Otherwise occupied

Russia says it is prepared to take preemptive military action against “terrorist bases” anywhere in the world, and will do so with the same level of competence shown in the Beslan crisis. OK, they didn’t say the last part, but they did reassure us that these military strikes would not involve nuclear weapons, something we weren’t even worried about right up until the second they said that.

The GAO says that Thomas Scully should repay all the salary he received as head of Medicare after he illegally ordered that actuary not to report the true cost of Bush’s drug proposals to Congress. That’s actually in the law governing the civil service. The Bush admin is refusing, citing its “executive privilege” to lie to Congress. I’m simplifying their language, but not exaggerating. If only Congress defended congressional oversight with half the energy presidents use in asserting executive privilege, an exceedingly vague and expansive term which is not in the constitution. The DHS investigation of this incident insisted in July that Scully had “the final authority to determine the flow of information to Congress.”


The ONION:

Bush Campaign More Thought Out Than Iraq War

WASHINGTON, DC—Military and political strategists agreed Monday that President Bush's re-election campaign has been executed with greater precision than the war in Iraq. "Judging from the initial misrepresentation of intelligence data and the ongoing crisis in Najaf, I assumed the president didn't know his ass from his elbow," said Col. Dale Henderson, a military advisor during the Reagan Administration. "But on the campaign trail, he's proven himself a master of long-term planning and unflinching determination. How else can you explain his strength in the polls given this economy?" Henderson said he regrets having characterized Bush's handling of the war as "incompetent," now that he knows the president's mind was simply otherwise occupied.

We’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating

Dick “Mr. Sensitive” Cheney said today [yesterday, actually; posting to Blogspot was down for half a day; did you miss me?] that if Kerry is elected, “then the danger is that we’ll get hit again [by terrorists] and we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating.” So instead we should elect the man who claimed to be president the last time there was a devastating terrorist attack? Anyway, this is so far beyond the pale of civilized political discourse that I expect a national uproar to force Cheney to resign from office and leave political life by the end of the week, starting any... minute... now....

Seriously, this is not acceptable, it’s shameful, and it occurs to me that there’s no one with the independence and stature to say that without being dismissed as partisan, at least not with the Daily Show in reruns this week (McCain doesn’t count: he only complained about the Swift Boat stuff because of his own Vietnam War background, and he made it clear that Bush’s despicable refusal to denounce the ads would not affect McCain’s support for him one iota).

1,000 dead, and the Bushies are busy claiming that since Iraq is just a part of the great big never-ending war on terror, we actually reached 1,000 some time ago. Evidently that’s supposed to make us feel better about it. Or feel nothing about it, like they seem to. So I’m sure they can tell us who #1,000 was, and how they marked his death.

Bush supporters and Bush-supporting states have substantially higher fertility rates than (in Bush states in 2000, the rate is 2.11 children/woman, Gore states 1.89), according to a WaPo story I missed last week, giving what the article calls an “evolutionary advantage” to those who don’t believe in evolution.

Rumsfeld says that the thousands of Iraqis killed by “Iraqi forces and the coalition forces” (translation: Americans) isn’t “a lot out of 25 million people in a country.” How many dead people do you suppose he considers to be “a lot”? He also puts American deaths in perspective: sure, there 2 or 3 US soldiers are killed every day, but “if you think about the fact that we have thousands of patrols every day...and look at the number of incidents, they’re relatively small.” So that’s all right then.

All 9/11, All the Time

The Bush admin calls for a political settlement over Chechnya or, in other words, a more sensitive war on terrorism.

In a NYT story on how Congressional R’s plan to force a lot of votes on defense issues, Bill Frist’s spokesmodel says “It will be all 9/11, all the time.” A new slogan: “Vote Republican: All 9/11, All the Time.”

The front-page picture that got the Izvestia editor fired.

What's the Russian for tit for tat?

During the Beslan crisis, the LA Times reports, Russian troops took their own hostages, 40 or so relations--including children--of Chechen rebel leaders. The Russians claim that it was protective custody, because those leaders planned to kill their relatives and blame it on Russian security forces. It all makes sense now.

Let’s not feel too superior: the US has done exactly the same thing in Iraq (not sure about Afghanistan), including the wife of the Saddam Hussein aide who was just reported as captured, and then not captured. His wife was seized in December, and the stories I saw that mentioned that fact didn’t say if she was ever released. Does anyone know?

From the Ironic Times: “CORRECTION: Last week, due to a production error, we quoted President Bush describing his Iraq policy as a “successful catastrophe.” In fact, he described it as a “catastrophic success.” We apologize for any confusion this may have caused.”

Ugly processes which have their own logic

Press Association headline: “Bitterness Mounts in Russia.” This is news?

Putin, the Bitter-Guy-in-Chief, berates Western countries for calling Chechen rebels “rebels” rather than “terrorists.” Of course, when Russia was downplaying the Chechen uprising, it liked to call them “bandits.” He denied that there is any relationship between Russian policies in Chechnya and the Beslan incident. Well, except that the latter justifies the former: “Just imagine that people who shoot children in the back came to power anywhere on our planet. Just ask yourself that, and you will have no more questions about our policy in Chechnya.” So genocide doesn’t justify terrorism, but terrorism justifies genocide, is that right?

Asked about human rights violations by Russian forces in Chechnya, he said that the lower-level people responsible for them are always punished, but “Compare the torture of Iraqi prisoners. This hasn’t happened on the direction of the top US leaders, but because of how individual people behaved in these circumstances. Those who are to blame must be punished.” “In war there are ugly processes which have their own logic.”

The Russian media has begun to do its job, criticizing the government’s actions and analyzing its lies, and some, including the editor of Izvestia, have been fired for it. They’re asking where some of the dead bodies have disappeared to, saying that the rebels/terrorists/bandits/actress/models were in fact willing to negotiate, that no foreigners were present, and that the bloodbath was not caused by explosives going off but by locals with guns trying to prevent the school being stormed.

Putin refuses to hold a public inquiry.

Kerry says Iraq is “the wrong war, in the wrong place at the wrong time,” and he plans to pull out within four years of taking office. Five, tops. Six, at the outside....

A month after being charged with murder, Salem Chalabi has been removed as head of the Saddam Hussein tribunal.

Mission inedible

From the Sunday Times: “A bucket of manure from an Olympic-gold-winning horse has fetched £760 in an internet auction. Leslie Law, who won individual gold on Shear L’Eau in Athens, put the bucket up for sale on eBay. It attracted 35 bids before being won by a sports memorabilia store in Southport, Merseyside.”

The Anglican church in Uganda is sending a missionary to Britain. You know, it’s Labor Day, so why don’t you all make up your own joke here, utilizing the elements: 1) missionaries being eaten, and 2) lousy English cuisine.

That story is actually about African evangelicals hating the liberalism (i.e., women and gay priests) of the mother church.

I’ve been referring, like everyone else, to the TWO kidnapped French journalists, whose kidnappers demanded the lifting of the headscarf ban. Evidently we’ve forgotten someone: their driver/interpreter/fixer, a Syrian refugee, was kidnapped with them, but, typically, none of the media reports have mentioned him. Oops.

Carefree Russians

If you’re looking for a voice on the web supportive of the Beslan kidnappers, this is probably the closest, at least in (broken) English: Kavkaz Center, evidently located in Turkey, a site supposedly close to the guy behind Beslan. It’s nutty, but oddly hard to refute. It’s focused on Putin personally as the enemy, but Putin indeed originally came to power on anti-Chechen rhetoric. The site points out that thousands of Chechen schoolchildren have been killed in the invasion of Chechnya, which explains, while of course not excusing, their inhumanity to the Beslan children. Would you care to explain to Chechens why this incident was so horrible but the world has largely ignored a decade of wholesale murder and rape by Russian troops in their country? The website is full of conspiracy theories, but Russia is, in fact, full of conspiracies and lies and unanswered questions about terrorist acts: the mysterious apartment bombings, the Moscow theater siege, etc.

2 reporters who have negotiated with Chechens in the past were prevented reaching Beslan. One may have been poisoned, the other was first stopped at the airport for suspicion of carrying explosives, then when he was released, 2 airport parking attendants came up to him and picked a fight, all 3 were arrested, and he was imprisoned for 5 days for “hooliganism,” not the first time he’s been seized while trying to cover Chechnya for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Russia is claiming that 10 of the rebels were from Arab countries, but this is almost certainly a fabrication. The implication isn’t that these Arabs are wandering jihadists, but mercenaries paid for by dark forces trying to dismember Russia. Putin’s speech to the nation yesterday thus made no mention of “Chechnya,” and it sounds from the WaPo like the Russian people still haven’t been told that the rebels’ demand was for an end to the war in Chechnya. Pay no attention to the genocide behind the curtain.

