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By Weldon Berger, on November 29th, 2006
 On the eve of a summit between president Bush and Iraqi prime minister Maliki, someone at the White House leaked a memo describing Iraq’s prime minister as either clueless, deluded or impotent. The leak may have some bearing on the postponement of the Bush-Maliki meeting, although the primary reason may be the decision by followers of Muqtada al Sadr to protest the get-together by suspending their participation in the Maliki government.
But the meeting itself ranks way high on the “who cares?” scale, significant only in the fact that the two “leaders” are meeting in Jordan because Iraq is too dangerous. We’re here for the unconscious irony list, the first item on which is the leaked memo, and the second, an op-ed from the Cleveland Plain Dealer’s Kevin O’Brien.
Continue reading Great moments in unconscious irony
By Eric Brewer, on November 28th, 2006
Last week, Nicolo Pollari, the head of SISMI (the Italian counterpart to our CIA), was fired. . . . → Read More: Italy’s top intelligence official canned
By Keifus, on November 22nd, 2006
Three highways through their own separate hells.
Cormac McCarthy, The Road: A
Paul Park, Celestis: B+
Roger Zelazny, Damnation Alley: C-
 The atomic post-apocalypse, as a warning or as a story unto itself, originated roughly in September, 1945 and has been flogged so mercilessly since that time, it’s become a field of cliché so barren of fruit that authors tread there at their peril. So here’s Cormac McCarthy stumbling from general acclaim into the genre ghetto to explore those time-hardened paths. I admit to a certain skepticism about his effort, and his opening page, a gimmicky affair of stripped-down prose style, deficient of quotation marks and apostrophes but rich in fragmented sentences and filthy with verbed and adjectived nouns, supported my prejudice.* It took a couple of paragraphs to break down my cynical defenses, but by the time I got to “read me a story Papa,” I couldn’t pull away. This may be the best story of its kind that I’ve read.
Continue reading Three for the Road: Maps for the Post-Apocalypse (Book Reviews)
By Weldon Berger, on November 21st, 2006
 If president Bush keeps up the good work, he’ll leave office every bit as popular as Richard Nixon was the day he left. The occasion should be suitably memorialized. (This is assuming Bush actually leaves.)
Incoming presidents don’t customarily use their inaugural addresses to slam their predecessors but in this case there’s really no point in not doing so. And with the 2008 campaign season having begun on November 8 of this year, it’s by no means too soon for candidates to being sketching out their speeches; what then to say about the departed president Bush the Younger?
The obvious place to turn for instruction is Gerald Ford. Aside from the spectacular Whip Inflation Now campaign in which he asked his countrymen to kick inflation’s ass whenever and wherever they found it, Ford’s most memorable moment arrived about two minutes into his presidency when he addressed the nation after he took the oath of office following Nixon’s resignation and said, “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.”
So that line’s taken, but it remains a good starting point.
Continue reading What should the headlines be the day Bush leaves office?
By Weldon Berger, on November 21st, 2006
Michael Ledeen has the solution for Iraq: get US troops out of their latte shops and yuppie gyms, plus regime change in Iran and Syria. “[W]e may not need new troops,” he says, “just better use of the ones already there.”
The way we win in Iraq, according to Ledeen, is by convincing the Iraqis we’re winners. The way we convince Iraqis we’re winners is by winning. The tactics we use to win are prying the troops loose of their effete liberal pursuits — everyone knows only liberals drink lattes and liberals are notoriously soft on defense; the problem therefore isn’t a shortage of troops but a moral failure on the part of the troops or their leadership or both — and promoting successful pro-US insurgencies in Iran and Syria. The reason we need regime change in those two countries is that in Ledeen’s considered opinion, they’re flooding the Iraq insurgency market with foreign fighters.
This is all total crap.
Continue reading Ledeen: US troops wasting time in latte shops and yuppy gyms
By Weldon Berger, on November 20th, 2006
“Why do they hate us? Is it somehow connected to the way we cut off their limbs with chainsaws?” That’s Jonathon Schwarz’s question, and by golly it’s a good one. He’s referring to the exhumation of butchered bodies from a mass grave near a Colombian village that was attacked by chainsaw-wielding right wing paramilitaries who slaughtered more than 120 men, women and children a few years ago. The context is an ongoing investigation into ties between the drug trafficking paramilitaries and Colombian congressional figures from the ruling party of prime minister Álvaro Uribe, whose government benefits greatly from US aid aimed at debilitating the drug trade run by the paramilitaries allied with the ruling party.
Continuing on the freedom ride, we arrive at Jim Henley’s place for a quick lesson on how US attorney general Alberto Gonzales draws upon the Constitution in support of his contention that freedom not freely surrendered in service to the state isn’t freedom at all. Sure, it’s the Soviet Constitution but seen one, seen ‘em all.
