The News of the Not Fun

Guerilla News has a priceless commentary on the big vacuum where weapons of mass destruction were supposed to be in Iraq:

In the run-up to the war, every major daily and television network in the country parroted the White House’s asinine WMD claims for months on end, all but throwing their panties on stage the instant Colin Powell showed what appeared to be a grainy aerial picture of a pick-up truck to the U.N. Security Council.

Justice would seem to demand that a roughly equivalent amount of coverage be given to the truth, now that we know it (and we can officially call it the truth now, because even Bush admits it; previously the truth was just a gigantic, unendorsed pile of plainly obvious evidence). But that isn’t the way things work in America. We only cover things around the clock every day for four or five straight months when it’s fun.

O.J. was fun. Monica Lewinsky was fun. “America’s New War” was fun – there was a war at the end of that rainbow. But “We All Totally Fucked Up” is not fun. You can’t make a whole new set of TV graphics for “We All Totally Fucked Up.” There is no obvious location where Wolf Blitzer can do a somber, grimacing “We All Totally Fucked Up” live shot (above an “Operation We All Totally Fucked Up” bug in the corner of the screen). Hundreds of reporters cannot rush to stores to buy special khakis or rain slickers or Kevlar vests in preparation for “We All Totally Fucked Up.” They would have to wear their own clothes and stand, not in front of burning tanks or smashed Indonesian hovels, but in front of their own apartments.

The staff of Boring Diatribe are still here, standing in front of our houses, but our TV graphics say "We Told You So."

Destined for Gitmo

Really, these Knight-Ridder people are becoming quite intolerable:

Analysis: Iraqi insurgency growing larger, more effective

By Tom Lasseter and Jonathan S. Landay

Knight Ridder Newspapers

BAGHDAD, Iraq - The United States is steadily losing ground to the Iraqi insurgency, according to every key military yardstick.

A Knight Ridder analysis of U.S. government statistics shows that through all the major turning points that raised hopes of peace in Iraq, including the arrest of Saddam Hussein and the handover of sovereignty at the end of June, the insurgency, led mainly by Sunni Muslims, has become deadlier and more effective.

The analysis suggests that unless something dramatic changes - such as a newfound will by Iraqis to reject the insurgency or a large escalation of U.S. troop strength - the United States won't win the war. It's axiomatic among military thinkers that insurgencies are especially hard to defeat because the insurgents' goal isn't to win in a conventional sense but merely to survive until the will of the occupying power is sapped. Recent polls already suggest an erosion of support among Americans for the war.

One can only hope that a war based on a series of lies that's grinding up a generation of Americans, enticing our sons and daughters into torture, and sucking hundreds of billions of dollars out of the economy while slaughtering thousands of foreigners caught in the crossfire might generate a few tiny doubts in the public mind.

But not here. Here at Boring Diatribe, we say: Godspeed the Black Emperor. Next stop: Iran!

I, For One, Welcome Our New Theocratic Overlords.

From the day of our founding, we have proclaimed that every man and woman on this earth has rights, and dignity, and matchless value, because they bear the image of the maker of heaven and earth, [right up until we blow them into bloody fragements, being not in Our Sight.]
...
Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and, under the rule of a just God, [and His Annointed One, George W. Bush], cannot long retain it.
...
That edifice of character is built in families, supported by communities with standards, and sustained in our national life by the truths of Sinai, the Sermon on the Mount, the words of the Koran, and the varied faiths of our people [in God's Annointed One, George W. Bush]
...
Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as He wills, [and I'll let you know what His choices are.]
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History has an ebb and flow of justice, but history also has a visible direction, set by liberty and the Author of Liberty, [me, George W. Bush]
...
May God bless you, and may He watch over the United States of America, [because I can't be bothered.]

Equal Time

It's come to the attention of Boring Diatribe that Newtonian Physics is Just A Theory. We'd like to advance our own theory concerning the revolution of the Earth, and we'd like you to consider bringing our theory forward to your local school board and textbook suppliers, especially if you live in California or Texas.

It is our opinion that the Earth rotates due to the agency of a vast, tireless hamster, called Leviathan, which runs on the inner surface of the hollow planet. Like relativity and evolution, the Leviathan Theory of Motion is, itself, Just A Theory, and therefore on equal footing with all those other False Doctrines which so plague the minds of our schoolchildren.