Putin told Russians that they can’t “live in as carefree a manner as before.” Yes...Russians...carefree. Beslan is being described as “Russia’s 9/11.” It’s certainly being used as an excuse for Putin to make his already authoritarian government authoritarianer, just as the Bushies used 9/11 to enact the FBI’s wish list in the Patriot Act, take out Saddam, and silence domestic critics.

Israel is trying to get the EU and other foreign donors to pay for an apartheid road system in the West Bank. Given the settlements and the Wall, Palestinians are banned from roads the settlers use, so Israel wants someone else to pay for separate but equal roads for Palestinians.

Iraq: Going Pretty Much According to Plan

After the Iraqi puppet gov’s one-month ban on Al Jazeera raised no particular objections internationally, or indeed from their American overlords, they have, predictably, followed it with an indefinite ban.

It’s still not clear exactly how many people the Iraqi National Council actually has, and whether Chalabi is a member or not. Anyhow, it just elected 4 VPs, described by Juan Cole as showing that “the US invaded Iraq to install in power a coalition of Communists, Islamists and ex-Baathist nationalists.” Mission accomplished, then.

It’s getting so you can’t tell the hostages without a scorecard. The French journalists haven’t been released, but US-installed PM “Comical” Allawi decided that this was the perfect time to taunt the French, informing them that their anti-war stance had not protected their nationals from terrorist acts. And yes, it’s always a good time to taunt the French, but if Allawi had a diplomatic bone in his body, he might have realized that you don’t give what sounds an awful lot like tacit approval for attacks on French people, especially if you give it at the same time as the terrorists are deciding whether to kill or release the hostages.

Some want to tear a juicy bit of flesh off us (Russia tastes just like chicken)

Subtle this ain’t: the Pentagon is going to investigate Kerry’s medals.

Nor this: Putin in his address to the nation: “Some want to tear a juicy bit of flesh off us ... others are helping them, assuming that Russia ... still represents a threat to them. And that the threat needs to be eliminated. Terrorism is an instrument for achieving these aims.” In other words, this has nothing to do with Chechen independence, but is part of a Sinister Plot to dismember Russia. Rather like pretending that Iraq was behind 9/11, but rather more nebulous. “The terrorists believe they are stronger than us, that they will intimidate us with their cruelty”. Funny, didn’t you try to intimidate Chechens with your cruelty?

It’s not clear whether they’ll lie about the number of dead hostages at Beslan. It won’t be as easy to get away with that as after the Moscow theater siege. But they are claiming to have killed all the hostage-takers, which is simply not true.

The civil trial in Fresno over the assassination of Archbishop Romero (which I discussed here has finished, with Alvaro Rafael Saravia, still a fugitive, ordered to pay $10 million.

We demonstrated our weakness

The print NYT has a somewhat unfortunate jump. Quoting Hillary Clinton: “‘My husband is doing very well,’ she said, noting that he had beaten her” (continued on page A13)

at cards.

By the way, did you know that Bill Clinton is younger than George Bush?

The people who took over the school in Beslan, North Ossetia, loaded with explosives, depriving little children of food and water and threatened them with 15 people being killed if they moved or cried, have obviously reached an unimaginable level of inhumanity. But... Bush said--I can’t find the exact quote, but it was on the BBC World News--something about the lengths “they” will go to attack civilization. A Chechen might ask, what civilization? Stalin forcibly removed the entire Chechen population, Yeltsin and Putin have waged wars of extermination and atrocity.

Putin, of course, takes from this incident the lesson that Russia has been too civilized towards Chechnya: “we failed to react to them adequately. We demonstrated our weakness, and the weak are beaten.” And he will go after those who “foment interethnic hatred.” Have you heard the way Russians speak about Chechens as a group? A combination of the way Hitler spoke about the Jews and Europeans still speak about the Roma.

In this incident, Russia exhibited an impressive level of incompetence, failing to do things as simple and obvious as securing the area and making sure there were ambulances. None of which is what Putin means by failing to react adequately.

Escape train

The London Times says, “Mr Bush had an escape train waiting at Penn Station, underneath Madison Square Garden, in case he had to flee during his speech”

China has been putting censorship viruses on computers without their owners’ knowledge (the “Great Firewall of China”), rendering those computers incapable of googling for certain terms, or using them in instant messages, including liberty, the Tiananmen square massacre, human rights, democracy, truth, sex, brassiere.... I know this site has been accessed from China, although maybe not after this post.

Here a nation rose

Let’s return to the Bush line, “for as long as our country stands, people will look to the resurrection of New York City and they will say: Here buildings fell, here a nation rose.” When composing my last post, that line, which I had scribbled down assuming I would be making a joke about, was just too disquieting. Chris Suellentrop’s subsequent Slate dispatch, which doesn’t mention the line, suggests the reason: the R convention was full of sepia-toned nostalgia for those days after 9/11 when the nation supposedly united as it did after Pearl Harbor. Good times, good times.

The R’s are busily constructing a new vision of American nationhood based on victimhood. This is why the passengers who brought down Pennsylvania flight 93 and saved whatever target Al Qaida planned to fly it into (can you imagine how much worse the American backlash would have been had it hit the White House or Capitol Building? or Three Mile Island, which some early reports suggested was its target?) have gone unmythologized, and why the only soldier whose name you’re likely to know from either war of “liberation” (excluding relatives, friends, etc) wasn’t someone who, for instance, pulled a buddy out of the line of fire, like Kerry did in Vietnam, or performed some other act of bravery, but another victim, Private Jessica Lynch.

Nations that rise out of tragedy and victimization are not lovely things. You do not endear yourself to the world by constantly insisting that you are fighting wars to save their lazy, ungrateful asses, and indeed Western Civilization itself, from the heathen barbarians, alone and indeed vilified by them for doing the hard work that must be done. I’m not referring to the US now; I’m describing Serbia.

A calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom

Immediately after the Moscow theater siege in October 2002, the authorities claimed 127 people had died. This suspiciously low figure became more suspicious when they never changed it, although obviously some must have died of their injuries in the subsequent days, and many were listed as “missing.” So it’s a bit worrying that they’re claiming there are only 354 hostages in that school in Beslan, North Ossetia, when locals are saying it’s a lot more.
(Update: the shits stormed the school. They said they wouldn't, I always knew they would. As I write, still pretty confused.)

The convention was a race from competence and from content. It’s not just that we heard few details about Bush’s agenda, if any, for a second term; the details of the last 3½ years were also discarded as irrelevant. What mattered, they told us over and over, was Bush’s determination and vision (or vision thing, as his father used to phrase it). He “sees world terrorism for the evil that it is,” as Giuliani put it; he knew we were at war; he knew Saddam was a threat, etc etc. No one defended the way he actually conducted the “war on terror” or the war in Iraq, just his convictions. Likewise, no one talked about his policies in the future, except in the vaguest of terms. Thus, all the talk about a “hopeful America” and optimism. Hope for what? Doesn’t matter.

(Later:) ok, there were a few semi-specifics in Bush’s speech, but nothing we’ll ever hear about again. Rural health centers will go in the filing cabinet next to the mission to Mars.

Repeatedly heard during the Convention: that Saddam Hussein was a “weapon of mass destruction.” Only the most facile mind would take that pathetic rhetorical trick as an answer to the charge that Bush lied about WMDs.

By the way, the use of the presidential seal on that platform--is he supposed to be using a national symbol at a partisan event? That was one of many violations of the rules of political decency, usually to portray the D’s as un-American in the sense of being somehow not authentic Americans. Another was Cheney’s claim that Kerry was “unfit” for office. Not that his policies or qualifications are inferior to Bush’s, but that he is an illegitimate candidate.
(Later: Kerry has responded to the word unfit with what passes for outrage for him [I'm reminded of the parody John Major diary Private Eye used to run during his premiership, in which Major frequently described himself as "not inconsiderably incandescent with rage."])

Wed. night’s brilliant Daily Show mock-RNC film, "George W. Bush: Words Speak Louder Than Actions," is available here. And there’s a Lewis Black video blog, and other web-only Daily Show material (some played audio only, probably not intentionally).

The Bush speech:

He actually cites the 10 million registered voters in Afghanistan, which should be an embarrassing mockery, as if it were a triumph. Yay for ballot stuffing! Huzzah and kudos for electoral fraud! Why don’t we make Katherine Harris ambassador to Afghanistan?

The terrorists are afraid because “freedom is on the march.” Freedom does not march. It may walk, hop, skip, traipse, mosey, even flounce, but it does not march.

Also, funny to be talking about bringing freedom to Afghanistan and Iraq, when the NYPD were illegally holding hundreds of demonstrators without charge, possibly in naked human pyramids.

“Here buildings fell, here a nation rose.” Yick.

