Australian painter Tim Patch has done portraits of Prime Minister John Howard and the leader of the opposition using his penis (and also, I assume, some sort of paint).
Iranian President Ahmadinejad, whose out-of-touch-with-reality-ness was already shown by the fact that he sent an 18-page letter to George Bush, who is not widely known as a reader, is also the only person in the world who thinks George’s problem is that he is not religious enough: “We increasingly see that people around the world are flocking towards a main focal point - that is the Almighty God. My question for you is, ‘Do you not want to join them?’”
Headline of the day: “Roach Quits Run for Seat in Congress.”
Reuters has captioned this picture “Bush Taps Hayden to Head CIA.” Um, just where is Bush tapping him?
Israeli Vice Premier Shimon Peres, you know, the “dove,” warned Iran, “They want to wipe out Israel... Now when it comes to destruction, Iran too can be destroyed.” He says that Iran’s defiance of the international community was making a “mockery” of the world (other planets are laughing at us behind our back – I’m looking at you, Venus!) and that the UN’s credibility is on the line if it fails to make Iran obey UN resolutions...
The president of Iran sent the US an 18-page letter, which is said to be about philosophy and history and, oh yeah, nukes. The mind boggles: 18 pages. Condi immediately dismisses it: “Absence of communication isn’t really the problem here. We and the international community have been very clear with the Iranians what they need to do.” That’s Condi’s idea of communication: her telling someone what they “need to do.”
That’s in an AP interview that seems, even on the AP site, to exist only in excerpt form, which is frustrating. What was the actual question here?:
On whether the United States should have foreseen that problems would follow installation of a former Shiite militia leader as head of the Iraqi Interior Ministry, which has been accused of hosting Shiite death squads that target Sunnis:
“There was nothing to suggest that this was going to be a problem. But it turned out to be a problem.”
And last week, at something called the Espacio USA Conference, Condi said, “We want, too, also to recognize that there are still too many marginalized people in this hemisphere,” but didn’t say how many was the right number of marginalized people. She continued, “There have been times in the United States of America when populations were marginalized.” 1776 to present. “I come myself from a community and a population that was long marginalized.” It’s true: the gap-toothed were not allowed to own property until 1961, to vote until 1973, or to hold office until 1989.
According to a member of the Afghan parliament, “I have the right to beat people up if I want to.” That was during a little fracas in the parliament today, in which woman MP Malalai Joya was physically attacked when she dared to say that some mujahidin had done bad things in Afghanistan. Read about it in The Times, which, however, says that “Even women MPs joined in.” From what I read elsewhere, it was especially some of the women MPs.
I don’t know why everyone is making fun of Bush for saying that the greatest moment of his presidency was when he caught a fish. Can you think of anything he’s done that was better than that?
That was in an interview with Bild, which asked what role Germany plays in The War Against Terror (TWAT). Bush: “Germany plays a vital role in the war on terror. Germany is in the heart of Europe.” Say what? “Germany’s will is important.” Yes, it should triumph. No, wait...
Chimpy magnanimously forgives Germany for not supporting the war in Iraq:
I’ve come to realize that the nature of the German people are such that war is very abhorrent, that Germany is a country now that is -- no matter where they sit on the political spectrum, Germans are -- just don’t like war. And I can understand that. There’s a generation of people who had their lives torn about because of a terrible war.
Yes, the Thirty Years’ War was terrible. “Just don’t like war.” He really said that. Just don’t like war. But they like blood sausage. And David Hasselhoff. There’s really no accounting for taste, is there? He followed up with this little Freudian slip:
The point now is not what went on in the past. The point now is how do we work together to achieve important goals. And one such goal is a democracy in Germany [sic].
On Iranian President Ahmadinejad and Israel: “But what he’s also saying is, if he’s willing to destroy one country, he’d be willing to destroy other countries.” Well when you put it that way, it does seem a little unreasonable.
On Pope John Paul II & Pope Ratzi: “These are strong, capable men who challenge the concept of moral relevancy.”
Bush was also interviewed, last week, by German tv. He said his meeting with Angela Merkel “gave me a chance to get a glimpse into her soul.” And she’s “not a fake.” Phew. You’d hate to get stuck with one of those fake Merkels.
On Iraq: “There is a tough Shia as the Prime Minister-designate, there’s a Sunni rejectionist who is now reconciled with the country.” Huh?
On Palestine: “I was not pleased that Hamas has refused to announce [sic] its desire to destroy Israel.”
Asked about his alleged liking for strong women, he went on a bit. “And I’m married to an incredibly strong woman who I love, and that’s my wife.” Thanks for explaining that the woman you’re married to is your wife. Describes Jenna and Not-Jenna as “two incredibly strong women who will have confidence to go out and explore life, and to achieve.” Says Karen Hughes “was one of the most powerful women ever in the White House, simply because she had complete access to the President and I trusted her.” Such a feminist is our George: Hughes was “powerful,” but all her power derived from him.
Says he’d like to “end” Guantanamo and put everyone on trial.
Says he won’t “scold” Putin just to “gain editorial approval.” Says, “I’d much rather be an effective person than a popular person”. And how’s that going for you?
British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott is facing an investigation by Scotland Yard for his sex scandal: evidently it’s illegal to have sex in your office during working hours. Honestly, if you can’t have sex in your office during working hours, when and where can you have sex? No, really, I’m asking, when and where?
Hugo Chavez wants a referendum on letting him hold power without the inconvenience of further elections until 2031. Can the bloggy left please stop hero-worshipping this guy now? (Update: there’s a long and interesting debate on these insightful 27 words in comments.) Pfizer experimented on sick Nigerian kids, and some of them died. This is not news, although the WaPo makes the extent of the cover-up clearer, and as I mentioned in a 2003 post is one of the reasons many Africans are deeply suspicious of things like polio vaccines. So Pfizer’s lack of ethics creates victims well beyond those given dangerous drugs.
