Oh no she dinnt!

The Queen. Of England. Quoted Groucho Marx today. The Queen did. Thusly: “As Groucho Marx once said ‘Anyone can get old - all you have to do is to live long enough.’”

Oh, it’s on.



It’s all about the hats.

Hard

Speaking of election-year pandering, they just had a little ceremony to sign the bill allowing the FCC to impose, ahem, stiffer fines on broadcasters for what Bush called “obscene, profane and indecent material.” He praised the Congressmen (I use the term advisedly: there were ten men and no women present. I noticed that too in a picture a week or two ago of sponsors of the anti-gay marriage constitutional amendment) three times for “working hard” on the bill. Although these days Ted Stevens (seen here wearing a white suit to represent his purity) has to take a little blue pill to work hard.


That’s Rep. Joe Barton of Texas sucking his thumb, or whatever the hell he’s doing.

Nobly struggling

On this day when American deaths in Iraq have hit 2,500, the House of Representatives is debating, if that’s the word for this empty-headed grandstanding, a resolution against setting a deadline to remove troops from Iraq and which “declares that the United States will prevail in the Global War on Terror, the noble struggle to protect freedom from the terrorist adversary.” (Purple emphasis added) I may or may not have more to say about this tripe-fest later, but it seems the Pentagon put together a 74-page debate prep book which attacks the notion of a deadline as “cut and run” and warns of the dire consequences of leaving “before the job is done.” This is a gross breach of the rules of democracy: the military does not get to dictate to the elected representatives of this nation what its job is or when that job is done.

Naturally, I want to read this thing, which the AP seems to be keeping to itself. If anyone sees it online, please share with the rest of the class in comments or by email.

Bush press conference: I sense something different happening in Iraq

Transcript.

Number 869 on the list of phrases that Bush uses over and over that grate on my nerves until I snap: “killing innocent lives.” It’s either 1) killing innocent people, or 2) taking innocent lives. FUCKING CHOOSE ONE AND STOP KILLING THE INNOCENT ENGLISH LANGUAGE!

Sorry. All better now.


Darn dangerous: “I’d like to close Guantanamo, but I also recognize that we’re holding some people that are darn dangerous”. And we have to recognize the real victim here: him. “Sometimes we get criticized for sending some people out of Guantanamo back to their home country because of the nature of the home country. It’s a little bit of a Catch-22.” Yup, damned if you torture them yourself, damned if you give them to someone else to be tortured. And Gitmo “provides an excuse, for example, to say the United States is not upholding the values that they’re trying to encourage other countries to adhere to.” Note how he tries to delegitimize criticism with that word “excuse.”


There’s something happening here / What it is ain’t exactly clear: “I sense something different happening in Iraq.”

You gotta want it: “I appreciated very much the agenda [Maliki]’s laid out. In other words, he’s got a plan to succeed. And I appreciated their determination -- it’s not just his determination, but their cabinet’s determination to succeed. In other words, part of the success in Iraq depends upon the Iraqis and their will and their desire.” And later: “one of the reasons I went to Iraq was to be able to sit down with an Iraqi government to determine whether or not they have the will to succeed... [to] expel any doubt in my mind as to whether or not we have a partner that is going to do the hard work.” That’s why he brought his trusty will-o-meter. To misspell expel any doubt in his mind.


I like these kids; they got moxie: And rappel repel expel them he did: “And so doubts about whether or not this government can -- has got the will to go forward was expelled. That’s why I went. In other words, sitting here in America, wondering whether or not these people have got what it takes can create uncertainty. I’ve eliminated that uncertainty.”


Condescend much?: “I made it clear to the government there that it’s up to them to succeed.”

