Adopting key portions of administration’s plan for victory in Iraq

The new White House line is that everyone actually agrees on the fundamentals about Iraq, so why all the fussin’ and the feudin’? The implication being that any remaining dissent must therefore all be about partisan politics, which is why they single out Joe Biden, who thinks he’s running for president, in a hilarious piece of spin, entitled “Setting the Record Straight: Sen. Biden Adopts Key Portions of Administration’s Plan for Victory in Iraq,” that must be read to be believed.

Among the people who are evidently not adopting key portions of the administration’s plan for victory in Iraq are the members of the US Air Force who spoke to Seymour Hersh for this week’s New Yorker article. They are scared that the Bushies’ Vietnamization plan will involve wogs Iraqis setting bombing targets – oh, it just won’t do – and abusing the privilege by getting the Americans to bomb their sectarian enemies. Evidently Hersh’s sources are unaware that they’re already fully involved in an Iraqi civil war. Whether they are also concerned that a greater reliance on air-power, as American ground troops are moved to relative safety, will dramatically increase the number of deaths of innocent Iraqis is not clear.

Okay, it is clear.

The important thing is for someone not to come away thinking this whole process is arbitrary, which it is not

Adam Liptak in the NYT writes that the Bush admin “sets its own rules” as to whether prisoners in The War Against Terror (TWAT) are charged with a crime or held forever as an enemy combatant, although even that gives them too much credit, since there is no evidence that rules actually exist. A Justice Dept spokesmodel says, “The important thing is for someone not to come away thinking this whole process is arbitrary, which it is not,” but if we go by my computer dictionary’s definition of arbitrary, “2. (of power or authority) used without constraint; autocratic”, then that is exactly what we’re talking about. The factors the spokesmodel cites for how someone will be treated are:

national security interests, the need to gather intelligence and the best and quickest way to obtain it, the concern about protecting intelligence sources and methods and ongoing information gathering, the ability to use information as evidence in a criminal proceeding, the circumstances of the manner in which the individual was detained, the applicable criminal charges, and classified-evidence issues.

And evil lawyer John Yoo adds,

The main factors that will determine how you will be charged are, one, how strong your link to Al Qaeda is and, two, whether you have any actionable intelligence that will prevent an attack on the United States.

What’s missing from these lists? Human and civil rights, the rule of law, fair trials, justice. Every factor they cite is about the convenience of the state, and the state alone.

Speaking of the rule of law, Singapore has fired its long-serving hangman, Darshan Singh, after his name (and most of his body) were revealed in The Australian. Singh has hanged more than 850 people, as many as 18 in a single day. Singapore is scrambling to import a new executioner in time for the scheduled hanging of an Australian drug-smuggler. Singh will miss the extra cash, but says, “In a way I am happy.” And that’s the important thing.

These goats are a gift from God

There’s a week-old (so the link may not be good for much longer) LAT story I missed until the Miami Herald ran a shorter version, about how harmless American Christian missionaries in Venezuela are and how Chávez is a) paranoid and b) a big meanie for expelling some of them (others have left voluntarily, including all the Mormons. Result!) and how the poor benighted Indians will surely suffer. The article says that “many of the estimated 45,000 indigenous people in the Amazon basin resent the expulsion order, saying the missionaries have improved their lives,” but only quotes one of these resentful indigenous people, a politician.

County officials in Miami, Ohio, have ordered a 12-year old boy to get rid of his trampolining goats. His mother says they’re necessary to help him manage his ADD. “These goats are a gift from God,” she says.

But honestly, I mean, conspiracy theories...

Last month, you’ll remember, US troops in Afghanistan burned the bodies of two Taliban fighters and taunted locals as “lady boys” for not coming out to recapture the corpses, and did it all on Australian television. A military investigation has just cleared them, upholding their laughable explanation that it was done for reasons of hygiene with “no intent to desecrate the remains”. They may yet be charged with “failing to show local understanding,” although the whole point of the exercise was to implement local understanding in the form of crude psychological warfare – “You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burned,” they sneered through loudspeakers. As in Abu Ghraib, Americans’ sociological interest in foreign cultures is in finding points of cultural sensitivity to exploit: fear of dogs, dislike of nakedness, taboos against physical contact with strange women, etc.