The LAT examines murders in Baghdad. Mostly we haven’t been hearing about them unless they were the result of bombs, which most are not.
Some more Bush pictures. Two Marines and a maroon:
Guess who just found out he’s being sent to Iraq:
Bush delivered the commencement address at Oklahoma State University. They gave him an honorary degree, then snuck behind him, slipped a red hood over his head, and... What happened next? Ideas in comments.
Porter Goss on why he was forced out: “it’s one of those mysteries.” They stopped letting him give the daily briefing to Bush because that’s how he answered every single question.
Enter that veritable Hercule Poirot, Gen. Michael Hayden. His appointment is a sign that the CIA’s intelligence-gathering is being given priority over its covert action side, which Rumsfeld has largely poached for himself.
By the way, is not Kyle “Dusty” Foggo the bestest name ever for a CIA official? Le Carré by way of Dickens.
Follow-up: those officials sent to explain to the UN Committee Against Torture that we don’t torture claimed that “rendition” is legal under the Convention Against Torture so long as the rendee was caught outside the US, that is, the convention’s “obligations do not apply extraterritorially.”
A British helicopter is shot down over Basra, crashes and bursts into flames, sending up plumes of British understatement: the BBC says the crash “sparks unrest”; the Guardian says the reaction of Basrans shows “discontent” over the foreign occupation. You mean dancing around the burning helicopter filled with dead, crispy soldiers, that sort of discontent? And setting armored vehicles on fire and throwing stones at British soldiers, is that what you mean by unrest?
I’m a little curious about the press. How many of them were wandering around the rioting? I mean, these two pictures of the same stone-throwing kid come from two different photographers working for two different news agencies.
Mad dogs and English soldiers...
Some more Basrans. Not a female in sight.
Didn’t I see this in the preview for Mission Impossible 3?
It’s nearly election time again here in California (the rest of you may skip this post; we’re not voting on anything silly or, you know, “Californian” this time, although one of the initiatives is sponsored by an actor). There’s still time to register, if you need to do that. Here are my recommendations. Comments are welcome. The voter’s pamphlet is here (pdf).
Prop. 81. Sigh. I am against bonds as a method of funding anything. They’re an expensive way of funding something, they’re regressive in that they provide their purchasers an undeserved tax deduction, and place tax obligations on future citizens to pay them off--taxation without representation. So normally I would vote no, but since I like libraries and don’t want to vote against them, I will take the intermediate position of not voting for or against 81.
Prop 82. There’s no problem with regressive taxation in Meathead’s initiative, although the use of a dedicated tax, even one on well-off incomes, means that the level of funding is determined by factors unrelated to the needs of the pre-school system, which is just bad budgetary policy.
Now, while I support public education, the thought of state-run pre-school creeps me out. 82 provides for a centrally determined curriculum, which would inevitably focus on some sort of measurable standards, like the test-based No Child Left Behind. Let’s hold off turning the rugrats into automatons until they’re at least, I don’t know, five. Like fishermen, we should throw back the little ones and wait until their souls get bigger to crush them.
The program would be voluntary, in theory, but the more they try to integrate it into the K-12 system by focusing its curriculum on preparation, the more it becomes de facto mandatory, as kindergarten already has, because if it can do what they say it will do, any kid who hasn’t gone through it will be behind the curve. That’s not pre-school, that’s actual school. And that’s if it works; if it doesn’t, then the money could be better spent (textbooks, computers, teacher pay, extending the K-12 school-year, etc etc).
I also worry that this program will compete with K-12 for teachers. California’s public school system needs to find 100,000 new teachers in the next decade. Since paying a decent wage to teachers seems to be contrary to the laws of the known universe, I don’t see where those teachers and the pre-school teachers are supposed to come from, but I imagine some barrels would have to have their bottoms well and truly scraped.
(Post-election update: both props lost, 82 by 61-39, I suspect based less on the merits or demerits of pre-school than on a disinclination to spend money, even the money of rich people.)
Ewen MacAskill suggests that one purpose of the Blair reshuffle, beyond using the excuse of crappy local election results to fire or demote some of the biggest embarrassments-who-aren’t-Tony-himself, was to rid himself of an obstacle to his lap-dog agenda, Jack Straw, the now-former foreign secretary, who announced a couple of weeks ago that military action against Iran was “inconceivable.” I had the feeling at the time that, to quote Inigo Montoya, “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” Someone needs to ask Margaret Beckett at the earliest possible opportunity what she could conceive doing to Iran.
I’m not hugely worried by the BNP (British National Party) local election wins, but perhaps that’s because of how amused I am that the place they did really well is Barking (11 seats out of 51).
John Bellinger of the State Dept told the UN Committee Against Torture that the US has been responsible for “relatively few actual cases of abuse and wrongdoing.” Relative to whom, he did not say. The Spanish Inquisition? Josef Mengela? Jack Bauer? Still, I’m sure the UN CAT (or do they prefer UNCA T?) was appropriately impressed by the relativity and lack of actuality of the cases of abuse and wrongdoing committed by America (torture, of course, we do not do. That would be inconceivable).
The announcement of Porter Goss’s resignation on a Friday, with no replacement ready to be announced, suggests something interesting is up. Possibly involving hookers. Bush described the CIA as “known for its secrecy and accountability.”
Speaking of secrecy and accountability, Dick Cheney was in Kazakhstan today, talkin’ about oil and trying very hard not to talk about democracy and human rights (in the 2004 parliamentary elections, Nazarbayev’s party comes in first, with second place going to a party led by... his daughter), right after yesterday’s speech criticizing Russia for its record on democracy and human rights. Asked how he would evaluate Kazakhstan, he said, “I think the record speaks for itself.” Yes, yes it does.
