard uniform. Which is a subtle hint about his background. Incidentally, generals are not exactly uncommon in Iraq; Saddam gave out promotions instead of money and there are...I just read the figure a couple of days ago...something absurd like 10,000 generals. (Later:) Hah, I called that one, all right. The Sunday NYT says that Pentagon officials wrongly told reporters yesterday that Saleh wasn’t even ever in the Republican Guard, and today the Pentagon pretty much had to admit they’re not sure who this guy is.

Secretary of War Rummy Rumsfeld: “It's never been an easy road to go from a dictatorship to a free system. It's bumpy. It's hard. And it isn't going to be a straight path.” Insert your own penis joke here.

OK, so we invaded Iraq to disarm it of weapons it didn’t have, and this week we can’t even get Fallujans to give up rocket launchers they certainly do have. I’m sure there’s an ironic juxtaposition in there somewhere, but it’s allergy season, so you’ll have to come up with that for yourself too.

Really, who would have guessed we’d be this bad at occupation. I mean, how many countries has the US occupied over the decades? You’d think all that experience would have been worth something. And, to quote Patrick Cockburn in the Sindy, “Saddam should not have been a hard act to follow.” He notes how completely the US has backed itself against a wall. “Despite having an overwhelming military force available to take Fallujah and Najaf, the US did not dare do so. It had become evident even in Washington that to crush the resistance in either city - not a difficult task against a few thousand lightly armed gunmen - would spread rather than end the rebellion.” Cockburn has another detail about Gen. Saleh--his car waved the Old Coke flag.

As you will no doubt have heard, Deputy Secretary of Warmongering
Paul Wolfowitz gave a figure for dead US soldiers in Iraq that was low by 200. Every member of the military and their families should be demanding his head. Personally, I think we should make it easier for him to keep track, by carving a notch on his person for each one, while Ted Koppel reads out the name. I’d tune in to Nightline to watch that.

That's not the way we do things in America

In how many speeches did Bush bitch about Saddam building palaces while his people starved? And then he diverts money from restoring clean water to build a huge embassy. And in general diverts billions from rebuilding to “security.” Iraq will have the best-guarded rubble in the world.

AP: “The Treasury Department agency entrusted with blocking the financial resources of terrorists has assigned five times as many agents to investigate Cuban embargo violations as it has to track Osama bin Laden's and Saddam Hussein's money”. Since 1994 it has collected $8m in fines from people who sent money to Cuba or traveled there, and $9,425 in fines for financing terrorism. Which makes you wonder just how low the fine for financing terrorism is.

Bush, today: “There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily -- are a different color than white can self-govern.” He said that while standing next to the whitest world leader he could find, Paul Martin of Canada. No reporter has yet asked Bush to tell us who all these racists are. You will also have noticed his evident belief that Americans are all white (“skin color the same as ours”). Also, self-govern is not a word.

Indy: “Police in Macedonia said yesterday that the killing of seven alleged terrorists two years ago was staged to win US support and that the victims were simply illegal immigrants.” Pakistanis.

Bush says about those photos of Iraqi prisoners being made to play Twister, “That's not the way we do things in America.” It wasn’t in America, you idiot, it was in a funny place called The Rest of the World.

And today, pictures are also released of British soldiers beating and peeing on Iraqis prisoners.

The story still hasn’t picked up much in America. The Guardian, which often has a “what the newspapers say” section about various events, has a “What the US papers don't say” piece about this. Evidently the Pentagon pressured CBS not to run the pictures; I’d like to hear more about that.

So we’re sending in the commandant of Stalag Guantanamo to put things right in the vast detention camp that is Iraq. And we’re sending in that Saddam general, who showed up in his old uniform, and was cheered by Fallujans. OK, NOW are we finished?

If we had something to hide, we would not have met with them in the first place

Something called Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns 8 ABCs (and 60 other tv stations) and is evidently run by partisan Republicans, has decided not to run the Nightline Friday, which will consist solely of Ted Koppel reading the names of dead soldiers. Sinclair claims the program promotes a political agenda. I repeat, it’s just the names of dead soldiers. Evidently, acknowledging that people are dying is something only Democrats do, or something. Sinclair points out that Koppel’s not reading the names of people killed in terrorist attacks, now is he? Huh, what do you say to that, Mr. Liberal Media Guy, huh, huh?

