Maybe next time they could just send a singing telegram

Flash: all those scores of people killed in multiple attacks in Iraq yesterday were a good sign, according to alliterative General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, an indication, in fact, that last month’s elections were a “major blow” to Al Qaeda. “I see the terrorist attacks as acknowledgment on the terrorists’ part that this is a center of gravity (in the war on terror) and that they’re losing.”


What’s really dangerous, of course, said Pace, “damaging to morale,” are some critical comments by American congresscritters like Jack Murtha, who said that he personally would not volunteer to join the military today.

So to sum up, suicide bombings show that everything is bright and sunny and hopeful, with daisies and puppy dogs, while the news that a 73-year old won’t be re-upping threatens us all with doom and despair and darkness.

If he did not repent, he would be executed. It’s the only way.

A judge in Maryland rules that a man who mooned his neighbor during an argument did not break the law.

I have to admit to being a little surprised that Bush recess-appointed an almost universally awful, underqualified bunch of toadies, fund-raisers and ideologues to various positions, as if the last year had never happened. The move neatly combined kingly arrogance with cronyism, the traits that gave us domestic surveillance and Michael Brown. The destruction of New Orleans and its aftermath was evidently not enough of a lesson that it made him think twice before appointing Ellen Sauerbrey assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration. So here’s my question: why do we on the left never learn that Bush never learns?

You will remember the editor of the Afghan magazine Women’s Rights being sentenced to two years for blasphemy (the prosecutor had asked for the death penalty), the judge saying that he was acting under orders from the Ulama Council. Well, I missed this, but two weeks ago, he recanted and was released. Somehow, the death penalty came back into play. Said one of the appeals judges in the case, “if he did not repent, he would be executed. It’s the only way.” So to recap, in a country occupied liberated by the United States, an editor was forced on pain of death to deny and abjure the ideas that women should have equal status to men in courts, that apostates should not be executed, and that lashing adulterers 100 times is a bad idea.

In other press-freedom news, a newspaper reporter who called in his blog for the boycott of the Beijing News after the Chinese government fired its editor and two of his deputies, has seen that blog shut down by Microsoft. Microsoft’s defense: “Most countries have laws and practices that require companies to make the internet safe for local users.” Safe.

In yet more press-freedom news, the British government’s heavy-handed and yet silly and doomed order to British newspapers not to name the MI6 head of station in Greece who was outed in the Greek press and who allegedly watched the beatings of 28 Pakistanis suspected of having something to do with the 7/7/05 train bombings, while rather pointless in the age of the internet...

his name is Nicholas Langman by the way...

he looks like this...

(the London Times helpfully describes the picture, so that when you google your way to the Greek paper that printed it, you’ll be able to recognize it even if you don’t know the language) has nevertheless for the most part inhibited the British press from investigating the claims. He said, she said, and they were done.

From the LA Weekly, among many other entertaining lists this week, Things We Learned from the Intelligent Design “Controversy”:

1. Some complexity is irreducible.

2. Evolutionary theory has gaps.

3. Gaps are evidence of God.

4. Naomi Watts is evidence of God.

5. God doesn’t play dice, but he does play Life.

6. God is falsifiable.

7. What’s religion in Delaware is science in Kansas.

8. Thirty-eight Nobel laureates aren’t as smart as the Kansas Board of Education.

9. It’s quite possible that humans rode dinosaurs.

10. Any crackpot theory deserves a hearing, unless it involves spaghetti.

11. A man is like a watch: If you don’t wind him up, he doesn’t work right.

12. Some people spell Creationism with only two letters.

And this cartoon is from that issue:

I appreciate you being such a solid citizen of our country

The population of Japan is in a slight decline, but it is the Year of the Dog, so Prime Minister Koizumi has advised Japanese women to do it doggy style and learn from their canine sisters: “Dogs produce lots of puppies and, when they do, the pains of labour are easy.” Clearly the problem with Japanese women is that they aren’t producing large enough litters.

Speaking of large litter, this is the Guardian headline about Ariel Sharon: “Huge Shadow Cast Over Israel.” Is this really the time to be making fat jokes? Oh, sure it is, go right ahead.

Several high-fatality suicide bombings in Iraq today, including yet another attack on yet another line of applicants for police jobs, cleverly located outside the Ramadi Glass and Ceramics Works, aka Shrapnel ‘R Us. Here’s the line I liked, from the BBC: “US military spokesman Capt Jeffrey Pool said the surviving recruits later got back in line to continue the screening process.” Some screening. Some process.

