Standards

The US military will no longer turn Iraqi prisoners over to Iraqi jailers, who must be no end of confused: we thought (they must be saying) that as Iraqi torturers stand up, American torturers would stand down, and come home to the honor and the secret shame and the less secret drinking they have earned. The US will not resume turning prisoners (and detention facilities) over until the Iraqis meet American “standards.” For example, said Maj. Gen John D. Gardner, they don’t wipe the electrodes off when transferring them from the genitals of one prisoner to those of another, and that’s just kinda gross. And for the naked human pyramids, you put the bigger prisoners at the bottom, for stability; it’s just common sense, said Gen. Gardner.

Speaking of setting the bar remarkably low, the Democrats, in their response to Bush’s radio weekly radio address, said that Americans deserve better than George Bush.

There is no god but god, and Oppenheimer is his prophet

The FBI has been sneaking onto the property of mosques and the homes of Muslims to check for radiation because, as we all know, Muslims worship chunks of plutonium and pray five times a day in the direction of Hiroshima.

See? it’s got a halo.

How could we build an Iraq with a fraudulent process?

The head of one of the Iraqi parties rejecting the election results asks, “How could we build an Iraq with a fraudulent process?” That’s probably a rhetorical question. Notable among those claiming fraud are the two men whose careers were pushed most strenuously by the Americans, and with so little result, Achmad Chalabi and Iyad “Comical” Allawi. Which leaves the question, were the Americans spectacularly, monumentally wrong about the level of support these two clowns could muster, or was it American backing that reduced their support to the zero figures?

These two stories feature, consecutively, on the Pentagon website: “U.S. Forces to Take on Different Role in Iraq,” “NORAD Marks 50 Years of Tracking Santa.”

Chad says a state of war exists between it and Sudan. I’m sure the American papers will be all over this.

Media Matters has a lengthy, linky rebuttal of the myths and falsehoods surrounding the Bush spying scandal, NSA-gate or whatever we wind up calling it.

Sadly, I found as I looked for the link, the NYT online has changed the title of this obit to something boring from the print version’s “Charles F. Cummings Dies at 68; Knew Everything About Newark.”

Today Secretary of War Rumsfeld went to Fallujah, the scene of his greatest massacre atrocity war crime victory. Didn’t meet any natives, of course, but did eat with some American soldiers, who were allowed, as is now the custom, only plastic sporks. Rummy also protected himself with a condiment barrier.

I’m going to go to every one of your states, and I’m going to tell them what you’ve done

WaPo: “Senate Approves Cuts, but Not Drilling.” How about rips, are rips ok?

I like the vote because Ted Stevens is so cute when he’s seething with impotent rage: “I’m going to go to every one of your states, and I’m going to tell them what you’ve done.”



Sounds like the budget deal has all sorts of mean-spirited provisions that snuck under the radar: blocking foster-care assistance for grandparents taking in family members, cutting enforcement of child support, increasing the cost of student loans, all sorts of Medicare and Medicaid cuts, shielding doctors and hospitals from lawsuits from Medicaid patients turned away by emergency rooms.

I’ll bet every other lefty blog will quote this by morning, but here goes anyway:

Sources knowledgeable about the program said there is no way to secure a FISA warrant when the goal is to listen in on a vast array of communications in the hopes of finding something that sounds suspicious. Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales said the White House had tried but failed to find a way.

One government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the administration complained bitterly that the FISA process demanded too much: to name a target and give a reason to spy on it.

“For FISA, they had to put down a written justification for the wiretap,” said the official. “They couldn’t dream one up.”

I love the writing in that second paragraph. Elsewhere in the WaPo, Bush’s story about how the Washington Times alerted bin Laden to the fact that his satellite phone was being monitored in 1998 is comprehensively dismissed as an “urban myth.” I hadn’t realized that the article appeared the day after the US fired missiles in an attempt to kill bin Laden, which, it is suggested, might have been the more proximate cause for his decision to stop using a phone he must have figured had been used to locate him. The Moonie Times story, and others that profiled bin Laden, including one two years before, mentioned that he liked his sat phone, not that the US was listening in.