Speaking of the record speaking, the Pentagon has finally put up the transcript of Rummy’s much-heckled speech yesterday. It’s fun because they’ve actually transcribed the heckling, among other things:
HECKLER: How can you sit here and listen to this war criminal?
AUDIENCE: Oh! No!
HECKLER: You are a serial killer!
AUDIENCE MEMBERS: Sit down! Sit down!
HECKLER: This man needs to be impeached, along with George Bush. How can you sit here smiling and listen to this criminal?
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Booo!
AUDIENCE MEMBER: Get out of here!
HECKLER: You’re a war criminal, Mr. Rumsfeld!
(Pause while heckler is removed by security.)
Of course he or she was. The proper form of address is, “You’re a war criminal, Secretary Rumsfeld!”
Israeli PM Olmert has announced his plan to establish unilateral borders for Israel, stealing a good chunk of the West Bank. Netanyahu criticizes him for rewarding Palestinian violence, although to me it looks rather like rewarding Israeli violence. Olmert justifies abandoning small Jewish settlements on the grounds of racial purity, saying they “create an intermingling of populations which is impossible to separate, and which endangers the state of Israel as a Jewish state.” Also, why has so little attention been given in the American media (this is a rhetorical question) to Avigdor Lieberman, who thinks Netanyahu is a dangerous softie, and his racist Yisrael Beiteinu (Israel Our Home) party, mostly consisting of immigrants from the former USSR, which won 10% of Knesset seats? Lieberman today called for Palestinian members of the Knesset to be executed if they have any contact with Hamas or fail to express adequate enthusiasm on Independence Day.
Iraqi police have been killing homosexuals. Sistani ruled that they must be killed in the “worst, most severe way.”
However, intolerance is not growing everywhere. A Greek court has just re-legalized the worship of Zeus and his posse. Evidently until now, Christianity, Judaism and Islam were the only legal religions in Greece.
Atrios wrote something – “Apparently Frist fristed himself with his grand plan to give out ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS.” – that finally made me realize who it was this whole thing reminded me of: Dr. Evil.
From the WaPo: “More than 1,000 riot officers firing tear gas entered a town at the edge of Mexico City on Thursday to hunt for agents taken hostage in a riot sparked by flower traders that left at least one person dead.” Yes, “a riot sparked by flower traders”. There’s a phrase you do not hear every day.
Another picture from the National Day of Prayer. Captions?
The War Against Terror (TWAT) is on, it is SO on, as the Pentagon unveils its newest weapon: blooper reels. The American Forces Press Service has the details:
BAGHDAD, May 4, 2006 – Coalition officials here today showed the “outtakes” of terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s latest anti-coalition screed, and it became quickly apparent why they ended on the cutting-room floor, so to speak.
In one, Zarqawi -- the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq -- has trouble trying to operate an automatic weapon. An associate has to show him how to do it. Later in the same shot, an associate takes the weapon from Zarqawi by the barrel and burns his hand. In another, the feared terrorist is shown in a black uniform and bright blue “tenny pumps.”
Coalition troops found the tape during a raid on a hideout for foreign fighters. “He is far from being a capable military leader,” coalition spokesman Army Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch said during a news conference today.
Tenny pumps! Why, the war is almost won! Tenny pumps.
What are tenny pumps?
Donald Rumsfeld, as we’ve noted before, has a powerful ability to deflect criticism or inconvenient facts using only the power of his own impenetrable ignorance. This week he responded to Gen. Bernard Trainor’s book Cobra II thusly: “Well, I don’t know the gentleman. The quote you gave, I’ve not seen the book so I can’t speak to it, but I can tell you this...” And what about Colin Powell? “Actually I’ve not seen his precise comments.”
Here’s a bonus Rummyquote from one of the few people who can (and does) combine “golly” and decapitation in a single sentence: “I keep coming back to the basic, and by golly, we’re a lot better off fighting these violent, vicious people who cut off people’s heads over there than here in our own country.”
I still don’t know what tenny pumps are, but it’s a lot of fun just saying it over and over. Try it. Tenny pumps tenny pumps tenny pumps tenny pumps.
One of my favorite moments in the early Bush presidency was his visit to Spain, where he listened to the prime minister (or king?) for about 30 seconds without translation, because Bush actually thinks he knows Spanish, before hastily putting on his headphones. Scotty McClellan (you’ll miss him when he’s gone) insisted today that Bush couldn’t have sung the National Anthem in Spanish (by the way, I found the NatAnth in Latin, but not in Klingon; I trust someone is correcting this oversight) because “He’s not that good with his Spanish.”
The Oklahoma Legislature legalizes tattoos, as long as they’re of scenes from “Oklahoma.”
China and the Pope are getting into a pissing match. That sort of thing is always fun for the rest of us to watch. Though there was supposed to be a truce by which the Chinese government would only appoint bishops to the “official” Chinese church who’d already been named by the Vatican, the Chinese have gone ahead with their own bishops. Who have now been excommunicated by Rome, along with the bishops who ordained them. China is trying to pressure the Vatican to withdraw recognition from Taiwan. All of which reminds me when the Chinese government in 1995 put itself in the business of choosing the next Panchen Lama, claiming that the Dalai Lama had done it wrong: “The Dalai Lama’s arbitrary selection of a soul boy as the reincarnation of the Panchen Lama is null and void.”
