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This time, it was the voluble Joe Biden who said it most succinctly: “We’re going to be just fine. They’re going to be just fine.” Obama spun that nonsense out at greater length, in a soporific monotone.
Transcript.
WHAT THIS MILESTONE SHOULD SERVE AS A REMINDER TO ALL AMERICANS OF: “But this milestone should serve as a reminder to all Americans that the future is ours to shape if we move forward with confidence and commitment.” Funny, I’d have said the last 7+ years of the Iraq war have shown that the future is not ours to shape, no matter how much misplaced confidence and commitment we exude.
MAYBE WE SHOULD BURN THAT DESK, JUST TO BE SURE: “From this desk, seven and a half years ago, President Bush announced the beginning of military operations in Iraq.”
“A war to disarm a state became a fight against an insurgency.” Here, Obama buys into the narrative that Bush began the invasion of Iraq to disarm Saddam Hussein. Wouldn’t want the smoking gun to come in the form of a mushroom cloud, you know.
EXCEPT FOR THAT WMD SNIPE HUNT, OF COURSE: “The Americans who have served in Iraq completed every mission they were given.”
WHY WE FOUGHT: “Our troops fought block by block to help Iraq seize the chance for a better future.” And I’m sure the surviving residents of those blocks are standing by their piles of rubble, just being grateful for that chance for a better future.
“So tonight, I am announcing that the American combat mission in Iraq has ended.”
“And Iraqi forces have taken the fight to Al Qaeda, removing much of its leadership in Iraqi-led operations.” And here (and elsewhere in the speech), Obama buys into the narrative that the Iraq war was about Al Qaida.
IT’S ABOUT FIVE MONTHS LATE FOR THAT “SENSE OF URGENCY” THING: “Tonight, I encourage Iraq’s leaders to move forward with a sense of urgency to form an inclusive government that is just, representative, and accountable to the Iraqi people.”
IRAQ = PAGE. “Now, it is time to turn the page.”
WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU WANT TO DO THAT? “This afternoon, I spoke to former President George W. Bush.”
I’M PRETTY SURE THERE IS SOMEONE WHO COULD DOUBT THAT: “Yet no one could doubt President Bush’s support for our troops, or his love of country and commitment to our security.”
HE NEVER WANTS US TO MAKE A MISTAKE: “But make no mistake: this transition will begin - because open-ended war serves neither our interests nor the Afghan people’s.”
“Over seven years before, American troops and coalition partners had fought their way across similar highways, but this time no shots were fired. It was just a convoy of brave Americans, making their way home.” So the big victory is that they didn’t shoot at us when we were leaving. Hurrah.
IT’S HARD TO GET TO KNOW SOMEONE YOU JUST SHOT OR BOMBED: “Along with nearly 1.5 million Americans who have served in Iraq, they fought in a faraway place for people they never knew.”
THE LIGHT OF ELECTRICITY MORE THAN TWO HOURS A DAY WOULD ALSO BE NICE: “They stared into the darkest of human creations – war – and helped the Iraqi people seek the light of peace.”
HOW WE MUST EARN VICTORY: “In an age without surrender ceremonies, we must earn victory through the success of our partners and the strength of our own nation.”
PAINTED GRAY AND UNDERWATER? “Our troops are the steel in our ship of state. And though our nation may be traveling through rough waters, they give us confidence that our course is true, and that beyond the pre-dawn darkness, better days lie ahead.” So, if I understand this metaphor correctly, we’re traveling through rough waters on a ship built out of troops (I’m picturing the pirate comic in Alan Moore’s Watchmen) in pre-dawn darkness to better days.
Today Obama also issued a proclamation for National Prostate Cancer Awareness Month. Just saying.
At the Israeli whitewash investigation of the flotillacide, Major General Eitan Dangot of the IDF insists “There was no justification for the flotilla, because there was no humanitarian crisis in Gaza.”
