Telling the US side of the story to approved targeted audiences

What the fuck sort of day is this? Today’s NYT obits page reported the death of not one but two people who wrote (very different sorts of) books I own, Roger Shattuck and Robert Sheckley, then during the day Eugene McCarthy and Richard Pryor die. How did I not know Pryor was one of the writers of Blazing Saddles?

Boy I hope no one is reading any of that for the first time here.

The Sunday Times says that the only pictures ever published in Russia of Putin’s daughters are over a decade old.

“The enemy in Anbar province is different from that in other areas of Iraq,” a Pentagon release begins intriguingly, only to crash and burn in the next sentence, when it turns out that they are all “rejectionists,” a term that made its debut in Bush’s November 30th speech, and which is remarkable for the amount of information it completely fails to convey. Is this the grand sum of 3 years of accumulated knowledge about the enemy? The Pentagon people peddling this piffle prefer to remain “on background,” as well they might; you do have to wonder about a Pentagon release in which Pentagon officials aren’t willing to be named. Now, don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of a Rejectionist Party, and I would even suggest a motto: “Whatever it is, I’m against it.” Has a ring to it, doesn’t it? But as an intellectual category, it tells you nothing about the aspirations and ideas of the people to whom you apply the category (it’s not like any Iraqis actually consider themselves to be “rejectionists”). Indeed, it denies they have any aspirations or ideas we need to pay any attention to; it’s the same dismissive taunt, “They have no ideas, they just trash ours,” the Republicans like to use about the Democrats. To call your opponents rejectionist is to stigmatize, even criminalize disagreement.

The NYT has a good long story about American semi-secret propaganda efforts in Iraq and, in the last part, Afghanistan. Says a psyops colonel, “We tell the U.S. side of the story to approved targeted audiences.” In Afghanistan, the Pentagon gives money to 30 radio stations, including one named... wait for it... Peace, and a newspaper of the same name. Without disclosing the relationship, of course. Says AID’s rep in Afghanistan, whose name is evidently also a secret, “We want to maintain the perception (if not the reality) that these radio stations are in fact fully independent.” That’s called lying. AID also funds something called Voice For Humanity, which hands out iPod-like devices (pink for women, silver for men!) in both countries with get-out-the-vote messages, which can’t be used for anything else, just like those North Korean radios that can only receive state radio.

Unless, of course, they meant stoning infidel voters

Inappropriate headline of the week, from the WaPo: “Iraq’s Mosques Rock the Vote as Election Nears.”

It’s official: according to the Patent and Trademark Office, the word “dyke” is no longer offensive. Accordingly, it has reversed an earlier decision to deny a trademark for the name “Dykes on Bikes.”

There’s some sort of lesson in this story about people with one of the most boring hobbies ever, planespotting, helped expose the secret CIA torture flights. One planespotter in Spain, who posted a picture of one plane on the web, started getting calls from reporters and... others: “One man wanted to buy up all the photos. He eventually sent me a form in which he asked for everything, including my home address. I didn’t give it to him and I never heard from him again.” Your tax dollars at work.

Simon Carr of the Indy (sub., so no link) says that David Cameron, though the 5th Tory party leader since Thatcher, still has to figure out how to “integrate Mrs Thatcher back into the Conservative story as a necessary but demented character, a creature of her time, like Joan of Arc.”

I love it when Bush scandals intersect: the key pre-war “evidence” that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and chemical weapons was provided by a single prisoner, rendered to Egypt, who lied to make the torture stop.

We’ll let the historians look back and make those judgments

Four men who stole the original manuscript of Darwin’s The Origin of Species have been sentenced to long prison terms. There’s probably a joke in there somewhere. Oh, and did I mention it was from the library of Transylvania University?

In Wednesday’s Gaggle, Scotty McClellan was asked if mistakes were committed by the US in the Iraq war. Astonishingly, he admits that there were. Less astonishingly, he says he doesn’t know what they were, and indeed, “we’ll let the historians look back and make those judgments. I don’t think you can do it in the current time.” So there you have it: the Bush admin not only doesn’t learn from its mistakes, but denies even the possibility of learning from its mistakes until decades from now, which could be a little late. On the other hand it might not be late because, due to those mistakes, we’ll probably still be fighting this war decades from now.

Speaking of lengthy contemplation, this Thai Buddhist monk is wearing the helmet because of falling rocks from the blasting at a nearby limestone quarry.


Wilkommen: Cute story in the Indy about preparations in Germany for next year’s World Cup, specifically, mega-brothels being built to accommodate the 40,000 prostitutes expected to make their way to Berlin for the event. Actually a good thing, if it cuts down on the number of prostitutes who are sex slaves. 3 million football fans are expected to make use of their services.

Speaking of remarkably accommodating and flexible Europeans, all the European officials Condi met evidently found her reassurances entirely reassuring, or say they did.

George Bush claims that all his policies come from these two. Explains so much. Now if it were two cats...

Wink winkery

In Britain, the Law Lords (the highest court) rule that evidence elicited by torture in other countries may not be used in court.

Back here in torture central, various sources explain how every word spoken by Condi about torture this week has been exquisitely polished by State Dept lawyers to mean either nothing or the exact opposite of what it’s meant to sound like. Eric Umansky in Today’s Papers points out that her statement

As a matter of U.S. policy, the United States obligations under the [Convention Against Torture], which prohibits, of course, cruel and inhumane and degrading treatment, those obligations extend to U.S. personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the United States or outside of the United States

is undercut by the Bush legal position that there are in fact no legal obligations not to torture foreigners unless they are held in the US. So they would abide by their obligations, but claim there are no obligations.

Also (and forgive the lack of links; I had assumed someone would collect all the Condi-parsings in one place, but no one has), the NYT yesterday noted that when she said the US doesn’t send prisoners to countries where they “will be tortured,” that only excludes rendition when we absolutely, positively know that they will be tortured, not that they may be, or probably will be. I believe in lawyer’s parlance, that’s called a “wink wink.” A couple of days ago, she said that the US didn’t transport prisoners “for the purpose” of torture, more wink winkery. (I just made that up. I like it.) And of course without a working definition of “torture,” no statement rejecting the practice of torture has any real-world meaning.

And someone in the Guardian, um, or the Independent, sorry again, focused on her use of the word “policy” – for example, her statement above began with the phrase “As a matter of U.S. policy...” – which is another loophole, since policies have exceptions and are a matter of presidential will (that is, they can be changed at any time); “policy” is not an iron-clad promise: she wouldn’t have used the phrase if it were. To the extent that gullible news media, and gullible congresscritters like Carl Levin, believe that some sort of change has taken place, her oh so carefully chosen words have done what they were intended to do, get critics off the Bushies’ backs. If she had really intended to rule out the use of torture, her words would not have needed to be carefully chosen.

There is perhaps a limit to gullibility among those who characterize Rice’s words as a “reversal of policy”: I’ve heard no one say that they believe that any of the practices – kidnappings in foreign countries, secret prisons, extraordinary renditions, torture by American interrogators, torture by foreign interrogators – will actually be altered, that a decision was made this week by the Bush admin to stop doing any of the things it’s been doing.

If you’re wondering about the statement by UN high commissioner for human rights Louise Arbour which provoked John Bolton to object “I think it is inappropriate and illegitimate for an international civil servant to second-guess the conduct that we’re engaged in in the war on terror, with nothing more as evidence than what she reads in the newspapers,” here it is. Oddly, she doesn’t mention the US specifically. Wonder how he knew she meant us?

Militias and armed gangs are exerting more influence than they should in a free society

Some snippets from Bush’s latest Iraq speech:

“Over the course of this war, we have learned that winning the battle for Iraqi cities is only the first step. ... We found that after we left, the terrorists would re-enter the city, intimidate local leaders and police, and eventually retake control.” Boy , live and learn, huh? You’d think no one had ever fought a war before.