Speaking of inappropriate, Dick Cheney in Vilnius criticized Russia for being too authoritarian and undemocratic. And for its energy policy. Right message, but so, so, SO the wrong messenger. Really, I’d be hard put to say whether Cheney or Bush has the greater lack of self-awareness: the Dickster said that repressive governments “feed rivalries and hatreds to obscure their own failings. They seek to impose their will by force, and they make our world more dangerous.” But when speaking specifically about Russia, he talked about things the government has done, said “opponents of reform are seeking to reverse the gains of the last decade,” and yet somehow failed to criticize Vladimir Putin personally.
Back in the States, George Bush took some time off from praying next to the winner of the coveted Biggest Beard Prize,
to meet with President Tabare Vazquez of Uruguay. “We’ve had a very extensive conversation,” Bush said, not specifying what language it was conducted in, “about -- we talked about a lot of subjects. We talked about the human condition.” I guess Vazquez wanted an outsider’s perspective.
Tony Blair has wildly overreacted to the scandal about foreign criminals not being deported, and a few of them committing further crimes after being released when their terms were up. He is promising to deport foreign nationals after even minor crimes that don’t carry jail terms.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has ranked the most heavily censored countries, in this order: North Korea, Burma, Turkmenistan, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, Eritrea, Cuba, Uzbekistan, Syria and Belarus. On the more important WIIIAI Scale, this blog has been read in Burma, Turkmenistan, Cuba, Uzbekistan, Syria and Belarus, but not (although I could have missed it) in North Korea, Equatorial Guinea, Libya, or Eritrea.
Speaking of censorship, the US refused to let the president of Taiwan go to New York and San Francisco, although they did offer to let him refuel in Anchorage. He said thanks but no thanks.
The US has introduced a resolution on Iran’s nuclear program to the UN Security Council, with a not-so-subtle slippery-slope provision. The resolution threatens Iran with unnamed “further measures” if it does not comply. Really, the Council shouldn’t ever vote for an ominous vague threat; you either vote for something specific or you don’t vote at all. The idea, of course, is that if, down the road, the UN refuses to give us exactly the sanctions and/or military force against Iran that we demand, we’ll accuse them of failing to uphold their word, lacking credibility, all the usual crap, and then go ahead and do whatever we want under the pretext of upholding the will of the world community against its will.
Today, Bush wheeled out German Chancellor Angela Merkel to express complete agreement with him over Iran. At the Q&A with the press, there was this exchange:
Q Mr. President, what kind of sanctions should be taken against Iran, and when?
PRESIDENT BUSH: That’s the kind of question that allies discuss in private.
Q You discussed it just this afternoon.
Speaking of private, “I’m looking forward to taking the Chancellor upstairs to my private residence after this press availability to continue our discussions and to have a dinner that is a continuation of a personal relationship that is developing”. Or as Bill used to say, “Kiss it.”
What, too crass? Too vulgar? Well, you can apply your sophisticated, high-minded wits to this... Caption Contest! Yay!
There are days when Bush’s rhetoric is so fuzzy, seems like a parody of Jon Stewart’s parody of him that it’s hard to focus on it. Which is the idea. Bush’s rhetoric is like the character described by Raymond Chandler: “From 30 feet away she looked like a lot of class. From 10 feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away.” Re-reading Bush’s statement about the Moussaoui verdict after reading Tristero’s discussion of it, yeah, Bush probably did intend to say in semi-coded form that the jury wimped out, showed a failure of will, cut and ran, etc. “The end of this trial represents the end of this case, but not an end to the fight against terror.” Meaning that this trial was a defeat in The War Against Terror (TWAT), justifying his decision not to let “terrorists” have access to the court system. Here’s the ending:
We have had many victories, yet there is much left to do, and I will not relent in this struggle for the freedom and security of the American people. And we can be confident. Our cause is right, and the outcome is certain: Justice will be served. Evil will not have the final say. This great Nation will prevail.
Very Protestant. Justice with a capital J, the outcome certain because our cause is right, i.e. God’s cause, but it is still a test of character, his character: “I” will not relent (like that jury did).
But you know what does work? Operation Smile, the feel-good Operation of the Iraq war. The US military, out of the goodness of its heart and modestly seeking no publicity, has flown some Iraqi children with cleft palates and such to Jordan for corrective surgery. Many had never been in a plane before, isn’t that exciting for them? (they could have been driven to Jordan, but then they’d probably have been blown up). Operation Smile. Their country may now be cleft, but not their palates. Makes it all worth while.
The nice thing about a blog as opposed to a newspaper column is that you can take as much space as an idea requires. Or as little. Today Maureen Dowd had to pad out to column length what would have been a perfectly good single-sentence blog post: “The invasion of Iraq has turned into ‘The Ransom of Red Chief.’”
George Bush says of the sentence on Zacarias Moussaoui (the George Bush of the terrorist world), “Evil will not have the final say.”
Speaking of Dick Cheney, here’s another good opening sentence, from the London Times’s Tom Baldwin: “The word ‘offensive’ has often been used to describe the activities of Dick Cheney, if rarely with the prefix of ‘charm’.” The article includes the news that Mary Cheney has a book, ahem, coming out.
How dare CNN run anonymously a quote as provocative as “It’s beginning to look like the Marines were overzealous.” Other than that, their story about the cover-up of the Haditha massacre has nothing new, and rather than less than was known in March.
The $100 oil-price bribe may be a transparent gimmick, but I want to put myself on the record as being willing to be given $100. I am in fact solidly in favor of being given money. Harry Reid unwittingly revealed himself to be part of the problem today when he said something about $100 not even being two tank-fulls. Um Harry: we don’t all drive SUVs.
Slow news day. In absence of better raw material I’m tempted to make fun of the headline “Bolivia: Morales Defends Gas Grab,” but I think I’ll just let it go.
