A gut feeling

Remember the 4 mercenaries who were killed in Fallujah and strung up on the bridge, giving the US an excuse to besiege and bomb the city? Their families are suing the “security” company that employed them, Blackwater, and now Blackwater has counter-sued for $10 million, claiming that the lawsuits violated the dead men’s employment contracts. Kenneth Starr is involved in this in some way I’m not clear on.

In Basra, British military spokesmodel Major Chris Ormond-King told reporters that he had absolutely no evidence of Iranian arms, money, or anything else in the region but “As a gut feeling we know there is Iranian influence.” Hey, we’ve invaded countries on less than that!

Speaking of gut feelings, Hugo Chavez says that the Venezuelan telecom company CANTV has been spying on him on behalf of “the empire” (whether the United States or CANTV’s part-owner Verizon, he didn’t say). Sigh. Of course it might be true, it might very well be true, but I like for accusations like that to be accompanied by some scintilla of proof. Chavez plans to nationalize CANTV along with... well, we’ll have to see what else he’ll nationalize, because he’ll do it all by decree power, which he claims is a “completely democratic process,” and I know some of you will explain to me in comments how it really is a completely democratic process and I can’t wait for that. To me the fundamental restructuring of a nation’s economy should follow an open national debate involving representative institutions, but what do I know?

There’s a “series of tubes” joke in here somewhere, I just know there is

From AP: “Ted Stevens, the Republican senator, has said that his wife, Catherine, has frequently been identified as Cat Stevens and stopped on US flights.” And the funny thing is, it’s not that they have the same name: they actually look uncannily alike.

An insurance company in Spain failed to get a court to order a man to return €550,000 they’d paid him in compensation for having been 90% blinded in a traffic accident, when he was stopped by police two years later driving a car at 96 mph. He said he’d just asked his wife to let him drive on a straight stretch of road.

Yesterday Maliki claimed that his forces had arrested 400 followers of Sadr. Possible, but who trusts anything Maliki says to be true? So was no one actually arrested? 400 random people, “Casablanca” style? 400 not-so-random Sunnis? Will we ever know?

A cute detail about the ethics measure passed by the Senate today: not all travel paid for by lobbyists would be banned; AIPAC can still pay for trips to Israel, although Sen. Stevens may have trouble getting his wife through security.

All the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized people

Alberto Gonzalez testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee today. His opening remarks included a plea for Bush’s judicial appointees to be treated “at least as fairly” as Clinton’s. He also said that “At the Department of Justice, every day is September 12th.” Also, their VCRs keep blinking 12:00.

He said that the secret ruling held after a secret hearing, which allegedly gives him the power to continue wiretapping, will remain secret even from Congress. He said that it took him two years to come up with a program that could survive even this farcical approximation of judicial scrutiny because “It’s not something you just pull off the shelf.” Only my renowned sense of decorum prevents me suggesting from whence he did pull it.


[P.S. Glenn Greenwald actually (shudder) watched the hearings, and has much more.]

The military tribunals will allow hearsay evidence, under trial rules issued today, including in capital cases. The Pentagon says that this is fair because both sides can use hearsay evidence, which “levels the playing field,” except of course that the defense is unlikely to have access to hearsay evidence originating with American military personnel or people living in Afghanistan, Iraq, etc.

Statements obtained by “coercion” may also be used, although it doesn’t look like the defense is allowed to torture anyone. So much for a level playing field. Pentagon lawyer Dan Dell’Orto says this affords “alien unlawful enemy combatants” (my, what a long list of scare words that is!) “all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized people.” I would be interested in hearing his definition of “civilized.”

To be fair, there are many improvements over the original proposed rules, which isn’t saying much. There will be no secret evidence not seen by the defense, but only the judge gets to decide if redacted classified material introduced at trial accurately represents the whole. Like hearsay, that’s a violation of the defendant’s constitutional right to confront the evidence against him (and presumably the defense doesn’t get to check other classified files for exculpatory evidence).

Short-term plus-up

Pentagon website headline: “Gates Wants to Build on Success in Afghanistan.” And if he had ham, he could have ham and eggs, if he had eggs. In order to “sustain” all of our success in Afghanistan, and not at all because insurgent attacks are up 300%, he’d like to send more troops. Now, I know you’re all wondering what they would call such an increase in troop levels. Not a surge. Not an escalation. Not an augmentation. A “short-term plus-up.” My theory is that even at the Pentagon they don’t really speak this way: at this point they’re introducing silly Orwellian euphemisms just so they can giggle when Fox News anchors slavishly repeat them on-air. The deployment of troops in Baghdad will be called Operation Desert Boogers.

Obviously, we’re all very concerned about cancer

Digby picked up a bit of the Bush interview on McNeil-Lehrer that I somehow missed, Bush on the subject of sacrifice: “Well, you know, I think a lot of people are in this fight. I mean, they sacrifice peace of mind when they see the terrible images of violence on TV every night.”


Today, George Bush visited the National Institutes of Health, which he said was “an amazing place because it is full of decent, caring, smart people, all aiming to save lives, in other words completely unlike me in every way.” I may have made up the last nine words. They talked about cancer. “Obviously, we’re all very concerned about cancer,” he said. At the end of the presentation, he thanked them for “the work being done at the grassroots level.” Evidently he thinks cancer comes from grass. “I thank you for your articulate presentation, both of you all. And this government supports what’s happening in order to save lives, and we will.” Completely unlike him in every way, including articulativity.


The man speaking here is Dr. Marston Linehan, chief of Urological Oncology, talking about urological oncology, one assumes. Personally I’m with Bush on this one, more hands-over-the-genitals than hands-nonchalantly-in-pockets.

To celebrate Haloscan functioning normally again, a caption contest.

We still have a chance to move beyond the broken egg

Amsterdam will soon get a bronze statue of a prostitute. According to the Dutch news agency ANP, “The statue represents a self-assured woman, her hands on her hips, looking sideways towards the sky, and standing on a doorstep”. ANP also says that “The precise place where the statue will be laid and its title have not yet been announced”.

Speaking of bronze prostitutes, Bush was interviewed on McNeil-Lehrer today. He says the Iraqi regime “fumbled” the recent hangings – yup, they really dropped the severed head ball on that one – and said this reinforced doubts that the Maliki government “is a serious government. ... this is a government that has still got some maturation to do.” Boy, when George W. Bush accuses you of being immature...

He said that Saddam’s execution “looked like it was kind of a revenge killing,” but on the other hand, he said (because Bush likes to see the bright side of executions) that it “closed a terrible chapter... In other words, there’s people that were around Iraq saying, well, I think he may come back. And that obviously is not going to happen.” Given Bush’s track record in predicting events in Iraq, I’m expecting Zombie Saddam to show up right about now.

He says if we “don’t crack this now,” “the violence will spiral out of control.” Yeah, imagine what that would be like. And if that were to happen, the spiraling thing, “it will embolden Iran; it will provide safe haven for Sunni killers”. Yeah, why should Sunni killers be the only people in Iraq to have safe haven?

There was an odd exchange:

LEHRER: Just today, another 35 people were killed in bombings; 80 over the weekend.

BUSH: Yeah, there is a difference between - look, death is terrible - but remember, some of these bombings are done by al-Qaida and their affiliates, all trying to create doubt and concern and create these death squads or encourage these death squads to roam neighborhoods. And it’s going to be hard to make Baghdad zero - to make it bomb-proof, blather blather blather...

What point was he trying to make here? A difference between what and what? Clearly, he believes there’s some “difference” we should “remember” that somehow mitigates these 115 deaths, but I don’t get it.

