It is not understandable anymore

Harmid Karzai says he wishes American troops would stop killing quite so many Afghan civilians (including 50 or so this week in Herat province, mostly as a result of air strikes): “five years on, it is very difficult for us to continue to accept civilian casualties. It is not understandable anymore. ... It is becoming a heavy burden and we are not happy about it.” Or, to put it another way, for 5½ years he did accept thousands of civilian casualties, found them entirely understandable, considered them a light burden, and was not unhappy about them.

I’m the commander guy

Bush’s veto message on the Iraq spending bill complains: “The Congress should not use an emergency war supplemental to add billions in spending to avoid its own rules for budget discipline and the normal budget process.” Yes, heaven forbid an emergency war supplemental bill avoid the normal budget process.

This morning Bush met with Colombian Warlord Uribe, who he described as “a true democrat, a strong leader, and a friend.”


He said it is “very important for this nation to stand with democracies that protect human rights and human dignity” with, you know, amnesties for his friends in death squads, murders of union leaders, that sort of thing. The way he wants us to stand with Colombia is through a free-trade agreement. “This agreement is good for the United States. It’s good for job-creators, farmers, workers. This agreement is good for Colombia. It’s good for job-creators, and workers, and farmers.” Insert obvious cocaine joke here.

Later he met with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah “Wild Eyes” Saleh. “And we spent a lot of time talking about our mutual desire to bring radicals and murderers to justice.”


In between, he met the Associated General Contractors of America, a group of contractors who are both associated and general. Joe “The Contractor” Lieberman was there. Said Bush, “And I appreciate Senator Joe Lieberman. ... Joe Lieberman is one of these -- I would call him a unique soul who followed his conscience, stood for what he believed in, in the face of a political firestorm. And he proved that if you stand on conviction, the people will follow.” Although they will vote for someone else in the primary.


Said Bush, “I like to be in the room of builders and doers and problem solvers and entrepreneurs.” The associated general contractors, presumably, rather than Holy Joe.

And then he talked about his “new strategy” in Iraq at some length. I have a headache and need to go to my bank and yell at them shortly, so I’ll just quote: “The most important fact about our new strategy, it is fundamentally different from the previous strategy.” “The whole purpose is to secure the capital. My theory is, and it’s a good one, is that if the capital is in chaos, the country can’t -- it’s going to be difficult for the country to survive.” “What’s interesting is, is that the plan, General Petraeus’s plan, is to help build trust. And when you build trust, you end up getting people buying into a centralized government, a unity government, a country that is united.” “it’s important to measure the level of sectarian violence. If the objective is to bring security to the capital, one measurement is whether or not sectarian violence is declining. These measures are really not flashy. In other words, they’re not headline-grabbing measures. They certainly can’t compete with a car bomb or a suicide attack.”


“My attitude is, if murderers run free, it’s going to be hard to convince the people of any society that the government is worth supporting.” “The same bunch that is causing havoc in Iraq were the ones who came and murdered our citizens.”

Once again, he denied the existence of a civil war in Iraq: “The recent attacks are not the revenge killings that some have called a civil war. They are a systematic assault on the entire nation. Al Qaeda is public enemy number one in Iraq. ... For America, the decision we face in Iraq is not whether we ought to take sides in a civil war, it’s whether we stay in the fight against the same international terrorist network that attacked us on 9/11.”


Asked one of a series of not-at-all-prescreened questions (“What do I need to do, what does the media need to do to help you, so that my second cousin, and others like him, have not died or been injured in vain?” “What do you pray about, and how we can we pray for you?”), this one about how we can force the media to run positive stories about Iraq, Bush said that freedom of the press is “just something that we’ve all got to live with”.

He took a stab at defining success in Iraq: “Success is not, no violence. There are parts of our own country that have got a certain level of violence to it. But success is a level of violence where the people feel comfortable about living their daily lives.”

He spoke again against democratic civilian control of the military: “That didn’t make any sense to me, to impose the will of politicians over the recommendations of our military commanders in the field. ... The question is, who ought to make that decision? The Congress or the commanders? And as you know, my position is clear -- I’m the commander guy.”


“Intelligence is important,” he said, possibly ironically. “You have to know in advance that somebody’s getting ready to slide into society and kill innocent in order to achieve an objective.”

I’m with stupid.

Funds and flexibility or chaos and confusion

Bush’s little address to the nation continued the alliteration theme, demanding a bill to “provide our brave men and women in uniform with the funds and flexibility they need.”

“Instead,” he said, “members of the House and the Senate passed a bill...” (Not the actual House and Senate, just members of the House and Senate) “...that substitutes the opinions of politicians for the judgment of our military commanders.” Politicians have opinions, military commanders have judgment.