Iraqi President Talabani said yesterday that he’d met with representatives of 7 militias, and thought that they could be persuaded to disarm. Today, however, his office said that it was actually a subordinate who had made the contacts. And that it wasn’t with the insurgency but with some groups they wouldn’t name, but who weren’t Saddamists or connected to Al Qaeda. So basically someone is negotiating with someone else.
Bush said today that “the Iraqi leaders... need to know that we stand with them. ... and we believe we’ve got partners to help the Iraqi people realize their dreams.” Of course their dream is that we stop “standing with them” and go home already.
Or possibly we’re helping the Iraqi people realize their dreams by sending in the Marines to strip them down to their underwear and deposit them in classrooms.
On Saturday I mentioned the John Prescott sex scandal in Britain. Noting the “outrage” of the political editor of the Mail on Sunday (a tabloid) about Prescott and his diary secretary having sex after attending an Iraqi memorial service with the queen, Times columnist David Aaronovitch asks if he “could advise our more anxious readers on the correct interval between sharing a space with Her Majesty and having an orgasm.”
Reuters picture. That’s Rove and Economic Adviser Al Hubbard with Chimpy.
Went to the vet today. Was kept waiting 43 minutes. The fee for the visit: $43.
Happy Mission Accomplished Day. I know it seems like ages have passed since The Day of the Stuffed Flight Suit, the day the mission was in fact accomplished, and our memories of the Iraq War have faded into the nostalgic sepia tones of simpler times...
At today’s Gaggle, a reporter repeatedly tried to get McClellan whether Bush could stand under a Mission Accomplished sign today (the correct answer is “Of course he could, because he can’t read”). After several tries at that, there came this exchange:
Q Let me ask it another way: Has the mission been accomplished?
MR. McCLELLAN: Next question.
Q Has the mission been accomplished?
MR. McCLELLAN: We’re on the way to accomplishing the mission and achieving victory.
Asked whether Colin Powell did indeed express reservations about the number of troops being sent to Iraq, Scotty said: “The President, when he was making the decision, looked to his team to provide advice, and he welcomed all advice that his team provided, and there was a lot of advice provided during that time. ... I can’t go back all the way to that time and relive all the advice that was given.”
Zeynep (Under the Same Sun) calls Orwellian the claim that the US can’t return prisoners now in Guantanamo to their home countries because they might be treated... wait for it... inhumanely. Breathtaking in its audacity, yes, but it might actually be worse than Orwellian, a term which implies cynical knowing distortion of the truth: the Bushies might well genuinely believe that America’s motives are so pure and enlightened that the exact same treatment is somehow a superior experience to those at its sharp end when meted out by Americans than it is when inflicted by the dusky hands of lesser nations.
Bush recounts Condi & Rummy’s impressions of the new Iraqi leaders: “they were optimistic people, that they’re full of energy and they’re very eager to succeed.” Sound like interns or cheerleaders or puppy dogs or something.
Another line from Condi’s appearance on Face the Nation: “you defeat an insurgency through politics, not just through military force.” Oh dear, I think Zarqawi’s about to be... Swift Boated.
So Colin Powell suddenly remembers having suggested that more troops were needed to occupy Iraq. On “Face the Nation” (pdf), Condi (in remarkably bad form even for her) claimed she can’t remember what Powell had said, “but I do know that if there were questions about troop levels, they were, of course, raised.” And “The number of troops on the ground was there to execute the plan.” Evidently the plan was that we would defeat the Iraqi military and then immediately start relying on it to run security during our occupation: “Well, I--I--but if you look at what happened in the immediate aftermath of the war, the Iraqi Army in effect kind of disintegrated.” See, the Iraqi Army failed to hold up its part of The Plan. And yes, we were the ones who ordered the Iraqi army disbanded, she admits when Shieffer brings it up, but it had already “melted into nothing”. And unfortunately we weren’t the only ones with a Baldrickian cunning plan: “Secondarily, there was systematic looting that obviously had been planned, really, where it was not really the number of forces on the ground, it was the--the systematic looting that took place.” But, like the Flight 93 movie, it’s just too soon to be talking about this, why there’ll be plenty of time after the heat death of the universe: “As I’ve said many times, Bob, there will be time to go back and look at those days of the war and after the war to examine what went right and what went wrong.”
Addressing the number one topic of the week, she refuses to condemn or to support or indeed to express any coherent opinion on the Spanish version of the National Anthem.
On CNN (she was interviewed everywhere today, as was George Clooney; they must have kept bumping into each other; wonder what they said?), Blitzer asked if Iranian President Ahmadinejad is a psychopath. She refused to offer a diagnosis, but said “I just know that nobody speaks in polite company in that way.” That put him in his place.
Gen. Rick Lynch, Military Moron, disputes the claim that many people have been forced out of their homes in Iraq: “We see reports of tens of thousands of families displaced here in Iraq, and we chase down each and every one of those reports. But we have seen some displacement, pockets of families moving, but not in large numbers.” They chase down each and every one of tens of thousands of reports? Man, are you sure there are enough troops?
Berlusconi is finally willing to concede the elections, sort of: “We comply because we are democratic, but inside ourselves we remain convinced that the majority prize has been wrongly assigned.” You know what people who “are democratic” don’t usually use? The royal “we.”
Bush in his Saturday radio address hailed the establishment of what I guess they’re going to keep calling Iraq’s “national unity government” (NUG) (I’m trying for a meme on that acronym).
He said, “This is an important milestone on the road to democracy in Iraq,” which is an adaptation of an old Iraqi saying, often attributed to Hammurabi, “The road to democracy is paved with... Look out! An IED! (BOOM!!)”
And he said, for like the 983rd time, that the violence of the enemy comes from desperation (I wrote in August ‘03: “Yeah, it’s a sign of desperation if they attack us, a sign of boldness and resolve if we attack them, yeah yeah yeah.”). You normally think of despair as an emotion that doesn’t last for years and years.
