oil and feathers for whistleblowers

Much has been made of the mismanagement and corruption that cripples the Iraqi oil ministry. Before trying to clean up that house, perhaps we should look into cleaning up our own. The below from a NYTimes article on our government's attempt -- or non-attempt-- to get oil companies to pay royalties they owe for drilling on public lands.

Particularly striking were complaints by two auditors in Oklahoma City, Randall Little and Lanis Morris, who said that senior officials had refused to demand $1.5 million in back interest from oil companies caught underpaying, saying that requiring the companies to calculate their own bills would be a hardship. But the officials said the Interior Department could not get its own systems to do the calculations.

Mr. Little told investigators that the oil companies were getting a “free ride” and that “the taxpayers ought to be outraged.” After the auditors filed their lawsuits, Interior officials removed Mr. Little and Mr. Morris from their jobs at the Minerals Management Service and sent them to work below an entry-level technician at the Bureau of Land Management.

And the neocons wanted to hand over the Iraqi oil fields to Big Oil, expecting not a peep of protest from the Iraqi people?

Disgusting is Right

What larks, eh Pip? The Senate resolution to condemn MoveOn for exposing Petraeus as a mouthpiece for the Bush administration. Bush saying that he thought the ad "disgusting," thought the attack on Petraeus "an attack on the military itself." What a surprising response.

The Surge is working my arse. Working to what end? To temporarily displace some corner boys in Baghdad? At the cost of how many American lives, how many hundreds of millions of dollars?

I'm glad MoveOn has moved its focus back on the war. Was myself disgusted by how in the last presidential election the organization backed off criticism of the war, thinking that doing so would help Kerry win. Took the midterms to make them see what should have been obvious two years previously: It's the war, stupid!

There once was a General Petraeus
Who they said would never betray us
But the war that he pimped
Gave Uncle Sam a bad limp
And in general served to dismay us

blackwater blackguards

Apropos the presence of security contractors in Iraq, these two short poems from WWI. First, A. E. Housman's "Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries":

These, in the day when heaven was falling,
The hour when earth's foundations fled,
Followed their mercenary calling
And took their wages and are dead.

Their shoulders held the sky suspended;
They stood, and earth's foundations stay;
What God abandoned, these defended,
And saved the sum of things for pay.

Now, in response, Hugh MacDiarmid's "Another Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries":

It is a God-damned lie to say that these
Saved, or knew, anything worth any man's pride.
They were professional murderers and they took
Their blood money and impious risks and died.
In spite of all their kind some elements of worth
With difficulty persist here and there on earth.

What are we to make of the privatization of combat? The fact that our government is not sure how many hired guns are running around Iraq, "somewhere between 20,000 and 50,000," none of these subject to Iraqi justice (a tip o' the hat to Paul Bremer) or the Uniform Code of Military Justice. A law unto themselves.

long silence

My long silence in this forum due to depression and disgust. Re: the war, things stand no better today than in March. So much for the Democratic cavalry that came charging over the hill last November.

Could I grow any more weary of hearing politicians say that the problem with the war was mistakes made at its inception? Like saying a gang rape could have gone a lot better if not for the fuck ups at the start. This war has been criminal since its conception. Criminal and stupid.

We continue to fetishize our mighty military. What's the point in repeating that we have the most powerful military in the world if that military is impotent in the face of this kind of insurgency? How many more of our soldiers need to get blown to pieces by IEDs, how many more fall the victims of snipers -- and how many more innocent Iraqi families die at our checkpoints -- before we recognize this impotence?

Iraq is faced with giant problems, but these are obviously not problems the American military can solve. Let's get out of there.

juxtaposition

From the NYTimes:

Lt. Col. Christopher Garver, an American military spokesman in Baghdad, confirmed a report by the Pentagon on Tuesday that insurgents had put two children in the back seat of a car loaded with explosives to get the car through a checkpoint in Baghdad. An unknown number of Iraqi civilians were hurt or killed when the car exploded, including the children, Colonel Garver said.