He continued, “It makes no sense...” (So politicians have opinions, but they don’t have sense) “to tell the enemy when you plan to start withdrawing. All the terrorists would have to do is mark their calendars and gather their strength”. Or gather their calendars and mark their strength.

“Setting a deadline for withdrawal is setting a date for failure”. That date was January 20, 2001.

Okay, really, I enjoy alliteration as much as the next blogger, but c’mon: “the bill would impose impossible conditions on our commanders in combat.... This is a prescription for chaos and confusion”.

He again describes the spending bill as a “political statement” and suggests “now it is time to put politics behind us,” which is actually a statement about what the Democrats should do because Bush, of course, doesn’t engage in politics himself.

He says we know the surge is working because sectarian murders are down in Baghdad although “we continue to see spectacular suicide attacks”. I’ve gone back and forth in my mind about what the Bushies are up to when they continually describe bombings as “spectacular” attacks. I think the implication is that when we pay attention to them, we are doing exactly what the terrorists want. It’s not wrong to point out that terrorism is in part show biz, but there is also an implication that the problem they pose for the US is less in terms of the actual damage they cause (what’s a few dozen more dead Iraqis more or less?) than the PR damage. Bush didn’t say “there continue to be spectacular suicide attacks,” he said “we continue to see spectacular suicide attacks”.

He adds, “These attacks are largely the work of al Qaeda -- the enemy that everyone agrees we should be fighting.” Of course what he means is that some of the terrorists call themselves Al Qaida, and have only the most tenuous connections with Osama and that lot (remember Osama, George?) (no, really, I’m really wondering: do you actually remember Osama, George? Tall guy, beard?).

He ended with one of those “why do you hate the troops?” moments that seem more despicable with every passing day: “Yet whatever our differences, surely we can agree that our troops are worthy of this funding – and that we have a responsibility to get it to them without further delay.”

The cauldron of chaos at the CENTCOM Coalition Conference

Today Bush went to Florida to address a CENTCOM Coalition Conference, an alliterative event if ever there was one.

Here he is walking to his helicopter.


Waving as he walks to his helicopter.


More waving.


Yes, I’m padding. His speech wasn’t that interesting.

In discussing Iraq, you’d almost think the mission had been accomplished four years ago, since “Our main enemy is al Qaeda and its affiliates.” We seem to be reverting to a simpler time, when Bush didn’t have to talk about Sunnis and Shiites, or know the difference. Or know that they existed.


This was a Coalition of the Willing event, so he had to alter his rhetoric to pretend that he cares about what happens in other countries: “We must defeat the enemy overseas, so we don’t have to face them in our countries.” You’ll note that whoever re-wrote that usually US-centric slogan forgot that some of the COW countries are not actually separated from the enemy by a sea.

The Iraq war is just like another war when there were a bunch of quitters: “During the Cold War, the NATO Alliance worked to liberate nations from communist tyranny, even as allies bickered, and millions marched in the streets against us, and the pundits lost hope.”


“Just as America and our allies are standing together in Afghanistan, a determined coalition is committed to winning the fight in Iraq.” He must love Afghanistan, his forgotten war: no one talks about benchmarks or timetables or exit strategies or even winning. What’s our mission in Afghanistan? Standing together.

The highlight of the speech was the return of my favorite bit of rhetoric, the “cauldron of chaos,” which is what Iraq would turn into if we pulled out of Baghdad. “Our enemy, the enemies of freedom, love chaos. Out of that chaos they could find new safe havens.” Well, safe but chaotic havens, because of the cauldron thing.


These days, he uses Colonel Combover as a human shield for everything. Look how he quotes him saying the exact things Bush has been saying literally for years: “Last week, General Petraeus called al Qaeda ‘probably public enemy number one’ in Iraq. He said that al Qaeda has made Iraq ‘the central front in their global campaign.’” Bush has so little credibility left that if he told Laura the sky is blue, she’d ask if General Petraeus also thinks the sky is blue.

He told the representatives of the COW countries, “Thank you for helping the liberated.”

The height of cynicism

At today’s Gaggle, Dana Perino castigated the Democrats for sending up the Iraq spending bill on Mission Accomplished Day: “it is a trumped-up political stunt that is the height of cynicism”. How dare they use the anniversary of Bush’s trumped-up political stunt for a trumped-up political stunt! How dare they!

