Interesting analysis by the BBC’s Mohammed Hanif of Musharraf’s meandering televised speech last week.
The London Times op-ed editor asks for a new motto for Britain, in six words or less. Some of the replies so far (there are serious ones too, but sod that for a packet of crisps) (I think I just inadvertently coined my own entry):
“Sorry, is this the queue?”
“Full service will soon resume.”
“Yeah, but no, but, yeah.”
“No, please, after you, honestly.”
“That’s really most awfully kind.”
“At least we’re not French.”
“At least we’re not American.”
“Americans who missed the boat.”
“Yer’ve got to larf, aintcha?”
“Hanging on in quiet desperation.”
“Britain: it sucks a bit.”
“Once mighty empire, slightly used.”
“Mind the gap.”
“Is Princess Di still dead?”
“Bond. James Bond.”
“Fancy a cup of tea?”
“Come for the Weather, Stay for the Dentistry (and the cooking).”
“Lie back and think of England.”
“The game is afoot, Watson!”
“Don’t mention the war.”
“I have a cunning plan.”
The last 4 I just made up.
Update: checking back a day later, I find only one new one worth mentioning: “An island in a teacup.” And I have two more of my own:
“Mrs Peel – we’re needed.” “Ying tong iddle i po.”
This humble blog hasn’t been noticed by the right-wing of the blogosphere in a long time, but my post Thursday with all the pictures of Bush and the wounded soldiers has been, and gosh they don’t much like it. We can talk about them here without fear of discovery, by the way, because I notice that when they click over from, say, Jules Crittenden’s blog, not one of them reads anything besides the linked post (zero out of 66 so far), such is their intellectual curiosity. And yet, as is indicated by their comments on that post and in other right-wing blogs, chat groups and whatnot, they think they know from that single post, which mostly consisted of pictures, everything there is to know about me – not just that I’m a sick seditious bastard, a hate-filled moron with no honor who should leave the country, etcetera, but also that I personally know no one in the military, have never met a wounded veteran, am mocking the injured soldiers, and wouldn’t recognize the “You can’t handle the truth” speech from A Few Good Men.
They also insist that Bush really does care. In a previous visit to the same facility in January 2006, Bush happily joked about how he had injuries of his own, a minor scratch on his forehead sustained “in combat with a Cedar.”
The post I wrote at the time would have been a lot angrier, but I only learned later that he had just come from the amputee ward.
A Beijing restaurant with an old-style-communist theme (wait staff in People’s Liberation Army uniforms etc) has been ordered by the local commerce bureau to remove a sign saying “liberation zone” pointing to the bathrooms. The bureau called the sign a “malicious satire detrimental to culture.”
By a curious coincidence, I’ve always thought of this blog as both a liberation zone and a malicious satire detrimental to culture. Does that mean this blog is also a bathroom sign?
Benazir Bhutto is being held under house arrest, but only “for her own security.” So that’s okay, then. (Update: she’s been released.)
Holy Joe Lieberman waxes nostalgic: “The Democratic party I grew up in was unafraid to make moral judgements about the world beyond our borders.” Good times, good times. Democrats today, however, “are viscerally opposed to the use of force – the polar opposite to the self-confident and idealistic nationalism of the party I grew up in.” So idealistic nationalism = the use of force. And how is that different from jingoistic thuggery?
The White House is having its annual Thanksgiving contest, in which the two turkeys to be spared the ax are named by the great American public. The choices offered by the White House this year are less creative than ever: Wing & Prayer, May & Flower, Gobbler & Rafter (Rafter?) (evidently a flock of turkeys is called a rafter), Wish & Bone, Truman & Sixty (the pardon-the-turkey thing was initiated by Truman 60 years ago, when I believe the turkeys were named Hiroshima & Nagasaki), or Jake & Tom. Surely we can do better. I declare this a CONTEST and open with my own entry: Water & Board.
Job change of the day: the British minister for defense equipment and support Paul Drayson, 47 (that’s Lord Drayson to the likes of you), resigned in order to compete in the 24 Hours of Le Mans race.
Headline of the day: “Man Punches Trick-or-Treat Boy, 8.” Well, to be fair, that does pretty much constitute a trick, now doesn’t it?
An email from the Giuliani campaign says that “[Pat] Robertson’s endorsement shows that Rudy is the candidate who brings Americans together from all walks of life”. Really? How does it show that? And doesn’t Robertson think that Americans from all walks of life, except the precise one he dictates, are going to hell?