Meanwhile, beneath a bright sky, thousands of residents of Baghdad celebrated the first day of spring, a holiday called Nowruz, by going to the zoo.

the invertebrate & the conscience free

The war party's strategy is clear enough: whatever the opponents of the war propose as a means of hastening its end, the hawks will construe as a betrayal of the troops. What we need do first, therefore, is expose this rhetorical strategy. Make it clear that the people who put our troops needlessly in harm's way will exploit our sense of loyalty to those troops to keep them in harm's way indefinitely. We cannot allow ourselves to be so bullied. The war's opponents need to develop some backbone and take the high ground on the matter of our soldiers. It is, after all, precisely our concern for the troops -- for their welfare and that of their families -- that most strongly motivates our opposition to this war. We are attempting to save their lives, plain and simple.

***********

In a speech delivered by Dick Cheney in Sydney, Australia, he referred to the Iraq war as "a remarkable achievement." That it certainly is. In years to come historians will remark again and again on this achievement, much to our country's shame. What a fiasco it has been, from start till present! An almost-unbearable burden to those Americans possessed of a social conscience. As Neil Young puts it in song, people of conscience are "living this war every day." Happy the man who can put it out of his mind and continue with his daily routine.

snatching victory

Yesterday listening to a right wing pundit who heads an organization the aim of which is to punish those Republican congressmen who do not continue to support Bush's war. He complained about the "defeatism" that is permeating this country. He exhorted the American people to get behind the President and the troops in order to "snatch victory from the jaws of defeat."

I find the pundit's metaphor faulty. Victory is no longer in the jaws of Defeat. Defeat has chewed Victory, has swallowed Victory, has digested Victory, and is presently preparing to excrete Victory onto the dusty ground of Iraq. If we snatch Victory now, we snatch it from the bowels of defeat. A rather unsavory clot of Victory that would be.

I suggest the pundit attempt to snatch a bit of reality from the jaws of delusion. The war was never winnable. It's time to bring our soldiers home.

Surging

The word "surge" keeps cropping up, as if we were fighting the war with electricity and not human beings. --Garrison Keillor

The Bush administration tells us the surge is designed to give cover to the al-Maliki government -- enough cover to allow it to get its act together and take control of the country. But it can't be possible, can it, that anyone actually believes that al-Maliki has the wherewithal to do this? He' s a weak puppet, with Moqtada al-Sadr pulling the strings. How is al-Maliki supposed to "rein in" Shiite death squads when al-Sadar, the leader of the death squads, is more powerful than he? (It's like asking George Bush to rein in Dick Cheney. He can't and wouldn't if he could. )

Maybe in reality the surge is a desperate attempt to bring enough order to Baghdad to allow us to withdraw our troops in a calm and dignified fashion, rather than the fashion of our withdrawal from Saigon, with someone blowing a whistle and crying "Every man for himself!"

"Surge." Why do the closing words of Flann O'Brien's "The Hard Life" keep popping into my mind: "a tidal surge of vomit."

saddam's hanging

Just viewed the video of Saddam's hanging--the full hanging, from life to death. What a sordid, chaotic affair it was. As brutal as the man's life.

To what end this execution? To teach others not to be dictators? Something tells me the deterrence effect somewhat lacking . To teach our children that Justice will be done? Should the video of the hanging be played in grade school classrooms? How edifying!

Let's call it what it is, what it always is: revenge. Blood for blood. The animal satisfaction derived from the snapped neck, the upturned face, the glassy eyes. The very scene that an advanced system of justice is designed to eliminate. To break the bloody cycle of vengeance, that is the point and end of modern jurisprudence.

Does anyone believe that this execution accomplishes anything at all in terms of solving the problem(s) of Iraq? That it will hasten the return home of our troops? The effect I predict is further inflamation of the Sunni insurgency, which will result in even more deaths among American soldiers, particularly if we decide to "surge" their numbers.