On Najaf: “An Iraqi battalion has consumed [sic] control of the former American military base” but “There are still kidnappings, and militias and armed gangs are exerting more influence than they should in a free society.” As opposed to exerting just the right amount of influence.

Says there’s some corruption in the Iraqi government at the local and national levels, so “[w]e’ve helped the Iraqi people establish institutions like a Commission on Public Integrity and a stronger Supreme Board of Audit to improve oversight of the rebuilding process.” I’m guessing the contracts to set up the Commission on Public Integrity and the Supreme Board of Audit went to Haliburton.

As is now requisite, Bush quoted Holy Joe Lieberman approvingly. Joementum went to Iraq and wrote that he could see the signs of progress: “There are many more cars on the streets... and literally millions more cell phones in Iraq hands than before.” Of course the cell phones are being used to detonate the cars...

*

Hanukkah at the White House, or as George calls it, Jewy Christmas

California right-wingers are so upset with Der Arnold that they’re looking around for an alternative.

In Germany, Condi Rice said that she wouldn’t comment on the American kidnapping, and five-month detention and torture of German national Khaled al-Masri, all because he had a “suspicious name,” because he’s suing, and she certainly can’t talk about an issue that might be before the courts. I am getting so sick of that line. Angela Merkel came out of their meeting saying Rice had admitted a mistake in that case, but the State Dept says that Rice did no such thing and they don’t understand how Merkel could ever have gotten such an idea. Rice said something about “if” little errors occur, the US will rectify them, although she didn’t say how dumping al-Masri on a mountain road and then pressuring Germany not to talk publicly about the case fit with that.

George Bush loves him the Hanukkah. Possibly because it’s all about the oil. So he got a 19-day jump start on it.


Is the White House’s fire insurance premium paid up?

That’s the West Point Jewish Cadet Choir. Let me repeat that: the West Point Jewish Cadet Choir.

We are not tents people

Earlier this year, Robert Mugabe destroyed the houses of hundreds of thousands of people in the subtly named “Operation Drive Out Rubbish.” Now, his government has rejected an offer from the UN to provide tents because “we are not tents people.”

A Bush exchange with AP reporter Nedra Pickler today:

Q Thank you, Mr. President. Insurgents in Iraq claim that they have taken a U.S. citizen hostage. We also have a U.S. peace activist who is being held. Is there anything you can do to get them back?

THE PRESIDENT: We, of course, don’t pay ransom for any hostages. What we will do, of course, is use our intelligence gathering to see if we can’t help locate them. The best way to make sure that Iraq is a peaceful society is to continue to spread democracy. And, clearly, there are some there who want to stop the spread of democracy. There are terrorists there who will kill innocent people and behead people and kill children; terrorists who have got desires to hurt the American people. And it should be -- the more violent they get, the clearer the cause ought to be, that we’re going to achieve victory in Iraq, and that we’ll bring these people to justice. We will hunt them down, along with our Iraqi friends, and at the same time, spread democracy.

Notice how quickly he slides from the individual hostages to his terrorists-are-bad talking points, never making a human connection or saying a word to the families of the hostages. The rest of us just aren’t real to him. Indeed, there’s nothing in his answer that demonstrates that he knows the hostages’ names or is following this story at all. Also, saying we don’t pay ransom is fine, but the thing about using intel to track them down just increases the chances they’ll be killed.

On Iraq, he says the troops “need to hear... that we have a strategy that will win. ... And so our strategy is two-fold” (killing people, spreading democracy). Only, the thing is, in last Wednesday’s so-called major speech, he said, “Our strategy in Iraq has three elements.” He can’t even remember how many folds/elements his strategy has. Or possibly he just can’t count that high.

About secret prisons and torture, he seems to have gotten the memo about stressing how everything we do follows American laws without mentioning the Bush admin position that American laws don’t actually apply to these detainees. Note the McClellanesque use of mindless repetition:

I can tell you two things: one, that we abide by the law of the United States; we do not torture. And two, we will try to do everything we can to protect us within the law. We’re facing an enemy that would like to hit America again, and the American people expect us to, within our laws, do everything we can to protect them.

To be responsible, one needs to stop defining success in Iraq as the absence of terrorist attacks

The State Dept’s position on the Venezuelan elections, the Miami Herald notes, “was clearly closer to the opposition line” than to the government’s. Funny, that. State spokesmodel Adam Ereli says the low turnout, caused by the opposition boycott (and not even that low compared to other Venezuelan mid-term elections, Left I points out), is a sign of distrust in the electoral system, showing a magical ability to read the minds of the Venezuelan non-voters. (Response of one reporter at the press conference: Isn’t that a bit of a reach? Fifty percent of the people in this country don’t vote. You just don’t like Venezuela very much.) The Herald quotes an opposition leader saying, or possibly miming, “Silence united Venezuelans.” A little silence from the State Dept would also be nice.

Rummy Rumsfeld, criticizing the media’s peculiar habit of focusing on the negative: “To be responsible, one needs to stop defining success in Iraq as the absence of terrorist attacks.” That’s one of the best Rummyisms yet. And he asked, after citing a survey showing pessimism about Iraq among American journalists, academics, think tanks, etc, “Which view of Iraq is more accurate, the pessimistic view of the so-called elites in our country, or the more optimistic view expressed by millions of Iraqis and by some 155,000 U.S. troops on the ground?” Oo, oo, I know this one, oh, I’m gonna have to go with “the so-called elites in our country.”

There are a lot of knuckleheads here that need to die

Excellent: it was time for another Neil Bush scandal. Now he’s hanging around with Sun Myung Moon.

Israel – ostensibly in response to 3 rockets, but any excuse would have done – has announced plans to a) resume assassinations in Gaza, b) fire into built-up regions, after giving the residents what I’m sure will be ample time to get out of the way.

George Monbiot on why biodiesel sucks.

Quote of the day, from Marine Col. Stephen W. Davis, about military operations in Anbar province: “This is not a hearts and minds battle. ... There are a lot of knuckleheads here that need to die. You’re just crunching heads.”

There are two kinds of people in the world: those the (London Times) headline “Saddam Trial Hears of ‘Human Flesh Grinder’” makes want to read the article, and those it makes want not to read the article.

Caption contest: Bush (circled, on the right) attends a production of The Nutcracker.

Condi the Rock Star sez: Some governments choose to cooperate with the United States

The NYT has an article on “The Man Behind the Secretary of State’s Rock Star Image.” That aide insists that all of his work in promoting her alleged rock star image is not for domestic consumption – in a story about Condi’s rock star image (no, it doesn’t get less silly with repetition, does it?) printed coincidentally on the same day she’s facing questions in Europe about secret prisons and torture.

Rockin’?
Condi the rock star tried today to implicate European countries in America’s torture flights and secret prisons (whose existence she refused to confirm or deny): “Some governments choose to cooperate with the United States. That cooperation is a two-way street. We share intelligence that has helped protect European countries from attack, saving European lives.” So if a country doesn’t “cooperate,” we don’t share any intelligence we have that it might be attacked by terrorists? She won’t say which European countries cooperate, because that would put them at risk of reprisal. Not saying, instead, puts all of them at risk, or at least the ones rumored to be involved. She defended, nay praised, the extra-judicial detention of prisoners, while at the same time refusing to acknowledge the existence of the prisons in which those prisoners are held, because to do so “would be compromising intelligence information, and I’m not going to do that”. That statement is designed to elicit the Pavlovian mouth-shutting that is the response of most of the media to claims that intel is endangered, but in fact makes no sense whatsoever. Compromised how?

