Exacting a high price from Palestinians everywhere: wholesale violence at retail prices

Yesterday I thought I was being clever in spotting the Israeli defense minister’s implicit use of the “language of collective punishment.” Turns out it wasn’t so implicit: according to AP, Mofaz “told security chiefs in a meeting... that he wanted to exact a high price from Palestinians everywhere, not just the militants”. Also, targeted assassinations have officially resumed, not just been threatened. Sharon says there will be “no restrictions regarding the use of all means to strike at the terrorists”. One wonders what restrictions there were in the past. Israel has arrested hundreds of Palestinians, including many candidates in the January PA elections.

This program of murderous assholery goes by the name Operation First Rain. Does anyone know to what that refers?

It would be inappropriate for the British Army to apologise

The British papers are full of stories about Basra, including ones in the Times and Indy that purport to tell what the SAS soldiers were up to when they were caught, but which don’t actually answer the question in any convincing manner; there is nothing to learn from these articles, so I haven’t bothered with links. By the way, when I was writing my earlier posts, I wasn’t satisfied with calling them soldiers, since, as I said, people operating without uniforms disguised as locals are not acting as soldiers. Someone in comments in Lenin’s Tomb used the term I was groping for: illegal combatants. These illegal combatants’ commander, Brig. John Lorimer, tells the Sunday Telegraph that “It would be inappropriate for the British Army to apologise.” Indeed, heaven forfend they do something inappropriate, like fail to extend their pinky when drinking tea, or not curtsey to the queen, or apologize for shooting at cops, knocking down the wall of a police station and firing on a crowd of civilians. Heaven forfuckingfend.

It’s a measure of how mainstream opposition to the war in Iraq now is that pro-war politicians are unable to impugn the motives of its opponents. Yesterday Bush said something about advocates of pull-out being well-intentioned but mistaken. Compare this with the taunts hurled at opponents of the war in Vietnam and you can see the difference. Bush and his claque are not able to call war opponents traitors, to suggest that they love America or leave it or even to suggest that they don’t support “our troops.” Bush used the same rhetoric about the terrorists only being able to win if America’s will is sapped, but at the same time in the same press conference had to acknowledge the legitimacy of the anti-war position. Rhetorically, he’s lost the argument, or at least ceded a lot of ground.

The US military is using more than 250,000 bullets for every insurgent killed. Really bad shots, I’m guessing.

The response needs to be crushing

Earlier yesterday I wrote up my recommendations for the California ballot, which I’ll post a little closer to the poll date. Coincidentally, Governor Arnold announced his recommendations a little later. I must have done something right, because we disagree on all 8.

Here’s a non-surprise: Israel is already back to bombing Gaza, in “response” to Hamas rocket attacks (remember, Israel is always presented, as in the WaPo story on this, as responding to violence initiated by others; one could equally say that Hamas was responding to the killing of 3 of its leaders and an explosion at a Hamas rally which might actually have been an accident, not Israel’s fault). The Israeli defense minister said, “We have to make it clear to the Palestinians that Israel will not let the recent events pass without a response. The response needs to be crushing.” Note that although the rockets were fired by Hamas, his response is aimed at “the Palestinians,” all Palestinians. This is the language of collective punishment. Eli at Left I on the News notes that while the defense minister also threatened to “resume” targeted assassinations, Israel never actually stopped targeted assassinations.

SUN KING: Bush cancelled his trip to Texas because it was sunny, screwing up his brave-leader-facing-down-the-hurricane imagery. Without the right imagery, it wasn’t worth his while to make the trip at all.

Yet more evidence of the abuse & torture of Iraqi prisoners. And not recently either: if some idiot didn’t take pictures, this stuff tends to remain buried for quite some time (the incidents took place Sept 2003 to April 2004). “Some days we would just get bored so we would have everyone sit in a corner and then make them get in a pyramid. This was before Abu Ghraib but just like it. We did that for amusement.” Indeed, they did it as a substitute for sex: in the soldiers’ lingo, to “fuck a PUC [person under control]” meant to beat or torture them.

