Near Kabul, a US convoy crashed into some cars while merging onto a highway after leaving Bagram, killing a few motorists and setting off a day of Road Rage Rioting. The interesting thing is how organized it seems to have been, with a demonstration in place to greet the convoy (and to be shot up in turn) as it reached its destination, which can’t have been more than 5 miles away.
There’s a new mass hunger strike at Guantanamo, dismissed by a Gitmo spokesmodel as an “attention-getting” move. So they did it on a holiday weekend? Commander Robert Durand, who is new to me, repeated the phrase of earlier Gitmo spokesmodels, that hunger striking is “consistent with al-Qaeda practice,” a phrase designed to smear without having to offer any proof of anything.
I might have left Memorial Day alone, except Bush used the day to hide (not for the first time) behind the corpses of American soldiers, to stand in front of ginormous flags,
to look all squinty and somber-like while standing next to men in uniform,
to look all squinty and somber-like while staring at flowers,
and to look all squinty and somber-like while staring at flowers and trying to figure out what to do with his fingers.
And then there’s the speech, dear God there’s the speech. After reading Haditha stories all week I’m not really in the mood to hear the dangerous fantasies about perfect saint-warriors that are the stock in trade of Memorial Day. Humans are complicated and messy, and it does them no honor to pretend to remember them by misrepresenting them as otherwise, to talk about how they all “answered the call to serve” (Greetings!) and how “All who are buried here understood their duty” and “understood that tyranny must be met with resolve” and “acted with principle and steadfast faith” (and automatic weapons) and whose deaths were all “sacrifices.” How do you mourn these figures of myth, when they’re not recognizably human? “On this Memorial Day, we look out on quiet hills, and rows of white headstones -- and we know that we are in the presence of greatness.” It is this sort of rhetoric that makes war seem clean and a worthy means of problem-solving, and which drives veterans who know that their actions and motives did not, because they are humans and not demi-gods, always match up to those ideals they are told they were supposed to have lived up to, to alcohol and violence and self-hatred and suicide.
Speaking of less-than-perfect humans, whoever transcribed the speech had it end, “May God Bless the Untied States of America.”
How much longer do I gotta stand here looking all squinty and somber-like?
Really, how much longer? I wanna ride my bike, and that brush won’t clear itself.
Angelina Jolie wants the proceeds from the sale of pictures of her and Brad Pitt’s genetic experiment daughter Shiloh to go to UNICEF. The pictures will be sepia-toned and accompanied by that plaintive Ken Burns violin music. Shiloh indeed.
Speaking of mutant hell-spawn, X-Men 3 has overtaken the box office receipts of The Da Vinci Code, which posits that Jesus lived, married Mary Magdalene, and has descendants, who when pissed off extrude long claws made of adamantium. I can’t think why it’s been so long since I’ve gone to a movie theater.
The WaPo suggests that the Haditha Massacre isn’t much exercising the Iraqis, because the unceasing violence has left them numb. One massacre more or less isn’t going to affect their opinion of us at this point. Actually, the stories are all beginning to run together for me: a bomb on a bus, assassination of a Sunni tribal head, member of parliament shot, battle between insurgents and the Iraqi army with maybe 20 dead on each side. And that was just today (Sunday). Tomorrow’s another day.
If Haditha is really only an issue for us, I wonder what the reaction of ordinary Vietnamese people was to My Lai?
The LA Times has the first interview with a member of the unit at Haditha. It doesn’t add much to our knowledge, but there is a disturbing bit that I’d ordinarily link to with a warning, but since it will disappear behind the LAT’s pay wall in I think a week, I’ll put it in comments.
Moscow’s mayor having already banned what was to be the city’s first gay pride march, the city has now also banned a planned gay conference and festival, the city’s chief of security saying that all public expression by gays must be outlawed because “they violate our rights.”
And really, what’s wrong with a dude gettin’ it on with another dude?
Military name of the day: the British chief of defense staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup.
To enliven a dull news day (and because I don’t feel like looking into why the East Timorese are killing each other), some more London Review of Books (LRB) personals. I understand there’s to be a book of these published sometime soon.