You cannot tackle terrorism with the lawbook in your hand

Silvio Berlusconi, defending a football player who gave his fans a fascist salute: “Fascism in Italy was never a criminal doctrine. There were the racial [i.e., anti-Jewish] laws, horrible, but because one wanted to win the war [along side of] Hitler.” So that’s all right then. In the very same event (a dinner with foreign correspondents), he used the very same logic to defend Italy’s complicit role in America’s extraordinary renditions: “When hundreds of thousands of lives are at risk, countries have to use the secret methods... You cannot tackle terrorism with the lawbook in your hand. If they fight with a sword, you have to defend yourself with a sword.”

Israel will stop the January Palestinian elections being held in East Jerusalem, and not for the usual God-gave-Jerusalem-to-the-Jews reason (they didn’t stop voting the last time around), but explicitly because they don’t like the probable results of those elections, a sweeping Hamas victory. So the Palestinian government will probably cancel them.

The Russian Duma gives the government the absolute right to close down any NGO, giving no reason and with no appeal (the provisions applying to foreign NGOs like Human Rights Watch were watered down, but only slightly; they won’t be banned immediately, but the government can shut them down on vague grounds).

Scott McClellan accused Democrats filibustering the renewal (and making permanent) of the “Patriot Act” of “playing to certain special interests within their party that want to see authorities within this legislation killed,” without saying who those special interests might be. Could it be.... Satan?

We hardly knew ye, algae miracle worker

California has settled a suit, promising to stop segregating prisoners by race. They will now interview new inmates to determine their compatibility with members of another race, AP says.

Contest: suggest, in comments, sample questions (I may regret this).

The Canadian Supreme Court rules that group sex in clubs (in private rooms) is legal. Plan your vacations accordingly.

Funniest sounding obit headline of the day: “W. J. Oswald, 86, Algae Miracle Worker, Dies.” His big breakthrough came when he poured water on the algae while tracing the word for water on it...

Rumsfeld, looking for Hot Lips

I believe in a strong, robust executive authority. And the fascism fairy.

American ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzhad says that 2006 will be the “Year of the Police.” In Iraq, that is. He meant it to be reassuring.

Speaking of the Year of the Police, outgoing (thank God) Iraqi interior minister Bayan Jabr says the death squads in police uniform aren’t actually policemen: “Anyone can go to the store and buy a police uniform.”

The UK has been experiencing its own spying crisis, one with more wide-ranging implications than our own. 20 years ago, the security services began blackmailing a top Sinn Fein official, Denis Donaldson, into cooperating with them in ways that haven’t been fully revealed yet, but seem to include the fabrication of a scandal 3 years ago in which Sinn Fein was supposed to have been spying on other parties in Northern Ireland’s self-rule Stormont government, which was promptly abolished and direct rule from London restored. Still a lot of unanswered questions, but this is as good a primer as any other.

Opening sentence to a WaPo story: “Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) could barely conceal his anger.” Not exactly man-bites-dog, is it?

Frist is barely concealing his anger about the filibuster of renewal of the “Patriot Act.” At the risk of spoiling the surprise, let me tell you now that the Patriot Act will not expire, that there will instead be a deal for a 3-month extension, that Bush won’t carry out his threat to veto it, and that everyone in the Senate knows it.

On Monday, Condi Rice reacted to the election of Morales in Bolivia, saying “We have good relations with people across the political spectrum in Latin America,” which would be news to Chavez and Castro. But of course the state of relations will be “a matter of behavior.” Theirs, not ours, of course, we’re always perfectly behaved little angels. Also, “The issue for us is will the new Bolivian government govern democratically”. Faithful readers will remember that this is the new standard whereby the US deems democratically elected governments, such as Venezuela’s, to be undemocratic, based on subjective criteria determined not by the people of the country in question, but by the Bush administration.