Asked if he has any feeling of personal failure, he sidesteps the “personal” part, and just says that failure in Iraq would be bad and that he is “frustrated with the progress.” You’ll notice that in just four sentences, failure turned into progress, although progress whose pace he is frustrated with. Why, “If you were to take it and put me in an opinion poll and said do I approve of Iraq, I’d be one of those that said, no, I don’t approve of what’s taking place in Iraq.” Boy, no wonder he doesn’t pay any attention to opinion polls.

Says “No question, 2006 was a lousy year for Iraq.”

Asked how success will be measured, says “A success means a Baghdad that is, you know, relatively calm compared to last year”. Dare to dream, Mr. President, dare to dream.

THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON DRUGS: Jim Lehrer asked if Iraq was like a broken egg that we’re now saying the Iraqis should put back together. Bush responded that Iraq is a cracked egg, not a broken egg, “where we still have a chance to move beyond the broken egg... and you know, if I didn’t believe we could keep the egg from fully cracking, I wouldn’t ask 21,000 kids - additional kids to go into Iraq to reinforce those troops that are there.”

He says he’s “spent a lot of time during my presidency talking to the American people and educating the American people about the stakes and what we’re trying to get done.” Does anyone actually feel more educated, more knowledgeable after listening to Bush speak? I just feel like I’ve been struck on the head with a ball-peen hammer, and I need to lie down.

Caption contest. The first picture is “Bush helping paint a mural at a Martin Luther King Jr. holiday volunteer day at a high school in Washington.”


The second is Bush with the St. Louis Cardinals, who I’m told are a baseball team which won some sort of contest.

Iraqi process

So two more executions in Iraq, and 24 hours later the video (and there is video) still hasn’t turned up on the internet. I had 12 hours in the pool. The video was shown to international reporters to prove that there were no unseemly incidents this time. Unless you count the whole thing being filmed and then shown to reporters. I saw an Iraqi official on the BBC news saying that this time the executees weren’t “subjected to any mistreatment.” Unless you count the part where they were hanged, and that head-ripped-off thing.

Condi, while granting that the executions might have been carried off with more “dignity,” for example if the hangman had worn a tuxedo instead of a ski mask, says “Let me just say that the decision concerning the execution of Saddam Hussein and the two defendants today were made according to Iraqi process and Iraqi law.” Because nothing says “Iraqi process” like having your head torn from your body.

But now I’m here, guess I’m goin’ to stay, and lick you into shape

Bush’s questioning of whether the Iraqis are showing “a gratitude level that’s significant enough” reminded me of an article about Cuba: Louis Pérez, Jr. “Incurring a Debt of Gratitude: 1898 and the Moral Sources of United States Hegemony in Cuba,” American Historical Review, 104:2, April 1999. Check your public library’s website; I was able to download the pdf through mine. It’s about how Americans were bewildered that the Cubans didn’t show sufficient gratitude for our generosity in liberating them from the Spanish. And they weren’t the only ingrates: Gen. Otis Howard, a former director of the Freedmen’s Bureau, wrote an article in 1898 suggesting that Americans were developing a prejudice against Cubans, who “have not properly appreciated the sacrifices of life and health that have been made to give them a free country,” similar to the “dislike of black men in 1863... because so many of them did not seem to understand, or be grateful for, what had been done for them.”

When the US was pressuring Cuba to accept the Platt Amendment denying it the right to its own foreign policy, ceding Guantanamo Bay, and giving the US the right to intervene militarily in Cuba at will, Secretary of War Elihu Root thundered, “If the American people get the impression that Cuba is ungrateful and unreasonable, they will not be quite so altruistic and sentimental the next time they have to deal with Cuban affairs as they were in April, 1898.”

This more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger-although-actually-pretty-angry-too-now-that-you-mention-it attitude persisted for decades, as did the belief that the history of the country only began when the US became interested in it: Teddy Roosevelt often said “Cuba owes to us her birth,” just as Bush last week described Iraq as a “young society.” In October 1959 a reporter asked President Eisenhower what he supposed was “eating” Castro. Ike admitted bafflement: “The whole history – first our intervention in 1898, our making and helping set up Cuban independence... and the very close relationships that have existed most of the time with them – would seem to make it a puzzling matter to figure out exactly why the Cubans and the Cuban Government would be so unhappy.” Rep. Mendel Rivers in 1960 called Cuba “a country that was conceived by America, delivered by America, nurtured by America, educated by America and made a self-governing nation by America. ... When ingratitude on the part of a nation reaches the point that it has in Cuba, it is time for American wrath to display itself in no uncertain terms.”



(Click here for larger image.)

They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that’s significant enough in Iraq

I didn’t see Bush’s 60 Minutes interview because the cable was out and I could only watch one program with the antenna, so I went with “24,” just to see how long it took for the writers to resort to their favorite piece of dialog, “What are you talking about?” Less than five minutes. And again before the end of the hour. I fully expect by the end of the season there will be a scene in which two characters, possibly Jack and Chloe, just repeat “What are you talking about?” over and over while applying electric shocks to each other. It’ll be the highest-rated episode ever.

No, I didn’t say they were naked, that’s just how you pictured it in your filthy, filthy mind.

But there is a transcript of the interview, you’ll be pleased to hear.

Bush said he really did seriously weigh the pros and cons of withdrawing from Iraq, and he takes us step by step through his thought process: “I thought long and hard about would withdrawal cause victory or cause success. And the answer is I don’t believe so, and neither do a lot of experts. And so then I began to think, well, if failure’s not an option and we’ve gotta succeed, how best to do so? And that’s why I came up with the plan I did.” The man uses logic like a scalpel, doesn’t he?

Asked if the instability in Iraq wasn’t caused by, you know, him, Bush said, “Well, our administration took care of a source of instability in Iraq. Envision a world in which Saddam Hussein was rushing for a nuclear weapon to compete against Iran.” Dude, for the 9,000th time: there was no nuclear weapons program.

Asked about the mistakes he admitted in Wednesday’s speech having made, Bush said, “Abu Ghraib was a mistake.” Oops?

Other mistakes? “Using bad language like, you know, ‘bring them on’ was a mistake.” Yeah, but at this stage I don’t think “bad language” even makes it onto the list of your top 100 mistakes, Georgie.

And troops levels, he admits after prompting, “Could have been a mistake.” He says that he referred to mistakes in the speech because he didn’t want anyone blaming the military. “Well, if the people want a scapegoat, they got one right here in me ‘cause it’s my decisions.” Of course just ten seconds before that, when admitting that troops levels could have been a mistake, the Scapegoat-in-Chief subtly slipped in a mention of “John Abizaid, one of the planners. And ten seconds later, asked if there are enough troops there now, he responded, “Let’s let the historians work it out.” My, but that “cause it’s my decisions” thing sure didn’t last long. And it gets worse:

PELLEY: Do you think you owe the Iraqi people an apology for not doing a better job?

BUSH: That we didn’t do a better job or they didn’t do a better job?

PELLEY: Well, that the United States did not do a better job in providing security after the invasion.

BUSH: Not at all. I am proud of the efforts we did. We liberated that country from a tyrant. I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude, and I believe most Iraqis express that. I mean, the people understand that we’ve endured great sacrifice to help them. That’s the problem here in America. They wonder whether or not there is a gratitude level that’s significant enough in Iraq.

PELLEY: Americans wonder whether . . .

BUSH: Yeah, they wonder whether or not the Iraqis are willing to do hard work necessary to get this democratic experience to survive. That’s what they want.