The average person contains enough iron in their body to make a small nail. Not me, I’ve got about a tent peg’s worth. Man, 57, enjoys licking railings. Box no. 10/05
Drooling, toothless sociopath (M, 57) seeks F any age to help make this abandoned petrol station kiosk feel more like home. Must bring shoes (size 10). Box no. 10/06
Justify my strop. 24/7 PMS-suffering woman seeks man to 35 prone to inadvertently saying the wrong thing (which is everything) at the wrong time (which is always). If you whistle, I will kill you. You have been warned. Chocolate (lots of it, please) to box no. 10.08
Although this is an advert that screams excitement, the man who placed it (historian, 54, enjoys air-fix modelling) is strangely subdued. Box no. 10/09
I intend to keep the precise contents of this personal ad secret. Box no. 10/10
All humans are 99.9% genetically identical, so don’t even think of ending any potential relationship begun here with ‘I just don’t think we have enough in common’. Science has long since proven that I am the man for you (41, likes to be referred to as ‘Wing Commander’ in the bedroom). Box no. 10/11
World of the Strange! LRB reader (F, then 36) places personal advert in 2001 for man to 40 who loves literature, the arts, and cycling in Italy. She receives no responses whatsoever but duly notes over the course of the next five years the number of male advertisers to 40 who enjoy literature, the arts and cycling in Italy (there were 13 of them). Is the reason they didn’t reply to her advert because they were blind to her outrageous beauty or because she lived in a house in which an old soldier had died upon returning from the Great War in 1918 and had subsequently cursed all future inhabitants, preventing them from ever being happy (this same curse also prevents inhabitants of the house from being able to make omelettes or perform basic house chores such as washing dishes and opening council tax bills)? F, now 41, believes it to be the latter and WLTM M to 45 with some knowledge of exorcism rituals, direct debits, and the best place for bulk paper plate purchases. Box no. 10/04
On 15 March, 1957, Commander J.R. Hunt of the United States Navy landed at Key West Florida in his non-rigid airship having travelled for 264 hours and 12 minutes without once refuelling. Coincidentally, that’s the same length of time I’ve spent without once making contact with a woman (apart from my mother, who doesn’t count, but who only ever asks me what I’d like for breakfast – it’s eggs, I like eggs for breakfast, poached, please, on two slices of granary bread). Is this a world record? Answers, please, to 37-year old male idiot. Box no. 08/03
Another picture from Bush’s visit to West Point, which I might as well make into a caption contest for the three of you actually looking at this blog this long weekend. What is he saying to Valedictorian Jessamyn Jade Liu? And no references to ping pong balls, please.
The Haditha massacre story seems to be heating up, as it did not do after the initial Time magazine article in March, because the media have been waiting since then for the Pentagon to do the investigating for them. This is a little troubling because the Pentagon’s track record is not good, not just on Abu Ghraib but on Haditha itself. When the Marines’ first story (the civilians were killed by an IED) was disproved, the Pentagon simply accepted their second story (gun battle) without investigating. Without the Time article, that would have been the end of it (unlike after My Lai, no American military personnel came forward to tell the truth). Dunno, maybe it’s just me, but if US Marines are pointing guns at four-year olds and pulling the trigger, I’d like that looked into. A detail from the London Times, which sent a reporter to talk to a 10-year old survivor: “An American unit attended the funeral to apologise, but not before it had positioned snipers around the mourners”. Hearts and minds, eh?
Rumsfeld yesterday defended the number of troops sent to Iraq, saying that every single general, except maybe the one he fired, said that it was the right number. And you can’t suggest that Rummy doesn’t appreciate being contradicted, facing hard facts and hard questions, because after all he gave this interview to... Larry King. “Now, is it the right number? Time will tell.” Jeez, Rummy, checked your inbox lately? Time has told.
What you’ve gotta love about Republicans is that they can invade a country and make it sound like a ‘60s welfare program: “The second risk [of sending “too many” troops] is you create a dependency. You do all the work for the Iraqis, instead of pushing them and having them do the work.” Yeah, can’t turn the whole country into a bunch of shiftless hippies; “push” them into a civil war, that’ll toughen em up.
