The Indy asked some Labour MPs whether they agreed with Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott that Bush’s Middle East policy was “crap” (which Prescott denies saying but no one believes him, because it sounds just like him, and anyway we’ve all just been enjoying watching the BBC use the word as often as possible). Says Ian Davidson MP: “I think that John Prescott is to be commended for the quality of his political analysis.”
CentCom’s new slogan: “It’s fun to shoot some people.” To be fair, they may just have promoted Mattis because they were scared of him. Wouldn’t you be?
Bush had a meeting with his economic advisers, who advised him not to wear a tie, then they all did the traditional “Buckaroo Banzai” walk to the microphones
to answer questions, none of which were about the economy. He was asked to explain why he thinks Hezbollah was defeated: “The first reaction, of course, of Hezbollah and its supporters is, declare victory. I guess I would have done the same thing if I were them.” Ya think?
“But sometimes it takes people a while to come to the sober realization of what forces create stability and which don’t.” Ya think?
(Update: While waiting for the pictures for this post to upload, I looked over to Bob Harris’s site. Sigh.)
“Hezbollah is a force of instability. ... Hezbollah, they’re pretty comfortable there in south Lebanon.” If you like sitting on piles of rubble. “They’re now going to find themselves not only that which caused the destruction, but they’ll find themselves with now a Lebanese army, with U.N. help, making it clear they won’t have the safe haven necessary -- that they think is necessary to launch attacks.”
On yesterday’s ruling against his warrantless surveillance: “I would say that those who herald this decision simply do not understand the nature of the world in which we live.” See, this is what happens when they let him read Camus; he starts talking about the “nature of the world.” Next thing you know he’ll be dressing all in black and smoking unfiltered cigarettes.
Why just last week, he says, “we disrupted a plot. People were trying to come and kill people.” Peoples is the craziest people. “The judge’s decision was a -- I strongly disagree with that decision, strongly disagree. ... I made my position clear about this war on terror. And by the way, the enemy made their position clear yet again when we were able to stop them.” Just as long as we’re all clear.
Summary judgement 1: The validity of Günter Grass’s writings is not undermined to any significant extent by the revelations about his youth.
Summary judgement 2: I still don’t think Pluto is a planet, but I’m willing to let it be grandfathered in. Charon is not a planet. Indeed, if the argument for Charon not being a satellite of Pluto (that the barycenter [center of gravity, around which both objects revolve] of the two does not lie within Pluto) is legitimate, then Jupiter is not a planet. And Jupiter is obviously a planet. I don’t care about Ceres, and neither does anyone else. 2003 UB 313 can be a planet, but only if it’s called Xena (no, I’m not a fan of the show, but the idea gives me a bit of a giggle).
A Gallup poll shows that 39% of Americans interviewed believe that Muslims in the US should be required to carry a special i.d. I just wrote a comment on that before realizing I already wrote one 20 months ago after a similar study (which had it at 27%). I thought what I was writing seemed familiar (although this time I went with “ham sandwich” instead of “pork products”).
Speaking of racists, John McCain was out campaigning for George Allen, because if you’re trying to pretend that “Makaka” isn’t a racial epithet, the person you really want standing next to you is the guy who said (when running for president in 2000), “I hated the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live.”
Salon investigates voter security/suppression efforts. A must-read. It could almost make you support Norm Ornstein’s proposal for mandatory voting, providing the fine for a vote not being cast is matched by one for a vote not being counted. This is one of those areas where the left (or even the Dems) have been afraid of sounding like conspiracy theorists, allowing the R’s to, well, conspire. I mean, do you check your supermarket receipts for errors? Your first thought is that the people who work there are idiots and errors happen, but 90% or more of those errors invariably favor the store. By the way, anyone who has to wait on line at the DMV four times like that woman in Indiana in order to register, should get four votes at the next election – it’s only fair.
After Bush toured the Harley plant (“I’m impressed by the fact that they're impressed by the product they make”), Bush gave a speech at a fundraiser for Lynn Swann. His reiterated phrases and stories are not getting less irritating with familiarity, like the things “I happen to believe/disagree.”
They want us to cut and run. And there’s some good people in our country who believe we should cut and run. They’re not bad people when they say that, they’re decent people. I just happen to believe they’re wrong.
Why is that phrasing so much more obnoxious than “I believe they’re wrong” or “They’re wrong”?
Here’s Bush making yet another claim he can’t prove, while pretending that he’s not making it:
I know it’s hard for Americans to believe this, but the enemy that attacked us before has got people that want to act like them, are maybe taking instruction from -- I can’t tell you whether this plot we disrupted was al Qaeda. I’m not going to say that unless I’m certain it was.
Oh, he almost let it slip, and then stopped himself in the nick of time! This is a technique he perfected when tattling on Jeb to his mother when he was 6.
And, if you can stand it, another iteration of his sophisticated understanding of the problems of the Middle East:
Isn’t it interesting today that the most violent parts of the world are where young democracies are trying to take root? Isn’t it interesting that Hezbollah would attack Israel, a democracy in the heart of the Middle East, try to destabilize the Middle East so that Lebanon doesn’t get to be a strong democracy and starts to try to turn the world against Israel? Isn’t it interesting that the young democracy of Iraq is the place where the enemy is trying to stop the progress? That should tell the American people the following things: One, we face an enemy that has an ideology that can’t stand freedom; and secondly, as freedom progresses, it changes the world for the better. Otherwise, the enemy wouldn’t be trying to stop it.
Hezbollah was attacking Israel because Israel is a democracy and it hates democracy. Is there anyone else in the world who believes that? Also, who is “the enemy” in Iraq who is trying to stop the progress? Sunni insurgents, Shiite militias, Al Qaida, there are so many enemies I have no idea who he’s singling out.
I may get hysterical blindness if I have to read another Bush speech.
Another story about the long-term effects of war on individual lives: in Britain, a 93-year old has finally won a pardon for her father, Priv. Harry Farr, a shell-shock victim executed during World War I for “cowardice” after a 20-minute trial. The daughter was 7 days old when her father was sent to the front, 2 when he was killed; she and her mother were evicted because they received no pension, and she wasn’t told the manner of his death until she was 40.