Who, then, benefits most from Saddam's execution? The Grim Reaper rubs his bony palms together in gleeful anticipation.

Read Robert Fisk's lucid take on the hanging at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article16086.htm

To the vanishing point

In the "war on terror," our signature weapon the laser-guided missle, theirs the suicide bomber. And with every missle launched, new recruits for suicide missions are created. The more missles, the more suicide bombers.

Can we kill all, or enough, of the suicide bombers to claim victory? There were a finite number of kamikaze pilots in WWII. Eventually we could kill them all. But is there a finite number of suicide bombers? Or is there a queue of them stretching out to the vanishing point? An endless succession?

What cold blooded questioning war demands. News this morning of a Iraqi man screaming for help while his wife and two children burned to death in their bombed car. This while the sympathetic gaze of America is focussed on the jilted Jennifer Aniston.

Why the Iraqi army won't stand up

Our current best plan to solve the problem of Iraq? To inject more military trainers into the country to get the Iraqi army ready to stand up and fight. The more quickly the Iraqi army stands up, the more quickly our army can stand down.

This plan on the surface seems logical, yet it is based on a flawed assumption: that the Iraqi army is like our army, or the army of any other established nation state. We expect that the members of the Iraqi army will identify themselves first and foremost as Iraqis and will fight and die for their country, just as soldiers in our military will fight and die for America. But what if they don't and won't?

As a number of analysts have pointed out, there's really no Iraq to Iraq. The country is not so much a nation as it is an idea imposed a century ago by the British on a region divided among very distinct and antagonistic sects and tribes. The Iraqi soldier, in other words, is more likely to identify himself as a Sunni or a Shiite or a Kurd first and as an Iraqi second -- a very distant second. This hardly lends itself to establishing the esprit de corps necessary to accomplish what our government expects the Iraqi army to accomplish.

I suspect that most of the soldiers in the Iraqi army are there not out of patriotism but out of mere necessity. It's a job. They need some means of supporting themselves and their families. So if the head of some sectarian militia offers them a better deal, they are likely to take it. This is why our government is so worried about the Saudis funding the Sunni insurgents, or Iran supporting the Shiite militias.

To sum up, our current best strategy in Iraq is based upon the same thing that so many previous failed strategies were based upon: wishful thinking. So enough already about getting the Iraqi army to stand up. It's time for us to get the hell out of Dodge.

Pinochet and Difficulty

Having made thousands of innocent people disappear in his day, General Augusto Pinochet finally drops down the rabbit hole himself, thus escaping the long arm of justice. And what is the reaction from the White House?

"Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile represented one of the most difficult periods in that nation's history," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. "Our thoughts today are with the victims of his reign and their families. We commend the people of Chile for building a society based on freedom, the rule of law and respect for human rights."

Notice the diction here. The dictatorship of Pinochet was not one of the darkest periods in Chile's history, one of the most shameful periods in Chile's history, one of the most abominable periods in Chile's history, etc. No, it was a "difficult" period. Something tells me that "difficulty" is not the word the families of the disappeared would likely choose to describe what they suffered under Pinochet. How about "terrorism"?

It would be difficult indeed to acknowledge our government's complicity in the Pinochet coup and the terror regime that followed. Difficult to explain why Nixon and Kissinger cozied up to the good General while he presided over atrocity after atrocity. Very very difficult.

See article by Amy Goodman at http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1214-33.htm

Johnny Bolton Resigns

From today's Washington Post:

Unable to win Senate confirmation, U.N. Ambassador John Bolton will step down when his temporary appointment expires within weeks, the White House said Monday.

Critics have questioned Bolton's brusque style and whether he could be an effective bureaucrat who could force reform at the U.N. . . . .