But it’s not all will and desire. Another part of success, at least for Bush, is defining success downwards. He said there won’t be “zero violence” in Iraq. Indeed, if you use violence to measure whether this is “a successful experience” (!), “then it’s not going to happen. All that does is give the power of -- a handful of murderers to determine success.” Don’t get him wrong, though: “Obviously, we’d like violence to go down” (phew), but “the reason why I said that we shouldn’t use the level of -- have a zero-violence expectation is because there are other measures to determine success, starting with political measures.” Also, cheese production.

Asked how much less violence he wanted, in, like, round numbers: “Enough for the government to succeed. In other words, the Iraqi people have got to have confidence in this unity government, and reduction in violence will enable the people to have confidence.”


Al Qaeda philosophy watch: “But al Qaeda is real; their philosophy is a real philosophy; they have ambitions.” You’ll remember that on Monday they didn’t have a philosophy.


On addressing the troops: “You know, when you’re in a theater like that, it’s important to hear words of congratulations sometimes, to hear that their efforts are appreciated and doing hard work. And I got to do that.” The congratulating part, he means, he got to do that, not the hard work part.

I have come today to personally show our nation’s commitment, and say is that the time?

Maliki is implementing security measures, a crackdown, martial law, call it what you will, in Baghdad. They’re calling it “Advancing Forward Together,” unless of you course you want to advance forward in a car on a Friday, or after 8:30 at night. Oh, and advance forward slowly and carefully when approaching the numerous checkpoints now being established. Freedom, ain’t it grand. Baghdad residents will have noted that George Bush can still just swan in whenever he feels like.

They will also have noticed that when he said “I have come today to personally show our nation’s commitment to a free Iraq,” he was on a five-hour visit.

Just saw the video of Bush in Baghdad, and there’s a priceless visual you can’t get from a mere transcript: when he talked about looking Maliki in the eyes, he literally turned to look him in the eyes, and this meant that Maliki, who was seated next to him, had to turn his head towards Bush. (The moment is 80 seconds into this Fox video clip, after a [sigh] 15-second commercial.)

Bush goes to Baghdad: And all of it makes sense to me

In retrospect, the ruse seems painfully transparent: Bush was going to spend two days discussing Iraq policy. Two days! Policy!

No, the only thing these clowns plan in that sort of detail is a photo op. We’re informed this one took a month of planning. And what a plan it was! Wheels within wheels: oh sure, when Bush started fake yawning at 7:45 and saying he was going to turn in and read. Of course no one was fooled – read! what a kidder! – but they just figured that any second Condi was going to make some similarly lame excuse to absent herself – have to brush my teeth, takes a really long time with the gap, you know! – and then the boys could get on with the traditional game of “Deliverance,” in which Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns, who’d been wondering why he’d been invited, is jumped, stripped naked, told he has a purdy mouth, and given a two-minute head start.

So it’s off to the Green Zone for George Bush! In a fleet of helicopters and, despite what CNN may have told you, Bush wore the same flak jacket as these guys, though perhaps without the pee smell Tony Snow detects arising from Dan Barlett’s.


I said perhaps. Funnily enough, there seem to be no pictures of Bush in that get-up.

It was Bush’s first meeting with Nouri Maliki, seen here having an attack of the vapors.


Who, by the way, was the genius who positioned Maliki in front of an American flag?


(Update: Bob of Bob’s Links and Rants has an uncropped version of the picture above this one, which shows that he’s standing in front of an even bigger American flag. Maybe he just likes standing in front of American flags. Maybe he thinks they’re pretty or something.)

It was all going swimmingly, until Bush started speaking. “I appreciate you recognizing the fact that the future of this country is in your hands.” “We discussed the security strategy. We discussed an economic strategy, a reconstruction strategy. And all of it makes sense to me.” “[I]f given the right help, I’m convinced you will succeed, and so will the world.” The world will succeed if given the right help? From where, Rigel 7?

Hey sparky, no one walks in front of the king.
Then he went to speak to the troops. He told them, “I thank you for your sacrifice... Your sacrifice is noble and your sacrifice is important.” How reassuring. Still, being ordered to sit through a pep talk by George Bush is quite a sacrifice.

