June 4, 2004, Fetch the stick! GOOD BOY!
Ayad Alawi (or, as I like to think of him, Ahmed Chalabi-LITE), the designated interim prime minister of the Iraqi... political entity... announced that U.S. and British troops should remain on Iraqi soil or... well, it would really suck if they left. Needless to say, this is an interesting day all around on the Iraq front. The U.S. made a deal with Baby Sadr's militias... again... to pull out of Najaf and Kufa. And the UN announced that the various war crimes being committed by American troops in Iraq are... war crimes (or "serious human rights violations" anyway). And most interestingly, while watching most of his office be hooked up to FBI lie detectors over just who gave Ahmed Chalabi-- a convicted criminal-- some of the most sensitive secrets our government had, Secretary Rumsfeld attempts to inoculate his continuing incompetence by announcing that Al Qaeda will be stepping up attacks in Iraq between now and fraudulent-sovereignty-transfer-day. What a day!
Loyal reader MAMayo sends along a wonderful quote from dog run member and famous pundit-blogger Josh Marshall:
"[B]eside the possibility that the White House's favored Iraqi exile was an Iranian agent, that the spy chief just got canned, that the OSD is wired to polygraphs, and that the president has had to retain outside counsel in the investigation into which members of his staff burned one of the country's own spies, I'd say the place is being run like a pretty well-oiled machine."
Well, Josh, given that both the Preznit AND Dick are both in the oil bidness (and, of course, STILL ARE), I would say the place has ALWAYS been run as a well-oiled (and doubtless well-greased) machine. Amazingly, even as the economy added another quarter million jobs in the last month and the financial markets showed some gains... everyone is too busy watching (and I suspect ENJOYING) the Bush Administation meltdown to pay any attention!
Oh, man... with all the candy and popcorn I'm downing watching this show, I hope I don't hurt my marathon training...
June 3, 2004, Iceberg, Ho!
What could possibly be coming up on the horizon to have led CIA George Tenet-- who took SO much shit and SO many bullets for the benefit of his jerk-off boss in the Oval Office-- to announce his resignation today (completely surprising said jerk-off boss)? Some speculation concerns the possibility of a rather vicious and scathing critique of Tenet on its way down the pike from the Senate Intelligence Committee.
I don't know; Tenet, as I have oft quipped, has gotten so used to eating shit thanks to Bush, that he has doubtless come to enjoy doing it. No, something bigger. I assure all that the President's decision to retain private counsel regarding Plamegate was a painful one: this is an election year, and this automatically raises the scandal stakes. He'd been ignoring the damned issue for almost a year, for God's sake... NOW it bites him... just 4 weeks before the big Iraq-sovereignty-transfer-fraud? Could it be Plame that's doing this? Yellowcake? How about some genius who gave Chalabi the keys to the kingdom so he could take them to an Iranian locksmith for copying? Death by a thousand cuts? Oh-- here's a possibility.
The veep sends in this little gem about Niaz Khan, an Al Qaeda "trainee" who contends he told the FBI about OBL's little plan to highjack planes and crash them into things, oh, a year or so before 9-11. I wonder if THAT'S what it is. You see? A rather specific plot-- doubtless Khan was trained for 9-11--- I mean, how many OBL's training suicidal murderers to crash airplanes into buildings in Afghanistan and Pakistan could there possibly be?
The thing with the CIA, of course, is that we may never actually REALLY know why Tenet is resigning. The "personal" reasons to "spend more time with his family", since he clearly wasn't fired, make this VERY interesting, the same week (allegedly non-related) the deputy director for operations will announce HIS resignation, and of course, Bush hires a lawyer for Plamegate and the Chalabi thing turned into the Rosenbergs (don't look, however, for any loyal Bushmen to take the appropriate fall for this-- let alone a harsh sentence).
In short-- the implosion is now moving into another level-- Act II, perhaps?
Pass the raisinets, please...
June 2, 2004, Is There No Code Among Convicted Embezzlers?
Someone really cynical might question if the Bush Administration might make getting to the bottom of today's revelations as seriously as it takes those pertaining to the outing of clandestine CIA operative Valerie Plame. Today's revelations are that someone high in that Bush Administration leaked unbelievably sensitive information to good old convicted embezzler, INC Chairman and former IGC member and American darling Ahmed Chalabi, who then leaked it to our old buddies in Iran. Oh alright-- I suppose it wasn't THAT sensitive-- merely that American intelligence had broken Iranian intelligence's transmission code. I mean why should WE care? I think it was digby who quipped "hey, who could have thought the Americans would figure out how to read Farsi backwards?".
Still, as the President lauds himself and anoints himself Roosevelt and Churchill rolled into one (though Stalin seems a bit more apt... or possibly Mussolini or Chiang Kai-Shek... or perhaps, Abbott and Costello-- they were ALSO big in that war, IIRC) trying to liken the current American military fiasco with World War II. Bush deleted Ike's use of the word "crusade"-- its so Les Miz you know-- though Bush DID fail to point out how wonderfully WWII would have gone had Ike and Wild Bill Donovan and Roosevelt and the rest all decided to do business with someone who told the Germans about that whole Enigma machine thing; then again, given how much business the Third Reich did with members of the Bush family, hey-- maybe they DID!!!