And he insists that “Quitting is not an exit strategy.” Dude, it really kinda is.
Larry asked him how he felt signing letters to relatives of dead soldiers. “Annoyed that I got caught using that autosigner.” OK he didn’t say that. He did say that it doesn’t affect his sleep because he reads history before he goes to bed. I bet he doesn’t get asked to give a lot of jacket quotes.
Asked about his meetings with families of dead soldiers, this is the adjective he chose to apply to those meetings: “forward-looking.”
Suspender Man brought up Robert McNamara having recanted on Vietnam. Here is how foreign the concept of guilt is to Rummy: when King said, “He lives with a lot of pain,” Rummy, totally missing the point, replied, “He does. As a matter of fact, he has just been ill, but he’s much better.”
Asked about Cheney, Rummy utters the understatement of the year: “Well, he doesn’t spend any time trying to make people like him.”
Asked about Bush, Rummy utters the mis-statement of the year: “He is enormously talented, bright,” adding, “I just spent an hour and a half with him. And he must have asked 50 questions of John Abizaid and me and General Pace.” CONTEST: what are some of those questions? “Can I have a cookie? Can I have a cookie? How ‘bout now? Can I have a cookie?...”
Oh, and Larry King being Larry King asked Rummy if he watched American Idol. “Heck, no!”
During the Bush/Blair press conference, the former admitted that saying “bring them on” may have been, you know, undermisinterpretated in certain parts of the world. “I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner, you know.” That’s true: since July 2003 the sophistication of his discourse has astonished us all.
Of course earlier, he’d once again praised Maliki’s declaration that he would use “maximum force” against the insurgents. Actually, I don’t have that much of a fix on Maliki yet, but he does seem to be a bit of a blowhard.
Indeed, when asked to respond to Maliki’s claim that his regime would be in charge of Iraqi security within 18 months, Bush made his usual stock comment that “our commanders on the ground will make that decision” and “the conditions on the ground will make the decision” and politics won’t make the decision. Of course he was on autopilot, but he accidentally suggested that Maliki a) has nothing to do with the decision, b) is just engaging in politics.
Caption contest, and do try to express yourselves maybe in a little more sophisticated manner:
Today, Bush went to a Limerick Generating Station in Pennsylvania. Which is a nuclear plant.
When that Eli Lilly heir bequeathed $100 million to Poetry magazine, I suggested that they “may just blow it all on a crash project to find a word that rhymes with orange,” but it never occurred to me that mad poet-scientists could invent a nuclear-powered limerick generator. Stop the madness! Stop the madness!
He explained economics to the plant workers – who all come from Nantucket – in a way that was utterly simplistic while not actually being true: “I think it’s important that we’re the economic leader of the world, because when you’re the leader it helps the folks who live in your country.” Naturally, this involves cutting taxes: “We need to be able to be a society that says, you get to earn more of that which you earn.”
We’ve talked about Bush’s little verbal tics, how he always says things are “interesting” and how he “understands” things and even “fully understands” them, and how he “appreciates” everyone (yesterday he said that he appreciated being on a stage with Dennis Hastert, and I tastefully declined to make the obvious joke). But there’s also the “in other words” tic, and today he provides a lovely example: “nuclear power is abundant and affordable. In other words, you have nuclear power plants, you can say, we’ve got an abundant amount of electricity.” However, he does admit that nuclear power plants are “highly risky.” No, wait, he means economically risky, because of all the regulations and lawsuits. So we’ll get rid of all those, then remove any remaining risk by having the federal government insure the plants in case of meltdowns. Because nuclear plans are necessary for a glowing better future.
Not that he doesn’t see the problems: “I understand the issue of waste”. Sure, because he himself is a complete waste of spa- ... oh, sorry, he meant nuclear waste. Fortunately, he has the answer to that: faith-based science. “I’m a believer that Yucca Mountain is a scientifically sound place to send the waste”. Can I hear an amen?
And then they let him wander around the control room for a while.
If you see on CNN that limericks have mutated into giant sonnets and are rampaging through the Pennsylvanian countryside, you’ll know why.
