In case you were wondering, the White House issues one of its Setting the Record Straight briefings to prove that “President Bush’s Foreign Policy Is Succeeding.” Written in response to something on the Today show, um, today, it shows some signs of hasty preparation, such as the sentence “The United States Is Rallying The World Behind North Korea.” In an odd move, it denies that Max Boot is no longer behind Bush, quoting Boot saying that Bush is right to stand back and “Let Israel Finish The Job.”
Speaking of letting Israel finish the job, Condi explains that “a ceasefire [in Lebanon] would be a false promise if it simply returns us to the status quo.” And we wouldn’t want that. Taking a leaf from that consummate diplomat Donald Rumsfeld, she dismissed calls for a ceasefire as coming from an “old” Middle East. “This is a different Middle East. It’s a new Middle East. ... What we’re seeing here ... are the birth pangs of a new Middle East and whatever we do, we have to be certain that we are pushing forward to the new Middle East, not going back to the old one.” Push! Push! World’s worst lamaze coach.
There is, of course, no one reason to talk to Syria – “Syria knows what it needs to do” – much less Hezbollah – “Hezbollah is the source of the problem”. Defending the delay, she said that “Okay, I could have gotten on a plane and rushed over and started shuttling and it wouldn’t have been clear what I was shuttling to do.” Ask the people being bombed and forced out of their homes what you should have been shuttling to do. She said, “we also seek to address the root causes of that violence so that a real and...” wait for it... “endurable peace can be established.”
The Israelis have called up the reserves, amassed tanks and troops on the border, and told the Lebanese to evacuate a twenty-mile-long zone, but when asked about all this, Condi replied, “Well, I’m clearly not going to speculate on something that is just speculation. The Israelis have said that they have no desire to widen this conflict. And I take them at their word that they have no desire to widen this conflict.”
She won’t be taking, or indeed hearing, the word of any actual Arabs. Asked why she wasn’t going to any Arab country (or as far as I know meeting a single Arab or Lebanese), she gibbered, “Look, I am going to go to a place where we can all meet and talk about what needs to move forward. ... I also felt that it was important to have come to a meeting of the minds of some of the elements that might actually provide a political framework for a stable peace.” In between those sentences she said this, which is just talking for the sake of talking: “But everybody also needs to unite. The people need to stand strong now, because the time has come not to just take a temporary solution”. Who needs to unite? Who needs to stand strong? Possibly this displays my ignorance of the art of diplomacy, but shouldn’t you be able to have some idea what the hell a country’s chief diplomat is talking about?
You’ve probably heard about the photo-shopped images in Mike DeWine’s campaign commercial (Senate, Ohio) of one of the Twin Towers burning and with a halo. Thought you might like to see the actual ad (30 seconds), and maybe someone can explain to me the eye in the sky.
Adblock
DeWine’s opponent, one Sherrod Brown, says, “To distort images sacred to so many Americans is just shameful.” Sacred?
Sacred?
Although the number of violent attacks in Baghdad has been rising, Pentagon spokesmodel Gen. William Caldwell IV finds the bright side, pointing out that violence was declining in some neighborhoods, which are “experiencing somewhat relative peace,” even as it rose in others: “We should note the extreme concentration of attacks in roughly five areas around the city,” he said, adding, “We’re pretty sure once everyone in those five areas has been killed, everything will be copacetic.” I may have made up some of that quote.
In a WaPo article entitled “In Mideast Strife, Bush Sees a Step To Peace,” White House counselor Dan Bartlett repeats Bush’s line that this is a “moment of clarity.” I’ve been hoping that someone else would comment on this, but isn’t that a term used in 12 Step programs?
Bartlett is also quoted as saying that Bush “mourns the loss of every life.” Mr. Bartlett, whose full title is evidently White House grief counselor, does not say when Bush takes the time to mourn or what form that mourning takes.
People in mourning sometimes exhibit odd behaviour. Here is a picture of Bush at the NAACP convention that wasn’t available when I posted this morning, of Bush “playfully” slapping United States Congressman Al Green of Texas.
Odd how no one else ever seems to be having fun when Bush gets one of his playful moods.
Also, the WaPo’s Dana Milbank demonstrates the problems of my reliance on White House transcripts of such events: after one instance of shouted epithets, Bush said, “I’m almost finished” and Julian Bond responded, “I know you can handle it,” but the entire exchange was not in the transcript, which described the heckling as “applause.”
Here’s a Reuters picture of Camp Delta, Guantanamo Bay.
Bush went to the NAACP convention, graciously accepting their invitation to speak a full, what, day? two days? in advance. It wasn’t that interesting a speech. He talked about No Child Left Behind, home ownership, the faith-based policy. He mentioned AIDS in Africa but not Sudan (whose vice president he was due to meet an hour later). He did not take questions, although there was a heckler. Most of the entertainment value consisted of trying to decide who looked less comfortable, Jesse Jackson, seated four seats away from Condi, forced to applaud George Bush, or George Bush, forced to pretend to care nearly as much about black people as he does about embryonic stem cells.