Pelley asked twice “Is Muqtada al-Sadr an enemy of the United States?” Bush sidestepped the question both times: “Anybody who murders innocent people or frustrating the ambitions of the Iraqi people and the United States” ... “If he is ordering his people to kill Americans, he is.”

He also sidestepped on whether Iran’s (alleged) interventions in Iraq amount to an act of war against the United States: “I’m not a lawyer. So act of war is kind of a . . . I’m not exactly sure how you define that. Let me just say it’s unacceptable.” So it’s an act of unacceptability.

Asked what he would tell the Iranian president: “I’d say, first of all, to him, ‘You’ve made terrible choices for your people. ... You’ve threatened countries with nuclear weapons.” He threatened which countries with what nuclear weapons? “‘You’ve said you want a nuclear weapon. You’ve defied international accord.’” Then he’d tell Ahmadinejad, “it’s in your interest to have a unified nation on your border.” Yeah, remember back in the ‘80s when you had a unified nation on your border? Good times, good times.

Bush says he saw “some of” the Saddam snuff film – on the internet! – but didn’t really enjoy it: “I was satisfied when we captured him. I’m just not . . .revenge isn’t necessarily something that causes me to react. In other words, I’m not a revengeful person.”

He says of the Congressional opponents of escalation: “we’ve got people criticizing this plan before it’s had a chance to work.” No, we’ve got people criticizing this plan before it’s had a chance to fail. Which is kind of the right time to be criticizing it.

Asked about the perception that the administration has lied, rather often, to the American people: “The minute we found out they didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, I was the first to say so.”

Asked if he feels let down by his subordinates, he says Cheney’s a “great” veep and Rumsfeld “did a really fine job.” “I feel like this country is blessed to have those kind of people serving.” As they say on “24,” what are you talking about?

You can’t fault that logic

Condi tells Israeli television that the very fact that Israel is threatening to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities “just shows how very serious it would be to have Iran continue its programs unabated.”

Stomach

Stupid death of the week: Jennifer Strange participated in a Sacramento radio station’s “Hold Your Wee for a Wii” contest in which whoever drank the most water without having to pee won. A few hours later she died of water intoxication.

Dick Cheney was interviewed by Chris Wallace this morning.

On Iraq: “Chris, we have, in fact, made enormous progress.”

On the New Way Forward (TM): “Why don’t we get together in a couple of months and see how it worked.” Yes, let’s do that.

On Congress’s complete inability to halt the New Way Forward (TM):

CHENEY: So Congress clearly has a role to play.

Q: That’s a consultative role.

CHENEY: It is a consultative role. ... you cannot run a war by committee.

(Pardon my not blockquoting, by the way, there’s a bug in New Blogger that screws up line spacing after a blockquote.)

On Democrats in Congress: “But then they end up critical of what we’re trying to do, advocating withdrawal or so-called redeployment of force, but they have absolutely nothing to offer in its place. I have yet to hear a coherent policy out of the Democratic side with respect to an alternative to what the President has proposed in terms of going forward. They basically, if we were to follow their guidance, the comments, for example, that a lot of them made during the last campaign about withdrawing U.S. forces, we simply go back and re-validate the strategy that Osama bin Laden has been following from day one, that if you kill enough Americans, you can force them to quit, that we don’t have the stomach for the fight.”

So-called redeployment. And clearly, the way to invalidate Osama bin Laden’s strategy is to let them kill many, many more Americans. That’ll show ‘em we have the stomach.

On Chuck Hagel: “And for us to do what Chuck Hagel, for example, suggests or to buy into that kind of analysis -- it’s really not analysis, it’s just criticism -- strikes me as absolutely the wrong thing to do.”

Just criticism. Notice that now “criticism” is a pejorative term.


Polls, elections, he’ll ignore them equally:

Q: By taking the policy you have, haven’t you, Mr. Vice President, ignored the expressed will of the American people in the November election?

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Well, Chris, this President, and I don’t think any President worth his salt can afford to make decisions of this magnitude according to the polls. The polls change.

Q: This was an election, sir.

THE VICE PRESIDENT: Polls change day by day, week by week. ... you cannot simply stick your finger into the wind and say, gee, public opinion is against, we better quit. That is part and parcel of the underlying fundamental strategy that our adversaries believe afflicts the United States.


The key word in the sentence “This President does not make policy based on public opinion polls” is “polls,” because it’s a red herring, a distraction from what he’s really saying. Let’s try the sentence again without it, and see if anything is clarified: “This President does not make policy based on public opinion.”

Bush will be on 60 Minutes tonight. A preview: “I think the Iraqi people owe the American people a huge debt of gratitude and I believe most Iraqis express that.”

Informal museum of agricultural vehicles

In the Bay Area, next to I80 (exit 36) about 10 miles east of the Carquinez Bridge heading towards Sacramento, somebody has arranged on their farmland, alongside miscellaneous cows and donkeys, a bunch of antique tractors and other farm vehicles in a sort of impromptu outdoor museum, lined up so as to be “toured” from inside one’s car in the 30 seconds or so it takes to drive past on the freeway. I like the idea very much.

Due to the position of the sun, I couldn’t see a damned thing through my camera’s viewfinder, so I snapped about 20 pictures more or less at random (not thinking to use the zoom) and hoped for the best. Wish I had a closeup of the carts on the right in the first picture, which might be 19th century.

Iraqis killing Iraqis is something that Americans really don’t understand

Bush’s weekly radio address mostly reiterated his Wednesday speech on Iraq, but I would like to point out this characterization of Anbar: “America will step up the fight against al Qaeda in its home base in Iraq -- Anbar province.” He went on, “Our military forces in Anbar are killing and capturing al Qaeda leaders”. In that order. Or not.

Bush reached out to Congress, well, reached out to slap them: “Members of Congress have a right to express their views... But those who refuse to give this plan a chance to work have an obligation to offer an alternative that has a better chance for success.” I.e., get out now doesn’t count. “To oppose everything while proposing nothing is irresponsible.” This is like an alchemist insisting his critics should shut up unless they have a better way to turn lead into gold. Like saying, all right, smartypants, if you don’t think my perpetual motion machine will work, let’s see you make one with a bicycle chain, three coat hangers, a baby stroller with one wheel missing, some string, an Atari joystick, and an old mayonnaise jar.

(What sort of spellcheck program doesn’t recognize “smartypants”?)

Bush added, “We recognize that many members of Congress are skeptical. Some say our approach is really just more troops for the same strategy. In fact, we have a new strategy with a new mission: helping secure the population, especially in Baghdad.” So for the last four years, we haven’t been trying to secure the population?

He also informs us that “Secretary Rice has gone to the region to continue the urgent diplomacy required to help bring peace to the Middle East.”

Actually, Condi herself says, “I’m not coming with a proposal, I’m not coming with a plan” and “this time, I think we want to have consultations to see where people are”, so possibly her definition of urgent diplomacy is different from her boss’s.

Speaking of urgent diplomacy, here she is with Israel’s deputy prime minister and minister for strategic threats, Unholy Avigdor Lieberman, whose threats against Palestinians have done so much to help bring peace to the Middle East.


Lieberman told her that it was just “a matter of time” before Israel re-invaded Gaza.

(I’m just going to mix together quotes from that briefing and the 1, 2, 3, 4 other interviews Condi gave yesterday. Oh, and I think I deserve some sort of prize for reading all of them. Cash, a back rub, cash, antidepressants, cash, something.)

