Zarqawi death dance party: who was supposed to bring the balloons?

The US military has announced the death by air raid of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (Muss to his friends). Zarqawi was never as important inside Iraq as he was in Washington, where the Jordanian served as symbol of the Bush admin’s contention that insurgency in Iraq was largely the work of outside agitators. It’s hard to see what will change. After all, unlike our illegal immigrants, the Z Man was doing a job that many, many Iraqis are willing to do.

Still, in the Green Zone, Gen. Casey, Amb. Khalilzad and PM Maliki, seemingly the only Iraqi present except for an interpreter, held a kick-ass victory party. Later, there was cake.

A teeth-breaking defeat

A Taliban commander vowed to inflict a “teeth-breaking defeat” on British forces in Afghanistan. A good phrase, properly chilling, slightly reminiscent of The Iliad, but dude, have you seen British teeth?

The BBC, to whom he gave that interview, pointed out that the armed men who kept trooping through the frame were the same three guys over and over.

Have I been over-using “dude”? I blame Hurley on “Lost.”

Max Hastings writes in the Guardian that when British soldiers occupying Basra in 2003 were turned into policemen with no training (because being a cop is so easy that any guy with a gun and a uniform can just do it, right?), they were, “in effect, invited to invent their own system of local justice, because Bush and Blair had failed to make provision for any other.” And what they invented was “wetting” looters (by the way, about that word “looter” – Basra was under siege, with no economic activity going on; people trying to scavenge food were no more looters than were Katrina victims) in the canal, which we now know was a widespread practice. I’m not how soon it was ended after the 15-year old drowned.

Why yes I’d love some dessert. The still-warm heart of a baby with hot fudge sauce is my favorite too!

It’s a defense mechanism

Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki has ordered the release of 2,500 prisoners against whom there is no actual, you know, evidence. The first 600 have been thrown out of prison kicking and screaming and shouting, “Hell no, we won’t go! Let us back in! Do you know how fucking dangerous it is out there?”

Maliki has made some criticisms of Haditha. Here’s the response of James Jeffrey, the Coordinator for Iraq Policy at the State Department: “It’s a defense mechanism. ... I wouldn’t make too much out of it... There is a constant buzz in Iraq of what our troops did or didn’t do.” Buzz buzz. Sometimes the condescension reaches an entirely new level of refinement, and this was one of those moments.

Jeffrey also says that Haditha is “at this point nothing like Abu Ghraib.” It took me a minute to realize he wasn’t measuring it in terms of the body count or human suffering or sheer awfulness, but in terms of something much more important – public relations: “I think this will not have the same impact in terms of insurgents turning the population against us or turning opinion in the Arab world against us.” Yes, it’s all the insurgents’ fault. Buzz buzz buzz.

New low

In The Times, a headline about Iraq that’s hard to argue with: “Severed Heads Mark New Low.”

The NYT reports that the Pentagon will try to have only psychologists assist in the interrogation of prisoners at Guantanamo and elsewhere rather than psychiatrists, because the American Psychiatric Association has higher ethical standards than the American Psychological Association. What the NYT misses is that the Pentagon’s new standards (pdf) also allow for the use of detainees’ medical files for “any lawful law enforcement, intelligence or national security-related activity,” i.e., interrogation. Also, they reaffirm the use of force-feeding on sane hunger-strikers.

It’s what we call assimilation

In another speech on immigration today, Bush said, “I believe English is the key to unlocking opportunity in America.” If I had the patience, I’d count the number of grammatical and subject-verb-agreement errors in this speech. “It’s been what it takes to help somebody go from picking crops to owning a grocery store, or from cleaning the floors of an office building to running that office.” When was the last time an immigrant actually did that? Or anyone else, for that matter? “It’s what we call assimilation, as part of assimilating to be Americans.” Sorry, Webster, could you take another stab at defining that word? Oh, and just for laughs, could you try spelling it as well? “When immigrants assimilate into this society, they realize their dreams.” But remember: no dreaming in Spanish.

All that advice to immigrants was of course delivered to an audience of immig... no, wait, it was delivered at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Artesia, New Mexico. Guess they couldn’t find any of the millions of immigrants in this country for him to speak to, just like they couldn’t find any gay people (unless you count the re-closet cases at Exodus International) for Bush to explain his opposition to gay marriage to.

And why didn’t any of the MSM mention the presence of those “ex-gays” when reporting on Bush’s speech?

Those who can’t do, teach

3 years ago in Basra, several British servicemen forced 4 alleged looters into a canal “to teach them a lesson.” Because if there are three things the occupation of Iraq has been about, it’s education, education, education. However, the lesson being taught was not a swimming lesson and one of the Iraqis, a 15-year old, drowned. At their court martial, the servicemen complained that they themselves had not been adequately trained for the job of occupation (what, no lectures on core warrior values?), but the court decided not to teach them a “lesson,” and acquitted them, in the latest of a string of acquittals for occupation-related homicides. I suspect the Iraqi people are learning a lesson of their own.

Was that a little too belabored?

Speaking of education, in Denmark some masonry students complaining about the lack of internships built a wall across the entrance to the Education Ministry.

Bush and gay marriage, the love whose name he dares not speak

Bush gave his anti-gay marriage speech today, oddly enough while wearing his flight suit. It turned out to be only ten minutes long, much of it identical to his radio address Saturday, which I’ve already analyzed.

Acting on a precept he certainly didn’t learn from his mother, Barbara “Rhymes with socksucker” Bush, he decided that if he couldn’t say anything nice about gays and lesbians, he wouldn’t say anything about them at all, even as he advocated permanently restricting their rights. He again said that “As this debate goes forward, every American deserves to be treated with tolerance and respect and dignity,” but failed to see the difference between that and ignoring them completely, refusing to acknowledge their existence like a fart at a cocktail party. He not only has nothing to say about gays and lesbians and their families, he has nothing to say to them. (Update: In fact, there were, according to Tony Snow, no gay people invited to the meeting at which he gave this speech.) (But there were some “ex-gays.” Has anyone seen the full list of participants?)