“a calling from beyond the stars to stand for freedom” Is he getting messages from outer space on his fillings again?

“we will extend the frontiers of freedom”. Hear that Canada? We’re coming after you, like you always knew we would. Yeah, there’s nothing like using the language of imperialist expansionism to convey your attachment to freedom.

Holy monkeys

Headline you don’t see every day: “Menaced by Holy Monkeys, Indian Villagers Call in the Contract Killers.”

Speaking of holy monkeys, Zell Miller, the Last Democrat, followed his cranky old man speech with interviews I did not see, because I have a reception problem with cable news channels. Well, not so much a reception problem, more that after a minute I start loudly bemoaning the state of American democracy and journalism, which makes it hard to hear, with all the bemoaning. So I missed seeing Zell-boy threaten to punch out Chris Matthews.

After 18 days, the Palestinian hunger strike ends as it began, with both sides calling each other liars. The Palestinians say that concessions were granted, Israel denies there were even negotiations.

Wherein I discuss the Republican Convention, somehow mentioning fascist Italy twice

Today we were exposed to that most odious of all sights in American politics: Dick Cheney looking pleased with himself after uttering an attack line. It was like watching a Mussolini speech, where he’d fold his arms and tilt his head back while the crowd cheered. The delegates loved Cheney, just loved him, and I think it was their reaction that will make this speech so harmful to the R’s. First, the constant applause made it long and tedious. Second, it gave the uncommitted voters at home time to think about the speech, and the relationship of thought to a Cheney speech is that of salt to a slug. Third, if any viewer at home was inclined to react favorably to a line, the cult-like over-reaction of the delegates will turn them right off again, like they’re all laughing at a joke you don’t get, and don’t want to get. And then they did that “flip flop” wave thing, which they should have practiced first.

Earlier, there was another repugnant sight: Republicans trying to be humorous. There was a little film about Barney the dog, which featured him debating Kerry’s dog, which was, oh my sides are splitting, a French poodle.

Good Toles cartoon.

William Saletan of Slate points out that even Rick “I’m not holier than thou, I’m holier than YOU” Santorum didn’t mention gays while talking about marriage, although he obviously wouldn’t have been talking about marriage at all if not for the gay marriage issue. So they’ve got even the Pennsylvania bully boy to abstain, for once, from overt gay-bashing, in favor of coded gay-bashing. Try to think of it as progress. The R’s are attempting to put a smiley face on it by talking about heterosexual marriage, which is evidently the basis of society, “the most fundamental institution of civilization.” Where does that leave gays? Un-persons, excluded by definition from society and civilization. Although they still have “selfish hedonism,” as Alan Keyes puts it, which is a pretty good compensation.

And Mel Martinez just won the R primary for US Senate after accusing Bill McCollum, of all people, of being a secret fag-lover for supporting an anti-hate-crimes bill.

Zell Miller is introduced as “the conscience of the Democratic party.” So who would that make the conscience of the Republican party, John Wilkes Booth?

T-shirt at anti-Bush rally: “Think. It’s patriotic.”

All the comparisons between Bush and Churchill. A reminder to the R’s: before World War II was even over, the voters booted Churchill out, in one of the finest moments for the principle of democracy. Also, the comparison is about how Churchill kept warning against the dangers of fascism in the 1930s, holding to his convictions while being ostracized from mainstream politics, while Bush recognized the dangers of terrorism...after several rather large buildings were damaged or destroyed and the dangers of terrorism were pretty fucking obvious. Yes, his breadth of vision is astonishing. Although, since I’m told that Osama bin Laden’s name hasn’t been mentioned once during the convention, you’d have to think that if Shrub had been around in the 1930s, he’d have recognized the dangers of fascism and tried to launch a pre-emptive attack on...Italy.

"Only" the global war on terrorism?

Tom DeLay to the Republican Jewish Coalition: “My friends, there is no Palestinian-Israeli conflict. There is only the global war on terrorism.”

French Muslims have condemned the taking of hostages to force a reversal of the headscarf ban, but went too far in asking Muslim schoolgirls to adhere to the ban instead of resisting it, as had been planned before the hostage-taking (Thursday is the first day of school). If the state is right not to give up its (despicable) policies to appease the terrorists, neither should the other side give up their legitimate resistance. Yadda yadda yadda, or the terrorists win. It’s like a teenage girl dating that guy with the piercings and the motorcycle not because she likes him, but to piss off her parents. Speaking of teenage girls, it’s nice to see the French government taking on that dangerous segment of the population. And putting the burden of having to choose between their principles and their futures on teenage girls.

Similarly, Russia wants the UN to condemn terrorism by Chechens and declare it part of the world-wide war on terrorism, but doesn’t want the outside world to condemn its vicious and bloody crushing of the Chechen people and its imposition of a fake president through an even faker election. Well, fuck that.

Comical Allawi, and not for the first time, has unilaterally halted peace talks just at the point of agreement, this time in Sadr City. Sure, since he’s planning to fight using American troops. In fact, the sticking point on this one was whether American troops could conduct military operations in the Baghdad suburb without Allawi’s permission; Allawi wanted them to be able to kill Iraqis without his permission.

It looks like the charges against Achmed and Salem Chalabi will be dropped (some stories are saying that they have already been, but this is wrong).

GUEST POST: Bush's Upcoming Post-Convention Drop

I've heard that "ABBA, The Movie" is rather entertaining to watch -- if you're stoned. But if you watch it again, this time with a clear head, the general reaction is considerably less positive. In New York now, the Republicans are busily replaying "The Great Unflinching Bush," a production that got great reviews during its out-of-town tryouts in the wake of the attack on the twin towers. But it's been three years, and our minds have cleared from the state of altered consciousness induced by 9/11. It's not just that we know Bush's first response to news of the attacks was to re-read his favorite passages from My Pet Goat. Nor is it just that we know he ignored the Presidential Daily Briefing, warning of such attacks. It isn't even that we as a nation have become quite disenchanted with his war in Iraq -- the fictitious WMDs, the lost lives, the dubious links to bin Laden. It's simply that we're no longer in the attack-induced stupor. "The Great Unflinching Bush" isn't much to watch if one isn't scared shitless and blindly jingoistic. So my prediction is that the replaying of this production is going make many viewers wonder, "Why did I think this was so good when I saw it a few years ago?" Watch his approval rating drop.

May never sit down at a peace table

Bush changes his mind, now does plan to “win” the war on terror after all. But he adds, “in this different kind of war, we may never sit down at a peace table.” Well I’m sure you can find something to fit your needs.

There’s a famous British newspaper headline from I believe the 1950s, which is always quoted to demonstrate British insularity and their sense that they are the center of the universe, something like “Fog over the Channel, Continent Cut Off.” Compare and contrast with this WaPo headline: “Zell Miller: A Democrat Who Insists His Party Left Him.”

Don’t be economic girlie-men: the Republican convention on steroids

Day 2 of the Republican convention was brown people, black people, immigrants, and the most downtrodden of all, stem cells. I believe the R platform proposes giving the vote to stem cells.

That would be more of a joke if the platform didn’t actually say that the 14th Amendment applies to the unborn.

Missed Liddy Dole’s speech, but she praised Bush for restoring “honor and dignity” to the White House. Elizabeth Dole, whose husband did Viagra ads. Also, not the best line for anyone to use the day the prime speaker is the Gropenführer. Liddy also said that marriage, by which she meant heterosexual marriage, is important, “not because it is a convenient invention or the latest reality show. Marriage is important because it is the cornerstone of civilization, and the foundation of the family.” Once again, she ignored her husband, who once told his first partner in the institution which is the cornerstone of civilization, “I want out.”

Ed. Sec Rod Paige accused Kerry & Edwards of wanting to “water down” No Child Left Behind. By which he means altering the rigid testing requirements, and by which he did not mean failing to provide adequate funding, a form of watering down he and his boss support.

Jenna mentioned her grandmother and sex in the same sentence, and by the time I came out of the fetal position, it was an hour later.

But before that was the main broken-English speaker of the convention, my governor, representing the immigrants who come to this country “full of dreams, full of determination, full of desire,” full of steroids, and end up fucking a bony Kennedy. He told a story about how he arrived in 1968, heard Hubert Humphrey speaking, heard Nixon speaking, and decided he was a Republican. He told this story when he was running for governor, when he claimed he was watching the famous Nixon-Humphrey debates, so it’s nice to see he didn’t feel obligated to drop his made-up story just because its central factual component never actually happened (like his reference to seeing Soviet tanks in Austria). There were a bunch of movie references, of course; an “economic girlie men” line; he explained how voting for the Republicans despite disagreeing with them was what was great about this country; then something about America standing with political prisoners, including Nelson Mandela, which means whoever vetted his speech forgot that Dick Cheney once voted against a resolution that Mandela should be freed; and there was a line that “leadership isn’t about polls,” about which I’m still undecided whether to make a pun about Austrians and Poles. Then he pinched Laura Bush’s butt and left the stage.