A very Chimpy Mission Accomplished Day

Four years, how time flies when you’re having fun. Here are the comments I made at the time:

Just watched Bush’s little smirk-and-swagger-a-thon, on board a carrier, no less. They’re going to divert the path of the carrier so that Bush can take a helicopter from it to San Diego, so all in all a pretty expensive campaign ad. We should be thankful he didn’t give the speech in the flight suit he was wearing earlier, which I thought was very Michael-Dukakis-in-a-tank, although a middle-aged man in a suit and tie on an aircraft carrier is also pretty silly-looking.


“We have difficult work to do in Iraq,” he said, but then he considers tying his shoes difficult work and has never mastered the pronunciation of nuclear, so perhaps his definition of what constitutes difficult work is not everyone’s. Again he referred to the military as the “highest calling.” In your face, doctors and teachers! He said that Saddam built palaces instead of hospitals and schools. Of course now the hospitals are all looted, and the US military is occupying both the palaces and the schools, and this week shot up a crowd of people [in Falluja] who wanted their school back, so possibly that wasn’t the best choice of words. He also tried hard to link the war to terrorism, still without offering any proof of the alliance of Iraq with al Qaida, which he mentioned yet again.

“The war on terror is not over; yet it is not endless. We do not know the day of final victory, but...” yadda yadda. The problem is that he is treating the “war on terror” as if it were a traditional war, with a “day of final victory,” but fighting terrorism is at least as much like a police problem, no more winnable than the war on drugs or the war on muggings.

One problem with treating this as a traditional war is that it encourages racist responses. Let’s see if I can explain that. The Bushies are encouraging us to think of terrorists as if they were a nationality, as if they all came from one (evil) place that can be bombed, when they are in fact a dispersed group of people with diverse origins (the Brits are currently trying to figure out how they produced their very first suicide bomber), and diverse ideologies. We’re being encouraged to think of them instead as an ethnic or national group, and the only ethnic group that most of them are is Arab.

I was right about Bush’s visit to the carrier being expensive, but it also kept the sailors from their homes by an extra day, after the longest deployment of a US carrier in 30 years.

Condi won’t be rude. She’s not a rude person.

Friday Kurt Vonnegut’s son delivered a commencement speech his father had written and was going to deliver at Butler University. Has anyone seen the full text online?

Today George Bush met with German Chancellor Merkel, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso, and MOEzilla, a robot “designed to quickly hang tubes in autonomous and human control periods on all three spider leg levels.” It’s less clear what Barroso does all day. Bush did not try to give MOEzilla a back-rub. MOEzilla gave George an inflatable ring. If I call a competition to decide what Bush should do with the inflatable ring, will I regret it?



Bush told reporters that in passing the Iraq spending bill, Congress “chose to ignore” his position. He seems to think that’s rude in a way that his constant veto threats and dismissals of Congress’s position are not.

Indeed, it was all about good manners today. He says that Russia simply misunderstood our intentions to base missile defense systems in Eastern Europe, and he wants it not to “see us as an antagonistic force, but see us as a friendly force.”


And indeed, we will display our very best manners even towards the Iranians. For example, at the Iraq conference, “Should the foreign minister of Iran bump into Condi Rice, Condi won’t be rude. She’s not a rude person. I’m sure she’ll be polite.” There may even be a non-serious conversation about a serious conversation: “And so I -- if, in fact, there is a conversation, it will be one that says if the Iranian government wants to have a serious conversation with the United States and others, they ought to give up their enrichment program in a verifiable fashion.”

He said the Iranian nuclear program is “unacceptable to peace.” “I happen to believe a significant threat to world peace, today and in the future, is the Iranian threat if they were to end up with a nuclear weapon -- ‘today’ is the wrong word -- ‘in the future,’ they don’t have a weapon today.” Phew.


He said that Wolfowitz should keep his job. “And I appreciate the fact that he has advanced -- he’s helped the World Bank recognize that eradication of world poverty is an important priority for the bank.” That has kinda supposed to have been one of its priorities since 1945, George. It’s in the charter and everything.

He explained carefully why global warming (which he says “got global consequences”) can’t be solved by the US alone: “As I reminded the people around the conference table today, the United States could shut down our economy and emit no greenhouse gases, and all it would take is for China in about 18 months to produce as much as we had been producing to make up the difference about what we reduced our greenhouse gases to.” Pity the poor translators. But, he said, “The good news is, is that we recognize there’s a problem.” And he had even more good news: “The good news is recognize technology is going to lead to solutions, and that we’re willing to share those technologies.” For example, technologies like robots which can trap all the greenhouse gases in inflatable rings. That’s so crazy it might just work.

I think it’s a complete misreading of how, certainly, I read the slam dunk comment

Condi hit a bunch of talk shows this morning: CNN, ABC, and CBS. I’ll mix & match quotes.