He said that slavery and discrimination “placed a stain on America’s founding, a stain that we have not yet wiped clean,” adding, “now that’s why we need slaves, see, to wipe up those stains. Things have just never been as clean since then... what?”
Eli notes that the House and Senate have passed willfully ignorant resolutions of absolute unquestioning support for Israel which describe its military actions in Lebanon and Gaza (which are lumped together) as acts of self-defense and praise Israel’s historic commitment to not killing too many civilians (only 60 or so of them killed by air strikes in Lebanon today, where Israel bombed a hospital and for some reason started bombing Christian neighborhoods and towns not notable for having a large Hezbollah presence). Didn’t the US just veto a UN resolution because it was “unbalanced?”
Why do “they” hate us, again?
The House was also preoccupied with protecting something much more precious than mere human life, passing the “Pledge Protection Act,” which bans American courts ruling on the constitutionality of the Pledge of Allegiance. Because it’s one nation under God, not one nation under the Constitution.
Garance Franke-Ruta suggests that the reason for the slow evacuation of Americans from Lebanon is that the US doesn’t want to give the impression that Israeli air strikes are actually, you know, dangerous or a threat of any kind to civilians.
Lebanese PM Siniora asks, “Is the value of human life in Lebanon less than that of the citizens of other countries?” One assumes that’s a rhetorical question.
As promised, Bush has exercised his first ever veto against medical research using embryonic stem cells. His veto statement says that science “offers temptations to manipulate human life and violate human dignity.” Stem cells have dignity? Like, they get embarrassed if their cytoplasm is showing?
He says the bill would, gasp, force taxpayers to fund “the deliberate destruction of human embryos.”
I think my head just exploded from a surfeit of bitter irony.
It would also “encourage a conflict between science and ethics”. And he somehow sees a threat that humans would become “slaves to technology.” Actually, after 5½ years of the Bush presidency, I’m kinda looking forward to serving our robot overlords.
Oh, and he made the announcement while surrounded by “snowflake babies” born from leftover frozen embryos to good Christian families who presumably first adopted all the already-born orphans out of all the world’s orphanages. “These boys and girls are not spare parts,” he said. “They remind us that we all begin our lives as a small collection of cells,” he said. Probably the last time he wasn’t a complete asshole. After a previous such photo op, I noted that “destroying human life in order to save human life, which he rejects for stem-cell research, is precisely his rationale for supporting the death penalty, to say nothing of ‘preventive’ warfare.”
“Oh God, I can feel myself getting stupider the longer I’m exposed to him.”
That caption was the baby, obviously. I’m feeling some ill effects from over-exposure to Bush myself, so I’ll leave the rest of the captioning to you people...
The House’s gay marriage debate yesterday proved that the stalest cliché is still fresh... if you’re a Republican congresscritter from Texas. Rep. Louie Gohmert boldly declared that “The world did not start with Adam and Steve.”
I still can’t find on the web the cartoon of Hezbollah’s Nasrallah that Israel is dropping on Lebanon. The internet is a great source for propaganda imagery from the World Wars, campaign commercials from the 1950s and so on; I wish someone would make an effort to collect and preserve current examples. Anyway, the Daily Show showed it last night, and quite crude it was too. According to another leaflet that fell from the sky, “The saying goes: those who sleep in graveyards have nightmares.” Which I think means that Israel plans to bomb Lebanon’s graveyards too. Because you just can’t be too careful.
By the way, who’s helping all the refugees Israel is creating, to the extent that anyone is? You guessed it:
A tour of Beirut’s shelters offers a revealing look at the power of Hezbollah. Known for its social and charity network as well as its powerhouse political party and its militia, the Shiite Muslim group has once again eclipsed government efforts: Many of the facilities are being run by Hezbollah. The group says it is collaborating with the government at the shelters, but representatives of the government are generally not present.
So when its soldiers were kidnapped by Hezbollah, Israel blew up bridges, roads, etc with the stated goal of making it difficult to move them out of southern Lebanon. And now Israel is demanding that the Lebanese army be deployed into the south. Did they only blow up the north-bound lanes and leave the south-bound ones intact?
Here, for no particular reason, is a Lebanese man releasing a bird in front of the wreckage of his home in a Beirut suburb. It wasn’t bombed by the Israelis, he’s just not very good at home repairs. Kidding, I kid, of course it was bombed by the Israelis.
Rep. Lincoln Davis (D-Tenn) thinks that not only should we ban gay marriage, but exclude adulterers and divorced people from Congress. And make adultery a felony. He seems to be serious, except that he pronounces marriage murridge. About his own family: he and his wife have 3 daughters, Larissa, Lynn, and Libby, and five grandchildren, Ashton, Alexa, Andrew, Austin, and Adam. Two generations of alliteration.
(Update): the House has failed to pass an Amendment to the Constitution banning gay marriage. Surely the Republic will perish.