Many have quoted Cheney saying yesterday, “I believe in a strong, robust executive authority, and I think that the world we live in demands it,” “Either we’re serious about fighting the war on terror or we’re not,” and that the period after Watergate and Vietnam marked “the nadir of the modern presidency in terms of authority and legitimacy,” but he also cited actual examples of what he considers illegitimate limitations on a robust (dictionary definition: “uncompromising and forceful; not subtle; strong and rich in flavor or smell”) executive authority: the War Powers Act, natch, the limitation on the president’s ability to impound funds authorized by Congress, and Iran-Contra – he thinks Reagan had the authority to do all that Iran-Contra stuff. Other examples of the legitimate authority of the presidency: his own secret energy policy task force, and NSA warrantless surveillance. After all, “It’s not an accident that we haven’t been hit in four years.”

Rumsfeld goes to Afghanistan in a surprise photo op (he met with American troops, but, running behind schedule, decided to skip the actual work portion of the trip, a meeting of the Combined Forces Command - Afghanistan staff) (Xinhuanet calls it a “surprised visit to Afghanistan”). Says the US plans to reduce troop levels from 19,000 to 16,000 doesn’t mean fewer troops, because we’re sending in NATO troops. Notice there’s no talk of Afghans taking responsibility for their own security, standing up so that Americans may stand down etc. Says the reduction won’t affect the hunt for bin Laden, which will continue with just as much success. Asked whether the US runs secret prisons in Afghanistan, as has been reported this week, Rummy gave this reassuring response: “Not to my knowledge.”

Where can I get me one of those hats?

Not accepting a relationship of submission

State Dept spokesmodel Sean McCormack said of the election of Evo Morales as president-elect of Bolivia, “We’ll see what policies that person pursues. And based on that, we’ll make an evaluation of what kind of relationship we’re going to have with that state.” I’m guessing a frosty one, when one partner in the “relationship” can’t bring himself to utter the name of the other. “That person” is also thinking about what kind of relationship we’re going to have: the WaPo says

On Sunday, [Morales] repeated some of his more provocative assertions, saying he would never accept a relationship of “submission” with Washington.

Provocative! Hell, that’s downright uppity. How dare he provoke us like that!

I’ve looked it up now, and provocative means “deliberately arousing sexual desire or interest.” Well, if Morales wants to maintain Washington’s sexual desire or interest, he’d better put those shackles and the hood and the assless leather pants back on and resume that relationship of submission at once. At once I say!

OK, that was just disturbing.

The WaPo neatly explains why democracy in the under-developed world is a sham:

The question, say both Bolivian and U.S. observers, is whether the socialist candidate will use that mandate to follow through on pledges for radical economic and political change -- pledges that won him support among indigenous and poor voters -- or whether he can demonstrate enough pragmatism to reassure foreign governments and investors, whose support he needs for economic development.

The WaPo quotes the egregious Bernard Aronson (who was Bush the Elder’s Assistant Secretary of State for Fucking up Latin America, the direct successor to Elliot Abrams in that post) who says that the “old threat in Latin America was that of military coups,” (which he used to support; in 1990 he said about the Salvadoran army, “I don’t think it indicts the armed forces if a unit commits an atrocity.”), but “The new threat is that of authoritarian democracies -- leaders who get elected and then use the state to repress opponents, push through social change and stay in power.” Yes, authoritarian democracies, right, whatever. Aronson is afraid that Morales will follow the path of Hugo Chavez, who has dared to stay in power (Aronson is now a partner in ACON Investments LLC, which manages investments in Venezuela).

Britain registered its first civil partnerships today, in hippy-dippy, uh, Belfast. There were protesters. And there were counter-protesters, like this one.


OK, that was just disturbing.