Gosh, did I say “at least they’ve picked a new flag” for Iraq? Well, two words: New Coke. It’ll be replaced soon.

The state of Nebraska hired a convicted thief to run its anti-smoking program. He was actually serving his sentence at the time, and was paid $55,200 a year, which is more than the warden gets. Insert obvious joke here about him being paid in cigarettes. Oh, and he did illegal stuff at this job too.

Turns out there won’t be a Ronald Reagan University after all, which relieves me of the duty of making a lot of tedious jokes about it.

If you haven’t seen those pictures of Iraqi prisoners being tortured and whatnot, here they are. They’re POWs, guys, not posable action figures. Does anyone know what word was written on that POW’s chest?

Oh, this is good: “One of the six, Sergeant Chip Frederick, who plans to plead innocent, asserted on CBS that he and his colleagues had had no proper guidance from commanders on how to treat the prisoners.” But you figured the human pyramid thing was just about what they had in mind? I’m guessing “Chip”’s previous job was stacking cans in a supermarket. More seriously, the Chipster reports that they were never told about the Geneva Convention. More seriously still, private “contractors” were put in charge of interrogations. And to cap it off, they were using an old Saddam prison known for torture. Incidentally, those “rape rooms” Bush likes to talk about--one (male, mid-teens) prisoner was indeed raped. By one of the mercenaries, so he hasn’t been charged with anything, ‘cause he’s not under military jurisdiction--his punishment, if any, will be left up to his company.

THE CHARLIE McCARTHY HEARINGS: Bush finally met the 9/11 Commission, saying, “If we had something to hide, we would not have met with them in the first place.” OK, “in the first place”? This was about the 23rd place, after months and months of stonewalling. Also: behind closed doors, with no recording made, and nobody present allowed to talk about it. No, nothing to hide. (Personally, I think they didn’t even bother asking him any questions, they just all sat around for an hour and got drunk. Under the circumstances, what would have been the point of doing anything else?) On showing up with Cheney: “I think it was important for them to see our body language, as well, how we work together.” Yeah, that was the important thing.

Follow-up: The Utah woman who refused her doctors’ orders to have a C-section is sentenced to probation, including 100 hours community service (what does that have to do with anything?), is expelled from the state, and, although the surviving baby was given up for adoption and I’m pretty sure she doesn’t have any other children, is ordered to take parenting classes, which just seems cruel.

All people are seeing is the minaret hit by American fire and falling

So how many North Koreans do you think really did lose their lives trying to save portraits of the Dear Leader, or searched for them before trying to rescue their own children? I mean if you had a really good collection of porn, that’s one thing... Seriously, I don’t know what’s worse, the possibility that this isn’t a myth or that the NK media are holding this up as model behaviour.

The UN Security Council votes to ban the spread of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons to terrorist groups. Who knew that was ok before? Well, Pakistan obviously, which was only coaxed into voting for it when told that it wasn’t retroactive.

The US is trying, again, to get Qatar to censor Al-Jazeera. According to a US official quoted in the NYT, “All people are seeing is the minaret hit by American fire and falling.” I repeat, sometimes a minaret is just a minaret.

The Supreme Court has decided to allow partisan gerrymandering, stating in a case re Pennsylvania that no “judicially manageable standards for adjudicating political gerrymandering claims have emerged”. That’s lawyer-speak for We’re too lazy to figure out how to do our job, so we won’t, or possibly it’s lawyer-speak for, As long as the R’s are winning, it’s all good.

The US is claiming that most of the insurgents in Fallujah are former members of Saddam Hussein’s military. Also, the US will pull back from Fallujah and send in a new force, the Fallujah Protection Force, led by former members of Saddam Hussein’s military. I’m sure there’s a flaw in all this somewhere.

Military Moron Kimmitt says “there is still a determined aspiration on the part of the coalition to maintain a ceasefire and solve the situation in Falluja by peaceful means,” and says that the air strikes which are reported to have destroyed at least 25 buildings were “limited,” targeting only naughty buildings.