I haven’t written about Bush’s supposed plan to bomb Al Jazeera before now because I’m still not sure how seriously to take it, although the British government’s ferocious efforts to suppress, by threatening British editors with imprisonment, reports of this plot to suppress Al Jazeera’s reports through rather more robust measures does give it more credibility, as does Tony Blair scoffing comment, “But honestly, I mean, conspiracy theories...” However, the Sunday Times and the Sindy believe there are other things in the memo that the government wants kept hushed up, like details of the siege of Fallujah, Bush’s endorsement without consulting Blair of Sharon’s plan to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza, and secret negotiations with Iran, which Britain hoped to persuade to rein in al-Sadr.

US military attacks on Al Jazeera are nothing new, and were, Robert Fisk points out, presaged by the 1998 bombing of Serbian tv, but my agnosticism comes from the fact that such a move inside Qatar would have been spectacularly self-defeating even for the Bushies: being expelled from the US base there would have seriously complicated the Iraq war. I’m sure the truth will come out in 3 or 7 or 15 or 53 years. The Sunday Times notes that the day before the Bush-Blair meeting in April ‘04, Rumsfeld accused Al Jazeera of “vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable” reports that the siege of Fallujah was targeting civilians. My favorite bit was the phone interview they did a few days before that with Gen. Mark Kimmitt, Military Moron, claiming that the US had declared a unilateral cease-fire in Fallujah, which they ran with live pictures of the town being bombed by F-16s. One of the US conditions for ending the siege: the expulsion of Al Jazeera from the town. Later, they got their puppet government to expel it from the whole country. In April ‘04, the US also tried to get Qatar to censor the channel.

Du Bist Deutschland

So the German government is spending $30m on a campaign to make Germans feel better about being Germans. The campaign’s slogan, “Du Bist Deutschland (You are Germany)” was carefully chosen, except for the failure to check if the Nazis had ever used it...


and the fact that it sounds like an accusation (“Who, me? I’m not Germany, you must be thinkin’ of some other guy.”) And that one of the ads features Albert Einstein, who renounced his German citizenship in 1896.

Also, the name of Ariel Sharon’s new party, Kadima (forward) is criticized for echoing one of Mussolini’s slogans, “Avanti (forward)” (which is also the name of a not-at-all-good Jack Lemmon movie). Sharon claims he won’t spend time attacking Likud, which would a) be very uncharacteristic of him, b) screw up a joke I was holding in reserve, something about Sharon withdrawing from Likud and then bombing it, just like Gaza.

Shouting fire in a crowded torture house

John Kerry served on a jury this week (“I’m John Kerry, and I’m reporting for jury duty!”). He was even elected jury foreman. The AP says his “fellow jurors called him a natural leader.” Hopefully they exercised better judgment than that in coming to a verdict in the case.

Today is Augusto Pinochet’s 90th birthday (and the Bush twins’ 24th), and he’s spending it under house arrest. Good.

Speaking of house arrest, Riverbend writes that what I’ve been calling secret prisons in Iraq were no secret to people who lived near them:

The neighbors had tried to get the Americans to check the house for months - no one bothered. They finally raided it because they got information from someone in the area that it was an insurgents hiding place. I read once that in New York, if a woman is being raped, she should scream ‘fire’ instead of ‘rape’ because no one would come to save her if she was screaming ‘rape’. That’s the way it is with Iraqi torture houses – the only way they’ll check it is if you tell them it’s a terrorist cell.

From the BBC, a laundry woman’s tale:

A Nigerian state governor has denied reports that he escaped charges of money-laundering in the UK by disguising himself as a woman.