Again, he fails to make much a case for going the literally extra-ordinary route of amending the Constitution. Here’s a bit of the speech which is structured as if it were a logical argument:

marriage is critical to the well-being of families. And because families pass along values and shape character [Just ask Jenna!], marriage is also critical to the health of society. Our policies should aim to strengthen families, not undermine them. And changing the definition of marriage would undermine the family structure.

Undermine it how? He does not say.

I suppose his recognition that engaging in rhetorical gay-bashing is no longer acceptable is encouraging, a sign of progress. But this is Bush, and Bush needs an enemy to excoriate, so it’s back to the activist judges, who are described as “over-reaching” (insert your own “reach-around” joke here) and “imposing their arbitrary will on the people,” leaving “no other choice” but to amend the Constitution. This is odd and contradictory as legal theory: he is claiming the decisions were arbitrary, i.e., not correct interpretations of the Constitution, but he proposes to change the Constitution anyway.

But then political theory has never been his long suit (by the way, when I referred to his arguments as sub-Federalist Papers on Saturday, I refrained from making a pun based on “Publius,” and I think I deserve some credit for that). In the days of this most imperial of presidencies, it’s interesting to see Bush make an assertion about power that doesn’t involve concentrating it in the executive branch. But what he does assert is horribly muddled: “A constitutional amendment would not take this issue away from the states, as some have argued. It would take the issue away from the courts and put it directly before the American people.” In fact it would ban the states from enacting same-sex marriage, and earlier in the speech he said that marriage was a “national question [which] requires a national solution,” so of course he wants to take the issue away from the states. And putting something “directly” before the American people would involve a national referendum, which he is not suggesting.

In today’s Gaggle, there was a tug of war over nomenclature:

Q So at what point is -- that’s what I’m trying to -- why on gay marriage is it not that important?

MR. SNOW: You mean, why on traditional marriage?

Q On the issue of gay marriage, yes.

MR. SNOW: It’s the issue of traditional marriage. This is the Family Marriage Amendment.

Hibhib Hubbub

The US occupation forces can’t seem to do anything, including merging into oncoming traffic and possibly flossing, without collateral damage. In the latest military oopsie, on Friday an infantry unit training on a base in Iraq accidentally fired a 155mm howitzer shell into the town of Hibhib, killing three people and damaging 6 houses. So this may not be the appropriate time to point out what a fun name that is. Say it with me, everyone: Hibhib, Hibhib, Hibhib.

As I mentioned last month, Cruz Bustamante’s campaign for California insurance commissioner consists entirely of telling people how much he’s weight he’s lost. So LAT columnist Steve Lopez tested his commitment by inviting him to a Mexican restaurant and ordering every fatty food on the menu, while interrogating him about the money he took (and has since returned) from insurance companies. At the end, Lopez asked him just what he had said he’d weighed that morning, and then took a scale out of his backpack...

A very people-focused and a very people-friendly force

Embarrassing deaths of the day: two 21-year olds think, as anyone would, that if sucking helium from a balloon is funny, then climbing inside an 8-foot helium balloon will be hilarious... The balloon advertised a condo complex, one of whose residents said, “This is not the kind of place where this happens.” As opposed to where?

Admitting that American troops are less than popular in Afghanistan, the commander of NATO troops in the country, Lt. Gen. David Richards, vows that when NATO replaces the Americans in southern Afghanistan next month, they will be “a very people-focused and a very people-friendly force.” Can’t make this shit up. Oh, and they’ll also be better drivers.

Condi Rice on Iraq, on Meet the Press: “So American forces are the solution here, not the problem.”

Do you think that in 100 years or so, dotty spoiled holo-vid stars, possibly even the clones of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, will be naming their children Haditha and Ramadi and Fallujah?

Couldn’t they find a sailor suit in Rummy’s size?

Hold the mayo

From Saturday’s NYT:

Marine commanders in Iraq learned within two days of the killings in Haditha last November that Iraqi civilians had died from gunfire, not a roadside bomb as initially reported, but the officers involved saw no reason to investigate further, according to a senior Marine officer.

So the Pentagon decided to pretend to believe the marines’ second story, knowing the first one had been a cover-up and, therefore, that there was something to be covered up. If they were ignorant of the Haditha Massacre, it was wholly wilful. Remember the initial “investigation” into My Lai, in which Colin Powell concluded “relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent”? Indeed, the WaPo informs us that the Captain Jeffrey Pool who dismissed the Haditha story as Al Qaeda propaganda, emailing reporters “I cannot believe you’re buying any of this,” was the very person who first released the roadside bomb story. Last paragraph of the WaPo story: “The Marine Corps still has not corrected its misleading Nov. 20 statement asserting that the Iraqi civilians were killed in a bomb blast. A Marine Corps spokesman didn’t return calls on Friday asking why it had not.”

Incidentally, Lance Corp. Ryan Briones, who took pictures at Haditha that were later erased, who spoke to reporters about carrying out bodies, and who 36 hours after returning stateside stole a pickup and crashed it spectacularly into a house, has just been charged not only for that, but also for pot possession from 2003. To a suspicious mind, this might suggest that the government is bringing the hammer down on him for... some reason.

And little 9-year old Iman Walid Abdul-Hameed, Haditha survivor and media voice par excellence, is demanding that the marines be executed.

Among the latest things banned by Iraq’s religious militias: falafel stands. Also, mayonnaise. And ice. Anything they didn’t have in Mohammed’s time (unless it shoots or blows up, of course) or which Bill O’Reilly... no, I won’t go there. The Sunday Times has the latest of what’s sure to be a long series of articles on how Iraqi women can’t leave their homes anymore. Freedom, ain’t it grand?

How George Bush serves the interests of all

With today’s radio address, Bush joined the battle in defense of heterosexual marriage. If he does as well in this fight as he’s doing “defending” Iraq, by 2009 there won’t be an intact marriage left anywhere in America. Something to look forward to.