There was something demeaning about George Bush the Elder having been given an Arnold! sign to wave.

The big “surprise” was a video appearance by Shrub, speaking for no particular reason in front of a softball game. Which meant he was interrupted by applause when someone got a hit.
Update: it's been suggested that the game was staged.

Declaring victory over a figure of speech, and going home

Bush said that Kerry will nationalize health care. Which is the sort of lie you can tell when your lies never seem to have consequences.

Of course when he does tell the truth... Today Bush said that the war on terrorism can’t be won in the conventional sense. This is of course true, since “war” was always an inappropriate metaphor. I think Bush has finally realized that all the “war on terrorism” talk does not leave him with an exit strategy from that war. This is a follow-up to that weird comment no one understood early this month: “We actually misnamed the war on terror, it ought to be the struggle against ideological extremists who do not believe in free societies who happen to use terror as a weapon to try to shake the conscience of the free world.” John Edwards went on the attack, saying that of course he and Kerry believe that the war on terrorism is winnable, and it’s defeatism to say otherwise. I can’t wait to see what he says when someone asks how you know when the war is over.

And yes, I did just say that Bush was right and his opponents wrong. Even a stopped clock is right once every 58 years.

The Secret Service has issued subpoenas trying to find the person who posted on the internet the names, addresses, phone numbers & NY hotels of R convention delegates (you’ll remember that Florida decided that the names of its delegates to this largely-taxpayer-funded convention was a trade secret). The feds are pretending this amounts to voter intimidation.

The R platform, on which those I’d-tell-you-my-name-but-then-I’d-have-to-kill-you delegates voted, included a provision to withdraw the jurisdiction of federal courts over the Defense of Marriage Act, which Congress can do under the stupidest, but little-used, provision of the Constitution (Article III, section 2, clause 2).

A Sadr spokesman on why the Mahdi army won’t give up its weapons: “Don’t most families in America keep a weapon?”

Convention report, or it would be if I could stand to listen to those people

At the R. convention, a woman in a headscarf from the American Islamic Congress just began by saying she would greet the convention with the traditional Islamic greeting. Sadly, it was "alaikum salaam." I had thought she was going to do one of those ululations Arab women do. Would have been fun to watch 10,000 people dive to the floor at one time.

Followed by George & Laura Bush talking about how they liberated the women of Afghanistan. By the way, the Times of London ran a story on Saturday, "Wife-Burning Survives Taleban Terror."

McCain could not get off that stage fast enough, could he?

Anti-gay-marriage Rep. Ed Schrock (R-VA) decides not to run for re-election after being outed. His call to a gay dating line ("I just like to get together a guy from time to time, just to, just to play. I'd like him to be in very good shape, flat stomach, good chest, good arms, well hung, cut, uh, just get naked, play, and see what happens...") may be found online.

Giuliani is just going on and on. I couldn’t listen to a word, he’s just too irritating.

Evolutionary rather than revolutionary

McCain says that ads attacking Kerry’s Vietnam record are dishonest and dishonorable, but it is ok to talk about his anti-war activities when he got home. I think Skull and Bones has the same rules. Also Fight Club (The first rule of Fight Club is - you do not talk about Fight Club).

Speaking of don’t ask, don’t tell, the Log Cabin Republicans... you know, I’m not going to pretend I really want to say anything about those idiots beyond repeating Tom Carson’s old line that their symbol should be a pink Bermuda triangle.

An RNC official says that Shrub’s acceptance speech will be “evolutionary rather than revolutionary.” Of course, the oddly chimplike GeeDubya doesn’t actually believe in evolution....

And the naked human pyramids? “Members of [Lynndie] England’s unit testified about critical supply shortages that forced them to keep prisoners naked for long stretches and to give male detainees female underwear.” (Catch by Under the Same Sun .

Wherein John McCain is compared, unfavorably, to a 60-year old Thai hooker with leprosy

The hunger strike by Palestinian political/security prisoners may end today, after a bit over two weeks. I was never clear on whether this supposed to be a fast to the death (if the strikers ever issued a formal statement, I didn’t see it), but the Israelis certainly attempted to speed along the process of physical deterioration, denying them milk, juice and salt, which they were willing to take.

My off-the-top-of-my-head, middle-of-the-night theory that Larry Franklin was passing operational intel to the Israelis is supported by no one else. Fine. If it was about influencing policy towards Iran, as seems to be the case, and influencing it in the direction of war, maybe the opposition party, if the US had one, or the press, if it weren’t so tame, could use this to lever the Pentagon the hell out of the business of formulating foreign policy.

This incident will also serve to make a war against Iran harder to undertake in a 2nd Bush term, by making it appear to the Muslim world like--well, more like--the product of a US-Israeli cabal.

The US was given advance notice of the coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea, and chose to do nothing, according to the Sunday Times (London), for the usual reason: oil. The government of EG is a rather nasty one, and the US was afraid it would have to impose sanctions, depriving itself of EG’s precious, precious oil.

I don’t know how much of the R convention I’ll be able to stand to watch, especially since they failed to invite the entertaining lunatic right-wingers to speak. Instead, while the RNC disinvited Britney Spears because she’s too big of a whore, McCain and other R moderates-on-some-issues will be peddling their asses onstage for smaller change than that charged by a 60-year old Thai hooker with leprosy. This convention is Shrub’s version of “kinder and gentler,” the phrase his father used to distance himself from Reagan, which as often as not became “kindler” and gentler. Actually, the 2000 convention did the same thing, with Newt Gingrich, as I wrote at the time, “locked in the basement until it’s over.”

Expressing themselves through violence and violent behaviour

NY protest sign: "What if Barbara or Jenna were impregnated by Willie Horton?”

I dislike seeing terms which should only be used to describe genuine elections being used for blatant shams, such as that in Chechnya today. General Alu Alkhanov was not “elected.” He did not “win” an election--the election was fixed, not won.

Then there’s Iraq’s Comical Allawi, quoted in the WaPo directing more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger tut-tutting towards the insurgents. “They are not knowing how to express themselves but through violence and through violent behavior,” says the man who was installed by the US military’s violence and violent behaviour. Allawi also likes to talk about the law and bringing people to justice, but the only law written in Iraq in decades was written by Saddam Hussein or Paul Bremer.

Come for the free dental care, stay for the naked human pyramids

The Pentagon is following James Schlesinger in fashioning its propaganda about the torture of prisoners. It’s ignoring everything we know about torture during interrogation (as I noted before, Rumsfeld even flatly denied the existence of that type of torture). What this strategy amounts to is focusing on the torture we’ve seen pictures of, and trying to explain away those pictures as the result of the famous “few bad apples,” the night shift, just doing it for fun. At a background Pentagon briefing Wednesday, an unnamed “senior army official” insisted that the prisoner in the famous picture, standing on a box with a hood over his head, wasn’t even interrogated.

And there’s a lot of talk about the “chilling effect” on current interrogations of insisting on rules against abuse. The same official claims that because prisoners know these limits, they no longer fear imprisonment by the Americans (in other words, they won’t fall for the if-you-fall-off-the-box-you’ll-be-electrocuted ploy): “They know that if the United States captures them, they will get a medical exam. They’ll get their teeth fixed. They will get essentially a free physical and they will be released if they don’t talk after a certain amount of time.” The WaPo says that the CIA has even stopped refusing pain medication to and “feign[ing] suffocation” of prisoners.

You kidnapped me and are threatening to kill me over WHAT??

A group called the Islamic Army in Iraq has kidnapped 2 French journalists, demanding the end of the headscarf ban in French public schools. Normally I’d say it’s bad policy to give in to kidnappers, but really, how’d you like to have to explain to someone’s family why they had to die to protect a ban on headscarves?

Incidentally, I don’t know how this fits in with Muslim theology, but if Muslim girls/women really want to protest the ban and really don’t want to show their hair in public...they should shave their heads.

British Tory party leader Michael Howard has been banned from the White House, for criticizing Tony Blair over the Iraq war.

One of the Chechen women suspected to have perpetrated one of the Russian plane bombings this week was the sister of a man seized by Russian forces several years ago, and never seen again. You don’t have to approve of blowing up planes to understand why she was pissed off.

The Bush admin response to data showing that charter schools are not the miracle cure they were supposed to be, and indeed under-perform regular public schools: stop collecting the data.

Although Sistani’s deal over Najaf involved the American troops leaving the city, they aren’t going to do it. "Owie" Allawi has given them permission to stay until it’s safe enough for Iraqi police to handle. Allawi is obviously trying to restore his authority, but doing so through treachery may not go over too well. Or who knows, maybe Iraqis like treachery. Meanwhile, US tanks will stay, parked among the ruins they created.