Condi spoke about propping up Palestinian PM Abbas: “we continue to work on how to help Abu Mazen and how to help the Palestinian people to create governing structures and security forces that can actually secure the Palestinian people.” These are the exact same terms the Bushies use about Maliki and Iraq. “Secure” has been the Bushies’ favorite verb for the last couple of weeks. I’m never sure whether they mean it in the sense of to make safe, get possession of, tie down or fasten, to pledge something to assure payment, or to cover openings and make movable objects fast.

While unwilling to talk to Iranian leaders, Rice does say “we’re reaching out to the Iranian people. We’ve had a delegation of medical personnel here. They had a wonderful trip, went down to Atlanta to the CDC, seeing how America does these health matters. But we also have the American wrestling team going to Iran fairly soon. So we’re going to continue to reach out to the Iranian people, a great people, a people that shouldn’t be isolated.” Wrestled, but not isolated. Got it. Who needs diplomacy when you’ve got wrestling.

She criticized the skepticism expressed by senators about the Maliki regime: “And the undercurrent that because they’ve not performed in the past, they won’t perform this time, I think was -- is just -- there isn’t a natural automaticity there”. And even if they succumb to unnatural automaticity and don’t perform, “we’re not pulling the plug on Iraq.” Hard to see how that matters: it’s not like they have electricity anyway.

She says she has told Iraqi officials that the impatience of the American people has increased “as Americans watch Iraqis killing Iraqis. Because while we understand fighting al-Qaida, while we understand fighting Saddamists, while we even understand insurgency, Iraqis killing Iraqis is something that Americans really don’t understand.”

But the real pressure on Maliki will come from Iraq’s vibrant democratic process: “The Iraqi people have lost patience... the Iraqi people are fed up”; “Well, the compelling forcing mechanism is that this government is not going to survive its own people if it doesn’t take control of the situation in Baghdad.” Wow, a government forced to change its failed policies because the people are fed up – I guess we could never have a system like that in this country, huh?

That’s not an escalation, that’s just good policy

Condi is in the Middle East, but says she comes with no proposal to end Israeli-Palestinian conflict: “I think anything that is an American plan is bound to fail.” Yes, that has certainly been the experience of the last six years.

And she again denied that what Bush plans for Iraq is an escalation. Yesterday she said it was, rather, an “augmentation.” Today she said, “I don’t think there is a government in the world that would sit by and let the Iranians in particular run networks inside Iraq that are building explosive devices of a very high quality that are being used to kill their soldiers. That’s not an escalation, that’s just good policy.”

Speaking of Iranians, the alliterative Peter Pace told the Foreign Relations Committee, “I think one of the reasons you keep hearing about Iran is because we keep finding their stuff in Iraq.” Tell me about it, I lost yet another hat somewhere this week, and don’t even get me started on umbrellas or explosive devices of a very high quality.

The pause that refreshes

The soldiers who met Bush at Fort Benning yesterday were banned from speaking to reporters.

Monday the Supreme Court refused to overturn a 9th Circuit decision allowing the prosecution of seven Iranian refugees for supporting the People’s Mujahadeen of Iran, which the State Dept considers a terrorist organization. This means that they will not be able to question that designation in court (the 9th said it literally doesn’t matter if the designation is correct). So you’ve got all wrapped up in one unconstitutional ball a bunch of things antithetical to justice and fairness: 1) secret evidence (used in the designation, which is an administrative process but has the effect of making the giving of aid to certain organizations a criminal act), 2) guilt by association, 3) collective guilt, 4) and in this case the designation was even made retroactive. The Bush admin had told the Supreme Court that this wasn’t about free speech (or freedom of association) at all but the regulation of financial interactions.

Secretary of War Robert

testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that members of the Bush administration and the military have been persuaded that Maliki and other Iraqi leaders “finally have the will to act against all instigators of violence in Baghdad.” “Finally.” Even the Bushies (including DCI Hayden, in a reference I’ve misplaced) are having to admit that these people have always acted in a sectarian manner in the past and that the only guarantee they won’t do so in the future is that they say they won’t. Gates: “The record of fulfilling their commitments is not an encouraging one. But I will say this: they really do seem to be eager to take control of this security.” Yes, they are eager to be unleashed to repress the Sunnis.

Yesterday the House voted for federal support for stem cell research. The NYT chose to run the story with this picture



of Rep. Diana DeGette and her staff toasting the victory with plastic cups of delicious, thirst-quenching stem cells.

A good opportunity to really crush this group of folks

At the Senate hearings today, Condi told Biden, “I have met Prime Minister Maliki. I saw his resolve.”

There are some straight lines even I won’t touch.

Asked whether Bush’s remarks about Iran and Syria yesterday meant we might attack those countries militaries, she said that Bush “isn’t going to rule anything out to protect our troops,” but doesn’t have any immediate plans to do so. Color me reassured.

Speaking of the Decider, this morning he got all choked up and weepy while giving the mother of a dead marine his posthumous Medal of Honor.



Poor sad monkey. Within three hours he was recovered and whooping it up with future dead troops at Fort Benning, playing hide and seek,



eating delicious mashed potatoes or possibly potato salad,



and enjoying the Fort Benning Amateur Theatrical Society’s reenactment of the hanging of Saddam Hussein.



He told the soldiers, “Everywhere that warriors from this base serve, you leave your mark”. Well, mark their territory, if you know what I mean.

He told them, “the sectarian violence needs to be challenged and stopped in order for this young society to advance.” That young society he’s talking about is, oh what’s it called again, Mesopotamia? Babylonia? oh yes, I remember, Iraq.

George’s memory was also troubling him, as he failed to come up with the name Samarra: “They [Al Qaida] bombed holy -- important holy site, they killed innocent people”.

And you know what’s worse? They’re not even really religious: “I, frankly -- well, speaking about religion, these are murderers. They use murder as a tool to achieve their objective. Religious people don’t murder. They may claim they’re religious, but when you kill an innocent woman, or a child to create a political end, that’s not my view of religion.”

Shrub is always willing to generously acknowledge the deep, deep wisdom of others: “One of the wisest comments I’ve heard about this battle in Iraq was made by General John Abizaid -- smart guy, a great soldier. He told me -- he said, Mr. President, if we were to fail in Iraq, the enemy would follow us here to America.”

GeeDubya inspired the troops with his visionary, um, vision of the transformation to come in Iraq: “you’ll begin to see a society that is somewhat more peaceful.”

In a fascinating insight into the workings of his, for the lack of a better word, brain, Bush explained how he crafted the surge policy: “I understand the consequences of failure; they’re not acceptable. And so I thought long and hard how best to succeed. That’s what I’m interested in, is success. The American people are interested in success. And I laid out a plan that is our best chance for success.”

You can really tell how committed Chimpy is to democracy in Iraq by the way he keeps quoting tribal sheiks in Anbar province that have supposedly come over to our side. “They’re tired of foreigners and killers in their midst,” Bush said, without a hint of irony, “That’s what the commanders have told me. And they [I’m not sure if he means the sheiks or the commanders] believe we have a good opportunity to really crush this group of folks.”

A good opportunity to really crush this group of folks. Here’s the link to the transcript again, just in case you want to check that I’m not making that up.

One of the things people are curious about from last night’s speech was his reference to Patriot missiles. Fortunately, today he cleared that up completely: “I also talked about Patriot missile systems in the region, to help others deal with the external threats.”