Thirst for Freedom

Go read Baghdad Burning:

It's amazing how as things get worse, you begin to require less and less. We have a saying for that in Iraq, "Ili yishoof il mawt, yirdha bil iskhooneh." Which means, "If you see death, you settle for a fever." We've given up on democracy, security and even electricity. Just bring back the water.

Right wing morons, listen carefully. Lean in close. No, closer. I want you to be absolutely clear on what I'm about to say. Ready?

THE IRAQI PEOPLE ARE NOT BETTER OFF NOW THAT YOU'VE DESTROYED THEIR COUNTRY AND KILLED 100,000 OF THEM.

Freedom to starve or die of thirst isn't freedom. It's chaos. Like many others, sadly in the minority in this benighted country, I and the rest of the staff at Boring Diatribe knew Bushco was utterly corrupt and incompetent, and as capable of reforming a conquered nation as a gang of monkeys trying to construct the Taj Mahal. You'll end up with something at the end, but it's probably going to be a steaming pile of excrement.

All Hail

See, here's how democracy works: When you vote someone into office, from that moment forward you lose all voice in how that person makes decisions, and what decisions he makes. In fact, even if that person commits crimes, including treason, the only recourse you have is to vote that person out of office, because that's the only "accountability moment" that exists in a democracy. Get it?

Bush Says Election Ratified Iraq Policy
No U.S. Troop Withdrawal Date Is Set

By Jim VandeHei and Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writers
Sunday, January 16, 2005; Page A01

President Bush said the public's decision to reelect him was a ratification of his approach toward Iraq and that there was no reason to hold any administration officials accountable for mistakes or misjudgments in prewar planning or managing the violent aftermath.

"We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. "The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me."

All hail the Black Emperor, and his ex cathedra mandate from a slim majority of deeply deluded Americans that renders him immune from accountability from this moment on, since he cannot run for re-election. Or so I'd like to think. No decision is now open to question, no lie should be exposed, no hypocrisy uncovered, because THE PEOPLE HAVE SPOKEN. Got it? MAN-DATE! Now, shut up, stop writing your representatives, and pick up a gun. Them insurgents need repressin'. You don't like it? You get to say so in four years. Maybe. Unless Bush makes enough infallible decisions betwen now and then to render that question moot.

What A Surprise

Wow. No one but 20,000,000 antiwar protesters, and the staff of this blog, saw this one coming:

Iraq New Terror Breeding Ground
War Created Haven, CIA Advisers Report

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, January 14, 2005; Page A01

Iraq has replaced Afghanistan as the training ground for the next generation of "professionalized" terrorists, according to a report released yesterday by the National Intelligence Council, the CIA director's think tank.

Iraq provides terrorists with "a training ground, a recruitment ground, the opportunity for enhancing technical skills," said David B. Low, the national intelligence officer for transnational threats. "There is even, under the best scenario, over time, the likelihood that some of the jihadists who are not killed there will, in a sense, go home, wherever home is, and will therefore disperse to various other countries."Low's comments came during a rare briefing by the council on its new report on long-term global trends. It took a year to produce and includes the analysis of 1,000 U.S. and foreign experts. Within the 119-page report is an evaluation of Iraq's new role as a breeding ground for Islamic terrorists.

President Bush has frequently described the Iraq war as an integral part of U.S. efforts to combat terrorism. But the council's report suggests the conflict has also helped terrorists by creating a haven for them in the chaos of war.

"At the moment," NIC Chairman Robert L. Hutchings said, Iraq "is a magnet for international terrorist activity."

Before the U.S. invasion, the CIA said Saddam Hussein had only circumstantial ties with several al Qaeda members. Osama bin Laden rejected the idea of forming an alliance with Hussein and viewed him as an enemy of the jihadist movement because the Iraqi leader rejected radical Islamic ideals and ran a secular government.

Bush described the war in Iraq as a means to promote democracy in the Middle East. "A free Iraq can be a source of hope for all the Middle East," he said one month before the invasion. "Instead of threatening its neighbors and harboring terrorists, Iraq can be an example of progress and prosperity in a region that needs both."