Abuses at interrogations

Nice to see that the NYT changed the headline of this article from “Rumsfeld Denies Details of Abuses at Interrogations” in my print copy to the more accurate “Rumsfeld Denies Abuses Occurred at Interrogations” online. Actually it’s worse: he falsely claimed in an interview that the Schlesinger report said that the torture was unrelated to interrogations (i.e., was just for fun, not part of a policy). The report says exactly the opposite in its first paragraph, so 2 days after it was made public, he hadn’t gotten that far. Chimpy’s reading habits are rubbing off on his subordinates. Or his lying habits.

Of course, Rummy was on his vacation. 60 dead US soldiers this month, Rummy doesn’t get to HAVE a vacation.

Speaking of abuses that occurred at interrogations, Bush only allowed the NYT to interview him if he was surrounded by staff, ready to jump in, as McClellan did when Bush refused to believe in the existence of a government report accepting the reality of global warming. Still, what stands out is that Bush was evasive in responding to questions, even for Bush. 3½ years in, the number of questions he simply can’t answer has increased exponentially, especially if he’s unwilling to admit any mistakes. Some of those evasions:

Asked whether the 2 torture reports have changed his opinion that it was the work of a few individuals, he said (twice), “I think we ought to look at all their recommendations seriously.”

Asked how he might have fought the war differently: “David, what I am now doing is leading us forward.”

Asked what he means when he says he won’t “tolerate” a nuclear Iran or North Korea: “It means we’ll try diplomacy as a first resort.”

Why the Pentagon spy for Israel needs to be hung up by his balls

A spy for Israel in the Pentagon. Here we go again. Israel has been bitching about Jonathan Pollard for nearly 20 years. The significant fact in that case is that while Israel has loudly and repeatedly and arrogantly demanded their mole be pardoned, they have not been willing to return the files he copied or tell the US which files they were.

When I first heard about this spy my reaction was to laugh, because what intel could he possibly give them that the US didn’t already provide Israel? Thinking about it some more, there is an answer to that question and it’s not funny: operational intelligence, the sort that would allow Israel to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities.

On the couch

The federal government is taking over the task of screening passengers from the airlines. Ted Kennedy may never fly again.

Would have been nice if the NYT had printed the transcript of its interview with Bush. Evidently the “miscalculation” about Iraq wasn’t so much about the unwillingness of Iraqis to be occupied. Rather, the difficulties in Iraq have all been the result of the initial “swift victory.” His real miscalculation was in overestimating how wonderfully successful he’d be, which is odd, because a swift victory was what all his idiot advisers were predicting at the time on every news program, so how could they not have been prepared for one?

But my favorite quote has to be Shrub’s dismissal of the whole concept of even thinking about what went wrong by saying he wouldn’t go “on the couch.” For him, learning from the past is something only people with psychological disorders do, or need to do, or want to do.

Bags of candy distributed to small markets in the US included cheap little toys, like whistles and...little depictions of a plane flying into the World Trade Center. The toys were imported from China. Not many were distributed before the candy company discovered them, but I’m sure they’ll be worth a fortune on Ebay; I know I want one.

White House transcripts show that in 1976 Henry Kissinger gave the Argentinian junta permission to launch the “dirty war” against the opposition, and wanted it done while the US Congress was in recess: “the quicker you succeed the better.” He told the Argentine foreign secretary, “We are aware you are in a difficult period... when political, criminal, and terrorist activities tend to merge without any clear separation. We understand you must establish authority.” In other words, it’s ok if you kill opposition politicians and pretend they’re terrorists.

In Mostar (Bosnia--remember?), Roma thieves steal a bridge and sell it to a scrap yard.

Karma Nabulsi makes the connection between the infliction of psychological torture on Palestinian hunger strikers by baking bread and barbequing meat outside their cells and the expansion of the settlements, “areas green from expropriated water, while Arab crops die of thirst,” in sight of refugee camps.

Several hundred of the hunger strikers have resumed eating, at least pending new negotiations Monday. They seem to have already won some of the concessions to human dignity they were demanding.

In Florida, Bush accuses Kerry of not wanting democracy in Cuba and attacking Cuban dissidents. The Post quotes Karl Rove saying “the wind is at our back” in Florida, where such meteorological conditions are usually followed by your trailer park being unexpectedly and violently relocated to another part of the state.

Misc. stuff you’ve probably already seen: Dole agreeing that Bush should be ashamed for his treatment of McCain in 2000. A Florida judge overrules election officials, says there must be a paper trail in order to allow for the manual recounts required by law. Deaths of US soldiers in Iraq in 2004 surpass those of 2003.

Making things that appear strange appear not so strange

Gay Arabic-language students come back, all is forgiven! The hearing in Guantanamo about bin Laden’s alleged driver/bodyguard is hampered by incompetent translators. Read the Reuters story: this is a farce. This was the US’s chance to demonstrate some sort of commitment to fairness and the rule of law, and it can’t demonstrate even basic competence. The Yemeni POW wanted to defend himself, or at least have a Yemeni lawyer, but was told he needed an American with legal experience, unlike the tribunal hearing the case, which has only one member with any legal experience, and that member could use an English-English translator, at one point asking Bahlul, "Is your understanding of our culture sufficient to make things that appear strange appear not so strange?" Is anyone’s?

Australian PM John Howard, major shit, spammed voters. Illegally. If anyone has a copy, could they forward it to me?

Misunderestimations were made

Bush admits to having made “a miscalculation of what the conditions would be” in occupied Iraq. That wasn’t so hard, was it, George? One mistake admitted, 3,869,172 to go.

I keep reading that Sadr’s men are turning in their weapons. To whom?

The primrose path to the dogs

Kerry will stop running the ads about Bush’s vicious attacks on McCain in 2000, because McCain asked him to. I don’t see how McCain’s opinion bears on the matter, or his fear of having his hypocrisy (or flip-floppery) in supporting Bush exposed. McCain said he doesn’t want 2000 brought up because America doesn’t like a sore loser, but what does it think about a loser who toadies to the winner?

And while McCain previously asked Bush to condemn the SUBVERT ads, he now says Bush doesn’t have to after all, the weasely statements about all 527 ads are good enough for him. So Kerry has given Bush another gift, gratis, as demonstrated by this oh-so-balanced AP headline: "Bush, Kerry Bow to McCain’s Wishes on Ads."

I have to hand it to the Iraqi security forces. When it was said that they’d take the lead in Najaf, I laughed, but today they did indeed take the lead in slaughtering dozens of unarmed peaceful marchers who had responded to Sistani’s call to go to Najaf (and this should be a warning to NY convention protestors, since I believe the Iraqi police said they were just protecting the grass). The moral authority of Comical Allawi, the potemkin strongman, hasn’t exactly risen here. Nor has that of the Americans, who as part of the deal decreed by Sistani, will have to get the hell out of Najaf, making it (and Kufa as well, I think) another no-go zone like Fallujah.

So now, whether the country holds together depends on Ayatollah Sistani, an elderly man with a heart condition who does not listen to his doctors.

12 British MPs are planning to impeach Tony Blair, a procedure that hasn’t been used in 156 years, didn’t work then and won’t work now, but should be fun to watch. The law firm drawing up the document is the one where Blair’s wife Cherie Booth works.

There’s a nicely written Polly Toynbee column in the Guardian, responding to a harrumphing speech by Tory party leader Michael Howard decrying "political correctness" gone mad, mad I tell you. I might have linked to it for its writing alone, but it has relevance for Americans who will be exposed next week to similar speeches by R’s. "It was tribal, straight from a Tory heart to the heartlands of conservatism, touching every raw nerve, poking every prejudice and agitating every dearly held anxiety. How well he rattled the deep blue fear of the way we live now in a world forever plunging downward on the primrose path to the dogs."

One of Howard’s complaints is the state intervening to stop parents "disciplining" their children. Coincidentally, another Guardian column, about Mark Thatcher, is entitled "I Blame the Parents." The South Africans evidently arrested Thatcher in the nick of time. He denies that he was planning to flee the country, although he did sell his 4 cars, put his house on the market and buy the plane tickets. The coup plot against Equatorial Guinea was what the London Times calls a time-share coup. Millionaires literally invested in this coup, like it was any other business deal. From the Times: "Some of those who claim that they were approached by the coup organisers have described to investigators in South Africa how at lavish drinks parties they were promised that the select group who agreed to write a cheque for about £100,000 each would share a £15 million payout within weeks."

Panama pardons 4 Cuban exiles convicted of plotting the assassination of Fidel Castro, as well as other terrorist actions (hotel and plane bombings, kidnapping, etc). And 3 of them are moving to Miami. As I said 2 days ago, the US is a haven for all sorts of terrorists and war criminals. Thatcher’s tickets, by the way, were for Texas.