Oh, and if you read Condi the rock star’s comment about respecting the sovereignty of European states too quickly, you may have missed what she was actually saying: she totally respects their right to lie about there being secret prisons on their territory.

Unprecedented democratic conditions

NYT: “The American commanders say their soldiers have largely halted combat missions and now play a training and backup role for the Iraqi forces”. Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.

Let’s see if we can spot a pattern. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, asked by Chris Wallace about secret overseas prisons today, said, “We respect the sovereignty of the countries with which we deal and we do not move people around the world so that they can be tortured.” Bush, last Tuesday, in non-response to a question about secret overseas prisons: “The United States of America does not torture.” McClellan, Friday, when asked about secret overseas prisons: “The President has made it very clear that we do not torture.” And we’ll see what Condi says in Europe this week. (Update: yup.) The pattern is that you ask them about secret prisons and they immediately turn the subject to torture. Which is a term none of them have ever been willing to define.

Hadley said Rice won’t comment on the CIA operations, presumably even to the people who run the countries where they take place, because “the information would help the enemy.” John McCain? The ACLU?

Hey, I just figured something out. The secret prisons are only in a couple of countries, as far as we know, Poland and Romania we think, but the flights that took prisoners there went through a lot of countries – Britain, Ireland, Germany, Italy, etc etc. I think the CIA deliberately spread them around to implicate as many countries as possible to keep them quiet.

AP headline: “US Missile, al-Qaida Death May Be Linked.” Ya think? The first story they tried to put out was that he’d been blown up accidentally by one of his own bombs. If that’s your cover story, you might use missiles without model numbers and the words “guided missile” and “US” on them.

Not surprisingly, Kazakhstan’s dictator Nazarbayev is “re-elected” for another 7-year term with 91% of the vote, in what Nazarbayev calls “unprecedented democratic conditions,” but which were, of course, undemocratic and very precedented.

Number 3

The alleged number 3 man in Al Qaeda was killed in Pakistan by a drone. At the same time, Crown Princess Mette-Marit of Norway gives birth to a boy who is number 3 in the line of succession. Coincidence? I think not!

Equality under God

In both his speech on immigration last month and his radio address today, Bush said that immigrants should assimilate and “we must continue to welcome legal immigrants and help them learn the customs and values that unite all Americans, including liberty and civic responsibility, equality under God, tolerance for others, and the English language.” Funny that he should be talking about assimilation and equality while proposing a guest worker program. Also, when will Mr. Patriot Act learn the customs and values of liberty; since when did the draft- and, just yesterday, jury-duty dodger believe in civic responsibility; what does this privileged member of the lucky sperm club know about equality; when did this god-bothering homophobe show a passing acquaintance with tolerance; or the English language? And indeed, which is the English language supposed to be, a custom or a value?

Also, what’s with the “equality under God” crap? Well, I know what the phrase means: that God values all souls equally. It’s a Christian thing (yeah, yeah, other religions too, but the expression is a Christian one), it is not an American thing. Indeed, just as he often says that freedom comes from God, what he is trying to do is Christianize the values that underlie American institutions, and it’s as creepy as the campaign to take that atheist Jefferson off the nickel and replace him with Jesus.

Okay, I made that up, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

Like Zorro

The Pentagon has decided to brazen it out and defend the practice of secretly paying to place happy-news stories in the Iraqi press as a) perfectly legitimate “rebuttal information” to counter the “lies” of the insurgents and “get the truth out there”, b) a practice “customary in Iraq.”

Although it is widely reported that Condi Rice, who is visiting Europe next week, will answer the questions of European governments about secret prisons, Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern, who met her on a visit to the US this week, says (I can only found a paraphrase, not a direct quote) that she told him that “she expected allies to trust that America does not allow rights abuses.” Ah yes, the old “trust me” ploy.

The front-runner in Chile’s presidential elections is Michelle Bachelet, who was tortured as a dissident during the Pinochet years, and whose father was tortured to death.

On the 50th anniversary of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her bus seat, various bus systems kept a seat unoccupied in her honor and inevitably someone in New York – although a tourist, not a New Yorker – sat in it and wouldn’t get up. “I think I’ve got a right to sit here,” she said. Welcome to your place in history, Fiona Humphreys of Bristol.

The Chinese finally admit that they harvest organs from people they execute and sell them to rich foreigners, but promise to “tidy up the medical market.”

The annual Bad Sex in Fiction prize has been awarded, to Giles Coren’s novel Winkler. I didn’t think it was as funny as previous winners, so I was going to pass on posting it this time, but there’s something I rather like about the form in which the London Times (for which Coren is a restaurant reviewer) printed the award-winning passage:

And he **** **** in her ***** and his **** jumped around and ******* on her ***** and he blacked *** and she **** his **** out of her ***** and lifted ******* from his **** and ******* the pillow away and he ****** and ******* at the air, and he **** again so **** that his **** ******** out of her **** and a **** of it *** him straight in the *** and ***** like ******* he’d ever *** in *****, and he yelled with the pain, but the **** could have been ********, and as she ******* at his ****, which was ******* around like a ****** dropped in an ***** ****, she ********* his **** deeply with the ***** of both **** and he **** three **** times, in ***** ****** on *** chest. Like Zorro.

Robbie, do you like movies about gladiators?

Very clear

A couple of days ago I commented on the insanity in the White House whereby they believe that George Bush making a speech about his Iraq policy, emitting word-like sounds from his chimp-like mouth, would actually increase support for it. But it’s actually worse than that, much worse. Let me give you two quotes. Bush two days ago: “The United States of America does not torture. And that’s important for people around the world to understand”. And Scotty McClellan today, after he refused to confirm or deny the existence of secret prisons: “The President has made it very clear that we do not torture”. Now maybe this was obvious to all of you, but the concept is so alien to my way of thinking that my brain may just have rejected it out of hand before now, succumbing to audacity overload: they expect everyone, and not just Americans either, to take Bush’s word for it, to treat Bush’s say-so as if it were incontrovertible evidence, to say “Well, I’ve read all these stories about torture, and it really seemed like there was something to them, but George Bush has said that we do not torture, and that obviously clears up that little misunderstanding completely and conclusively.” They won’t let the UN into Guantanamo, they won’t admit the existence of the prisons: they are literally offering no other proof than Chimpy’s verbal denial.

Look for the union label, when you are buying that coat, dress or IED

So the Bushies didn’t realize that torturing Iraqis would look bad, or the use of chemical weapons like white phosphorus, or... Israeli commandos training Kurds in Israeli-style “anti-terrorist” techniques.

327 parties are running in the Iraqi elections, among them: the Islamic Virtue Party, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution In Iraq, the Assyrian Patriotic Party, the Turkmen Loyalty Movement, Kurdistan Democratic Solution Party, Iraqi Dignitaries Council, Gathering for the Future of Iraq, Assyrian Independent Gathering Movement, Society of Turkmen Tribes and Elites, the Independent Cultivated League, the Arabic Unifying Front (I think not), The Sixth of January Movement, Democratic Iraqi Sons Gathering, Amal Association for Intifada Martyrs, a party simply called Consistency, the Future Party, the Future, We All For Iraq, Prisoners and Political Martyrs Gathering, Syndicate of the Honorable Gentlemen, etc.

And the insurgency ELIGgers exhibit the same fragmentation, with over 100 groups. The NYT quotes a leaflet found in Ramadi complaining about this: “We are asking people to reject any statement signed by the Sajeel Battalion of the Islamic Army that does not carry their slogan or seal.”

