2006 in pictures

Tony Blair, who has made a surprise Christmas visit to British troops in Basra every year since the war started, made a surprise Christmas visit to British troops in Basra. It was quite a surprise. He signed an armored personnel carrier; he wrote, “Good luck! Tony Blair.”


Let’s move on from Blair looking kinda goofy to my annual selection of the best pictures posted on “Whatever It Is, I’m Against It” this year. I’ve looked through all the photos of 2006 and... shit have I over-indulged in “Bush looking goofy” pics. I know Bush looking goofy is the well that never runs dry, but... damn.





























There isn’t really a lot of overlap between my pics and those in the Republican National Committee 2007 calendar, although for June they have this snap


of Bush with a “snowflake” baby, similar to one I ran, and for October they feature one of my old themes, “Bush leaning on a black woman.”


My promise to you for 2007: wherever there’s a picture of Bush tripping, or being strangled by an old lady, or pinching Angela Merkel’s butt, wherever there’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, wherever there’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there.

If they want to do that, hook it up

The NYT has an article on how “Newt Gingrich has set his sights not on the presidency, but on the restoration of God to a central place in American government and culture.” And when he says God, he of course means Newt Gingrich. Newton is forming a committee called American Solutions for Winning the Future (or ass-woof for short).

As I write, Newtie is supposed to have a program on God and politics on Fox, but is being preempted by some sort of rescue operation on Mt Hood. Maybe there is a God.

Harry Reid says he’ll “go along with” a “surge” increase in troops in Iraq and “give the military anything they want.” Leadership, ladies and gentlemen, leadership.

From News of the Weird, quoting the Washington Blade, the feds have been going after assets that Enron executives put in the names of their spouses, all except for one guy, who plead guilty to illegally obtaining $16.5m but put assets in the name of his same-sex partner.

Guantanamo hunger-strike update: 3 hunger strikers still being force-fed. Guard commander Col. Wade Dennis says of them, “If they want to do that, hook it up.”

Today’s must-read: the NYT on the Iraqi legal system, which is not legal or a system or wholly Iraqi, and it’s worse than you think.

Of magic bullets, bush blessings, the appropriate response to a hand grenade, karaoke and coups

Unfortunate metaphor of the week, from the director of HIV/AIDS for the World Health Organization, Dr. Kevin De Cock (whose name is also unfortunate; I mean, really... “Kevin”), who says that circumcision can reduce the risk of HIV infection but is “not a magic bullet”.

Unfortunate headline of the week, regarding Mary Cheney’s pregnancy: “Lesbian Mother Gets Bush Blessing” (The Sunday Telegraph, which also translated Chimpy’s original quote, “Mary Cheney is going to make a fine mom” for the benefit of its down-market English readers: “Mary Cheney is going to make a fine mum”. The story ends with this fine sentence: “The manner of Miss Cheney’s impregnation and the father’s identity have not been revealed.”).

The US Army has produced a new manual on counter-insurgency (those who can’t do, write manuals), which I haven’t seen yet but which seems to be an etiquette guide, preparing military personnel “to be greeted with a hand grenade or a handshake, and to respond appropriately to each”. Something about not using the left hand, I’m guessing.

The British Education Ministry reports that millions of British adults cannot read well enough to keep up with karaoke machines. They seem to think this is a bad thing. “New York, New York” evidently requires the reading skills of an 11-year old (plus 11 glasses of warm beer).

Palestinian President Abbas has announced that there will be new elections. In case you’re wondering, no, he does not have the power to do this. Hamas is now in the position of either boycotting illegitimate elections, or standing in them and accepting the illegitimate results. Or going to option 3, civil war. I’m not sure why Abbas thinks he’ll win either the elections (yes I am: he plans to rig them) or a civil war, even with all the American arms that have been arriving for his “presidential guard.”

The WaPo Style Invitational is especially good this week, bad ideas for toys.

A teapot museum here, a teapot museum there, and pretty soon it adds up to real money

In his weekly radio address, Bush claimed that the economy was in great shape. For example, retail sales were up in November! Just like every November since the invention of Christmas! Also, “another bit of holiday cheer”: real hourly wages rose by an entire, whopping 2.3% this year. “That may not sound like a lot,” he said, and then tried unsuccessfully to make it sound like a lot.

Then he talked about earmarks. He’s against them. The typical earmark, in his presentation, is “a swimming pool or a teapot museum.” Yes, it was the $400,000 for the Sparta Teapot Museum (“Steeped in Surprises”) that broke the budget, just when Bush was preparing to ask for another $100 billion supplemental appropriation for the war (or 250,000 teapot museums). Now let’s see, what would be a good visual metaphor for what that $100 billion will be spent on...