Here’s a nice put-down, from a Taliban commander encountered by a London Times reporter at a roadblock: “We will also hunt the puppet Afghans who are the rented bicycle for the infidels.”
A year ago, when the Supreme Court ruled that eminent domain could be used for the benefit of purely private profit, I wrote sarcastically, “I’m sure we will see many Wal-Marts condemned and the land turned over to mom & pop stores.” In fact, the small town of Hercules, CA, a few miles north of Berkeley, is under threat of a Wal-Mart moving in and will use eminent domain to seize the land Wal-Mart wants to build on.
Hollywood simply has to be stopped. There are plans for big-screen versions of Kung Fu and Welcome Back Kotter.
Pentagon website headline: “Suicide Bombings Mask Political Progress.” Yeah, that’ll do it.
Belarus has yanked “The Da Vinci Code” after four days because Christian groups found Tom Hanks’s hair offensive. The replacement: “Memoirs of a Geisha.”
I’ve been waiting for a couple of days to see if the Pentagon website would have something to say about the Afghan bombings. And today, there is a glancing reference in a story whose headline on the main page is “Afghan Troops’ Progress Frustrates Taliban,” though if you click on it, the headline is “Afghan Violence Reflects Afghan Troops’ Progress, Taliban Frustration.” Evidently, and stop me if you’ve heard this before, the increase in violence is a sign of the enemies’ desperation. After the massacre, Gen. Carter Ham, a long-time favorite of this blog and the possessor of the most WASPy name in all Christendom, has the gall to talk about “the great measures we take to try to protect noncombatants.”
Bush said at his press conference with Olmert that oh sure Iraq is bad, “If one were to measure progress on the number of suiciders, if that's your definition of success, I think it gives -- I think it will -- I think it obscures the steady, incremental march toward democracy we're seeing.” Somebody noted yesterday that “incremental” is his new favorite word, although he seems to have confused it with “imperceptible.”
I didn’t find any material in it worth making fun of, but yesterday Bush gave a speech on The War Against Terror (TWAT) to the National Restaurant Association, which is pretty funny in and of itself. In the q&a, somebody praised him for running the country “the way a chef would run the country.”
Olmert said that Israel will go ahead with the plan to spend money on health care for the Palestinians, using taxes collected from the Palestinians and illegally held by Israel. Although when he said it, it sounded a lot more generous than when I said it.
Yesterday, it was Maliki who expressed the adorably naive notion that he could say when foreign troops would leave parts of his country. Today, it’s Hamid Karzai, uttering faux outrage over the deaths of civilians in American bombing raids (as opposed to the governor of Kandahar, who said “accidents” happen). Deaths which are contrary to his explicit instructions: “on several occasions in the past, the president [yes, this is his statement: he’s doing that obnoxious third-person thing] had called on the coalition forces to be highly cautious to avoid civilian casualties during their military operations and not to be swayed by terrorists’ tactics who use people’s homes as a shelter.” Indeed, he “condemned” that tactic, but only expressed “concern” at the bombing of a civilian town. He also helpfully suggested to Afghan civilians that they resist attempts by terrorists to enter their homes. Gee, he makes it sound so simple. Puffed-up moron.
Some pics of the people beneath the bombs. There were females wounded as well, but as ever they are hidden away.
(Update: his name, by the way, is Mohammad Imran.)
John Bolton, he of the mustache, said that America’s decision to come to terms with Libya was a subtle hint to Iran that if they just do what we tell them to do, “their regime can stay in place”.
When Tony Blair made his ever-so-secret trip to Iraq today, PM Maliki stood next to him and announced that British troops would be leaving two provinces next month, and that Iraqi troops will be in complete charge of all the provinces except Anbar and Baghdad by the end of the year. Of course this won’t happen, and Americans keep saying such decisions will be “conditions-based,” as did Blair, who said there was no timetable. I wonder who gets to break the news to Maliki that it’s not actually a decision he or any other Iraqi will be making.
Is that the tie you’d choose for a trip to a war zone?
Ah, it matches the carpet, so to speak.