At the end of the address, he made the ritual intonation that “every American deserves to be treated with tolerance, respect, and dignity. All of us have a duty to conduct this discussion with civility and decency toward one another, and all people deserve to have their voices heard.” Which is funny, because at no point does he actually mention the existence of, you know, the gays. It’ll be interesting to see if his longer speech on the subject Monday will also manage the feat of talking about “protecting” marriage without ever acknowledging who he proposes to protect it from. Homophobia without the homos, so to speak. Indeed, he claims, even gays will benefit: “Government, by recognizing and protecting marriage, serves the interests of all.” So what are you whining about, gay people?

Really, that “interests of all” thing is just breathtakingly obnoxious and dismissive.


Actually, it’s not true that he doesn’t name the enemy who marriage needs protection from: the dread activist judges. This is part of a completely insincere, sub-Federalist-Papers argument, that “in a free society, decisions about such a fundamental social institution as marriage should be made by the people -- not by the courts.” “In a free society”? So a society in which courts order the recognition of gay marriages is unfree? I say insincere since he affirms the right of “the people” to make such decisions democratically only so long as they don’t seem likely to support gay marriage, and even then the purpose of the constitutional amendment he supports is to close off the option for states or localities that might do so. There needs to be a poly sci word, along the lines of subsidiarity, for the idea that decisions should be made at whichever level of government is most likely to come to the “right” decision.

Some people, by the way, would argue that in a “free society,” the only “people” who get to decide about marriage are the people getting married.


This address is notable for its bland, evasive language, which is why I can’t wait for a full-length speech. The more people like Bush are forced to enunciate their prejudices, the better. Have you read anti-women’s suffrage pamphlets? Once society has moved beyond the laugh-it-out-of-court stage and opponents actually have to articulate a case, the weakness of that case becomes nakedly apparent. Today, Bush said that this issue is “critical” – necessitating amending the United States Constitution, no less – but didn’t say how it was critical. He said that heterosexual marriage “promotes the welfare of children and the stability of society” but did not say what will promote the welfare of the children of gay people and what the position of homosexuals (stop it! get your minds out of the gutters!) is in relation to society. Is he implying that gays destabilize society or that they are outside of it altogether? If heterosexual marriage is to be “honored and encouraged,” does society owe anything to the decision of two people of the same sex to commit themselves to each other? Should their unions be discouraged? ignored? I’m curious what word he’d even use to describe such commitments: obviously not marriage, but not partnerships, or unions either. Hell, I want to watch his chimp-like face as he tries to conceal his discomfort when forced to speak the words “gay,” “lesbian” and “ass-fucking.” Yes, I want to hear him talk at length about gay marriage, over and over.


(For anyone who wants more, here is a two-year old post which argues that traditional marriage isn't what it used to be and that opponents of gay marriage are sexists.)

A big public relations problem

About the March massacre in Ishaqi: BBC headline: “Troops Cleared of Iraq Wrongdoing.” Press Association headline: “US Army Cleared of Misconduct.” In fact, a news.google search shows 970 related stories. Who cleared the US Army? Full marks to anyone who saw past all that passive voice and guessed it was the US Army.

I would love to know the name of the Republican aide who described the various massacres in Iraq to the WaPo as “a big public relations problem.”

Speaking of public relations, the WaPo has some more details about the “core warrior values” course, including some of the scenarios used (If a roadside bomb has a detonation cord leading to a clearly marked clinic, can you blow the shit out of the clinic? Yes, yes you can.). The script says that soldiers “should think through the possible consequences of engaging a questionable target in an area heavily populated by noncombatants.” Which is funny, because that seems to have been precisely what they didn’t do in Ishaqi, even if you accept the military’s claim that the civilians were “collateral deaths” and not shot at close range, as the video of the bodies suggests.

Another superb military name, the retired general who was in charge of the taking of Baghdad in 2003 and now says war-planning was not so terrific: Major General Buford Blount.

The next freshman class at UCLA will have 96 black students out of 4,852 (and 20 of those are athletes), a lower percentage of blacks than the University of Spoiled Children (USC).

Things that shouldn’t happen, do happen

Rumsfeld says it’s not our fault that Iraq has gone belly-up: “The thing that held that country together before was repression and putting hundreds of thousands of people in jail and in mass graves.” Re Haditha, he uses the “99.9% of our military don’t shoot children, so why focus on the other .1%” line and the “We also know that in conflicts, things that shouldn’t happen, do happen” line (for the record, the first is a paraphrase, the 2nd a direct quote). Note that no one in the Bush admin seems able to condemn Haditha without adding caveats.

More on the “core warrior values” training: “The training package includes five possible scenarios, including encountering a roadside bomb and being engaged by enemy fire from a mosque or school... Servicemembers will discuss the ethical and legal issues in each scenario, and the proper reaction”. However, Brig. Gen. Donald Campbell, chief of staff of Multinational Corps Iraq reassures us, “The training will not overly sensitize servicemembers, because it will still emphasize every servicemember’s right to self-defense.” Phew. I know I was worried about service members becoming overly sensitized by this hippy-dippy core warrior values training.

Here, for no particular reason, are Bush & Cheney going to the swearing-in ceremony for OMB Director Rob Portman.

You’ve got to be a realist and understand that those kind of things do happen

Yesterday I asked, “Isn’t the president of the United States supposed to have other sources of information than old magazines?” Well, never mind, sorry I even brought it up. On Tuesday Bush was briefed by “Iran experts,” among them “hero in error” (as Chalabi liked to describe himself) Amir Taheri, the man responsible for the story about Iran requiring Jews to wear yellow pieces of cloth (and many, many other lies in the past).

There are now 89 hunger strikers in Guantanamo (using the Navy’s 9-missed-meals-in-a-row standard), of whom 6 are being fed by force (3 of those for 10 months now).

Earlier today I quoted Gen. Peter Chiarelli about Haditha (Bruce in comments noted that if 99.9% of 150,000 COW troops were doing their jobs blamelessly, as Chiarelli said, that leaves 150 running amok). The WaPo has more from the general, who may or may not be part of the 99.9%: “you’ve got to be a realist and understand that those kind of things do happen.” Now read that again and ask yourself what his intentions were in uttering that sentence, just what form he expects this realistic understanding to take.