Rummy goes bye bye

It’s been confirmed by the medical examiner that Florida botched an execution this week, essentially having to execute the guy twice. The first time, the needle was stuck not into the vein, but all the way through it, so that the chemicals went into his flesh, burning it. Jeb Bush suspends executions until March. Elsewhere, a federal district judge continues a suspension of executions in California, saying that its lethal injection regimen is so painful that it amounts to cruel and unusual punishment. In the last 3 executions here, the prisoner may have been conscious (but paralyzed) when the hot shot went in.

On his way out as secretary of war, Donald Rumsfeld went on Fox, took some pot shots at the UN, Kofi Annan, at Old Europe, which he decried for spending less than 2% of their GDP on the military, which he blamed on their aging populations and the fact that “They have large numbers of Muslims in their population”. He said for I believe the third time this week that Bush is the “victim of his success,” because 9/11 “caused our country to recognize there was a problem, a threat; that we were vulnerable, that we as free people, by our very way of life, put ourselves at risk, and our openness. And the farther we get away from September 11th, the less concern there is about that threat.” I’m suddenly reminded of Bob Dole in 1996, repeatedly asking “Where’s the outrage?” Bushies keep asking where’s the mindless fear they used to such advantage. Asked his greatest regret, he said, “Oh, goodness. I guess that one would have hoped that the -- Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts would have been concluded more rapidly.” He “guesses” that one would have hoped that. Guesses. And on Abu Ghraib, he again blamed the “midnight shift,” who ignored his clear instructions to treat prisoners humanely, “And it just was -- you know, look at what happens in the United States in any given day and any given night in any given city -- some very bad things happen.” Naked human pyramids? Only if the given city is San Francisco. “Human beings are not perfect. ... And that’s not what our country does.” Really? Because I’ve seen the pictures.

And then it was party time! Or at least a “full honor review,” whatever one of those might be. Bush said of Rummy, “We’ve been through war together.” Sure you have. Said, “He took ballistic missile defense from theory to reality.” Did you know we can shoot ICBMs down now? When did that happen? And Bush gave him his highest accolade: “It was easy to understand him.” There we agree. It was easy to understand Rumsfeld. He was a douchebag.

They will do it anyway

Condi Rice tells the WaPo that there is no need to talk to Iran and Syria about helping stabilize Iraq: “If they have an interest in a stable Iraq, they will do it anyway.” Two things wrong with that which you wouldn’t think would need to be explained to the nation’s top diplomat: 1) they aren’t doing it anyway, 2) the purpose of diplomacy is not, generally speaking, to persuade nations to do what they already want to do anyway.

Bush debates imaginary people (still loses)

The Israelis held up Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyev (Hamas) for several hours at the Egypt-Palestine border, ostensibly because he was carrying $35 million (they’d closed the entire border in order to prevent the money coming into Gaza, which they are trying to strangle to death), but possibly, or at least foreseeably, also because the delay would give Fatah gunmen time to arrange an assassination attempt. Which they did, though they succeeded only in killing his bodyguard.

And the Israeli Supreme Court unanimously ruled that assassination is legal.

Yesterday I quoted Bush saying, “I’ve heard some ideas that would lead to defeat, and I reject those ideas -- ideas such as leaving before the job is done; ideas such as not helping this government take the necessary and hard steps to be able to do its job.” Linguist Geoffrey Pullum comments that it’s rather unlikely anyone ever told Bush, “Mr President, I think leaving before the job is done would be the best course,” so that what Bush is doing, putting “claims in imaginary people’s mouths before rebutting them... is not just a figure of speech. It’s lying.”

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo “Honest” Abe admits that he rigged “town hall” meetings. He will forfeit his pay for three months.

Chimpy and Yayi

If circumcision cuts the risk of HIV infection in half, wouldn’t castration be just that much more effective?

Today Bush met with Benin’s president, Boni Yayi, who has such a fun name he should be a coup leader in Fiji.


As was the case yesterday, Bush seems to have difficulty distinguishing countries from human beings: “And, Mr. President, I’m proud to announce today that you’re one of the countries that we’ll be concentrating our help upon.”



Then they both attended a “White House Summit on Malaria,” which Bush said “sounded like a festive occasion.” Ha ha. Let’s send him to Africa with a fly-swatter and a couple of cans of Raid to take care of the problem personally.


That’s Isaiah Washington, who is black and plays a doctor on television, which to the Bushes makes him an expert on tropical medicine, plus he gets to make out with Sandra Oh, so there’s that.

But one thing people got to understand is we’ll be headed toward achieving our objectives

Bush met today with military people about Iraq (I believe this was his last such meeting, and I would bet that Cheney made sure he heard from Rumsfeld, the alliterate Peter Pace, and the Joint Chiefs last, since Bush does tend to agree with whoever talked to him last). Bush said afterwards, “I thank these men who wear our uniform for a very candid and fruitful discussion about the -- about how to secure this country, and how to win a war that we now find ourselves in.” Find ourselves in? Have we been sleep-invading again? Or did we just take a wrong turn at Albuquerque?