On the decision to invade Iraq:

BLITZER: But did it represent an imminent threat, the fact that he was violating the oil-for-food?

RICE: The question with imminence is, are you in a situation whether you’re better to act now, or are you going to be in a worse situation later? That’s the question that you have to ask in policy.

(And along the same lines on ABC: “George, the question of imminence isn’t whether or not somebody is going to strike tomorrow.”)

Obviously, that is not “the question with imminence.” Arguably, she is just repeating the outline of the old “smoking gun in the form of a mushroom cloud” line with the WMD content removed, humming it instead of singing it, if you will.

We’re talking about this again, of course, because of George Tenet’s book. She generously forgave him for the “slam dunk” wording: “I certainly don’t blame George for the slam dunk comment having the sense that that was the reason we went to war. I think it’s a complete misreading of how, certainly, I read the slam dunk comment.” Indeed, “To the degree that there was an intelligence problem here... It was an intelligence problem worldwide. We all thought -- including U.N. inspectors -- that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. So there’s no blame here of anyone.” Everyone’s to blame so no one’s to blame. Isn’t that conveeeeenient? Especially since one of the people she is absolving of blame is the national security adviser at the time, who was herself.

I’m not sure what to make of this, but she refers to Clinton’s bombing of Iraq in “Operation Desert Fox” thus: “we had gone to war against him in 1998 to try to deal with his weapons of mass destruction.”

On benchmarks in the Iraq spending bill: “But the problem is, why tie our own hands in using the means that we have to help get the right outcomes in Iraq? And that’s the problem with having so-called consequences for missing the benchmarks.” That “so-called” literally makes no sense: they’re not so-called consequences, they’re actual consequences. She just doesn’t think consequences for failure are a good idea (and if you had her record, neither would you). Indeed, the threat of withdrawal would be “to tie our own hands, [which] doesn’t allow us the flexibility and the creativity that we need to move this forward.” But enough about your sex life, Condi.

What? You weren’t thinking the same thing?


Speaking of flexibility and creativity, the two attributes the Bush administration is best known for, here is how Condi says the Iraqis will be punished if they fail to complete the oil-revenue-sharing law: “If they don’t, then they’re not going to be making the kind of progress on national reconciliation that gives the Iraqis a view of a future together.” Way to light a fire under their asses, Condi!

But, again, enough about Condi’s sex life.


Not that this refusal of timetables means our patience is unlimited, oh no, it just can’t be measured in time, or something. “We are telling them all of the time that their national reconciliation is moving too slowly, needs to move more quickly.” She’d make a great marriage counselor, wouldn’t she? But actually what I think you can see in that sentence is that the Bushies are coming to define reconciliation in Iraq not as actual, you know, reconciliation, but as the passage of a few legislative measures: oil revenues, local elections, un-de-Baathification. If and when those measures go through, the Bushies plan to declare reconciliation complete.

Literally, not figuratively, restoring America’s place in the world

A reminder that the effects of any war are felt for a very long time indeed: former British army corporal Leslie Croft has just died as a result of an injury sustained from a shell blast in 1943.

The Iraq situation has certainly created a new range of business opportunities for people with entrepreneurial spirit. Case in point: people who race to the scenes of bombings and, pretending to be medics (indeed, some of them actually are), make off with the corpses of victims and hold them for ransom.

The NYT referred today to remarks made by Bush in a January meeting with Congressional leaders which I don’t seem to have caught at the time. 1) “I said to Maliki this has to work or you’re out.” You have to wonder if he really said that to Maliki in those words. You also have to wonder what the congresscritters said. 2) Asked why he thought the surge would work, Bush responded, “Because it has to.” You have to wonder if he believes that’s actually some sort of logical argument.

Sigh, no you don’t.

At the California Democratic Party convention today, Hillary Clinton called Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” Day four years ago “one of the most shameful episodes in American history. ... The only mission he accomplished was the re-election of Republicans.” To which Bush no doubt responded, “Yeah, and your point is?”

And Joe Biden said that the American people are “looking for someone literally, not figuratively, to restore America’s place in the world.” North America, right? In between Mexico and that nice country with all the hockey?

Sorry, I hate it when people say literally when they don’t mean literally.

And Barack Obama said something about how he would “turn the page” on Iraq. While I don’t know what that actually means, after 6 years of Bush it’s refreshing to see someone using a book metaphor.

Relaxed but strategic

Maliki has evidently rescinded his demand that the work on the Dubya Wall be halted, and it has resumed.

A good E.J. Dionne piece on the Bushies’ denigration of legitimate disagreement with their policies as partisan politics.