The article says that the “core warrior values” training will last between 2 and 4 hours. Guess there aren’t that many core warrior values. There will be 36 slides, which I dearly hope will wind up online (“This is a child. Try not to shoot one of these. Click. This is a pregnant woman. Try not to shoot her in the head...”)

The Kenyan parliament passed a law to increase the penalties for rape and outlaw child prostitution, but it dropped provisions to criminalize marital rape, sexual harassment, gang rape and forcible female genital mutilation. MP Kenneth Marende explains the logic behind the former decision: “Kenyans can still have sex with their partners even when they are asleep so long as they are married.” So that’s okay then. They also added an intimidatory provision: women falsely accusing men of rape are to receive the same sentence as rapists.

Core warrior values

“If a little knowledge is dangerous, where is the man who has so much as to be out of danger?”
–T. H. Huxley

The Pentagon admits that US troops fired into the crowd after that fender-bender in Afghanistan Monday, after two days of lying about it and after Brig. Gen. Carter Ham blamed praised the Afghan authorities: “we should be cognizant of the fact that a freely elected government of Afghanistan managed this situation effectively. That could not have happened only a few short years ago.” 20 or so civilians were killed, if that’s your definition of effective. And you know I really do think that could have happened a few years ago: Afghanistan’s domestic rulers and foreign occupiers the last few decades haven’t exactly scrimped on the lethal crowd control. Anyway, the Pentagon is now claiming the troops acted in self defense in response to gunfire from the crowd that no one had previously thought to mention.

In response to the Haditha Massacre, US troops in Iraq will be given what some in the press are calling “ethics training,” although the military calls it “core warrior values,” which somehow doesn’t sound all that promising to me. Says Gen. Peter Chiarelli: “Of the nearly 150,000 coalition forces presently in Iraq, 99.9 percent of them perform their jobs magnificently every day. ... The challenge for us is to make sure the actions of a few do not tarnish the good work of the many.” Don’t you hate it when a few individuals massacre two dozen civilians and ruin it for the rest of the class? Chiarelli: “As military professionals, it is important that we take time to reflect on the values that separate us from our enemies.” For example, we eat crispy delicious bacon, they don’t. Values like that. Core values. Core warrior values. Mmm, bacon.

Condiplomacy

Condi had a news conference today so she could threaten and intimidate Iran. You could almost feel sorry for Iran. But she had a carrot as well as a stick. The US will join in talks with Iran if it can “persuasively demonstrate that it has permanently abandoned its quest for nuclear weapons.” This is of course inherently unprovable.

But what, you may ask, is there left to talk about if the Iranians have to agree to our demands before the talks even start? Well, Condi says, “we have many issues of concern with Iran that do not relate to the nuclear issue. ... Iranian behavior in Iraq... the terrorism that Iran continues to support...” Gosh, who wouldn’t do whatever they had to do to get into talks like that!

There’s a lot more about the things she’s unwilling to give Iran: diplomatic recognition (she is planning to enter into negotiations with a regime she will not accept as the de facto government of Iran?) or even a security assurance, a simple promise not to attack Iran.

Indeed, she warned that “If the Iranian regime believes that it will benefit from the possession of nuclear weapons, it is mistaken. The United States will be steadfast in defense of our forces and steadfast in defense of our friends and allies who wish to work together for common security.” I think she just threatened to nuke Iran.

“I think the last year and half or so -- year or so has really been about creating a climate of opinion about what is demanded of Iran. That we have done.” That climate? Arrogant with a 90% chance of hectoring.

And there’s more like that. It’s not about Iran giving up a nuclear program (I’m leaving to one side the not entirely irrelevant question of whether it actually has one), it’s about how Iran will do so: by a complete, abject, and very visible surrender to the awe and might of the world’s only superpower. This is all much more about America’s place in the world than Iran’s.

I don’t know what she does to Iran, but she scares the piss out of me.

That proud culture will be reinforced

Last week I reported on the death of the man who sent Checkers the dog to Richard Nixon. This week another important figure in presidential history has died: Ted Berkman, who wrote “Bedtime for Bonzo.” If he’d written a movie about a chimpanzee that didn’t blow quite as hard, maybe Reagan wouldn’t have been laughed out of the acting profession, George H.W. Bush wouldn’t have been vice president, and... well, you knew where I was going with this the second I said chimpanzee.

Here’s an unbiased headline from the AP: “Uribe’s Re-Election Also a Win for U.S.” It goes on to call Uribe a “law-and-order conservative” (unless you count the amnesty he gave all his death-squad buds). A “win for US” actually means “a triumph... for U.S. policymakers, who some observers say may be losing Latin America to a rising tide of leftist nationalism.” The article is a handy collection of imperialistic assumptions and language: the tide metaphor (the next sentence refers to a wave of leftist governments – possibly the reporter spent the holiday weekend at the beach), the idea that Latin America is something that the US can “lose,” the assumption that Latin American politics is all about us, as seen in the term “leftist nationalism,” nationalism being defined as the belief by Latin Americans that Latin America is not in fact something that the US can “lose.” What else can the US lose? Oil monopolies, of course. Thus, “nationalization of foreign-owned companies” is juxtaposed to “free market reforms.” The second half of the article is where it all falls apart, where it becomes clear that the Bushies don’t know how to turn this election victory into a rising tide of rightist internationalism, other than to point to Colombia repeatedly as a “regional model for the virtues of free trade and friendship with the United States,” much in the same way as the model of Iraqi democracy and freedom will transform the Middle East. How’s that one going again?

Another amusing AP headline: “Bush Offers to Help Catch Rwanda Criminals.” Because he did so well with Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden.

That offer came during a visit to the White House by Rwandan President Paul Kagame. Bush told Kagame, “I’m proud of your leadership.” Proud? In what way is Bush responsible for Kagame’s leadership? Asked about the Rwandan genocide, he utilized his favorite adjective once again: “The interesting thing about Rwanda today is that you have a President who understands that part of a successful society is for people to work hard on reconciliation” (whatever that means). I suppose you have to give him some credit today for test-driving some new adjectives. He described the genocide as a “real tragedy,” which is certainly correct, it wasn’t one of those fake tragedies. And he described it as “one of the most significant tragedies in modern history,” as opposed to one of those insignificant tragedies, I guess. We should all be thankful he didn’t describe it as an “interesting tragedy.” Oh, and Rwanda “can serve as an example for other societies that are troubled,” like, f’rinstance, Iraq. Rwanda, an example. So, first you have a genocide, and then you work hard on reconciliation, is that the game plan?