You know how you avoid generational effects of war? Child soldiers, at least if you kill them before puberty. A spokesmodel for Sri Lanka’s military says it was legitimate that a bombing raid yesterday killed children because they were conscripted (i.e., kidnapped) Tamil Tiger child-soldiers. “If the children are terrorists, what can we do?” asked Brig. Athula Jayawardana. What indeed.
Germany will send troops to the Lebanese-Israeli border. Um, right.
John Spencer, the Republican sacrifice to the unstoppable killing machine that is Hillary Rodham Clinton, has an ad out: “Islamic facists [sic] still hate us....”, Hillary would “leave us vulnerable...”, but Spencer “won’t play politics with our security.” I suspect there will be a lot more of this sort of not playing of politics.
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An ape park in the Netherlands is setting up webcams so its orangutangs (or as George Allen, who is familiar with Krusty’s “comical K sounds,” calls them, “makakas”) can communicate with, and possibly pick out potential mates from, residents in an orangutang center in Borneo. These long-distance relationships never work out.
George Walker Bush, who has already displayed a new-found sophistication by reading one of the, well, shortest works of European literature, astonished and delighted the staff of the National Counterterrorism Center when he burst into song during a visit today.
Best headlines of the day, a tie: “Federal Government Takes Control of a Huge Cross” (WaPo), and “Frozen Sperm ‘Could Bring Mammoths Back to Life’” (Daily Telegraph).
Speaking of headlines, the BBC currently has two: “Dell Recalls 4m Laptop Batteries” and “US Recalls 300 Soldiers to Iraq.” What do these recalls have in common? They both tend to blow up.
I’m going to hell for that one.
I mean I am so going to hell for that one.
Speaking of going to hell, those 300 soldiers had just finished a one-year tour and were literally en route home when they were turned around and told they were serving another 4 months (in Baghdad, yet). Another 301 who made it all the way home to Alaska now have to go back. This is no way to run a war.
Syrian President Assad says that Hezbollah’s, um, victory, has resulted in a “new Middle East.” There’s something he agrees with Condi about: the “old” Middle East was crap.
After the Danish cartoon crisis, Iran threatened to have a competition for cartoons about the Holocaust.
Pardon me, about the Holocust. I’ve noted before that the language of choice for Iranian anti-Semitism is English.
And now they have held the competition, staged by the Iran Cartoon Association, which is a hell of a concept in and of itself (update: it has a website. It doesn’t seem to have the cartoons, though there is a better image of the poster.) Most of the pictures I’ve seen are too small to make out, although I saw Hitler dressed as Uncle Sam (or I suppose arguably, the other way around),
and the Statue of Liberty with a book on the Holocaust, giving a Nazi salute (sort of a mixed message, really). Said one 23-year old attendee, “I came to learn more about the roots of the Holocaust and the basis of Israel’s emergence.” Doesn’t this tell you everything you need to know?
Bush says “We live in troubled times, but I’m confident in our capacity to not only protect the homeland, but I’m confident in our capacity to leave behind a better world.” Leave behind? Are we (gulp) going somewhere?
The Pentagon website has an example of damage-control entitled “Pace Focuses on Human Dimension of Iraq War.” What that means is that the alliterative Peter Pace was confronted in Iraq by a lieutenant who had lost two men to an IED and who told him, “I have no doubt, that if they were in an RG-31 [armored vehicle], they would still be alive today.” Especially if the RG-31 wasn’t in Iraq. So Pace found a tame interviewer, so he could talk about how he knows the cost of battle because he was in Vietnam blah blah blah, never forget the names blah blah, “Lance Corporal Guido Farinaro, then I lost Lance Corporal Chubby Hale.” Yeah, focus on that human dimension, Petey.
Chubby Hale?
After meetings at the State Dept and the Pentagon, Bush had a press conference, in which he described Lebanon as one of the “fronts of the global war on terror.” He says that Hezbollah is completely responsible for all the suffering in Lebanon and Israel, as people will understand when they “take a look-see, take a step back, and realize how this started.” In a month of violence, he was still found nothing done by Israel worthy of criticism.
But, as ever, there was something he found “interesting”:
What’s really interesting is a mind-set -- is the mind-sets of this crisis. Israel, when they aimed at a target and killed innocent citizens, were upset. Their society was aggrieved. When Hezbollah’s rockets killed innocent Israelis they celebrated. I think when people really take a look at the type of mentality that celebrates the loss of innocent life, they’ll reject that type of mentality.
Other bloggers have also been considering the possible meaning of Bush’s adoption of the vocabulary of fascism and totalitarianism to describe insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as Hezbollah. Juan Cole has, and I’ve seen talk on a couple of linguistics sites, and most recently this discussion on Daily Kos. No one, including me, seems very certain, which is no doubt the idea: Bush doesn’t use language to make a subject clearer, now does he? More simplistic, but not better understood. We know from Peter Galbraith’s book that as late as 2002 Bush didn’t know that there were Shiites and Sunnis. The fascist/totalitarian vocabulary lets him forget it all over again, not just so he can conflate Sunni Al Qaida and Shiite Hezbollah, as MarkC suggests at Kos, but so that no one will notice that the Bushies are using exactly the same “fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here / these are the guys responsible for 9/11” rhetoric about Iraq despite the fact that they’re now principally concerned with Shiite militias rather than Sunni “rejectionists.”
A couple of months ago I noted that Bush kept alternating, sometimes in the same week, between saying that the enemy “has a philosophy” and saying they have no philosophy. At least he’s finally made a decision; fascism counts as a political philosophy, doesn’t it?
Al Kamen answers the question how government employees, in this case Deputy Assistant Secretary of Labor Karen Czarnecki, can legally appear as a Republican strategist on tv (for pay on PBS, which means the taxpayers are giving her two paychecks), given the Hatch Act: well, she is never identified as a government employee, or as a Republican, only as a “conservative strategist/analyst,” which means that in the case of Czarnecki, Fox and PBS are forced to inaccurately identify one of their talking heads. Also, she takes an official leave of absence – for a few hours. Somehow I don’t think that’s what the law intended.
