Oh no she dinnt!

The Queen. Of England. Quoted Groucho Marx today. The Queen did. Thusly: “As Groucho Marx once said ‘Anyone can get old - all you have to do is to live long enough.’”

Oh, it’s on.



It’s all about the hats.

Hard

Speaking of election-year pandering, they just had a little ceremony to sign the bill allowing the FCC to impose, ahem, stiffer fines on broadcasters for what Bush called “obscene, profane and indecent material.” He praised the Congressmen (I use the term advisedly: there were ten men and no women present. I noticed that too in a picture a week or two ago of sponsors of the anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment) three times for “working hard” on the bill. Although these days Ted Stevens (seen here wearing a white suit to represent his purity) has to take a little blue pill to work hard.


That’s Rep. Joe Barton of Texas sucking his thumb, or whatever the hell he’s doing.

Nobly struggling

On this day when American deaths in Iraq have hit 2,500, the House of Representatives is debating, if that’s the word for this empty-headed grandstanding, a resolution against setting a deadline to remove troops from Iraq and which “declares that the United States will prevail in the Global War on Terror, the noble struggle to protect freedom from the terrorist adversary.” (Purple emphasis added) I may or may not have more to say about this tripe-fest later, but it seems the Pentagon put together a 74-page debate prep book which attacks the notion of a deadline as “cut and run” and warns of the dire consequences of leaving “before the job is done.” This is a gross breach of the rules of democracy: the military does not get to dictate to the elected representatives of this nation what its job is or when that job is done.

Naturally, I want to read this thing, which the AP seems to be keeping to itself. If anyone sees it online, please share with the rest of the class in comments or by email.

Bush press conference: I sense something different happening in Iraq

Transcript.

Number 869 on the list of phrases that Bush uses over and over that grate on my nerves until I snap: “killing innocent lives.” It’s either 1) killing innocent people, or 2) taking innocent lives. FUCKING CHOOSE ONE AND STOP KILLING THE INNOCENT ENGLISH LANGUAGE!

Sorry. All better now.


Darn dangerous: “I’d like to close Guantanamo, but I also recognize that we’re holding some people that are darn dangerous”. And we have to recognize the real victim here: him. “Sometimes we get criticized for sending some people out of Guantanamo back to their home country because of the nature of the home country. It’s a little bit of a Catch-22.” Yup, damned if you torture them yourself, damned if you give them to someone else to be tortured. And Gitmo “provides an excuse, for example, to say the United States is not upholding the values that they’re trying to encourage other countries to adhere to.” Note how he tries to delegitimize criticism with that word “excuse.”


There’s something happening here / What it is ain’t exactly clear: “I sense something different happening in Iraq.”

You gotta want it: “I appreciated very much the agenda [Maliki]’s laid out. In other words, he’s got a plan to succeed. And I appreciated their determination -- it’s not just his determination, but their cabinet’s determination to succeed. In other words, part of the success in Iraq depends upon the Iraqis and their will and their desire.” And later: “one of the reasons I went to Iraq was to be able to sit down with an Iraqi government to determine whether or not they have the will to succeed... [to] expel any doubt in my mind as to whether or not we have a partner that is going to do the hard work.” That’s why he brought his trusty will-o-meter. To misspell expel any doubt in his mind.


I like these kids; they got moxie: And rappel repel expel them he did: “And so doubts about whether or not this government can -- has got the will to go forward was expelled. That’s why I went. In other words, sitting here in America, wondering whether or not these people have got what it takes can create uncertainty. I’ve eliminated that uncertainty.”


Condescend much?: “I made it clear to the government there that it’s up to them to succeed.”

But it’s not all will and desire. Another part of success, at least for Bush, is defining success downwards. He said there won’t be “zero violence” in Iraq. Indeed, if you use violence to measure whether this is “a successful experience” (!), “then it’s not going to happen. All that does is give the power of -- a handful of murderers to determine success.” Don’t get him wrong, though: “Obviously, we’d like violence to go down” (phew), but “the reason why I said that we shouldn’t use the level of -- have a zero-violence expectation is because there are other measures to determine success, starting with political measures.” Also, cheese production.