Singapore must have found a new hangman, because they executed the Australian drug smuggler, Nguyen Tuong Van. After intense lobbying by Australia, they allowed him to hold hands with (but not hug) his mother before they strung him up. Interestingly, his mother was a Vietnamese refugee, who escaped Vietnam the same year she gave birth to him (I don’t know whether before or after), while the victim of the 1,000th American execution since 1976, Kenneth Boyd, was a Vietnam veteran. Also, Nguyen was executed in Changi Prison, which Australians will remember as the site of a Japanese prisoner of war camp where many Australians were kept during World War II.

Texas was responsible for 355 of those 1,000 executions, and George W. Bush signed the death warrants for 152 of them.

A leading Kazakhstan opposition leader, Zamenbek Nurkadilov, has been found dead of what the police are calling a suicide. He was shot twice in the chest and once in the head, so he must have been really quite depressed.

CBS is in talks with Al Sharpton for him to star in a sitcom, possibly called “Al in the Family.”

We don’t lie - we don’t need to lie

Free at last: Nelson Mandela has been made a freeman of Salford, England, which means he has the right to herd sheep over London Bridge, be drunk and disorderly without risk of arrest, or wander the streets with a drawn sword and if convicted of a capital crime (and the combination of sheep, a drawn sword and being drunk & disorderly has brought down many a man before now), to be hanged with a silken rope. I’m pretty sure this is what he was working towards, those 27 years on Robben Island.

Back in South Africa, the Constitutional Court rules that confining marriage to heterosexuals is a form of discrimination inconsistent with the constitution.

The Pentagon admits that it is currently force feeding 22 hunger-striking prisoners in Guantanamo, but says it is doing so “humanely,” so that’s okay, then. Says Brig. Gen. John Gong, “We have a great desire to ensure they are healthy.” And, heck, says the press release, “For the most part, the feedings are not involuntary... Most agree to the procedure” (if they don’t “agree to the procedure,” they’re put in restraints). Why some of them even insert their own NG tubes into their own noses. And no you may not confirm any of this by speaking with the prisoners.

Asked about the program whereby the Pentagon paid for happy-talk stories to be printed in Iraqi newspapers, Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch responded, Yeah, but Zarqawi cuts people’s heads off and stuff, “so that he gets international coverage to look like he has more capability than he truly has”. Also, Zarqawi lies and stuff, but “We don’t lie - we don’t need to lie,” he lied.

No war has ever been won on a timetable

The lower house of the Czech parliament has voted to reduce, in tandem, the age of consent and the age of criminal responsibility from 15 to 14. They also voted to make communist genocide denial a crime.

Bush’s National Strategy for Victory says, “No war has ever been won on a timetable - and neither will this one.” This follows the strategy of such great American generals as Eisenhower who, when asked to set a date for the invasion of France, a “D-Day,” as one aide, a youngster possibly named Murtha, called it, refused out of hand, declaring, “No war has ever been won on a timetable: I won’t be bound by your fancy-shmancy ‘watches’ and your hoity-toity ‘calendars’ and your la-di-da ‘measured progression of events in relation to time’...”

We don’t need no stinkin’ cute kitty calendars
Fred Kaplan at Slate points out some of the inconsistencies, to put it kindly, in Bush’s speech, including multiple definitions of when the “mission” is complete, and no definition at all of “victory.” So it’s not just timetables Bush rejects, but dictionaries as well. But you knew that.

I watch Bush’s Iraq speech – oh God, make it stop – so you don’t have to

Because people in the White House still believe that the way to revive support for something is to have the Chimperor make a speech about it, Bush gave a “strategy for victory” speech today at Annapolis, although I’m pretty sure the Navy isn’t a big part of that strategy.


Actually, after listening to it, I’m not sure I heard any actual strategy. He did repeatedly refer to it as a “clear strategy,” so it may be see-through, which would explain a lot.

He also called it a national strategy, but he didn’t say which nation, and for most of the speech American troops were also see-through, invisible. Mostly he spoke about Iraqis. Good Iraqis, and bad Iraqis. The good ones have all joined the Iraqi army or police, all for altruistic reasons of course, no death squads here, and they are standing up so... well, you know the rest. They’re being trained and increasing in numbers and in every day in every way they’re getting better and better.


For the bad Iraqis, who Rumsfeld says we’re no longer allowed to call insurgents, Bush created a handy taxonomy, applying labels that are in no way useful in assisting understanding and which bear little resemblance to the actual people involved. They consist, he says, of Rejectionists, Saddamists & terrorists. Rejectionist, which sounds like a label Stalin might have used for his ideological opponents or kulaks or something, actually means Sunni. Evidently we’re going to “marginalize” these Rejectionists, he said it several times, but I don’t know what that actually means. I suspect he doesn’t either. Saddamists (shouldn’t it be Husseinistas?) are just a few guys, also Sunnis, and will also be marginalized or turned into margarine or something. Terrorists are defined as “affiliated with or inspired by Al Qaeda,” and Bush emphasized the foreigners among them; they’re like outside agitators and “These terrorists have nothing to offer the Iraqi people.”

Bush twice refers to violence as media events (“the suicide bombings and the beheadings and the other atrocities we see on our television” and “creat[ing] chaos for the cameras”), as if the terrorists were run by an Arab Karl Rove.

I fell into a hypnotic state after a while, but I could swear he made fun of Democrats for saying that his only plan is to “stay the course,” like they just made up the phrase themselves.

Anyway, if you were wondering what our mission in Iraq is, “Our mission in Iraq is to win the war - our troops will return home when that mission is complete.” As opposed to when the mission is accomplished, which was a couple of years ago.

And then it was over, leaving us all re-energized and re-dedicated to whatever it was he was talking about.

Rumsfeld spots a sign of progress in Iraq

When Secretary of War Rumsfeld is bored, he likes to rename stuff (and torture puppies). Today, he decided (full transcript here) that the Iraqi insurgency doesn’t merit the word insurgency. “These people don’t have a legitimate gripe,” he says, so from now on, they’ll be “enemies of the legitimate Iraqi government” or ELIGgers for short. Also, since the Iraqi government is legitimate, “Any contention that there’s some sort of an occupation taking place or that coalition forces are there at anything other than the invitation of the government and the United Nations becomes a weaker argument.” Yeah, heaven forfend they get the idea into their heads that there’s some sort of an occupation taking place.


Asked about white phosphorus, Rummy handed off to the alliterative Gen. Peter Pace, and here there’s something interesting in the transcript. Pace insists willy pete is “a legitimate tool of the military” and that

It is not a chemical weapon, it is an incendiary (sic) [It is not an incendiary weapon as defined by the 1980 Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons], and it is well within the law of war to use those weapons as they are being used for marking and for screening.

The sic & brackets are in the transcript. I think Pace accidentally admitted to a war crime.

Asked about the uniformed death squads working within the, uh, legitimate Iraqi government, Rumsfeld: “I’m not going to comment on hypothetical questions. I’ve not seen reports that hundreds are being killed by roving death squads at all.” As Maureen Dowd once said, fire Rummy or make him read faster. He went on, “I can only talk about what I know. That’s life.” He actually suggested that the death squad claims are purely “politicking,” part of the December 15 elections, so they’re yet one more “sign of progress” – see if you can follow this – because instead of “repression by a vicious dictator,” “They’re tugging; they’re pulling; they’re arguing; they’re debating; they’re making charges and countercharges. That’s a good thing. That’s a sign of progress, in my view.” Yes, Sunnis complaining about being murdered by roving Shiite death squads is a sign of progress.

In response to a question about torture by Iraqi security types, there was this already-famous exchange:

GEN. PACE: It is absolutely the responsibility of every U.S. service member, if they see inhumane treatment being conducted, to intervene to stop it. ...

SEC. RUMSFELD: But I don’t think you mean they have an obligation to physically stop it; it’s to report it.

GEN. PACE: If they are physically present when inhumane treatment is taking place, sir, they have an obligation to try to stop it.