The White House denies the Seymour Hersh report that the US collaborated with Israel in planning the war on Lebanon. Tony Insert-Snow-Related-Pun-Here scoffed, “The piece abounds in fictions.” Say what you will about Tony Insert-Snow-Related-Pun-Here, but neither Ari nor Scottie would have used the phrase “abounds in fictions.”
Turkmenistan’s President-for-life Niyazov had a melon named in his honor today to celebrate national Melon Day. According to the AFP, “The Turkmenbashi melon is said to be very big and tasty.” Niyazov sez: “All Turkmens celebrate this holiday. The Turkmen melon is the source of our pride, its taste has no equals in the world, the smell makes your head spin.”
Iranian President Ahmadinejad has started a blog (that link’s for the English version). So far it’s just got an autobiography of the great leader, some photos of the great leader, some Battlestar Galactica fanfic, and a poll: “Do you think that the US and Israeli intention and goal by attacking Lebanon is pulling the trigger for another word [sic?] war?”
According to Seymour Hersh, the Israelis got their green light from Washington (they went to Cheney first) for a massive bombing campaign in Lebanon, targeting infrastructure, in advance, to start “in response” to whatever the next Hezbollah action was. Cheney and others view it as a test-run for their very similar contingency plans for how to conduct war against Iran, mostly through air strikes. Which gives Ahmadinejad the answer to his poll question. When Iran sees the Israeli attack on Lebanon as an Israeli-American proxy war on Iran, it is merely seeing it the same way the Americans and Israelis do.
The alliterative Peter Pace again says of the various atrocities committed by American troops in Iraq, “It’s not who we are as a nation; it’s not who we are as an armed force.” Says we’ve sent “between 1 million and 1.5 million Americans” to the Gulf (shouldn’t the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs know how many troops he’s deployed with just a little more accuracy than plus or minus 500,000?), and only “A small fraction of them have done things that we know for sure were wrong.” Pace says atrocities are “unacceptable,” and says that because most of them (except the Haditha massacre) were reported through the chain of command, the system... wait for it... works.
Pace adds that any failure in Iraq is not his fault: “The problem is not so much how much combat power you have in a country, it’s more how is the governance going. How are the people doing? What is getting better about their economic situation, what is getting better about their trust for each other? What is getting better about the education system and roads and the like? What gives them hope for a better future? This drives you to the understanding that to have a better future, you need to stop killing one another.”
The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the alliterative Peter Pace, says, twice, that “if we were to come home, the war would simply follow us home.” Well, maybe it would go away again if you just didn’t feed it.
Bush in his weekly radio address claims that the rather nebulous alleged terrorist plot (RNATP) “is further evidence that the terrorists we face are sophisticated”. Yup, blowing up planes is the height of sophistication. He is deeply disappointed that “some have suggested recently that the terrorist threat is being used for partisan political advantage.” I don’t know who this Sum guy is, but why does he always say those things about our leaders? And what sort of a furrin name is Sum, anyway?
He goes on, “We can have legitimate disagreements about the best way to fight the terrorists, yet there should be no disagreement about the dangers we face.” What a guy, he’ll allow you disagreements, as long as you confine yourself to legitimate disagreements and allow him to define all the facts. In his world, of course, there are no real opinions, there are only facts; everything else follows from those facts. There are facts on the ground in Iraq which will determine, like a mathematical formula, the correct number of American troops. There are facts like the existence of terrorists, of which we have just had a “stark reminder,” but which Sum “forgets.” Or worse, Sum denies the fact that we are at war; Bush “respectfully disagrees.” Bush’s speeches are filled with the facts that he “understands” or “realizes” and which he “reminds” people of, rather than trying to persuade them.
He repeated the line that the US is safer than it was before 9/11, which seems to be giving hostages to fortune and which will run endlessly (except on Fox) if there is another terrorist attack. Did he learn nothing from “Mission Accomplished”?
For better or worse, Bush has largely kept out of the Middle East crisis, speaking to Olmert once (Olmert called him) and Siniora twice over the last month, once this morning. Here’s the photo the White House released of that phone call.
“Hey Fouad, guess what I’m wearing. What’re you wearing?”
The Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesmodel, explaining why Olmert ordered the offensive to begin, while recommending that his cabinet approve the UN ceasefire resolution: “if you hand over to the Lebanese army a cleaner south Lebanon, a south Lebanon where you have Hezbollah removed from the territory, that makes their troubles a lot easier”. See, they’re like house-guests, cleaning up after themselves. Do you suppose “a cleaner south Lebanon” sounded better in the original German Hebrew?
Maybe I should take a vacation and read French novels too: I can’t think of anything to say about the unlikely news that George Bush is reading Camus’s L’Étranger (by the way, the linked AFP story gets the year of the novel wrong and notes that Bush quoted Camus once in a speech while neglecting to mention that he took the quote completely out of context). I think at the next press conference the reporters should only ask questions about the book.
Holding a contest over the weekend is usually a losing proposition, but I’ll give you a choice: 1) what French novel should Bush read next? 2) Let’s assume it was a mistake: when he picked up the book, what did Bush think The Stranger was, or who did he think Camus was?
Some Muslims have expressed displeasure at Bush’s use of the term “Islamic fascists,” arguing that there can be no Islamic fascism because Islam is antithetical to fascism. And also that Bush doesn’t pronounce his sibilants well, and “fascists” has two of them. Bush started using “Islamic fascists” just a couple of weeks ago, I believe (update: a search of the White House website shows single usages on May 25 and June 14). Originally it was Islamo-fascism, which to me sounds more obnoxious and yet a little bit comical at the same time, that “o” giving it a touch of buffoonery (see also: Defeat-ocrats, David O. Selznik). It took him some months to move from a “Some call this evil Islamic radicalism, others, militant Jihadism, still others, Islamo-fascism” formulation last October to adopting the term without qualifiers by March. He’s also taken recently to describing their ideology as “totalitarian.” I always get a little nervous when I try to discern meaning in these shifts of terminology, given that Bush probably can’t define the words he’s using. Or spell them. These words define the enemy by their goals and philosophy (i.e., telling other Muslims to grow beards and not fly kites) rather than methods (i.e., terrorism), perhaps recognizing that most Americans no longer see much linkage between the war in Iraq and protecting Americans from 9/11-type terrorism.