He also reminded the soldiers of the Big Picture, the larger context:

It’s very important for people to understand -- put this situation in Iraq in a larger context, and that is the ideological war that we’re seeing. I talked to you about the consequences of failure. The best way to defeat the totalitarian of hate is with an ideology of hope -- an ideology of hate -- excuse me -- with an ideology of hope. It matters whether or not people are resentful in the Middle East. It matters if people are hateful and look to strike out at a convenient target in the Middle East. Our security depends on there to be a alternative to the ideology of hate. Because if there’s resentment and hate, it’s easier to recruit 19 kids to get on an airplane and kill 3,000 people.

A surge across all lines of operations

The story I passed on a couple of days ago about scores of Shiites being hanged from lampposts in Baghdad in retaliation for Saddam Hussein’s execution looks like it was a rumor.

Secretary of War Robert

, Condi Rice and the always alliterative Peter Pace held a press briefing today.

Condi: “The President has conveyed to the Iraqi leadership that we will support their good decisions, but that Americans’ patience is limited.” Funny, because in the November elections the American people thought they were conveying to the American leadership that our patience is limited, but the message doesn’t seem to have quite gotten through.

Gates: “This means, above all, strengthening those in Iraq who are prepared to address its problems peacefully against those who seek only violence, death and chaos.” Yes, we are asking the Iraqi government to send 60,000 troops into Baghdad to address its problems peacefully.

Gates: “The term ‘surge’ has been used in relation to increasing U.S. troop levels, and an increase certainly will take place. But what is really going on, and what is going to take place, is a surge across all lines of operations -- military and non-military, Iraqi and coalition.” Where earlier Condi sounded like a mother telling the Iraqis that her patience was running out, here Gates sounds like an Appleby’s manager giving a speech to the servers about filling orders faster. “A surge across all lines of operations” indeed.

Gates also informs us that “failure in Iraq is not an option.” Just in case you thought that failure was an option. Now you know. It’s not.

Gates says the surge (unlike Bush, he used the word) is “viewed as a temporary surge. But I think no one has a really clear idea of how long that might be.” He’s also a little vague about how we’ll know if the New Way Forward (TM) is working, although he does mention a new oil law.

Condi: “the Saddam hanging was extremely unfortunate... But these passions do get expressed.”

But she does think that Iraqi leaders are overcoming sectarian differences and sites as evidence of this... work on a new oil law.

Gates says there will be no more political interference in “clearing operations” and arrests: “all law-breakers are susceptible to being detained or taken care of in this campaign.” Taken care of.

And then Gates immediately ducked a question about whether the US would try to detain or take care of Sadr.

QUESTION: One last attempt at this, let me take one last, different way. Has anyone in the military recommended operations inside Iran?

GENERAL PACE: No.

Like Bush, Pace also talks about “going door-to-door to see the people and let them know that there is a security presence”.

Gates says that if “the Iraqis are not fulfilling their commitments,” we will immediately spring into action and come down on them hard: “the way this is going to unfold, we are going to have a number of opportunities to go back to the Iraqis and point out where they have failed to meet their commitments, and to move forward.” Damn, he’s tough! With the pointing out, and the moving forward, do not incur this man’s displeasure, just Do. Not. Do it.

He adds, “if we see them falling short, we will make sure that they know that and how strongly we feel about it.”

Rice, who is going to the Middle East tomorrow but is not going to Iraq (unless it’s one of those, you know, surprise visits), adds that right now we need to give the Maliki regime “a little breathing space” (she actually said that earlier in the day, into a mike she didn’t know was live), because “Maliki needs to work with his government, get his Baghdad commander in place, get his forces in place, get his reconstruction coordinator appointed, and then I fully expect at that time, probably in not very long, to go to Baghdad and to work with them. But I do think it’s important to give them a little time to get organized.” Sure, what’s the hurry, take your time.

From the briefing and her Senate testimony this morning, the many faces of Condi:

Bush’s Surge Speech: no magic formula for success in Iraq

Bush insisted in his address to the nation that “In our discussions, we all agreed that there is no magic formula for success in Iraq.” Oh dear, someone’s finally told him that his Magic 8 Ball isn’t really magic.

Actually, what that phrase is meant to convey is that the Iraq Study Group recommendations aren’t the magic formula he specifically ordered them to come up with, so he’s free to ignore it. Haven’t heard a lot from James Baker lately, have we?

He also said that some people’s “solution is to scale back America’s efforts in Baghdad  or announce the phased withdrawal of our combat forces. We carefully considered these proposals.” Hands up anyone who believes he really did carefully consider those proposals. Or read any of the books on the shelves behind him. He gave the address from the White House library, using a room he’d never used before to demonstrate that this was a new position, according to this morning’s NYT. Maybe he should have delivered it from the bathroom.

Bush needed to show that he knew what had gone wrong before he could convince anyone that he knew how to correct past errors. But he wasn’t consistent about which Iraqis (and how many Iraqis) were responsible for the ongoing violence. At one point he said that “Most of Iraq’s Sunni and Shia want to live together in peace,” a dubious proposition (I’d say at this point most Sunnis and Shiites want to live apart in peace). But elsewhere he said “We thought that [the 2005] elections would bring the Iraqis together, [but] the opposite happened.”

At other times it’s not actually clear what he means by “Iraqis.” In the sentence, “Only the Iraqis can end the sectarian violence and secure their people”, is it the Iraqi government, the military, the average Iraqi. And aren’t the people the Iraqis need to “secure their people” against also Iraqis? It’s just not clear what he’s saying should happen, and who should make it happen.

It just now occurs to me that he didn’t mention the Kurds once.

He also forgot Poland. And Britain and whoever else remains of the Coalition of the Willing (COW). Evidently they’re totally irrelevant to the New Way Forward (TM).

He’s sticking with the myth that everything was going swimmingly until the Samarra bombing, which was evidently a Sunni/Al Qaida plot to get Shiites to form death squads. So, what, there were no death squads before last February? I think his belief in his own omniscience is such that he thinks that because he only noticed that things were going wrong in February, nothing was actually going wrong until that moment.

His continuing failure to understand the way things work in Iraq led to the single scariest sentence in the speech: “These Iraqi forces will operate from local police stations  conducting patrols, setting up checkpoints, and going door-to-door to gain the trust of Baghdad residents.” Gain... the trust... oh dear lord.

He’s less sanguine about Anbar, which he describes as another Afghanistan or as what Iraq could become if we don’t follow his plan, a terrorist state run by Al Qaida. Makes you wonder why he’s only sending 4,000 more troops. No it doesn’t: he thinks he can win in Baghdad with enough troops, but has no idea what could possibly work in Anbar.

It’s hard to tell what he’s saying the surge (a word he refrained from using) would accomplish. It would create “breathing space” for the government, it would “break the current cycle of violence” (because the 20,000 troops wouldn’t be engaging in any violence themselves?), I don’t really know what those things mean, how we would recognize if the surge was succeeding or failing. Which is of course the idea.

He says he’s told Maliki and other Iraqi leaders that “America’s commitment is not open-ended.” Just until January 2009, and after that he doesn’t care what happens.

When he talked about Iran and Syria, he said, “We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria”, which might just refer to tightening the borders, but he went on, “And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq”, which sounds an awful lot like a threat to invade or bomb both countries.

He mentioned exactly one member of Congress by name. Joe Lieberman.

It was a largely unrhetorical speech, delivered with little affect. It was a defiant speech in that it defied every bit of advice he’s been given, the results of the November elections, and, of course, reality itself, but he was very careful not to look defiant or sound defiant, to talk of staying the course or accuse anyone of wanting to cut and run. Neither did he make any grandiose promises that will be used against him in a few months time when things go wrong. He may finally have realized he isn’t going to win anything that anybody will call a victory.