The Iraqi government I keep hearing described bears little resemblance to the one that actually exists. Blair said it was “directly elected by the votes of millions of Iraqi people.” A directly elected government would have taken office immediately after the elections, not after five months of haggling. Bush said today, “Although Iraq’s new leaders come from many different ethnic and religious communities, they’ve made clear they will govern as Iraqis.” Again, five months of haggling about which sects would get which ministries.
Blair says that with this directly elected government, “There is now no excuse for people to carry on with terrorism and bloodshed.” So he thought there was an excuse up until now?
The US heavily bombed the small Afghan town of Azizi, killing, it claims with no plausibility whatsoever, 80 Taliban fighters and maybe one or two civilians. The US position is the usual “How dare they hide behind civilians” crap – Maj. John Yonts (a Dr. Seuss name if ever I heard one) said the rebel leaders were “responsible for the deaths of those women and children” killed by American bombs. In fact, the Taliban were in a madrassa which was bombed (it was nighttime so I assume it was otherwise unoccupied); they then ran out of it and into other houses, which were then bombed. What else would you expect them to do? Stand in the middle of an open field, waving their arms? The villagers, the London Times reports, take a different view from Yonts and blame the people with the airplanes. You can blame the Taliban tactics all you like, and of course they were risking the lives of those villagers, but the Americans chose to bomb civilian houses at night, being more interested in killing Taliban than in not killing civilians.
Why does anyone buy arms from the US? The US is refusing to sell Venezuela the replacement parts to keep its F-16s flyable, and claims that Venezuela must get US permission to sell them to China or Iran, as it is threatening to do. So the US took their money, tries to dictate what they can and can’t do with the product they bought, and won’t support that product. Who do they think they are, Microsoft?
My question is, if Venezuela can’t get spare parts, how could Iran?
The military thinks the way to solve its problems in Iraq is to keep popping out new organizations. I know, said Gen. George Casey, let’s create a Counterinsurgency Center for Excellence and... OK, half of you think I made that up; we’re simply not going to be able to go on with this paragraph until you’ve confirmed that it exists by clicking here. Did you know that the “best tactic in counterinsurgency warfare” is to “get out of the vehicles and walk”? That’s just one of the things they teach at the Wayne and Garth Excellent Counterinsurgency Center for Excellence, where students are also taught to... wait for it... “think outside the box.” For example, “there are certain things you can do that are not helpful, like the escalation of force. Let’s really think about, ‘Do we have to shoot our weapons to warn people?’” Cuz, see, and just hear me out here, “If we do escalation of force and it results in some needless casualties, then you haven’t created a lot of support for what we’re trying to do.” So evidently you can major in The Totally Fucking Obvious, with a minor in Duh Studies.
Another new organization: the National Unity Office, a group within the Coalition forces which will “interface with the [Iraqi] government to help them achieve their goals.” Another idea of Gen. Casey, who believes that there are three pillars for Iraq’s unity government (UG) to be successful: unity, security and prosperity (or, as I’d rearrange it for acronymous reasons, prosperity, unity and security).
I’ve seen breakdowns of the partial Iraqi cabinet by party and religion, but I’d be curious how many of them are former exiles.
Her Condiness was on Meet the Press today, uttering a lot of talking points that conflicted with other talking points.
For example, she explained the low approval ratings for the Iraq war as a problem of the visual: “I understand that Americans see on their screens violence.” But she rejected the UN report about Guantanamo as a result of a lack of the visual: “I only wish that Rapporteur had gone to Guantanamo and actually looked at what was going on there. It’s a little difficult to understand by remote control.” Gitmo comes with a remote? Cool. Can we turn down the “evil” setting a smidge? (And of course if the commission had gone there, they would not have been allowed to speak to the prisoners, something Russert predictably failed to point out). She added, “No one would like to shut down Guantanamo more than this administration.” Oh, I think there are several hundred prisoners who’d like it shut down shut a little bit more than you.
A more disturbing use of the visual came in the Condi di tutti Condis’s other interview today, with Fox, where she insisted that she knows Maliki is a strong leader because “I’ve looked into his eyes.” You mean these eyes?