And stop calling the Republic Shirley.
Today Bush briefed some congresscritters about the G-8 meeting, then briefed the press about the briefing. In other words (you should be imagining this sentence spoken by Jon Stewart imitating George Bush) there was a lot of briefing goin’ on, heh heh heh. The briefing is like one of “his signing statements,” altering the meaning of something he’s supposed to be signing onto. I’ve read the G-8 leaders’ statement, and while it’s not what I’d have said, it was a whole lot more subtler than... well, I’ll let Bush dumb it down for us:
What was really interesting was that -- and I briefed this to the members -- that we were able to reach a very strong consensus that the world must confront the root causes of the current instability. And the root cause of that current instability is terrorism and terrorist attacks on a democratic country. And part of those terrorist attacks are inspired by nation states, like Syria and Iran. And in order to be able to deal with this crisis, the world must deal with Hezbollah, with Syria and to continue to work to isolate Iran.
He added, “Sometimes it requires tragic situations to help bring clarity in the international community.” Dude, they just spent an entire weekend with you, I think they’ve had all the tragic situations they can take.
Some reporter then asked the sort of sharp question he never gets asked (not that he answered it): “In trying to defuse the situation in the Middle East, is the United States trying to buy time and give Israel a chance to weaken Hezbollah militarily?” While Bush calls Hez the “root cause” of the problem six times in as many minutes, he is in fact focused on bigger fish: “Listen, Syria is trying to get back into Lebanon, it looks like to me.” I think there’s a division-of-labor deal with Israel, where they go after Hezbollah and our job is to keep Syria from intervening. Syria will know what usually happens after Bush accuses a country of doing something it isn’t doing.
Asked if he’s willing to let the Israeli offensive go on for weeks, he replied, “we’re never going to tell a nation how to defend herself”. Never? His only caveat: “It’s essential that the government of Lebanon survive this crisis.” Just the government, of course, not the actual people of Lebanon.
John Bolton says of Lebanese killed by Israeli bombings, “I think it would be a mistake to ascribe moral equivalence to civilians who die as the direct result of malicious terrorist acts”. Now, to be fair to the creepy-mustached UN ambassador, elsewhere in his comment he distinguished between acts, between deliberately targeting civilians and “the sad and highly unfortunate consequences of self-defense” (I disagree with his assumptions: Israel is indeed targeting buildings and other facilities where it knows civilians are present, and its massive bombing campaign is not an act of self-defense). But to return to that first quote, what he is saying, which I don’t think is just sloppy speech on his part, is that he denies the moral equivalence between the innocent Israeli victims of violence and the innocent Lebanese victims of violence. This is similar to what Olmert said last month, that “the lives and the welfare of the residents of the Sderot are more important than those of the residents of Gaza.”
Also, of course, whatever the moral equivalence might be, there’s certainly a huge numerical disparity. If Bolton rejects equivalency, perhaps he can give us a mathematical formula for determining the relative morality of dead civilians, and tell us if the 200 sad and highly unfortunate deaths of Lebanese civilians are worth a) more than, b) less than or c) exactly the same as the 12 Israeli civilians maliciously killed by Hezbollah.
If there’s any hope for the future, it’s the children. Here are some Israeli girls writing messages to be... delivered... to their pen pals in Beirut.
Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service has decided after a full year of thinking about it not to bring manslaughter charges against the cops who shot dead the Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes in London a couple of weeks after the 7/7/05 Underground bombings, but rather to use health and safety laws (that is, the police failed to exercise proper concern for the health and safety of de Menezes when they repeatedly shot him in the head).
Headline of the day, from the Guardian: “Lebanon: The World Dithers.” (Which some dithering editor subsequently altered to “Lebanon: The World Looks On.”)
Today’s obits: Robert Brooks, the chairman of the board of the “Hooters” chain, and Mickey Spillane. Coincidence, or a tangled web of intrigue, corruption, and long-buried secrets?
Olmert has adopted the unlovely phrase “axis of evil,” which according to him “stretches from Tehran to Damascus.” Of course if you look at a map... oh, never mind.
According to The Times, when Bush drove one of those golf cart things at the G-8 conference, he “imitat[ed] a screeching noise as he applied the brakes.” And he talks with his mouth full. And he picked on the only (?) girl at the G-8, Angela Merkel. My theory has always been that we’ve mistaken Bush for the wrong Tom Hanks character: not “Forrest Gump” but “Big.”
I guess “Cast Away” is too much to hope for.
By the way, even if he didn’t know the microphone was live, he knew there were tv cameras around. But there’s evidently some sort of weird code among news outlets that they’ll report what was said if they can actually overhear it, but they won’t have lip readers translate for us.
That article also says that Russian police arrested two Swiss journalists trying to cover protests, allegedly for swearing at them. Asked in court what language they had sworn it, the main witness said, “Swiss.”
Hillary Clinton says that all Americans stand behind Israel, which “is standing for American values as well as Israeli ones.” She doesn’t say what those values are. Which is probably just as well.