Just yesterday, Bush said (two posts back), “I’ve committed our troops into harm’s way twice, and it’s not a pleasant experience because I understand the consequences firsthand.” Today he went to an army medical facility and met some people who actually do understand the consequences of his decisions firsthand. Warning: graphic pictures of the consequences of Bush’s decisions.
Update: the White House website has five pictures of the visit. One is similar to my second picture above, one is just Bush giving his prepared remarks, and the remaining three are these rather tame pics:
Update to the update: it seems that Bush also played virtual reality games with the recovering soldiers, including a shoot-em-up set in Baghdad. See? He really does appreciate the consequences of war firsthand.
Asked if Franco-American relations have been changed by Sarkozy replacing Chirac, he explained very carefully, and with OTHER WORDS, that despite both of them being, you know, French and shit, they’re actually different people: “In the sense that every individual matters. In other words, I’ve dealt with a lot of foreign leaders, and some -- and each person brings their own set of personalities and values.” Thank you for that deep psychological insight into the human condition, George.
Sarkozy, he said, is “like me, he wants to solve problems: Here is a problem; let’s go solve it.”
“And I can’t thank President Sarkozy enough for sending the foreign minister to Baghdad, which basically said, we want to help you survive.” Asked about the imminence of war with Iran: “I don’t know where you’re getting all these rumors -- there must be some weird things going on in Europe these days”. In Europe? Mais non!
But what happens, he is asked, “if the sanctions and the threats do not work”. “I’m not so sure I agree with your hypothesis, that ‘if they don’t work.’ I’m the kind of guy that says, let’s make sure they do work.”
Asked if removing the counter-weight of a strong Iraq didn’t vastly increase Iran’s power, he took a deep hit off his crack-pipe and said, “I think that, ultimately, they’re going to feel pressure about the type of government they have when their people look across the border and see a flourishing, free society.”
He said that he’d finally talked to Musharraf. “And my message was that we believe strongly in elections, and that you ought to have elections soon, and you need to take off your uniform.” As Eli of LeftI points out, he evidently didn’t suggest that Musharraf end martial law, restore the Constitution, the Supreme Court, freedom of the press, release political prisoners, etc etc. Just the naked elections. Asked by a French reporter about the Iraqi quagmire, Bush once again pulled out his trusty crack-pipe, inhaled deeply, and replied, “I don’t -- you know, ‘quagmire’ is an interesting word.” Adding, “and have you ever looked at your hands, I mean really looked at them?” Okay, what he really said, which is significantly more batshit out-of-his-head-loco, was, “If you lived in Iraq and had lived under a tyranny, you’d be saying, god, I love freedom -- because that’s what’s happened.”
He denied that his threats against Iran are responsible for the price of oil, insisting, “I believe oil prices are going up because the demand for oil outstrips the supply for oil.” He’s an MBA, you know.
Addressing the Iranians, he explained that he was just looking for someone to talk to who isn’t, you know, crazy: “we will work together to try to find if there’s not rational people inside your government who are tired of isolation and who believe there’s a better way forward.”
MAYBE A LITTLE TOO COMFORTABLE: “And so when you ask, am I comfortable with the Sarkozy government sending messages -- you bet I’m comfortable.”
Friday, you’ll remember, Dick Cheney referred to Hugo Chavez as leading Peru. Chavez responds that this shows that the US is run by “a bunch of ignorant fools.” And your point is?
French President Sarkozy addresses the US Congress, says, “We love America,” mutters under his breath, “It’s just the damned Americans we detest.”
They ask if the “nuclear threat” posed by Iran now, with its complete lack of nuclear weapons, is greater or less than the threat Iraq, with its complete lack of weapons of mass destructed, posed 6 years ago. Bush responded with his characteristic command of verb tenses: “I think they were both dangerous. I think both of them could have been solved diplomatically. ... And I think they’re both dangerous. And I think therefore the lesson of Iraq is that we can work together and solve questions peacefully now.” See, and you didn’t think he’d learned the lesson of Iraq.
“And hopefully we can and hopefully we can keep pressure on the Iranians to say, one, we respect your people; two, we respect your history; but your government is making decisions that are isolating your country.” We can keep pressure on them by respecting their people and history?
Was he serious about the World War III line? “Oh, absolutely serious. I said, if you want to avoid World War III. I didn’t say I’m for World War III.” You didn’t have to say it. “If you want to see World War III, you know, a way to do that is to attack Israel with a nuclear weapon.” How many nuclear weapons would you recommend?