Pentagon spokesmodel John Skinner responded to the report by Human Rights Watch, which revealed the incidents, by attacking it as “another predictable report by an organization trying to advance an agenda through the use of distortions and errors in fact. ... Humane treatment has always been the standard no matter how much certain organizations want people to believe otherwise.” I’d be interested to know what “agenda” Skinner thinks Human Rights Watch has. If he’s going to impugn their motives, he really needs to be made to answer that.

In other words, they have had attacks

Watch this Kinky Friedman commercial.

Thomas Shannon, the nominee to replace Roger Noriega as assistant secretary of state for hemispheric affairs, worries about Chavez-style “populism.” “The United States went through a similar process of populism, and our party structure found a way to contain it,” he said at his confirmation hearing. That’s what these people mean when they pretend to support something they call democracy: doing the minimum necessary to hold off populism. Shannon says he wants to engage Chavez in a “battle of ideas,” which would be a change of pace from his predecessor, unless “You suck” is an idea.

Bush today went further, I believe, than he has before in putting the blame for 9/11 squarely on Bill Clinton (and Reagan too, I guess):

To leave Iraq now would be to repeat the costly mistakes of the past that led to the attacks of September the 11th, 2001. The terrorists saw our response to the hostage crisis in Iran, the bombings in the Marine barracks in Lebanon, the first World Trade Center attack, the killing of American soldiers in Somalia, the destruction of two U.S. embassies in Africa, and the attack on the USS Cole. The terrorists concluded that we lacked the courage and character to defend ourselves, and so they attacked us.

Bush’s language strikes me as getting even odder, more disjointed, with more going back and rephrasing things: “Now, look, they’ve been successful on attacks. They were successful here. They’ve been successful in London and Madrid. In other words, they have had attacks.”

He explains the philosophical underpinnings of his foreign policy: “See, democracy trumps their view of the world. Democracy trumps Taliban-type regimes, because it’s free.”

Not 90 minutes later, displaying no sense that he was aware of any contradiction, he was welcoming the King of Jordan to the White House, telling him, “Your Majesty is a leader and the United States of America respects his leadership a lot.”

Or the terrorists win

Sir Ian Blair has told the BBC that he considered resigning as head of the Metropolitan Police after the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes, but didn’t because “the big job is to defend this country against terrorism and Kate Moss.” OK, I added the “and Kate Moss” part, but according to the Telegraph, he took time off from the fight against terrorism, in which he is so very indispensable, to take the lead in the decision to investigate the model’s reported drug use.

Blair’s interesting juggling of priorities matches that of Alberto Gonzales, now gearing up for the struggle to rid America of pornography, picking up Ed Meese’s baton, but not in, you know, a gay way. The records of the Meese Commission on pornography, by the way, are stored at the Hoover Institution in Stanford, because if there’s one thing the Hoover Institution needed, it was a really extensive collective of hard core ‘80s porn.

George meets some Jews

Today Bush hung out with some Jews at the anniversary of something called the Republican Jewish Coalition. He paid tribute to Simon Wiesenthal, who “insisted that we remember that hatred prepares the way for violence,” which he used as a hook for this: “As we saw in the recent desecration of the synagogues in Gaza, the ancient hatred of anti-Semitism still burns in the hearts of men.” Then he went on for some length about Hurricane Katrina. Maybe he thought it sounded like a Jewish name. He talked about rebuilding communities, but assured them that no Jews would actually have to go live in Mississippi, because “you’ve suffered enough.” Oh, okay, he didn’t, but this is his idea of an appropriate joke:

Rabbi Stanton Zamek of the Temple Beth Shalom Synagogue in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, helped an African American couple displaced by the storm track down their daughter in Maryland. When Rabbi Zamek called the daughter, he told her, “We have your parents.” She screamed out, “Thank you, Jesus!” (Laughter.) He didn’t have the heart to tell her she was thanking the wrong rabbi. (Laughter and applause.)

I suspect that whoever’s running the White House website is being punished for something. This is someone so concerned with correct English that they insert a [sic] when Bush says “inspector generals,” and the poor schmuck is in charge of transcribing George Bush’s speeches.

Also, “armies of compassions [sic]”.

