One of the last big media events that broke my heart was the 1994 suicide of Kurt Cobain. Nirvana was the last band that meant anything at all to me and most right-thinking people of my generation.
Almost everything that has come after has been horrible beyond my ability to describe. It's almost as if the shotgun shell that ended his life exited his skull and killed the music industry, which happened to be standing right behind him.
Cobain was of course a giant mess. He was a heroin addict who suffered from chronic pain and lifelong depression. On or about April 5, 1994, it was all over and Kurt Donald Cobain, aged 27, found the "Leonard Cohen afterworld" that he sang about just the year before.
Of course, he never really found peace. Almost immediately an epic battle for his recorded legacy was waged between his widow and his bandmates. His person was commercialized in death in ways that horrified him in life. His Leonard Cohen afterworld turned out to be not at all different than the world he killed himself to escape.
THE music world was In Bloom-in' shock last night after hearing that the ashes of grunge god KURT COBAIN have been PINCHED!
I can also reveal that the wife of the NIRVANA legend, COURTNEY LOVE, is said to be "suicidal" after finding Kurt's remains missing from her Hollywood home.
She had kept the singer's ashes in a pink teddy-bear-shaped bag along with a lock of his hair.
But a couple of weeks ago, she was horrified to discover them gone, along with thousands of pounds worth of clothes and jewellery.
Courtney said: "I can't believe anyone would take Kurt's ashes from me. "I find it disgusting and right now I'm suicidal.
"If I don't get them back I don't know what I'll do." The sad news will sicken the millions of Cobain and Nirvana fans worldwide.
A pink teddy bear shaped bag? That must be Courtney's revenge for leaving her without a husband and their daughter without a father. Can you imagine the Godfather of Grunge spending the hereafter in a pink teddy bear shaped bag?
God knows that Courtney Love is an ... acquired taste. It seems that she has been on a non-stop berserk frenzy of drug fuelled weirdness for the fourteen years since Kurt died. But that is her husband and the only part of him that his daughter has ever known. To take that away, even if only by accident, is one of the coldest things I can think of doing to someone.
I feel terribly for Courtney Love this morning and hope that whoever has those ashes realizes what he or she has done and returns them.
Besides, I'm pretty sure that selling human ashes violates eBay's terms of service.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: They Hung Him on a Cross By: Nirvana From: With the Lights Out
JESUS MAKES YOU DUMB: JEREMIAH WRIGHT, JOHN HAGEE & PRESIDENTIAL POLITICS
For the last forty years presidential campaigns have essentially been little more than an episode of Seinfeld, fundamentally about nothing. The last campaign where serious issues were discussed in something approaching a seious manner was in 1964. Say what you will about the candidates, but the election itself was about the permanence of social security, the role of the federal government in guaranteeing the civil rights of the citizenry and the wisdom of sending an ICBM into the Kremlin men's room.
Since then, campaigns have been about generic "crime," the death penalty, the pledge of alliegence, gay marriage, and fucking flag pins. The one thing that all of these things have in common is that they have nothing at all to do with the executive office of the president. As a matter of fact, the pledge and flag pins have nothing to do with anything.
Voters - American ones in particular - don't like issues because they make your head hurt. It's much easier and much more fun to get angry about bullshit. It doesn't matter that the United States is $9 trillion dollars in debt and that its military and foreign policies are effectively crippled and everybody's losing their fucking houses, at least it doesn't matter as much as what Barack Obama's goddamned minister said.
We're now well into the sixth consecutive week of the most important debate in America: whether or not Jeremiah Wright is a nut. Judging by column inches in the newspapers of record, television time and space devoted by the biggest of the big dog blogs, you cannot come to any conclusion other than Wright is the most important man in the country. Thankfully, the United States isn't at war or anything.
To be fair, the preoccupation with goofy religious nonsense in this campaign didn't begin with Wright. Much was made about Mitt Romney's magic underpants during the Republican primaries. The fact that Romney is a Mormon seemingly mattered far more than did the fact that Romney is an asshole and a borderline idiot.