Bush admin pays (pdf) for anti-abortion centers to lie to pregnant women (Henry Waxman had staff call up all the centers that receive federal funding, posing as pregnant 17-year olds. 20 of the 23 reached by phone lied, saying there was a link between abortion and breast cancer (8 of the centers), would screw up breast milk, would cause infertility (7) (happens more often than the media tells you, one said), psychological harm possibly leading to suicide (13) (like Vietnam vets, one said).
Bush at the G-8, with Indian PM Singh: “I’m most pleased that the leaders came together to say, look, we condemn violence, we honor innocent life.” Did the leaders really say “look”? He went on, “However, for the first time we’ve really begun to address with clarity the root causes of the conflict, the recent conflict in the Middle East, and that is terrorist activity”. By “root” causes, he means things that happened as long as two weeks ago. And what caused this terrorist activity? Don’t know, don’t care, everything was fine in the Middle East until the terrorists came along and wrecked everything. Trying to understand any more than that would upset the clarity we evidently now have for the very first time.
The Israelis were yesterday trumpeting the fact that the missile was made in Iran as proof of Iran’s involvement in the Lebanon war. This was odd reasoning. Since almost all the missiles used to kill the civilians of Lebanon over the past four days were made in Seattle, Duluth and Miami in the United States, their use already suggests to millions of Lebanese that America is behind the bombardment of their country.
For the latest Fisk, click here (reg./BugMeNot, but at least not behind the Indy’s pointless pay barrier).
And keep reading Billmon, whose recent posts on the Middle East, like this one, have all been good.
George Bush at the G-8 summit, chatting with Tony Blair and with a microphone he didn’t realize was live, explains how really simple it would be to make everything hunky-dory again: “See, the irony is what they really need to do is to get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit, and it’s over.” Not sure who “they” are or what exactly he finds ironic. (Half the news outlets feel that the big news here is that George said a naughty word.) He also said that he “felt like telling” UN Secretary-General Annan to get on the phone with Syrian President Assad and “make something happen.” And he said of an upcoming session, “I’m not going to talk too damn long, like the rest of them.” Dude, you already have, you already have.
Here he makes a gesture to explain...
why he’s the only one, ahem, unable to stand up. He always gets that way when they seat him next to Koizumi. Something about his hair.
Afghanistan is to revive the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. Because virtue is good and vice is bad, right?
In a press conference with Tony Blair, Bush says the Middle East crisis is a “moment of clarification.” In other words, Bush is actually trying to learn lessons from events, and that is never pretty. That little analogy machine is chugging away in his head, as he chooses which existing template he can use to frame the current situation, because it would be too much like work to find out what’s actually going on. So this is a clarifying moment like 9/11, justifying anything the Israelis choose to do. But it’s also like Iraq, where violence is a sign of desperation on the part of the bad guys about how well everything is going. “It’s becoming clear for everybody to see some of the root causes of instability. ... there’s still a militant wing of Hamas that wants to stop progress.” What progress, you ask?
There’s a Prime Minister from Israel, Olmert, who is dedicated to a two-state solution. He comes to the United States and holds a press conference and says, I am dedicated; as a matter of fact, I am so dedicated, I’m campaigning on the platform that if need be, we will unilaterally make the decision that there’s a Palestinian state.
What a guy.
As progress was being made, it obviously scared those who can’t stand the thought of democracy.
Dick Cheney?
Back to that clarifying moment: “one of the interesting things about this moment is it’s now become clear to a lot of people why we don’t have peace in the Middle East.” “[T]he world is going to have to recognize that there are terrorist elements who are dedicated to stopping the advance of democracy and peace. And, therefore, we must deal with those.” The only obstacle he recognizes to peace, here as in Iraq, is a relatively small number of terrorists. Without them, everything would be fine. Oh, and since they’re supported/armed/sheltered by Iran and Syria, we may have to overthrow those countries’ governments.
He said several times that Israel as a “sovereign nation” has a right to defend itself, but of course some nations are more sovereign than others, and he displays no tenderness for the sovereignty of Palestine or of Lebanon.
I feel with all the recent violence and gloom that I must end on a positive note, at least for Americans: sometimes, just occasionally, Bush meets with other world leaders and his chimp-like face is not the one with the goofiest expression.
The Israeli air force has been dropping leaflets on Beirut, with a cartoon. Fun! They depict Hezbollah Secretary-General Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah (who they tried unsuccessfully to assassinate by air strikes on his home and office Friday, and who has said, “If you want open war, we will give you open war”), with his turban turning into a cobra. “To the Lebanese people, beware: He appears to be a brother, but he is a snake.” Because people value so highly the opinion of people who drop things out of warplanes on them.
Has anyone seen a picture of this leaflet? I can’t find it, but I want it.