This is the group that once paid for him to go to Israel, when he was governor of Texas. Ariel Sharon “said, would you like to go on a helicopter ride and take a look at the West Bank. I said, “Are you flying?” No -- (laughter.) I said, you bet.” Yes, that’s our George: went to a Jewish group and told a fat joke about the Israeli prime minister.

“Does the nose on that eagle look a little Jewy to you?”

And by God it was effective

Bush, in Mississippi today:

And that can-do spirit is -- these county commissioners -- we call them county commissioners -- county supervisors and mayors who are dealing with unbelievable trauma, and, you know, they’re right there on a front line of trying to comfort people who hurt. And, yet, amidst all that agony and pain they’re going through was this comforting spirit. The can-do spirit is, you know, seeing progress being made. And inside this tent there’s a can-do spirit of taking a horrible situation and making this part of the world better. And so I’m impressed.

Me too, by the amount of gibberish packed into just five sentences.

Bush has not only allowed the workers rebuilding after Katrina to be paid less than prevailing wages, but has also suspended affirmative action requirements.

In order to justify their Great-Escape-but-with-helicopters-and-tanks-instead-of-Steve-McQueen-on-a-motorcycle, the British have been spinning it as a rescue from imminent death (Defence Secretary John Reid: “When it is necessary to protect British servicemen, we will take that action. And by God it was effective.”) and trashing the Basra police, who they say 1) are heavily infiltrated by the militias, 2) failed to release the British soldiers when ordered to do so by the central gov, and 3) handed them over to a Shiite militia. Now Basra’s finest may be eminently trashable, but the soldiers did just shoot two of them, so basic human nature might have been all that was at work here. When 4 American “security contractors” were killed in Fallujah last year, for example, we responded by reducing the city to smoking rubble. So a reluctance on the part of the Basra constabulary to see them walk free with impunity, or even a decision to give them to people who would mete out a little (or a lot) of the rough justice they could not, would be understandable regardless of their extracurricular affiliations. What’s more entertaining is watching the British, after a couple of years of constantly talking about how much superior their occupation strategy is to that of the Americans, are justifying yesterday’s actions by making accusations that amount to an admission that their approach has been a miserable failure. They’re less willing to admit that they are also less than beloved amongst the civilian populace. Says Brig. John Lorimer, “British armoured vehicles being attacked by a violent crowd, including petrol bombs, make graphic television viewing. But this was a small, unrepresentative crowd.” So that’s all right then. How would he know whether or not the crowd is representative? Did he send men with clipboards to ask the petrol-bomb throwers, “Are you 18-35, 35-49...?” Lorimer added cheerily, “It was a difficult day yesterday but we have put it behind us and we shall move on.” I’m sure the people of Basra feel the same way.

The two soldiers were in plain clothes (and they had wigs with them!) and were armed with assault rifles and... an anti-tank missile. Oh yeah, nothing suspicious about that.

Break-out in Basra, update

The British are now claiming that the soldiers had been turned over by the police to a militia, and therefore weren’t in the prison when they knocked its wall down. They also deny that any prisoners escaped through the hole in the wall. If you don’t like this British version of the story, don’t worry, there’ll be another one along in about ten minutes. None of the versions include any real explanation for what soldiers were doing dressed in Arab garb or why they shot at the Iraqi police. The central Iraqi government is giving an entirely different version than either the British or Basra officials, denying that any unpleasantness took place at all.

It will be artistic and it will involve body paint

A couple of days ago, the NYT reported Ariel Sharon as threatening to block elections in Palestine (scheduled for January) if Hamas was allowed to take part. “I don’t think they can have elections without our help,” he said. In fact, he went further. Ha’aretz has him also demanding that Hamas be disarmed and that it revise its charter and declare that “Yentl” didn’t suck.

New Zealand MP Keith Locke (Green Party) made a campaign pledge to run naked through the streets of Epsom, a suburb of Auckland, if the leader of the right-wing Act party was re-elected for the constituency. Which he was. Locke intends to keep his pledge, as soon he’s worked out the... choreography. He says his streaking “will be artistic and it will involve body paint.”