Speaking of desperation, Tony Blair seems to be having a bad week, from Home Secretary Charles Clarke failing to deport foreign criminals after their sentences, some of whom committed more crimes (a woman raped by one of them is calling for Clarke’s resignation), to the health secretary being heckled by nurses, to the mistress of Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott (who once punched a guy in the face during an election: he’s like Dick Cheney with gun control) selling her story to the tabloids (they had sex right after an Iraqi war memorial service, tut tut tut) (there’s Prescott behind the Blairs, and the mistress on the far right).
Also, cannabis with “a street value of 85 pence” was discovered in the home of the defense secretary. The Sunday Times is displaying the edifying signs of the British press when it smells blood. Some of its headlines: “The Week from Hell for the New Labour Project,” “And It’s Going to Get Worse,” “A Government on Borrowed Time,” “Focus: Going Down.” Although another story suggests that the problem with the foreign convicts was that the tabloids and the Tories whipped up a xenophobic frenzy against asylum seekers, to which Blair responded in his usual managerialist style by setting targets to reduce their number by half, so the Home Office simply stopped trying to deport foreign felons who might claim asylum to prevent being deported.
The Independent on Sunday’s three editorials are “Charles Clarke Must Go,” “Patricia Hewitt Must Stay,” and “John Prescott... Must We?”
Here’s a picture of Blair and Prescott I rather like.
Fortunately, the Tory party is still run by ineffectual losers, who this week have been trying to portray themselves as environmentalists. For example, Conservative Party chair Francis Maude is urging Brits to pee on their compost. There’s probably a metaphor in there somewhere.
Some right-wing blog is abusing my theme song. Stop it.
Reading this WaPo article about how Iraqi troops and police in one town, even those trained by Americans, are not to be trusted, I got the distinct feeling that while some of them certainly are insurgents, others are simply failing to demonstrate the loyalty to which their American overlords feel entitled.
And the more the Americans suspect their loyalty, the more they treat them as cannon fodder. The need not to give them advance warning of missions so that they don’t tip off the insurgents mean they have no role in planning or choosing those missions; if they weren’t gung-ho before, that wouldn’t be the way to make them. And worse than cannon fodder: there’s a story about the police commander telling the Americans about an IED only after the 28-year old American who seems to be issuing orders to the Iraqis decides to take the commander along on a drive through town. The American sees the story as being about the duplicity of the natives; the Iraqi might just see it as an example of the Americans using Iraqis as human shields.
The Americans also seem to arrest members of those forces on a regular basis not just for insurgent activities, but for failing to do their jobs (and risk their lives) in what the Americans consider a sufficiently zealous manner (“Tell your guys, if they refuse to ride in the Humvees, they will go to jail for 10 days. It’s not a choice,” a 23-year old American lieutenant threatened). The flip side of that is the view of one unnamed American officer that “more police have been killed lately, which means some of them are finally doing their job.” That’s rather like the witch-drowning thing. Or to put it another way, the only good Iraqi cop is a dead Iraqi cop.
Pakistan’s Generalissimo Musharaf tells the Guardian that he is not George Bush’s poodle. So much not George Bush’s poodle that he comes right out and says that he’d prefer that the US not his bomb his country any more, please, calling it “an infringement of our sovereignty”. Ya think? The Guardian mentions that a reporter who photographed fragments of the missiles fired on that village in January, proving that they were American, disappeared four days later and hasn’t been seen since. Why have I not heard that before? The US, by the way, still hasn’t acknowledged responsibility for that attack.
Bush met Azerbaijan’s hereditary president Iham Aliyev, with whom he “talked about the need to -- for the world to see a modern Muslim country that is able to provide for its citizens, that understands that democracy is the wave of the future.” That’s a description of Azerbaijan that will come as quite a surprise to Azerbaijanis.
Within an hour of praising Aliyev’s record (my favorite story about him is that when his father was dictator he closed every casino in the country to keep Iham from getting any deeper into debt), Bush also met with various people whose stories highlighted North Korea’s human rights record. Right message, wrong messenger. For example, he met with relatives of a Japanese teenager kidnapped by North Korea, saying, “It is hard to believe that a country would foster abduction.” This in a week when the EU reported that there have been over 1,000 secret CIA flights since 2001, carrying secret prisoners to secret prisons. He concluded, “We strongly will work for freedom,” which sounds like it was translated (badly) from a banner in Pyongyang.
I want my approval ratings back up to 40% pronto, or the cute little Korean girl gets it.
Continuing on his human rights roll, Bush said in the afternoon, “genocide in Sudan is unacceptable.” Earlier, he told reporters, “We don’t like it when we see women raped and brutalized.” Um, right.
He also said that it is unacceptable – not quite as unacceptable as genocide, but still pretty darned unacceptable – for the National Anthem to be sung in Spanish: “people who want to be a citizen of this country ought to learn English, and they ought to learn to sing the National Anthem in English.” Sadly, there was not a follow-up asking him to sing it, or at least recite every single word and no leaving out the “Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution” stanza.
On immigration, he says several times that he wants to “enforce the border.” Does that strike anyone else as kind of a weird phrase? He also says he’s against the boycott and that “One of the things that’s very important is when we debate this issue that we not lose our national soul.” Have you checked under the seat cushions? “One of the great things about America is that we’ve been able to take people from all walks of life bound as one nation under God.” All walks of life? He literally forgot that he was talking about immigration half-way through that sentence. Also, “bound” as one nation? That doesn’t sound pleasant, unless he’s referring to Gina Gershon/Jennifer Tilly lesbian scenes.