Bush met today with Japan’s nationalist PM Shinzo Abe. Said Bush, “Our talks were very relaxed, but they were strategic.”

Abe will soon be traveling to the Middle East. Said Bush, “I will remind him he’ll be traveling into an important region”. George is nothing if not informative.

“I’m absolutely convinced the Japanese people will be better off when they eat American beef,” he said mysteriously.

Talking about the environment and energy, he said that “there’s a lot of work that Japan and the United States can do together” on nuclear energy. Somehow I don’t have the heart today to make a Hiroshima crack.

Abe talked about the North Korean abduction of Japanese citizens, after making another clarification of his remarks on “comfort women” that used a lot of passive voice and didn’t quite acknowledge the abduction of Korean, Chinese and other women by the Japanese army. Bush said of the abductions that he will work “to get this issue resolved in a way that touches the human heart”. On comfort women, Bush said, “I accept the Prime Minister’s apology.” He accepts? I didn’t know Bush was a comfort woman. It would explain a lot.

A reporter named Deb (AP’s Deb Reichmann, I believe) managed to be stupider than Bush, who she accused of having gone soft on North Korea, thinking he’d said he had unlimited patience with its government (Bush had, in an admittedly rare correct use of the double negative, said his patience was “not unlimited”) and not having the wit to wonder if she’d maybe misheard him.

Asked about the Iraq spending bill, Bush said he will veto it “because members of Congress have made military decisions on behalf of the military”. When precisely did the US military declare independence from the US? “I’m just envisioning what it would be like to be a young soldier in the middle of Iraq and realizing that politicians have all of the sudden made military determinations.” “Mission accomplished,” anyone? And since when is Bush himself not a politician?

“I’m sorry it’s come to this. In other words, I’m sorry that we’ve had this, you know, the issue evolve the way it has.” He threatened Congress not to “test my will” over timetables, adding, “In other words, I don’t like tests.” (I may have made that last bit up.) He did say, reaching out to Democrats by implying they had only temporarily gone insane, “I think we can come to our senses and make sure that we get the money to the troops in a timely fashion.” We?

Of baked beans, being somehow grounded in the 1980s, concrete caterpillars, and a very happy meal indeed

Headline of the day: “Hugh Grant Arrested over Baked Beans Allegation.” If you don’t already know what that means, wouldn’t it be nicer to just leave it at Hugh Grant Arrested over Baked Beans Allegation?

Whoops, I awarded the headline of the day prize before coming across this one: “Condom Found in Girl’s McDonald’s ‘Happy Meal.’” (Unused, you’ll be delighted to hear.) (The condom, not the happy meal.)

In quoting Condi in my last, describing Russian fears as “purely ludicrous,” I missed that what she was so describing was the idea that the US missile defense program threatens the Soviet deterrent. She also accused the Russians, or Soviets, or possibly the subjects of the Grand Duchy of Muscovy, of having a view “that is grounded somehow in the 1980s.”

Gen. Petraeus has been talking to Congress (behind closed doors) and to reporters. He explained that “in most cases,” the people being walled off in Baghdad actually “welcome that kind of barrier plan or walls or what have you” (he seems to be backing away from calling it the “concrete caterpillar”). He insisted that “This is not about walling off Sunni from Shi’a. This is about walling off neighborhoods.” So that’s okay, then.

Petraeus is saying that the occupation of Iraq will go on and on and on, although naturally he refuses to get specific about “what levels would be some years down the road.” But the key word is years, and what the White House and its tame congresscritters need to be forced to acknowledge publicly is that when they talk about giving Petraeus’s plan a chance to work, that plan involves significant numbers of American troops manning the concrete caterpillars for years to come.

Well, I can’t worry about it. I don’t think about it.

Former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet says that the “enhanced interrogation” of prisoners – which he says is not the same as torture, but won’t say in what way it differs – provided more intel than the FBI, CIA and NSA put together. Tune in to 60 Minutes Sunday to find out if that means our enhanced interrogators are really, really good, or that the FBI, CIA and NSA are really, really bad.

In an interview with Larry King, John McCain called for Alberto Gonzales to resign to restore the integrity of the Justice Dept. Okay, no he didn’t, he said he should leave out of “loyalty to the president.” Wasn’t appointing someone whose only qualification was loyalty to the president exactly the problem with Gonzales in the first place?

Asked what happens if the “surge” doesn’t work, McMaverick said, “Well, I can’t worry about it. I don’t think about it.” Maybe he can put that on his bumper stickers. Wasn’t a refusal to think about what would happen if everything didn’t go exactly according to plan exactly the problem with the Iraq war in the first place?

