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When I quoted Rummy in my last post warning Iraqi leaders about being “attentive to the competence of the people in the ministries,” I should have made it clear that he was telling them not to purge Baathists. He said a purge would make it difficult to “defeat a doggone insurgency.”
The Emperor Chimpy inspects the troops at Fort Hood. From the transcript:
Many of you have recently returned from Iraq. (Hoo-ah!) Welcome home -- and thank you for a job well-done. (Hoo-ah!) Others are preparing to head out this fall -- (Hoo-ah!) -- some for a second tour of duty. (Hoo-ah!)
I think that’s the soldiers doing the hoo-ah’ing, unless Shrub has come down with Tourette’s. He went on:
Whether you’re coming or going, you are making an enormous difference for the security of our nation and for the peace of the world.
It’s official: he doesn’t know whether we’re coming or going in Iraq.
When Ironhorse soldiers left for Iraq, Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator sitting in a palace, and by the time you came home, he was sitting in a prison cell.
What I’m saying is, he sits down a lot. Not a lot of standing.
In Baghdad, soldiers of the 1st Cavalry Division launched Operation Adam Smith, and the new generation of Iraqi entrepreneurs you helped nurture will create jobs and opportunities for millions of their fellow citizens.
Operation Adam Smith? Does the military enforce the division of labor in pin manufacture by force of arms? Somehow I think the 1st Cavalry Division is a rather more visible hand than the Scottish philosopher envisioned.
Secretary of War Rumsfeld issues a warning to Iraqis: “It’s important that the new government be attentive to the competence of the people in the ministries and that they avoid unnecessary turbulence.” Sage advice from a man who eats, drinks, breathes and craps unnecessary turbulence. You want less unnecessary turbulence, you warmongering idiot? Stop invading shit!
I’ve been meaning to write a little about the British elections, although they haven’t yet become as interesting as in years past.
In fact, LibDem leader Charles Kennedy’s wife gave birth today and he took parental leave from the campaign.
I’ve skimmed the Tory Party election manifesto, which was issued yesterday. It’s always amusing to see policy wonks trying to sound like loudmouths at the local pub. It’s full of such clever policy pronouncements as “I mean, how hard is it to keep a hospital clean?”, “What’s wrong with a little discipline in schools?”, “It’s not racist to impose limits on immigration”, “Put more police on the streets and they’ll catch more criminals. It’s not rocket science, is it?” Still, Michael Howard is most persuasive (which isn’t saying much) when he attacks Tony Blair personally, threatening that Labour’s (near-inevitable) victory will mean “five more years of smirking.” The Tory campaign slogan is, for fuck’s sake, “Are you thinking what we’re thinking?”
Fortunately, there is an alternative.
Chimpy met Ariel Sharon today.
Bush went out of his way to be vague about settlements. His handlers had given him a really short mantra from which he did not stray: “the road map says no expansion of settlements.” Also, “road map road map road map.” At no point did he say that Sharon’s plans for major expansions of the settlements contravened the road map, although he said it in such a way that you might think he had, which was the point. But when Sharon stood up and insisted that Israel will “meet all its obligations under the road map” but that he intends to build new housing to make the settlements contiguous with Jerusalem, Bush didn’t object. Clearly, Sharon will be allowed to interpret the road map to mean the exact opposite of what it says. In fact Bush said that “the United States will not prejudice the outcome of final status negotiations” and went on to do just that: “changes on the ground, including existing major Israeli population centers, must be taken into account in any final status negotiations.”
Sharon kept talking about an “opportunity” that shouldn’t be missed. By which he means the death of Yasar Arafat. A little hint: when you’re making nice with people, you don’t usually refer to the death of their leader as an opportunity.
When talking about the settlements, Sharon slipped in some wording as carefully chosen as Bush’s: Judea and Samaria.
And we’ll make Mahmoud Abbas jump this high.
Speaking of unnecessary expansion, here George offers Ariel cookies in the shape of the Israeli flag.
USA Today reports that the State Dept is trying to spend $3m on “educational institutions, humanitarian groups, non-governmental organizations and individuals inside Iran to support the advancement of democracy and human rights.” Interestingly, the US is prohibited from interfering in Iran’s internal affairs by the 1981 agreement under which Iran released the 52 hostages. The State Dept website describes this project as seeking “to raise public awareness of accountability and rule of law as an important aspect of the democratization process in Iran.” So Iranians taking money secretly from a foreign government will explain the importance of accountability? We’re like those American tourists in Europe complaining about all the tourists: we just don’t see our interventions into the politics of other countries as peculiar, alien, foreign in any way. We expect the governments of every other country to consist of four branches: the executive, the legislative, the judiciary, and the CIA.