The AP caption for this picture is “President Bush talks to reporters about the economy in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington, Friday, April 28, 2006.”
A Senate committee says that FEMA should be disbanded and rebuilt from scratch. George Bush immediately went to work.
Oh okay, he was actually “helping” rebuild the home of Ethel Williams, seen here being used quite literally as a prop.
His tendency to stray far, far into other peoples’ personal spaces is always at its strongest, for some reason, with black women. Here he was yesterday with National Teacher of the Year Kimberly Oliver.
In Biloxi, he made what Reuters calls an “impromptu” stop at a gas station, where he commiserated with redneck SUV owners about the price of gas. “Yeah, just shut up and squeegee the damned windshield, Mr. President.”
I want my approval ratings back up to 40% pronto, or the pup gets it.
The LAT has an article suggesting that Rummy & Condi went to Iraq to use the country purely as a backdrop for a message aimed at the American public. No kidding. You have to appreciate the irony that the two show up unannounced and uninvited, which they wouldn’t do to, say, China or Britain, to talk about how Iraq is fully sovereign now. They’re playing up the message of unity, by which I don’t mean the “unified government of national unity,” but unity between Rummy and Condi, who have evidently put all the fussin’ and the feudin’ behind them. Sez Condi: “We’re actually having a great time here in Iraq. I think it’s very stimulating for us both to be in these meetings with Iraq’s leaders together.” Cuz they really know how to party.
Hope the thought of Condi being stimulated doesn’t put you off your breakfasts.
Iraq’s vice president’s sister was just assassinated, two weeks after his brother was also killed. The BBC is too darned tasteful to tell us how many siblings he has left.
Army chief of staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker says of complaints about the size of the Pentagon’s budget request, “I just don’t understand.... What’s the problem?” adding (incorrectly) that Americans spend about the same amount of money on “plastic Santa Clauses and tinsel and all this stuff for Christmas last year.” All Schoomaker wants for Christmas is an invasion of Iran.
In a Supreme Court case heard Wednesday, the state of Florida argued that an inmate shouldn’t be allowed to challenge the constitutionality of lethal injection as cruel and unusual without offering his own suggestion for how the state should put him to death. Scalia, being Scalia, suggested that subjecting inmates to a certain amount of pain was okay and that calling for painless executions would be “a very extreme proposition.”
Bush gives a stirring thank you to outgoing press secretary Scott McClellan: “I will always be proud to call him, ‘friend,’” adding, “because I’ve already forgotten his name.” And as for the new guy, Tony Insert-Snow-Related-Pun-Here, “He’s going to work hard to provide you with timely information about my philosophy, my priorities, and the actions we’re taking to implement our agenda.” Can’t wait for that timely information about Bush’s philosophy.
Condi Rice and Donald Rumsfeld are both in Iraq at the same time! Presumably that was where she meant to go, because she said in Greece yesterday “The United States of America understands and believes that Iran is not Iraq” (I adore her choice of the verb believe)(maybe that’s what Bush meant by “my philosophy”). Rice tells reporters on the plane, “and I will obviously link up there with Secretary Rumsfeld.” Hey, she said it, not me. Maybe they can finally come to an agreement on whether we’ve made thousands of mistakes or zero mistakes in Iraq. She said the purpose of the trip is “to make sure there are no seams between what we’re doing politically and what we’re doing militarily.” I’m sure what you’re doing politically and what you’re doing militarily will indeed be unseamly.
Oh, get a room, you two
A reporter asks Condi whether this visit doesn’t just reinforce the charges made by Zarqawi that the Maliki regime is a puppet of the US. She replies by repeating over and over that it is a “government of national unity.”
Canadian PM Stephen Harper has followed American practice in banning news coverage of the return of the bodies of soldiers killed in Afghanistan. He says it’s all about privacy and certainly not aboot hiding the consequences of Canada signing on to fight America’s wars – but at the same time he halted the practice of flying the flag at half-staff for slain soldiers.
Condi tries to lower expectations that the new Iraqi government will actually accomplish anything any time soon: “I just hope that people understand and keep those expectations in check... Progress is going to be the kind of progress that is political progress, which doesn’t come in great flashes, it doesn’t come in great outbursts of another election or purple fingers or any of that.”
And Bush had deep philosophical conversations when he phoned Iraq’s president, speaker of parliament & PM-to-be and “encouraged them to stand strong for the Iraqi people. I reminded them the people had voted, the people had expressed their desire for democracy and unity, and now there’s a chance for these leaders to stand up and lead.” I know it was quite some time ago but... he reminded them the people had voted.
I call this series “Trying to Look Dignified and Solemn and All-Presidential-Like While Carrying a Football (And Then Blowing It By Showing Off His Secret Decoder Ring).”
Bush issues a presidential message commemorating the Armenian genocide, while blurring it as much as possible. Guess what word he doesn’t use? Genocide. He twice calls it a “tragedy,” which is a word that does not entail responsibility, especially not Turkish responsibility. He calls it “the mass killings and forced exile of as many as 1.5 million Armenians,” which could mean that 3 people were killed and 1,497,993 were exiled or it could mean that 1,497,993 were killed and 3 people exiled.
But here’s my real beef with Bush: he went to Las freaking Vegas Monday and there’s not a single funny picture for me to use.
The Pentagon wants to put on trial a few of the Guantanamo prisoners, execute a few of them, release some of them (at some point in the future, so why is this news?), transfer others to prisons in their own countries, and declare some of them no longer combatants but continue to imprison them, like those Uighurs, because they can’t safely be sent back to their own countries. The LA Times headline for this, which is obviously inaccurate in so many ways, is “U.S. to Free 141 Terror Suspects.” And it entirely misses the other big Gitmo news: McDonald’s is celebrating the 20th anniversary of its Guantanamo store! Hurrah!