However, Diepreye Alamieyeseigha told the BBC that he could not remember other details of his journey back to the oil-rich southern Bayelsa State.

Why did the Americans come here?

Headline in a British newspaper that probably sounds more alarming to Americans than to Brits: “Murdered Head’s School in Academy Row.”

Today, some American soldiers went to deliver candy and toys to the child patients in a hospital in Mahmoudiya, Iraq. You already know this story isn’t going to end well, don’t you? But let’s pause to wonder: how were they planning to spin the Thanksgiving tale for Iraqi consumption? Well, people fleeing their homes because of religious persecution, I guess Iraqis can relate to that. Puritanical religious fanatics whose goal is to stamp out every sign of free will and joy, especially among females, that might seem familiar too (Muqtada al-Sadr is of course Arabic for Cotton Mather, and I’m pretty sure somewhere in that new constitution is the phrase “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live”). White guys with guns arriving from a foreign land and taking control of all the natural resources? Check.

So the Americans went to the hospital, and a suicide bomb attack killed 30 or 34 people. Shouted one survivor, in a question that is in no way a metaphor for the wider situation, “Why did the Americans come here? They must have known they would bring the killers with them.”

And Kadima spelled backwards is Amidak. OK, I got nothing.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, in Pakistan, says that the Crusades were a bad idea after all, sorry about that.

I’ve been asking what happened to the prisoners in the secret Iraqi prison: they were transferred to Abu Ghraib, according to the BBC. And probably happy to be there. Yes, we’ve created a brand-new Iraq, where Abu Ghraib is considered the soft option, and an Iraqi prisoner at the bottom of a naked human pyramid is even now giving thanks that he is no longer in the clutches of his fellow countrymen, who we installed in power.

Ariel Sharon has finally chosen a name for his new party: Kadima, meaning “forward,” which my computer dictionary defines as “noun: an attacking player in football, hockey, or other sports.” Or possibly it indicates the direction Sharon plans to fall when the inevitable heart attack hits.

Speaking of attacking players, here are some more London Review of Books (LRB) personal ads:

I use this column principally as a sounding board for my radical philosophical theories. This time, however, I’d like some sexual intercourse. Radical philosopher and occasional lust monkey. M, 41. Box no. 22/04

Last night I had that dream again. The one were dinosaurs hadn’t been wiped out but stalked the earth for human prey. They found it too. It was you and me hiding beneath some twigs. I tried to save you but the dinosaurs sniffed you out and tore you from my arms. Then they all turned into clowns and told me that I couldn’t have a balloon because I’d been a naughty girl. When I cried, the head clown roared like a tyrannosaur and bit your head off. I looked down and noticed I’d become a dinosaur too. I felt like a herbivore. Woman, 38. Sees every social situation as an opportunity for free psychotherapy. WLTM fully-qualified psychotherapist. Box no. 22/08

I want my mummy. Man (37) with far too many issues to go into detail about in this column seeks psychoanalyst/tailor/stevedore. Whitstable. Box no. 23/07

I am not afraid to say what I feel. At this moment in time I feel anger, giddiness, and the urge to dress like a bear and forage for berries at motorway hedgerows. Man, 38. Box no. 23/09

We brushed hands in the British Library, then again in the London Review Bookshop, reaching for Musil. And then once more on the tube, getting off at Ladbroke Grove. Serial random hand-brusher (F, 32, publicity exec) demands attention, followed by more attention, followed by extended periods of self-pity. It's all me, me, me at box no. 23/10

I have known only shame. Then, last week, I experienced surprise. Man, 37. Box no. 22/06

For all my favorite LRB personals, click here.

Well, shortly I’m off to a Chinese restaurant, as is traditional, commemorating the first Thanksgiving, when the Puritans were saved from starvation by the native Chinese. “You white men call it noodles, we call it chow mein.”