Speaking of cartoon figures, Bush, refusing to call on Israel to stop its acts of war against Lebanon, said this: “Our message to Israel is defend yourself but be mindful of the consequences, so we are urging restraint.” There are two messages Lebanon can take from this statement: 1) fuck you, and 2) fuck you. Fuck you the first: Bush is describing Israel’s acts as purely defensive, and therefore justified. Fuck you the second: while “urging restraint,” Bush fails to condemn any particular action taken by the Israelis; hence, he must think that every action taken by the Israelis thus far has shown the restraint he is urging.
Bush & Pootie Poot held a press conference to tell us what they’ve been discussing. Putin says they talked nuclear power, nuclear proliferation, and nuclear terrorism. Bush says “we talked philosophy. ...it’s important for leaders to be able to share philosophy, whether it be the philosophy of government or the philosophy of governing.” I’m not sure which is scarier, nuclear terrorism, or George Bush discussing the philosophy of government (or his philosophy of governing).
Bush explains that violence in the Middle East is all Israel’s fault. Ha! just kidding! But he does take an uncharacteristic intellectual approach: “In my judgment, the best way to stop the violence is to understand why the violence occurred in the first place.” Why, oh why, sage guru? “And that’s because Hezbollah has been launching rocket attacks out of Lebanon into Israel, and because Hezbollah captured two Israeli soldiers. That’s why we have violence.” Er, how is that “understanding” the best way to stop violence?
No, wait, he’s got another “best way to stop violence”: “And the best way to stop the violence is for Hezbollah to lay down its arms, and to stop attacking.” So the best way to stop violence is to stop attacking... why did no one think of this before? That’s so crazy it just might work!
Then he said something about Hezbollah trying to stop the “good progress” being made toward a two-state solution. I assume he meant Hamas.
Sigh. No I don’t. I assume he doesn’t know the difference.
Bush invoked Beslan: “both nations know what it’s like to see people blown up.”
Bush did indeed discuss democracy with Putin: “And I talked about my desire to promote institutional change in parts of the world like Iraq where there’s a free press and free religion, and I told him that a lot of people in our country would hope that Russia would do the same thing.” Way to make it sound attractive, George! Putin replied, “We certainly would not want to have the same kind of democracy as they have in Iraq, I will tell you quite honestly.” Thank you for clearing that up.
HaloScan has added a feature that should allow the use of images in comments. Not sure how/if it actually works, but it should be fun. And they seem to no longer be displaying my Slim Pickens picture at the top of post pages.
Speaking of pictures, the editor of an Italian magazine that published a photo of Princess Di taken as she was dying defends the picture as “tender,” “She is not dead in the picture but looks as if she is a sleeping princess.”
Speaking of sleeping princesses, Secretary of War Rummy went to Afghanistan and Iraq this week, and I’m waiting for someone to explain what the purpose of these trips was supposed to have been. He did, of course, have some troops assembled so he could prattle at them: “You know, in the Department of Defense we work hard on jointness... Here in Iraq you’re making jointness a reality.” Insert your own don’t-ask-don’t-tell joke here.
He also tried to define for the troops “what ‘victory’ means”: “First and foremost, it’s helping the Iraqi people take the fight to the enemy.” Anyone spot the flaw in the logic? That’s right: if there’s still a fight, and you have to take that fight to an enemy, you probably haven’t achieved victory.
That was his entire definition of victory; there was no second part, he just rambled off about how the enemy won’t quit, and how in past wars “there have always been doubts and there have always been doubters,” adding, “They all laughed at Christopher Columbus when he said the world was round. / They all laughed when Edison recorded sound. / They all laughed at Wilbur and his brother when they said that man could fly. / They told Marconi wireless was a phony, it’s the same old cry. / They laughed at me wanting you, said I was reaching for the moon. / But oh, you came through, now they’ll have to change their tune. / They all said we never could be happy, they laughed at us and how! / But ho, ho, ho! Who’s got the last laugh now?”
Rummy took the opportunity to pat Iraq on the head: “They’ve got oil, they’ve got water, they’ve got intelligent people, they have an industrious population, they have a proud history.” And moxie, he left out moxie. “There isn’t any reason that this country can’t make it.”
Must-read: Billmon analysis of the Israel-Palestine-Lebanon situation.
Condi says of Israel, “I think they understand the need to exercise restraint.” She does not present any evidence of this. (The Israeli ambassador to the US immediately responded that Israel has “tried restraint” with Lebanon.) Asked about the possibility of all-out war in the Middle East, she replies, “I think it doesn’t help to speculate about kind of apocalyptic scenarios.” Smoking gun, mushroom cloud, ring a bell, Condi?
A great step forward in Iraq! Foreign occupying forces will hand Muthanna province (which is mostly desert) over to the Iraqi security forces! Prime Minister Maliki was there to celebrate, but “Most of his speech at the ceremony to mark this historic event went unheard because the sound system failed due to a power cut.” The Indy continues:
There were no members of the public present at the ‘Olympic Stadium’ of the sleepy and dusty provincial capital, Samawa, to witness the Prime Minister’s tussles with broadcasting. All those present were invited, and the date of the handover had not been publicised to prevent an attack by insurgents.