Asked about Don Imus, McCain said, “I believe in redemption. I believe in forgiveness. And I -- I forgave my North Vietnamese captors, who didn’t treat me very well. I forgave the anti-war movement and reconciled with them.” Larry King did not ask him about his remarks in 2000: “I hated the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live.” He was against forgiveness before he was for it.

He said several times that he was “disappointed” with Harry Reid, adding, “But to declare the war lost, then I think it’s incumbent upon Senator Reid to say who won. Is that al Qaeda? Is that the militia? Is that -- is that the forces of terrorism and radical Islamic extremism that are dedicated to destroying the United States of America?” I’m not sure by what logic Reid needs to say who won, except that McCain wants to implicate Reid in some way for losing the war simply because he pointed out the fact that it has in fact been lost.

As does Joe Lieberman, who writes in an op-ed piece in the WaPo, “When politicians here declare that Iraq is ‘lost’ in reaction to al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks and demand timetables for withdrawal, they are doing exactly what al-Qaeda hopes they will do, although I know that is not their intent.” I think Holy Joe shows a true generosity of spirit in suggesting that Harry Reid is only an unwitting dupe of Al Qaida.

NATO is holding talks with the Russian foreign minister about our plan to base Star Wars systems in eastern Europe. So naturally right before those talks start, Condi called Russian concerns “purely ludicrous.” Our chief diplomat, ladies and gentlemen, our chief diplomat.

Robert Parry on Posada.

Riverbend is going into exile.

Apa kabar

Barack Obama told the National Jewish Democratic Council that his years in an Indonesian “madrasa” make him a candidate who is, as they say, good for the Jews: “If I go to Jakarta and address the largest Muslim country on earth, I can say, ‘Apa kabar,’ - you know, ‘How are you doing?’ - and they can recognize that I understand their common humanity. That is a strength, and it allows me to say things to them that other presidents might not be able to say.” Oh, Barack, you had me at apa kabar.

Give my chance a plan to work

I received an ad in the mail that asked “Do You Value Your Teeth?” Fortunately, it turned out to be from some dentist, not from my bookie.

Speaking of no child left behind, the US will put on trial a 20-year old, Omar Khadr, who has been held without charge in Guantanamo for 5 years. Charges include murder in violation of the law of war, spying, and conspiracy. This will be the first war crimes trial of a child soldier. Details are sketchy, but his lawyer says that the conspiracy was committed when he was less than 10. (Update: oh, according to the charge sheet [pdf] the conspiracy involves everything that Al Qaida has ever done.)

In his interview of John McCain on last night’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart, who I’ve often felt has been too obsequious in his interviews with people in power, quietly refused to let McCain describe the Iraq War as “unpopular,” a word chosen to frame opponents of the war as followers of fashion. Well done.

In an email from the McCain campaign today, McCain says, “If you don’t believe that the problems facing the country need to be addressed, then I am probably not your candidate.” Does that sort of rhetoric ever convince anyone?

There seems to be no transcript of Bush’s interview by Charlie Rose, so I had to (shudder) watch it, although I had to pause it for laughter after he claimed that Gen. Petraeus said, “Give my chance a plan to work.” I only listened in snatches while doing other things, so here are some snatches:

We’re working with “an interesting group of nations” on Iran, which is “spreading radical Shia in a region that doesn’t need any more radicalism.”

Can he imagine saying about Iraq, well, we’ve tried, & then leave. No he can’t.

The Iraq bill is “a political document.”

Asked how much violence is acceptable in Iraq, he said he’d have to ask “experts,” such as Petraeus and Ryan Crocker. He thinks that it’s a cultural thing, how much violence is considered normal (I think Bush was copying something Petraeus said a couple of days ago that Iraq would always have a certain number of bombings and would adjust, just like Belfast in the 1970s).

Today is Malaria Awareness Day. George Bush held an event at the White House. “Every year, more than a million people die of malaria -- and the vast majority of them are children under five years old,” he said. “It’s a sad statistic,” he said. “Malaria imposes a crippling economic burden in sub-Saharan Africa, where so many are struggling to lift their families out of poverty,” he said. “All of that may seem like a cause for despair. But it’s not,” he said, and proved that he was not despairing by following his speech with a Malaria Awareness Party. Woooo!







(Update: Think Progress has the video.)

The pipeline is beginning to be full of little readers that are competent readers

Bush went to a school today. Well, if at first you don’t succeed...

It was the Harlem Village Academy Charter School, which he says is a “school where a child looks at the President and says, I don’t mind being tested, because I know that they’re going to help correct problems early, before it’s too late.” I’m sure one of the children really said exactly those words to him.