Asked about the Haditha Massacre, Bush said, “I am troubled by the initial news stories.” We’ve already heard that the first Bush knew of it was four months after the fact, when Time reported on it. It’s now more than 6 months later, and he’s still reacting to “initial news stories”? Isn’t the president of the United States supposed to have other sources of information than old magazines?

He went on, “I know this: I’ve talked to General Pete Pace about the subject, who is a proud Marine, and nobody is more concerned about these allegations than the Marine Corps.” Oh, I don’t know about that. The people of Haditha, they might be a little concerned too. And “if laws were broken” (he is so open-minded about whether the massacre was a legal massacre or an illegal massacre that he says this twice), then “the Marine Corps will work hard to make sure that that culture, that proud culture will be reinforced”. Which I guess means they’ll be writing poems and carving sculptures about it. What he’s doing here, as he did with the Rwandan genocide-followed-by-reconciliation, is welding a happy ending onto this story: sure there were 24 or so civilians killed, but in the end the proud culture is reinforced and we’re all the better for it. It’s like an after-school special but with a higher body count.

Bush, looking oh-so-comfortable as he is asked questions by reporters:

I rejoiced to see him enjoying himself playing croquet

In Britain, the pro-croquet forces strike back in the letter columns of The Times (where else?)

Sir, Three cheers for John Prescott! I rejoiced to see him enjoying himself playing croquet....

Sir, As the chairman of the one active croquet club in Cornwall, a large part of any difficulty in recruiting members is caused by the assumptions made about the game, fully illustrated by your third leading article of May 29....

South Dakota will get to vote in November on the severe restrictions on abortion enacted by the legislature. On a pragmatic level, this is good, assuming the vote goes the right way, and as an added bonus puts implementation of the law on temporary hold. The problem is that I don’t consider such a vote to be legitimate. A right is a right, not to be circumscribed or repealed by a referendum, not to be the subject of campaign commercials and junk mail.

Interesting Simon Jenkins op-ed in the Guardian on the lack of an exit strategy for Iraq, including the instant rejection by Blair and Bush of Maliki’s comment that foreign troops could be out within 18 months (today he said it could happen even earlier):

The hidden premise of Blair’s position is that British (and American) troops must by definition be a blessing to any nation they occupy. It is inconceivable that they could increase anarchy or that their departure might alleviate it. This arrogant assumption runs through every argument about Iraq at present. It is the last shred of imperialist illusion, held even by many who opposed the invasion. It is encapsulated in the brainless Tory proposition that in Iraq we must “finish what we started”.

A limit to the acceptable excuses

Iraqi PM Maliki announces, rather late in the day, some might say, that Iraq too will investigate the Haditha Massacre. He says, about Haditha and the raid on the mosque in Baghdad in March and all the other cases of civilians being collaterally damaged, “we will hold those who did it responsible,” possibly not having read through all of Paul Bremer’s edicts yet, like the one immunizing Americans from Iraqi law. He says “There is a limit to the acceptable excuses.” I wish he’d tell us what that limit is.

“Death to dog washers”?

Also, when Afghans are criticizing Americans’ driving, well...

There’s no way to say historically why something like this might have happened

British Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, already demoted for having had sex with his diary secretary in his offices, is now under pressure to resign altogether because he was spotted... playing croquet. (He’s the one on the right)


Okay, there’s slightly more to it, and you could click here to read about it, but wouldn’t you rather not know any more than that the Brits are having a scandal over croquet?

The alliterative Gen. Peter Pace says of the Haditha Massacre, “Fortunately, it does not happen very frequently, so there’s no way to say historically why something like this might have happened.” Yeah, massacres of civilians during a war, that can’t have happened more than two or three times historically.

For example, a newly discovered 1950 letter from the American ambassador to South Korea to Dean Rusk shows that it was the policy of the American military to shoot at refugees running from the fighting, as happened the next day at No Gun Ri (South Koreans, the people we were supposed to be saving). The massacre is well-known, except to Americans who tend to forget their war crimes, but that it followed a policy which was known to high officials is new.

False memorials

Near Kabul, a US convoy crashed into some cars while merging onto a highway after leaving Bagram, killing a few motorists and setting off a day of Road Rage Rioting. The interesting thing is how organized it seems to have been, with a demonstration in place to greet the convoy (and to be shot up in turn) as it reached its destination, which can’t have been more than 5 miles away.

There’s a new mass hunger strike at Guantanamo, dismissed by a Gitmo spokesmodel as an “attention-getting” move. So they did it on a holiday weekend? Commander Robert Durand, who is new to me, repeated the phrase of earlier Gitmo spokesmodels, that hunger striking is “consistent with al-Qaeda practice,” a phrase designed to smear without having to offer any proof of anything.

I might have left Memorial Day alone, except Bush used the day to hide (not for the first time) behind the corpses of American soldiers, to stand in front of ginormous flags,


to look all squinty and somber-like while standing next to men in uniform,


to look all squinty and somber-like while staring at flowers,



and to look all squinty and somber-like while staring at flowers and trying to figure out what to do with his fingers.


And then there’s the speech, dear God there’s the speech. After reading Haditha stories all week I’m not really in the mood to hear the dangerous fantasies about perfect saint-warriors that are the stock in trade of Memorial Day. Humans are complicated and messy, and it does them no honor to pretend to remember them by misrepresenting them as otherwise, to talk about how they all “answered the call to serve” (Greetings!) and how “All who are buried here understood their duty” and “understood that tyranny must be met with resolve” and “acted with principle and steadfast faith” (and automatic weapons) and whose deaths were all “sacrifices.” How do you mourn these figures of myth, when they’re not recognizably human? “On this Memorial Day, we look out on quiet hills, and rows of white headstones -- and we know that we are in the presence of greatness.” It is this sort of rhetoric that makes war seem clean and a worthy means of problem-solving, and which drives veterans who know that their actions and motives did not, because they are humans and not demi-gods, always match up to those ideals they are told they were supposed to have lived up to, to alcohol and violence and self-hatred and suicide.