Asked how much less violence he wanted, in, like, round numbers: “Enough for the government to succeed. In other words, the Iraqi people have got to have confidence in this unity government, and reduction in violence will enable the people to have confidence.”


Al Qaeda philosophy watch: “But al Qaeda is real; their philosophy is a real philosophy; they have ambitions.” You’ll remember that on Monday they didn’t have a philosophy.


On addressing the troops: “You know, when you’re in a theater like that, it’s important to hear words of congratulations sometimes, to hear that their efforts are appreciated and doing hard work. And I got to do that.” The congratulating part, he means, he got to do that, not the hard work part.

I have come today to personally show our nation’s commitment, and say is that the time?

Maliki is implementing security measures, a crackdown, martial law, call it what you will, in Baghdad. They’re calling it “Advancing Forward Together,” unless of you course you want to advance forward in a car on a Friday, or after 8:30 at night. Oh, and advance forward slowly and carefully when approaching the numerous checkpoints now being established. Freedom, ain’t it grand. Baghdad residents will have noted that George Bush can still just swan in whenever he feels like.

They will also have noticed that when he said “I have come today to personally show our nation’s commitment to a free Iraq,” he was on a five-hour visit.

Just saw the video of Bush in Baghdad, and there’s a priceless visual you can’t get from a mere transcript: when he talked about looking Maliki in the eyes, he literally turned to look him in the eyes, and this meant that Maliki, who was seated next to him, had to turn his head towards Bush. (The moment is 80 seconds into this Fox video clip, after a [sigh] 15-second commercial.)

Bush goes to Baghdad: And all of it makes sense to me

In retrospect, the ruse seems painfully transparent: Bush was going to spend two days discussing Iraq policy. Two days! Policy!

No, the only thing these clowns plan in that sort of detail is a photo op. We’re informed this one took a month of planning. And what a plan it was! Wheels within wheels: oh sure, when Bush started fake yawning at 7:45 and saying he was going to turn in and read. Of course no one was fooled – read! what a kidder! – but they just figured that any second Condi was going to make some similarly lame excuse to absent herself – have to brush my teeth, takes a really long time with the gap, you know! – and then the boys could get on with the traditional game of “Deliverance,” in which Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns, who’d been wondering why he’d been invited, is jumped, stripped naked, told he has a purdy mouth, and given a two-minute head start.

So it’s off to the Green Zone for George Bush! In a fleet of helicopters and, despite what CNN may have told you, Bush wore the same flak jacket as these guys, though perhaps without the pee smell Tony Snow detects arising from Dan Barlett’s.


I said perhaps. Funnily enough, there seem to be no pictures of Bush in that get-up.

It was Bush’s first meeting with Nouri Maliki, seen here having an attack of the vapors.


Who, by the way, was the genius who positioned Maliki in front of an American flag?


(Update: Bob of Bob’s Links and Rants has an uncropped version of the picture above this one, which shows that he’s standing in front of an even bigger American flag. Maybe he just likes standing in front of American flags. Maybe he thinks they’re pretty or something.)

It was all going swimmingly, until Bush started speaking. “I appreciate you recognizing the fact that the future of this country is in your hands.” “We discussed the security strategy. We discussed an economic strategy, a reconstruction strategy. And all of it makes sense to me.” “[I]f given the right help, I’m convinced you will succeed, and so will the world.” The world will succeed if given the right help? From where, Rigel 7?

Hey sparky, no one walks in front of the king.
Then he went to speak to the troops. He told them, “I thank you for your sacrifice... Your sacrifice is noble and your sacrifice is important.” How reassuring. Still, being ordered to sit through a pep talk by George Bush is quite a sacrifice.

He told them that he’d given Maliki his patented ophthalmological test: “Today, I have come to not only thank you, but to look Prime Minister Maliki in the eyes -- to determine whether or not he is as dedicated to a free Iraq as you are, and I believe he is.” Yay, he passed the eye test! Just like Putin!