Bush today pretended to listen to a group of former secretaries of state and defense. Why, no one can accuse him of living in a bubble now that he has met with Robert McNamara! Afterwards he kept calling them solid, as in “I appreciate your interest. I appreciate you being such a solid citizen of our country.” On closer inspection, however, it turned out that Melvin Laird is actually a liquid, Alexander Haig is a gas, and Colin Powell is hollow. Jokes about the word solid, ladies and germs! I need a nap!

(Update: actually, he didn’t even spend more than 5 to 10 minutes pretending to listen to them, according to the NYT.)

Caption contest:

People will be making decisions not based upon who has got the biggest gun

Going to a funeral in Iraq must be... different. “I’m going in to mourn. Cover me!”

From the BBC, the segue of the week:

In the worst attack, at least 36 people were killed in a suicide bombing at a Shia funeral north of Baghdad. Across Iraq, more than 50 people died.

In Washington, President George Bush said the plan in Iraq was going well.

Indeed. In a variation on the popular children’s game “Telephone,” George Bush was given a national security briefing today, and then had to give us a briefing on the briefing. Hilarity ensued.


Wonkette:

From the sounds of things, each Pentagon briefing is much the same as all the others -- freedom is marching, constant elections will soon replace potable water as a source of refreshment, a new Middle Eastern government based on Sharia law is just what the American taxpayers wanted, the Iraqi forces are well on their way to retaking Hadrian’s Wall from the Celtic hordes, et cetera, ad infinitum, with liberty and justice for all, strategery.

Bush:

During our briefing we talked about the areas of concern in this global war on terror, recognizing that the enemy, which has an ideology of hate and a desire to kill, lurks in parts around the world. I assured the generals that this administration would do everything in our power to bring these enemies to justice.

Wouldn’t it be funny if these meetings were actually just like Bush describes them? If the generals really did talk about the enemy having a desire to kill and lurking in parts around the world, and he really did assure the generals that etcetera?

Says that what will no doubt be endless haggling to form a new Iraqi government will show that “people will be making decisions not based upon who has got the biggest gun [I think George has just unwittingly revealed something about himself we didn’t need to know], but who has got the capacity to rally the will of the people. And that’s positive.” Professor Bush’s PolySci -101 seminar continued:

Democracies yield an ideology that is based on an ideology that says, people are free -- free to choose. The ideology of the enemy says, a few people will choose, and if you don’t like what we tell you to believe in, we’ll kill you, or -- or treat you harshly.

I note a bit of rhetoric creep: “artificial” timetables to withdraw troops from Iraq has become “false political timetables.”

He demonstrates his eerie ability to get inside the enemy’s head: “See, al Qaeda thinks they can use Iraq as a safe haven from which to launch attacks. That’s their stated objective. I’m not making this up.”

They will dwell in the shadows, with a security deposit and first and last month’s rent, and no pets

Dick Cheney, at (where else) the Heritage Foundation: “Either we are serious about fighting this war or we are not.” I’ll turn this car around, you kids! He accuses some, unnamed, politicians of “yielding to the temptation to downplay the ongoing threat to our country”. Yielding to temptation; makes it sound like getting a blowjob from an intern.

Cheney doesn’t much like terrorists, but then perhaps he’s projecting just a little: “They dwell in the shadows [undisclosed location], wear no uniform [I had other priorities], and have no regard for the laws of warfare [cough], and feel unconstrained by any standard of morality [cough cough].”

Evidently, everything Cheney learned about good government, he learned from... Gerald Ford:

Serving immediately after a period of turmoil, all of us in the Ford administration worked hard to restore people’s confidence in the government.

As opposed to restoring government to a condition where the people could repose confidence in it.

We were adamant about following the law and protecting civil liberties of all Americans, and we did so. Three decades later, I work for a President who shares those same values.

Ford nostalgia fever: Catch it!!

Also, 9/11, 9/11, 9/11, and just for a change of pace, 8/11. Domestic surveillance is necessary to prevent another 9/11, and in fact has actually prevented, oh, let’s say, eight 9/11s that you’ve never even heard about, because we’re just that good.

Wave bye bye to your civil liberties. Bye bye!