He told them that he’d given Maliki his patented ophthalmological test: “Today, I have come to not only thank you, but to look Prime Minister Maliki in the eyes -- to determine whether or not he is as dedicated to a free Iraq as you are, and I believe he is.” Yay, he passed the eye test! Just like Putin!

“We don’t expect the Iraqi government to look like the American government.” Except for that one squat, squinty guy. Oh, and their agriculture minister has a purdy mouth, just like Mike Johanns. “We expect an Iraqi government to honor its traditions and its histories and its religious faiths. But we do expect the Iraqi government to honor the right of every man, woman and child to live in a free society.” Dude, it’s one or the other.

Treated better in death

Gen. William Caldwell, waving the military’s autopsy of Zarqawi, says, “The Iraqi people deserve the facts, to know that the personal threat of Zarqawi was eliminated and the fact that he was treated better in death than he treated others in life.” I’m not sure what, if anything, that actually means, although I know I’d feel better-treated if I were only autopsied when I was actually dead.

Another in our ongoing series, “Real News or The Onion?”: The United States Marines and the Iraqi Army are going around to mosques delivering air conditioners and prayer rugs, in what is called Operation Cool Carpet.

Bush dragged various generals and members of the Cabinet out to Camp David to strategerize about Iraq. Including, for some mysterious reason, the secretary of agriculture. Chimpy eloquently summed it all up for the press: “We all agree that we have got to continue to help this new government move forward.” Do you suppose there was a lot of discussion about that? Or about this: “The message to the Iraqi government is, is that we stand with you, that what you’re doing is important”.


What else did they talk about? I know this will surprise all of you: “We spent a lot of time in talking about energy and oil.” And what about oil? “My own view is, is that the government ought to use the oil as a way to unite the country”. Sounds sticky. Now I’ve often pointed out that Bush knows only one adjective. But when he’s talking about his favorite subject, oil, that adjective has a friend: “There’s some unbelievably interesting exploration opportunities.”


Let’s talk philosophy for a minute. Bush, today: “But the enemy doesn’t stand for anything. ... They have no positive philosophy.” And in an interview with Al Arabiya last October: “They don’t have a philosophy.” But 11 days before that: “And we’re facing an enemy that is ruthless and cold-blooded, an enemy that actually has a philosophy, and the philosophy is so opposite of ours, it is the exact opposite of what America stands for.” And in February: “Ours is an enemy that has no conscience, but they do have a philosophy.” And in March: “I see them bound by a philosophy with plans and tactics to impose their will on other countries.” And 18 days ago: “They have a point of view, they have a philosophy”. So, George, philosophy or no philosophy?


In all these pictures, it looks like Condi was really excited to be invited out to Camp David, only to find when she got there that other members of the cabinet were there too.

The Interagency Team on Iraq has t-shirts now?

And don’t they look a little young? (click for larger image)

A good PR move to draw attention

Colleen Graffy, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy, says that the Gitmo suicides did not value human life (click here for the 7½ minute audio clip), including their own (the valuable human life which the US still refuses even to name [Update: they are Mani Shaman Turki al-Habardi Al-Utaybi, Yassar Talal Al-Zahrani, and Yemeni Ali Abdullah Ahmed; the Saudi government named its citizens), and then demonstrates her own high regard for human life by calling the suicides “certainly... a good PR move to draw attention,” a “tactic to further the jihadi cause.” She almost sorta had a point – that the actions were a statement aimed at the world, not just a gesture of despair aimed inwards – but then she just had to append that casually callous adjective “good.” Graffy knows all about good PR, because she works for Karen Hughes making the US beloved throughout the Muslim world. (Here’s an interview she gave the BBC in March about Guantanamo).