You know what else he didn’t mention? Saddam Hussein’s execution.

Manners

Tony Blair finally ventures an opinion on Saddam Hussein’s execution, saying, “The manner of the execution of Saddam was completely wrong, but that should not blind us to blah blah blah.” He concludes, “So the crimes that Saddam committed does not excuse the manner of his execution, and the manner of his execution does not excuse the crimes,” a statement which gives the illusion of even-handedness, while suggesting that those who complain about the way the lynching was carried out (or even those who oppose the use of the death penalty, which Blair seems not to have done) are somehow using it to “excuse” or forget his actions, a position taken by no one in the entire world.

DIY blog post

Sometimes in the course of my blogging duties I come across something I know is a perfect straight line, but to which I just cannot for some reason come up with a punchline. On those occasions I must turn to you, the reader.

The Pentagon web site currently features, under the rubric “War on Terror,” this story from Iraq: “Troops Raid Meat-Packing Plant.”

Over to you, guys. I’m gonna get a sandwich.

P.S. The article quotes one soldier thusly: “This mission rocked! We got to enter and clear a building. My buddy and I got to kick a door down. It really increased my motivation hearing the word ‘Breach!’”

Sea change

Guantanamo hunger strike update: 11 hunger strikers, 5 being forcibly fed. And the military is still using the line that hunger striking is “consistent with Al Qaeda practice” and claiming that no demands have been made by the prisoners.

Olympia Snowe reports that Bush told her Monday (at a meeting with 30 Republican senators and zero Democratic senators; he didn’t even try to make it a bipartisan event by inviting a senator from the Connecticut for Lieberman party) that what would be different about the New Way Forward (TM) is that Maliki has experienced a “sea change” in his attitude. I don’t know about you, but all this talk about surges and sea changes just makes me have to pee. I’d also like more details about what Bush said: the sea change thing suggests that he admitted that up until now Maliki has been acting in a sectarian manner and failing to confront the Shiite death squads and militias. Even if Bush’s assessment of Maliki changing his sea (or whatever that nautical term means) were true, which it isn’t, it would hardly matter. Bush, with his authoritarian inclinations, likes to assume that if the Man At The Top has sufficient “will,” he can accomplish anything, but Maliki’s powers are severely circumscribed, his influence limited, and his reputation among non-Shiites bad.

New video and stills of the dead body of the last guy who could turn his will into results, Saddam Hussein, are available, and yick.

Oh, and here’s something I haven’t seen outside of the, of all places, Daily Telegraph: something like 100 Shiites held hostage in order to prevent Saddam’s execution have been hanged from lampposts in Baghdad.

The article also says that the number of copy-cat hangings by children around the world is up to 7.

Since he’s dead, the charges against Saddam for ordering the extermination of Kurds have been dropped, but the trial of his co-defendants continues. Yesterday they played tapes of Saddam. Can it be a fair trial if they can’t call Saddam as a defense witness?

Interfacing directly without the interference of filters

The Pentagon website informs us of the start of a “Why We Serve” program, in which troops who have served in Afghanistan or Iraq will be sent around the US for three months to speak to schools, Rotary Clubs, Boy Scouts, NAMBLA chapters and the like about the good things they’ve been doing. According to the program’s director, the hyper-alliterative Marine Major Matt Morgan, the idea is to send them “out to the American people so they could talk to community organizations and groups and interface directly without the interference of filters.” So committed is the Pentagon to doing this “without the interference of filters” that these troops were picked by lottery without any ideological screening whatsoever, and will be permitted to say whatever they like about the conduct of the war. Ha ha, I kid the military’s propaganda programs, I kid because I love.

Also... “interface.”

If you want to invite one of these fine troops to speak at your next anti-war rally, barn-raising, bris, Star Trek convention, pie-eating contest, Renaissance Faire, bachelorette party, etc, the request form is here.

Burritos & genocide: it’s what’s for lunch

Bush met with the president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso. Bush kept asking him, “But that’s not like a real president, right?” Evidently it was a non-stop talkfest: “We talked about Iran. We talked about Syria. We talked about Iraq. We talked about a lot of issues.” And they weren’t done: “We’re going to talk about Darfur here at lunch. I’m hoping we get burritos. I know that José is as committed as I am to helping solve what I’ve called a genocide. I really like burritos. It is outrageous that people are being treated the way they are. Isn’t that a funny word: bur-ri-tos.” I may have made up the sentences that didn’t involve burritos.



Barroso responded: “I’ve been in Darfur recently. I can tell you that it’s really a tragedy, what’s going on, and we cannot accept that tragedy going on without the united response of the international community. Say, did you just say we’re having burritos?”

We are not going to be their legal nannies

Since the official film of Saddam Hussein’s execution that aired on Iraqi tv was so rapidly supplanted as the snuff-film-of-record by that cellphone footage, we’ve tended to ignore the fact that the bowdlerized version was dishonest, inaccurate and in short, a cover-up.

There is a lengthy piece of dictation article in the NYT, in which American military officials use the newspaper to distance themselves from Saddam Hussein’s execution. They pleaded with Maliki and his people to delay, to do it in a more seemly fashion, to take heed of international concerns, even to follow Iraqi law, but in the end they just had to turn him over. Sure, just as if he’d been acquitted, the Americans would have shaken his hand and let him walk free. Because our respect for Iraqi sovereignty is just that strong.

An unnamed American official is quoted saying that they thought the execution violated Iraqi law, but “the president [sic – he means Maliki] of their country says it meets their procedures. We are not going to be their legal nannies.” Indeed, why should Maliki have any less of a right to violate his country’s laws than Bush claims for himself every single day?

Here’s the damning detail, which I think hasn’t come out before: the Americans wanted a written statement (the Iraqis were very reluctant to put anything down on paper) from the chief judge of the highest court that the execution was lawful. He refused, so Maliki went instead to a body of Shiite clerics. Because, really, it didn’t look enough like an act of sectarian vengeance.

Now that’s what I call a surge

Headline of the week (BBC): “US Army Urges Dead to Re-Enlist.”

Gives a whole new meaning to “bring out your dead.”

Which leads us nicely to Terry Jones of the Pythons, who suggests that rather than spend $500b on a war with Iraq, the US could simply have given every Iraqi $18,700 each, with more felicitous results.

Did I really just write “felicitous”?

The Haditha massacre: the norm

The WaPo has gotten hold of the investigative report on the Haditha massacre (click on the label at the bottom of this post for my previous posts on the subject). It still doesn’t answer whether the Marines were on a rampage after an IED attack killed one of them, or whether they calmly massacred civilians in compliance with rules of engagement that allowed for such massacres. And I’m still not sure which would be worse. One of the most damning aspects is that the events took place over many hours. It was fairly late in the day that Marines “approached a third and fourth house after noticing men they said were peering at them suspiciously,” separated out the men from the women, and executed the men. For peering at them suspiciously.

At the start of the massacre, after the IED blast, the report says that the squad’s leader, Staff Sgt. Frank Wuterich, executed five innocent bystanders “one by one,” and that when he ordered Marines to enter civilian houses from which, supposedly, they were being fired upon (I still doubt there was any hostile fire), he told them to shoot first and ask questions later. That quote is from his own statement. (I wonder if they ever did ask those questions.)

Wuterich also told investigators, “I want to make clear that we did not go in intentionally to spray everyone we saw. We were taking fire.” Note that Iraqi bullets = fire, American bullets = spray.

Speaking of spray, another sergeant admits to having peed on the corpses.