One of the reasons I started blogging was to clarify my own thinking through the act of writing. Didn’t really work in the previous paragraph. Anyone else have any ideas, or is it just better for the sake of all our sanities not to pay too close attention to the words that come out of George’s chimp-like mouth?
Günter Grass was in the Waffen-SS! What would Oskar Matzerath have said?
For your captioning pleasure, a picture from yesterday’s preznidential tour of Metal-Tech in Wisconsin:
I dunno. On the White House website I see the phrase “President’s Statement on Kleptocracy,” naturally I have to click on it, but it’s not the pure comedy gold I was hoping for. “Today, I am announcing a new element in my Administration’s plan to fight kleptocracy, The National Strategy to Internationalize Efforts against Kleptocracy”. More chuckle-funny than laugh-out-loud funny.
Bush also made a statement about the rather nebulous alleged terrorist plot (RNATP) to do something or other with airplanes, which for some reason requires mothers to drink their own breast-milk, which sounds like the sort of thing you could sell videos of to a niche market of perverts (and if any of you sets up that business now, I want my share) (of money, not breast milk). I seem to have lost my train of thought. Oh yes, Bush made his statement at the Austin Straubel International Airport in Green Bay, Wisconsin, standing in front of his own personal airplane, which he can board without being strip-searched, taking off his shoes, or drinking breast-milk, unless of course he wants to.
He said that this RNATP is “a stark reminder that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom”. So he’s safe. He thanks Tony Blair and British officials for “their good work in busting this plot.” Busting this plot? Has he been watching Starsky & Hutch reruns again?
As expected, the number one Republican talking point the day after the CT primary is that it just shows that the D’s are soft on terror. My cat received an email from Ken Mehlman with the charming and so very clever subject line “Weak and Wrong: Today’s Defeat-ocrats.” Do you suppose they focus-grouped “Defeat-ocrats”? I wonder what the runners-up were like. And Cheney was wheeled out to speak about the sad decline of the D’s from their glory days when Lieberman was their choice (as opposed to Al Gore’s) for veep, and how this just made America look weak in the eyes of “Al Qaida types.” Mehlman and Cheney both say that Holy Joe was “purged” from the party, as if by a politburo. However, Holy Joe was not purged by a politburo but by CT’s registered Democrats at the ballot box, which is how such things are done in a democracy. R’s pushing this line should be asked just who it is they are accusing of softness and “pre-9/11 thinking,” Ned Lamont, or the citizens of Connecticut.
Cheney, by the way, accused D’s of wanting to “retreat behind our oceans”. Behind? Of course with the Cheney energy policy, global warming may well mean that those of us on the coasts will be not so much behind but under our oceans.
Speaking of lack of respect for the voters, the opposition in Venezuela decided to call off its presidential primary, 7 candidates agreeing to step down in favor of Manuel Rosales, a state governor. Can’t say I know anything about him yet.
What I like about YouTube: within a minute after seeing a character in a series on BBC America mentioning “Laurel and Hardy dancing in front of the saloon,” an old favorite scene of mine, I was watching it on my computer. And now you can too.
I can remember when the British political scandal was a thing of beauty, with fascinating salacious details. Headline from the Indy: “Lib Dem Leader Admits He Uses Wasteful Lightbulbs.”
This next paragraph is a bit of pedantry, and I write it really only for myself: this past Sunday NYT’s Week in Review section has a correction to an article on the history of hunger strikes in the previous Sunday’s Week in Review. 1) The correction is closer to the truth, but still wrong. 2) There were at least 3 other mistakes in the (short) article. 3) Don’t get me started on the quality of their delivery service lately.
So let’s move on to their story about Lamont’s victory, which says his “candidacy... soared from nowhere on a fierce antiwar message”. First, “soared from nowhere” is just crap writing. Second – and yes, I didn’t switch from my pedantic mode after the last paragraph; it’s never a good sign when I start numbering my points – the place where people are tired of the war or never approved of it in the first place or don’t trust George Bush’s handling of it, is not “nowhere,” it’s not the Twilight Zone, as spooky as the Times might find it, it’s America. If Lamont’s win seemed to you to come out of nowhere, you just weren’t paying attention.
Lieberman, in his post-defeat speech, henceforth to be known as the “Sore Loserman Speech,” called his side, the losing side, Team Connecticut, which is just kind of sad and pathetic, really. He accused Lamont of running a campaign of “partisan polarizing,” which is a telling phrase, because this was a primary election and so any polarizing was intra-partisan, unless Lieberman is admitting that he’s been a Republican all this time. (Update: Billmon caught that too.) Sez His Holy-Joe-ness, “For the sake of our state, our country and my party, I cannot, I will not let this result stand.” Suggesting that the election results are a danger of some sort to the state, the country and his (former) party, implying that they are not legitimate, is just an insult to the citizens of Connecticut and to democracy itself.
A WaPo article on Tom DeLay’s difficulties getting off the ballot in Texas mentions something I hadn’t thought about: the new touch screen polling machines make write-in campaigns very difficult.
In May, the American ambassador to Armenia was fired, probably for the crime of referring to the Armenian genocide of 1915 as a genocide. Some senators are holding up, or will vote against, the next nominee, Richard Hoagland, because he refuses to use the word.
Far worse than the comfy chair: something or someone, possibly the Mystical Lords of Irony, has crashed Joe Lieberman’s website, which currently reads: “This account is under construction. Please check back soon. It will be available shortly. Thank you.” Joe is pointing fingers.
See? See how he points fingers? He suspects the worst, a Denial of Service (DoS) attack. That’s DoS, which rhymes with Kos, which stands for Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, True Tsar of All the Internets.
By the way, a word to both Lieberman and Lamont: Go home. This is election day and candidates are not supposed to campaign on election day. It’s bad electoral etiquette.
Forgot to link to George Monbiot’s excellent summary of Israeli-Lebanese relations over the last few years, which should, but won’t, put to rest the claim that everything bad in the Middle East began less than 4 weeks ago with an unprovoked attack by Hezbollah.