There was a wee incident in Basra today involving two undercover British soldiers. Let’s pause there, because the concept of undercover soldiers is a bit... faulty, and in fact violates international law. If they’re not in uniform, they are not soldiers but spies. I don’t imagine we’ll ever know what they were actually up to. When Iraqi police tried to stop their car at a checkpoint, they fired at the police, killing one of them. When they were captured, the British army effected a jail break using tanks, which are very handy during a jail break. The BBC calls this a “daring rescue operation” but honestly how daring do you have to be IN A FUCKING TANK, I mean that show on Fox would have a much shorter season IF THEY HAD A FUCKING TANK. The pissed-off civilians had sling shots.


Oh ok, one of the tanks was set on fire, I admit, but still.






The Brits killed a couple of civilians and let out a few prisoners during the jail break. By the way, the BBC link above shows the undercover soldiers with their faces disguised, as per British government request. That would be these guys.


Headlines in the British press: “Rioters Attack British Troops” (Daily Telegraph); “Army Storms Jail to Free Seized Soldiers” (The Times); “British Tanks Storm Basra Jail” (Guardian); “Under Fire: British Soldiers Attacked in Basra” (Independent); “UK Soldiers ‘Storm’ Basra Prison” (BBC). No mention of the soldiers shooting the Iraqi policemen.

In fairness, I must add that the Basra police are known to be a partly or wholly owned subsidiary of the insurgency, and may have intended to hold the soldiers in order to exchange them for captured militia leaders. In other words, the Brits didn’t trust the Basra police enough to leave their soldiers in their hands, but evidently they are willing to leave the entire population of Basra in their hands.

Blog or constitution?

North Korea agrees to abandon its nuclear program in exchange for exactly what it always said it wanted in exchange for abandoning its nuclear program: a promise by the US not to invade or nuke it. That wasn’t so hard, now was it? Also, the US declared that it didn’t have nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula, although if I have this right didn’t actually guarantee not to in the future.

New Yorker piece by Paul Rudnick, “Intelligent Design”:

And the Lord God said, “Let there be light,” and lo, there was light. But then the Lord God said, “Wait, what if I make it a sort of rosy, sunset-at-the-beach, filtered half-light, so that everything else I design will look younger?”

“I’m loving that,” said Buddha. “It’s new.”

Riverbend notes that the Iraqi draft constitution (which is finished now, really it is, no foolin’ this time) seems to exist in various incompatible versions, and suggests that this is a problem because “this is a constitution – not a blog”. Hmmm, I wonder what a constitution in blog form would look like. Any ideas?

Legacy

The WaPo reports with a straight face that “Afghans have demonstrated enormous enthusiasm for the election -- about 12.4 million people have registered to vote, 2 million more than for last year’s presidential election”. Right, last year more people were registered to vote than there were actual people qualified to vote in all of Afghanistan, with voter registration reaching 140% in some areas, and this year they’ve topped that by 20%.

At the national prayer & remembrance thingy, Bush said, “As we clear away the debris of a hurricane, let us also clear away the legacy of inequality.” Really, George, is that really what you want us to do? Because no one’s life history shows the legacy of inequality more than yours does. Or do you not consider privilege, cronyism, nepotism and favoritism, which got you out of Vietnam, into Yale (you were even called a “legacy”), and smoothed your way through every economic venture you ever participated in (God knows it wasn’t skill and hard work), etc etc etc to be part of the legacy of inequality? Because while he may say that “poverty has roots in generations of segregation and discrimination that closed many doors of opportunity,” he doesn’t acknowledge or understand that his wealth and privilege and power are rooted in precisely the same discrimination, but discrimination in his favor. Deep down, he still believes that everything he has was earned, that he is entitled to them. And many of his followers’ biggest worry about Katrina is that it will derail their plans to eliminate permanently the legacy of inequality tax estate tax.