I’ve said before how obnoxious I find that “before it’s too late” thing, how insulting to people in adult literacy programs, learning to read in prisons, etc. I mean, GeeDubya is 60, and what is the following line if not a hidden cry for help: “When student struggle, they receive one-on-one tutoring during the school day.”

He said “Schools should be places of safety.” Which is why he brought a whole bunch of guys with guns with him.


The purpose of the trip was to call for the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind. He talked in a softly bigoted way about the soft bigotry of low expectations: “I have come to a school where some may say these children can’t possibly exceed high standards”.

The centerpiece of NCLB? Choice. “I like to be able to sit with parents and say, I have chose school for my child -- chosen the school for my child...”

His word of the day was herald: “See, I love it when somebody heralds that which is working and takes on that which is not working.” “so a good way to herald National Charter School Week is come to a charter school”. “the President has an opportunity to herald excellence, and I have seized that opportunity.”


Some of his other faves: There were 14 “in other words,” including “In other words, it matters what happens now in our schools, more so than ever before” and “In other words, there ought to be flexibility -- more flexibility as opposed to less flexibility when a school fails” and “So I said to a lot of the kids here at this school, how many of you want to go to college? They all rose -- raised their hand. That’s a good sign. In other words, this school believes in high expectations and putting in a child’s mind the possibilities of achieving a dream.”

And a death-defying double “in other words”: “In other words, something has changed here at this school. In other words, there is progress being made”.

He found 7 things “interesting,” including that a student asked why he’d come, and “Interestingly enough, this week is called National Charter School Week -- I mean, next week is called National Charter School Week, so a good way to herald National Charter School Week is come to a charter school”.

And something or other about tailoring was interesting: “The data from this school that you -- as a result of measurement helps teachers tailor their lesson plans to the specific needs of the child. Isn’t that interesting? The education system tailoring the needs to fit the -- tailor the curriculum to fit the needs of the child? That may sound simple, but it’s an unusual concept for a lot of schools.” I think I can honestly say that that didn’t sound simple.

And a two-fer: “I appreciate the results of this school. In other words, it’s interesting, isn’t it, that the President can come and say you’ve got good results here -- because you measure.”

And if you don’t want to measure, you hate America. Or at least “certain” children. “Now, if you believe certain children can’t learn, then you shouldn’t measure.”

He wants to extend NCLB to high schools. “I believe if you want to make sure a high school diploma means something, you better have high accountability in high schools.” And how did George spend high school? High.


“I can’t think of a better way to get somebody’s attention that we’re tired of mediocrity than to give a parent an option.” Really, George, you can’t think, period.

Here’s a thought you never expected to hear from George W. Bush: “If you find failure, it’s important to do something differently.”

A Texas oil man’s view of schools: “The pipeline is beginning to be full of little readers that are competent readers.” Maybe that’s what he means about reaching children before it’s too late. No Child Left Stuck in the Pipeline.

Wherein Dick Cheney defines cynicism (in fact, when you look up cynicism in the dictionary...)

The Bushies are trying to make Harry Reid, who is so harmless that he may be made entirely out of nerf, into a hate figure. Today, Cheney spoke to the press about Reid’s “defeatism.” Cheney speculated about the motives that could be behind such dark deeds: “Maybe it’s a political calculation. Some Democratic leaders seem to believe that blind opposition to the new strategy in Iraq is good politics. Senator Reid himself has said that the war in Iraq will bring his party more seats in the next election. It is cynical to declare that the war is lost because you believe it gives you political advantage. Leaders should make decisions based on the security interests of our country, not on the interests of their political party.”


Note the rhetorical slide there: he starts from “maybe” it’s political calculation so that he never makes the accusation directly, but every subsequent sentence is predicated on the assumption of political calculation.


Reid responded, “I’m not going to get into a name-calling match with the administration’s chief attack dog,” which is technically species-calling rather than name-calling. For some reason, he failed to respond to the implied claim that he doesn’t really believe that the war in Iraq is lost and is just claiming that it is for party political advantage. I think he should take a lie detector test, don’t you? Up next: Cheney accuses Reid of hating dogs.

It makes no sense to tell the enemy when you start to plan withdrawing

Today is Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. Bush put out a statement. It touches some of the bases that need to be touched: 1.5 million Armenians dead (well, he said “as many as” 1.5m), need to remember and examine the historical events, blah blah blah. And some that didn’t need to be touched: “Our Nation is grateful for Armenia’s contributions to the war on terror”. And missed one altogether: it referred to “mass killings,” but failed to characterize them as genocide or in any way acknowledge the ethnic-religious impulse towards extermination. Indeed, “mass killings” is not coupled with any mention of the mass killers: those “as many as 1.5 million Armenians” merely “lost their lives.” As I said about last year’s presidential message, Bush “calls it a ‘tragedy,’ which is a word that does not entail responsibility, especially not Turkish responsibility.” Imagine a similar statement about the Holocaust that shied away from naming the Nazis.