What does the IDF find justified? As Lenin reminds us, shooting a 13-year-old Palestinian girl and then going over and emptying a magazine into her to “confirm the kill,” that was considered justified. (My old posts on the case.)
The pope has ordered the closing of the seminary in Perugia, Italy, because the students gave an ovation to the king and queen of Italy.
The NYT reports that Henry Reed Rathbone is near death. They’re wrong by a year, but this story was new to me, not being an assassination buff: In April 1865 Rathbone, a Union army major, and his step-sister Clara were guests of the Lincolns at Ford’s Theatre. Rathbone received several stab wounds trying to stop John Wilkes Booth. He recovered and entered government service, but slowly went insane. In 1883, while US consul to Hanover, he shot Clara, who he had married in 1867, fatally, then tried to commit suicide by stabbing himself 6 times. He was committed to a German insane asylum for the rest of his life.
The trolley strike is still going on in Columbus. A couple of trolleys are dynamited, with passengers aboard, but no one is killed. The mob fights with soldiers.
Headline of the Day -100: “Brooklyn Helpless Before Cardinals.” Oh, baseball, not a Hitchcock, Tippi Hedren thing.
The governor of Colorado and the mayor of Denver call for Theodore Roosevelt (who they were introducing in the Denver Auditorium) to run for president in 1912. They are both Democrats.
Kaiser Wilhelm delivered a speech
in which he insisted that the crown came to him “by God’s grace alone, and not by Parliaments, assemblages of the people, or resolutions of the people”. Predictable shitstorm ensues.
Russia gives special permission to Oscar Straus, the US ambassador to Turkey, to enter visit St. Petersburg. Permission is required because Straus is Jewish.
Edward Kean, the Howdy Doody writer who coined that immortal word, has died. No mention of what his last words or, one hopes, word, might have been.
Secretary of War Jacob Dickinson, visiting the Philippines, hears from Moros who want Mindanao annexed to the US, or made independent, but definitely not subsumed within the Philippines.
but I’m pretty sure he’s getting a lot of pee.
Another way in which Obama administration policies go further than Bush’s did: officials at Guantanamo no longer tell us how many hunger strikers they are force feeding.
But they do inform us that they are doing it in a culturally sensitive way, force feeding them only between dusk and dawn during Ramadan.
So that’s okay then.
“By last summer, staff were pointing to Butter Pecan flavored Ensure as popular with the chair-shackled captives. Flavor made no difference going down, one nurse explained, but a captive could taste it if he burped later.”
Roosevelt gives a speech in upstate New York, supporting a state senator who VP Sherman opposes. TR sez, “the only kind of politics I care for is the kind of politics where decency is combined with efficiency,” whatever that means. He also said, “I am against a crook – rich or poor” and “There is only one person I place above the veteran, and that is the mother who does her full duty. I like all your crops, but I like children best.”
José Dolores Estrada, brother of the insurgent general, declares himself president of Nicaragua. He claims there will be an election within six months.
Fashion victim -100: A Pittsburg tailor fell asleep in his shop and died in his sleep, choked to death by a high collar.
Headline of the Day... well, it’s a tie:
“Italian Priest Shot Dead after Being Mistaken for Wild Boar” and “Minneapolis Will Pay $165,000 to Zombies.”
Actually, the money will be paid to “seven zombies and their attorney.”
Contest: what would be a good name for an attorney’s firm that specializes in representing zombies?
Arizona Democrats want the not-yet-state’s constitution to have provisions for initiatives and referenda, and are willing to risk the Republicans in Congress and the White House denying them statehood on that account.
The insurgents capture Managua without a fight. Madriz goes into exile.
The US has declared that it will consider it unconstitutional if Panama’s National Assembly elect the acting president, Carlos Mendoza, the VP who took over when President Obaldia died, to serve out the remainder of his term. Mendoza is black. (A week later he dropped out.)