Angela Merkel took Bush to the village of Trinwillershagen yesterday. I hope, for the sake of all our sanity in a week like this, that someone has, and posts to YouTube, footage of Bush trying to pronounce Trinwillershagen.
It wasn’t just invisible herring. Here George, according to the Reuters caption, is preparing to kiss the invisible wife of the American ambassador to Germany.
And if it’s Friday, it must be whatever they’re calling Leningrad this week. Goosestepping soldiers with flowers accompanied the Bushes to the Monument to the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad.
The US vetoes a UN resolution against the Israeli attack on Gaza, John Bolton calling it “untimely and already outmoded.” See, that’s what happens when you don’t turn in your homework on time.
Speaking of outmoded, Rummy Rumsfeld went to Afghanistan this week (it was a “surprise” visit, except that the State Department announced it Saturday, then said that was a mistake and he wasn’t really going to Afghanistan, then he went to Afghanistan. The State Department also throws the lamest surprise birthday parties). Reporters kept asking him about the rise in violence there. He denied that it was in fact rising, attributing it to better “accounting” of such incidents. That double-entry bookkeeping’ll get you every time. He also offered this insight: “I think that we have seen changes in the level of violence with the number of incidents that occur in Afghanistan.” Later, he took this analysis even deeper: “I also think that the levels of incidents are up because of the level of activity.” That’s why he’s the secretary of defense and you’re not.
Also, he doesn’t know the meaning of the word “losing”:
Q: But looking to that violence and insurgency, some observers from inside and outside the country are thinking that the U.S. troops are losing slowly, losing the game day by day. What do you think of that?
SEC. RUMSFELD: I’m sorry, I didn’t understand the word. “Losing” is what you said?
Q: Losing the game.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Losing the game.
Q: Losing the fight.
PRESIDENT KARZAI: Against terrorism. That’s what he means.
SEC. RUMSFELD: Oh.
He then explained, “Well I think if you look at the number of terrorists and Taliban and al Qaeda that are being killed every month, it would be hard for them to say that the Coalition forces and the Afghan security forces were losing.” Ah, body counts, for any of you experiencing nostalgia (or flashbacks) for Vietnam and Robert McNamara.
And then he made a “surprise” visit to Iraq. Some day no doubt the Pentagon website will even put up some transcripts for me to make fun of. AFP headline: “Shiites Massacred as Rumsfeld, Maliki Discuss Security.”
Bush is in Germany, which gives me the opportunity to use Google’s fine translation program on a Der Spiegel article. The result is an odd approximation of what the inside of George Bush’s head must look like: “Afterwards it over-accumulated it up with praise.” “The president vibrated the hands of humans and spoke with them.” “...approximately 1000 citizens, who were invited to the greetings of Bush by Merkel on the old person market.”
Bush said he wanted to see what East Germany was like, so they banned cars in Stralsund, locked people in their homes, and imported 15,000 cops. Actually, the guys who used to guard the Berlin Wall were nothing like as scary looking as this:
The Wall guys were very polite and didn’t laugh at me when I asked them to point out the Reichstag (crappy map in the AAA guide book).
Bush held a press conference with Angela Merkel. He wants Putin “to join us in saying to the Iranians loud and clear: ‘We’re not kidding. It’s a serious issue.’” You know, I think that should be the exact text of the UN Security Council resolution.
He explains the situation in Gaza: “And we were headed toward the road map, things looked positive, and the terrorists stepped up and kidnapped a soldier, fired rockets into Israel.” Things looked... positive? And of course, “Israel has a right to defend herself.”
Says Putin’s crack about Cheney’s shooting a guy in the face “was pretty clever — actually quite humorous.” And, “My own view of dealing with President Putin, though, is that nobody really likes to be lectured a lot”. Which explains your grades at Yale.
But what really interested him was the pig they were roasting in his honor (I think they were planning to eat it too).
Q Does it concern you that the Beirut airport has been bombed? And do you see a risk of triggering a wider war? And on Iran, they’ve, so far, refused to respond. Is it now past the deadline, or do they still have more time to respond?
PRESIDENT BUSH: I thought you were going to ask me about the pig.
If I declare a caption contest, you must all promise not to apply that line inappropriately.
Here, George samples the invisible herring for which the town of Stralsund is justly famous.
Israel has been broadcasting this message into Gaza: “Israel is interested in your well-being. Is this the welfare that Hamas promised you?” They really do seem to be operating under the delusion that Palestinians will be turned against their elected government by Israeli bombing.
American ambassador to the UN John “Creepy Mustache” Bolton on a proposed resolution against the Israeli attack on Gaza: “We don’t see anything productive coming from it.”
Admittedly, it does seem just soooo last invasion. Israeli PM Olmert says that the Hezbollah capture of 2 Israeli soldiers was “an act of war” by the Lebanese government and that the Israeli response, which follows the Gaza model – bombing, destroying bridges, refusal to negotiate (which in general I would agree is the correct policy, although in both cases most of the prisoners that Hamas/Hezbollah want released are people Israel has no particular right to hold) – “will be restrained, but very, very, very painful.” Just ask Mrs. Olmert... no, I won’t go there.