I just don’t see it.
Another example of contradictory talking points came in a single uninterrupted paragraph in which she first said, about the Iraq invasion, that “everybody knew and believed there was a WMD problem with Iraq.” Now obviously they “knew” no such thing because there was no “WMD problem,” but she then blithely went ahead and justified the hard-line stand against Iran’s nuclear program on the grounds that the same “everybody” who got it wrong last time now knows and believes that there is a WMD problem with Iran: “we are also in very good company in being concerned about what Iran is doing... we have pretty good unity on the concerns about the Iranian nuclear program.”
Asked whether the US might guarantee not to attack Iran if it gave up its nuclear program, she said no, because they are bad and Israel and terrorism and blah blah blah. Then she turned around and suggested that their very desire for a guarantee not to be bombed and/or invaded is proof that their nuclear program is not benign: “If this is a civil nuclear program, and supposed to give energy, what’s, what is with security guarantees? I thought this was supposed to be a civil nuclear program.” I’m pretty sure she thinks she just proved something with her devastating logic.
I’ve been thinking about whether to ask for the Democratic ballot when I go to vote in the June primary (as previously noted, I am not registered in any party). If I do, I’ll have to leave a lot of it blank given my refusal to vote for death penalty supporters for governor, lite governor or attorney general. Would-be governors Westly and Angelides (currently running negative ads denouncing each other for running negative ads) bow ritually before the sacred death chamber at San Quentin, but even Jerry freaking Brown (running for attorney general, of all things) would implement capital punishment while claiming to oppose it inside his shriveled opportunistic heart.
Lately, Bush is using more and more of those “I understand” sentences. Today: “I fully understand that a free Iraq will be an important ally on the war on terror (etc)”.
Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki says he will use “maximum force against terrorism.” Evidently the problem has been that up until now their phasers have been set to stun. Maliki also claimed that “Militias, death squads, terrorism, killings and assassinations are not normal”. Er, right.
Which reminds me that the NYT ran an obituary earlier this week of the man who sent Checkers to Richard Nixon. I especially enjoy the obits of people who only entered the public eye for one brief moment. I once tore out of the paper the obit of the man who introduced colored bowling balls to a grateful world, planning to comment about what it must be like to have that as your legacy, but before I got around to it the woman from the “I’ve fallen and I can’t get up” commercial died. I suggested that her tombstone was already written for her.
The Bushes leave church today, George as always thrilled not to have been struck down by lightning, the LauraBot trying to figure out how its leg attachments work.
Your video of the day: “10 Things I Hate About Commandments.” (The Ten Commandments re-envisioned as the teen comedy it was always meant to be) (78 seconds long).
Looking through the new-books section at the public library today, I found sticking out of the latest Stephen King a business card for a “mental health rehabilitation specialist,” which I thought was an amusing thing to be using as a bookmark in that particular book (they didn’t get very far into it), until it occurred to me that it might have been the, um, specialist, going to the library and sticking his card into all the especially disturbing books.
I’m not sure how a government could be considered formed without proper ministers of interior, defense and national security in a normal country, much less Iraq, but there you go. It’s also being called a unity government (UG) by everyone, and Bush says it’s a “broadly representative unity government” (BRUG?) that “reflects Iraq’s diversity.” Broadly representative? So where are the broads? There are two, the women’s affairs minister and the human rights minister, who as the only Christian is a two-fer. Observer headline: “New Dawn for Iraq Marked by Bloodshed.” So, just like the old dawn then.
Go re-read On Liberty (see how much credit I’m giving you? I’m assuming that you know more about Mill than that “John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill.”) His writing tends towards the precise and rational, so he’s not all that quotable, but there’s this: “Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.” Speaking of which...
George Bush: “Some people think any proposal short of mass deportation is amnesty. I disagree.” You’d think Bush would want to keep the few words he does know, yet he keeps defining so many of them in such a way that they never apply to anything related to his policies: torture, civil war, amnesty.
Still, there are some words I wouldn’t have thought he even knew, much less that they’d ever pass his chimp-like lips. In today’s radio address, he says that on immigration there is a “rational middle ground” between his two straw men, automatic citizenship and mass deportation.