Rummy emits an odd combination of happy talk – “But by golly, the people who have been denigrating the Iraqi security forces are flat wrong!” – and language designed to distance himself from any responsibility for the atrocities that are going on now, and the atrocities to come:

Our problem is that any time something needs to be done, we have a feeling we should rush in and fill the vacuum and do it ourselves. ... It is the Iraqis’ country, 28 million of them. They are perfectly capable of running that country. They’re not going to run it the way you would or I would or the way we do here in this country, but they’re going to run it.

At 6:45 a.m. PST, Bush will give his speech outlining his “strategy for victory” in Iraq.

And that’s important for people around the world to understand

Bush:

Q Is there going to be investigating the allegations that there are U.S.-run terrorist detention centers abroad? Don’t the American people deserve an accounting of why these places exist and what’s being done there?

THE PRESIDENT: The United States of America does not torture. And that’s important for people around the world to understand.

You’ll notice that even when evading a question, he does it in the form of a bald-faced lie.

Speaking of bald-face lies, the London Times details those by the British (Labour party) government in the 1970s to cover up the atrocities committed by Indonesia after it invaded East Timor, doing the bidding of Henry Kissinger.

Spain just really pissed off the Bushies by selling arms to Venezuela. As much as I enjoy seeing the “imperialist elite which seeks to dominate the world,” as Chávez calls them (imperialist, check, seek to dominate the world, check, but “elite?”), with smoke coming out of their ears, I’m not especially comfortable with his description of the signing ceremony as “more than a commercial [deal], this ceremony is one of dignity”. I get worried when countries, especially those run by former military officers, start defining their national dignity in terms of weaponry; that’s the sort of rhetoric we hear from Iran, India and Pakistan about their nuclear programs.

In Iraq, the US is bribing newspapers to print, as if they were real news stories, good-news stories written by American military personnel, stories with titles like “Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism” and “More Money Goes to Iraq’s Development.” The managing editor of one paper said that if he’d known the stories came from the US government, journalistic ethics would have required him to... “charge much, much more.” Also, the Americans have bought a newspaper, and through some mechanism taken over a radio station; they won’t say which ones, but only to protect the employees, of course.

He doesn’t walk around Washington with a lot of airs like some of them do

The LAT on Iraqi death squads within the interior ministry, or possibly on the interior ministry within the death squads. A must-read. NYT on same.

Bayan Jabr, the interior minister, and other government officials denied any government involvement, saying the killings were carried out by men driving stolen police cars and wearing police and army uniforms purchased at local markets. “Impossible! Impossible!” Mr. Jabr said. “That is totally wrong; it’s only rumors; it is nonsense.”

Back in January, Newsweek ran an article suggesting that it was Pentagon policy to set up death squads, the Salvador Option. I believe Rumsfeld’s sole response, which he was allowed to get away with, was that he hadn’t read the story because he couldn’t find it in his copy, and he hadn’t heard of a country called El Salvador either, but he could deny the existence of “this so-called Salvatore -- Salvador option, I think it’s called.” No one seems to have revisited the issue with Rummy this week, although the Pentagon website does feature a story, “Iraqi Security Forces Steadily Improving, But Still Need Support.”

Bush, at a Jon Kyl fundraiser, addressed these concerns dead on:

We’re going to succeed in Iraq because our vision, and the vision of those in Iraq who believe in democracy, is positive and hopeful, as opposed to the vision of the suiciders and killers of the innocent. We’re going to succeed in Iraq because we’ve got a plan that will help the Iraqis not only develop a democracy, but a security force.

Fabulous.

And on Jon Kyl: “Look, I don’t know how many U.S. senators there are that like NASCAR. (Laughter.) I view that as a pretty good sign, to have a United States senator who follows NASCAR. It means he’s down to earth. He doesn’t walk around Washington with a lot of airs like some of them do.”

They need to stay at home

I think I need to clarify my last post about the Bushies’ new spin. With the backlash against the attempt to swift-boat (or michael-mooreize) Murtha, they’ve decided on this new tack of focusing on wishy-washy D’s like Biden, which is most of them, who won’t call for an immediate pull-out but would prefer not to occupy Iraq forever, and, instead of portraying them as defeatist cut & runners, paint them as unoriginal copycats, “adopting key portions of the administration’s plan for victory.” By pretending that there are no substantive policy differences (which in Biden’s case isn’t far from the truth, which is precisely why they chose him to stand in for all centrist Democrats), they can claim that any criticism must be partisan in nature. In other words, they are once again pretending to be uniters, not dividers.

Speaking of dividing, Bush talked about “securing the border” today in Arizona. He lauded something called “interior repatriation,” which means dumping illegal immigrants well inside Mexico. How exactly the United States has the power to put someone on a bus in a foreign country and keep them on that bus until it reaches its destination, I do not know. He said, “We want to make it clear that when people violate immigration laws, they’re going to be sent home, and they need to stay at home.” And it’s no television for you either, young man!

In the rest of the speech, he talked about streamlining deportations, increasing the size of the border patrol and giving it lots of fancy toys, a temporary worker program not leading to permanent residence or citizenship, and so forth. He talked of immigrants as illegal workers, murderers, child molesters, gang members, etc, but his speech was carefully written to avoid conferring upon them even the humanity of the singular personal pronoun; that is, he never calls them “he” or “she,” they are always part of a depersonalized horde. Or possibly a depersonalized school, as in fish, since he also derides the current “catch and release” policy.

I like how the Indy puts it: “Six years after Grozny was blasted to smithereens on the orders of Vladimir Putin, the Russian President, it was claimed that the separatist-minded people of Chechnya now support the man who commanded the almost total destruction of their capital.” “President” Alu Alkhanov described the elections as “democratic, honest and transparent,” speaking, the Indy points out, amid the ruins of the city: “A bombed out Soviet-style apartment block seemed like an unlikely prop for feel-good propaganda but the authorities obviously had no choice.” The caption to this AP photo is “Chechen police guard the Finance ministry during a news conference of Chechya's president, Alu Alkhanov in the Chechen capital of Grozny, Monday, Nov. 28, 2005.”


Putin is pretending this is some sort of purple-finger moment, claiming, for fuck’s sake, that the Chechen people “have shown that no one can scare them.”

Adopting key portions of administration’s plan for victory in Iraq

The new White House line is that everyone actually agrees on the fundamentals about Iraq, so why all the fussin’ and the feudin’? The implication being that any remaining dissent must therefore all be about partisan politics, which is why they single out Joe Biden, who thinks he’s running for president, in a hilarious piece of spin, entitled “Setting the Record Straight: Sen. Biden Adopts Key Portions of Administration’s Plan for Victory in Iraq,” that must be read to be believed.

Among the people who are evidently not adopting key portions of the administration’s plan for victory in Iraq are the members of the US Air Force who spoke to Seymour Hersh for this week’s New Yorker article. They are scared that the Bushies’ Vietnamization plan will involve wogs Iraqis setting bombing targets – oh, it just won’t do – and abusing the privilege by getting the Americans to bomb their sectarian enemies. Evidently Hersh’s sources are unaware that they’re already fully involved in an Iraqi civil war. Whether they are also concerned that a greater reliance on air-power, as American ground troops are moved to relative safety, will dramatically increase the number of deaths of innocent Iraqis is not clear.

Okay, it is clear.