A lot more sovereignty than they have right now

Rumsfeld press conference today, about Chalabi: “well, on anyone, we're not in the position of ruling people in or ruling people out, and have no intention to. Clearly, there's a vetting process that's taking place by the United Nations representative, Mr. Brahimi, and by the Iraqi people and by the Iraqi Governing Council, and certainly by the Americans. And they all look at these people, and at some point there will be consensus developed, I suppose, in a manner possibly not dissimilar from that we saw in Afghanistan, where there may be some meetings, whether they're public or formal as opposed to informal or not, but the names will be up, and someone will rise to the top and – some bodies, plural, undoubtedly, given the nature of the country. And that then will be the interim government for a period, until the constitution is fashioned and then elections are held sometime next year or the year thereafter, I guess.”

Oddly enough, those are almost the exact words of Madison’s first draft of the Constitution.

And John “Death squads? What death squads?” Negroponte told the Senate, in his confirmation hearings, that after June 30, Iraqis will have “a lot more sovereignty than they have right now,” which is also taken from that draft: “We the People, in order to have a lot more sovereignty than we have right now...”

At those hearings, Chris “Death squads? What death squads?” Dodd and Barbara “Death squads? What death squads?” Boxer said that they would put aside their previous differences with Negroponte over his role in Reagan’s Central American policy out of personal respect for him.

Kamen at the WaPo asks the question, ambassador to what? Normally, the receiving country has to agree to an ambassador before they are confirmed by the Senate.

Possibly that’s just one more thing that happened in the black box that is Iraqi governance. I’ve been meaning to ask for some time, who is on the Iraqi Governing Council right now? One was killed, several are supposed to have resigned, but if they were replaced, I’ve never heard about it. And how many haven’t set foot in Iraq in, say, the last 3 months? And where are they?

Expert guidance or assistance

BLOOPER REEL: Mark Kimmitt, military moron, on why the US, which just called in air strikes to level a minaret in Fallujah (and don’t be gettin’ all Freudian about it either, sometimes a minaret is just a minaret), is the real victim: “Many times it would appear that these provocative actions on the part of the enemy are intentionally inspired for the purposes of trying to get a tank into the camera lens, an airplane in the camera lens.” The sneaky bastards!

China rules out full, free elections in Hong Kong again, but I have yet to hear it explain exactly what’s wrong with universal suffrage. The electorate for the chief executive will remain 800 people.

Iraqis holding 3 Italian hostages (security guards) name their conditions: an anti-war protest to be held in Rome within 5 days. I don’t think they quite get what civil protest means, do you? Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever heard of such a demand from hostage-takers. Anyone?

We may not know what form the fake Iraqi government will take in a little over 2 months, what powers it will have if any, and who will be in it, but at least they’ve picked a new flag. White, 2 blue stripes, 1 yellow stripe, a crescent. Gone are the words “God is great,” possibly because a year of American occupation would make anyone question just how great She really is. The blue stripes represent the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the yellow represents the Kurds, possibly all being drowned in the Tigris and Euphrates rivers.

From a piece by Peter Galbraith in the NY Review of Books:

While telling Iraqis it wanted to defer constitutional issues to an elected Iraqi body, the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority could not resist trying to settle fundamental constitutional issues in the interim constitution. The US government lawyers who wrote the interim constitution, known formally as the Transitional Administrative Law, made no effort to disguise their authorship. All deliberations on the law were done in secret and probably fewer than one hundred Iraqis saw a copy of the constitution before it was promulgated. To write a major law in any democracy—much less a constitution—without public discussion should be unthinkable. Now that Iraqis are discovering for the first time the contents of the constitution, it should come as no surprise that many object to provisions they never knew were being considered.

Roman Polanski is filming a version of Oliver Twist, with Ben Kingsley as Fagin, the charismatic head of a gang of impressionable...uh oh.

The joint patrols in Fallujah have been postponed, perhaps because the Iraqis found out that not only were they not getting any body armor, but they were going to *be* the body armor for the Americans.

Note to the president of Westminster College: what, you’re surprised that Dick Cheney made a political attack on John Kerry rather than giving a dispassionate analysis of geopolitics? Dick Cheney? Dick Fucking Cheney??