More testimony today about the... unpleasantness... in Mahmudiya. Honestly, I don’t know what to call it. There was a gang-rape, it was of a 14-year old, they burned her body, killed her and her family. There’s not really a word that sums all that up. Speaking of summing up, let’s look at the headlines. The Guardian headline to an AP story focuses on the preliminaries: “Soldiers ‘Hit Golf Balls Before Going out to Kill Family.’” Other headlines mention whisky (mixed with an energy drink) and gin rummy. The Daily Telegraph focuses on the after-party: “Troops Ate Chicken Wings after ‘Killing Rape Girl, 14.’” The BBC notes that the “Troops ‘Took Turns’ to Rape Iraqi,” CNN that “U.S. Soldier Poured Kerosene on Raped, Slain Iraqi.” So many ugly, ugly details to focus on. May I stop focusing on them now? Please?
Bush & Condi had a press conference this morning. Possibly because he was standing next to Condi, Bush was very much in his faux-Thomas Jefferson mode
– you all got that was a Sally Hemings reference, right? – talking about creating democracies in Lebanon, in Iraq, in Cuba, and using the exact same narrative and the same vocabulary for each. Reading Bush’s speeches and press conferences reminds me of the old joke where someone is reading Romeo and Juliet and exclaims, “Why it’s just like West Side Story.”
When you’re a Hez, you’re a Hez all the way.
His latest grandiose phrase is that it’s the “great challenge of the 21st century” to protect fledgling democracies against the onslaught of the terrorists.
The contradiction there, which he is blind to, is that self-determination in those countries is undercut at every turn by his own ham-handed efforts to run the world. The past couple of days Bush & his various underlings have been repeatedly asked about the Lebanese government’s utter rejection of the big smelly turd that is the proposed UN Security Council resolution, and have always sidestepped it. Bush usually goes off on a tangent about supporting democracy in Lebanon blah blah blah, with the implication that they should be grateful and keep their little quibbles to themselves. The message is that Lebanon should be a democracy, but the world is very much not one, it is the personal fiefdom of George W. Bush. He proclaimed that “The people on the island of Cuba ought to decide... their form of government” and “The Iraqi people decided against civil war when they went to the ballot box,” but I forget, who was it he said was The Decider in this country?
Hezbollah rockets killed a record number of Israelis today, 15, of whom 3 were civilians. So Israel is going to bomb Lebanese infrastructure (which Ha’aretz claims it hasn’t done up until now, except for Beirut’s airport, evidently forgetting about all the roads and bridges) and, just to be obnoxious, “symbols of the Lebanese government.” All the talk about being at war with Hezbollah but not the Lebanese people? Always purest bullshit, of course, but now they’re explicitly making war on the Lebanese people. Someone on the IDF General Staff said to Ha’aretz, “It could be that at the end of the story, Lebanon will be dark for a few years.”
Yesterday I commented about the use of the term “offensive military actions” in the draft UN resolution. Today Stephen Hadley was asked about that very thing, and said that Israeli air strikes and ground operations are indeed offensive military actions, but Israel wants the phrase removed from the draft altogether because it claims, as I said, that it is only defending itself.
Sgt. Milton Ortiz, Jr. of the Penn. National Guard plead guilty to obstructing justice by planting an AK-47 near an unarmed Iraqi, Gani Ahmed Zaben, killed by his buddy in Ramadi in February because he was believed to be walking in a “tactical” manner and carrying a gun, which he wasn’t. Charges were dropped against the shooter last month. Ortiz also faced a separate charge of beating up another Iraqi. He was reduced in rank. Not even discharged from the military.
The US is pressing forward on getting a UN Security Council vote, because if there’s one thing that’s influential in the Middle East, it’s a UN Security Council resolution. But while the US and Israel keep talking about the need for the Lebanese government to displace Hezbollah from what they like to call a power vacuum (how can it be a vacuum when Hezbollah is there? In the vacuum of space, no one can hear you scream “Death to Israel”), they’re treating the rejection of their resolution by the Lebanese government as irrelevant. Condi said today that they may not like it now, but “I suspect that after this resolution is passed that you will see an understanding on the part of both parties that the time to have an abatement in this violence is now.” She’s a great one for telling people that it’s “time for” this or that.
And what a busy Condi she was today, appearing on ABC and NBC, and holding a press conference. I’ll take them together.
When did “that’s a hypothetical question” become an acceptable reason not to answer it? Lieberman refused to answer a question about running as an independent on that ground, and Condi refused to talk about the possibility of civil war in Iraq: “I’m not going to deal with a hypothetical.” Yes, heaven forbid we plan for stuff before it happens; worked so well for us in Iraq up until now. She did, however, say that “The Iraqi people and the Iraqi government have not made a choice for civil war.” Did Bosnia hold a referendum first, “Civil war: yea or nay”? Or any other country? Imagine what the campaign ads would be like. I mean I’ve heard of attack ads... Condi admitted that sectarian violence is at its height, but she offered a helpful solution: “The Iraqis need to get a handle on that.” Yeah, they should really get to work on that.
After all the talk about how a ceasefire only made sense if it were lasting, enduring, permanent, stable, eternal, etc., she does rather seem to be trying to lower expectations, saying “these things take a while to wind down” and “there could be skirmishes of some kind for some time to come.” However, “The violence that we are all seeing every day on our screens has simply got to stop” – oh, won’t someone think of the real victims in this: Americans watching CNN – “so that the Lebanese people have an opportunity to begin to return to a normal life.” Under Israeli military occupation, living as refugees amidst piles of rubble, without food, shelter or electricity. Normal for Lebanon, I suppose.
And while at times she treated the UN resolution as a magical incantation, at others she downplayed it. She called it a “first step” 3 times on NBC, 5 times on ABC, and 7 times in the press conference, including, “a good first step,” “a very good first step,” “the best first step,” “the right first step.” Beyond moving in international forces, she was a little unclear about what the second step would be, but that’s probably one of those – how you say? – hypothetical questions.
Her other favorite phrase, all this week, has been “status quo ante,” (5 times on ABC, 6 times on NBC, 4 times in the press conference) the thing to which we cannot return.