The important thing is for someone not to come away thinking this whole process is arbitrary, which it is not

Adam Liptak in the NYT writes that the Bush admin “sets its own rules” as to whether prisoners in The War Against Terror (TWAT) are charged with a crime or held forever as an enemy combatant, although even that gives them too much credit, since there is no evidence that rules actually exist. A Justice Dept spokesmodel says, “The important thing is for someone not to come away thinking this whole process is arbitrary, which it is not,” but if we go by my computer dictionary’s definition of arbitrary, “2. (of power or authority) used without constraint; autocratic”, then that is exactly what we’re talking about. The factors the spokesmodel cites for how someone will be treated are:

national security interests, the need to gather intelligence and the best and quickest way to obtain it, the concern about protecting intelligence sources and methods and ongoing information gathering, the ability to use information as evidence in a criminal proceeding, the circumstances of the manner in which the individual was detained, the applicable criminal charges, and classified-evidence issues.

And evil lawyer John Yoo adds,

The main factors that will determine how you will be charged are, one, how strong your link to Al Qaeda is and, two, whether you have any actionable intelligence that will prevent an attack on the United States.

What’s missing from these lists? Human and civil rights, the rule of law, fair trials, justice. Every factor they cite is about the convenience of the state, and the state alone.

Speaking of the rule of law, Singapore has fired its long-serving hangman, Darshan Singh, after his name (and most of his body) were revealed in The Australian. Singh has hanged more than 850 people, as many as 18 in a single day. Singapore is scrambling to import a new executioner in time for the scheduled hanging of an Australian drug-smuggler. Singh will miss the extra cash, but says, “In a way I am happy.” And that’s the important thing.

These goats are a gift from God

There’s a week-old (so the link may not be good for much longer) LAT story I missed until the Miami Herald ran a shorter version, about how harmless American Christian missionaries in Venezuela are and how Chávez is a) paranoid and b) a big meanie for expelling some of them (others have left voluntarily, including all the Mormons. Result!) and how the poor benighted Indians will surely suffer. The article says that “many of the estimated 45,000 indigenous people in the Amazon basin resent the expulsion order, saying the missionaries have improved their lives,” but only quotes one of these resentful indigenous people, a politician.

County officials in Miami, Ohio, have ordered a 12-year old boy to get rid of his trampolining goats. His mother says they’re necessary to help him manage his ADD. “These goats are a gift from God,” she says.

But honestly, I mean, conspiracy theories...

Last month, you’ll remember, US troops in Afghanistan burned the bodies of two Taliban fighters and taunted locals as “lady boys” for not coming out to recapture the corpses, and did it all on Australian television. A military investigation has just cleared them, upholding their laughable explanation that it was done for reasons of hygiene with “no intent to desecrate the remains”. They may yet be charged with “failing to show local understanding,” although the whole point of the exercise was to implement local understanding in the form of crude psychological warfare – “You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burned,” they sneered through loudspeakers. As in Abu Ghraib, Americans’ sociological interest in foreign cultures is in finding points of cultural sensitivity to exploit: fear of dogs, dislike of nakedness, taboos against physical contact with strange women, etc.

I haven’t written about Bush’s supposed plan to bomb Al Jazeera before now because I’m still not sure how seriously to take it, although the British government’s ferocious efforts to suppress, by threatening British editors with imprisonment, reports of this plot to suppress Al Jazeera’s reports through rather more robust measures does give it more credibility, as does Tony Blair scoffing comment, “But honestly, I mean, conspiracy theories...” However, the Sunday Times and the Sindy believe there are other things in the memo that the government wants kept hushed up, like details of the siege of Fallujah, Bush’s endorsement without consulting Blair of Sharon’s plan to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza, and secret negotiations with Iran, which Britain hoped to persuade to rein in al-Sadr.

US military attacks on Al Jazeera are nothing new, and were, Robert Fisk points out, presaged by the 1998 bombing of Serbian tv, but my agnosticism comes from the fact that such a move inside Qatar would have been spectacularly self-defeating even for the Bushies: being expelled from the US base there would have seriously complicated the Iraq war. I’m sure the truth will come out in 3 or 7 or 15 or 53 years. The Sunday Times notes that the day before the Bush-Blair meeting in April ‘04, Rumsfeld accused Al Jazeera of “vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable” reports that the siege of Fallujah was targeting civilians. My favorite bit was the phone interview they did a few days before that with Gen. Mark Kimmitt, Military Moron, claiming that the US had declared a unilateral cease-fire in Fallujah, which they ran with live pictures of the town being bombed by F-16s. One of the US conditions for ending the siege: the expulsion of Al Jazeera from the town. Later, they got their puppet government to expel it from the whole country. In April ‘04, the US also tried to get Qatar to censor the channel.

Du Bist Deutschland

So the German government is spending $30m on a campaign to make Germans feel better about being Germans. The campaign’s slogan, “Du Bist Deutschland (You are Germany)” was carefully chosen, except for the failure to check if the Nazis had ever used it...


and the fact that it sounds like an accusation (“Who, me? I’m not Germany, you must be thinkin’ of some other guy.”) And that one of the ads features Albert Einstein, who renounced his German citizenship in 1896.

Also, the name of Ariel Sharon’s new party, Kadima (forward) is criticized for echoing one of Mussolini’s slogans, “Avanti (forward)” (which is also the name of a not-at-all-good Jack Lemmon movie). Sharon claims he won’t spend time attacking Likud, which would a) be very uncharacteristic of him, b) screw up a joke I was holding in reserve, something about Sharon withdrawing from Likud and then bombing it, just like Gaza.

Shouting fire in a crowded torture house

John Kerry served on a jury this week (“I’m John Kerry, and I’m reporting for jury duty!”). He was even elected jury foreman. The AP says his “fellow jurors called him a natural leader.” Hopefully they exercised better judgment than that in coming to a verdict in the case.

Today is Augusto Pinochet’s 90th birthday (and the Bush twins’ 24th), and he’s spending it under house arrest. Good.

Speaking of house arrest, Riverbend writes that what I’ve been calling secret prisons in Iraq were no secret to people who lived near them:

The neighbors had tried to get the Americans to check the house for months - no one bothered. They finally raided it because they got information from someone in the area that it was an insurgents hiding place. I read once that in New York, if a woman is being raped, she should scream ‘fire’ instead of ‘rape’ because no one would come to save her if she was screaming ‘rape’. That’s the way it is with Iraqi torture houses – the only way they’ll check it is if you tell them it’s a terrorist cell.

From the BBC, a laundry woman’s tale:

A Nigerian state governor has denied reports that he escaped charges of money-laundering in the UK by disguising himself as a woman.

However, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha told the BBC that he could not remember other details of his journey back to the oil-rich southern Bayelsa State.

Why did the Americans come here?

Headline in a British newspaper that probably sounds more alarming to Americans than to Brits: “Murdered Head’s School in Academy Row.”

Today, some American soldiers went to deliver candy and toys to the child patients in a hospital in Mahmoudiya, Iraq. You already know this story isn’t going to end well, don’t you? But let’s pause to wonder: how were they planning to spin the Thanksgiving tale for Iraqi consumption? Well, people fleeing their homes because of religious persecution, I guess Iraqis can relate to that. Puritanical religious fanatics whose goal is to stamp out every sign of free will and joy, especially among females, that might seem familiar too (Muqtada al-Sadr is of course Arabic for Cotton Mather, and I’m pretty sure somewhere in that new constitution is the phrase “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”). White guys with guns arriving from a foreign land and taking control of all the natural resources? Check.

So the Americans went to the hospital, and a suicide bomb attack killed 30 or 34 people. Shouted one survivor, in a question that is in no way a metaphor for the wider situation, “Why did the Americans come here? They must have known they would bring the killers with them.”

And Kadima spelled backwards is Amidak. OK, I got nothing.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, in Pakistan, says that the Crusades were a bad idea after all, sorry about that.