Speaking of less-than-perfect humans, whoever transcribed the speech had it end, “May God Bless the Untied States of America.”

How much longer do I gotta stand here looking all squinty and somber-like?

Really, how much longer? I wanna ride my bike, and that brush won’t clear itself.

Wherein we examine numerous and divers atrocities: Haditha, The Da Vinci Code, and the names celebrities give their children

Angelina Jolie wants the proceeds from the sale of pictures of her and Brad Pitt’s genetic experiment daughter Shiloh to go to UNICEF. The pictures will be sepia-toned and accompanied by that plaintive Ken Burns violin music. Shiloh indeed.

Speaking of mutant hell-spawn, X-Men 3 has overtaken the box office receipts of The Da Vinci Code, which posits that Jesus lived, married Mary Magdalene, and has descendants, who when pissed off extrude long claws made of adamantium. I can’t think why it’s been so long since I’ve gone to a movie theater.

The WaPo suggests that the Haditha Massacre isn’t much exercising the Iraqis, because the unceasing violence has left them numb. One massacre more or less isn’t going to affect their opinion of us at this point. Actually, the stories are all beginning to run together for me: a bomb on a bus, assassination of a Sunni tribal head, member of parliament shot, battle between insurgents and the Iraqi army with maybe 20 dead on each side. And that was just today (Sunday). Tomorrow’s another day.

If Haditha is really only an issue for us, I wonder what the reaction of ordinary Vietnamese people was to My Lai?

The LA Times has the first interview with a member of the unit at Haditha. It doesn’t add much to our knowledge, but there is a disturbing bit that I’d ordinarily link to with a warning, but since it will disappear behind the LAT’s pay wall in I think a week, I’ll put it in comments.

Russia, still a little unclear on the whole “rights” concept

Moscow’s mayor having already banned what was to be the city’s first gay pride march, the city has now also banned a planned gay conference and festival, the city’s chief of security saying that all public expression by gays must be outlawed because “they violate our rights.”

And really, what’s wrong with a dude gettin’ it on with another dude?


Military name of the day: the British chief of defense staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup.

To enliven a dull news day (and because I don’t feel like looking into why the East Timorese are killing each other), some more London Review of Books (LRB) personals. I understand there’s to be a book of these published sometime soon.

The average person contains enough iron in their body to make a small nail. Not me, I’ve got about a tent peg’s worth. Man, 57, enjoys licking railings. Box no. 10/05

Drooling, toothless sociopath (M, 57) seeks F any age to help make this abandoned petrol station kiosk feel more like home. Must bring shoes (size 10). Box no. 10/06

Justify my strop. 24/7 PMS-suffering woman seeks man to 35 prone to inadvertently saying the wrong thing (which is everything) at the wrong time (which is always). If you whistle, I will kill you. You have been warned. Chocolate (lots of it, please) to box no. 10.08

Although this is an advert that screams excitement, the man who placed it (historian, 54, enjoys air-fix modelling) is strangely subdued. Box no. 10/09

I intend to keep the precise contents of this personal ad secret. Box no. 10/10

All humans are 99.9% genetically identical, so don’t even think of ending any potential relationship begun here with ‘I just don’t think we have enough in common’. Science has long since proven that I am the man for you (41, likes to be referred to as ‘Wing Commander’ in the bedroom). Box no. 10/11

World of the Strange! LRB reader (F, then 36) places personal advert in 2001 for man to 40 who loves literature, the arts, and cycling in Italy. She receives no responses whatsoever but duly notes over the course of the next five years the number of male advertisers to 40 who enjoy literature, the arts and cycling in Italy (there were 13 of them). Is the reason they didn’t reply to her advert because they were blind to her outrageous beauty or because she lived in a house in which an old soldier had died upon returning from the Great War in 1918 and had subsequently cursed all future inhabitants, preventing them from ever being happy (this same curse also prevents inhabitants of the house from being able to make omelettes or perform basic house chores such as washing dishes and opening council tax bills)? F, now 41, believes it to be the latter and WLTM M to 45 with some knowledge of exorcism rituals, direct debits, and the best place for bulk paper plate purchases. Box no. 10/04

On 15 March, 1957, Commander J.R. Hunt of the United States Navy landed at Key West Florida in his non-rigid airship having travelled for 264 hours and 12 minutes without once refuelling. Coincidentally, that’s the same length of time I’ve spent without once making contact with a woman (apart from my mother, who doesn’t count, but who only ever asks me what I’d like for breakfast – it’s eggs, I like eggs for breakfast, poached, please, on two slices of granary bread). Is this a world record? Answers, please, to 37-year old male idiot. Box no. 08/03

Another picture from Bush’s visit to West Point, which I might as well make into a caption contest for the three of you actually looking at this blog this long weekend. What is he saying to Valedictorian Jessamyn Jade Liu? And no references to ping pong balls, please.

Because nothing says “I’m sorry” like snipers

The Haditha massacre story seems to be heating up, as it did not do after the initial Time magazine article in March, because the media have been waiting since then for the Pentagon to do the investigating for them. This is a little troubling because the Pentagon’s track record is not good, not just on Abu Ghraib but on Haditha itself. When the Marines’ first story (the civilians were killed by an IED) was disproved, the Pentagon simply accepted their second story (gun battle) without investigating. Without the Time article, that would have been the end of it (unlike after My Lai, no American military personnel came forward to tell the truth). Dunno, maybe it’s just me, but if US Marines are pointing guns at four-year olds and pulling the trigger, I’d like that looked into. A detail from the London Times, which sent a reporter to talk to a 10-year old survivor: “An American unit attended the funeral to apologise, but not before it had positioned snipers around the mourners”. Hearts and minds, eh?

Who wears short shorts?

Message to Iraqis: when exercising your new freedoms (and we’re still waiting for a “thank you” for them, by the way), don’t wear shorts. That is all.