We continue to see terrorists and insurgents using civilians in an attempt to shield themselves

The US military bombed and hit with 100 cannon rounds (from a plane) an Iraqi house that contained some people who’d been spotted digging a hole in a suspicious manner, allegedly to plant an IED, by a drone aircraft operating at night. Incidentally, the first Pentagon press release was that the military had launched all that steel “against insurgents placing an improvised explosive device,” as if they had been caught in the act.

The US is still not admitting that non-terrorists including women and children were killed. Which they were. Says military spokesmodel Barry Johnson, “We’re now trying to determine in coordination with Iraqi security forces in the area exactly what casualties occurred, and why they occurred.” I would have thought the bomb and the 100 cannon rounds explains the “why” pretty comprehensively. Johnson went on to say, “We continue to see terrorists and insurgents using civilians in an attempt to shield themselves.” Some shield. And the AP, as is pointed out by Eli, whose post I had intended simply to point you to, but then I came over all ranty, but you should read it too, calls the house a “hideout,” although the men may well have lived there. Anyway, here it is well over a day later, and no one seems to have gone to see if they were actually planting an IED and maybe even defuse it before it, you know, kills somebody.

Searching for bodies.

Body.

Bodies.

Government officials and governmental action are not for sale

Listening to Assistant Attorney General Alice Fisher talk about Jack Abramoff today,


you might think she was less concerned with portraying him as a crook, than with portraying every other lobbyist, and the politicians they’re in bed with, as not being crooks: “Lawful lobbying does not include paying a public official a personal benefit with the understanding, explicit or implicit, that a certain official act will occur. That’s not lobbying. That’s a crime. ... Government officials and governmental action are not for sale.” No, they’re not ON sale; it’s full retail price. No sales tax, though. And you can get gift cards.

People have not stepped up and have agreed that it’s still necessary to protect the country

Bush today made a plea for Patriot Act renewal that completely ignored the NSA surveillance scandal: “And now, when it came time to renew the act, for partisan reasons, in my mind, people have not stepped up and have agreed that it’s still necessary to protect the country.” It’s that crisp, dispassionate, completely fair-minded political analysis that makes George W. Bush the chimp man-child man he is.

And Scottie McClellan, on the same subject:

Q But, Scott, again, the people who are against the surveillance, as well as the Patriot Act are citing --

MR. McCLELLAN: I don’t think people, if they’re not talking to people overseas that are al Qaeda members or related to terrorist organizations, they have to worry. And I think the American people understand that.

You know, the old “if you have nothing to hide, you shouldn’t mind the cops going through your underwear drawer” line just never gets old.

The Palestinian elections are increasingly likely to be postponed because of Israeli interference. Even if the Israelis decide to allow polling in East Jerusalem (which Bush is calling for), they are currently interfering with electioneering there, because Palestinian political activity there is illegal in that part of The Only Democracy in The Middle East. (Or, rather, an area that The Only Democracy in The Middle East considers to be part of The Only Democracy in The Middle East.) (Where, incidentally, there is yet another case of bribery to Ariel Sharon and his tubby family.)

“What I Heard About Iraq in 2005.”


Bush, listening to the governor of West Virginia talking about the trapped miners, trying to look concerned, just looking kind of gassy.

The purported imperial presidency

Bush signed the Defense Dept supplementary authorization on Friday (note the timing), adding a little statement about how he intends to interpret several of its provisions out of existence, including the requirement that Congressional committees be informed in advance of any future spying programs, and the McCain amendment against torture, citing in each case “the President’s constitutional authority as Commander in Chief.” He says he might choose to inform Congress about programs “as a matter of comity,” just being neighborly-like, but then again he might not.

And on the McCain amendment, he says, “the executive branch shall construe Title X not to create a private right of action” and “to preclude the Federal courts from exercising subject matter jurisdiction over any existing or future action, including applications for writs of habeas corpus.” What he’s doing here is claiming the ability to interpret laws to mean things he knows they were not intended to mean, thus taking powers which constitutionally belong to both the legislative and the judicial branches. Note the imperial arrogance in this sentence:

Also, the executive branch shall construe sections 8106 and 8119 of the Act, which purport to prohibit the President from altering command and control relationships within the Armed Forces, as advisory, as any other construction would be inconsistent with the constitutional grant to the President of the authority of Commander in Chief.

“Purport” (he uses this term in a similar manner 6 times) means he knows that he is not simply creatively interpreting the intent of Congress, but turning it inside out, rejecting the clear intent of a bill he has nevertheless signed. He can’t do that. He can sign or he can veto, that’s it.