There is no justified sense of grievance

Tony Blair says that the claim of one of the July 7 suicide bombers to be fighting on behalf of Muslims is “rubbish.” “We have got to challenge this sense of grievance because there is no justified sense of grievance.” I don’t know why no one thought of this before: end all terrorism by telling the terrorists that their sense of grievance is not justified. That is so totally going to work.

Someone who hadn’t gotten the word that their sense of grievance is not justified launched a mortar at a ceremony marking the hand-over of one of Saddam’s palaces to the Iraqis, attended by General Casey and the American ambassador, Khalilzad. Last sentence in the WaPo article: “‘The band played on,’ a military spokesman, Brig. Gen. Donald Alston, pointed out.” “Nearer my God to thee,” no doubt.



That’s the key.

The WaPo notes that Rep./Col. Bubp campaigned for Jean Schmidt (R-State of Rage) while wearing his Marine uniform. He is still serving. Isn’t that a violation of the rules?

Americans prefer marshmallow and yam to democracy and freedom

The votes are in. Americans went bravely to the polls, defying the terrorists, and once again named the National Thanksgiving Turkey and his running mate after food products, Marshmallow and Yam.

George Bush; the National Thanksgiving Turkey. But I repeat myself.

They were issued a pardon, but despite this, a second after this picture was taken, Dick Cheney bit off Marshmallow’s head.


(Update: Needlenose has a caption contest for the last picture.)

We did not go looking for trouble

Antonin Scalia says, “The [2000] election was dragged into the courts by the Gore people. We did not go looking for trouble.” He says that studies by news organizations suggest that Bush would have won a recount. That’s wrong, but Scalia, whose position in 2000 was that we should all get on with our lives and not have an accurate vote count, does not get to cite anything other than the fatally flawed Katherine Harris count. Scalia adds that there would have been a more difficult transition had the Court not ruled as it did, and worse, it might have been a transition to the guy who was actually, you know, elected president.

The NYT interviews Iraqi interior minister Bayan Jabr, who denies running Shiite death squads (phew) and jabrs (sorry) about that secret prison raided by the Americans last week. “Only a few detainees were punched and hit,” he claims. Reports last week were that “instruments of torture” were found there, which suggests that rather more than punching and hitting was going on, but we still haven’t been told what those instruments were. Nor what has happened to the prisoners, who Jabr describes as the “worst of the worst,” because there’s nothing more reassuring than stealing your rhetoric from Donald Rumsfeld.

Revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety

Bush went to Mongolia today to thank them for sending a hordette (160 troops) to Iraq and a horditesimal (12) to Afghanistan. The London Times helpfully notes, “The last Mongolian forces to go to Iraq, led by a grandson of Genghis Khan in 1258, sacked Baghdad and killed an estimated 800,000 people.” He gave Mongolia an endorsement of sorts: “This is a beautiful land, with huge skies and vast horizons -- kind of like Texas.” Yeah, they’ll be sure to put “Mongolia – kind of like Texas” on their flag. They gave him some fermented mare’s milk to drink. He points out – and I didn’t actually know this – that the current Mongolian prime minister participated 15 years ago in a hunger strike for democracy. Or as we call hunger strikes, “an Al Qaeda tactic to try to get media attention” or “a diet.”

DCI Porter Goss says the CIA doesn’t use torture, does extract information from prisoners using “unique and innovative ways.” Somehow that’s even more chilling. Goss adds himself to the chorus of people declaring that torture doesn’t work, which I’m not sure is true, but which is morally irrelevant.

Dick Cheney calls those who say the Bushies lied about intelligence guilty of “revisionism of the most corrupt and shameless variety.” Which is funny, because corrupt and shameless are... well, you know where I’m going with this. Honestly, for Cheney, a sense of shame, like a sense of irony, is just something for others to experience. He also calls such charges “dishonest and reprehensible” – possibly he got confused and was just reading off his resumé – but hey, it’s a “perfectly legitimate discussion,” as long as the opposition doesn’t use any actual, you know, words.

