Category: Politics

Don’t you just hate it when a blow-hard bigot like Buchanan [corrected – thanks Paul] is simply right – and eloquently so – as he is here on The meaning of Fallujah? Fortunately he is irrepressibly WRONG in many other ways elsewhere on his site, so my feelings of cognitive dissonance aren’t too severe….

I just finished reading P. W. Singer’s fascinating article Warriors for hire in Iraq, and the follow-up piece Outsourcing the war. I strongly recommend that you take a look at both of them.
One particular paragraph caused me to look twice in disbelief:
Each firm determines its own standards and procedures, and there is no formal regulation or even an industry self-regulatory mechanism to establish them or to police and punish those who fall below standards. While the best firms will blackball rogue or incapable employees, the industry has grown so huge and the clients remain so clueless that such tagging offers minimal recourse. For instance, industry insiders could only shake their heads when one firm invited CNN “Crossfire” talk-show host Tucker Carlson to ride along on a mission into Iraq. Not only did the firm’s personnel give the conservative pundit an AK-47 to wield in the middle of a volatile war zone, but when they needed gas, Carlson and crew took over an Iraqi gas station by holding local civilians waiting in line at gunpoint. (One hopes he wasn’t wearing his trademark bowtie, which would have only added to the local insult.) Carlson described the incident with proud delight in Esquire magazine, apparently not understanding the multiple industry sins that had been committed.
Hmmm. This is CNN, not Fox. I wonder if CNN has any comments on this kind of behaviour by their “journalists”. I shall ask them.

Today’s leader (that’s “editorial” for you Americans) in the Guardian begins as follows:
Shortly before being elected US president, George Bush wasn’t able to name the president of Pakistan when asked in a televised interview. Yet, according to his national security advisor Condoleezza Rice, in the months leading up to September 11, President Bush was fully briefed and supported a detailed plan to help General Musharraf cut off support to al-Qaida in Afghanistan. As Groucho Marx once asked: “Who do you believe – me, or the evidence of your own eyes?”
Precisely.

My last post about Iraq might have given the wrong impression about the troops over there. Just because things are fraying at the edges doesn’t mean everybody’s cracked. I’ve been reading A View from a Broad to get a soldier’s perspective. Most eye-opening comment: about the poor XXXXXXXXX troops:
If you want to take some of the time and attention you’ve been giving to me, you might want to think about the XXXXXXXXX soldiers who provided help, support, and first aid to our lost soldier. They have been stranded here without pay for six months, and lack even phone cards to call home to rectify the situation. They helped a dying man at the scene of the accident, and now it would be nice to return the favor. Some of the toiletries various people have been nice enough to send will be going to them.
Edited: The original poster has just deleted the nationalities of the soldiers involved for “security reasons. I’ll do the same, although deleting stuff from the web is a pointless exercise.

This afternoon my wife was sitting in her doctor’s waiting room. She was reading Richard Clarke’s Against All Enemies; the only other patient, a man, was reading Ron Suskind’s book on Paul O’Neill, The Price of Loyalty. They started talking, and the man said that he was reading the book because a friend had told him to do so, saying [approximately] “I voted for Bush last time, but after reading this I could never vote for him again.” My wife asked if the book was having the same effect on him. “Yes,” he replied, “we knew that Bush wasn’t very smart, but we didn’t realise that he didn’t care.”

Watching the news about what’s happening in Iraq, I am struck by two things: they only talk about the number of Americans killed (or perhaps “Coalition forces”), and they do not even try to answer the question “Why now?” There are fatuous references to the weather, as though we were talking about a bunch of crips in the ‘hood on a hot summer night. Why? In the grand scheme of things, I am not surprised, and I want to say “I told you so”, but even so…. Why?
I turn to Salon, and read Andrew Cockburn’s piece. It reminds us of history, of how things unfolded just like this in 1920, and it mentions the unmentionable: the way some American troops are turning on the civilian population, robbing them during searches, the naive young men and women brutalized by their situation, just like in Vietnam.
But why now? Ask the Iraqis. I have an Iraqi colleague at work who insists, angrily, that things are not as bad as they seem, but his perspective seems distorted. So I turn to Baghdad Burning, and read what River has posted from the city itself. If you care about what’s happening over there, you should read her journal.
Continue reading “Understanding Iraq”

So another multi-million dollar trial collapses because of a mistrial related to the jury system. Can anyone give me any good reason – other than “tradition” [cue Fiddler On The Roof music] – for requiring unanimity in juries? For most (?all) trials in the UK, they moved to a 10-2 majority requirement years ago. Requiring 12-0 means that you are at the mercy of jury tampering or the wacko who wants to play Henry Fonda in Twelve Angry Men. It’s much harder to intimidate or bribe three jurors than one…..
I’ll make an exception for capital cases, although since I’m opposed to capital punishment on principle, this exception is more tactical than anything else.
Legislate 10-2 juries in every state and at the Federal level; those who vote against it can pay for the mistrials!

Press release from the White House:
Iraq Fact of the Day
Civic Pride in Iraq’s Capital
The CPA, responding to a Baghdad City Council request, is allocating $10 million to brighten the city’s public parks, squares and playgrounds. The funding will provide lighting in the capital’s outdoor public places, new murals, sculptures, and landscaping. Revitalization of Baghdad’s public areas shows civic pride and is another example of the Iraqis’ faith in their future.
Source: Coalition Provisional Authority, Baghdad

Among Lisa Rein’s archives of TV clips is this piece by Bill Moyers, from March 25. Simple, direct, moving.
(She also has the hilarious Daily Show piece on Richard Clarke’s 9/11 Commission testimony.)

Depressingly, opinion polls seem to suggest that Richard Clarke’s testimony before the 9/11 panel isn’t changing anyone’s mind. Folks who already support Bush are playing back the White House attacks on him; those on the other side don’t really need any more reason to think that Bush is a disaster. The cynic in me says that Gary Hart’s damning account of how the White House blocked consideration of the report of the Hart-Rudman Commission is going to be equally ineffective in waking people up. Maybe. However, there is one shred of hope: that the accumulation of evidence will tip the media from cowering complacency into investigative enthusiasm. If they smell blood in the water, and a Pulitzer on the mantelpiece, who knows…..
Continue reading “How many times do we have to tell you?”