Taft finally breaks his silence about the NY Republicans’ snubbing of TR, saying he had nothing to do with it and hanging his veep out to dry, releasing a telegram which he had sent to Sherman advising him to talk with Roosevelt before the vote by the committee on the chairmanship of the party convention – which Sherman failed to do. In fact, Taft suggests that when he spoke with Sherman before the vote, Sherman had not told him that his name would be put forward against TR’s.
A rocket killed an American soldier near Basra today.
The Madriz government in Nicaragua is on the verge of falling, with the Estradists threatening Managua.
Korea is about to cease to exist as a nation and be annexed completely by Japan. Newspaper censorship has ensured that Koreans have no idea this is about to happen. The NYT thinks most Koreans will be better off under Japanese rule and won’t object too much to the change.
The King of Saxony and two of the princesses, taking a stroll through the woods, stumbled across a nudist. The princesses ran away, screaming.
John Tully of Brooklyn was bitten by a dog one month ago and then by a Mr. Stanford Waltbridge, also of Brooklyn, last Saturday. Headline of the Day -100: “Prefers A Dog’s Bite.” In case you were wondering.
Or is this the Headline of the Day -100: “Assaulted with Cucumber”? A grocer is the assaultee, the offending fruit being hurled at him by a youth he caught trying to shoplift it.
Jeb Bush says the Democrats are showing their desperation by focusing so much on the manifold failures of his brother. “It’s a loser issue.”
He said it, not me.
Taft’s people have been claiming, truthfully or not I cannot say, that he didn’t even know about the scheme of the New York Old Guard Republicans to defeat Roosevelt as temporary chairman of the party convention in favor of VP Sherman (it should be noted that TR and Sherman were both New Yorkers). Nevertheless, the break between Taft and TR seems to be complete.
Speaking of Sherman, the House committee investigating Indian land contracts in Oklahoma exonerates him of having anything to do with the attempt to bribe Sen. Thomas Gore. It’s not clear how hard they really tried to find out the truth.
At an air meet in New York, a Lt. J.E. Fickel fired a rifle at a target on the ground from aviator Glenn Curtiss’s plane. This was the first time gunfire ever emanated from an airplane (but not the last). Fickel missed by six feet.
Kaiser Wilhelm is opening a big new imperial castle in Posen, Poland, a symbol of German control of Poland. The Polish nobility will be staying away from the dedication ceremony in droves. A new law in German Poland bans public political meetings held in Polish or any other language than German.
Karmic Death of the Day: Sam Mazzola, whose business included bear wrestling, is mauled by one of his bears.
Another albino child killed in Swaziland because, as you know, albino parts (in this case evidently her head) are great for magic.
The descendants of Ivan the Terrible and the Rurik dynasty are suing to regain ownership of the Kremlin. Funnily enough, no one has official title to it now.
Headline of the Day: “Japanese Man Kept Dead Mother in Backpack.” And if I know the Japanese, it was a Hello Kitty backpack.
Theodore Roosevelt addressed the National Negro Business League. He told them “that they should not whine about privileges they did not enjoy, but should plunge ahead and make the best of the opportunities they have.” And “slouchy, ne’er-do-well” negroes hurt the whole negro race. And the best friends the negroes can have are their white neighbors in the South (say WHAT?).
Canadian MP Henri Bourassa, leader of the Quebec Nationalists, calls for annexation of Canada by the United States.
South Sudan plans to rebuild its cities in the shape of rhinos and giraffes.
The White House actually sent out someone to tell the press that Obama is a Christian.
A Disneyland hostess is suing to be allowed to wear a hijab. Did no one consider the obvious compromise?
The obvious compromise is Mickey Mouse ears over the hijab.
A man in a banana costume, brandishing a shotgun and his penis and shouting “something or other about white supremacy” in Washington state, is arrested for, among other things, indecent exposure (either because the banana costume was child-sized or because he was exposing himself to women, depending on which story you read). Name of the Day: the cop telling all this to the press: Sgt. Randy Pieper. Said Pieper, “he was drinking earlier in the day, but he didn’t really have a reason for the costume.”
Headline of the Day (and the photo caption’s pretty good too).