Like Alfred Hitchcock, but scarier
So to sum up, it’s not torture if we do it, it’s not a hunger strike if it’s done by people in our prisons, and it’s only shameless, corrupt, dishonest and reprehensible if Democrats do it.

Contest: name that party

Ariel Sharon is leaving Likud to start his own party. But what should it be called? Entries in comments, please. Fat jokes acceptable. Acronyms are good. Slogans for extra points.

Put yourself in the shoes of a soldier who thinks that we’re going to pull out precipitously

Rumsfeld went on four Sunday talk shows to say that it’s “fair enough” to criticize the conduct of the war, oh except for the whole emboldening-the-enemy thing. So before you do that, “Put yourself in the shoes of a soldier who thinks that we’re going to pull out precipitously ... Put yourself in the shoes of the Iraqi people ... . Put yourself in the shoes of the enemy.” OK, so how does catching three types of foot fungus help anything?

The Pentagon website paraphrases: “Discussion of such a withdrawal, Rumsfeld said, surely gives our servicemembers and the Iraqi people cause to doubt the wisdom of their sacrifice.” Oh, and also remember: every time you discuss ending the occupation, a puppy dies and the angels weep; but it’s a free country...

On CBS he said, “There is no doubt in my mind that were we to pull out precipitously, the American people would be in greater danger than they are today.” That’s the problem, Rummy: there’s never any doubt in your mind. And you’re always wrong.


Every time he was asked about something awkward, like the secret prisons in Iraq, he claimed not to know anything about it because he’s been in Australia.

I remember our visit very well

George Bush does not travel well. With jet lag, he actually gets stupider and less coherent. Here’s Bush, meeting the Chinese premier:

Thank you. It’s good to see you again, sir. I remember our visit very well. And I thank you for this invitation to come and talk and have lunch. It will give us a chance to continue to strengthen this very important relationship. And I agree with you, it’s a relationship where we’ve got common interests.

It’s always important when you meet the premier of a country to reassure him that, yes, you remember having met him before.

And here, talking to the press pool: “a society that welcomes religion is a wholesome society, it’s a whole society.” It’s a whole-grain society, it’s a holy soci... whoops, didn’t mean to say that out loud!

“it’s a really important relationship. I mean, China is a big, growing, strong country.” Big, yes, but growing? Is this something we should be worried about?

Granted, there’s something about going to China that turns American presidents’ brains to mush. Nixon famously said, “It sure is a Great Wall.” Bush, on the other hand, went bicycling with Chinese Olympic hopefuls and said, “this trail is a great bike trail”.




“And I explained to them as clearly as I could that the value of the Chinese currency is very important for manufacturers and farmers and workers in the United States.” As clearly as he could. Oh dear.

He also explained the importance of intellectual property: “And I made it clear that if you’ve got a vibrant economy, and people feel uncomfortable about the piracy of product, that it’s going to affect the economy in the long run.” Uncomfortable about the piracy of product, yeah that’s just so completely clear. Also, I’m pretty sure Bush was just trying to get Hu to say “long run.”

You know, it wasn’t all that long ago that people were not allowed to worship openly in this society

In my last, I mentioned Bush going to an officially-sanctioned Protestant church in China. There, he said this: “You know, it wasn’t all that long ago that people were not allowed to worship openly in this society. My hope is that the government of China will not fear Christians who gather to worship openly. A healthy society is a society that welcomes all faiths and gives people a chance to express themselves through worship with the Almighty.” This is curious. Not that he specifically mentions only Christianity and not, say, Tibetan Buddhism, which is obnoxious but typical. But what’s with the thing about worshipping openly, which he says twice? He surely knows that the majority of Christians in China, and especially, hello, Catholics, worship in underground churches, which he seems to be going out of his way not to endorse.

(Update: twice as many, according to the WaPo, and there’s been a recent upsurge of repression of underground Christians.)