NYT article on a trial of a Saudi computer sciences grad student in Idaho under provisions of the Patriot Act criminalizing the provision of “expert guidance or assistance” to terrorist groups. It was of course meant to deal with expert assistance relating to anthrax or dirty bombs, but the Saudi helped a Muslim group put up a website. Period. So would it be “expert guidance or assistance” if someone were to send out the URL of that website?
http://www.iananet.org/

We pretty much took out anyone who was in there being stupid

An American MP, quoted in the Daily Telegraph about the bombing of a village near Fallujah: “We were supposed to wait until today, but we got pissed off and decided to draw a line. We pretty much took out anyone who was in there being stupid.”

Increasingly, I’ve been hearing US military types using one of those phrases that US military types don’t realize sound creepy to the rest of us: “breaking the will” of the enemy. Of course democracy, which those same military types are supposed to be bringing to Iraq by means of curfews, sieges and free-fire zones, is defined (by Rousseau) as the expression of the general will (volonte generale). At the same time, we’re trying to reintroduce into positions of power people whose political will was already broken, those who were “members in name only” of the Baathist party. See, they were just going along with all the persecution and executions and, ya know, evil, during the Saddam years not because they supported all that stuff, but so that they could advance their careers, and those are just the sort of people we need to make freedom and democracy flourish. I don’t have the energy to work the phrase “banality of evil” into this paragraph, so let’s all just assume that I did.

Did you know that the Australians invented streaking? Exactly 30 years ago. We got funny pictures.

Evidently the newest trend in the world’s largest democracy is candidates who just happen to have criminal charges pending against them, 20% in Bihar according to “activists,” and yes, the Guardian should have checked that out before running the story.

Don’t you hate it when decent institutions like game shows are perverted from their higher calling--greed?

Reuters: “A Kuwaiti court has set a precedent by approving the request of a man who had a sex-change to have his gender officially registered as female, on the grounds that he had suffered physically and psychologically since childhood because of his hormonal imbalance.” Does that mean s/he’ll no longer be allowed to vote?

A very unusual death

British Press Association headline: “Leslie Ash Breaks Rib Having Sex.” Leslie Ash was one of the stars of the sitcom...wait for it...Men Behaving Badly.

Sharon says he no longer feels obligated by his promise to Bush not to kill Arafat, and that he told Bush so last week. Even if Bush warned him against it, as the White House claims, his public silence for the last week and a half (and I’ll bet he didn’t warn Arafat either) makes him complicit.

THE GAME IS AFOOT: I probably shouldn’t, but I think this story is just plain cool: “A leading expert on Sherlock Holmes grew paranoid that people were plotting against him before being found garrotted in his bed, an inquest was told yesterday. Richard Lancelyn Green, 50, who co-edited a book about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of the fictional detective Holmes, was found dead at his home in Kensington, west London, with a shoelace tightened around his neck using a wooden spoon. Dr Paul Knapman, the Westminster coroner, recorded an open verdict and said it was a "very unusual death".”

Japan: it’s those damned hostages screwing it up for the rest of us.

Dick Cheney’s last press conference was in 1991.

Here’s a headline (Sunday Times) that will appeal to Israelis’ silly musical prejudices: “Wagner's Operas Kept Me Sane, Says Vanunu”. He’d be the first.

A member of the US’s synchronized swimming team has had her 3-month sentence for multiple manslaughter postponed until after the games. Nice priorities, huh? Now if it had been a discus thrower...

Not just high on death

CBS aired photographs of Princess Diana dying, so it’s hard to get much sense out of the British papers this week about anything else. In defending them, CBS used the word “tasteful.”

The US has hired a bunch of Saddam’s generals. OK, disbanding the army was arguably stupid, but the fucking generals? Presumably the idea is that generals put aside their politics, their opinions, their backbone, and their integrity and will just do whatever they’re told--the Colin Powell model--but do Iraqi generals behave the same way? Teachers, doctors and civil servants who were members of the Baath party will be rehired as well.

Israel uses a 12-year old Palestinian as a human shield (13, says Reuters). There’s a picture!

Evidently the insurgents in Fallujah are all on drugs. Sez Dan Senor, “It is part of what they're using to keep them up to engage in this violence at all hours.” Dude, if you want to pull an all-nighter, get some Jolt Soda.