The colonel in charge of the unit, Stephen W. Davis, decided that even though there had been many civilian casualties, and an initial attempt at covering up how those civilians had died, there was no need for an investigation: “There was nothing out of the ordinary about any of this, including the number of civilian dead, that would have triggered anything in my mind that was out of the norm.”

That pretty much says it all, huh?

The Sunshine boys

As you doubtless know, Holy Joe Lieberman and Maverick John McCain brought their comedic stylings to the American Enterprise Institute today. They were there to speak for a “surge.” They were optimistic that a surge would succeed. See how optimistic they are?



They insist the surge be open-ended rather than temporary, that it “must be substantial and it must be sustained.” In other words, their goal is a surge that can sustain itself, govern itself, and defend itself.

According to McCain, this would give the Maliki regime “a fighting chance to pursue reconciliation.” Yes, it’s all about the make-up sex.

In that op-ed in the WaPo last week, Lieberman quoted some unnamed colonel who told him in private how he and his men all support the war. Today he quoted him again, but this time claimed that Colonel Totally Not a Made-Up Guy also supports a surge, saying that “We need some more troops to... fight it to a victorious finish.” Funny how Joementum failed to mention that part in the op-ed.

Lieberman was just full of Nazi parallels: this is all just like the Spanish Civil War, a prelude to a really Big One. No wait, it’s also like 1942, when Pearl Harbor had already happened, and some Americans still didn’t want to fight in a world war.

McCain says it’s like the 1930s, the 1940s and the 1920s, when there was an “incredible” desire in the US not to be involved in another world war, and “Some of the most respected Americans in our country -- Charles Lindbergh, Henry Ford and many others -- were out and out about isolationists.” Isn’t it funny that the only “isolationists” he can think of were actually fascist sympathizers.

Here’s the sentence from Holy Joe that most made me want to kick him in the balls: “If the American people could talk to the American military, as we do regularly, and hear their commitment to this cause, their selfless bravery, their honor, I believe that they would support the troops as we are.”

Lieberman expressed undying confidence in Bush’s boundless wisdom – “The president of the United States gets this.” – while McCain didn’t utter his name once. Holy Joe suggests that Bush simply ignore Congress if it dares to cross him: “this moment cries out for the kind of courageous leadership that does what can succeed and win in Iraq, not what will command the largest number of political supporters in Congress”. Hey, if ignoring the will of the majority was good enough for Joe in Connecticut...

He joined the Navy to see the world, and what did he see...?

Bush is evidently going to give Admiral William Fallon the CentCom job currently held by John Abizaid, overseeing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, despite the fact that he is an admiral in the Navy. The “surge” will evidently involve battleships and submarines. It’s that element of surprise that makes this a stroke of pure genius.

So the Democrats are in charge of both houses of Congress, and in a historic breakthrough, Harry Reid, a middle-aged wealthy white guy, has become Senate majority leader. The marble ceiling has indeed been broken. Congratulations, Harry, you are a role model for middle-aged wealthy white guys everywhere.

If innocent people were hurt

The US Navy is fighting the Islamists in Somalia. Did I miss the national debate over whether entering another civil war was a good idea?

During a joint press conference with Egyptian President Mubarak, Israeli PM Olmert almost kinda sorta apologizes for the deaths of four or more Palestinian civilians during a military raid on Ramallah. No, wait, that’s not what he said: “I’m sorry if innocent people were hurt.” First, dead is not the same as hurt. Second, that’s a rather ungrammatical use of the conditional: by suggesting that the people who were hurt/killed might not have been innocent, he is saying that he either is or is not sorry at the present time. Possibly he alternates every minute between being sorry and not sorry, using an egg timer, until such time as their guilt or innocence is determined. Perhaps the correct phrasing would have been, “I would be sorry if innocent people were hurt,” but then again maybe no form of grammar adequately conveys an apology slash smear. Maybe that could be Lynne Truss’s next book: Eats, Shoots, Leaves, and Pretends to Apologize.

Olmert also says that “things developed in a way that could not have been predicted.” Yes, no one could have predicted that an Israeli military incursion of troops, tanks and attack helicopters into the West Bank could result in fatalities; normally they’re greeted as liberators, with flowers and dancing.

I mistook Commodore Bananarama’s return of some powers to the Fijian president he had deposed: the deal was that the president then swear in the commodore as prime minister.

Bush’s signing statement giving himself the power to open anyone’s mail without a warrant – “especially,” in the words of the statement, “if they contain free samples of gum, candy or other taste treats” – is not exactly a surprise, given his record. But almost more worrisome than Bush’s people reading our mail is the failure of anyone in Congress to read this statement, which was issued 15 days before anyone noticed.

Bush & Merkel press conference: Chimpy’s thinking is taking shape, and he calls for more dignified executions

German Chancellor Angela Merkel met Bush at the White House and oh dear God he’s still talking about the roasted pig she served six months ago: “And Laura and I are looking forward to feeding you dinner. I’m not so sure it’s going to be as good a dinner as the barbecue you fed us -- (laughter) -- but we’ll try.”

On global warming, he said we should “put behind us the old, stale debates of the past... Here in the United States, we’re going full-steam ahead with new technologies that will change the way we drive our cars”. A Stanley Steamer in every garage!

He says that on Iraq, “my thinking is taking shape.” Pear shaped? Circular, as in, rounding around in circles? “One thing is for certain, I will want to make sure that the mission is clear and specific and can be accomplished.” What, you mean the Mission wasn’t Accomplished? Flight suit, sock, aircraft carrier, banner, does any of this ring a bell, Georgie?

He says that he spoke on the phone with Maliki for two hours today. “I talked about a lot of topics with him. One thing I was looking for was will -- to determine whether or not he has the will necessary to do the hard work to protect his people. And I told him, I said that, you show the will, we will help you.” The frightening thing is that that’s probably really what he said. “I believe Prime Minister Maliki has the will necessary to make the tough decisions. That’s one of the things I learned today.”

In fact, George is the Johnny Appleseed of condescension, scattering scoldings wherever he goes: “Syria knows exactly what she needs to do in order to reenter the nation -- reenter the -- you know, to be viewed as a nation that’s constructive. ... So my attitude on Syria is they can be a much more constructive partner and they haven’t been. They don’t need to be told that in meeting after meeting after meeting. They get told that right here in a press conference like this. They know exactly what they need to do. And it’s their choice to make.”

He says that he wished the “proceedings,” by which he meant Saddam Hussein’s hanging, “had been done in a more dignified way.” Because George would never mock someone about to be executed...

He says, “The Iraqi people want to move forward, they want to forget that terrible part of their past”. Because if there’s one thing about the Iraqis, it’s that they don’t hold grudges for things that happened in the past.

And then he mentioned the back rub thing, a terrible part of Merkel’s past that she no doubt wants to forget as well.


What’s the German for “Talk to the hand”?

Real genius

So did everyone spend the day mourning Gerald Ford? Did you assemble in your respective places of worship, there to pay homage to the memory of President Ford?

Patrick Cockburn: “It takes real genius to create a martyr out of Saddam Hussein.”

In that cell-phone footage, Saddam was looking directly at the camera. Imagine you’re being executed and you see someone whip out a cell-phone-camera to take a few snaps.

A NATO spokesman, Brig. Richard Nugee, who is the International Security Assistance Force’s Chief of Effects, whatever that means, says that in Afghanistan NATO kinda screwed up in killing all those innocent civilians, and they’ll really try to not do it quite so much in the future, but that the Taliban also kill lots of civilians, and show “no remorse at all.” Thanks for putting it all into perspective for us, Brig. Nugee.