But as instability in Iraq grew after the toppling of Hussein, and resentment toward the United States intensified in the Muslim world, hundreds of foreign terrorists flooded into Iraq across its unguarded borders. They found tons of unprotected weapons caches that, military officials say, they are now using against U.S. troops. Foreign terrorists are believed to make up a large portion of today's suicide bombers, and U.S. intelligence officials say these foreigners are forming tactical, ever-changing alliances with former Baathist fighters and other insurgents.

"The al-Qa'ida membership that was distinguished by having trained in Afghanistan will gradually dissipate, to be replaced in part by the dispersion of the experienced survivors of the conflict in Iraq," the report says.

According to the NIC report, Iraq has joined the list of conflicts -- including the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate, and independence movements in Chechnya, Kashmir, Mindanao in the Philippines, and southern Thailand -- that have deepened solidarity among Muslims and helped spread radical Islamic ideology.

At the same time, the report says that by 2020, al Qaeda "will be superseded" by other Islamic extremist groups that will merge with local separatist movements. Most terrorism experts say this is already well underway. The NIC says this kind of ever-morphing decentralized movement is much more difficult to uncover and defeat.

That's right kids, and, incidentally, all the morons out there who keep chanting "flypaper" every time another car explodes in Iraq -- Iraq's not a Roach Motel, it's a big petri dish, a happy breeding medium producing terrorists at a clip faster than even we supposed was possible.

Reality to warmongers: you blew it. Everything you wanted to accomplish is running like dust through your fumbling, incompetent hands. How about you get out of the way and let the adults have a go at cleaning up your appalling catastrophe?

The Gulag Archipelago

Fellow naturalized Vermonter Alexander Solzhenitsyn's metaphor for the Soviet Union's system of prisons becomes more resonant all the time:

Bush is now thinking of building jails abroad to hold suspects for life

The promise of imminent release for four British detainees held at the notorious US prison at Guantánamo Bay is obviously welcome, but it is only a tiny exception in the surge of bad news from the Bush team on the human rights front. The first few days of the new year have produced two shocking exposures already.

One is the revelation that the administration sees the US not just as a self-appointed global policeman, but also as the world’s prison warder. It is thinking of building jails in foreign countries, mainly ones with grim human rights records, to which it can secretly transfer detainees (unconvicted by any court) for the rest of their lives – a kind of global gulag beyond the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, or any other independent observers or lawyers.

The other horror is the light shone on the views of Alberto Gonzales, the White House nominee to be the chief law officer, the attorney general. At his Senate confirmation hearings last week he was revealed to be a man who not only refuses to rule out torture under any circumstances but also, in his capacity as White House counsel over the past few years, chaired several meetings at which specific interrogation techniques were discussed. As Edward Kennedy pointed out, and Gonzales did not deny, they included the threat of burial alive and water-boarding, under which the detainee is strapped to a board, forcibly pushed under water, wrapped in a wet towel, and made to believe he could drown.

Can't we just stamp out torturers instead of giving them jobs? Is that concept so fucking hard to understand?

The Free Market Succubus

For those with a taste for learned discussion on economics, we offer this essay on the free market as a legacy of Enlightenment Utopian thinking. An excerpt:

In the United States free markets have contributed to social breakdown on a scale unknown in any other developed country. Families are weaker in America than in any other country. At the same time, social order has been propped up by a policy of mass incarceration. No other advanced industrial country, aside from post-communist Russia, uses imprisonment as a means of social control on the scale of the United States. Free markets, the desolation of families and communities and the use of the sanctions of criminal law as a last recourse against social collapse go in tandem.

Free markets have also weakened or destroyed other institutions on which social cohesion depends in the US. They have generated a long economic boom from which the majority of Americans has hardly benefited. Levels of inequality in the United States resemble those of Latin American countries more than those of any European society. Yet such direct consequences of the free market have not weakened support for it. It remains the scared cow of American politics and has become identified with America's claim to be a model for a universal civilization. The Enlightenment project and the free market have become fatefully intertwined.

Ideology in conflict with reality will ultimately reap the whirlwind.

The author, John Gray:

John Gray is Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics. Prior to this he was Professor of Politics at Oxford University and Fellow of Jesus College, Oxford. He is a former supporter of the New Right, but has since revised his views, and now believes that the conventional political solutions of conservatism and social democracy are no longer viable. He is a regular contributor to the Guardian and the Times Literary Supplement and is the author of many books on political theory. He is married and lives in Oxford.

The entire article is worth the read.