His father tried to pull much the same stunt in 1990. After years of presidents trying to get a line-item veto, Bush the Elder’s people announced one day that the president already had such a power, which no one had ever noticed before – possibly it fell behind a filing cabinet for 200 years, you know how those things happen – and he could sign budget bills while stating that he would choose to ignore some of its provisions. So Bush signed a State Dept authorization bill while announcing that he would ignore several of its provisions (denying funds for the Middle East peace process if any PLO officials known to have participated in terrorism against an American were involved, barring from the US any representatives to the UN who had engaged in espionage against the US, etc). The ElderBushies were sending up a trial balloon, which didn’t go over well and since they never tried to act on their chimeral line-item vetoes, nothing came of it.

In other words, the enemy is calling somebody and we want to know who they’re calling and why

Bush visited an army hospital today: “I can’t think of a better way to start 2006 then here at this fantastic hospital.” I’m sure the patients feel exactly the same way.


He then compared their war wounds with the scratch he has on his forehead, from “combat with a Cedar.”


Asked about domestic surveillance, he claimed that it only applied to calls made to this country by people calling from outside the country. “In other words, the enemy is calling somebody and we want to know who they’re calling and why.” Poppycock. (Update: the White House corrected him almost immediately.) He reassured us that the program “has been reviewed, constantly reviewed, by people throughout my administration. And it still is reviewed.” Sort of a Siskel & Ebert thing. Rove is the fat one, Gonzales is the skinny one.


He explained why the Fourth Amendment is irrelevant: “Now, some say, well, maybe this isn’t a war; maybe this is just a law enforcement operation. I strongly disagree.” He adds, “the American people expect the Commander-in-Chief to protect them, and that’s exactly what I intend to do.” This from a man who just lost a fight with a cedar.

A cedar.


Also says his 2004 claim that any wiretaps required a court order applied only to roving wire taps, which is like a totally different program. So he wasn’t lying through his ass, no sirree bob.

Says General Casey is doing a “fabulous job” in Iraq, does not say whether that is better or worse than a “heckuva job.”

A reporter asks him why God allows bad things (like the wounds of the soldiers he’s been visiting) to happen to good people. “First of all, Mike, I’m conscious not to be trying to substitute myself for God.” “Here at this exclusive restaurant, we’ve secretly substituted their usual All-mighty and Omniscient Deity with George W. Bush. Let’s see if they notice...”

Competition in frightfulness

Harper’s has a good review of the year. And so, hurrah, does Dave Barry, just when I thought he was skipping this year.

The end of the year is also the time when the British release archival materials. This year, there’s some good, oddly relevant World War II stuff. We find that Churchill wanted to execute Hitler and other Nazi leaders without trial – he mused about getting an electric chair from the Americans on Lend-Lease. He figured war crimes trials would be a farce and planned to use a Bill of Attainder – one of those things mentioned in the American Declaration of Independence as a sign of British oppression. The Brits were annoyed with the American troops stationed on their soil for eating like pigs while the natives were rationed, and that they agreed to allow the American military to enforce its racial segregation rules, but not in British pubs, cinemas, dance halls, etc. When the Germans put British POWs in chains, the British retaliated; Churchill: “We’ve each tied up 1,500. Germans threaten to go up to 5,000.” When the Germans destroyed a whole village (Lidice) in Czechoslovakia, Churchill considered wiping out German villages through bombing on a 3 to 1 ratio, but was talked out of it; said future prime minister Clement Attlee, “I doubt if it is useful to enter into competition in frightfulness with the Germans.”

And there are Guantanamo echoes: Gandhi began a Quit India campaign during the war, was promptly locked up without trial (in a palace rather than a prison), and began a hunger strike. British cabinet members were scared of the repercussions his death in custody would bring, and tried to work out how to release him without losing face. Churchill (who’d had to deal with hunger-striking suffragettes when he was home secretary 30 years before) was of the let-him-die school, but said that if they insisted on letting him out, they should pretend it was not because of the hunger strike, not “an act of submission to G’ will,” but portray it “as act of grace because det(ained) 6 (months) and we’ve beaten him.” There’s actually a similarity in Churchill’s approaches to Gandhi and Hitler: a wish to maintain control of the spin and give no legitimacy or voice whatsoever to them. His idea of, specifically, electrocuting Hitler was to use a form of capital punishment that would label him a “gangster” rather than a führer.