I’ve been asking what happened to the prisoners in the secret Iraqi prison: they were transferred to Abu Ghraib, according to the BBC. And probably happy to be there. Yes, we’ve created a brand-new Iraq, where Abu Ghraib is considered the soft option, and an Iraqi prisoner at the bottom of a naked human pyramid is even now giving thanks that he is no longer in the clutches of his fellow countrymen, who we installed in power.

Ariel Sharon has finally chosen a name for his new party: Kadima, meaning “forward,” which my computer dictionary defines as “noun: an attacking player in football, hockey, or other sports.” Or possibly it indicates the direction Sharon plans to fall when the inevitable heart attack hits.

Speaking of attacking players, here are some more London Review of Books (LRB) personal ads:

I use this column principally as a sounding board for my radical philosophical theories. This time, however, I’d like some sexual intercourse. Radical philosopher and occasional lust monkey. M, 41. Box no. 22/04

Last night I had that dream again. The one were dinosaurs hadn’t been wiped out but stalked the earth for human prey. They found it too. It was you and me hiding beneath some twigs. I tried to save you but the dinosaurs sniffed you out and tore you from my arms. Then they all turned into clowns and told me that I couldn’t have a balloon because I’d been a naughty girl. When I cried, the head clown roared like a tyrannosaur and bit your head off. I looked down and noticed I’d become a dinosaur too. I felt like a herbivore. Woman, 38. Sees every social situation as an opportunity for free psychotherapy. WLTM fully-qualified psychotherapist. Box no. 22/08

I want my mummy. Man (37) with far too many issues to go into detail about in this column seeks psychoanalyst/tailor/stevedore. Whitstable. Box no. 23/07

I am not afraid to say what I feel. At this moment in time I feel anger, giddiness, and the urge to dress like a bear and forage for berries at motorway hedgerows. Man, 38. Box no. 23/09

We brushed hands in the British Library, then again in the London Review Bookshop, reaching for Musil. And then once more on the tube, getting off at Ladbroke Grove. Serial random hand-brusher (F, 32, publicity exec) demands attention, followed by more attention, followed by extended periods of self-pity. It's all me, me, me at box no. 23/10

I have known only shame. Then, last week, I experienced surprise. Man, 37. Box no. 22/06

For all my favorite LRB personals, click here.

Well, shortly I’m off to a Chinese restaurant, as is traditional, commemorating the first Thanksgiving, when the Puritans were saved from starvation by the native Chinese. “You white men call it noodles, we call it chow mein.”

There is no justified sense of grievance

Tony Blair says that the claim of one of the July 7 suicide bombers to be fighting on behalf of Muslims is “rubbish.” “We have got to challenge this sense of grievance because there is no justified sense of grievance.” I don’t know why no one thought of this before: end all terrorism by telling the terrorists that their sense of grievance is not justified. That is so totally going to work.

Someone who hadn’t gotten the word that their sense of grievance is not justified launched a mortar at a ceremony marking the hand-over of one of Saddam’s palaces to the Iraqis, attended by General Casey and the American ambassador, Khalilzad. Last sentence in the WaPo article: “‘The band played on,’ a military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, pointed out.” “Nearer my God to thee,” no doubt.



That’s the key.

The WaPo notes that Rep./Col. Bubp campaigned for Jean Schmidt (R-State of Rage) while wearing his Marine uniform. He is still serving. Isn’t that a violation of the rules?

Americans prefer marshmallow and yam to democracy and freedom

The votes are in. Americans went bravely to the polls, defying the terrorists, and once again named the National Thanksgiving Turkey and his running mate after food products, Marshmallow and Yam.

George Bush; the National Thanksgiving Turkey. But I repeat myself.

They were issued a pardon, but despite this, a second after this picture was taken, Dick Cheney bit off Marshmallow’s head.


(Update: Needlenose has a caption contest for the last picture.)

We did not go looking for trouble

Antonin Scalia says, “The [2000] election was dragged into the courts by the Gore people. We did not go looking for trouble.” He says that studies by news organizations suggest that Bush would have won a recount. That’s wrong, but Scalia, whose position in 2000 was that we should all get on with our lives and not have an accurate vote count, does not get to cite anything other than the fatally flawed Katherine Harris count. Scalia adds that there would have been a more difficult transition had the Court not ruled as it did, and worse, it might have been a transition to the guy who was actually, you know, elected president.

The NYT interviews Iraqi interior minister Bayan Jabr, who denies running Shiite death squads (phew) and jabrs (sorry) about that secret prison raided by the Americans last week. “Only a few detainees were punched and hit,” he claims. Reports last week were that “instruments of torture” were found there, which suggests that rather more than punching and hitting was going on, but we still haven’t been told what those instruments were. Nor what has happened to the prisoners, who Jabr describes as the “worst of the worst,” because there’s nothing more reassuring than stealing your rhetoric from Donald Rumsfeld.

Revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety

Bush went to Mongolia today to thank them for sending a hordette (160 troops) to Iraq and a horditesimal (12) to Afghanistan. The London Times helpfully notes, “The last Mongolian forces to go to Iraq, led by a grandson of Genghis Khan in 1258, sacked Baghdad and killed an estimated 800,000 people.” He gave Mongolia an endorsement of sorts: “This is a beautiful land, with huge skies and vast horizons -- kind of like Texas.” Yeah, they’ll be sure to put “Mongolia – kind of like Texas” on their flag. They gave him some fermented mare’s milk to drink. He points out – and I didn’t actually know this – that the current Mongolian prime minister participated 15 years ago in a hunger strike for democracy. Or as we call hunger strikes, “an Al Qaeda tactic to try to get media attention” or “a diet.”

DCI Porter Goss says the CIA doesn’t use torture, does extract information from prisoners using “unique and innovative ways.” Somehow that’s even more chilling. Goss adds himself to the chorus of people declaring that torture doesn’t work, which I’m not sure is true, but which is morally irrelevant.

Dick Cheney calls those who say the Bushies lied about intelligence guilty of “revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety.” Which is funny, because corrupt and shameless are... well, you know where I’m going with this. Honestly, for Cheney, a sense of shame, like a sense of irony, is just something for others to experience. He also calls such charges “dishonest and reprehensible” – possibly he got confused and was just reading off his resumé – but hey, it’s a “perfectly legitimate discussion,” as long as the opposition doesn’t use any actual, you know, words.

Like Alfred Hitchcock, but scarier
So to sum up, it’s not torture if we do it, it’s not a hunger strike if it’s done by people in our prisons, and it’s only shameless, corrupt, dishonest and reprehensible if Democrats do it.

Contest: name that party

Ariel Sharon is leaving Likud to start his own party. But what should it be called? Entries in comments, please. Fat jokes acceptable. Acronyms are good. Slogans for extra points.

Put yourself in the shoes of a soldier who thinks that we’re going to pull out precipitously

Rumsfeld went on four Sunday talk shows to say that it’s “fair enough” to criticize the conduct of the war, oh except for the whole emboldening-the-enemy thing. So before you do that, “Put yourself in the shoes of a soldier who thinks that we’re going to pull out precipitously ... Put yourself in the shoes of the Iraqi people ... . Put yourself in the shoes of the enemy.” OK, so how does catching three types of foot fungus help anything?

The Pentagon website paraphrases: “Discussion of such a withdrawal, Rumsfeld said, surely gives our servicemembers and the Iraqi people cause to doubt the wisdom of their sacrifice.” Oh, and also remember: every time you discuss ending the occupation, a puppy dies and the angels weep; but it’s a free country...

On CBS he said, “There is no doubt in my mind that were we to pull out precipitously, the American people would be in greater danger than they are today.” That’s the problem, Rummy: there’s never any doubt in your mind. And you’re always wrong.


Every time he was asked about something awkward, like the secret prisons in Iraq, he claimed not to know anything about it because he’s been in Australia.