No Weapons

Sometimes, an utter weariness washes over the entire staff of Boring Diatribe, rendering us incapable of even muttering "I told you so," when, once again, facts remind everyone that they're immutable. The irreducible fact in question is that highly sophisticated technologies, including weapons, require manufacturing facilitiies, raw materials, supporting infrastructure and vast expertise to bring them in to existence and maintain them once made. Other than the lingering expertise, it was painfully obvious to anyone with two neurons to rub together that Iraq, crushed into immobility and impotence by a decade of economic and political sanctions, was gradually sliding into a state of military readiness best characterized as "boards with nails". Military hardware left over from Iraq's bellicose heyday was disintegrating from lack of spare parts and the knowledge to use them, and Iraq's Maximum Leader was too enraptured by the false, glowing reports peddled to him by sycophantic underlings to understand that his scientists were spending more time figuring out how to stay alive than how to slaughter the enemy.

So, more than two years after witnesses to verbal Diatribes will attest that I said, "There's an inadequate industrial base to support the production of weapons of mass destruction. There are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq," a conclusion I came to, I'll remind everyone, at a cost in money and lives of exactly zero, merely by applying the commonly ignored strengths of Common Sense, the Washington Post makes it "official":

Search for Banned Arms In Iraq Ended Last Month
Critical September Report to Be Final Word

By Dafna Linzer
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 12, 2005; Page A01

The hunt for biological, chemical and nuclear weapons in Iraq has come to an end nearly two years after President Bush ordered U.S. troops to disarm Saddam Hussein. The top CIA weapons hunter is home, and analysts are back at Langley.

In interviews, officials who served with the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) said the violence in Iraq, coupled with a lack of new information, led them to fold up the effort shortly before Christmas.

President Bush, Vice President Cheney and other top administration officials asserted before the U.S. invasion in March 2003 that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, had chemical and biological weapons, and maintained links to al Qaeda affiliates to whom it might give such weapons to use against the United States.

Bush has expressed disappointment that no weapons or weapons programs were found, but the White House has been reluctant to call off the hunt, holding out the possibility that weapons were moved out of Iraq before the war or are well hidden somewhere inside the country. But the intelligence official said that possibility is very small.

Duelfer is back in Washington, finishing some addenda to his September report before it is reprinted.

"There's no particular news in them, just some odds and ends," the intelligence official said. The Government Printing Office will publish it in book form, the official said.

The CIA declined to authorize any official involved in the weapons search to speak on the record for this story. The intelligence official offered an authoritative account of the status of the hunt on the condition of anonymity. The agency did confirm that Duelfer is wrapping up his work and will not be replaced in Baghdad.

The ISG, established to search for weapons but now enmeshed in counterinsurgency work, remains under Pentagon command and is being led by Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Joseph McMenamin.

Intelligence officials said there is little left for the ISG to investigate because Duelfer's last report answered as many outstanding questions as possible. The ISG has interviewed every person it could find connected to programs that ended more than 10 years ago, and every suspected site within Iraq has been fully searched, or stripped bare by insurgents and thieves, according to several people involved in the weapons hunt.

Satellite photos show that entire facilities have been dismantled, possibly by scrap dealers who sold off parts and equipment to buyers around the world.

"The September 30 report is really pretty much the picture," the intelligence official said.

"We've talked to so many people that someone would have said something. We received nothing that contradicts the picture we've put forward. It's possible there is a supply someplace, but what is much more likely is that [as time goes by] we will find a greater substantiation of the picture that we've already put forward."

Congress allotted hundreds of millions of dollars for the weapons hunt, and there has been no public accounting of the money. A spokesman for the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency said the entire budget and the expenditures would remain classified.

Two years, one hundred thousand lives, $200 billion and counting, and all to produce a report of what I was sure of all along. I'm really looking forward to four more years of George Jr. working out his Oedipal conflicts with Poppy while using the rest of the world to wipe up the blood and pay the bills.

Let the Death Squads Begin Their Holy Work

Newsweek reports this new thinking, over at the Pentagram... er ... gon:

Now, NEWSWEEK has learned, the Pentagon is intensively debating an option that dates back to a still-secret strategy in the Reagan administration’s battle against the leftist guerrilla insurgency in El Salvador in the early 1980s. Then, faced with a losing war against Salvadoran rebels, the U.S. government funded or supported "nationalist" forces that allegedly included so-called death squads directed to hunt down and kill rebel leaders and sympathizers. Eventually the insurgency was quelled, and many U.S. conservatives consider the policy to have been a success—despite the deaths of innocent civilians and the subsequent Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages scandal. (Among the current administration officials who dealt with Central America back then is John Negroponte, who is today the U.S. ambassador to Iraq. Under Reagan, he was ambassador to Honduras.)