Quitting is not an exit strategy

Rumsfeld yesterday defended the number of troops sent to Iraq, saying that every single general, except maybe the one he fired, said that it was the right number. And you can’t suggest that Rummy doesn’t appreciate being contradicted, facing hard facts and hard questions, because after all he gave this interview to... Larry King. “Now, is it the right number? Time will tell.” Jeez, Rummy, checked your inbox lately? Time has told.

What you’ve gotta love about Republicans is that they can invade a country and make it sound like a ‘60s welfare program: “The second risk [of sending “too many” troops] is you create a dependency. You do all the work for the Iraqis, instead of pushing them and having them do the work.” Yeah, can’t turn the whole country into a bunch of shiftless hippies; “push” them into a civil war, that’ll toughen em up.

And he insists that “Quitting is not an exit strategy.” Dude, it really kinda is.

Larry asked him how he felt signing letters to relatives of dead soldiers. “Annoyed that I got caught using that autosigner.” OK he didn’t say that. He did say that it doesn’t affect his sleep because he reads history before he goes to bed. I bet he doesn’t get asked to give a lot of jacket quotes.

Asked about his meetings with families of dead soldiers, this is the adjective he chose to apply to those meetings: “forward-looking.”

Suspender Man brought up Robert McNamara having recanted on Vietnam. Here is how foreign the concept of guilt is to Rummy: when King said, “He lives with a lot of pain,” Rummy, totally missing the point, replied, “He does. As a matter of fact, he has just been ill, but he’s much better.”

Asked about Cheney, Rummy utters the understatement of the year: “Well, he doesn’t spend any time trying to make people like him.”

Asked about Bush, Rummy utters the mis-statement of the year: “He is enormously talented, bright,” adding, “I just spent an hour and a half with him. And he must have asked 50 questions of John Abizaid and me and General Pace.” CONTEST: what are some of those questions? “Can I have a cookie? Can I have a cookie? How ‘bout now? Can I have a cookie?...”

Oh, and Larry King being Larry King asked Rummy if he watched American Idol. “Heck, no!”

I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner

During the Bush/Blair press conference, the former admitted that saying “bring them on” may have been, you know, undermisinterpretated in certain parts of the world. “I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner, you know.” That’s true: since July 2003 the sophistication of his discourse has astonished us all.

Of course earlier, he’d once again praised Maliki’s declaration that he would use “maximum force” against the insurgents. Actually, I don’t have that much of a fix on Maliki yet, but he does seem to be a bit of a blowhard.

Indeed, when asked to respond to Maliki’s claim that his regime would be in charge of Iraqi security within 18 months, Bush made his usual stock comment that “our commanders on the ground will make that decision” and “the conditions on the ground will make the decision” and politics won’t make the decision. Of course he was on autopilot, but he accidentally suggested that Maliki a) has nothing to do with the decision, b) is just engaging in politics.

Caption contest, and do try to express yourselves maybe in a little more sophisticated manner:

There was a young man from Crawford

Today, Bush went to a Limerick Generating Station in Pennsylvania. Which is a nuclear plant.


When that Eli Lilly heir bequeathed $100 million to Poetry magazine, I suggested that they “may just blow it all on a crash project to find a word that rhymes with orange,” but it never occurred to me that mad poet-scientists could invent a nuclear-powered limerick generator. Stop the madness! Stop the madness!

He explained economics to the plant workers – who all come from Nantucket – in a way that was utterly simplistic while not actually being true: “I think it’s important that we’re the economic leader of the world, because when you’re the leader it helps the folks who live in your country.” Naturally, this involves cutting taxes: “We need to be able to be a society that says, you get to earn more of that which you earn.”

We’ve talked about Bush’s little verbal tics, how he always says things are “interesting” and how he “understands” things and even “fully understands” them, and how he “appreciates” everyone (yesterday he said that he appreciated being on a stage with Dennis Hastert, and I tastefully declined to make the obvious joke). But there’s also the “in other words” tic, and today he provides a lovely example: “nuclear power is abundant and affordable. In other words, you have nuclear power plants, you can say, we’ve got an abundant amount of electricity.” However, he does admit that nuclear power plants are “highly risky.” No, wait, he means economically risky, because of all the regulations and lawsuits. So we’ll get rid of all those, then remove any remaining risk by having the federal government insure the plants in case of meltdowns. Because nuclear plans are necessary for a glowing better future.

Not that he doesn’t see the problems: “I understand the issue of waste”. Sure, because he himself is a complete waste of spa- ... oh, sorry, he meant nuclear waste. Fortunately, he has the answer to that: faith-based science. “I’m a believer that Yucca Mountain is a scientifically sound place to send the waste”. Can I hear an amen?

And then they let him wander around the control room for a while.



If you see on CNN that limericks have mutated into giant sonnets and are rampaging through the Pennsylvanian countryside, you’ll know why.

The rented bicycle for the infidels

Here’s a nice put-down, from a Taliban commander encountered by a London Times reporter at a roadblock: “We will also hunt the puppet Afghans who are the rented bicycle for the infidels.”

A year ago, when the Supreme Court ruled that eminent domain could be used for the benefit of purely private profit, I wrote sarcastically, “I’m sure we will see many Wal-Marts condemned and the land turned over to mom & pop stores.” In fact, the small town of Hercules, CA, a few miles north of Berkeley, is under threat of a Wal-Mart moving in and will use eminent domain to seize the land Wal-Mart wants to build on.

Hollywood simply has to be stopped. There are plans for big-screen versions of Kung Fu and Welcome Back Kotter.

Pentagon website headline: “Suicide Bombings Mask Political Progress.” Yeah, that’ll do it.

Belarus has yanked “The Da Vinci Code” after four days because Christian groups found Tom Hanks’s hair offensive. The replacement: “Memoirs of a Geisha.”

Frustrated Taleban, incremental marching, and running the country like a chef. Pass the ketchup.