Replying to a question from Russert about the rise in support for Hezbollah in Lebanon in reaction to the invasion, she said, “Well, first of all, it is quite understandable that there is a lot of emotion in Lebanon about what is going on there.” Oh, thank you for being so very understanding.
Today’s WaPo Style Invitational contest is pretty good. Compare or contrast two words that differ by one letter:
Osama and Osaka: Given five years, the CIA might find Osaka.
Whores and chores: My wife has never given me a list of whores to do on my day off.
The difference between global warming and global arming is W; actually, that's also what they have in common.
Bush and bust: The difference between a president and his presidency.
Bush and blush: One of them demonstrates self-consciousness and the capacity for embarrassment.
Fast supper and Last Supper: One involves a happy meal.
A late entry was provided today by tiny anchor George Stephanopoulos, who asked Joe Lieberman about the perception that he was “too willing to buck your own party.”
Holy Joe insisted that Lamont is actually a center-right Democrat disguising himself as a liberal, adding “You don’t really know this other guy,” the cry of every incumbent who the voters know all too well.
Actually, though, Joementum seems worried that voters might think he’s someone else, asserting, without offering any evidence, “I ain’t George Bush.” Speaking ungrammatically ain’t going to bolster that case. If he ain’t George Bush, who does he claim he is? Not Joe Lieberman, of course, because no one wants to vote for that guy. No, like every other losing candidate for the last 50 years, he’s Harry Truman. Who he says won in 1948 because the “regular people” turned out to vote. I suppose it’s too late for the Lamont people to put out “Another irregular person for Ned Lamont” bumper stickers.
Asked whether Bush planned to call any Middle Eastern leaders about the draft UN resolution, Tony Insert-Snow-Related-Pun-Here said, “I don’t know if he needs to. I haven’t heard Olmert complaining.” Oy. Besides, Bush was busy with more pressing matters.
Hearings have begun for the soldiers accused of conspiring with Pfc. Steven Green to cover up his rape of a 14-year old Iraqi girl in Mahmudiya and subsequent massacre of her and her family. The London Sunday Times, which seems to have seen papers that no one else has, reports that the girl was not raped only by Green.
The Iraqi national security adviser Mowaffak al-Rubaie says that Iraq has civil strife but not a civil war. So that’s okay then.
Pointless invention of the week: a $1.5 million bed that floats. Magnets are involved.
The US and France have agreed on wording for a cease-fire resolution. Hezbollah would stop attacking Israel and Israel would cease “all offensive military actions.” Except... doesn’t Israel claim that everything it’s done has been defensive?
Oh, and Israel would be allowed to keep its troops occupying Lebanon.
It calls for an end to weapons being supplied to Hezbollah by other countries, so that the only military power in Lebanon would be Israel (well, I hear that there’s a Lebanese army too, but since its entire response to the bombing, invasion and occupation of its country has been, um, nothing, I don’t think we need to count it).
Israel says it will continue operations while it studies the draft... very... slowly.
Bush is going on vacation, Blair is going on vacation (update: no! he postponed it), so why not the mayor of Hit, Iraq, who finds conditions in his town such that he asked the US to send him to Abu Ghraib “just for the summer. ... You have air conditioning, three meals a day, soccer balls. Abu Ghraib is a nice place.” You know, I honestly can’t tell if that was the Iraqi version of sarcasm or what.
Four days before his primary defeat, Joe Lieberman calls for Bush to fire Rumsfeld. As many bloggers have pointed out, in 2004, Joementum wrote in the Wall Street Journal that such a move would make the “foreign and domestic opponents of America’s presence in Iraq” squeal with delight. Today, he said “a new face at the head of the Pentagon might help to open some minds and rebuild some public support [for the war] here in America.” So he’s still not actually willing to criticize Secretary of War Rumsfeld’s performance: it’s all about public relations and selling the war. And speaking of public relations, note his dismissive, arrogant attitude towards the public: people who oppose the war have closed minds and are blinded by their dislike of Rocket Rummy.
One thing I didn’t know: 45% of Connecticut’s registered voters have no party affiliation. 1/3 are Democrats, 22% are Republican.
When I first read the address (transcript, video) which Condi read (badly) to the Cuban people over Radio/TV Marti, it seemed pretty bland and I missed the point. See if you can spot the two key words in this sentence: “We encourage the Cuban people to work at home for positive change, and we stand ready to provide you with humanitarian assistance, as you begin to chart a new course for your country.” The key words are “at home,” and the message is: don’t get in your damned boats and try to come to Miami.
Finally got the IKEA table put together, sort of. Some of that unevenness is just perspective, some of it not so much.
Bush thinks that with Fidel Castro nearly 80 years old and in the hospital, he just might be able to take him in a fight. Today he issued a message, nay, a decree, to the Cuban people, “urging” them to work for democratic change. Not actual democracy, mind you, but a “transitional government in Cuba committed to democracy”. I think the word he’s looking for is “junta.” That choice of wording, which I’ve seen before, is obviously deliberate. He adds ominously, “we will take note of those, in the current Cuban regime, who obstruct your desire for a free Cuba.” Uh oh, he’s taking notes.
Israel hacked into the satellite feed for a Hezbollah tv station in Lebanon, showing a drawing of Sheik Nasrallah with a gun site superimposed on it, bang bang noises, and the printed words “Your day is coming, coming, coming.” Just what the invasion of Lebanon was missing: a logo and a motto.
Via the J-Walk Blog, a site of atheist quotes. The currently top-rated one is from Stephen Roberts, presumably not the one who’s Cokie’s husband: “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” Although as ever Mark Twain is more succinct: “The easy confidence with which I know another man’s religion is folly teaches me to suspect that my own is also.” And Bertrand Russell: “So far as I can remember, there is not one word in the Gospels in praise of intelligence.”
Caption contest, if you like (the guys on horses are Border Patrol).
Couldn’t post earlier. There was an earthquake and I thought it prudent to unplug the computer. 4.4, big deal. So this is a long one.
The House of Representatives cafeterias have changed “freedom fries” back to “French fries.”