But Boeing got to sell some planes to China, and Bush will be photographed mountain biking with Chinese Olympic athletes, and that’s the important thing. “The idea, [Bush aides] said, was to signal directly to the Chinese people that no matter what they hear from their government, Bush is not hostile toward their country.” That should reassure them. Wasn’t that what we told the Iraqi people before we, you know, invaded them?

“Oh man, all that effort in the Sixties to avoid Orientals with guns, but here they are...”
LA Times article on Russian moves to clamp down even further on NGOs.

The LAT also looks at one of Scalito’s death penalty cases, in which he said an incompetent/crappy defense (mitigating information was not put before the jury) was ok under the 6th Amendment as long as “counsel’s conduct falls within the wide range of reasonable professional assistance”. The Supreme Court overruled him. I was snickering earlier at a WaPo article quoting various Republican congresscritters bemoaning how Iraq was derailing other items on their Agenda of Eville, but it may also prevent D’s getting media attention on Alito, whose nomination could be derailed by his 1985 memo, if only (sigh) the media and the D’s were to keep up the pressure, which would require them to have a) balls, b) the ability to think about more than one issue at a time.

And your final must-read: the WaPo on the incompetence/waste/extortion/crappy quality/utter and complete chaos etc in American reconstruction projects in Afghanistan, you know, that other country we invaded, even before Iraq, only know no one’s even asking when our troops are leaving because not even 100 of them have been killed so far this year. Favorite sentence: “Locals tied a contractor to a tree in a pay dispute”.

Wattle & Snood: They Kept Us Out of Vietnam

At first I ignored the reports that the Pentagon has a plan to start pulling troops out of Iraq because of course they have contingency plans for everything, so I didn’t see it as the big gotcha moment other bloggers did. But evidently what they’re really hoping for is to reduce the size of the American contingent of the occupying army to below the “magic number” of 100,000, say around the time of the November 2006 elections. That sounds just like the Bushies: a goal rooted entirely in PR and partisan, rather than military, necessity. And it’s a two-fer: they also hope to influence the December 15 Iraqi elections by leaking the existence of this plan: vote for the puppets and maybe you’ll see an end of the occupation.

How often does Bush go to church on a Sunday in the US? Well, he certainly made a point of doing so in China, albeit in one of the tame licensed Protestant churches. He could meet a dissident except, oh wait, they were all put under house arrest for the duration of his visit. When he’s talked about the importance of freedom during this Asian trip, mostly it’s about printing Bibles and so forth, not about the right to criticize the government. He also links freedom with “prosperity,” as if Asians are too greedy to value freedom on its own terms.

His father slipped quietly into China ahead of his visit, to tell Chinese leaders what Shrub really meant to say before he’s even said it. It’s just safer that way. No word on whether Neil Bush was also on the advance team, given his extensive experience of free Asian hookers.

The White House website is holding the traditional on-line vote to name the two turkeys who will be ceremonially pardoned for whatever crime it is that turkeys commit, possibly leaking Valerie Plame’s name to the press. They will then go to Disneyland. The choices on offer include “Marshmallow and Yam,” “Democracy and Freedom,” “Wattle and Snood,” “Scooter and Turdblossom” and “Blessing and Bounty.” Last year “Biscuits and Gravy” won out over, among other things, “Patience and Fortitude,” and I wrote that in America patience and fortitude will always lose to biscuits and gravy. I wanted “Shock and Awe,” but for some reason the White House site has no facility for write-in candidates. Unlike this blog. Go for it.

Col. Blake did not die in vain

Bush, at an American air base in South Korea, tells the troops,

For half a century American servicemen and women have stood faithful and vigilant watch here in Korea. You’ve kept the peace and you secured the freedom won at great cost in the Korean War. You’ve ensured that no American life was lost in vain.

I take it this is a not-so-subtle hint about staying the course, not cutting and/or running, etc, and the need to occupy Iraq for at least the next 50 years. Possibly forever, since not only is he rejecting the whole notion of setting a target date for accomplishing the mission in Iraq, he won’t actually say what that mission is: “We will stay in the fight until we have achieved the brave -- the victory that our brave troops have fought for.” How is that victory defined? What has to happen before the troops can come home? He hasn’t said, he won’t say, he doesn’t know, I don’t know if he’s even thought about it. A simple response, “define your terms,” can deflate every piece of stay-the-course-until-victory rhetoric.