So the FISA court can issue warrants 72 hours after the actual bugging has begun. Obvious question, but I haven’t seen an answer to it: what happens if the court turns down the request for a warrant (not that that court ever does)?

Back in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s home town of Graz, Austria, there is a move afoot to remove his name from the local stadium in reaction to the execution of Tookie. So Arnold sent a petulant letter demanding that they remove his name from the stadium, and by the end of the year, or else. Or they could hold public executions in the stadium, that would be “fantastic” too. Also, “in the future, the use of my name to advertise or promote the city of Graz in any way is no longer allowed.” Also, he sent back a “ring of honor” the town had awarded him, saying he didn’t want it anymore, and it didn’t fit his cock anyway (steroid shrinkage).

OK, that was just disturbing.

The wacky new president of Iran bans Western music. Which gives me an excuse to quote a Daily Telegraph article from May 7, 1996:

THE appearance of smuggled Barbie dolls in shops in Iran has prompted Islamic hardliners to dub them “satanic” in an attempt to dissuade people from buying them.

Hardliners say that the “unwholesome flexibility of these dolls, their destructive beauty and their semi-nudity have an effect on the minds and morality of young children”.

OK, that was just disturbing.

Bush press conference: There’s a lot of work to get rid of the past

Jeez, Bush gives a press conference. Isn’t there some brush that needs clearing? The only thing more annoying than Bush not doing his job is Bush doing his job.

On NSA surveillance: “The fact that we’re discussing this program is helping the enemy.” Also says they’re not listening to domestic calls under the secret NSA program, the FISA courts are evidently sufficiently speedy to deal with those calls, but not foreign ones. And if that weren’t murky enough, he want on to draw a distinction between “detecting so we can prevent, and monitoring,” a distinction he didn’t actually explain. (Click here for the very plausible theory that Bush avoided the FISA courts because the calls he was intercepting were those of journalists).


Says democracy in Iraq is developing really fast, though “I know with all the TV stations and stuff in America, two-and-a-half years seems like an eternity.” And of course it’s so much faster than in our crappy old country, where “our road to our Constitution... was pretty bumpy.” Yeah, there was all that violence between the Sunnis of Massachusetts and the Shiites of New Hampshire.

And what you’re seeing now is an historic moment, because I believe democracies will spread. I believe when people get the taste for freedom or see a neighbor with a taste for freedom, they will demand the same thing because I believe in the universality of freedom.

Bush went on, “It’s pretty much like the way I saw Rummy with his new Xbox 360 and I asked Laura over and over if I could have one too...”

And it’s not going to be easy. It’s still going to be hard, because we’re getting rid of decades of bitterness. If you’re a -- you know, you find these secret prisons where people have been tortured, that’s unacceptable. And, yet, there are some who still want to have retribution against people who harmed them.

Unacceptable, huh? Makes it sound like putting your elbows on the table. And you’ll notice he’s talking about Saddam’s secret prisons where people were tortured, not the American secret prisons where people were tortured, or the Interior Ministry secret prisons where people are tortured.

My only point to you is there’s a lot of work to get rid of the past, yet we’re headed in the right direction. And it’s an exciting moment in history.

History which he’s planning to abolish.


Asked a rather good question by the WaPo’s Peter Baker about whether he sees any limits to the powers of the president in time of a war which may go on for decades, Bush rejected the term “unchecked power,” citing, among other things, the fact that people in the executive took an oath to uphold the law (here he mimed taking an oath),


and added that there is oversight, because they briefed a few members of Congress. Secretly. About powers they have claimed Congress has no right to modify because they are part of the president’s “inherent authority.” So Congress can’t talk about it, and they can’t stop it. Some oversight.

Slow learners

Guardian headline: “Warlords and Women Take Seats in Afghan Parliament.” So the seating is like, boy girl boy girl?