“In other words, I -- I’ve committed our troops into harm’s way twice, and it’s not a pleasant experience because I understand the consequences firsthand.” Well okay, secondhand. Okay, thirdhand... “And so I owe it to the American people to say that I’ve tried to solve this problem diplomatically.” Yes, saying that is the very least you can do.
On Putin: “My hope, of course, is I’ve tried to work with him as best as I can...” As best as you can, that’s the problem. “...to understand the checks and balances. And democracy requires a certain balance in society. And I would hope that he would make decisions that enhanced institutional reform, enhanced the institutions necessary for a free society. As I say, sometimes he listens, sometimes he doesn’t.” Note that by “listens,” he means “does what I tell him to do.” It’s a truly arrogant choice of word.
He is fascinated by the differences between Germany and America. Did you know they speak German instead of American over there? “[T]hat’s an interesting difference between, say, Germany and America. We’ve been attacked. We feel like another attack is coming”. The interviewer reminded him that Germans had some concept of what the fear of being attacked is like, with the Cold War and the Iron Curtain and all.
Asked what his legacy will be: “And that I helped this country protect itself, and at the same time was unashamed, unabashed at spreading certain values to others -- the main one being liberty, whether it be the freedom from forms of government or the freedom from disease and hunger.” Freedom from forms of government? I knew he was secretly an anarchist, I knew it.
Campaigning at a Christian adoption agency across the street from Bob Jones University, Mitt Romney said he wants to require clinics to provide information on adoption to women who are there for abortions, whether they want it or not. He also wants to require all adoption agencies to offer information on abortions.
Today Bush held a White House Forum on International Trade and Investment. I won’t leave you in suspense: he’s in favor of it. “We want people eating product grown here in the United States of America. That’s what we want.” I wish he wouldn’t speak so appetizingly; I have to skip product lunch today.
UNDERSTAND? “As I understand it, you understand how trade benefits this nation. ... You understand what I understand: Free and fair trade means higher paying jobs for American workers.”
HE’S THE UNDERSTANDER: “When a job goes overseas, some family hurts in America, and I understand that.”
He pushed for passage of various trade agreements. And remember, Congress, if you’re not with us, you’re with the false populists: “Champions of false populism in the region are watching Congress -- they will use any failure to approve these trade agreements as evidence that America will never treat democracies in the region as full partners.” (If it’s not clear, Hugo Chavez is the “false populist.”)
HE’S GOT AN MBA, YOU KNOW: “And when people compete for the dollar, it means somebody is going to get a better price.”
Last month I mentioned a lawsuit by some workers on a Dole banana plantation in Nicaragua sterilized by a Dow Chemical pesticide (which it seems Dow tried to pull from the market because of its dangerousness, but Dole threatened to sue Dow for breach of contract). Six of the workers won their case in a Los Angeles court. They’ve been awarded an initial $3.2 million, with more to come if the jury believes that Dole acted maliciously when it, for example, decided that informing workers about the pesticide in their own language was “not operationally feasible and does not need to be implemented.” A lawyer for Dow tried to tell the jurors (before the judge stopped him) that Nicaraguans deserve lower compensation for sterilization because they are of less value than members of other nationalities, suggesting the jurors “take into account their society and where they live,” assessing damages “in the context of their world and their society.”
Speaking of agribusiness, here is another convincing, to me at least, George Monbiot article on how “Biofuels could kill more people than the Iraq war.”
So there was no Daily Show tonight because the writers are striking against not being paid when the news satire they write is accessed on new media like a computer screen, just as if they were lowly, lowly bloggers.
Today Bush met with Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan.
Bush’s word of the day was “people”: “In order to chase down people [PKK] who murder people [non-PKK, I assume] you need good intelligence.” “people [PKK] who are using murder as a weapon to achieve political objectives”. “he has constantly talked to my government about seeing if we can’t work together to get these people [Turkish soldiers captured by the PKK] released. And the point I bring up is that there is at least one effective measure for people in Turkey [I believe “Turks” is the word you’re looking for, George] to see that when we work together we can accomplish important objectives.” “We need to know where people [PKK, the hidden ones] are hiding.” “I’ve assured the Prime Minister that we’re working very carefully and closely with people in the Kurdish part of Iraq [Kurds?] to help deal with the movement of these people [PKK, the moving ones]”.
Bush also made good use of the word hypothetical to avoid answering questions. How would he react to a Turkish incursion into Iraq? “I don’t like to answer hypothetical questions.” And if Musharraf refuses to do what Bush asks (but not in person; Bush still hasn’t talked to Mush), will he cut US aid to Pakistan? “Once again, it’s a hypothetical question.”