Speaking of war crimes, Digby has an excerpt from Rick Perlstein’s forthcoming book Nixonland on Lt. Calley, well worth reading.
Robert Novak says his exchange with Karl Rove over Valerie Plame lasted just 20 seconds. Just ask Mrs. Novak... no, I won’t go there.
Putin is pissed at foreigners daring to criticize him for his anti-democratic attitude, telling NBC that he considers such criticism “completely unacceptable.” Uh, yeah, that pretty much sums up the problem right there. He also compared Cheney’s criticism on this subject to “an unsuccessful hunting shot.” Dude, leave the Dick-Cheney-shot-a-guy-in-the-face jokes to the professionals.
Custody battle for the loincloth Johnny Weissmuller wore as Tarzan (just the one, for twelve movies?).
Israel just fired rockets at Beirut International Airport. I’m sure that will resolve the situation. How could it not?
Emmanuel “Toto” Constant, head of the Fraph death squad in Haiti in the early 1990s, responsible for many, many murders and rapes, has finally been arrested in New York City, which he fled to in 1994. In 1996 the Haitian government demanded his extradition and the US refused, a decision possibly related to the fact that Constant was threatening to reveal all the details of his close working relationship with the CIA. The Clinton Admin explained its decision was out of concern that a trial would overstretch the Haitian legal and penal system, And turned him loose. So he stayed in the US for ten years until he finally committed a crime the US cares about: defrauding banks in a mortgage scheme.
This sort of thing happens all the time. The Salvadoran Air Force captain whose driver got Archbishop Oscar Romero’s assassin to the church on time lived for many years in Modesto, California selling used cars until he went on the run two years ago for fear of being prosecuted for rolling back odometers. Oh, and the South Vietnamese police chief who shot the prisoner in 1968 – you know the picture – owned a pizza parlor in Virginia and died of natural causes.
In a press conference with foreign newspapers, Bush made perhaps his least appropriate use of his favorite adjective: “It’s an interesting thing about terrorists, by the way, they’ll kill children like that. They don’t care.”
He also talked about his good friend Pooty-Poot, whose thugs are currently disrupting a pro-democracy conference and ordering dissidents to leave Moscow during the G-8 summit. “We’ve [Laura and he] got a good friendship with the Putins. We’re comfortable around them.” Must not have seen that video of Vlad kissing that kid’s stomach. Or maybe he has seen it and is looking forward to having his own stomach kissed.
Oh, I am not gonna be able to get that image out of my head.
About the Mahmudiya rape/mass murder, Editor & Publisher asks something I asked 6 days ago, why the media keep referring to the rape victim (D.O.B. 8/19/91), Abeer al-Janabi, as a “woman.”
Riverbend thinks there have been many more rapes, that the only reason this one came out was that her whole family, which would normally have felt dishonor and kept quiet, was killed along with her.
She also says that Maliki’s family is abroad. I haven’t seen this elsewhere. Can anyone confirm?
Bush called again for a line-item veto (the unconstitutional version passed by the House) in order to allow him to “target unnecessary spending” and stop legislators “stuffing stuff into these bills that never gets a hearing or the light of day”. Thing is, he’s implying that he would use the power to shame greedy congresscritters, but I don’t think he’s ever named a single spending item he would have vetoed if he had the power, never brought any of this “stuff” into the light of day.
Later, at a fundraiser for Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Mark Green, he said, “You’ve got to make sure you’ve got a good fiscal hog in your governor’s seat. You’ve got to have somebody who’s willing to take on the sacred cow.” Fiscal hog?
The Somali Islamists have captured the last of the American-backed warlords, and Coca-Cola has been declared un-Islamic.
Bush was happy today. Look how excited he is about going for a ride in his helicopter.
And look how excited he is to be given these, um, colorful shoes. The entire cast of Sex and the City put together was never so excited by and proud of a pair of shoes.
In fact he is so excited that he has forgotten how to walk.
The text of the “Compact with the People of Cuba” is here. It lists the many things the US will do to support a “Cuban transition government,” whatever that might be, including providing emergency food, water, fuel and medical equipment (none of which except perhaps fuel are in short supply in Cuba), helping “rebuild your shattered economy,” and my favorite, “Discourage third parties from intervening to obstruct the will of the Cuban people.” Presumably the third party they have in mind is Venezuela, but.... third party? The unthinking use of that phrase neatly demonstrates the assumption that intervention by the US (the second party) in the affairs of the Cuban people (the first party) is completely natural and legitimate.
(Later): at the roll-out of the report yesterday, Caleb McCarry, the “Cuba Transition Coordinator,” undeftly dodged a question about whether the US would send troops:
MR. MCCARRY: Well, the report, in terms of perspective recommendations, does include a recommendation regarding providing support during a transition, as authorized by U.S. law, to assist the Cuban security forces in making the transition to working under a democratic government. That --
QUESTION: Does that involve the deployment of U.S. forces?