From our own precincts comes commentary on the news that US “diplomats,” surfing the wave of success in Iraq, are floating the idea of instigating a civil war in Palestine by importing and arming Fatah loyalists to take down the democratically elected but extremely irritating Hamas.
Continue reading Blogs on Parade: ‘Chainsaws of Freedom’ Edition
By Weldon Berger, on November 19th, 2006
From the Department of Oh Lord We’re Screwed comes news that Europeans think the US wants to start a civil war in Palestine. AMERICAN proposals to strengthen Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian security forces with additional guns and fighters have alarmed other Western nations, who argue that it is tantamount to supporting one faction in a . . . → Read More: Iraq isn’t going well; how about a civil war in Palestine?
By Weldon Berger, on November 19th, 2006
President Bush and secretary of state Condoleezza Rice have both been drawing hopeful analogies between Iraq and Vietnam. What Vietnam teaches us, they say, is that over time old enemies can reconcile and a war-torn nation can chart a happy future. This is both true and, in context, unbelievably bizarre.
To review: the US spent 15 years, more or less, in Vietnam. We took over a doomed colonial enterprise from the French and turned it into a doomed anti-communist one. By the time we lost the war and left, millions of Vietnamese and tens of thousands of Americans were dead. After we left, many more Vietnamese died as the communist regime consolidated its power. Thirty years later the country still bears scars from the war, not least among which are the continuing environmental problems caused by our liberal use of the toxic defoliant Agent Orange.
If we extrapolate the analogy, Bush and Rice are saying that when we ultimately leave Iraq, after killing as many Iraqis as seems feasible given the amount of time we have left and doing whatever damage we can to the country’s infrastructure and environment, and after Iraq concludes its own civil war, assuming any one party is ultimately able to prevail, it’s possible that a few decades down the road a more or less liberalized Iraq will rejoin the community of nations and all will be forgiven on both sides (other than those Americans who will insist that we could have won the war had the politicians not buckled).
Continue reading Notes from beyond: Bush, Iraq, Vietnam
By Weldon Berger, on November 18th, 2006
From the Department of Obviousity comes news that Donald Rumsfeld’s presumptive heir will make Iraq his top priority.
Robert Gates, President Bush’s pick for defense secretary, emerged from meetings on Capitol Hill Friday to say Iraq would be a top priority for him if confirmed by the Senate … “One of the highest . . . → Read More: In surprise move, Gates ranks Iraq as top priority
By Weldon Berger, on November 17th, 2006
Steve Clemons at The Washington Note earns a ticket behind the curtain and finds that the Wizard is depressed. After attending a dinner populated with “a few former Secretaries of State and foreign ministers, top intelligence officials, think tank chiefs, Senators and House Members, former National Security Advisors and Secretaries of Defense,” Clemons says that “many TWN readers have already known and posted commentary on how screwed America is in its current situation — but still, it’s a different thing when actually dining and drinking with folks in mega-power positions who concur.” We are aghast to learn that mortals are endowed with analytical powers akin to those enjoyed by gods and we are shocked, shocked to learn that what we had taken as a Galactus-like indifference on the part of the mega-powerful is in fact the helplessness of wee lambs before the adolescent storm that is The President …
Digby pulls back the curtain — well, not a curtain, exactly, more like pasties — and reveals the nippleheads manipulating the levers of power in the Washington press corps. “I knew it would happen in one form or another … the DC press corps hates having to criticize Republicans. Republicans make them feel all icky and call them liberals (which they so, like, aren’t!) I confess, however, that I’m a little bit awed by how smoothly they have transitioned back into their assigned roles. I thought there might be a moment or two of cognitive dissonance as they went from grim and serious reports about terrorism and war to shallow personality politics and tabloid character assassination.” Yeah, well, there’s a precondition for cognitive dissonance that we suspect is lacking among the press …
Continue reading Three Dots Over Washington: Oz Edition
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Word of the Decade Ignoranus: An ignorant asshole.
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What should the headlines be the day Bush leaves office?
Incoming presidents don’t customarily use their inaugural addresses to slam their predecessors but in this case there’s really no point in not doing so. And with the 2008 campaign season having begun on November 8 of this year, it’s by no means too soon for candidates to being sketching out their speeches; what then to say about the departed president Bush the Younger?
The obvious place to turn for instruction is Gerald Ford. Aside from the spectacular Whip Inflation Now campaign in which he asked his countrymen to kick inflation’s ass whenever and wherever they found it, Ford’s most memorable moment arrived about two minutes into his presidency when he addressed the nation after he took the oath of office following Nixon’s resignation and said, “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.”
So that line’s taken, but it remains a good starting point.
Continue reading What should the headlines be the day Bush leaves office?