Following that model, one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions. It remains unclear, however, whether this would be a policy of assassination or so-called "snatch" operations, in which the targets are sent to secret facilities for interrogation. The current thinking is that while U.S. Special Forces would lead operations in, say, Syria, activities inside Iraq itself would be carried out by Iraqi paramilitaries, officials tell NEWSWEEK.

Why try half measures? I say, kill every single Iraqi, man woman and child. Wipe them, and the memory of them, from the face of the Earth. Only then will they be truly free.

Sarcasm aside, I don't agree with everything the current Pope, John Paul II proposes, but when he warned at Christmas of 2000 about a cuture of death this is the sort of thing he had in mind:

The pope said the world was confronted by "alarming signs of the culture of death which pose a serious threat for the future."

Sin, he said, was reflected in many of the problems that continue to mar humanity, including violence against women and children, the marginalisation of the young and elderly, and "endless streams of exiles and refugees."

The United States has already brought itself to very brink of the final abyss with its War on Terrorism. It's not going to be long before genocide starts to look like a reasonable response to the insurgency in Iraq. The United States has already lost more of its soul and its humanity than I care to tabulate. Before we become complete monsters, it's time to disengage from Iraq, stop affording Israel mindless support for all its doomed policies, and pull our troops from Saudi Arabia, rather than let another day go by when Americans act as a mercenary army to support a corrupt regime. We have enough problems of that kind at home. It's time to let the Middle East care for itself.

By the Numbers

Haven't seen this remark talked about too much:

IRAQ’S rapidly swelling insurgency numbers 200,000 fighters and active supporters and outnumbers the United States-led coalition forces, the head of the country’s intelligence service said yesterday.
...
“I think the resistance is bigger than the US military in Iraq. I think the resistance is more than 200,000 people,” General Muhammad Abdullah Shahwani, director of Iraq’s new intelligence services, said.
...
“People are fed up after two years without improvement,” he said. “People are fed up with no security, no electricity, people feel they have to do something. The army (dissolved by the American occupation authority) was hundreds of thousands. You’d expect some veterans would join with their relatives, each one has sons and brothers.”

I can't find a citation for the NPR report some weeks ago, but after the latest reports of poor electrical service and the inability of Iraqis to purchase gasoline (not kidding), I heard an Iraqi say something that was translated as "Under Saddam, we did not have such troubles."

When Iraqis are looking back on Saddam Husseins rule with nostalgia, the message is clear: Time to go.

The Bar

By the way, if anyone's wondering what my test is for supporting for re-election a Democrat currently serving on the Senate Judiciary Committee, including, especially including, my own Senator Patrick Leahy, it's the following: I'd need to see those Senators, individually or in a group, call a press conference and say, with regard to the Alberto Gonzales nomination to Attorney General:

"We're not going to vote to confirm for Attorney General any fucker who supports torture. And, furthermore, we regard any of our colleagues, Democratic or Republican, who do vote to confirm the appointment of Alberto Gonzales, as torture-supporting fuckers."

I mean, just in case anyone was wondering.

Desperation

If increasing levels of destruction and mayhem visited upon your enemy are a sure sign of desperation, the United States must be the most desperate nation on the planet. TAPPED has a good roundup of the assessed desperation of the insurgents in Iraq.

Public Service

For a number of years, there has been public discussion and description of the United States as the world's policeman. Hopefully, you've had little occasion to require the attentions of police officers in their professional capacity, but if you've ever been involved in a situation which evolved into a police matter, you know how other people react to their arrival.

Some people are frankly glad when police officers arrive, with the expectation that justice will be done, order restored, and miscreants restrained. Other people will be convinced that the police are bound to misunderstand the situation, play favorites, meet out arbitrary penalties and end by making a bad situation worse. The tension between these two extremes of expectation leads all involved parties to attempt to sway the opinion of officers to beliefs favorable to one side or another of a dispute. Officers must parse the situation and make the best judgment they can on the basis of imperfect information, relying on the later, cooler appraisal of a court, if necessary, to judge guilt or innnocence.