Alberto Gonzales, the man at the pinnacle of the American legal profession: “Our position is that the authorization to use military force which was passed by the Congress shortly after Sept. 11 constitutes that authority [to conduct warrantless surveillance].” Interesting definition of military force. Since this was an interview by Katie Couric, there was no follow-up question as to whether he’s claiming that even a single member of Congress believed that they were granting such a power to the president.

Returning to last night’s fireside chat (because Americans are burning their furniture, unable to afford any other form of home heating) and Bush’s reference to critics as defeatists. Or, actually, as Defeatists. The initial cap makes clearer the tactic of Stalinist-type categorization of the enemy, as in his denominating the insurgency in Iraq as Rejectionists.

Dick Cheney went to Afghanistan to condescend to the troops: “It’s good to be back at Bagram Air Field... I’m only sorry I didn’t come earlier this month. Somebody told me I missed a chance to meet Vince McMahon, Big Show, and Triple H.” And to condescend to the “Taliban die-hards who apparently are slow learners. (Laughter.)” They’re still operating four years after their country was invaded and occupied by the most powerful army in the history of the world, and they’re slow learners?

I also want you to know, ladies and gentlemen, that I was in Iraq yesterday... Your comrades are doing fantastic work over there. On occasion they receive mixed signals from politicians about whether America has what it takes to stay in the fight.

On the other hand, you guys, here in Afghanistan, most Americans have completely forgotten you’re even here.

Where can I get me one of those hats?

There are only two options before our country — victory or defeat

Yet another Bush speech about Iraq. I can’t have been the only one mesmerized by Bush’s hands, which were constantly in motion, to no particular effect, in part because they were positioned awkwardly on the desk in front of him because his chair was too low.


The speech struck me as more defensive than he’s been, the message being essentially that it’s not as bad as you think it is. “For every scene of destruction in Iraq, there are more scenes of rebuilding and hope.” Is that the standard? that the number of “scenes” (it’s all just pictures on the tv to him) of bombs blowing up are outnumbered by other scenes in which people are rebuilding after the last time bombs blew up.


The people of Iraq and Afghanistan must be wondering why Bush keeps calling them allies of the US in the war on terror. Hey, we already did our little bit, they must be saying, we gave at the office. I’m pretty sure no candidates in either countries’ elections ran on a platform of being allies of the United States in The War Against Terror (TWAT).


He admits that “This work has been especially difficult in Iraq — more difficult than we expected.” No fucking kidding. That’s what will be praised by the right-wing pundits as welcome honesty.

“Saddam Hussein, captured and jailed, is still the same raging tyrant — only now without a throne.” Raging tyrant? Didn’t Robert DeNiro gain a lot of weight for that one?

“We invite terrorism by ignoring them.” They just don’t take the hint, do they? We’ve all got relatives like that.


He’s perfectly willing to listen to “honest criticism” but not to “defeatists.” So if you oppose the war or think it is going badly, he doesn’t have to listen to you because you are dishonest (and a partisan, he says in the next sentence, and “giving in to despair,” he says later, as if his view of the war is rational and fact-based while differing views arise entirely from emotion).

Now, he says, “there are only two options before our country — victory or defeat.” The more he paints withdrawing troops from Iraq as a defeat, the more he makes it impossible ever to say that it’s time to do so, given the unlikelihood of the country calming down to the point where even he can credibly declare victory. So there is in fact a third option: permanent military occupation and never-ending warfare.

Then he finished with what he called a Christmas carol (and misquoted), Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem “Christmas Bells,” which was about how God would defeat those fucking Confederates.

Cheney of Arabia

Dick Cheney told American troops, during his 10-hour trip to Iraq, “We’re in this fight to win. These colors don’t run.” And they didn’t frag him on the spot. You have to admire the discipline. He also visited some Iraqi troops, who couldn’t frag him:

U.S. forces guarded Cheney with weapons at the ready while Iraqi soldiers, who had no weapons, held their arms out as if they were carrying imaginary guns. (AP)

I so want a picture of that. Anyone seen one?