Olmert declared today that Hezbollah “has been disarmed by the military operations of Israel to a large degree.” I’m not sure whether that was before or after Hez disarmed itself of 190 rockets by launching them at Israel (wounding 21 and killing one). Olmert counted as part of that victory that “All the population which is the power base of the Hezbollah in Lebanon was displaced.” Just in case you thought that ordering Lebanese to abandon their homes was done out of any concern for their personal safety.
And Olmert, in an interview with the London Times, asks, “And by the way, how do you really know that 400 innocent civilians were killed? How do you know who is innocent and who is not? Why? This is not an army. They don’t wear uniforms that distinguish them from other civilians.”
Israeli ambassador to the UN Dan Gillerman, who seems to be competing with our own ambassador John Bolten in assholery, 1) claimed on “Meet the Press” that Hezbelloh was responsible for the Qana massacre by forcibly preventing residents from leaving, 2) said that he didn’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud (okay his actual words were “If we waited a year or two, they [Hezbollah] would have had chemical and biological weapons, and if we waited another five or six years, Hezbollah would have nuclear weapons.”), 3) accused Lebanon of being big ol’ cry-babies: “Isn’t it time that Lebanon took its fate into its own hands rather than keep crying out to the Security Council and to the international community?”
I don’t want to get too ahead of the process in discussing the procedures the Bushies are talking about for the military tribunals for suspected terrorists. Until they actually officially propose a bill, I’ll refrain from hitting the roof over the notion of letting the secretary of defense decide what crimes should be tried by military tribunals. I’m assuming – dear god, let it be so – that they’re throwing out every half-baked idea they can think of now so that their final proposal will look only mostly evil rather than batshit insane. Still, I would rather have a flat-out extra-legal system of detention without trial, which would at least be honest, than something that pretended to be a legal system but, for example, allowed the introduction evidence that the defense was not allowed to see. That isn’t just not a fair trial, it’s not a trial at all, and I’d rather see no court than a mockery of one. And they want to be able to admit information obtained by torture, and they want that written into law and passed by Congress – they’re trying to make every branch of government complicit. In a way, I’m with them on this one: I want congresscritters forced as often as possible to declare whether they are for or against torture.
The Bushies will also include a provision to immunize what the WaPo calls “service personnel and civilians,” the latter I assume meaning CIA employees, who commit war crimes while following administration policies. Alberto Gonzales called for such “protections for those who’ve relied in good faith upon decisions made by their superiors”. Ah yes, the “I vas chust following orders” defense.
A Miami Herald story begins: “Lacking hard facts about what is happening in Cuba after Fidel Castro ceded power, the Bush administration has accelerated its planning for a Cuban transition and is exploring new ways to broadcast information to the island.” So if they lack hard facts, what “information” would they be broadcasting?
Speaking of broadcasting, here’s a recruitment video for Appalachian State University (which is evidently hot hot hot) that’s been making the rounds. Stunningly bad.
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The LAT reports on how the investigation of the murder of 3 Iraqi detainees by American troops, possibly kinda encouraged by an alleged order by Col. Michael Steele to “kill all military-aged males,” is revealing that Steele created an atmosphere of trigger-happy racism, getting soldiers to compete over who could kill the most Iraqis, tracking their competition on a board at hq with the words “Let the bodies hit the floor” on it, and giving out knives as rewards for killing Iraqis. All very “Glengarry Glen Ross.”
Rumsfeld responded to Iraqi President Talibani’s claim that Iraqis could take charge of security in the whole country by the end of the year: “That’s fine. He’s the president of Iraq, and he can make his statements.”
Caption contest: Bush made a surprise visit to the press briefing room, which is like one of those surprise visits to Iraq, but with Helen Thomas instead of insurgents.
Iraqi President Talibani says that Iraqi forces will take complete responsibility for the security of the country by the end of the year. He also says that the current wave of violence is “the last arrows in their pockets” and that “We are highly optimistic that we will terminate terrorism in this year.” He added, “Dude, I am so high right now.”
Headline of the day: “Thai Bride Admits Feeding Ex-Husband to the Tigers.”
In that Fox interview, Bush supported the House Republican move to link the first increase in the minimum wage in a decade to permanent repeal of the estate tax. You know, when a country’s ruling party is that cynical, when it holds the interests of the poorest workers hostage to the interests of the wealthiest non-workers, voting against them just isn’t good enough. This is the sort of callousness that sparks revolutions. We need heads on pikes, people. We need to build barricades, and I will personally donate raw material for the first one.
Why yes, it is from IKEA, how did you guess?
More London Review of Books personal ads:
Leave me alone with your father for an evening and by the end of the night we’ll have gotten drunk together and have nicknames for each other and be scheduling in a football game. Give me the weekend and we’ll be lovers. Man in denial, 35, determined to bring everyone you know out of the closet before crawling into it himself and nailing the door shut from the inside. Box no. 11/02
The Schrödinger’s cat of personal ads. Box no. 11/08
My way or the highway – the two are very often the same with asphalting loon, 53, mixing his own bitumen and coarse aggregate surfacing solutions at box no. 14/03
I celebrated my fortieth birthday last week by cataloguing my collection of bird feeders. Next year I’m hoping for sexual intercourse. And a cake. Join my invite mailing list at box no. 14/04. Man.
‘Scarface’, ‘Mad Dog’, ‘Pretty Boy’, ‘Baby Face’ – if I had an underworld crime nickname it would be ‘Screwed by Ex-Wife’s Solicitor and Currently Sleeping in a Caravan’. Man, 42. Screwed by ex-wife’s solicitor and currently sleeping in a caravan. Box no. 14/06
Week 3 – Day 2. Breakfast: small piece of fruit (for example an apple), two crispbreads with one tablespoon low-fat soft cheese and one sliced tomato. Lunch: one wholemeal pita bread with a quarter small pot reduced-fat hummus and crudités, one small banana. Dinner: 47 chocolate cakes, anguish, despair, bile, hatred, a small pot of low-fat fruit yoghurt. Post-divorce comfort eater and sex therapist (F, 38). Box no. 15/03
The Red Devils flew over this ad while I was writing it. Family fun day guy (divorced, 51); monster trucks, motorbike displays, St John’s Ambulance and a beer tent. That’s me, breaking my leg on the Marine Corps death slide of self-hatred and over-compensation at box no. 15/05. I’ll meet you by the face-painting stand.