The outrageous quotes I’ve been relating the past 2 days have been about the US desperately trying prevent these people being seen as victims and martyrs, to portray as vocal, active and dangerous those from whom all voice and action had been removed. When you’ve been working tirelessly to silence these prisoners – no speeches in court, no interviews by UN inspectors, much less journalists, no letters to their families, no suicide notes – and they still manage to communicate with the outside world through the only medium left them, their dead bodies, perhaps that seems like a “good PR move.” When you’ve been trying to reduce these prisoners to entirely passive bodies, employing physical violence to break even their attempts to refuse food, only to see them retake their autonomy one last time in the only way not closed off to them, perhaps that seems like an “act of asymmetrical warfare” to you. The more totalitarian the system, the louder any act of defiance seems.

I’m feeling a little lazy and Deadwood’s on soon, so let’s assume this paragraph is something devastatingly clever linking 1) the Bushite fury that the Gitmo prisoners might be perceived as victims of a system of detention without end or hope with 2) the stuff about Zarqawi being used by the Bushies as a symbol, a more or less mythical figure only marginally related to the actually existing human being named Zarqawi.

Three Square Blocks of Kabul Afghan President Karzai will distribute guns to tribesmen, who are supposed to use them against Taliban. He will call those tribesmen “community police.” He does not see how this could possibly backfire.

Caption contest, if you’re so inclined:

Bring out your anonymous dead, in a humane and culturally sensitive manner

According to White House spokesmodel Christie Parell, Bush expressed serious concern about the Guantanamo suicides and “stressed the importance of treating the bodies in a humane and culturally sensitive manner.” Yes, I can sooooooo hear those words coming out of Chimpy’s mouth.

And all three left notes. Will we ever see them?

And the Pentagon got a fatwa from a tame imam allowing them not to bury the bodies within 24 hours, so that autopsies can be performed. Yes at Guantanamo cultural and religious sensitivity is job 1.

Speaking of nameless dead people, the Pentagon now admits the existence of a girl, aged 5 to 7, who died in the bombing assassination of Zarqawi, whose existence they’d previously denied. No explanation was given for how they could have misplaced a little girl’s corpse for just long enough that it didn’t cast a pall over the victory party.

An act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us

Although the Supreme Court has restricted the use of the death penalty to cases of murder, the governor of Oklahoma has signed a bill for the execution of repeat child molesters.

There are no Iraqi military hospitals; wounded Iraqi soldiers must somehow pay for their own medical care.

Three Guantanamo inmates hang themselves. All were former hunger-strikers who had been forcibly fed (at least according to the Sunday Times of London, the only paper with this detail). Doubtless the Pentagon will describe them as using methods “consistent with Al Qaeda training” and just looking for attention.

Indeed: after writing that, I found that Rear Admiral Harry Harris, commander of the US Joint Task Force Guantanamo, has described the suicides thus: “They are smart. They are creative, they are committed. They have no regard for life, neither ours nor their own. I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.” (horrified emphasis added).

The Pentagon still won’t release their names and doubtless if they left notes those will be suppressed too. Even in death they are un-persons whose thoughts and feelings must be silenced, their actions explained only by Harry “Harry” Harris and his ilk. The Pentagon says that the detainees “are not common criminals” and that the corpses were treated “with the utmost respect,” because if there is one thing Guantanamo is all about, it’s respect.

Speaking of respect, today was World Naked Bike Ride day. Because, according to one organizer whose word I will have to take for this, “When you get a lot of naked people on bikes, people tend to smile at you.”



The, ahem, bottom picture is from Prague, I think the top picture is from Britain.

1/500th of a Zarqawi

Headline that I so do not have the emotional energy to click on today, but thanks anyway (from Ha’aretz): “2 Infants among Dead on Beach; Army Apologizes.”

(Later:) Sigh, I guess if you want to avoid stuff like that, don’t read any newspapers at all. The Israelis shelled a picnic on the beach in Gaza.