Fundamentally inconsistent with achieving victory

A London Sunday Times reporter visits Fallujah and reports that it’s still a depressing concentration camp with rubble and raw sewage and really pissed off residents. She is the first independent reporter (i.e., not escorted and watched over by American soldiers) in Fallujah in over a year; she had to sneak in.

Bill Frist has an AIDS charity, World of Hope Inc. It raises money from corporations with legislative agendas, and spends large amounts of money on “consultant” fees to Frist’s cronies, as a way of keeping them on the payroll during non-election years. (World of Hope doesn’t seem to exist on the web, which doesn’t really suggest “legitimate charity” to me. It’s not these people, or these.)

The House of Reps has voted 279-109 for a resolution claiming that “setting an artificial timetable” for leaving Iraq would be “fundamentally inconsistent with achieving victory.” Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) asked, “What is victory? Nobody has defined what victory is.” Silly Jim, defining victory is fundamentally inconsistent with achieving victory.

Speaking of achieving victory, Dick Cheney made his first trip to Iraq since 1991, and would no doubt have been greeted as a liberator by the Iraqi people, had he met any below the rank of prime minister, with whom he shared a jolly, but evil, laugh.



They gave him his very own fake-military jacket, but would only let him eat with a plastic spork.

There’s an enemy that lurks

Yesterday, in a News Hour interview I’ve just caught up with, Bush refused to confirm the existence of illegal surveillance, “and the reason why is that there’s an enemy that lurks, that would like to know exactly what we’re trying to do to stop them.”. And this made all sorts of sense, because clearly the Enemy That Lurks wouldn’t cease discussing their nefarious plans and dastardly lurkery on the telephone just because they read on the front page of the New York Times that such conversations were being intercepted; no, they’d wait until the president of the United States confirmed the story. Terrorists don’t believe what they read in the newspapers, but they do take the word of George W. Bush as gospel.

So imagine my surprise today when Bush used his weekly address
on the talking-type wireless to take responsibility for having ordered just such a program of interception. Doesn’t he remember that there’s an enemy that lurks? He didn’t make his grand confession without taking a few swipes at those who “improperly provided” the story to the media, and the media who reported on it, eventually. “As a result, our enemies have learned information they should not have, and the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk.” Tut tut tut. “Revealing classified information is illegal. It alerts our enemies.” By which I assume he means the New York Times.

He assured us that the only people whose rights were violated had “known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations” and that there were reviews every 45 days or so by our nation’s top legal officials, including the Attorney General and the Counsel to the President.” Alberto and Harriet, those crack legal eagles. Swell.

He demonstrated the necessity of such surveillance by citing how the 9/11 hijackers had communicated with each other and with others outside the country. Yeah, but they also took over planes with pen-knives, but no one would expect to get away with that after 9/11 either. Bush said he plans to continue authorizing the program as long as there was a single bad person anywhere in the world.


Back to the McNeil-Lehrer interview. He seems to say that he never got an estimate for casualties, either American (excuse me, “coalition”) or Iraqi, before making the decision to invade. “I knew there would be casualties. I never tried to guess.” Nevertheless, “I’ll never forget making the decision in the Situation Room [or possibly making the situation in the Decision Room], and it affected me. I mean, it was -- I got up out of the chair and walked around the South Lawn there”. Whooa, dude, enough with the girly-girly emotions! This ain’t Oprah!

We run a danger of trying to say the casualties are less than other wars or more than expected. It’s just everybody matters, every person matters, and what really matters is having the strategy and the will to make sure any death is not -- is honored by achieving an objective.

Sure, one dead, 2,100 dead, 30,000 dead, 100,000 dead, same dif.

Nor do I think you don’t sit around in a planning session and say, gosh, I wonder how many-- how many people are going to die because of suicide bombers or because of politics or-- I know this, that when we went in we had a plan to target the guilty and spare the innocent and with our precision weaponry and a military that is a humane group of people that we did a good job of that.