There is no middle ground for aliens though. “[W]e must honor the great American tradition of the melting pot by helping newcomers assimilate into our society. ... When immigrants assimilate, they will advance in our society, realize their dreams, renew our spirit, and add to the unity of America.” Realize their dreams unless... Hey! You’re dreaming in Spanish, aren’t you? Stop it at once!
What does “add to the unity of America” actually mean?
I refrained from posting on the story yesterday that Iran was going to require Jews to sew yellow strips of cloth on their clothing and Christians and Zoroastrians to similarly identify themselves because my bullshit detector went off, and sure enough the story was bullshit. Makes you wonder who started it...
The Gitmo authorities are claiming that one of the four suicide attempts yesterday (except they’re now saying there were only three) was actually a cunning plan to lure guards so that they could be attacked by other prisoners, who had slicked up the floors with, well, you don’t want to know. The guards then shot them with rubber pellets and a “sponge-type grenade” fired from a grenade launcher. Rear Admiral Harry B. Harris Jr. said the prisoners were just trying “to bring attention to their detention.” Yes, “attention to their detention” – what do you expect from someone named Harry Harris? Of course, we don’t really know what happened or why because the only ones allowed to present their side are military officials, who haven’t exactly been truthful in the past.
The Pentagon website article linked to above has a picture of a basketball court in the facility where the outbreak took place, which I guess is intended to prove that the prisoners are well-treated, even coddled. Not coddled to the extent that they’re actually given a ball of course...
Indy headline: “At Last, America Has an Official Language (And Yes, It’s English).” I detect a faint whiff of English sarcasm.
Something odd happened to the headline of a WaPo story about Michael Hayden: the headline “CIA Nominee Has Ability To Deliver Bad News” (I tried to construct a joke about having to have a really strong back, cause there’ll be, you know, a lot of it, but decided it wasn’t up to my standards) changed between last night and this morning to “Nominee Has Ability To Bear Bad News.” Which is also good, because otherwise he’ll just be sitting in his office all day quietly weeping, but why the change, Post?
Pat Robertson: “if I heard the Lord right about 2006, the coasts of America will be lashed by storms.” So God... mumbles? Are you sure that wasn’t Dustin Hoffman? You’d think if God wanted to say something to you, you’d hear him.
By the way, if you’d heard that quote before and missed the point of it, Robertson is raising money from his viewers, ostensibly to relieve the victims of those storms.
The Senate has voted to make English both the “national language” and a “common and unifying language” (you’d have to ask Pat Robertson if English is the language God mumbles), which is evidently different from making it the official language in some way I don’t understand because I speak English rather than congress-speak. Thus the ironic AP headline, “Senate Sends Mixed Signals on English.” Sadly, no Democratic senator gave a speech against the measure in Spanish.
Speaking of problems with English, George Bush told NBC today (video here, but don’t bother) why his poll numbers are low:
BUSH: Because we are at war, and war unsettles people. Listen, we got a great economy. We’ve added 5.2 million jobs in the last two and a half years. People are unsettled.
GREGORY: But they’re not just unsettled sir. They disapprove of the job you’re doing.
BUSH: That’s unsettled.
He added that Iraq “colors everyone’s vision, it seems like.” Bush’s choice of the word unsettled suggests that for him, the normal, healthy, settled state of affairs is for his leadership to be unquestioned and fully supported. Any other condition is aberrant and temporary. His message that we’ve got a great economy, which I’m sure he sincerely believes because it is in fact a great economy if you’re Exxon-Mobil or the companies that get to build his high-tech border with Mexico, is a blatant appeal to self-interest: you’ve got a job, forget about the chaos in Iraq. But, evidently, it’s not the economy, stupid.
There was a mass suicide attempt at Guantanamo yesterday, with prisoners fighting the guards as they tried to save the four, who all survived. Gitmo’s spokesmodel claims to have no idea what “any intended message” might have been.
Speaking of Gitmo prisoners, could we stop describing them as “freed” when in fact they have just been sent to prison in another country?