Speaking of accountability, John Bolton was evidently questioned so harshly at his confirmation hearings that his mustache turned white.
Responding to a question about how much respect he had for the UN.
Joe Biden: “Some have said that sending you to New York would be like sending Nixon to China. I’m concerned it will be more like sending the bull into a China shop.” (Most of the news stories mutilate this bon mot by only giving the second sentence.)
Bolton explained that he didn’t really hate the UN, just the fact that it was run by all those foreigners, saying “for the UN to be effective, it requires US leadership. I deeply believe that.” So he sees his role less as ambassador, and more as King of the World.
Iraqi President Talibani is opposed to the death penalty! Even for Saddam Hussein.
Guardian headline about the Israeli shooting of 3 Palestinians involved in soccer, or gun-smuggling, or possibly soccer-ball smuggling, depending on who you listen to: “Killing Puts Ceasefire under Strain.” Ya think?
Just ran across a 4-month old post in a blog hitherto unknown to me, Apostate Windbag, on the Orange Revolution and all the other “cookie-cutter uprisings,” those media-friendly, focus-grouped, pro-democracy movements in former Soviet republics and elsewhere, and the American role in creating or assisting them, and a follow-up which extends the discussion to Venezuela, Bolivia and Mexico. Mr. Windbag argues that resistance to tyranny is still resistance to tyranny, even if Americans in trenchcoats are wandering around the periphery, and should be supported as such. The US, he argues, is amoral rather than immoral and is
“as happy with Stalinoid dictators who boil people alive - as in Uzbekistan - as it is with bourgeois democrats such as the Ukraine’s Yushenko - it doesn’t matter which form of government, so long as it suits its needs. ... at least in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, the US has decided to exploit the strategy of popular ‘revolution’. They would not be able to if the land were not fertile for the planting of such geopolitical seeds in the first place. They have used this tool because the tool was there to be picked up.”
Both posts are quite long, but are full of good information, clear-headed analysis and good writing. And he attacks the same WaPo editorial I eviscerated last month.
Rather less believable “spontaneous” demonstrations have been popping up in oh-so-spontaneous China, to protest “Japanese militarism.” Just as despots in Kyrgyzstan and Zimbabwe feel obligated to uphold their credentials with rigged elections, China is creating this simulacrum of popular outrage to justify vetoing Japan’s attempt to gain a seat in the UN Security Council. To be fair, Japan has once again put out school textbooks that whitewash the Nanjing Massacre, just to see if there’d be less outrage this time around.
The American Street points out that CNN low-balled today’s Baghdad demonstration (the one I posted the pictures of two posts ago) by describing it as “several thousand protesters.”
Well, the WaPo not only gives it more accurate number, “tens of thousands”, but is somehow magically able to determine that they are all “Shiite Muslims loyal to militant cleric Moqtada Sadr”. The Post characterizes the entirely peaceful demonstration as “a show of force” and “as much a show of strength as a declaration of grievances”. What force? What strength? It takes a certain amount of nerve to describe the inhabitants of a country which was bombed, invaded, and occupied for two years, with tens of thousands killed, as conducting a show of “force” when they wave banners and chant slogans to protest that occupation. Hell, they didn’t even so much as pull down a statue.
Prince Charles’ wedding (Indy headline: Charles Makes an Honest Duchess of Camilla) was postponed so he could go to the pope’s funeral (and set off a minor furore by shaking Robert Mugabe’s hand), but that made it conflict with the Grand National — that’s a horsie race. So the queen began her speech at the reception by announcing that Hedgehunter had won.
So how scared should we be of this Marburg virus?
Iraqi President Jalal Talabani: “We will be friends to whoever wants to be a friend, and enemy to whoever wants to be an enemy.” And friends “with benefits” to whoever wants....
In an attempt to humanize Michael Howard, the leader of the Tories (who have announced that they’d really rather not be called Tories anymore), his wife has informed the world that he always cries at the end of Sleepless in Seattle.
The ruling apartheid party of South Africa for so many decades, the National Party, later called the New National Party, has dissolved itself. Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, now that you no longer have a black guy in livery to hold the door to prevent it hitting you in the ass.