The White House resubmitted Bolton's nomination last month. But with Democrats capturing control of the next Congress, his chances of winning confirmation appeared slight. The incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Democratic Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, said he saw "no point in considering Mr. Bolton's nomination again."

LET US ALL RISE AND SING

Ye haven't an arm, ye haven't a leg, hurroo, hurroo
Ye haven't an arm, ye haven't a leg, hurroo, hurroo
Ye haven't an arm, ye haven't a leg,
Ye're an armless, boneless, chickenless egg
Ye'll have to put with a bowl out to beg
Oh Johnny I hardly knew ye

With your drums and guns and guns and drums, hurroo,hurroo
With your drums and guns and guns and drums, hurroo,hurroo
With your drums and guns and guns and drums,
The enemy nearly slew ye
Oh my darling dear, Ye look so queer
Johnny I hardly knew ye.

Rumsfeld and "Honor"

Neo-con theorist Kenneth Adelman, on a conversation with Donald Rumsfeld, to The New Yorker:

"What was astonishing to me was the number of Iraqi professional people who were leaving the country. People were voting with their feet, and I said that it looked like we needed a Plan B. I said, 'What's the alternative? Because what we're doing now is just losing.'"

He said Rumsfeld did not take the assessment well.

"He was in deep denial -- deep, deep denial. And then he did a strange thing. He did 15 or 20 minutes of posing questions to himself, and then answering them. He made the statement that we can only lose the war in America, that we can't lose it in Iraq. And I tried to interrupt this interrogatory soliloquy to say, 'Yes, we are actually losing the war in Iraq.' He got upset and cut me off. He said, 'Excuse me,' and went right on with it."

Enter Rumsfeld as Falstaff:

Well, 'tis no matter; honour pricks
me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I
come on? how then? Can honour set to a leg? no: or
an arm? no: or take away the grief of a wound? no.
Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is
honour? a word. What is in that word honour? what
is that honour? air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it?
he that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? no.
Doth he hear it? no. 'Tis insensible, then. Yea,
to the dead. But will it not live with the living?
no. Why? detraction will not suffer it. Therefore
I'll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon: and so
ends my catechism.

Then & Now

George W. Bush, after the 2004 Presidential election:

"Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it."

George W. Bush, after the 2006 Midterm election:

"Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad; now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?"

new rules on gays

The Catholic Church's just released “Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care”:

1. Tell them to knock it off and straighten up.
2. If they won't knock it off, sodomize them to drive home the point.
3. Console them by telling them "God hates the sin but thinks the sinner is fabulous."
4. If all else fails, excommunicate their genitals.

civil war . . . yet?

From today's Washington Post:

"The escalating violence in the Tigris River towns in many ways serves as a microcosm of the daily violence roiling Iraq. Sectarian attacks have increased more than tenfold since the start of the year and now claim more than 100 victims a day, according to the Iraqi government."

DUBYA SINGS!

AIN'T GONNA BE NO CIVIL WAR
AIN'T GONNA BE NO WAR
IF WE STAY THE COURSE
ON OUR BLINDERED HORSE
DER AIN'T GONNA BE NO WAR

AIN'T GONNA BE NO CIVIL WAR
AIN'T GONNA BE NO WAR
LONG AS WE WAIT
WITH NO PULLOUT DATE
DER AIN'T GONNA BE NO WAR

AIN'T GONNA BE NO CIVIL WAR
AIN'T GONNA BE NO WAR
WITH THE GOOD LORD'S GRACES
AND SOME PERMANENT BASES
DER AIN'T GONNA BE NO WAR

Police Academy X: Messypotamia

The Baghdad Police College, hailed as crucial to U.S. efforts to prepare Iraqis to take control of the country's security, was so poorly constructed that feces and urine rained from the ceilings in student barracks. Floors heaved inches off the ground and cracked apart. Water dripped so profusely in one room that it was dubbed "the rain forest." --Washington Post

A nice metaphor for the U.S. effort to prepare the Iraqi security forces for our long-delayed-but-always-expected pullout.