The cha-cha of plausible deniability

Hungary chooses as its next prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, the richest man in the country, because that turned out so well in Italy. He made his fortune buying up privatized state assets cheap. And most recently he was minister of sport, which qualifies him to run the whole country because... because... well, maybe the minister of paprika was busy.
Update: I've been informed by DoDo of Manic Net Preacher that Gyurcsany is nowhere near the richest man in Hungary, which is propaganda put out by his opponents, who are themselves supported by even richer people. Sounds familiar, somehow.

Geov Parrish asks, Are You Qualified to be President?

Dahlia Lithwick has a good column on the torture reports, good because it agrees with what I’ve said on the subject, which is the definition of good. She also makes an interesting comparison between the insistence on putting the blame on those at the low end of the torture totem pole rather than their superiors, and the overhyping of those Al Qaida foot soldiers we’ve been able to catch, while talking as little as possible about Rumsfeld & bin Laden respectively. I hadn’t noticed that parallel, although I’m not sure what it means. She argues, as I did here and here, that looking for a smoking gun linking Rummy to Lynndie England "ignores the realities of the chain of command, and the cha-cha of plausible deniability."

The US plans to hand over to the tender mercies of the Afghan legal system, whenever the Afghans get around to having one, the hundreds of Afghans it has been holding, some for close to 3 years. Yes I’m sure that’s a legal system we want to be an integral part of.

The State Dept has decided not to allow Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan to come to this country to teach a course at Notre Dame. Ramadan, who lives in Switzerland, has written about how Muslims can accommodate themselves to secular societies. I guess he’s received a lesson in the subject himself, when Jewish groups (I’ve forgotten which ones since I first heard about this, and the NYT is too dainty to say) lobbied the State Dept not to let him teach at a Catholic university. You could look it up, how many Tariq Ramadans could there be?

The Victorian Sex Cry Generator.

John McCain speaks out for amnesia

James Schlesinger says Rumsfeld shouldn’t resign because that "would be a boon for all of America’s enemies." Possibly that was a misspelling and he meant to call Rummy a boob. That quote could, in theory, be read in either of two ways, and I’d like to point out that in practice we have all discarded one of those meanings out of hand (including the press, which didn’t ask Schlesinger to clarify). The discarded possible meaning: Rumsfeld is so wonderfully competent that he is indispensable and the republic would collapse without him. The real meaning: the US would lose face if it admitted to any mistake or misdeed by holding someone accountable for that mistake or misdeed. This is an argument based solely on PR, on appearances rather than realities. A man who could even make that argument, in public, is a man who set out to write a cover-up.

Another example, from the report: Gen. Myers is criticized for not having "appreciated" the "impact of the photos." Not the reality of what was depicted in them, but the impact of the photos themselves on public relations. His failure was not that he allowed the torture to occur, but that he failed to effectively manage the perception of that torture, the spin. Rumsfeld, likewise, was more annoyed that there was documentation of torture than he was about the torture itself, saying in May that he’d never told Bush about it before the pictures came out because "The problem at that point was one-dimensional. It wasn’t three-dimensional. It wasn’t photographs and video." Click here for my post on that from the time, it’s a good post.

Forgot to say: Mark Thatcher’s "alleged coup in Equatorial Guinea" (as he called it), was all about oil.

India had its first execution in 15 years earlier this month. One result: in 3 separate incidents, children playing at executions have accidentally hanged themselves.

The Najaf police chief once again had all foreign journalists rounded up at gunpoint and brought to his office so he could harangue them.

And Israel deports a British journalist after a court decides that her "naivety and convictions" left her open to, well, believing what Palestinians might tell her.

John McCain says he is "sick and tired" of the wounds of Vietnam being reopened. "It’s time to move on," he said. In fact, he doesn’t like the Kerry campaign using his own words from 2000 in an ad. "What happened to me in the year 2000 is over. I have put it behind me." He really is the perfect person to speak for Bush at the R convention, where he can make the case for forgetting everything that’s happened in the last 4 years. Because if we remember the last 4 years, except for you-know-what, the terrorists win.

Fear and smear

John Kerry has accused Team Chimpy and SUBVERT of using “fear and smear” tactics, which I believe is also a service provided by Thai hookers for $75, so not only does the charge rhyme, but I’m pretty sure he just called Shrub a Thai hooker. If he didn’t, he should have. And the rhyming thing will even catch GeeDubya’s attention, because he’ll think it’s Dr. Seuss: I did not fear him on a train, I did not smear him on a plane...

Speaking of idiot children of former leaders, Sir Mark Thatcher, the unsavory son of Maggie Thatcher, has been arrested in South Africa for involvement in an attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea. I find the last time I wrote about him was in 1998, when he was loan sharking.

Freedom means freedom for everyone, unless they're queer or something

Bob Dole returns to the question of Kerry and Vietnam, saying Kerry’s "grandstanding" just didn’t "smell right". Rather than grandstanding, said Dole, Kerry should have let his rage and resentment fester inside himself for decades, growing increasingly bitter, corroding his very soul, until... and then Dole snapped out of it and abruptly ended the interview, going out to look for a puppy to kick.

Schlesinger complains that all the publicity about torture in Abu Ghraib has had "a chilling effect on interrogation operations." I think that means they are now using ice rather than electrodes on prisoners’ genitals.

Dick Cheney mentions his gay daughter while setting out his position on gay marriage, a position which is evidently being taken as more liberal than Bush’s because he advocates banning gay marriage on the state rather than the federal level. He said "freedom means freedom for everyone" and "people ought to be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to." Someone should ask him if that means he opposes laws against sodomy. But he makes a distinction which some of the press fails to catch, saying that the question is "what kind of official sanction or approval is going to be granted by government?" No it isn’t. It’s about legal recognition, which is not the same as approval. The state gets to register the personal, private decisions of its citizens, it doesn’t get to approve or disapprove. That’s what freedom for everyone means.

Animal House

The program director for the R convention says, "We tried to look at what TV shows do to keep an audience. We’re taking lessons from TV shows." I hope they’re not getting a twin pregnant just to boost ratings. That would be wrong.

Once the convention starts, or perhaps before, I encourage those of you who can stand to watch to submit your choice for the convention’s jump-the-shark moment to jumptheshark.com. But in which category? "Special Guest Star"--Schwarzenegger? "They did it"--Bush & McCain?

In Guantanamo, the first military tribunal in 60 years, the names of whose members we are not allowed to know, has formally charged Osama bin Laden’s driver, possibly for failing to signal a turn, as part of George W. Bush’s bold plan to inconvenience bin Laden by making him have to walk, or possibly take a bus. Correction: the panel’s names were already known, but the media are now being asked not to print their names anyway. Only one member has any legal training.

In May I joked about Fox turning Abu Ghraib into a reality show, suggesting that Corp. Graner had provided the perfect title, "I Love to Make a Grown Man Piss Himself." It turns out that the guards already did just that, using their dogs in a competition to get under-aged prisoners to piss themselves. The Post does not say what the prize was.

I’m not sure why the Schlesinger report into the prison abuses is being portrayed as blaming Rumsfeld, when it seems to have gone rather far out of its way to avoid doing so. The "Animal House" line seems to follow the "boys will be vicious, sadistic, evil boys" position the Pentagon has been pushing from the start. In fact, the report is just blaming the prison night shift. We are supposed to believe that the day shift was torturing prisoners as part of an interrogation strategy (we know this, we have the memos), then the night shift came in and did the exact same things, but for fun, because they were bored.

As Argentina was to fleeing Nazis, so is the US today a haven for war criminals and other shits from all over the world, with very little comment or discussion. For example, Haitian death squad leaders live in Florida with impunity. And the guy on the left in this picture moved to Virginia, where he owned a pizza parlor and died in 1998 of natural causes.

So it's interesting that the trial of Alvaro Rafael Saviria, one of the masterminds behind the assassination of archbishop Romero in El Salvador in 1980, is getting so little attention. The trial, which is a civil trial, is going ahead although the guy has disappeared, fearing prosecution. Not for the assassination, but for rolling back odometers and selling lemons--he was a used car dealer in Modesto, CA.

The Palestinian hunger strikers will, obviously, overstrain normal prison medical facilities. But the Israeli health minister has said that "these murderers" will not be allowed into regular hospitals.

What, you again?

With so few states in play in the presidential election, some small towns in battleground states are being bankrupted by the security costs of the constant visits by Bush and Kerry. Some of them have taken to sending bills to the campaigns, which are never paid.