The Greeks are still bitching about the nation of Macedonia being called Macedonia, as they have been bitching about it for something like 12 years now. Greece wants them to use the name “Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,” held up EU recognition of the country for years, etc etc. Now a UN envoy is suggesting as a compromise the “Republic of Makedonia-Skopje.”
Speaking about thuggish behavior.. well, hell, this whole post is going to be about various forms of thuggish behaviour:
A WaPo article on something I wrote about in late February, the creation by Putin of a youth movement to fight any attempt at an Orange Revolution in the streets.
Another WaPo piece about a prisoner beaten to death by the shiny new Iraqi police force. His family complained to the American military, which told them they should complain to the police. Evidently the Americans respect Iraqi “sovereignty” too much to intervene. I suspect that before too long, Iraqis will spit whenever they hear an American talk about Iraqi sovereignty.
Saudi authorities have sentenced 105 men who attended a gay wedding to sentences ranging from 6 to 24 months and 200 to 2,000 lashes. Their crime: “dancing and behaving like women.”
On the plane home, Chimpy spoke to reporters. Because he’s not a big “reader.” Although he did say he was reading Robert Massie’s biography of Peter the Great, so if next year’s budget includes a beard tax, you’ll know who to blame.
Shrub doesn’t realize that the government of Palestine extends to Gaza: “We need to have institution-building, and there needs to be an international effort that encourages and fosters economic vitality so that a government which does emerge in Gaza will be able to better speak to the hopes of those who live in the Gaza.” Someone explain to the moron that a government doesn’t need to “emerge” in Gaza.
He also never heard that Italy announced it was going to pull its troops out of Iraq, after we shot up that hostage/reporter’s car. “I don’t know why you say that. I’m not sure why you said what you just said.”
He also says (asked about Saudi Arabia and Egypt), something he’s said repeatedly: “we shouldn’t try to impose our democracy on other nations. What we should say is, we’ll work with you to develop a democracy which adapts to your own cultures and your own religions and your own habits.” Never does anybody follow up and ask in what ways democracy should be adapted to the culture and religion of the Middle East.
On the pope: “at the end of his life he made his points to me with his eyes” and “a lot of Christians gain great strength and confidence from seeing His Holiness in the last stages of life.” That could be taken more than one way.
On the next pope: “I’m not going to pre-judge the selection process.”
On why we need to “fix” Social Security now: “Every year we wait costs billions of dollars more.” How so?
And then he plays Freaky Friday: “Now, I was born prior to 1950. But if I were my daughter hearing somebody predict that at some point in time she’s paying an 18 percent payroll tax, I’d be suggesting to the old man -- me -- that I get something done.” Also, if he were his daughter, he’d be drinking even more heavily and doing more butt-dancing. Actually there’s a $10 billion item in the Pentagon budget for “paper clips” which is actually a program to create a device that would allow him to switch bodies with his daughter. Some people say it has already been created. Which would explain a great deal.
And there was one thing he wanted to make perfectly clear, just in case we might get it wrong:
By the way, I think when you discuss religion -- on doubt --there is no doubt in my mind there is a living God. And no doubt in my mind that the Lord, Christ, was sent by the Almighty. No doubt in my mind about that. When I’m talking about doubts, I’m talking about the doubts that an individual struggles with in his or her life. That’s important for you to make sure you get that part of the dialogue correct, if you don’t mind.
Q Thank you.
THE PRESIDENT: Got it? Everybody got it correct? All right.
Q Thank you.
Democracy at its finest:
The solemnity of the moment yesterday was marred when the new Iraqi President, Jalal Talabani, mysteriously left the ceremony. When he reemerged he explained that he had momentarily forgotten the name of the new Prime Minister whom he was appointing.
Slow news day, so I’m gonna make fun of the place I got my lunch, a Chinese food chain called Panda Express (so sue me, I like the orange chicken). The cashier was a Chinese man named Danny, if one were to believe his nametag. I’ve noticed this before: everyone there works under an American pseudonym, a nom de eggroll, if you will.
And as long as I’m in Seinfeld mode, what’s the deal with the expiration date on my shampoo?
Followup: Well, I’ve read Perle’s prepared statement to the House Armed Services Committee (pdf, 4 pages), which included the bit that perplexed me two posts ago. In context, the exact nature of the cunning conspiracy by Saddam to draw us into a war against him is no clearer, at least to me.