2005 in Pictures

Donald Rumsfeld and John Snow wait patiently to receive their kisses.


Bush trying to peer once again into the soul of Vladimir Putin. Then they fucked.

Strong progress

The Czech Republic is still illegally sterilizing Romany women.

It’s an odd day over at the Washington Post, which fills the void of the slow news week with an in-depth, take-no-prisoners exposé of Bush’s brush-clearing activities, alongside an actual important, why-the-hell-did-they-run-it-on-a-Saturday-and-the-last-day-of-the-year, piece on Tom DeLay’s dubious relationship to the “U.S. Family Network,” Jack Abramoff, and Russian and corporate money. If you are the last person in America who thinks that DeLay is not corrupt, this won’t change your mind because you are simply too medicated.

Speaking of medicated, George Bush ends the year with a radio address that suggests that he remembers 2005, which isn’t even over yet, with the sort of idealized, soft-focus memory usually reserved for 80-year olds remembering that one glorious summer when they were 5 and the world was fresh and new: “2005 has been a year of strong progress toward a freer, more peaceful world and a more prosperous America.” Of course it has. Still, the claim that made even my jaded jaw drop open (can a jaw be jaded? wouldn’t that make it hard to chew?) was this: “Last February, I submitted to Congress the most disciplined budget proposal since Ronald Reagan was President.” Yes, Ronald Reagan, master of fiscal discipline.

Speaking of fiscal discipline, Achmad Chalabi has been made acting oil minister. Even as we speak, he is swimming in a vat of crude oil (Chalabi is the only person who can emerge from a vat of crude oil less oily than when he went in), shouting, “Mine, all mine!” Chalabi proves, like former Attorney General John “Lost to a Dead Guy” Ashcroft and indeed George W. Bush himself, that... oh, write your own clever segue, I just wanted another crack at Ashcroft.

Safe, humane care

Yesterday I had not read the Pentagon press release authored by Col. Martin (pdf) announcing that there are 46 new hunger-strikers at Gulag Guantanamo. A little deconstruction is in order. The document uses the words fast or voluntary fast five times, compared to just two for hunger strike and its cognates (forcible feeding is referred to as “enteral feeding”). It attempts to de-individuate the hunger strikers, who are always referred to in plural forms (detainees, enemy combatants, fasters) and avoids giving us information that would allow us to imagine the experiences of individual hunger strikers. For example, we are told that there are now 84 hunger strikes and that “The number of detainees engaged in the current fast, which began on August 8, 2005, routinely fluctuates”, but not how long individuals have hunger struck for (if we came away with the impression that they hand it off in relays every five days, that would be just fine with the Pentagon), nor how long individuals have been forcibly fed.

It is a common technique of governments faced with hunger strikers to suggest that they are the weak-minded puppets of unscrupulous leaders. In 1981 Thatcher insisted that hunger-striking IRA prisoners “are of more use to [IRA leaders] dead than alive” and had therefore been “persuaded, coerced or ordered to starve themselves to death”. Similar claims were made about Irish hunger strikers in the 1920s. In 1914 the British home secretary claimed that hunger-striking suffragettes were paid by rich suffragettes to go to prison, hunger strike and be forcibly fed. So we are now told that “This technique (hunger striking) is consistent with al-Qaida training and reflects detainee attempts to elicit media attention and bring pressure on the United States Government to release them.” The phrase “consistent with” implies a causal relationship, suggesting that the prisoners are Al Qaeda members, that they have received some sort of training in not eating, and that they are under orders, without actually having to prove any of that.

We are told that the number of hunger strikers increases whenever lawyers are coming to Gitmo, and on September 11 (that the recent increase came on Christmas is not mentioned), suggesting that the hunger strike is a response to outside factors and clever PR strategies, not to anything that might be happening to them in Guantanamo. Indeed, any actual demands made by the hunger strikers are never mentioned, suppressed along with their individual voices and indeed their names.

But lest you think that all seems a little “consistent with” Kafka, Solzhenitsyn, whatever, we are informed that Gitmo, in accordance with its “mission of providing safe, humane care, ensuring the custody of all detainees, and intelligence gathering in support of the global war on terror,” affords the hunger strikers “enemy combatants on voluntary fasts” with monitoring by medical professionals (professionals means that they’re paid, but these medical professionals are paid by the US military, so I don’t know how reassuring that is), receiving “the appropriate amount of daily nutrition and hydration,” and, of course, counseling about the health risks of hunger-striking. Sounds very humane, almost touchy-feely, you’d never know tubes are being shoved down people’s noses several times a day.