Why does he so hate to talk hypothetically? He’s just not very good with verb tenses. “Previous to his decision we made it clear that these emergency measures were -- would undermine democracy.” “As I said earlier in my statement, that we made it clear to the President that we would hope he wouldn’t have declared the emergency powers he declared.” Phfew.
Y’ALL HURRY BACK NOW: “Now that he’s made that decision, I hope now that he hurry back to elections.” As I said, not so good with the verb tenses.
He does offer one great prospect for the Pakistani people: naked elections: “we expect there to be elections as soon as possible, and that the President should remove his military uniform.”
Here’s as close as he came to answering the question about cutting aid to Pakistan: “I certainly hope he does take my advice... And so that’s -- all we can do is continue to work with the President, as well as others in the Pak government, to make it abundantly clear the position of the United States. And then obviously we’ll deal with it if something other than that happens.”
Much of the talk with Erdogan was of course about the PKK. Bush repeatedly talked about the need to share intelligence, which... oh, insert your own joke here, it’s just too easy.
Erdogan doubtless recognized all this intel joke as a stall. “But what we did talk about is to make sure that there is good enough intelligence so that we can help deal with a common problem... And we need to know, in any of these actions, who they are and where they are, in order to make any strategy effective. And therefore, step one is to make sure that our intelligence-sharing is good. The problem oftentimes is that faulty intelligence means that we can’t solve the problem.” So what do we need, oh pointy-haired Dilbert boss? “Good, sound intelligence delivered on a real-time basis, using modern technology”.
NO, REALLY, HIS ACTUAL JOB TITLE IS “NUMBER MAN”: “I have set up a tripartite arrangement, for his number two man in the military to stay in touch with our number man and General Petraeus.”
He also discussed with Erdogan some of the other issues there am between the US and Turkey: “We understand there’s transit issues in airports; we understand that there is issues with money.”
Pakistan’s irony information minister, justifying the crackdown on anti-coup protesters: “If people take the law into their [own] hands, obviously, they have to be dealt with”.
Actually, a minister of irony would be a great idea.
My favorite new crime: highway truffle robbery. Dennis Moore, Dennis Moore, riding through the land...
Arlen Specter will also vote for Mukasey. No surprise there, huh? Says Mukasey assured him privately that if there were a law against waterboarding, Bush would have to abide by it. So clearly that law should be passed – and signed into law – before the confirmation process goes any further.
State Dept Legal Advisor John Bellinger also refuses to rule out waterboarding. Indeed, it’s okay by him if foreign secret services use it on Americans.
Pakistan’s military has usually defended its coups as necessary to fight corruption or chaos or corruption of their precious bodily fluids or whatever, but Mush’s latest coup is clearly about nothing other than his own personal grip on power. The reputation of the military cannot but suffer from being associated with it. Yet I haven’t heard of any dissent at all within the military’s ranks, any reluctance to follow Musharraf’s orders.
By the way, I’ve created a new label for posts about Musharraf, dating back to 1999. Somewhere along the way, the usual spelling of his name gained an R.
Condi speaks to the press again. It’s kind of fun just for the awkward verbal contortions.
For example, she hasn’t decided exactly what to call that thing Musharraf did – coup? martial law? – so she does as generic as she can, “the action that was taken”: “we don’t support the action that was taken because it was extra-constitutional”. Literally: Musharraf issued an entirely new constitution, an “extra” constitution if you will, and then fired the seven Supreme Court justices who refused to ratify it.
She repeatedly refers to a “democratic path” or a “constitutional path,” which is a way of suggesting that something democratic has been occurring in Pakistan while ignoring the absence of any actual, you know, democracy, and of obscuring the fact that any political processes, far from being democratic, have been entirely the result of the will of Pakistan’s military ruler. She is wistful about her illusions: “Because if you get back on a constitutional path, then you can imagine the continued process towards elections, and so, that’s what we’ve been concentrating on.” All she wants is just to be able to imagine continued progress towards phantasmagorical elections.
But of course none of this will affect American support of the Musharraf regime because of our alliterative “continuing counterterrorism concerns.” Indeed, she can’t picture anyone in the US not likewise prioritizing those c.c.c.’s over democracy or the human rights of Pakistanis: “But I would be very surprised if anyone wants the President to ignore or set aside our concerns about terrorism and protecting the American people.”