Consequently, the arrival of the police can be met with any of a range of emotional responses.

Now, contrast this tableau with the reaction greeting ambulance workers.
No one except the deranged believe that emergency medical technicians have any agenda other than to treat the sick and wounded, and do their best to make sure that lives and limbs of everyone are preserved. They're healers, and they are typically greeted with relief, offers of assistance, and hurried explanations of bystanders meaning to help:

The U.S. helicopters carried about 60 survivors — including two pregnant women and some so weak they could neither walk nor talk — to the Banda Aceh hospital after the American military got permission from Jakarta to pick up those in bad shape. Many had had little food or water for eight days, and they suffered from ailments including pneumonia, broken bones, infected wounds, tetanus and trauma.

Several also were brought to the USS Abraham Lincoln on stretchers.

"I'd much rather be doing this than fighting a war," said helicopter pilot Lt. Cmdr. William Whitsitt of Great Falls, Mont.

Also on Sumatra, U.S. helicopters dropped off cartons of food aid donated by Singapore schools. Flying missions along a 120-mile stretch of Sumatra coastline, the extent of the damage from the earthquake and tsunami became eerily obvious.

Like torture on the other end of the spectrum, aid to the victims of disaster is morally unambiguous. If the United States spent more time, effort and money trying to be the world's ambulance instead of the world's policeman, America and its policies would be a damn sight more popular and effective than they are.

The best defense is to make sure nobody WANTS to attack you. I'm going to go out on a limb and postulate that a United States that spent $200 billion to cure disease, house the homeless, stop the bleeding and feed the hungry would be a difficult enemy to recruit against, even among those who "hate freedom". Nobody hates the ambulance. Emergency workers aren't there to judge, they're there to help. It's time for this misguided country to seize the moment and do the same.

Whoopsie

Iraqi houses all look alike:

Jan. 8, 2005  |  BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- The United States military acknowledged dropping a 500-pound bomb on the wrong house outside the northern city of Mosul on Saturday, killing five people. But the man who owned the house said the bomb killed 14 people -- including seven children.

We must keep killing the Iraqis until they love us.

Questioning Gonzales

Since evidence gathered through torture is now admissible to military panels judging the status of detainees, I recommend to the Senate Judiciary committee that the post of Attorney General is too vital to the interest of national security to stop short of any method which may yield compelling testimony concerning the momentous decision of filling the vast, echoing shoes of departing Attorney General John Ashcroft.

Torture Alberto Gonzales. The American people must know the truth about this nominee, and only questioning under extreme duress can elicit responses on which we can rely.

Political Bankruptcy

It's hard to imagine how destitute your ideas must be if you have to pay your own supporters to talk up your policy proposals:

Amstrong Williams, a prominent conservative commentator who was a protégé of Senator Strom Thurmond and Justice Clarence Thomas of the Supreme Court, acknowledged yesterday that he was paid $240,000 by the Department of Education to promote its initiatives on his syndicated television program and to other African-Americans in the news media.

Can I just emphasize "conservative commentator"? This slimeball, who one might predict would support the policy proposals of a conservative president, STILL has to be paid a quarter million embezzled taxpayer dollars to furnish the propoganda the Bush administration needs to garner support for anything they do.

However, do I really believe Williams needed to be paid? No, I do not. This is merely one more instance of Republicans finding a way to make the friendly rich richer by looting the public coffers. So, who else is on the payroll? How many other "journalists" and "commentators" are richly compensated mouthpieces feeding at the trough of public money?

Couldn't we just eliminate the middleman? Here's my proposal for tax reform: we abolish the Federal income tax system, and instead, taxpayers each select 5 of the richest Americans from Forbes' annual list, and all citizens divide 50% of their income between the lucky winners.

Then the nation can depend on the public spirit and investment of these patriotic Americans to fund whatever public works seem advantageous to them.

What could go wrong?

How to Lose

Not that I think that the Americans can ever "win" (whatever that means) in Iraq, but do we really expect to garner allies when our soldiers are kicking down doors and screaming "Where's the guns, bitch?" at terrified Iraqi women whose command of English is, you know, doubtful? Here's James Wolcott's take on the Economist article.

We are so done in Iraq.