Speaking of ethnic-religious impulses towards extermination, Bush’s other statement this morning (which he made with a helicopter behind him)


was yet another demand for a “clean” bill funding his dirty wars. “It makes no sense to tell the enemy when you start to plan withdrawing,” he said. Speaking of making no sense, I think he was supposed to say “when you plan to start withdrawing.” That enemy, of course, is Al Qaida; Bush these days is back to ignoring the existence of a civil war in Iraq. He complains that the bills are “legislative mandates telling [US generals[ which enemies they can engage and which they cannot.” I have no idea what he’s talking about. He used the phrase “precipitous withdrawal” twice. He’s against it. He did not explain how withdrawal of troops from Iraq in 2008, as opposed to 2003, could in any way be described as precipitous.

I thank you very much for the Bleed Blood Blue Drive

Bush met with the Indianapolis Colts today. That’s a football team, I gather. He recited the Colts’ history of the last football season, how they started out strong, then had a losing streak in which some doubters wrote them off, then they came back to win, because they had “heart.” Everything in the world is a metaphor about him, isn’t it?

Speaking of the circulatory system, he thanked the Colts for their various good works: “I thank you very much for the Bleed Blood Blue Drive’ [sic] -- that’s hard for a guy from West Texas to say -- (laughter) -- ‘Bleed Blood Blue Drive’ [sic] in which you’ve encouraged 2,000 people to donate blood.” (I googled it: Bleed Blue Blood Drive.)

And it’s not a true White House event without a stupid-looking cowboy hat.



Every so often the White House website has “Setting the Record Straight” articles, which are usually attack pieces on some Democrat. Today they may have reached the pinnacle in gratuitous insult with “Reid vs. Reid: A State Of Confusion,” in which “corrections” to statements by Harry Reid are each snidely introduced “In Case Sen. Reid Missed It.”

My last post mentioned the Baghdad wall(s), which the US seems be calling barriers. In comments, JustZisGuy suggested the Bushies might name it The Great Wall of Democracy or The Freedom Fence. I hereby call a NAME THAT WALL CONTEST. Entries in comments. Winners will receive a souvenir piece of the wall after the Iraqis take sledgehammers to it.

Something there is...

Bush, asked about Alberto Gonzales’s amnesic Congressional testimony, said he “went up and gave a very candid assessment, and answered every question he could possibly answer, honestly answer, in a way that increased my confidence in his ability to do the job.” Makes you wonder what Gonzo could have done to reduce Bush’s confidence in his ability to do the job. Fling his own feces at Arlen Specter?

Another reporter asked Bush if he could compromise over Iraq.

In other news... What, you need me to tell you if Bush said he could compromise over Iraq?

I’m still trying to figure out how the US planned to build a three-mile-long wall in Baghdad without anyone noticing. Or did they not think there would be objections?


Maliki, who himself seems to have waited to see how much opposition there would be before sticking his head out, said the wall “might have repercussions which remind us of other walls,” and the American press assumed he was talking about the Berlin Wall, taking a day to remember the wall Israel built on the West Bank.

While Ambassador Ryan Crocker said the US would “respect the wishes” of Maliki, neither he nor the US military would say that construction would be halted, suggesting that they plan to sit Maliki down and tell him what his wishes really are. Crocker went on to defend the wall as “good security sense,” intended to “identify where the fault lines are, where avenues of attack lie and to set up the barriers literally to prevent those attacks.” Barriers. I can’t find a transcript of Crocker’s press conference, but I’ll bet he’s avoiding the word wall just as the Israelis do with their “fence.”

Farewell to wacky former Russian president Boris Yeltsin. Would Russia be better off now if he hadn’t loved his booze so much more than he loved his country?

A clarification

Azmi Bishara, one of the 3 (or 4?) Palestinian members of the Israeli Knesset and the chairman of the Balad party, has fled the country and resigned from the Knesset because of some sort of secret investigation of him. There is a gag order on exactly what is being investigated, although, in a triumph for Israeli openness, the gag order on reporting the existence of the gag order was lifted this week.

After meeting the Egyptian president, Maliki said, “I clarified to the president the reality of what is going in Iraq, which is not a civil or sectarian war.” Sadly, he didn’t clarify for the rest of us the reality of what is going on in Iraq. What is the Arabic for “crapfest”?