“We don’t expect the Iraqi government to look like the American government.” Except for that one squat, squinty guy. Oh, and their agriculture minister has a purdy mouth, just like Mike Johanns. “We expect an Iraqi government to honor its traditions and its histories and its religious faiths. But we do expect the Iraqi government to honor the right of every man, woman and child to live in a free society.” Dude, it’s one or the other.

Treated better in death

Gen. William Caldwell, waving the military’s autopsy of Zarqawi, says, “The Iraqi people deserve the facts, to know that the personal threat of Zarqawi was eliminated and the fact that he was treated better in death than he treated others in life.” I’m not sure what, if anything, that actually means, although I know I’d feel better-treated if I were only autopsied when I was actually dead.

Another in our ongoing series, “Real News or The Onion?”: The United States Marines and the Iraqi Army are going around to mosques delivering air conditioners and prayer rugs, in what is called Operation Cool Carpet.

Bush dragged various generals and members of the Cabinet out to Camp David to strategerize about Iraq. Including, for some mysterious reason, the secretary of agriculture. Chimpy eloquently summed it all up for the press: “We all agree that we have got to continue to help this new government move forward.” Do you suppose there was a lot of discussion about that? Or about this: “The message to the Iraqi government is, is that we stand with you, that what you’re doing is important”.


What else did they talk about? I know this will surprise all of you: “We spent a lot of time in talking about energy and oil.” And what about oil? “My own view is, is that the government ought to use the oil as a way to unite the country”. Sounds sticky. Now I’ve often pointed out that Bush knows only one adjective. But when he’s talking about his favorite subject, oil, that adjective has a friend: “There’s some unbelievably interesting exploration opportunities.”


Let’s talk philosophy for a minute. Bush, today: “But the enemy doesn’t stand for anything. ... They have no positive philosophy.” And in an interview with Al Arabiya last October: “They don’t have a philosophy.” But 11 days before that: “And we’re facing an enemy that is ruthless and cold-blooded, an enemy that actually has a philosophy, and the philosophy is so opposite of ours, it is the exact opposite of what America stands for.” And in February: “Ours is an enemy that has no conscience, but they do have a philosophy.” And in March: “I see them bound by a philosophy with plans and tactics to impose their will on other countries.” And 18 days ago: “They have a point of view, they have a philosophy”. So, George, philosophy or no philosophy?


In all these pictures, it looks like Condi was really excited to be invited out to Camp David, only to find when she got there that other members of the cabinet were there too.

The Interagency Team on Iraq has t-shirts now?

And don’t they look a little young? (click for larger image)

A good PR move to draw attention

Colleen Graffy, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, says that the Gitmo suicides did not value human life (click here for the 7½ minute audio clip), including their own (the valuable human life which the US still refuses even to name [Update: they are Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi Al-Utaybi, Yassar Talal Al-Zahrani, and Yemeni Ali Abdullah Ahmed; the Saudi government named its citizens), and then demonstrates her own high regard for human life by calling the suicides “certainly... a good PR move to draw attention,” a “tactic to further the jihadi cause.” She almost sorta had a point – that the actions were a statement aimed at the world, not just a gesture of despair aimed inwards – but then she just had to append that casually callous adjective “good.” Graffy knows all about good PR, because she works for Karen Hughes making the US beloved throughout the Muslim world. (Here’s an interview she gave the BBC in March about Guantanamo).

The outrageous quotes I’ve been relating the past 2 days have been about the US desperately trying prevent these people being seen as victims and martyrs, to portray as vocal, active and dangerous those from whom all voice and action had been removed. When you’ve been working tirelessly to silence these prisoners – no speeches in court, no interviews by UN inspectors, much less journalists, no letters to their families, no suicide notes – and they still manage to communicate with the outside world through the only medium left them, their dead bodies, perhaps that seems like a “good PR move.” When you’ve been trying to reduce these prisoners to entirely passive bodies, employing physical violence to break even their attempts to refuse food, only to see them retake their autonomy one last time in the only way not closed off to them, perhaps that seems like an “act of asymmetrical warfare” to you. The more totalitarian the system, the louder any act of defiance seems.