Here’s how you know the Pentagon was more interested in getting Zarqawi for his symbolic value than it was concerned with wiping out the organization he ran: there was a $25 million bounty on Zarqawi’s head, but for Abu Ayyub al-Masri, the Egyptian they think will replace him, just $50,000.

And he can no longer implement

The Pentagon is now admitting that Zarqawi was still alive when they reached the scene of the bombing, a fact they’ve kept to themselves until now. And that they cleaned up the corpse before taking those pictures. Says Gen. William Caldwell: “we made a conscious decision that if we were going to take photographs of him and make them available publicly that we were going to clean him up. Despite the fact that this person actually had no regard for human life, we were not going to treat him in the same manner.” Dude, you killed him, blew up everyone around him, including women and maybe a child, and then showed off framed pictures of his body: don’t pretend that cleaning off the blood before taking your victory snaps shows a morally superior regard for human life.

It’s so hard to take Zarqawi’s death at face value (yesterday I was muttering to myself that the US had had all these old photos of Zarqawi but had for years been using an artist’s rendering which had the eyebrows all wrong) because Zarqawi’s been such a convenient tool of Bushite propaganda for so long. Before the invasion, he was the sole piece of “proof” of a Saddam-Al Qaeda nexus, although he was not then connected to Al Qaeda and was operating in Kurdish- rather than Saddam-controlled Iraq, under the protection of the no-fly zone. He was more convenient alive than dead, so he was left to operate his bioweapons lab unmolested. Later, Fallujah was ordered to surrender Zarqawi; he had already fled, and the city was turned into smoking rubble. Then there was the Zawahiri-Zarqawi letter, cited by Bush in speech after speech months after it was discredited as a fake. So you can’t help but wonder when the timing of the man’s death is so symbolically convenient, as Bush admitted today:

The problem we have in this war is that all they’ve got to do is kill some innocent people by a car bomb, and it looks like they’re winning, see. It takes a major event like an election or the death of Zarqawi to understand that we’re making progress.

If it looks like they’re winning, it’s not because of “a” car bomb, but several hundred car bombs. Zarqawi you can presumably only kill once, so when it’s announced on the same day as the cabinet is completed, hopefully obscuring the preceding six months of sordid horse-trading, that’s just jolly symbolic. And... convenient.

Bush – and this is never a good idea – explains: “the upper management of al Qaeda was counting on Zarqawi to help implement their vision beyond Iraq... They want to have their view of the world. I call it totalitarian, Islamo-fascism. Whatever you want to call it, it is extreme and it’s real. And Zarqawi was the implementer of that strategy. And he can no longer implement.”

(Update: Geov Parrish makes all of my points, and more. Bastard.)

(Updater: and Patrick Cockburn: “He was an enemy to America’s liking.”)

Hung out to dry

So does anyone else think that that little incident Sunday when an American howitzer accidentally went off while they were cleaning it, or whatever the story was, and blew up several houses in Hibhib, the place where Zarqawi was just killed, wasn’t such an accident?

Molly Ivins:

I had a slightly insane discussion the other day with a winger who wanted urgently for me to understand that the Haditha massacre is the kind of thing that happens in war. Whereas I was trying to point out to him that the Haditha massacre is the kind of thing that happens in war.

Two of the British Guardsmen acquitted for the fatal “wetting” of that 15-year old Iraqi have announced that they are leaving the army in disgust at having been, and I quote, “hung out to dry.” Maybe not the most apt choice of metaphor under the circumstances.

Speaking of quitters, you might or, if you’re sane and/or not a blogger, might not want to read Tom DeLay’s farewell speech, a high-minded paean to the virtues of viciousness, liberal-bashing, and assholery: “You show me a nation without partisanship, and I’ll show you a tyranny.”; “conservatism isn’t about feeling people’s pain, it’s about curing it.”