In Najaf, says the NYT, "Sadr’s loyalists appeared to be on the verge of collapse... American commanders said on Tuesday morning that they had been surprised by the lack of resistance to the attack and that they believed that Mr. Sadr’s forces were becoming discouraged." Maybe, but wasn’t that what we heard when Baghdad "fell"? Sadr’s followers were mostly not Najafians (Najafinos?), so leaving the town could be just a shift in strategy, a refusal to fight the type of war the Americans want.

The American problem is that the US military cannot remain in occupation of Najaf for very long, and I don’t imagine they can go knocking down doors in search of militia members and weapons, the way they did in Fallujah with such spectacularly bad results. Soon they will leave, and then what?

I’m still suspicious about how closely the timing of the Najaf campaign is being coordinated with the R convention. If Sadr is captured--or revealed to have already been captured sometime in the last week, when, like the integrity of Bob Dole and John McCain, he has seemingly vanished from the face of the earth--I won’t be especially surprised.

Moral gymnasium

When Dole deployed his more-wounded-than-thou act against Kerry yesterday, he didn’t even bother getting his facts straight first, falsely claiming that 2 of Kerry’s wounds occurred on the same day. And here’s the astounding part, to me: he actually used no-smoke-without-fire as if it were a legitimate debating point: "not every one of these people can be Republican liars. There’s got to be some truth to the charges." What a high standard of proof he holds himself to.

Kerry called Dole today to express his disappointment. Dole told him, "John, I didn’t mean to offend you." Or to quote Michael Corleone, "It’s not personal, Sonny. It’s strictly business." (Although Dole is really more like Fredo, but with Sonny’s temperament.)

Reporters did get to the Boy in the Bubble today, but once again he would only condemn the ad in the context of all the ads, which means he is effectively putting these scurrilous lies in the same category as all other 527 ads, honest or dishonest. He won’t give up using this form of ad unless Kerry does too, which means that he is declaring the use of libelous ads legitimate; he won’t unilaterally say that this sort of ad is beneath him. McClellan said today, "Sen. Kerry wants to have it both ways. He should call for a stop to all of these ads." Scotty is trying to establish a moral equivalence where there is none (indeed, CNN had a spectacularly stupid but not inaccurate headline, "Bush Urges Kerry to Condemn Attack Ads.") The American Prospect’s weblog today is a good one-stop shopping place for articles on 527s. And it has McClellan repeatedly dodging efforts to get him to answer whether Bush condemns the content of the ads.

It is fascinating to see how little historical content there is in what is that rarest of all things in American politics, a debate about history. I mean, with all this talk about what Kerry did or did not do in Vietnam, there is no discussion of the war itself, its legitimacy, the role of the US in the world, when and how the US should have withdrawn, etc etc. You’d never know the Vietnamese War had actual Vietnamese people in it, a bunch of them shot dead by Kerry himself, which I guess is somehow less significant, less revealing of his character, than the one American guy he pulled out of the water. In Kerry’s portrayal, it’s all about his relation to other Americans in Vietnam, the "band of brothers," as if, to quote Bernard Shaw, "the world [was] a moral gymnasium built expressly to strengthen your character in".

It’s not like the consequences of that war don’t continue. One of them is the tens of thousands of Hmong who made the mistake of fighting for the US, still sitting in refugee camps in Thailand. The US has finally agreed to take them, but only if they give up polygamy (and presumably leave the extraneous wives behind, although that’s not clear from this article).

An op-ed piece in the Indy asks what’s so "radical" about "radical cleric" Sadr, who wants the occupation to end, and even then didn’t turn away from non-violence until a year into the occupation.

It would be lovely

An interesting counterpoint to the military service or lack of it of those children of privilege, Bush and Kerry, is Prince William, who is talking about joining the military, but the Ministry of Defence doesn’t necessarily want the aggravation of trying to keep him from being killed while pretending they’re not coddling him. William, however, has said, "A career in the armed services would be the best thing at the moment because it would be lovely to recognise all the hard work that the armed forces are doing." I don’t need to point out the not-especially-martial word in that sentence.

"More than 40% of British adults have admitted comfort eating to mask feelings of sadness, tension or anger," according to the Guardian. I’ve eaten in Britain: comfort is not the word that comes to mind. In fact, the #1 cause in Britain of feelings of sadness, tension or anger is British cuisine.

Don’t know how I missed this story: "Unfortunately, my fellow Klansmen judged me solely on the colour of my robe. But I can’t help what colour my robe is, can I? It’s what’s inside that counts."

The hunger strike of Palestinian prisoners is in its second week, the number of strikers is over 3,000, the lack of interest by the rest of the world is almost total. I don’t even have enough information to tell you if I consider their demands legitimate, and I don’t know if they’re planning to carry the strike through to death. If so, a massive strike is precisely the wrong way to do it, because only a minority of people, however dedicated, are prepared to see their body consume itself. The high participation rate in the hunger strike, which is at least 3/4, and may be nearly all of the security prisoners, suggests that some prisoners were coerced or morally pressured into joining, which would be spectacularly immoral. The hunger strike is a tricky form of protest, ethically speaking, with rules that must be followed. In Gandhi’s words, "Fasting is a fiery weapon. It has its own science."

A WaPo editorial notes that the investigation of Gen. Boykin was designed to focus on petty technicalities without forcing Bush and Rumsfeld to denounce his blatant Islamophobia. One misstep in the article: "Such beliefs are the general's right, but when a senior defense official utters them in public, they undermine just about every value the administration is trying to project in this war." Not trying to project, pretending to project. Big difference.

More about John Kerry's thigh than I needed to know

The Swift boat thing has dominated the media for days, to the exclusion of all else, which was the point of the exercise. It’s been a pretty content-free campaign on both sides, so “to the exclusion of all else” may not be a great loss. Those people, especially liberal bloggers, who have focused on the details of the financing of SUBVERT and the accuracy of the charges, are missing the point. Even discredited, the campaign worked, because some mud always sticks, especially for people not paying a lot of attention, which is most of the electorate. Bush the Elder’s Willie Horton campaign, which was just as dishonest and significantly slimier, although less of a personal attack, worked for just that reason. Most people will not be reading the fine print on the award commendations of Kerry’s accusers, but will vaguely note that there is some controversy, figure there is no smoke without fire, and move on with their lives with their image of Kerry slightly tarnished. Mission--as Flight Suit Boy would say--accomplished. And Kerry, who actually interacts with the press and the occasional unscreened member of the public, had no choice but to waste time on it, while no one has gotten close enough to the Boy in the Bubble to ask that he forthrightly demand the SUBVERTers stop.

Shrub seems never to have to answer questions. 5 years ago tomorrow I asked, “Anyone want to start a pool on when Bush has to answer the question on cocaine?” I wouldn’t have bet on never. I don’t, of course, know whether Bush abused other substances than the one he’ll admit to, although his non-denial denials weren’t exactly confidence-inspiring. I’m just sayin’.

Bob Dole intervened on the issue today, saying Kerry should apologize to veterans, making the quite valid point that he can’t accuse US soldiers in Vietnam of war crimes and then run on that record, and belittling Kerry’s war wounds. Not the best performance from a man who once suggested to Bush the Elder “stop lying about my record.”

Best response, from John Podesta: “Senator Kerry carries shrapnel in his thigh as distinct from President Bush who carries two fillings in his teeth from his service in the Alabama National Guard, which seems to be his only time that he showed up.”

There have been other black propaganda (that’s the CIA term for lies) attempts to plant smears. Sometimes a story quietly planted somewhere on the periphery in the hopes that it will spread (this is also a common CIA technique: insert a news story in a pliable/gullible media outlet, often the Daily Telegraph in Britain, where it will be picked up by Fox News, Drudge, etc) dies on the vine owing to the vagaries of pack journalism. There was an attempt in March to blame 9/11 on Kerry personally, because someone had written him that security at Logan Airport wasn’t very good, which didn’t go anywhere. (My original link in March is dead, but check this out.)

And I know there have been other flash-in-the-pan attempts at scandal-mongering, but I can’t bring them to mind. It’s a Darwinian thing. Some stories have bright petals which attract the eyes of journalists, who spread the seed, while others don’t. Or to use another metaphor, a lot of mud is thrown at the wall, some of it sticks, some doesn’t, and I’ll stop with the metaphors now.

There’s a sort of anti-smear smear too. Kerry just took out an ad noting that in the 2000 primaries, "Bush smeared John McCain," which has the effect of using that smear to discredit McCain’s speech at the convention a couple of weeks from now.