MR. MCCARRY: That’s -- I just gave you the -- recited the part of the report that does refer to, prospectively, in the future with a transition government, the kinds of assistance that might be provided.
In the Report to the President, Venezuela is indeed a big concern. It goes on and on about Venezuela and the Cuba-Venezuela “axis.”
The Report is about what you’d expect, how we’re going to destroy Cuba’s economy until Castro dies, and then how we’re going to rebuild it and bring in a prosperous, democratic future. Or to put it another way, they think they’ve learnt something from the example of how not to do such things, Iraq (which they never mention), but they really haven’t. What they have concluded is that “freedom” is not enough: “Offering to help Cubans meet their basic and unmet social desires and humanitarian needs will be a powerful force for change and the best guarantor that the transition to freedom will succeed”. In other words the “powerful force for change” will be tens of billions of dollars of American money.
Which will be channeled through this “Cuban transition government.” And quickly too: the report calls for the US to be ready “to provide technical assistance in the first two weeks after a determination that a Cuban transition is underway”. The CTG is the black box of the report, a CIA-coup-sized hole in its middle. The report talks endlessly about all the things the CTG should do and all the things we’ll do to help it but says nothing about how it would be formed, how it would push aside the Communists (though we are planning to “undermine the regime’s succession strategy”), from whence its legitimacy would be derived (we’re giving it 18 months to organize elections). McCarry at that press conference kept deflecting questions about this. I’m guessing that’s all covered in the classified parts of the report, because without this mysterious entity, there is literally no plan. The CTG will evidently just magically appear, possibly defrosted from cryogenic freezers in Langley and be embraced by the Cuban people and possibly welcomed with flowers and dancing in the streets.
Every other blogger is making fun of Joe Lieberman for the name of his new party. Well, this blog is better than that (go along with me on this one), and just wants to help out. I just know the readers of this blog can come up with a better name than “Connecticut for Lieberman,” one with more pizzazz, more Joementum, if you will. Slogans are also welcome.
Still haven’t seen the “Compact with the Cuban People” report. I guess it’s easier to hide when it’s compact.
Sorry.
We are, however, assured that “This plan is not an imposition [Your in-laws dropping over uninvited is an imposition, a telemarketer calling during dinner is an imposition; this is imperialism or, if you prefer, regime change] but rather is a promise we will keep with the Cuban people [note the odd preposition in “promise with,” no doubt changed from “promise to” when they realized it showed a little too clearly the unilateral nature of the “Compact”] to marshal our resources and expertise [“expertise” developed during 47 years trying to overthrow Castro], and encourage our democratic allies [don’t forget Poland!] to be ready to support Cuba when the inevitable opportunity [he’s gotta die sometime] for genuine change [accept no substitutes] arises. The work of the Commission will ensure that the U.S. Government is fully prepared, if asked [what’s the Spanish for Chalabi?], to assist a genuine Cuban transition government [accept no substitutes] committed to democracy [you know, eventually, when the people are “ready” for it] and which will lead to Cuba’s reintegration into the inter-American system [taking orders from Washington again, like God intended].”
You will be delighted to hear that the United States has a “Compact with the Cuban People.” I’m sure the Cuban People will also be delighted to hear it. For the moment, though, we’ll all have to be satisfied with a summary, the actual report of the State Department’s Commission for Assistance to a Free Cuba is not yet online (indeed, that link is currently dead) (and some of the report is classified, which some people might consider ironic).
We are told the Compact will “reassure Cubans that the U.S. stands with them in their desire for freedom.” I’m sure they will be very reassured indeed to hear it, and even more to hear that “The message to Cubans is that they will be secure in their homes,” because nothing is more reassuring than a message from a foreign country telling you that you will be secure in your home. We will “undermine regime finances and survival strategies.” And we will give all sorts of aid to a “Cuban Transition Government,” although it is unclear from whence this august body will spring. And there will be “market-based economic opportunities,” although again, opportunities for whom is left a little bit vague.
Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns, asked by Wolf Blitzer (who doesn’t know the meaning of the term “follow-up question”) what the US is doing about the siege of Gaza, responded that Condi “has been involved, every day of this crisis, to try to call on the Hamas authorities to release the Israeli soldier”, which is funny because the Hamas authorities are not the ones holding the soldier. Then he used possibly the least helpful words there are in international relations: “Let’s remember who started this.” And we know who that always is. “It was the outrageous actions of Hamas, in violating Israel’s sovereignty, in taking the soldier hostage, in killing the Israeli settler, that unleashed this.” First, I don’t think the Palestinians will be much impressed by the sacred status suddenly assigned to “sovereignty.” Second, that verb “unleashed,” as if Israeli actions are never a deliberate choice, but rather the air strikes, etc were “unleashed,” like a rambunctious puppy.