I’m feeling a little lazy and Deadwood’s on soon, so let’s assume this paragraph is something devastatingly clever linking 1) the Bushite fury that the Gitmo prisoners might be perceived as victims of a system of detention without end or hope with 2) the stuff about Zarqawi being used by the Bushies as a symbol, a more or less mythical figure only marginally related to the actually existing human being named Zarqawi.

Three Square Blocks of Kabul Afghan President Karzai will distribute guns to tribesmen, who are supposed to use them against Taliban. He will call those tribesmen “community police.” He does not see how this could possibly backfire.

Caption contest, if you’re so inclined:

Bring out your anonymous dead, in a humane and culturally sensitive manner

According to White House spokesmodel Christie Parell, Bush expressed serious concern about the Guantanamo suicides and “stressed the importance of treating the bodies in a humane and culturally sensitive manner.” Yes, I can sooooooo hear those words coming out of Chimpy’s mouth.

And all three left notes. Will we ever see them?

And the Pentagon got a fatwa from a tame imam allowing them not to bury the bodies within 24 hours, so that autopsies can be performed. Yes at Guantanamo cultural and religious sensitivity is job 1.

Speaking of nameless dead people, the Pentagon now admits the existence of a girl, aged 5 to 7, who died in the bombing assassination of Zarqawi, whose existence they’d previously denied. No explanation was given for how they could have misplaced a little girl’s corpse for just long enough that it didn’t cast a pall over the victory party.

An act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us

Although the Supreme Court has restricted the use of the death penalty to cases of murder, the governor of Oklahoma has signed a bill for the execution of repeat child molesters.

There are no Iraqi military hospitals; wounded Iraqi soldiers must somehow pay for their own medical care.

Three Guantanamo inmates hang themselves. All were former hunger-strikers who had been forcibly fed (at least according to the Sunday Times of London, the only paper with this detail). Doubtless the Pentagon will describe them as using methods “consistent with Al Qaeda training” and just looking for attention.

Indeed: after writing that, I found that Rear Admiral Harry Harris, commander of the US Joint Task Force Guantanamo, has described the suicides thus: “They are smart. They are creative, they are committed. They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.” (horrified emphasis added).

The Pentagon still won’t release their names and doubtless if they left notes those will be suppressed too. Even in death they are un-persons whose thoughts and feelings must be silenced, their actions explained only by Harry “Harry” Harris and his ilk. The Pentagon says that the detainees “are not common criminals” and that the corpses were treated “with the utmost respect,” because if there is one thing Guantanamo is all about, it’s respect.

Speaking of respect, today was World Naked Bike Ride day. Because, according to one organizer whose word I will have to take for this, “When you get a lot of naked people on bikes, people tend to smile at you.”



The, ahem, bottom picture is from Prague, I think the top picture is from Britain.

1/500th of a Zarqawi

Headline that I so do not have the emotional energy to click on today, but thanks anyway (from Ha’aretz): “2 Infants among Dead on Beach; Army Apologizes.”

(Later:) Sigh, I guess if you want to avoid stuff like that, don’t read any newspapers at all. The Israelis shelled a picnic on the beach in Gaza.

Here’s how you know the Pentagon was more interested in getting Zarqawi for his symbolic value than it was concerned with wiping out the organization he ran: there was a $25 million bounty on Zarqawi’s head, but for Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the Egyptian they think will replace him, just $50,000.

And he can no longer implement

The Pentagon is now admitting that Zarqawi was still alive when they reached the scene of the bombing, a fact they’ve kept to themselves until now. And that they cleaned up the corpse before taking those pictures. Says Gen. William Caldwell: “we made a conscious decision that if we were going to take photographs of him and make them available publicly that we were going to clean him up. Despite the fact that this person actually had no regard for human life, we were not going to treat him in the same manner.” Dude, you killed him, blew up everyone around him, including women and maybe a child, and then showed off framed pictures of his body: don’t pretend that cleaning off the blood before taking your victory snaps shows a morally superior regard for human life.