His attack on the CIA says its last 30 years have been marked by “chronic failure: faulty estimates accompanied by smug confidence about future developments rendered in the face of repeated nasty surprises.” Dude, that’s your resumé:
1981-87 Assistant Secretary of Defense for Faulty Estimates Accompanied by Smug Confidence about Future Developments Rendered in the Face of Repeated Nasty Surprises.
2001- Chairman and then member of Defense Policy Board in charge of chronic failure and faulty estimates accompanied by smug confidence about future developments rendered in the face of repeated nasty surprises.
Perle argues that all the failures in Iraq stem from not working with “those whose interests parallel our own,” by which he means Chalabi, whose name he never uses (although he didn’t testify wearing Groucho glasses, so I guess he doesn’t realize that his name is even more discredited than Achmad Chalabi’s). We should have invaded side by side with his people, who we should have trained, and we should have handed over the country the day after Baghdad fell. He thinks many of our problems occurred because of “the image on Iraqi television of an American pro-consul informing the Iraqi people of the rules we made for them.” Oh, I doubt it. For a start, they didn’t have electricity.
I don’t think I mentioned the US soldiers participating in the war on drugs on Colombia who are charged with drug smuggling. Charged by the US, of course, which says they have the protection of diplomatic immunity against the Colombian legal system.
Rep. Roy Blunt says Tom DeLay is “taking arrows for us all.” Again, it’s just as well I don’t have Photoshop, or I’d be spending the morning trying to put Tom’s hair on a picture of St. Sebastian. Or General Custer.
The Chinese government, ever eager to play the role of the petulant 3-year old who must be appeased, rolls out the deputy head of the Chinese Catholic Patriotic Association to complain about the president of Taiwan being allowed to go to the pope’s funeral: “The decision to let Chen Shui-bian attend has hurt the feelings of the Chinese people.”
There is a push to have John Paul named a saint as quickly as humanly heavenly possible. To that end, I present two miracles performed by his corpse:
1) The saintly corpse did not slide down. It can defy gravity!
2) Bill didn’t put his hand on Condi’s ass for an entire hour!
Testifying before the House Armed Services Committee Wednesday, Richard Perle blames the lies he used in arguing for the invasion of Iraq on the “appalling incompetence” of the CIA, although we all know that he considered the CIA a bunch of limp-wristed pacifists and got his intel straight from Achmad Chalabi. He also said, “There is reason to believe that we were sucked into an ill-conceived initial attack aimed at Saddam himself by double agents planted by the regime.” What? WHAT?? Is he really claiming Saddam was behind our invasion of Iraq? There doesn’t seem to be a transcript anywhere, so I can’t put the quote into better context than the Post did (and no other news source in Lexis-Nexis or news.google has this). One could in theory listen to the hearings here but we’re talking 3½ hours.
Last week it was dogshit, this week a 17-year old in London is arrested for spitting at a bus driver after that spit is DNA tested.
From the DOD website, I learn that
A group of San Antonio area quilters are doing their part to support wounded veterans. Stitched with love and gratitude, their lap quilts are just big enough to cover the legs of those in wheelchairs or on stretchers. ... “A quilt means so many things,” said Lytle Stitcher Kitty Janiga. “Warmth, cheer and caring, as well as something for the (servicemembers) to wrap themselves in. They’re perfect; what’s better than a quilt?”
Um, legs?
The state legislature in Florida, where persistent vegetative state is a way of life, passes the “Stand Your Ground” Bill, allowing people to shoot other people for lookin’ at ‘em funny. Previously, one could not defend oneself with deadly force if one could save oneself from harm by running away. Now, one can shoot the perp dead because, explained legislative moron Dennis Baxley, “If I’m attacked, I should not have to retreat.” Yeah, that’s worth taking a human life for. I’m telling you, these people won’t be happy until they bring back dueling.
The LA Times has a (long) article on the military recruiters roaming the halls of high schools, giving out goodies to students and staff, getting the schools to require students to take military aptitude tests. It’s not an especially tough piece — it doesn’t for example mention the rampant lying by recruiters — but you do get a sense of the aggression (and limitless resources) with which these recruiters go after potential cannon fodder. Here’s the ending:
Carloss [the Marine recruiter] asked them to fill out cards with their name, address, phone number, age and grade. Students must be at least 17 to enlist. Those younger than 18 need parental consent.
“Are you scared?” Carloss said jokingly to one boy.
Carloss waved down a girl: “Go to one of these boys over here who you think is cute and tell him to do it.”
“Who?” she replied.
“I don’t care,” Carloss said, “as long as he’s 17.”