Here is the key cowardly quote (if I too may alliterate), in which Condi cannot bring herself to criticize Mush personally for his actions:
Q: Are you disappointed in him?
RICE: I’m disappointed at this decision, sure.
(Update: just to show her language was not casually chosen, she repeated it in a Fox interview:
Q: Do we still support President Musharraf?
RICE: Well, clearly, we don’t support the actions he has taken. ...
Q: But you can’t say whether we still support Musharraf at this point?
RICE: Well, I don’t want to personalize this. This is about an action that has been taken. And the action is not supportable.
Not personalize this? Isn’t a coup by a military ruler just a little bit, you know, personal?)
For some reason, the quality of transcripts on the State Dept website is often suckier than those on other government sites, and yet, somehow, that very suckiness reveals deeper truths, as in today’s press briefing by Condi and Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni:
Condi: And I look forward to working to try to advance (inaudible) bilaterally with the Palestinians
Condi: I just want to repeat that the United States does not support a (inaudible) Pakistani leadership prior to the faction, that it would not support extra (inaudible).
Gen. Musharraf of Pakistan has once again suspended the constitution, arrested his opponents (except for Benazir Bhutto, who made a triumphal return to Pakistan after years of exile a few days ago and then, evidently, just left again; she is now supposedly on her way back), fired (and arrested) most of the Supreme Court, shut down opposition radio & tv stations, telephones, etc etc. But he did it in order to “preserve the democratic transition I initiated 8 years ago.” So that’s all right, then.
(Pardon the paucity of links, by the way; I’m cutting & pasting from all over. My favorite headline, though, from the Times of India: “Mush Blames Terror, Judiciary for Emergency.”)
“Pakistan is on the verge of destabilization!” he warned. Which makes the interesting assumption that a coup is the opposite of destabilization.
He said that “Pakistan’s sovereignty is in danger unless timely action is taken.” Which makes the interesting assumption etcetera.
He said he literally had no other choice. “Inaction at this moment is suicide for Pakistan and I cannot allow this country to commit suicide.”
He said he’s like Lincoln, who “usurped rights to preserve the union.” Yes, he’s just like Abraham Lincoln.
The last 3½ minutes of his 45-minute televised address were in English:
He asked for patience from the international community because “we are learning democracy.”
Mush discussed this step with his advisors on Wednesday, according to the WaPo, so the US knew in advance, since some of those advisors are certainly on the CIA payroll and the NSA listens to their phone conversations.
But Condi refused to say whether Musharraf (with whom she’s spoken several times this week) had warned her he’d be doing this, although it’s pretty clear that he did, which makes the US complicit. She said, “I’m not going to characterize how the conversations went, but we were clear that we did not support it. We were clear that we didn’t support it because it would take Pakistan away from a path of civilian rule, the democratic path -- by the way, a path that President Musharraf himself has done a lot to prepare [Ed.: hah!], and that it was absolutely essential that those elections be held.” In other words, if he holds Potemkin parliamentary elections, we’ll pretend they’re democratic, which they cannot be under these circumstances. Condi says she had told him in one of those conversations, “even if something happens, that we would expect the democratic elections to take place.” Coup + elections = good enough for us.
Indeed, this entire crisis came about because Musharraf insisted on running for president without giving up his position as army chief, in violation of the Constitution, as the Supreme Court was about to rule (Mush accused it of “creating hurdles for democracy”). The source of his authority lies solely in his monopoly of military power, not from the vaguely democratic-appearing processes he cobbled together to give him the title of president.
Condi also warned the Pakistani people not to resist the coup, or at least that’s how I interpret this sentence, in a CNN interview: “There really should not be violence, there should not be activity that will disturb calm, because it’s a difficult time for Pakistan.”
Pentagon spokesmodel Geoff Morrell says that “At this point, the declaration does not impact our military support for Pakistan’s efforts in the war on terror,” adding that Pakistan is “a very important ally in the war on terror”.
Bush has said nothing in public, either before the coup or since, and if he’s talked to Musharraf in the last few days, as Condi has done several times (and Adm. Fallon of CentCom met with him in person Friday), no one is mentioning the fact. Funny, that.
In his weekly radio address, Bush demanded the confirmation of Mukasey, which is evidently important in “this time of war,” a phrase he used three times. He repeated the Mukasey Catch 22, saying the Senate shouldn’t make his confirmation conditional on his expressing an opinion on waterboarding because he can’t be briefed on waterboarding unless he’s confirmed because... er, why can’t he be briefed unless he’s confirmed?