I’ve been waiting for a couple of days to see if the Pentagon website would have something to say about the Afghan bombings. And today, there is a glancing reference in a story whose headline on the main page is “Afghan Troops’ Progress Frustrates Taliban,” though if you click on it, the headline is “Afghan Violence Reflects Afghan Troops’ Progress, Taliban Frustration.” Evidently, and stop me if you’ve heard this before, the increase in violence is a sign of the enemies’ desperation. After the massacre, Gen. Carter Ham, a long-time favorite of this blog and the possessor of the most WASPy name in all Christendom, has the gall to talk about “the great measures we take to try to protect noncombatants.”

Bush said at his press conference with Olmert that oh sure Iraq is bad, “If one were to measure progress on the number of suiciders, if that's your definition of success, I think it gives -- I think it will -- I think it obscures the steady, incremental march toward democracy we're seeing.” Somebody noted yesterday that “incremental” is his new favorite word, although he seems to have confused it with “imperceptible.”

I didn’t find any material in it worth making fun of, but yesterday Bush gave a speech on The War Against Terror (TWAT) to the National Restaurant Association, which is pretty funny in and of itself. In the q&a, somebody praised him for running the country “the way a chef would run the country.”

Olmert said that Israel will go ahead with the plan to spend money on health care for the Palestinians, using taxes collected from the Palestinians and illegally held by Israel. Although when he said it, it sounded a lot more generous than when I said it.

Kandahar ER

Yesterday, it was Maliki who expressed the adorably naive notion that he could say when foreign troops would leave parts of his country. Today, it’s Hamid Karzai, uttering faux outrage over the deaths of civilians in American bombing raids (as opposed to the governor of Kandahar, who said “accidents” happen). Deaths which are contrary to his explicit instructions: “on several occasions in the past, the president [yes, this is his statement: he’s doing that obnoxious third-person thing] had called on the coalition forces to be highly cautious to avoid civilian casualties during their military operations and not to be swayed by terrorists’ tactics who use people’s homes as a shelter.” Indeed, he “condemned” that tactic, but only expressed “concern” at the bombing of a civilian town. He also helpfully suggested to Afghan civilians that they resist attempts by terrorists to enter their homes. Gee, he makes it sound so simple. Puffed-up moron.

Some pics of the people beneath the bombs. There were females wounded as well, but as ever they are hidden away.






(Update: his name, by the way, is Mohammad Imran.)

Really, who picked out that tie?

John Bolton, he of the mustache, said that America’s decision to come to terms with Libya was a subtle hint to Iran that if they just do what we tell them to do, “their regime can stay in place”.

When Tony Blair made his ever-so-secret trip to Iraq today, PM Maliki stood next to him and announced that British troops would be leaving two provinces next month, and that Iraqi troops will be in complete charge of all the provinces except Anbar and Baghdad by the end of the year. Of course this won’t happen, and Americans keep saying such decisions will be “conditions-based,” as did Blair, who said there was no timetable. I wonder who gets to break the news to Maliki that it’s not actually a decision he or any other Iraqi will be making.

Is that the tie you’d choose for a trip to a war zone?

Ah, it matches the carpet, so to speak.

The Iraqi government I keep hearing described bears little resemblance to the one that actually exists. Blair said it was “directly elected by the votes of millions of Iraqi people.” A directly elected government would have taken office immediately after the elections, not after five months of haggling. Bush said today, “Although Iraq’s new leaders come from many different ethnic and religious communities, they’ve made clear they will govern as Iraqis.” Again, five months of haggling about which sects would get which ministries.

Blair says that with this directly elected government, “There is now no excuse for people to carry on with terrorism and bloodshed.” So he thought there was an excuse up until now?

The US heavily bombed the small Afghan town of Azizi, killing, it claims with no plausibility whatsoever, 80 Taliban fighters and maybe one or two civilians. The US position is the usual “How dare they hide behind civilians” crap – Maj. John Yonts (a Dr. Seuss name if ever I heard one) said the rebel leaders were “responsible for the deaths of those women and children” killed by American bombs. In fact, the Taliban were in a madrassa which was bombed (it was nighttime so I assume it was otherwise unoccupied); they then ran out of it and into other houses, which were then bombed. What else would you expect them to do? Stand in the middle of an open field, waving their arms? The villagers, the London Times reports, take a different view from Yonts and blame the people with the airplanes. You can blame the Taliban tactics all you like, and of course they were risking the lives of those villagers, but the Americans chose to bomb civilian houses at night, being more interested in killing Taliban than in not killing civilians.

I hear the Counterinsurgency Center for Excellence is totally a party school

Why does anyone buy arms from the US? The US is refusing to sell Venezuela the replacement parts to keep its F-16s flyable, and claims that Venezuela must get US permission to sell them to China or Iran, as it is threatening to do. So the US took their money, tries to dictate what they can and can’t do with the product they bought, and won’t support that product. Who do they think they are, Microsoft?

My question is, if Venezuela can’t get spare parts, how could Iran?

The military thinks the way to solve its problems in Iraq is to keep popping out new organizations. I know, said Gen. George Casey, let’s create a Counterinsurgency Center for Excellence and... OK, half of you think I made that up; we’re simply not going to be able to go on with this paragraph until you’ve confirmed that it exists by clicking here. Did you know that the “best tactic in counterinsurgency warfare” is to “get out of the vehicles and walk”? That’s just one of the things they teach at the Wayne and Garth Excellent Counterinsurgency Center for Excellence, where students are also taught to... wait for it... “think outside the box.” For example, “there are certain things you can do that are not helpful, like the escalation of force. Let’s really think about, ‘Do we have to shoot our weapons to warn people?’” Cuz, see, and just hear me out here, “If we do escalation of force and it results in some needless casualties, then you haven’t created a lot of support for what we’re trying to do.” So evidently you can major in The Totally Fucking Obvious, with a minor in Duh Studies.

Another new organization: the National Unity Office, a group within the Coalition forces which will “interface with the [Iraqi] government to help them achieve their goals.” Another idea of Gen. Casey, who believes that there are three pillars for Iraq’s unity government (UG) to be successful: unity, security and prosperity (or, as I’d rearrange it for acronymous reasons, prosperity, unity and security).

Bareskin, geddit, bear skin, huh huh?

Pictures from a PETA protest against the use of bearskin hats by the guards at Buckingham Palace. Don’t say I never did nuthin’ for ya.