Target the guilty. Bush not only thinks he has the power to see into people’s souls, he thinks his rockets can too.

Says that when he said on Fox about Tom DeLay,

HUME: Do you just — do you believe he’s innocent?

BUSH: Do I? Yes, I do.

what he was conveying “is that people are innocent till proven otherwise.” Quite right, in this country we determine guilt or innocence through precision weapons, as set down in the Constitution.

I want my security first. I’ll deal with all the details after that.

Trent Lott, supporting illegal surveillance of Americans: “I don’t agree with the libertarians. I want my security first. I’ll deal with all the details after that.” As Benjamin Franklin said in his blog in 1759: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

The House voted to condition future aid to Palestine on Hamas being banned from parliamentary elections. So I suppose we won’t be hearing any more about spreading democracy throughout the Middle East. Oops, my bad, of course we will: Tom Lantos, one of the sponsors, says that Hamas “has nothing but contempt for democracy, though it is more than happy to exploit democracy for its own nefarious ends”. And Rep. Ileanna Ros-Lehtinen, chair of the House International Relations subcommittee on the Middle East and Central Asia, accuses Hamas of trying to “hijack” the elections by, you know, being more popular than other parties and winning more votes.

On a very special episode of The O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly interviews Secretary of War Rumsfeld, and tv’s all across America blow themselves up in suicidal despair. I missed seeing it myself, as I was talking my tv off a ledge at the time, but it reads like the Wimbledon of Stupid; when they get a volley of asininity going, it is a thing to behold, if you have the stomach for it.

O’REILLY: Is [Iraq] the best battlefield?

RUMSFELD: It is central front of the global war on terror.

O’REILLY: Even more than Iran?

RUMSFELD: Iran is not a battleground today. Iran is very busy financing Hezbollah and Hamas and the various terrorist groups that they fund with Syria to go in and try to — you heard what the new president...

O’REILLY: He’s a nut. All right. But I don’t know. You could make a case in Iran.

RUMSFELD: They said Hitler was a nut.

O’REILLY: I would have. And they should have stopped him in the Rhine.

Rummy on American Iranian influence in Iraq: “And what we’ve got to count on is that the Iraqi people are, even the Shia, are more Iraqi than they are Shia and that they’re not going to want Iran influencing their elections.” Rummy on the torture bill: “from the Defense Department’s standpoint, the arrangement that’s been made does not have implications, because we have had requirements for humane treatment from the beginning.” And that’s worked out just swell.

And here’s a photo from the Iraqi elections I haven’t been able to think of an excuse for using:

Inherent authority

The Bushies are using the same smokescreen on domestic eavesdropping that they used for torture: saying they didn’t break the law, in an area where they also say (but not at the same time, so no one notices, they hope) that the law simply doesn’t apply. In today’s Gaggle, Scottie McClellan repeatedly insisted that they are abiding by the law while repeatedly refusing to answer if it is legal to spy on Americans. The Bushies believe (or claim to believe) 1) that the 2001 Congressional resolution on the “war against terrorism” gives them authorization to do literally anything, 2) that “the Constitution vests in the President inherent authority to conduct warrantless intelligence surveillance... of foreign powers or their agents, and Congress cannot by statute extinguish that constitutional authority” (according to a brief they filed in a 2002 case). “Inherent authority” = above the law.

Making it clear to the world that this government does not torture

Dumbest quotes of 2005.

An amusing Clive James memoir of his youthful “literary education in sludge fiction” in the Times Literary Supplement.
“Bulldog Drummond arrived in my life like a descending testicle”.

Speaking of descending testicles, George Bush has come out in favor of the legal ban on torture he fought (and threatened to veto) for so long, after he realized that even Dick Cheney couldn’t stop it (at the White House ceremony yesterday in which Bush symbolically surrendered his cattle prod to John McCain, Cheney was conspicuous by his absence).