Bush says that Mukasey has been “praised by Republicans and Democrats alike for his honesty, intellect, fairness, and independence.”
One of those Republocrats, Dianne Feinstein, did so in the LAT today, carefully explaining the reason she will vote to confirm him: “Judge Mukasey is not Alberto R. Gonzales.” Okay, I could make fun of that sentence all day, that would be setting my bar as low as she has set hers, and that will not do.
She also hangs her hat on Mukasey’s “personal repugnance” for waterboarding, which is completely irrelevant. He may feel personal repugnance for abortions, as Gonzales and Ashcroft certainly did, but his job is to enforce the, you know, law.
She goes on: “I believe that Judge Mukasey is the best nominee we are going to get from this administration...” Say what you will about Bush’s entitled stubbornness, but with supine senators like DiFi, it works. “...and that voting him down would only perpetuate acting and recess appointments, allowing the White House to avoid the transparency that confirmation hearings provide...” For example the confirmation hearings at which Mukasey refused to say whether waterboarding is illegal? “...and to diminish effective oversight by Congress.” I assume that’s a joke of some sort.
Bush went to South Carolina today to give a speech at the Basic Combat Training Graduation Ceremony at Fort Jackson. He was met at the airport by 1st Lt. Andrew Kinard, who just returned to SC himself after nearly a year in the hospital.
Bush does not seem to have invited Lt. Kinard to come along with him to Fort Jackson. Funny, that.
Bush had a good reason to go to Fort Jackson. “I’m pleased to be here with you and to have a chance to say: ‘Hoo-ah!’” It was the most sensible thing he said.
IN OTHER OSAMA BIN LADEN WORDS: “Osama bin Laden -- who has to hide in caves because the United States is on his tail understands, has said publicly that al Qaeda’s recent setbacks are mistakes -- the result of mistakes that al Qaeda has made. In other words, he recognizes the inevitable -- that the United States of America and those who long for peace in Iraq, the Iraqi citizens, will not tolerate thugs and killers in their midst.”
Bush has irrefutable proof that we are winning in Iraq: “Here’s what this progress means to one shopkeeper in the former al Qaeda stronghold of Arab Jabour. He’s a local butcher. He says that as recently as June, he was selling only one or two sheep per week. Now, the terrorists cleaned out and residents returning home, he’s selling one or two sheep per day.” Wow! This war has been totally worth it!
GEORGE KNOWS WHAT’S IN OUR INTEREST: “It’s in our interest we deny safe haven to killers who at one time killed us in America.”
Dick Cheney was also out and about today, giving a speech to the World Affairs Council of Dallas/Fort Worth. He quoted that John Nance Garner line about the vice presidency not being worth a bucket of warm spit, but said “I guess they didn’t have Air Force Two back then.” What’s he saying? The vice presidency isn’t worth an Air Force Two of warm spit? Air Force Two is one giant spittoon? I don’t get it.
He praised the American Imperium: “As much as a nation of influence, we are a nation of character. And that sets us apart from so many of the great powers of history -- from ancient empires to the expansionist regimes of the last century. We’re a superpower that has moral commitments and ideals that we not only proclaim, but act upon. Our purposes in this world are good and right.” Right, we’re nothing like any of the previous empires, none of which ever said exactly the same things about themselves.
Asked whether American interest in the Middle East had anything to do with oil, he said the fact that we invaded Afghanistan, which has no oil, proves that we didn’t go into the Middle East because of oil. Quod erat demonstrandum.
He later denied the possibility or value of the US becoming energy-independent, saying, “it would be, I think, unreasonable to expect that we would not be integrated with the rest of the world’s economy where energy is consumed.” “Integrated.” Such a nice word for it.
Asked a question about Hugo Chavez of Venezuela (which is how the questioner phrased it), he said, “My own personal view is that he does not represent the future of Latin America, and the people of Peru I think deserve better in their leadership.” Don’t we all. Don’t we all.
Condoleezza Rice, in Turkey, says the PKK (Kurdish Workers’ Party) is a “common enemy” of Turkey and the US.
How will we deal with this common enemy? Condi has a cunning plan: “And the United States is committing to -- committed to redoubling those efforts because we need a comprehensive approach to this problem.” I’m sure that’ll do it.
However, she warns, it won’t be so easy, even with all the comprehensiveness and redoubling: “I want to repeat that all across the world, we’re seeing that it is not easy to root out terrorists who hide in remote areas and hide in villages.” This is evidently news to Condi.