The NYT seems to have finally decided to report in more detail on the mass hunger strike in Guantanamo (which the military likes to call a “fast”) and the forcible feeding of prisoners (which the military likes to call “assisted feeding,” as if they were cutting up their meet for them rather than shoving a tube into their nostril and aaaaall the way down into their stomachs). A month late, but welcome nonetheless. Still, the Pentagon has been able to keep a pretty tight lid on the facts, which was of course the whole point of keeping the prisoners on a military base in Cuba in the first place, so the story is more frustrating than illuminating. The NYT reports, for example, that a “senior military official” told it that camp officials “had tried several ways to end the hunger strike, without success.” What on earth could those several ways have been? We do not know. A prisoners’ grievance committee was chosen (by whom? how organized are the prisoners?), began negotiations, and was almost immediately dissolved by Gitmo officials, we do not know why. What are their demands, and are the guards really desecrating Korans again? The Pentagon is also withholding information on the prisoners’ health, has lied about the numbers participating in the hunger strike, and won’t release the names of those on hunger strike, to the distress of prisoners’ relatives.

As I read that story (in Opera), I got Google ads for 1) “Club Gitmo” t-shirts, 2) the tv show “Prison Break”.

Join Aahnuld

Arnold Schwarzenegger announces that he will run for re-election. Imagine my relief.


That banner says “Rebuild California,” which evidently no one considered an inappropriate metaphor in the light of Katrina. But then they’re not known for sensitivity or good taste in Team Terminator, whose website (meaningless and badly punctuated slogan: “Let’s Reform California So That Together, We Can Rebuild It”) features this remarkably creepy image.

Loyalists who lack the necessary training

Hugo Chavez on Nightline tonight.

The US decertifies Venezuela as a country helping the US on drugs (keep in mind that Venezuela, unlike Colombia or Peru, doesn’t actually produce any coca, but coca does transit Venezuelan territory on the way to the US). Here’s what I like about the State Dept statement: it says the people in charge of anti-narcotics efforts “were fired and replaced with Chávez loyalists who lack the necessary training.” Cuz the Bush admin is definitely opposed to that sort of thing.

Today was the National Day of Prayer and Remembrance. I hope you all prayed and remembered, in accordance with federal law.

The Cabinet that prays together, stays together.

Judges are not politicians

On the Pentagon website we learn that “Terror Occurs During Times of Iraqi Progress, General Says.” Must be a definition of progress with which I’m not familiar. General Rick Lynch (what is it with these guys’ names?) says that the recent epidemic of car-bombs is “predictable around the times that highlight progress towards democracy.” So that’s ok then. If they were so predictable, what is it you did to prevent them? Lynch says that counterinsurgency operations usually take a decade to succeed. That would be 2013. He said the terrorists have “zero effect” against Iraqi, US and coalition forces and so target civilians instead. That’ll be news to the 23+ Iraqi police and Interior Ministry commandos killed today alone. Perhaps they can have “zero effect” engraved on their tombstones.

Now, this is why I read the British newspapers. The Times provides the information that the bathroom Bush went to after handing the famous note to Condi “is famous in UN circles because a high-ranking protocol official once allegedly tried to fondle a messenger boy there.” In a further burst of journalistic exuberance, The Times interviews a urologist who says that when you gotta go, you gotta go. And they have a separate article on the importance of peeing and farting in diplomatic history.

The British government, having learned exactly nothing from the many miscarriages of justice perpetrated during the war against the IRA in the 1980s, or worse, not caring, is planning to use “supergrasses” against Islamic terrorists. For those who don’t remember, supergrasses were IRA members who testified against their former compatriots in exchange for immunity and money on such generous terms that perjury was inevitable.

And it gets better: Tony Blair is, as we know, planning to outlaw the glorification of terrorist acts. So they’re going to draw up a list of terrorist acts which can’t be legally glorified until 20 years later, except for 9/11, which there is an indefinite ban on glorifying, but you can go ahead and glorify the Easter Rising (Dublin, 1916) if you like.