By next week, he’ll be saying it was all his idea. This week, it’s still only half his idea: he’s willing to give McCain half-credit for “work[ing] very closely” with him on their “common objective” “to make it clear to the world that this government does not torture”. Note that he’s more concerned with the appearance of not-torturing than with actually not torturing. His previous (and let’s face it, current and future) policy has been to achieve the same objective, convincing the world that the US doesn’t torture, by torturing but lying about it. McCain is too much of a partisan at heart to be trusted with ownership of this issue, but he did mischievously push some boundaries, strategically rephrasing what Bush had said: “now we can move forward and make sure that the whole world knows that, as the President has stated many times, that we do not practice cruel, inhuman treatment or torture.” Of course, Bush has said no such thing, confining himself to denouncing torture, as defined into non-existence by Alberto Gonzales.

So now that we have a law against torture, that should settle it huh? Moving on: the other big civil liberties story was of course Bush’s authorizing the NSA in 2002 to break the law by spying on Americans’ phone calls and electronic communications. The WaPo, which may not have recognized the implications of its own story, says “A senior official reached by telephone said the issue was too sensitive to talk about. None of several press officers responded to telephone or e-mail messages.” Ix-nay on the elephone-tay.

On the torture bill, there were some little loopholes written in: if torture somehow accidentally happened, the “evidence” arising from that torture could be used by military panels to decide whether to hold people forever in Guantanamo. Oh, and people held not on US soil couldn’t actually enforce the ban on torturing them in US courts. Little stuff like that.

Little ink-stained fingers

Bush met with some overseas Iraqi voters, “And you might notice, they’ve got their -- got the little ink-stained fingers there.” Yes Bush was just fascinated by the little ink-stained fingers.


Maybe a little too fascinated.

Now wait, wait, did I vote too?

83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful and 2% angry

The White House says Iranian President Ahmadinejad’s description of the Holocaust as a “myth” shows why Iran shouldn’t be allowed to have nukes. Not sure I’m following the logic. I should have said in my last post that in the interview with Fox, Bush revived the phrase “Axis of Evil” when discussing Iran, which he called (speaking of myths) a “theocracy that has little transparency.”

And someone from the Israeli foreign ministry who really must not be paying a lot of attention said, “The combination of extremist ideology, a warped understanding of reality and nuclear weapons is a combination that no one in the international community can accept.”

Enigmatic no longer: emotion recognition software says that the Mona Lisa is 83% happy, 9% disgusted, 6% fearful and 2% angry.

The chimp and the fox

Just when I thought I was out, they drag me back in: with the last of the 4 Iraq speeches, I’d hoped I was done with Dumbya until after Christthelordandyoubetternotforgetitmas. Then he went and got interviewed by Brit Hume on Fox.

Says Rumsfeld is doing “heck of a job.” Twice. Says Cheney is good because he’s secretive: “when he discusses a topic with me and he gives me his advice, I never read about it in the newspaper the next day. And that’s why our relationship is so close and his advice is so valued.” Also means no one else can correct any mistakes, give him a differing perspective; just the way Bubble Boy likes it.

Says Abramoff was “an equal money dispenser” to people in both parties. So it cancels out, I guess.

Says DeLay is innocent.

Says the number he gave, 30,000 dead Iraqis, was “speculative,” just “a number that was in the press.”

What’s important for the American people to know is that our mission in Iraq is to target the guilty and protect the innocent. That’s what you go over with precision weapons and good intelligence. The terrorists’ mission in Iraq is to target the innocent.

What is he, 6? Also, is that “good intelligence” like the intel you just cited, a speculative number that was in the press?

Denies believing that God picked him to be president.

Says “I hope to be remembered, from a personal perspective, as a fellow who had lived life to the fullest and gave it his all.” Jeez, that was your all?