What did they talk about? Why, “We spent a lot of time talking about a new way forward in Iraq”. Sick of that phrase yet?


He says that in the last quarter of 2006 we have captured or killed 5,900 of the enemy. Funny, I thought they didn’t do body counts.

Addressing the troops, he reassured them that he is “focused on developing a strategy that will help them achieve their mission.” That’s what happens when you sleep-invade, you always forget something. Bullets, check, Humvees, check, strategy... d’oh! Still, we’ve done so well without a strategy so far that there’s really no hurry: “I’m not going to be rushed into making a difficult decision, a necessary decision, to say to our troops, we’re going to give you the tools necessary to succeed and a strategy to help you succeed.” In fact, he says about the postponing until January of his speech to the American people on the subject, “actually, I was quite flexible about when I was going to give my speech, to begin with”. See, whoever said Bush isn’t flexible? “And at the appropriate time, I will stand up in front of the nation and say here’s where we’re headed. But one thing people got to understand is we’ll be headed toward achieving our objectives.”


Asked if he’s heard any new ideas that might make him, god forbid, change his “thinking” (that’s a reporter’s over-generous terminology, not mine), he said he’d heard some interesting ideas, but won’t tell us what they are, and “I’ve heard some ideas that would lead to defeat, and I reject those ideas -- ideas such as leaving before the job is done”. And “I want to make sure I hear from as many of those ideas and opinions as possible. Today I heard from some opinions that matter a lot to me... And I am proud to have listened to their points of view.”

What do these men have to smile about?

I’m smiling because I am so fucking, I mean, golly gracious, out of here!

In his last days in the White House, Richard Nixon talked to the portraits of former presidents. Bush wouldn’t do that of course, because he’s never heard of any of them, although “George Herbert Walker Bush” sounds a little familiar to him, but he talks to families who die, and now ideas and opinions “speak” to him. Anything else? “And we spend a lot of time in our government talking to people like Saudi Arabia, or Egypt, or Jordan, or Turkey”.

He’s also been speaking with a lot of Iraqis whose names he didn’t quite catch: “today on the telephone I spoke to the two Kurdish leaders... I met with the major Sunni leader yesterday”. Think when he talked to those Kurdish leaders, he called them “Kurdish Guy One” and “Kurdish Guy Two”? Really, there are, what 25 million Iraqis? You can’t expect him to know more than one of their names. And that one lucky guy is Prime Minister Maliki: “In my conversations with him, I have said, are you going to promote a unity government, or will you be so divisive in your approach that you can’t achieve the objectives that the Iraqi people expect you to achieve? How do I know they expect to achieve? They voted; 12 million of them actually went to the polls and expressed their opinions.” He doesn’t actually say what Maliki’s answer was. And does the White House have a special translator who can render Broken English into Arabic? What is the Arabic for “How do I know they expect to achieve”?

Not surprisingly, if he can’t keep people’s names straight, how can he keep countries separate, which is why he said that it’s in the interests of Gulf Coast that there be a stable Iran, “an Iran that is capable of rejecting Iranian influence.”

Bush said if we fail in Iraq, “It would certainly make it more likely that moderate people around the Middle East would wonder about the United States’ will. Moderate people -- moderate governments in the Middle East would be making irrational decisions about their future.” I don’t know what that means, but neither does he, so that’s okay then. I wouldn’t care to attempt to diagram his last sentence, either: “And as I deliberate the way forward, I keep in mind that we’ve got brave souls that need -- to need to know that we’re in this fight with a strategy to help them achieve the objectives that we’ve got.” Do they really need to know that? Really?

Nobody sang Kumbaya

The Bush admin is fighting the court decision that it must make different denominations of paper money detectable by feel, saying that blind people can just use credit cards, or portable reading devices (which cost $350, or at least this one does). Or possibly they can have their butlers tell them what each bill is – doesn’t everyone have butlers?

Outgoing ambassador to the UN and wielder of the Mustache of Death, John Bolton, when asked if he had made peace with equally outgoing UN SecGen Kofi Annan, replied, “Nobody sang ‘Kumbaya.’” Told of this, Annan wondered, “But does he know how to sing it?”

In an interview with Laura Ingraham, couldn’t-be-outgoing-fast-enough-for-my-taste Secretary of War Rumsfeld said that the exact right number of troops was sent to Iraq. He also displayed his historical grasp of counter-insurgency campaigns: “And you think of the insurgency in -- in -- oh, Algeria, for example, I’m trying to remember, I think it was 10 or 12 years long. And that’s the nature of it. And it was the Algerian people, ultimately, that put it down and that will be the case here.” Actually, I just realized that he may not have been referring to the Algerian War (which France lost), but to the 1990s when the military cancelled elections after the Islamic Salvation Front won the first round, and put down their subsequent rebellion with a Pinochet-esque brutality. Either way, not really a role model.