Congress is working on a plan for near immediate elections if 100 or more Reps are killed (did you know that, according to the Constitution, replacement senators can be appointed, but reps have to be elected? Me neither). While you can make arguments about whether 45 days is too short for an election, but too long for a state to be unrepresented during a crisis, etc., I don’t think they considered a scenario in which 100 Reps of one party were killed (say by a terrorist attack on a party convention).

Historic times

But for real high-level historiography, nobody can beat Dubya: “This is historic times.” Yes it am.

North Korea, which is big on slogans, such as “Each Korean must perform selfless feats to glorify the heroic deeds of leader Kim Jong Il. Burma Shave,” but the Times of London says this one appears in schools: “Try to grow taller.” One study, admittedly of refugees, showed the average 17-year old male North Korean is 5’0, compared to South Koreans, who are 5’8.

Bush says that the world owes Ariel Sharon a “thank you” for his unilateral Gaza/West Bank plans. Think Hallmark makes a card for that?

McDonald’s in Britain, under pressure from a moral panic over obesity even, ahem, larger than here, will include pedometers in its Happy Meals. It takes 5½ hours to walk off a Happy Meal, according to health campaigners, so get waddling!

Poland is considering pulling out of Iraq. According to the prime minister, “Yeah, I know we sent guys on horses against Nazi tanks, but we’re not completely stupid.”

In 1971 the Nixon White House was very concerned to discredit John Kerry (whose military records show he’s believed to have killed 20 Vietnamese, by the way). Said Chuck Colson: “Let's destroy this young demagogue before he becomes another Ralph Nader.” We should be so lucky.

Oh brother:
http://www.gop.com/taxinvaders/

From the story that’s kept Belgium fascinating for what seems like years now: “Belgium's most notorious paedophile Marc Dutroux said yesterday that a 14-year-old girl who was kidnapped, raped and held in an underground cellar was not his intended victim.” So that’s all right then?

France expels an Algerian imam, resident in France 25 years, for telling a newspaper that he believed the Koran allows husbands to beat adulterous wives, although not on the face, and he added that Muslims should obey French law, which doesn’t allow for such beatings. The Interior Ministry says “The government cannot tolerate remarks against human rights and the dignity of women.” OK, wife-beating bad, dignity of women good, but let’s not talk human rights when we just bundled someone onto a plane for exercising his. Still in France: his two wives and 16 children. He’s probably grateful for the peace and quiet.

Speaking of human rights, war criminal Gen. Wiranto (who may not actually have a first name other than General) has been nominated by the former ruling party of Suharto to run in July’s presidential elections.

Suicide car bombing reaches Saudi Arabia. Since the country exports both oil and Islamic terrorists in great quantity, this seems like an inevitable Reese’s-peanut-butter-cup moment.

The list is not short

HE’S MAKING A LIST, CHECKING IT TWICE: Ariel Sharon promises to kill lots more people: “We got rid of murderer number one and murderer number two and the list is not short.”

Interesting that in the same week the Supreme Court is hearing arguments about whether inmates of Stalag Guantanamo have any right of access to the legal system, it ruled in another case that Indian tribes can prosecute members of other tribes for crimes committed on their reservations (I guess non-Injuns are exempt). And then be prosecuted by the US without double jeopardy applying, because as we all know the 5th amendment doesn’t mean what it obviously says. Which is better, being subject to multiple courts for the same crime, or no courts?

Still, it’s fun watching Solicitor General Ted Olson claim that Cuba has “ultimate sovereignty” over Gitmo. Which, LeftI points out, sheds some light on how little is meant by the transfer of “sovereignty” to Iraq on June 30th.

Article on Negroponte. So what if he doesn’t know Arabic, he probably picked up some Spanish in Honduras, that’s close enough. Actually, I take that back, he probably didn’t pick up any Spanish, since his policy of See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil was bilingual. And the CPA’s website has a picture of him in front of Picasso’s Guernica. Look if you don’t believe me. You couldn’t ask for better symbolism.

(Actually, don’t look. Since I wrote that, they’ve mysteriously clipped the picture so you can’t make out what the painting is.) You’ll remember that Guernica was covered up when Colin Powell went to the UN to lie about Iraq.