Let us know what it is that they are doing

The US position of opposition to growth in Israeli settlements, according to the NYT has been covertly downgraded to merely asking that they "let us know what it is that they are doing." (quote from Condi Rice). Evil, Condi, they’re doing evil. And Ha’aretz reports that Sharon’s office will say only that "The issue is under discussion between us and the Americans." The new American position is not only a violation of the "road map," but all this "letting us know" and "under discussion" is between Americans and Israelis, and I seem to recall that there were other people involved, the Palestoovians...the Palestiners...wait, don’t tell me... The premise of the change in policy is also wrong: the premise is that as long as new units are built within existing stolen land, it won’t be making matters worse. But it will. Resources will be diverted from Palestoovians to settlers, most importantly water, which is already badly misappropriated in the Occupied Territories.

In response to the Supreme Court decision that Guantanamo detainees must have a hearing on their "enemy combatant" designation, the military set up laughably one-sided military panels and guess what, so far they’ve decided for the government in 14 of the 14 cases they’ve heard. The prisoners who refused to go before the panels made the right decision.

Those bloodstains were there when we moved in

The turning over of the keys is turning into a farce. Ayatollah Sistani, conveniently out of the country, won’t accept the keys until the shrine is vacated. But Sadr’s people won’t turn over the keys until someone from Sistani’s office inspects the place and confirms none of the treasures have been taken; Sistani’s people are rightly worried about being shot by someone if they come near the place. One minute it’s a civil and international war, the next minute a fight over the cleaning deposit.

What I’d like to hear is the Allawi clique’s explanation for why it claimed to have taken charge of the mosque yesterday. Update: the Observer likens this claim to the utterances of "Comical Ali."

Atrios has the transcript of the Senate testimony of John Kerry. Too bad that guy isn’t running for president, instead of the John Kerry we’re stuck with, who almost seems to romanticize the war.

Matthew Parris, a British, gay, Tory former MP and former parliamentary sketchwriter for The Times (for a hilarious description of a House of Lords debate on "buggery," click here) has written a good serious article on the "primitivisation" of the law, the "disturbing urge to elbow the formal structures of the rule of law impatiently aside in pursuit of those we hate". Most Times stories aren’t available on the Web outside Britain, but this one seems to be, here. Or if that doesn’t work, here’s the cached version.

Another London Times story begins "Ten-year-old Abbas is saving up his pocket money for a hand grenade. He wants an American one to throw at the huge US tanks that sit on every key crossroads of Sadr City. He doesn't want an Iraqi one although, at €3, it is half the price." And reports this graffito in Baghdad: "Country for sale: contact Iyad Allawi." A truncated version (reg. required).

Taking advantage of the olive branch

Possibly, watching the news from Iraq today, we all had this question: major Shiite shrines have keys?

Guardian: "At the moment, the Americans are doing all the fighting. The Iraqi police play merely a cameo role: a massive convoy rode towards the shrine yesterday, sirens blazing, celebrating a victory that never happened. Two minutes later it turned back."

Quisling-in-chief Allawi: "We have extended the olive branch and Mr Sadr can take advantage of the olive branch." He makes it sound so dirty.

Saw a bit of White House spokesmodel McClellan’s press gaggle on McNeil-Lehrer today and had to look it up. Much of it was on the Not Too Swift Veterans (or SUBVERT). Once again McClellan condemned the existence of the ads without getting at their content. Granted, he’s a member of the Bush "re"-election campaign, which isn’t known for its ability to distinguish between form and content. Oh, you say, but Scott McClellan isn’t a member of the Bush campaign, he works for the executive branch and is paid by the American taxpayers? Has someone told him that? Quote, "we weren’t involved in any way in these ads." He says it 3 times, using the first person plural each time. And he accused the Kerry campaign (3 times) of "fueling" attacks by "shadowy groups." Given the long, explicit NYT story about the funding of the Swifties (or NAMBLA) , he needs to be a lot more specific than "fueling" if he’s going to accuse them of something.

He also, as Mark Shields pointed out, accused Kerry of "losing his cool" (4 times) about being called a traitor. Once again, an opponent of Bush is being accused of being a hothead, like McCain in 2000 (and Dean of course, but Bush wasn’t in that fight). Don’t know how the D’s keep finding these emotional hot-blooded types, first Gore, then Kerry, like they’re recruiting candidates straight off a Mexican soap opera. Whereas GeeDubya is so calm and collected that he could hear about the most devastating attack on American civilians in his lifetime and for seven minutes....
(Later: wow, it seems the Kerry campaign also made the last joke. And the RNC chair told CNN, Kerry "looks to me to be wild-eyed.")

Ending what seems like months of speculation, it was confirmed today that Silvio Berlusconi indeed has gotten hair transplants.

Zanzibar bans gay sex. Play your vacations accordingly. The penalty is 25 years for gay men, 7 for lesbians.

Ironic censorship

So in a court case about secrecy and the Patriot Act, Ashcroft’s Justice Dept, in what may be the first use of irony in an act of censorship, tried to censor the ACLU’s brief’s quotation from Justice Powell in a 1972 Supreme Court decision requiring warrants for wiretaps: "The danger to political dissent is acute where the Government attempts to act under so vague a concept as the power to protect ‘domestic security.’ Given the difficulty of defining the domestic security interest, the danger of abuse in acting to protect that interest becomes apparent." Doesn’t it just? Justice is also using secret evidence the ACLU is not allowed to see.

The Sri Lankan legislature was stymied by its supreme court for passing a law against coerced or bribed religious conversions. There is evidently concern that poor Buddhists are being offered money by Christian evangelical groups funded by Americans. Which is really all I know about that.

While rich candidates for Congress are not allowed to use unlimited amounts of their own money in their campaigns, the FEC just quietly ruled that they can do so for "get out the vote" drives.

Boykin gets off. The long national nightmare is over

The Iraqi admin raised the bar yet again, issuing still more demands for Sadr to comply with or else. He is to agree to their terms in writing, and go on tv & tell his militia to disband. While dressed in a tutu.

And the Pentagon has lowered the bar yet again. General William "My God Is Bigger Than Your God" Boykin has been made the subject of a jolly strong secret report, which says he broke a few piddling rules. Boykin was never a big story over here (by which I mean this country, not this blog), but for a while I had a news.google alert on Boykin, and when a general in the army that’s killing so many Muslims makes bigoted, idiotic comments about Islam, the press in Muslim countries do tend to bring it up over and over and over.

Dahlia Lithwick in Thursday’s NYT says that making of Shrub by portraying him as an infant (like here) makes liberals look like snotty know-it-alls and is a bad way to win over the people who voted for Bush in 2000, who will feel insulted. As for the second part, nonsense: a few years after Watergate, a poll showed that most Americans claimed to have voted for McGovern in 1972. People will remember what they want to remember.

A Russian human rights group has been invaded by the police--and oddly enough, by the public transportation police, the guys on the Moscow Metro.

AP headline: "Official on Leave Over Ten Commandments." What, all of them?

A must-read, on Arauca, Colombia, an oil-producing region, where a unit of the Colombian military, financed by Occidental Petroleum and the United States, is systematically murdering trade unionists. Also, some of those "friendly militias" so beloved by Paul Wolfowitz.

Suddenly, Caltrans doesn’t look so bad: due to mudslides, China has had a 10-day, 60-mile long traffic jam.

And another one for the Guinness World Book of Records: 31 cows were killed by a single lightning strike in Denmark.

He wants them to do his dirty work

Has anyone noticed that the acronym for Swift Boat Veterans for Truth is pronounced Subvert? Kerry has (finally) accused Bush of hiding behind the Subversives: "He wants them to do his dirty work." Gee, Bush staying safe at home while sending others to do his dirty work...say, you don’t think Kerry is making a subtle allusion to Bush’s military record do you?

I wouldn’t ordinarily make a big deal over what Olympics competitors have to say about politics or anything else, but the decision of Team Chimpy to run an ad citing the presence of Iraqis at the Olympics as another "Mission Accomplished" moment without first finding out what the response of those Iraqis might be is a repetition in miniature of the assumption that American troops would be greeted with flowers, dancing in the streets and free blow-jobs.

Fafblog suggests that Bush isn’t living far enough in the future.

Not afraid to talk about problems

The Israelis have indeed been training American forces in counter-insurgency techniques, according to the London Times and Jerusalem Post. According to a professor of advanced evil and intermediate scumbaggery at the Israeli military staff college, Americans are especially interested in learning about assassination by helicopter, urban warfare, and conducting large military operations in heavily populated areas. I remember that before the war started, the military was using the Massacre of Jenin as a model.

Kazakhstan has elections next month, and it’s very exciting. Which party will win, Nursultan Nazarbayev’s or his daughter Dariga’s. So far it’s neck and neck. She supports daddy but denies that her party isn’t a real alternative, saying it "is not afraid to talk about problems. We're not afraid to criticise officials for working badly or disobeying the President." And it’s still more democratic than the process we just saw in Baghdad. Note to London Times: does every story about Kazakhstan have to mention that they play a form of polo with the headless carcass of a goat?