I thought about writing to Col. Martin (jeremy.m.martin@jtfgtmo.southcom.mil) and asking him to clarify some of his statement (what does it mean to be “consistent with Al Qaeda training, what is the longest someone has been fasting, what is the longest someone has been forcibly fed, what demands have they issued, etc), but I didn’t think there was much likelihood of a response to an anonymous blogger, except perhaps an invitation for an extended tour of the facilities...

Because our policy is to preserve life

A WaPo article on covert action since 9/11 notes that assassinations of “terrorists” have been redefined: no longer are they considered to be assassinations (which would be illegal and shit) but acts of self-defense. It was necessary to destroy the English language in order to save it. Also, you know how we learned that decisions on whose communications get surveilled were made by “shift supervisors”? Well, the decisions on “who was going to get it,” as one anonymous source so elegantly put it, were devolved from George Bush to the Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet when this all began, who delegated them to the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center, where doubtless shift supervisors left it up to the Magic Eight Ball of Doom.

By the way, the WaPo refers to this program as GST, but its crack reporters failed to crack the riddle of just what that might stand for. Suggestions, serious or not so much, in comments, please.

Neither Russia nor Ukraine show any sign of budging in the showdown over natural gas prices, with the Russian deadline 24 hours away (although I think Ukraine’s been stockpiling). Notice how Hugo Chavez’s efforts to win friends and influence people through cheap oil exports are portrayed in the American press as some sort of fiendish plot – or possibly a dastardly plot.... actually which is worse, fiendish or dastardly? – but Russian threats to freeze the populations of countries that displease it (because, of course, this is not primarily a fight over what the fair and proper price of natural gas should be) hasn’t even generated a single tut-tutting editorial (that I’ve seen, anyway)?

The hunger strike in Guantanamo has more than doubled, according to the Pentagon’s highly untrustworthy reporting, to 84, of whom 32 are being forcibly fed. The Pentagon put out the usual claim that hunger striking is “consistent with al Qaeda training and reflects detainee attempts to elicit media attention”. Which must be why they did it on Christmas, and why we didn’t find out for 4 days. Asked why the hunger strikers were being force fed, Col. Jeremy Martin said, “Because our policy is to preserve life.” I’m not sure who has less media savvy, those attention-craving hunger strikers, or Col. Martin.

Very bad people who have a history of blowing up commuter trains, weddings, and churches

Trent Duffy, a b-list White House spokesmodel subbing for the lovely and talented Scottie McClellan, says that the “limited program” of warrantless surveillance was “designed to monitor calls from very bad people to very bad people who have a history of blowing up commuter trains, weddings, and churches.” He knows that’s who they are because they use MCI’s Very Bad People and Family program.

Arlen Specter has gone to Iraq to tell the judges in Saddam Hussein’s trial that they are being too lenient on him. For example, the chief judge says “if the deposed president is sentenced to death in the Dujail case and is executed, all other cases against him would be dropped.”

Israel “pulled out” of Gaza, and now declares that everyone must pull out of a stretch of it. Some rockets (which is a glorified name for the Qassams, which practically have to fly down your throat to do any damage) have been fired into Israel, harmlessly, so Israel declared a free-fire zone inside Gaza, dropped leaflets with the charming message, “Know that the terrorists have made you hostages and human shields and safeguard your interests.”

Augusto Pinochet was booked today, fingerprinted and photographed, and there are no pictures of it happening, goddammit! And where are the mug shots? If we’re denied a perp walk, I wanna see the mug shots.

The UN commissioner for elections in Iraq, Craig Jenness, proclaims, “You cannot but conclude that these were transparent, credible and good elections.” Only 1,500 complaints alleging irregularities were filed, which Jenness considers a low number. One of the reasons for that – and I wish I’d noted down the source when I read this a couple of days ago but I sorta expected someone to follow it up, which hasn’t happened – was that the Iraqi election monitors included many partisans, who failed to pass on complaints.