Fiji’s leader, known in these parts as Commodore Bananarama, seems to be handing power back to the president he ousted, possibly in response to the complete lack of international pressure.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s FBI files have been partially released. They show that the Nixon and Reagan administrations investigated the witnesses at his Senate confirmation hearings, and that he was addicted to powerful pain meds and went bonkers when he was taken off them in 1981, trying to escape the hospital in his pajamas.

From today’s Gaggle:

Q: Has the President seen the videotape of the execution?

MR. SNOW: I don’t think so.

Riiiight.

And now, two totally gratuitous pictures of The Decider from this morning, because I’m the blogger and I decide what’s best.

Simply political statements

AP headline: “Mass. Lawmakers Vote on Gay Marriage.” You know what would be a more interesting story? “Gay Lawmakers Vote on Mass Marriage.” Just saying.

Actually, there must be a lot of them in the Massachusetts Legislature, since the article keeps referring to “gay marriage proponents” and “gay marriage opponents.” It’s called a hyphen, Associated Press, use it!

So when there were riots in Afghanistan in 2005, in which at least 10 people died, over allegations that guards in Guantanamo were putting Korans in toilets, American officials pooh-poohed the possibility that the Koran would ever be treated with anything less than total respect. Now, the ACLU gets hold of an FBI report documenting many cases of religious-based as well as sexual abuses of Guantanamo prisoners, some of them a little on the elaborate side: “one interrogator bragged to an FBI agent that he had forced a prisoner to listen to ‘Satanic black metal music for hours,’ then dressed as a Catholic priest before ‘baptizing’ him.” Where, one has to ask, did the priest costume come from?

The WaPo says of the cell-phone footage of the Saddam hanging, “The video was the latest example of how amateurs using modern technology are exposing abuses and holding the powerful to account.” So it’s a Moqtada-Macaca moment?

Chief Justice John Roberts says that the low, low pay of federal judges (why, district court judges earn the same salary as a lowly United States senator, and Roberts himself makes only a little more than the vice president) (although judicial pensions are higher, 100% of retiring salary) amounts to a “constitutional crisis.” Gosh, there have been so many constitutional crises over the last few years that I’d completely overlooked that one. To arms, people! The republic is in peril!

Similarly, the Congressional Republicans are pushing something called the “Minority Bill of Rights,” which, surprisingly, is not about black people voting in the South or gay people getting married or Muslim members of Congress using the Koran in private ceremonies, but about protecting the “rights” of congresscritters in minority parties to get their amendments to the floor and that sort of thing. It’s always fun when Republicans use the language of civil rights. However, I’m willing to meet their “Bill of Rights” part-way and guarantee that they not have soldiers quartered in their house in time of peace.

George Bush is also reaching out to the new (well, a few hours from now) Congressional leadership, telling it in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece that “we can’t play politics as usual.” Personally, I can’t think of anything more usual than a politician saying that we can’t play politics as usual. He says that it’s perfectly possible for the parties to work together, citing those happy by-gone days when Democrats gave him all the tax cuts and Patriot Acts he wanted. Good times, good times.

He says, “Our Founders believed in the wisdom of the American people to choose their leaders”. Of course if they’d met George W. Bush, they might have reconsidered that position. Continuing with his PolySci 101 lecture, he informs us that “The majority party in Congress gets to pass the bills it wants. The minority party, especially where the margins are close, has a strong say in the form bills take.” Since when?

He says that “Now is not the time to raise taxes on the American people.” No doubt he’ll be sure to tell us when it is the time.

What is it time for? “It’s time Congress give the president a line-item veto.” [sic]

Bush says that he will continue to govern on the basis of “common-sense principles,” like “wealth does not come from government” (tell that to John Roberts) and “I believe that when America is willing to use her influence abroad, the American people are safer and the world is more secure.” By influence, he means soldiers and bombs. He contrasts these common-sense principles with the base partisanship that’s all you can expect from those darned Dems, warning, “If the Congress chooses to pass bills that are simply political statements, they will have chosen stalemate,” adding, “To the new members of the 110th Congress, I offer my welcome--and my congratulations.”

The Lord didn’t say nuclear

Top two Bush quotes from the NYT article Tuesday on how the Bushies’ plan for Iraq totally failed (written by three reporters, with additional reporting from 3 more, which seems a lot of people to be handling the duh beat): 1) at the Pentagon: “What I want to hear from you is how we’re going to win, not how we’re going to leave.” 2) to the Iraq Study Group: “It [victory]’s a word the American people understand. And if I start to change it, it will look like I’m beginning to change my policy.”

AP headline: “Saddam Execution Video Draws Criticism.” Yeah, the lighting was terrible and the plotline predictable. Maliki says he will launch an immediate investigation into who taunted Saddam and who leaked the cell phone footage. A more obvious question is why witnesses were allowed to bring in cell phones in the first place. One of those witnesses was Munir Haddad, from the appeals court which upheld the death sentence, who had said that it didn’t matter if Hussein was executed on the day Sunnis consider to be the start of Eid because 1) the only “official Eid” was the Shiite one, 2) “Saddam is not Sunni. And he is not Shiite. He is not Muslim.”

Pat Robertson (who is also not a Muslim) says God told him there will be a major terrorist attack with “mass killing” in the US in 2007. So you know it’s true. “The Lord didn’t say nuclear. But I do believe it will be something like that.” I’d have liked to know if He pronounces it nookyuler like Bush does.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T

The system of Arabic transliteration used by the NYT renders the Muslim holiday Eid as Id. This had a rather unfortunate effect in a quote from an aide to Maliki, who described the hanging of Saddam Hussein as “an Id gift to the Iraqi people.”

The White House website labels this picture, “President and Mrs. Bush Pay Their Respects to the Late President Gerald R. Ford in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol.”


Somehow with Bush, respect looks an awful lot like gas.

That’s my first Bush picture and my first flatulence joke of 2007.

We don’t count that way, because each one is important to us

Happy Eid! In Turkey, more than 1,400 “amateur butchers” injured themselves while attempting to sacrifice animals. Many accidentally cut themselves or amputated their own toes, while several were crushed under large animals, and one person tried to use a crane – hilarity ensued.

Speaking of amateur butchers, the US has now had 3,000 military deaths in Iraq. Said military spokesmoron Col. Christopher Garver, “We don’t count that way, because each one is important to us.” This is Comcast, your call is important to us...

New California laws coming into effect today (LAT, SF Chronicle, Sacramento Bee): Evidently disposing of used kitty litter in toilets is to be discouraged, though not banned, because it’s dangerous for sea otters. Great, something else to feel guilty about. People served with restraining orders have to give up their firearms (I wonder if there’s an exemption for cops; this has been an issue with these laws in the past). Domestic partners may file joint tax returns. The fee for registering domestic partnerships with the state is $23 which will be used to reduce abuse in domestic partnerships, which isn’t insulting at all. Parents of children entering kindergarten will have to prove that they have been to a dentist, and parents of high school students will be given a checkoff box to remove their names from the list of students given to military recruiters. Hospitals will be banned from dumping homeless patients in other counties (this has been a big deal in LA this year). It’s now illegal to leave a pet in a car in dangerously hot or cold weather (cops are now allowed to break into cars to rescue them), or tie a dog up to a stationary object for more than 3 hours, and the state must develop a plan to evacuate pets after a natural disaster, like an earthquake or mudslide or bad vibes. It is illegal to drive with someone in your trunk (unless they are dead, I assume).