Cowards cut and run, Marines never do

NYT headline: “Cocaine Prices Rise and Quality Declines, White House Says.” That’s sure a bitch, George, maybe you need to find a new dealer.

Bush has recently taken to delivering partisan attacks in front of the one group of Americans we’d really rather remain non-partisan, serving members of the military. But it also seems to me that there’s been a concurrent increase of people like Gen. William Webster and Col. James Brown, both of them commanders of forces in Iraq, taking up Bush’s tacit invitation and scolding Democratic congresscritters. And that’s to say nothing of the Marine colonel who Rep. Jean Schmidt claims told her to tell Rep. Murtha, “cowards cut and run, Marines never do.” Actually, the Marines will do whatever the civilian leadership tells them to do, and don’t forget it, colonel. (Incidentally, why are we using nautical imagery about a desert war?) It’s a nice bit of character-assassination precisely because of its ambiguity: is Murtha being accused of being a coward himself, or of calling Marines cowards? (Update: As Mikhail Capone points out in comments, Schmidt had to retract the comments, and pretend she wasn't implying what she was implying.)

Our practices and procedures are correct

AP headline: “Source: Cheney Isn’t Woodward’s Source.” That’s right, a secret source is denying that Dick Cheney is Bob Woodward’s secret source.

Follow-up to the previous post: Iraqi Interior Minister Jabr also said of the secret prison that while there had been torture there, “all the suspects’ files were in order -- which shows that our practices and procedures are correct.” Actually, 1/3 of the prisoners had no files, but his thinking, sputter, I have no, sputter sputter, words...

That article quotes the army general in charge of training Iraqi security forces, Martin Dempsey, saying that there needs to be internal oversight. Ya think? Although considering the sorts of things Jabr has been saying, somehow I don’t see oversight by him improving anything. Dempsey: “These kinds of things are a huge detriment to the morale of the force.” Oh, and the guys who were starved and tortured, their morale probably isn’t all that great either. By the way, whatever happened to those prisoners? Who has them now?

Bush in South Korea is asked whether he agrees with Cheney’s attack on war critics or Chuck Hagel’s statement that it’s patriotic to ask questions. “The Vice President.” Bush repeated that “ours is a country where people ought to be able to disagree” but that it’s “irresponsible” to criticize him. Clearly, by when he says people can “disagree,” he actually means “scream silently within their own heads in impotent rage.” Bush continued this contradictory, possibly schizophrenic, line of argument (well, I say line, but it clearly goes in anything other than a straight line):

It’s irresponsible to use politics. ... I think people ought to be allowed to ask questions. It is irresponsible to say that I deliberately misled the American people when it came to the very same intelligence they looked at, and came to the -- many of them came to the same conclusion I did. Listen, I -- patriotic as heck to disagree with the President. It doesn’t bother me. What bothers me is when people are irresponsibly using their positions and playing politics. That’s exactly what is taking place in America.

He used the word irresponsible five times, and it’s such a long word, we’re all very proud of him, although it’s not clear that he knows what it means. And you can’t use politics, or play politics. Evidently politics is like grandma’s good china, you never actually get to eat off of it, it just sits there all decorative and shit.


The Miami Herald makes Venezuela’s offer of cheap oil to its poor neighbors seem like some sort of dastardly, insidious plot:

While Cuban leader Fidel Castro tried to export his revolution throughout Latin America in the 1960s with AK-47s, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is fighting to expand his “21st century socialism” with oil barrels.

Um yeah, it’s just like that.

Equally helpful is the LA Times, which explains that the “Big Nose Bandit,” who has just held up his 18th bank, “got his nickname because he has a larger-than-average nose”.