It’s so hard to take Zarqawi’s death at face value (yesterday I was muttering to myself that the US had had all these old photos of Zarqawi but had for years been using an artist’s rendering which had the eyebrows all wrong) because Zarqawi’s been such a convenient tool of Bushite propaganda for so long. Before the invasion, he was the sole piece of “proof” of a Saddam-Al Qaeda nexus, although he was not then connected to Al Qaeda and was operating in Kurdish- rather than Saddam-controlled Iraq, under the protection of the no-fly zone. He was more convenient alive than dead, so he was left to operate his bioweapons lab unmolested. Later, Fallujah was ordered to surrender Zarqawi; he had already fled, and the city was turned into smoking rubble. Then there was the Zawahiri-Zarqawi letter, cited by Bush in speech after speech months after it was discredited as a fake. So you can’t help but wonder when the timing of the man’s death is so symbolically convenient, as Bush admitted today:

The problem we have in this war is that all they’ve got to do is kill some innocent people by a car bomb, and it looks like they’re winning, see. It takes a major event like an election or the death of Zarqawi to understand that we’re making progress.

If it looks like they’re winning, it’s not because of “a” car bomb, but several hundred car bombs. Zarqawi you can presumably only kill once, so when it’s announced on the same day as the cabinet is completed, hopefully obscuring the preceding six months of sordid horse-trading, that’s just jolly symbolic. And... convenient.

Bush – and this is never a good idea – explains: “the upper management of al Qaeda was counting on Zarqawi to help implement their vision beyond Iraq... They want to have their view of the world. I call it totalitarian, Islamo-fascism. Whatever you want to call it, it is extreme and it’s real. And Zarqawi was the implementer of that strategy. And he can no longer implement.”

(Update: Geov Parrish makes all of my points, and more. Bastard.)

(Updater: and Patrick Cockburn: “He was an enemy to America’s liking.”)

Hung out to dry

So does anyone else think that that little incident Sunday when an American howitzer accidentally went off while they were cleaning it, or whatever the story was, and blew up several houses in Hibhib, the place where Zarqawi was just killed, wasn’t such an accident?

Molly Ivins:

I had a slightly insane discussion the other day with a winger who wanted urgently for me to understand that the Haditha massacre is the kind of thing that happens in war. Whereas I was trying to point out to him that the Haditha massacre is the kind of thing that happens in war.

Two of the British Guardsmen acquitted for the fatal “wetting” of that 15-year old Iraqi have announced that they are leaving the army in disgust at having been, and I quote, “hung out to dry.” Maybe not the most apt choice of metaphor under the circumstances.

Speaking of quitters, you might or, if you’re sane and/or not a blogger, might not want to read Tom DeLay’s farewell speech, a high-minded paean to the virtues of viciousness, liberal-bashing, and assholery: “You show me a nation without partisanship, and I’ll show you a tyranny.”; “conservatism isn’t about feeling people’s pain, it’s about curing it.”

And Maliki has an op-ed piece in the London Times you also might or might not want to read. Evidently while he uses tough-guy talk in Iraq – maximum force, iron fist, etc – when he addresses Western audiences he uses a different arsenal of clichés: national reconciliation initiative, tipping point, liberty, democracy and, over and over, national unity government (NUG). Interestingly, he describes what’s going on in Baghdad as “ethnic cleansing.”

Nascar meets Scientology: this is how the world ends.

For the hell of it, two pictures of Queen Elizabeth and some Chelsea Pensioners (it’s all about the hats).

And the “Bloody” goes to...

Rumsfeld: “I think arguably over the last several years, no single person on this planet has had the blood of more innocent men, women and children on his hands than Zarqawi.” I assume Rummy is just being modest.

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.