Bush quietly over the holiday weekend (which should send off warning signals) changed the “doomsday” line of succession in the Pentagon, bumping the secretaries of the army, air force and navy further down, after political appointees such as the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics. Since this relates to what happens in the event of a major terrorist/nuclear decapitation of American leadership, it would be nice if someone looked into this a little. #3 is Stephen Cambone, who has held the newly created post of undersecretary of defense for intelligence since spring 2003. If you know the Bush modus operandi, you know that this means that Cambone’s involvement with intelligence goes back to spring 2003 (but I’m sure he’s doing a heckuva job). He is a Rummy loyalist, pushing for Star Wars and the weaponization of space, and was last seen in public during the Abu Ghraib hearings (he’s the one behind sending the commandant of Guantanamo to Abu Ghraib to ramp up the process of intelligence-extraction).

Sloooow

Pity the poor blogger during a slow news week. I should be enjoying the respite from speeches by Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld on how splendidly the war in Iraq is going, but I find myself desperately looking for blog fodder in stories such as the theft of a cinnamon bun that looks like Mother Teresa


and contemplating the decline of upper-class education in Britain. A Greek magazine, reporting on claims by several Pakistanis to have been violently interrogated by MI6 in Greece after the July 7 London bombings, named MI6’s head of station in Greece. The Blair government ordered the British press not to report his name (he was hastily ordered home), despite the fact that anyone who reads Greek can, presumably, get if off the web. Someone once said that in order to be an English gentleman it was not necessary to know Greek (ok, it might have been Latin), but it was necessary to have forgotten it. I guess the days have passed when it was necessary to know Latin and Greek to administer the Raj.

(Update: Nicholas Langman.)

Russia and Ukraine seem to be on the brink of war over Russian attempts to raise the price it charges Ukraine for natural gas. Ukraine says if it does, they’ll increase the fees they charge Russia for use of the warm-water port of Sebastopol, and Russia responding that if that happens, it will no longer recognize the existing border. So that’s pretty exciting, isn’t it? Sigh. Let’s see that bun again.

He genuinely cares about these boys and so does Mrs. Bush

Russian investigators say that in fact absolutely no mistakes were committed in the Beslan school siege, in which well over 331 people (the official, non-credible count) died. So that’s all right then.

Meet Travis Greene, former Twin Falls, Idaho track star, corporal in the Marine Corps. Then:


Now:



They turned down Travis’s pain meds as he recovers between his numerous surgeries, so that George Bush (this picture was supplied to the media by the White House) could shake his hand, one of the few appendages left to him. Travis’s father says, “He genuinely cares about these boys and so does Mrs. Bush. ... They’re just genuine people.”

(via Holden)

Xmas in Fallujah

I was already pissed off at Rumsfeld for taking a victory lap around Fallujah, the town he had reduced to rubble and ruin, and that was before I read the transcript of his little “town hall meeting” performance there:

The Fallujah of not that long ago was a symbol of rejection of the new democratic Iraq. Difficult days lie ahead to be sure, but the Fallujah today has some of the highest voter registration and turnout rates in the country, has increasingly capable and competent Iraq security forces in the streets helping to maintain order and hunting down terrorists. Fallujah is a place where the old adage about the U.S. Marines certainly fits -- no better friend, no worse enemy.

Wow! Security forces in the streets hunting down terrorists, it sounds like very heaven!

Mostly, though, he seemed to forget where he was, occupying a bubble in the rubble, as it were (sounds like the Bush administration as described by Dr. Suess). He talked about how the US military is helping out in the aftermath of the Pakistani earthquake, where there were houses with roofs blown off and many homeless – hello! that's just what the US military did in Fallujah!

And in a city that has a curfew, entry controls with biometric identity cards, constant searches and raids, and I think the locals still aren’t allowed to drive cars, not to mention white phosphorus, he talked about the American/COW military keeping its “footprint” “not... so large and so intrusive as to antagonize a proud and patriotic people”. Talk to Fallujans about the size of the footprint on their necks.

Standards

The US military will no longer turn Iraqi prisoners over to Iraqi jailers, who must be no end of confused: we thought (they must be saying) that as Iraqi torturers stand up, American torturers would stand down, and come home to the honor and the secret shame and the less secret drinking they have earned. The US will not resume turning prisoners (and detention facilities) over until the Iraqis meet American “standards.” For example, said Maj. Gen John D. Gardner, they don’t wipe the electrodes off when transferring them from the genitals of one prisoner to those of another, and that’s just kinda gross. And for the naked human pyramids, you put the bigger prisoners at the bottom, for stability; it’s just common sense, said Gen. Gardner.

Speaking of setting the bar remarkably low, the Democrats, in their response to Bush’s radio weekly radio address, said that Americans deserve better than George Bush.