What makes the sight of John Roberts refusing over and over to answer any substantive question is that it reeks of a sense of entitlement. In his mind the default position in this process is that he be confirmed, that is, that unless they can find something seriously wrong with him, they must confirm him, rather than that he must convince them that he is worthy of this job. I think the default position should be rejection, and if he isn’t willing to provide enough information that senators can see how he’d perform in the job, rejection is what it should be. He has tried to portray their attempt to ask him legitimate questions as a corrupt act:

It is not a process under which senators get to say, I want you to rule this way, this way and this way. And if you tell me you’ll rule this way, this way and this way, I’ll vote for you. That’s not a bargaining process. Judges are not politicians. They cannot promise to do certain things in exchange for votes.

Judges aren’t politicians? Funny, because demeaning the motives of your senatorial inquisitors like that, Swift-Boating them, looks a lot like politics to me.

Stunned and uprooted: George Bush talks about Katrina

Bush finally goes to New Orleans, having ensured himself of a non-hostile reception by emptying the city entirely. Did you like how he color-coordinated his shirt with the color of the lighting on the buildings? Did you like the statue of Andrew Jackson over his left shoulder? Did you pay much attention to what he said in that robotic voice? Me neither. I could swear he promised to rebuild church steeples. I bestirred myself to take a couple of notes. “We have seen our fellow citizens left stunned and uprooted.” I’m pretty sure you were already stunned, and ok, so you were “uprooted” from your vacation a couple of days early, we’re sorry you were inconvenienced.

He acknowledged that “As all of us saw on television, there is also some deep, persistent poverty in this region as well.” Poverty for Bush is always something he saw once on the teevee.

He called for a Gulf Opportunity Zone (GOZ), where there will be a few incentives for “entrepreneurs” (or storm profiteers, call them what you will), and, I’m gonna guess, a lot of relaxed labor and environmental regulations. He wants an “urban homesteading act” to give away some federal land in the region by lottery. Two weeks and that’s the best they came up with? And a generous $5,000 for job training and education (and child care while they’re looking for work). Funny, I thought the reason they have no jobs was this fucking big hurricane, not that they were untrained and uneducated.

And something about how the federal government was only prepared for a “normal” hurricane, and this wasn’t a normal one, it had, like, super-powers. And he ended by talking about New Orleans jazz funerals. He really shouldn’t be talking about New Orleans jazz funerals.

Not waving (at the Good Humor truck) but drowning

This poster is currently on display in the University of Colorado at Boulder, sponsored by the National Society of Collegiate Scholars.

Why does Abdul Shandal hate Iraq?

William Saletan explains how John Roberts affirmed a right to privacy in a way that stripped it of any actual meaning.

The Iraqi justice minister, Abdul Hussein Shandal, has been complaining that the US military keeps arresting people and detaining them without any warrant from an Iraqi judge. Isn’t it cute when the natives pretend they’re in charge? He’s also bitching about the extraterritoriality (immunity from Iraqi laws) (defined by the distinguished jurist Stephen Sondheim in these terms:

...your laws
Do not apply
When we drop by;
Not getting shot,
No matter what:
A minor scrape,
A major rape,
And we escape.
That’s what is extraterritoriality.)

that the UN granted to American military forces (and Bremer extended to the various imported mercenaries, security guards, soldiers of fortune etc). He’s also been talking about removing the latters’ right to carry firearms without a license, so he’s obviously some sort of communist. And he criticized the US for arresting journalists. Oh yeah, definitely a pinko.

Would you agree that the opposite of being alive is being dead?

Just when I thought that I was out they pull me back in. Sure John Roberts is deadly dull, but Biden emotes enough for the both of them. And then there’s Tom Coburn. You might think that to become both a doctor and a senator, you’d have to be something other than a complete idiot. You’d be wrong. (Hazzah and kudos, by the way, to the Daily Show for skewering this homophobic ass yesterday). Somehow he weaseled his way onto the Judiciary Committee, where he addressed these remarks to John Roberts:

As you have been before our committee, I’ve tried to use my medical skills of observation of body language to ascertain your uncomfortableness and ill at ease with questions and responses. ... And I will tell you that I am very pleased, both in my observational capabilities as a physician to know that your answers have been honest and forthright as I watch the rest of your body respond to the stress that you’re under.