So who are those “security contractors” so thick on the ground in Iraq? Considering how many have been killed (but not counted in the “coalition” death toll, which the Bushies hope to keep in the 3 figures before election day), we’ve got obits on very few. Here is one, a South African who was part of one of the apartheid government’s death squads.

A WaPo poll asked whether Bush is a uniter or a divider. 50% said he’s a uniter, 48% a divider.

Essential law

The US has been negotiating with the “authorities” in Fallujah (who have none) not to resume what this space will henceforth be referring to as the Massacre of Fallujah (and the new ambassador-designate will henceforth be John “Death squads? What death squads?” Negroponte). Jim Lehrer reported that the US was offering an easing of the curfew, and letting food and medicine into the city. Let me repeat that: we are using food and medicine as bargaining chips.

If Bush made a deal with Saudi Arabia about lowering oil prices right before the election, that means he’s keeping them artificially high now. So next time you fill up, just think of everything above $1.50 as your contribution to the Bush campaign. (Later: Atrios points out the same thing. Actually, it’s pretty obvious, but I thought it was worth pointing out since it was beyond the intellects of the NYT, etc etc).

Reuters: “A Florida teen charged with hiring an undercover policeman to shoot and kill his mother instructed the purported hitman not to damage the family television during the attack, police said.”

The Rapture Index for today is 143.

DESTROYING THE VILLAGE IN ORDER TO SAVE IT DEPARTMENT: Bush: "The Patriot Act defends our liberty," Bush said, thumping the podium. "The Patriot Act makes it able for those of us in positions of responsibility to defend the liberty of the American people. It's essential law." Wait, I think I get it: we’ll make it easier to defend our liberty by making it a lot smaller and hence more defensible. Hell, they won’t even be able to see our liberty. Bush: “Congress passed it and said, well, maybe the war on terror won't go on very long, and, therefore, these tools are set to expire.” So if Bush is calling for them to be made permanent, class, by his own logic he’s saying the war on terror will be what, class? That’s right: permanent, endless, eternal, unceasing. Something to look forward to.

People are fungible

Whoops, used the word naked in a subject line yesterday, so Chris’s prissy work computer bounced it, with the odd comment:
<<< 553 5.0.0 Possible Naked Wife e-mail virus
I don’t even want to know what that means.

Speaking of prissy, an Afghan state-run tv station has banned shows with female singers.

Spanish prez Zapatero (who by the way opted to take a secular oath of office) is talking about pulling Spanish troops out of Iraq with immediate effect. I had thought he wouldn’t do this until June 30 and not then if there was a UN resolution, but he says there probably won’t be one so why wait. Well, “people are fungible” according to Rummy Rumsfeld, so what the heck.

Speaking of the Coalition of the Fungible, there is also some vague talk in Portugal about removing their contingent. Here’s something I didn’t know and should have: the Portuguese president, a socialist, is head of the armed forces and refused to send troops without a UN mandate. The conservative government did an end-run around him and sent police officers.

Kerry, on Meet the Press today, accused Bush of having an arrogant and stunningly ineffective foreign policy. Too bad he voted for so much of it. He also endorses Israel’s most recent assassination. Arguably, he suggested that they could/should wack Arafat as well. “I believe Israel has every right in the world to respond to any act of terror against it. Hamas is a terrorist, brutal organization. It has had years to make up its mind to take part in a peaceful process. They refuse to. Arafat refuses to.” Just as polls show the Israelis broadly supportive of the assassinations, American politicians are united in their grubbing for votes in Florida. The praise for Sharon, and he even took back his 1971 designation of Richard Nixon as a war criminal, highlights that he is not critical of Bush on moral grounds, simply for being ineffective and arrogant.

The Iraqi Resistance has been so successful in attacking supply lines that some soldiers are being rationed. So the US has decided to spread the misery to the entire Iraqi population, closing all main roads to non-US-military traffic. The Iraqis see this as collective punishment, which is partly correct: we’re not so much deliberately inflicting economic dislocation as completely indifferent to it.

We are, according to the NY Times, keeping in Iraq to the time-honored Israeli ratio of 10 of Them killed for every one of Us.

Naked, combative and likely intoxicated

Sharon goes home from Crawford and immediately assassinates someone else. Does he hate us?