I remember our visit very well

George Bush does not travel well. With jet lag, he actually gets stupider and less coherent. Here’s Bush, meeting the Chinese premier:

Thank you. It’s good to see you again, sir. I remember our visit very well. And I thank you for this invitation to come and talk and have lunch. It will give us a chance to continue to strengthen this very important relationship. And I agree with you, it’s a relationship where we’ve got common interests.

It’s always important when you meet the premier of a country to reassure him that, yes, you remember having met him before.

And here, talking to the press pool: “a society that welcomes religion is a wholesome society, it’s a whole society.” It’s a whole-grain society, it’s a holy soci... whoops, didn’t mean to say that out loud!

“it’s a really important relationship. I mean, China is a big, growing, strong country.” Big, yes, but growing? Is this something we should be worried about?

Granted, there’s something about going to China that turns American presidents’ brains to mush. Nixon famously said, “It sure is a Great Wall.” Bush, on the other hand, went bicycling with Chinese Olympic hopefuls and said, “this trail is a great bike trail”.




“And I explained to them as clearly as I could that the value of the Chinese currency is very important for manufacturers and farmers and workers in the United States.” As clearly as he could. Oh dear.

He also explained the importance of intellectual property: “And I made it clear that if you’ve got a vibrant economy, and people feel uncomfortable about the piracy of product, that it’s going to affect the economy in the long run.” Uncomfortable about the piracy of product, yeah that’s just so completely clear. Also, I’m pretty sure Bush was just trying to get Hu to say “long run.”

You know, it wasn’t all that long ago that people were not allowed to worship openly in this society

In my last, I mentioned Bush going to an officially-sanctioned Protestant church in China. There, he said this: “You know, it wasn’t all that long ago that people were not allowed to worship openly in this society. My hope is that the government of China will not fear Christians who gather to worship openly. A healthy society is a society that welcomes all faiths and gives people a chance to express themselves through worship with the Almighty.” This is curious. Not that he specifically mentions only Christianity and not, say, Tibetan Buddhism, which is obnoxious but typical. But what’s with the thing about worshipping openly, which he says twice? He surely knows that the majority of Christians in China, and especially, hello, Catholics, worship in underground churches, which he seems to be going out of his way not to endorse.

(Update: twice as many, according to the WaPo, and there’s been a recent upsurge of repression of underground Christians.)

But Boeing got to sell some planes to China, and Bush will be photographed mountain biking with Chinese Olympic athletes, and that’s the important thing. “The idea, [Bush aides] said, was to signal directly to the Chinese people that no matter what they hear from their government, Bush is not hostile toward their country.” That should reassure them. Wasn’t that what we told the Iraqi people before we, you know, invaded them?

“Oh man, all that effort in the Sixties to avoid Orientals with guns, but here they are...”
LA Times article on Russian moves to clamp down even further on NGOs.

The LAT also looks at one of Scalito’s death penalty cases, in which he said an incompetent/crappy defense (mitigating information was not put before the jury) was ok under the 6th Amendment as long as “counsel’s conduct falls within the wide range of reasonable professional assistance”. The Supreme Court overruled him. I was snickering earlier at a WaPo article quoting various Republican congresscritters bemoaning how Iraq was derailing other items on their Agenda of Eville, but it may also prevent D’s getting media attention on Alito, whose nomination could be derailed by his 1985 memo, if only (sigh) the media and the D’s were to keep up the pressure, which would require them to have a) balls, b) the ability to think about more than one issue at a time.

And your final must-read: the WaPo on the incompetence/waste/extortion/crappy quality/utter and complete chaos etc in American reconstruction projects in Afghanistan, you know, that other country we invaded, even before Iraq, only know no one’s even asking when our troops are leaving because not even 100 of them have been killed so far this year. Favorite sentence: “Locals tied a contractor to a tree in a pay dispute”.

Wattle & Snood: They Kept Us Out of Vietnam

At first I ignored the reports that the Pentagon has a plan to start pulling troops out of Iraq because of course they have contingency plans for everything, so I didn’t see it as the big gotcha moment other bloggers did. But evidently what they’re really hoping for is to reduce the size of the American contingent of the occupying army to below the “magic number” of 100,000, say around the time of the November 2006 elections. That sounds just like the Bushies: a goal rooted entirely in PR and partisan, rather than military, necessity. And it’s a two-fer: they also hope to influence the December 15 Iraqi elections by leaking the existence of this plan: vote for the puppets and maybe you’ll see an end of the occupation.

How often does Bush go to church on a Sunday in the US? Well, he certainly made a point of doing so in China, albeit in one of the tame licensed Protestant churches. He could meet a dissident except, oh wait, they were all put under house arrest for the duration of his visit. When he’s talked about the importance of freedom during this Asian trip, mostly it’s about printing Bibles and so forth, not about the right to criticize the government. He also links freedom with “prosperity,” as if Asians are too greedy to value freedom on its own terms.

His father slipped quietly into China ahead of his visit, to tell Chinese leaders what Shrub really meant to say before he’s even said it. It’s just safer that way. No word on whether Neil Bush was also on the advance team, given his extensive experience of free Asian hookers.

The White House website is holding the traditional on-line vote to name the two turkeys who will be ceremonially pardoned for whatever crime it is that turkeys commit, possibly leaking Valerie Plame’s name to the press. They will then go to Disneyland. The choices on offer include “Marshmallow and Yam,” “Democracy and Freedom,” “Wattle and Snood,” “Scooter and Turdblossom” and “Blessing and Bounty.” Last year “Biscuits and Gravy” won out over, among other things, “Patience and Fortitude,” and I wrote that in America patience and fortitude will always lose to biscuits and gravy. I wanted “Shock and Awe,” but for some reason the White House site has no facility for write-in candidates. Unlike this blog. Go for it.

Col. Blake did not die in vain

Bush, at an American air base in South Korea, tells the troops,

For half a century American servicemen and women have stood faithful and vigilant watch here in Korea. You’ve kept the peace and you secured the freedom won at great cost in the Korean War. You’ve ensured that no American life was lost in vain.

I take it this is a not-so-subtle hint about staying the course, not cutting and/or running, etc, and the need to occupy Iraq for at least the next 50 years. Possibly forever, since not only is he rejecting the whole notion of setting a target date for accomplishing the mission in Iraq, he won’t actually say what that mission is: “We will stay in the fight until we have achieved the brave -- the victory that our brave troops have fought for.” How is that victory defined? What has to happen before the troops can come home? He hasn’t said, he won’t say, he doesn’t know, I don’t know if he’s even thought about it. A simple response, “define your terms,” can deflate every piece of stay-the-course-until-victory rhetoric.

Cowards cut and run, Marines never do

NYT headline: “Cocaine Prices Rise and Quality Declines, White House Says.” That’s sure a bitch, George, maybe you need to find a new dealer.

Bush has recently taken to delivering partisan attacks in front of the one group of Americans we’d really rather remain non-partisan, serving members of the military. But it also seems to me that there’s been a concurrent increase of people like Gen. William Webster and Col. James Brown, both of them commanders of forces in Iraq, taking up Bush’s tacit invitation and scolding Democratic congresscritters. And that’s to say nothing of the Marine colonel who Rep. Jean Schmidt claims told her to tell Rep. Murtha, “cowards cut and run, Marines never do.” Actually, the Marines will do whatever the civilian leadership tells them to do, and don’t forget it, colonel. (Incidentally, why are we using nautical imagery about a desert war?) It’s a nice bit of character-assassination precisely because of its ambiguity: is Murtha being accused of being a coward himself, or of calling Marines cowards? (Update: As Mikhail Capone points out in comments, Schmidt had to retract the comments, and pretend she wasn't implying what she was implying.)