But not in, like, a gay way, cuz we know Coburn isn’t down with the gayness, though he does have an odd fixation on lesbians in high school bathrooms. Coburn also had some point or other to make about the concept of brain-death, possibly having something to do with Sen. Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, and asked Roberts, “Would you agree that the opposite of being alive is being dead?” Roberts took a moment, and then agreed.

For a state somewhere between life and death, we must look to Guantanamo, where the hunger strike now involves more than 1/4 of the prisoners. According to Sgt. Justin Behrens, a military spokesmodel, talking about forcible feeding, and presumably intending to sound reassuring rather than threatening, “We’re going to take care of everyone.”


Other NATO countries are resisting American pressure to expand NATO’s role in Afghanistan beyond “peacekeeping” to offensive operations against the Taliban (Rumsfeld wants to reduce the American contingent without reducing the number of occupation troops). Rummy says “it would be nice if Nato developed counter-terrorist capabilities.” Nice. Violence in Afghanistan is increasing, but unless they target Americans no attention is paid in the US, where most people have forgotten that we’re still occupying Afghanistan. With elections coming up Sunday, there has been none of the usual rhetoric from Bush about purple fingers, 90-year olds braving the terrorists to cast their ballots, etc., presumably because he doesn’t want scrutiny of an election process that will not look especially democratic and which will return some quite unsavory warlords. Karzai said that it was ok that warlords hadn’t been expunged from the ballot, since voters could simply refuse to vote for them. Several former Taliban officials are also running, including the foreign minister, who had been held by the Americans for three years, and the head of the Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, who claims to have been misunderstood, why he wasn’t against girls being educated, they just didn’t have the money for it.


In a speech last week, which I keep forgetting to blog, Bush praised the efforts in relieving Katrina victims of the faith-based community and the “community-based community.”

Speaking of faith-based, Bush – that’s him in his bar mitzvah suit – celebrated the history of Jews in American life today.


Whoever’s in charge of the White House website is also down with the Jewish people, quoting Bush thus: “This may sound a little odd for a Methodist from Texas saying this, but I just came from shool [sic!].” Bush took the opportunity to blast “the desecration of synagogues in Gaza that followed Israel’s withdrawal.”

Taking storm responsibility

I’m surprised, but I shouldn’t be, at how many headlines I’ve seen like this typical one, from the WaPo: “Bush Takes Storm Responsibility.” As if he hadn’t coupled it with a non-acknowledgment that there were any mistakes to take responsibility for, and as if it actually meant anything. We’re so starved for a little accountability that even the miming of a pretense of a mockery of a sham of a simulacrum of accountability makes people who should know better go weak at the knees.

Speaking of a pretense of a mockery of an etcetera, I’ve given up on watching the Roberts confirmation hearings. They ask questions, he doesn’t answer them, gets old real fast, and you’re left watching his bland-beyond-bland face, which takes “normal” to such an extreme that it becomes something else entirely, like Terry O’Quinn in “The Stepfather,” a comparison only reinforced by how he’s got his family dressed.


Here he locks down Bill Frist’s vote by describing his cat-strangling technique.

I’ve never heard a single word of complaint

Bush, on Katrina: “To the extent the federal government didn’t fully do its job right, I take responsibility.” The conditional means that if we ask what it is he’s actually taking responsibility for, we’re playing the blame game. Or if we ask what “taking responsibility” actually entails, since I assume he’s not planning to resign and join Michael Brown in that stiff margarita. Also, George, you already took responsibility when you took the oath of office; don’t come in today acting like it’s optional.

Laura Bush tells the Heritage Foundation that the evacuees from Katrina are all thankful for how well they’ve been treated. “And that’s what I’ve seen at each of the shelters I’ve visited. I’ve never heard a single word of complaint.” But then she also thought the hurricane was named Corinna, so clearly an ear examination is in order. Or possibly she couldn’t hear the words of complaint over the voices in her head.

The Metropolitan Police say that, despite their murder of Jean Charles de Menezes, the shoot to kill policy is the “least worst option” and will be retained. But not explained to the British public, who don’t know what the “rules of engagement” are under which the police operate, that is, what they have to do in order not to be shot in the head seven or eight times. So to my British readers: good luck with that, and try not to make any sudden movements.