Being There

Appalled by a colleague who, in discussing the war in Iraq, while acknowledging that the war is a disaster, remarks, "But wouldn't it be exciting to be a part of the the most consequential happening of our time!" As if he envied the young men and women now serving in Iraq.

Let me find an analogy. Suppose that a gang rape happened at a small town tavern, and this crime was the "biggest thing ever to hit this town." Would a reasonable person respond by saying "Gee willikers! Wish I had been at the tavern that night rather than at home watching t.v. with the wife and kids. Nothing exciting ever happens to me!"

What good can come out of having taken part in this disgraceful war? How is it possible that any U.S. soldier will come away from it without wounds, be they physical, psychological, or moral? The proper attitude to take toward our soldiers is one of pity, not envy. Compassion for what they've gone through. We can admire their professionalism, admire their devotion to duty, etc., but to admire them for having been used to prosecute an immense crime? No, only pity there.

I wish I may, I wish I might . . .

It finally arrived in my email, the bit of apocrypha so many others have received. It is entitled "HOW TO STOP ISLAMIC TERRORISTS" and goes on as follows:

Once in U.S. history an episode of Islamic terrorism was very quickly stopped. It happened in the Philippines about 1911, when Gen. John J. Pershing was in command of the garrison. There had been numerous Islamic terrorist attacks, so "Black Jack" told his boys to catch the perps and teach them a lesson.

Forced to dig their own graves, the terrorists were all tied to posts, execution style. The U.S. soldiers then brought in pigs and slaughtered them, rubbing their bullets in the blood and fat. Thus, the terrorists were terrorized; they saw that they would be contaminated with hogs' blood. This would mean that they could not enter Heaven, even if they died as terrorist martyrs.

All but one was shot, their bodies dumped into the grave, and the hog guts dumped atop the bodies. The lone survivor was allowed to escape back to the terrorist camp and tell his brethren what happened to the others. This brought a stop to terrorism in the Philippines for the next 50 years.

This delightful myth came to me with a note from the sender: "Take that, liberal."

During times of crisis, wishful thinking runs rampant. All we need do to quash the Iraq insurgency, see, is provision ourselves with sufficient pig matter. Let's have our soldiers armed, not with assault rifles, but with super-soakers filled with pig's blood. Those mighty mujahadeen will head for the hills! As for terrorism at home, rather than air marshals we could have commercial airliners guarded by live pigs -- and let Porky ride first class, so every passenger can get an eyeful as they board. That'll make those creeps think twice before they turn the plane into a bomb, since they'd be taking the pig with them!

Sad, isn't it, that educated adults can fall for such bigoted nonsense, that they can give in to the wishful thought that America, if we puff ourselves up Big enough, if make ourselves Bad enough, can scare the bejeezuz into our enemies, can turn these would-be bloody martyrs into docile lambs. After all, they are nothing more than superstitious children, right?

According to this "logic," the tortures and humiliations carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo should have had the effect of frightening all faithful Muslims into easy submission to our will. Of course the opposite happened: the abuse of detainees has inflamed hatred of the United States throughout the Arab world and mightily fueled Islamic militancy. It has, indeed, made it impossible for us to win "the hearts and minds" of the Muslim peoples. With the possibility of a political solution now out the window, all that is left is an endless cycle of violence, of killing and being killed. Blood feud.

What has put us in this awful position? Once again, wishful thinking. The wishful thinking of Bush's neo-con cabal, who fooled themselves -- and for a while fooled us -- into thinking Iraq would be a military cakewalk. Now only a fool would believe that there is a military solution to the problem of Iraq.

We need to make the war in Iraq THE issue in the next round of elections. We need to use the war, the candidates' view of the war, as a touchstone. Anyone who evinces even a trace of belief that Iraq can still be won by military means needs to be shunned like the plague.

We cannot afford any more wishful thinkers in office.