And Maliki has an op-ed piece in the London Times you also might or might not want to read. Evidently while he uses tough-guy talk in Iraq – maximum force, iron fist, etc – when he addresses Western audiences he uses a different arsenal of clichés: national reconciliation initiative, tipping point, liberty, democracy and, over and over, national unity government (NUG). Interestingly, he describes what’s going on in Baghdad as “ethnic cleansing.”

Nascar meets Scientology: this is how the world ends.

For the hell of it, two pictures of Queen Elizabeth and some Chelsea Pensioners (it’s all about the hats).

And the “Bloody” goes to...

Rumsfeld: “I think arguably over the last several years, no single person on this planet has had the blood of more innocent men, women and children on his hands than Zarqawi.” I assume Rummy is just being modest.

Zarqawi death dance party: who was supposed to bring the balloons?

The US military has announced the death by air raid of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (Muss to his friends). Zarqawi was never as important inside Iraq as he was in Washington, where the Jordanian served as symbol of the Bush admin’s contention that insurgency in Iraq was largely the work of outside agitators. It’s hard to see what will change. After all, unlike our illegal immigrants, the Z Man was doing a job that many, many Iraqis are willing to do.

Still, in the Green Zone, Gen. Casey, Amb. Khalilzad and PM Maliki, seemingly the only Iraqi present except for an interpreter, held a kick-ass victory party. Later, there was cake.

A teeth-breaking defeat

A Taliban commander vowed to inflict a “teeth-breaking defeat” on British forces in Afghanistan. A good phrase, properly chilling, slightly reminiscent of The Iliad, but dude, have you seen British teeth?

The BBC, to whom he gave that interview, pointed out that the armed men who kept trooping through the frame were the same three guys over and over.

Have I been over-using “dude”? I blame Hurley on “Lost.”

Max Hastings writes in the Guardian that when British soldiers occupying Basra in 2003 were turned into policemen with no training (because being a cop is so easy that any guy with a gun and a uniform can just do it, right?), they were, “in effect, invited to invent their own system of local justice, because Bush and Blair had failed to make provision for any other.” And what they invented was “wetting” looters (by the way, about that word “looter” – Basra was under siege, with no economic activity going on; people trying to scavenge food were no more looters than were Katrina victims) in the canal, which we now know was a widespread practice. I’m not how soon it was ended after the 15-year old drowned.

Why yes I’d love some dessert. The still-warm heart of a baby with hot fudge sauce is my favorite too!

It’s a defense mechanism

Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki has ordered the release of 2,500 prisoners against whom there is no actual, you know, evidence. The first 600 have been thrown out of prison kicking and screaming and shouting, “Hell no, we won’t go! Let us back in! Do you know how fucking dangerous it is out there?”

Maliki has made some criticisms of Haditha. Here’s the response of James Jeffrey, the Coordinator for Iraq Policy at the State Department: “It’s a defense mechanism. ... I wouldn’t make too much out of it... There is a constant buzz in Iraq of what our troops did or didn’t do.” Buzz buzz. Sometimes the condescension reaches an entirely new level of refinement, and this was one of those moments.

Jeffrey also says that Haditha is “at this point nothing like Abu Ghraib.” It took me a minute to realize he wasn’t measuring it in terms of the body count or human suffering or sheer awfulness, but in terms of something much more important – public relations: “I think this will not have the same impact in terms of insurgents turning the population against us or turning opinion in the Arab world against us.” Yes, it’s all the insurgents’ fault. Buzz buzz buzz.

New low

In The Times, a headline about Iraq that’s hard to argue with: “Severed Heads Mark New Low.”

The NYT reports that the Pentagon will try to have only psychologists assist in the interrogation of prisoners at Guantanamo and elsewhere rather than psychiatrists, because the American Psychiatric Association has higher ethical standards than the American Psychological Association. What the NYT misses is that the Pentagon’s new standards (pdf) also allow for the use of detainees’ medical files for “any lawful law enforcement, intelligence or national security-related activity,” i.e., interrogation. Also, they reaffirm the use of force-feeding on sane hunger-strikers.