The US and Russia, which were supposed to have destroyed their chemical weapons stockpiles next year, have been granted another 5 years (and India and Libya until 2009 and 2010 respectively) from the oversight organization. I feel safer already.

Bush meets some guy

Today George Bush met Vice President, um, Thingamabob of Iraq: “It’s been my honor to meet with the Vice President of Iraq again. I had the pleasure of meeting the Vice President in Baghdad. ... The Vice President suffered unspeakable violence in his family. ... And Mr. Vice President, I respect your courage and I respect your advice. ... I spent time with the Vice President today talking about the conditions in Iraq... And my heart goes out to those, Mr. Vice President, who have suffered at the hands of extremists and killers. ... And so Mr. Vice President, my message to you today, and to the Iraqi people is, we want to help you...” Whoever you are.


“And I thank you for being a leader of one aspect of Iraqi society -- you’re the leader of many Sunnis and you’re committed to a government that is Shia, Sunni, Kurdish and everybody else in your country, every other group in your country that will help us yield peace.”

Oh, my goodness, the terrorists are winning and everyone else is losing

Rumsfeld was interviewed by Sean Hannity, the only, um, journalist allowed to accompany him on his surprise visit to Iraq. He explained the unpopularity of Bush’s policies: “And this president is almost a victim of the success he has had in preventing another attack in our country, because people have allowed the nature of the threat to diminish in their minds. And I think that we ought not to.” Poor Bush, a victim of his own success.

Says that we shouldn’t judge Iraq based on how many people get killed: “Today, the president’s being measured on the amount of violence in Iraq, and basically in Baghdad. It’s three or four provinces out of 18 in one country. That is not the measure; that is the wrong measure. If that were to be the only metric or measure of success or failure, my goodness, then you’ve given the game to the enemy. All they have to do is keep violence up in Baghdad, and the media that’s there will say, ‘Oh, my goodness, the terrorists are winning and everyone else is losing.’ That’s not it. But, regrettably, there are not good metrics to determine how it’s actually going on, what’s happening.” So, um, I’m pretty sure that means we’re winning, and pay no attention to the suicide bomb attack in Baghdad that killed 70 people this morning, because that is not the measure, that is the wrong measure and if we pay attention to the 70 dead (and 230+ wounded), “for some I could only find their heads,” my goodness you’ve given the game to the enemy.

Oh, and he says he “skimmed” the IGS report.

On the other hand, a blind guy, a rifle, an alligator, and half an ounce of marijuana, that’s a party!

Texas state legislator Edmund Kuempel is sponsoring a bill to let blind people hunt. Said Huempel, “This opens up the fun of hunting to additional people, and I think that’s great.” I supported this right up until I read that they’d have to have someone sighted with them, because I figured it would open up the fun of being hunted to hunters in the vicinity, and I think that’s great.

Speaking of dangerous combinations, a man whose car was stopped at a checkpoint in Arizona was found to have a 4-foot alligator in a suitcase and a quantity of marijuana.

Focus

Bush spent some of the morning being briefed by the State Department about Iraq for a full 90 minutes, which as we know is his limit. Then he talked to the press (didn’t take any questions, in case they quizzed him about what he’d learned in class today or what the difference between Sunnis and Shiites is), made sure to use the phrase “new way forward.”


He said, “Like most Americans, this administration wants to succeed in Iraq”. Ignoring the question of what most Americans really want, it’s funny that things have gone so badly that every time he speaks he has to say that he does really actually want to succeed.


He says that in Iraq’s “neighborhood” – and what is his allergy to the word “region”? did it not focus-group well, or is this a personal thing? – “[w]e believe that most of the countries understand that a mainstream society, a society that is a functioning democracy, is in their interests.” When exactly have countries in the Middle East demonstrated this attachment to democracy? “And it’s up to us to help focus their attentions and focus their efforts on helping the Iraqis succeed.” So the problem is their “focus,” Mister Easily Distracted By Shiny Objects?


Bush is aiming at announcing the, um, new way forward before Christmas. All things considered, I’d rather just get socks.

Wherein Rumsfeld breaks Taliban rule #9

I say Pinochet’s faking it again. Put him on trial anyway.

Sort of a Peter-Sellers-by-way-of-Mussolini look
Rumsfeld did not meet with any Iraqis on his visit to Iraq. According to his press secretary, “It was not a public trip whatsoever.” So I’m sure he paid his own expenses.

The Taliban has issued a set of rules for its members. #9: do not use jihad equipment for personal ends. Rule #18: no smoking. Rule #19: no fucking young boys. Also: all schools must be burned, but the religious books should be removed first. And beheadings should take place after the trial.