My advert comes in the form of interpretive dance. Man, 62. Box no. 15/09
When the Antmen unite, all will be their slaves. Man, 46, WLTM woman to 50 for whom this opening line works as a prelude to sex. Box no. 15/10
Bush talked to Fox’s Neil Cavuto Monday about a ceasefire in Lebanon: “Stopping for the sake of stopping is — is — is — can be OK, except it won’t address the root cause of the problem.” Which, as we all know, is terrorists. Nothing but terrorists. No one else in the Middle East ever does anything bad.
Cavuto brought up Israel’s breaking of its 48-hour bombing pause. Asked a similar question, Condi said, “the Israelis tell us that it’s close air support for their forces that were being engaged.” So that’s okay then. Bush attempted the “Look! Over there! Something shiny!” maneuver Cheney so often and so successfully uses on him:
CAVUTO: Reaction to the Middle East — we had a temporary suspension of hostilities. They were renewed this morning. What do you think?
BUSH: I think — first of all, I — I think your viewers ought to focus on the fact that the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution about Iran. And the world is coming together and making it clear that — to the Iranians, that their ambitions — their nuclear weapons ambitions — are just not acceptable.
He went on to say this about Iran: “I think that they — you know, I think that they sponsor Hezbollah. And, therefore, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re very much involved in the activities of Hezbollah.” Wow, he “wouldn’t be surprised.” Of course we’ve invaded entire countries on the basis of intel no more solid than that, so Iran should be worried.
On Venezuela purchasing weapons: “But, you know, the biggest threat he faces is under - the biggest face we threat - the biggest threat we face in the neighborhood is undermining democratic values and institutions. And it’s just - we will continue to speak out on behalf of - of democracy.” Speaking out, as only Bush can.
Says he wishes Chavez “would invest his petrodollars with the people of Venezuela, and give them a chance to, you know, get out of poverty, and give them a chance to realize hopes and dreams.” As opposed to the massive record profits just announced by Exxon, Chevron et al? (By the way, put aside some time for the Chicago Tribune series “A Tank of Gas, a World of Trouble.”)
On immigration: “But, you know, the words ‘amnesty’ are loaded words.” Yes they is. In the same response he said that illegal immigrants should learn English before applying for citizenship. Also, they should prove they “have been a good citizen.” Presumably he means a good non-citizen.
Asked if Americans are forgetting about the threat of terrorism: “My job is to do - is to do two things, one, remind people about the war on terror, and remind them that we’re doing everything we can to protect them, so that they’re able to go about their lives. ... It’s a - you know, it’s - you want the environment for - for people taking risks to be such that people say, ‘I understand that there’s a War on Terror, but I’m still willing to take risk.’” Well, to quote Lt. Frank Drebin, you take a risk when you get up in the morning, cross the street, or stick your face in a fan. “And [I’m quoting Bush now, not Drebin] I want the American people to know that, even if they don’t think that we’re still at war, I do”.
Summing up, Neil Cavuto got to the philosophical nub of the interview: “It was about 100 degrees, 100 percent humidity. He didn’t sweat. I did. And the guy is a lot older than I am. Go figure.”
Indeed today Bush had his annual physical (is that how you dress when you go to the doctor?) and was pronounced fit for duty, which is a case of medical malpractice if I ever heard of one.
So what is the Israeli government up to? Yesterday when the Israeli 48-hour aerial ceasefire was announced by Condi, it looked like she was being given credit she didn’t deserve. But less than an hour after she got on her plane and left, the prime minister and defense minister said, “Ceasefire? What ceasefire?”, resumed their bombing raids, and within a few hours the cabinet voted to expand the war. It looks very much like Condi was played. Did they really lie to her face about their intentions? Did they do so just to make her go away, thinking she’d accomplished something? And how can she return to the region now?
I don’t know what will happen next, and where we’ll be a month from now or a year from now. Haven’t got a clue. I suspect even the Israelis are surprised that they’ve gotten away with wreaking so much havoc on Lebanon for so long without being reined in. But they also haven’t accomplished nearly as much as they expected: Hezbollah can still fire rockets into Israel more at less at will and still holds the two Israeli soldiers Israel seems to have forgotten about. And Olmert et al have ratcheted up their rhetoric, and the Israeli public’s expectations, so far that anything less than the complete destruction of Hezbollah and the complete elimination of danger to all Israelis will seem like a failure, for which the Israeli public, who have shown no signs of sympathy for the Qana dead, no embarrassment over the deaths of children, will punish Olmert and the fledgling Kadima Party severely.
I was going to call the London Times’s “Shot Man Faces Porn Questions” my headline of the day (er, yesterday; I misplaced this paragraph), until I read the story. Last month the police raided a house under the impression that two brothers were Muslim terrorists, accidentally shooting one of them in the shoulder. They were quickly released and apologized to, but now the police are claiming to have found kiddie porn on the computer of the man they shot. Sure they did.
TPM has a scan of the Joe Lieberman flier distributed at black churches (front side, back side). What interests me, more than his mentioning having been at the March on Washington and gone to Mississippi while being rather sketchy about what he’s done for blacks in the last 40 years, more than his grossly mischaracterizing Lamont as saying he didn’t think much about race before getting into the race when he actually said he hadn’t thought much about the lack of diversity in his country club (which he attributes to its high dues and not – in a bit the flier leaves out – to discriminatory policy), is the claim that he is “The only candidate endorsed by the Democratic Party and President Clinton.” I like the underlining of only, to make it clear that they were endorsing just the one candidate for senator, but the real question is, what is this “Democratic Party” that endorsed him? The registered Democratic voters of the state of Connecticut might be forgiven for thinking that they are the party and that their endorsement won’t be decided upon until August 8th. The only party whose endorsement has been settled is this one. Any suggestion to the contrary is un-d/Democratic.
Glenn Greenwald explains why Arlen Specter’s anything-goes surveillance bill is a dangerous tilt towards unencumbered executive power.
Here’s something I feel confident no other blog will be interested in: pictures of George Bush stumbling on the Air Force One stairs.