Times (London): “Bush himself doesn't seem to have any idea that he can come across as shifty and ill-briefed -much the way Michael Jackson doesn't seem to realise that people suspect that he is black.”

So there’s this Catholic Republican couple who move to Kentucky from LA to have a more family-friendly environment. Only they’re gay. They’re the first gay couple known to have both had children through the same surrogate mother, if you’re following.

In South Africans, the apartheid party, the National Party, wins 1.7% of the vote. It will now disband. Giggle giggle snort snort.

Keep that acceptability

A short one today. My cable company decided to move 27 channels at random, so I’ve been occupied.

Kerry moves quickly to ensure that his thin patrician lips are planted firmly on the ass-cheek of Ariel Sharon not currently occupied by Bush’s thin patrician lips, endorsing Bush’s endorsement of Sharon’s land-grab. “What's important obviously is the security of the state of Israel”. Obviously.

Story about how the economic and environmental side-effects of GM soya in Argentina.

The next prime minister of Spain, evidently under the impression that he will be prime minister of Sweden, promises to legalize gay marriage and stem-cell research, and his cabinet will have an equal number of female and male members.

WaPo headline: “Kerry Hopes to Cement Image With New Ads.” Jeez, he already looks like he’s made out of concrete. Kerry is quoted: "Their goal is to define me and make me unacceptable. . . . Our goal has to be to keep that acceptability." Can’t wait for the bumper sticker.

Oo, a bumper sticker: “W starts with ‘duh’”

You shoot like a goat herder

Tony Blair, according to Dubya, is “a stand-up kinda guy,” “as we like to say in Crawford.” They don’t say that in England, however, where they think their prime minister has just been described as a stand-up comedian.

I found bin Laden’s latest tape disconcerting without being sure why. A Guardian writer explains that the nice thing about bin Laden was that he made absolutely no demands and nothing you offered him would make him stop, so there could be no talk of appeasement or tactics. And then this week he actually made a demand of European countries, assuming it was him, and the CIA says that it is, so it probably isn’t.

Also, I hadn’t noticed the Henry Higgins aspect of Al Qaida methods before: planes on 9/11, trains in Spain (by George, I think he’s got it).

That’s my second reference to a musical this month.

Not that there’s anything wrong with it.

Gen. Richard Myers repeats a line I thought had been buried under the dead American soldiers and the children buried under the Fallujah soccer field: the insurgency is “a symptom of the success that we're having here in Iraq.”

However Paul Krugman today says we have reached Vietnam-type “quagmire logic”: “they no longer have high hopes for what we may accomplish, but they fear the consequences if we leave.” Knee-deep in the big muddy.

Winning Hearts and Minds: US troops have been blasting heavy metal at Fallujah. Worked so well at Waco. AC/DC, Hendrix, sounds of babies crying, barking dogs, etc. They’re trying to irritate the insurgents into coming out and getting blasted like a man, so they are also using insults such as, and I’m not making this up, “You shoot like a goat herder” and “May all the ambulances in Fallujah have enough fuel to pick up the bodies of the mujahadeen.”

There was a fire-fight on the 6th inside the town of Kut, between Iraqis and... mercenaries (which may be why it took 10 days to hear about it). A South African was killed. After American troops, armed mercenaries are now the second-largest contingent in the Coalition of the Willing, comfortably ahead of the British, so why does Blair get to go to Crawford and the CEO of Blackwater doesn’t? Doesn’t seem fair, does it?

I’m long past believing anything Bob Woodward writes where he doesn’t name his sources.

From the Post: “• OLYMPIA, Wash. -- A bank robber wearing a wetsuit under his clothes tried to make a scuba-diving getaway but was tackled by police before he reached the water, authorities say. Police subdued the man Thursday on the shore of Budd Inlet after a car chase, a crash and a sweaty quarter-mile dash through the woods, during which he tried to sprint into the water while lugging his diving gear and a backpack filled with the stolen cash, Sgt. Ray Holmes said. Charles E. Coma, 35, was jailed on suspicion of robbery.”

Karl Rove says he wishes they hadn’t put up that “Mission Accomplished” banner, because it’s become “one of those convenient symbols.” Of course it was meant to be a convenient symbol, but not for the other side.