Condi Rice again praises Iraqi PM-designate Maliki: “He comes to this as the strongest political figure really ever ... since the liberation of Iraq”. Oh good, because “strong” political figures have never been any sort of a, ya know, problem for Iraq in the past. “He comes with both the imprimatur of the Iraqi people and ... the mandate to form a unified national unity government.” Yes, he has the sort of imprimatur and mandate that can only come from more than four months of back-room negotiation.
Update: when I first posted, I meant to make fun of “unified national unity government,” but I forgot.
Bush was in Irvine to tell a crowd of Orange County businesspeople that “the war on terror [is] not over.”
There is still an enemy that wants to do us harm. And the most important job of the President of the United States is to protect the American people from that harm. That’s -- and I think about it all the time.
Adding, “There, I thought about it just then. And then. And then. No, that was gas.”
Keywords of the day: “safe haven.” He uses it 7 times to describe the thing that terrorists want to have in Iraq and shouldn’t be allowed to have. They must have run some focus groups.
“You know, it’s really important for people to be able to connect the concept of freedom to our security. And it’s hard. It’s hard, particularly in a day and age when every act of violence is put in your living room.” Yeah, it’s getting really hard to keep the carpet clean.
He defended his conduct of the Iraq war once again by claiming that he didn’t conduct the Iraq war, but left it up to Tommy Franks to tell him what to do and what was needed to do it. “One the lessons of Vietnam, it seemed like to me -- still does -- is that people tried to make decisions on behalf of the military, which I think is a terrible precedent to make if you’re the Commander-in-Chief.” So the one thing a commander-in-chief shouldn’t do is command. What happened to “I’m the decider”?
Most of the speech was about immigration, in that county named after an agricultural product picked almost exclusively by immigrants. And we got more focus-grouped language designed to make an anti-immigration policy sound friendly to the people actually trying to immigrate: “One of the things that Congress has done, it’s done a good job of providing additional money for bed space and money to make sure that we can send people back home.” We’re giving them bed space, not putting them in detention centers surrounded by armed guards and barbed wire. And then we’re sending them “home.” Isn’t that nice of us? Although even he acknowledges, “They’re going broke at home”. Also, we’re saving them, he mentions in every speech on immigration, from coyotes. The Border Patrol and INS are really doing rescue work, if you think about it.
The guest-workers will be given – and here’s another focus-grouped phrase that he repeats like a gazillion times – “tamper-proof cards.” “All of a sudden, we’ve kind of taken this smuggling industry and dismantled it through rational policy. All of a sudden, we recognized that we want to treat people with respect.”
Then he started talking about lines, how illegal immigrants should get to the back of the line, how Congress could decide on the lengths of different lines for different nationalities. “In other words, there’s the line for people.” I think he was just feeling nostalgic for lines of coke.
In the Q&A, someone asked if he knew any illegal immigrants, say in Texas, who might give him their perspective. No, he doesn’t.
And now for a game of Find the Racist:
I was talking to a congressman from -- I don’t want to -- they’ll start trying to find the guy, so I’m not going to give him any hints, but -- (laughter.) It’s a guy. Anyway, but he said, my town was like a small number of minorities, and now it’s 50 percent Latino, and we don’t know what to do.
Two stories about Iraq. Halli-fucking-burton has been importing workers to do menial jobs on American bases in Iraq (because the occupation is such a success that there are no unemployed people in Iraq) and then taking their passports so they have no choice but to work in the conditions and for the pay Halli-motherfucking-burton feels appropriate. The words slavery and human trafficking are used, with good reason.
That article can be skimmed if you’re short of time. But the WaPo has a must-read about torture, abuse and starvation in Iraqi prisons, which are in fact still being inspected by American soldiers: they’re just not doing much of anything about it. They always, always find evidence of abuse, but short of actual broken bones they leave the prisoners in the hands of their torturers. You’ll remember the Interior Ministry “unofficial jail” discovered and shut down last November. Evidently the US military decided after that to stop embarrassing the Iraq regime. Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, Military Moron, has lied about the inspections, claiming they’d uncovered no abuse. He should be fired. The Post says it has photographs, plural, but runs only one.
Bush: “The Iraqis are showing the world that democracy is worth the wait”. Maybe, but if my dinner arrived more than four months after I placed the order, I sure wouldn’t tip 15%.
Evidently chants of “death to Arabs” are common at Israeli soccer matches. Charming.
I just found an LA Times clip from God knows when with suggestions for California license plate slogans:
California: Omigod! Omigod!
Millions of People, Dozens of Stories
Where Anyone Can Get Elected Governor
Whatever
Bush went to the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, and demonstrated his “aren’t I the cutest thing ever” face. No one was buying.
Bush: “And the doctrine, if you harbor a terrorist you are equally as guilty as a terrorist, came right from my soul.”
Managed care: a shoot-out at the Palestinian health ministry was caused, according to the BBC, by Fatah gunmen “seeking better treatment for a hospital patient”.
A few days ago, I linked to a London Times article about postal carriers in Baghdad. Today’s Sunday Times has one about garbage men, who are increasingly being targeted. The Iraqi version of “First they came for the communists...” is gonna be a little strange. According to a Sunni militant interviewed by the paper, it is because they spy for the government and report when they find booby traps in rubbish heaps (at no point is there an explanation for why anyone would booby-trap a rubbish heap).
In a followup to the story about Abdul Rahman, the Afghan Christian convert, which doesn’t actually mention what he’s doing now that he’s in exile, the WaPo quotes an imam saying that if it’s Afghanistan’s democratic decision to kill apostates, “we ask that you not interfere, or else we will have no choice but to become suicide bombers.” No choice. None at all.