Even as the Bush Administration continues to flout our Constitution by telling us just how EEE-VILLL alleged dirty bomber suspect Jose Padilla is in an effort to eviscerate Constitutional protections to all citizens as part of its continuing power grab-- its entirely unnecessary. All the Bush Administration had to say is that (1) he has adopted an Arabic name-- that would probably end it right there, but (2) in any event, he is an HISPANIC Chicago based ex-gang-banger, whom no one will miss anyway-- and probably the majority of the American people would happily VOTE not to have the Bill of Rights apply to him (and while we're at it, anyone else the President in his clearly flawless judgment deems... "a enemy.")
Of course, its not like Padilla is, oh... 27th on our list of suspected terrorists, in which case the Bush Administration might arrange for him to be deported to Syria (alleged state sponsor of terrorism)-- Padilla's name isn't Nabil Al-Marabh, or it might have done just that. And certainly, its not like he's a member of the bin Laden family or other Saudi national directly tied to 9-11 highjackers... they would get to be escorted out of the country with the help of the FBI.
You see, if Ike taught us anything about the conduct of WWII, it was that consistency, intelligent planning, the rule of law, having allies, and having adequately trained and equipped troops all mean NOTHING-- when compared to the cocksure moral certainty and resolve of a fearless leader who walks around brandishing the defeated dictator's (unloaded) side-arm...
June 1, 2004, The Bush Administration AGAIN Weighs In to Protect the American People
The veep sends along this gem, care of CBS News, which re-played tapes of Enron traders rooting for forest fires in California, knowing that transmission lines would be effected, and as a result, California utilities and customers would have to pay that much more for Enron controlled electricity.
The Bush Administration (via the Justice Department) has fought tooth and nail to prevent these tapes (which document how Enron "stole" millions of dollars a day from California-- in their own parlance) from coming to light. The tapes will help West Coast utilities in their lawsuits against what's left of Enron and its principals, among them the still-unindicted-and-eventually-to-be-pardoned Kenny Boy Lay.
Now, you might say, that seems awfully suspicious for the government to have intervened on the side of a private party AGAINST the interests of a state government, when there is clearly no national security or other compelling national interest in the secrecy of these tapes. But there is, of course, an explanation: the language on the tapes sounds like "Barnacle Bill the Sailor".
I KNEW IT! There WAS a good reason after all! Once again-- the Bush Administration shows that whether it comes to the sensitivities of people traumatized by Janet Jackson's boobie, or those who might be horrified by the Abu Ghraib pictures (not because of their CONTENT mind you, but because they are... kinky)-- its priorities lie in protecting the American people-- from things that might offend our tender sensibilities (and those of our mythical children, whose college graduations we'll be skipping because, hey-- why couldn't they go to school in a SWING STATE?).
Or of course, its interest in protecting vulnerable bin Laden relatives from irritating and annoying questions, say, within 2 or 3 days of 9-11 (when they participated in the ONLY civilian flight permitted in American air space) just shows HOW sensitive the Bush Administration is to protecting people from having... their feelings hurt.
That is, of course, if those people it is protecting fall into its tri-partite "base": Saudi royals and others most likely to have planned and financed 9-11 itself (who WERE NOT QUESTIONED while we hold stupid schmucks picked up in AFghanistan or Iraq and torture them FOR YEARS without legal recourse), corporate criminals, like Ken Lay of course, and the religious base, i.e. mostly Southern, often rural, bigots and racists and blowhards.
The Bush Administration has been pretty straightforward about saying that the rest of us can go fuck ourselves-- or in the case of we in New York City, we can literally DIE-- at the hands of at least one or more of its constituencies, btw-- and Californians-- you can die too-- as far as the Bush Administration is concerned. But hey, we all know we kind of deserve it-- Janet's boobie and the salty language probably just didn't bother us enough. We're just not moral and decent enough to warrant the protections of our government. We know it...
May 31, 2004, Bush, Kerry Commemmorate Memorial Day
The Bushmen scoff at
Kerry's remarks. Their problem's
called democracy.
May 31, 2004,
May 31, 2004, IGC Delays Selection of President
Iraqi puppets
throw monkeywrench in the Bush
dog and pony show.
May 30, 2004, Saudi Commandos Free Hostages Held by Alleged Qaeda Gunmen
Saudi commandos
save sixty. Qaeda breaks rule:
don't shit where you eat.
May 30, 2004, Watergate Special Prosecutor Cox Dies at 92
Archibald Cox passed
away at 92. Man,
could we use him now.
May 29, 2004, European, Latin American Leaders Condemn US Iraq Torture; Latins throw in Cuba Policy
U.S. human rights
harpings at Cuba piss off
Latins says Pravda.
May 28, 2004, U.S. Releases 600 MORE Prisoners from Abu Ghraib
Just before our war of
aggression, Saddam also
emptied the prisons.
May 27, 2004, Its No Longer Ironic that We are OFF the UN Human Rights Committee
There once was fool from Kennebunkport,
For whom war and torture were the first resort,
He flushed our moral authority and power,
Made the rest of humanity sour,
And those we dare accuse of abuses now have quite the retort.
May 27, 2004, Coalition Troops Withdraw from Najaf
U.S. forces backed
off from Najaf. Baby Sadr
is at large. We win.
May 26, 2004, Seven A.Q. Suspects Sought By Ashcroft and Mueller
We may know who, what
how, where... maybe when, but it
still won't be our fault.
May 26, 2004, U.S. "Firm" On Maintaining Control of Troops In Iraq
June 30 transfer
can't be complete without our
actual control.