I'll admit a bias here. I think that Jeremiah Wright is endlessly entertaining. Do I think that he's a lunatic? Sure I do. But insane people are often fun to watch and I need something to occupy my time with between Charles Manson's parole hearings. I have discussed this with my future bride, and when the day comes that we get married, we want Reverend Wright to conduct the ceremony. This is because I'm the most romantic man ever.
Am I shocked that Wright believes that the US government created the HIV virus and is ultimately responsible for 9/11? Not really. Wright also believes that Jesus is, as Sarah Silverman put it, magic. Faith is predicated on believing implausible things with no logical foundation whatsoever.
I don't make any distinction between worshipping the Zombie Christ and thinking that Louis Farrakahn is a swell guy. Both are incredibly silly assertions. On the other hand, Farrakhan made a pretty cool calypso record and Jesus didn't, so Farrakhan wins! I know for a fact that calypso exists, which I can't say about ressurection.
You know why Jeremiah Wright has been on television so much? Because Jeremiah Wright is entertaining as hell. He yells. He dances. He imitates marching bands from Florida and Michigan. He says shit that convinces you that he's completely lost his mind. And of the four, George W. Bush has only been really good at the fourth.
Even though Obama is still the presumptive Democratic nominee, Wright has essentially destroyed his chances of winning a general election. Unless the senator actually shoots his former pastor in the kneecaps, his name will forever be tied to America's chickens coming home to roost.
And I think that's unfortunate for two reasons. First, there are several perfectly logical reasons to vote against Barack Obama if people would only take the time to pay attention. Second, what happens to America's chickens if they don't come home to roost? Will they roost in Scandanavia? Or will they roost with the terrorists? If the chickens roost with the terrorists, don't the terrorists win? I think about these things so you don't have to.
I know that there are any number of asshole Republicans who are exhibiting no small measure of glee over the media obsession with the Wright story. This is because Republicans can be stupidly short-sighted when they smell blood in the water.
Like most of you, I remember Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson getting together on September 13, 2001 - three days after the attacks of 9/11 and three days before Wright made his comments - and said the following;
''What we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be minuscule if, in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve.''
Mr. Robertson responded, ''Jerry, that's my feeling. I think we've just seen the antechamber to terror. We haven't even begun to see what they can do to the major population.''
A few moments later Mr. Falwell said, ''The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the A.C.L.U., People for the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America, I point the finger in their face and say, 'You helped this happen.' ''
To which Mr. Robertson said, ''Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government.''
God allowed America's enemies to give them what the country probably deserved. Not radically different than what Wright said, is it? But everybody focused on the part about "the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the A.C.L.U., People for the American Way," as if Norman fucking Lear was the 20th highjacker, and they overlooked the first part. Liberals took Robertson and Falwell's comments as an attack on themselves because liberals are narcissitic shitheads. But they were an attack on America.
But President Bush never cut off either one of those ghouls and John McCain gave the commencement at Falwell's clown college just before Falwell had the good grace to finally fucking die. The GOP kept going to their poisoned wells long after they proved themselves to be every inch as treasonous as Jeremiah Wright. They campaigned on their dopey shows, received their emissaries at the White House and spoke at their hamburger universities.
If I know journalists as well as I think I do, they're using the Wright story to tee up a full-bore assault on evangelical retards in the name of being "fair and balanced." Journalists are godless heathens to be sure, but they happen to be particularly antagonistic toward conservative fairy tales.
All the way back in 1993, Bush remarked that "heaven is open only to those who accept Jesus Christ," which leaves Muslims and Jews in a rather precarious position. Fortunately for Bush, he was only running for governor then and the approximately 12 Jews and Muslims in the Lone Star State weren't going to vote Republican anyway. It was only in 1999, when he was preparing to run for president, that he sought absolution from Abe Foxman and the Anti-Defamation League.
Then there's John McCain's relationship with John Hagee. Reverend Hagee runs one of those Wall-Mart churches in Texas and believes some incomprehensibly dumb things.
And he's even got a minature whore for his "Whore Church" pointer. Awwww. John Hagee is fucking adorable!
Don't get me wrong, he's right about the "Whore Church" and Catholic anti-Semitism, but that's beside the point. There are 40 million Catholics in the United States and they constitute the single largest voting bloc there. Republicans would very much like to continue their recent trend of narrowly winning the Catholic vote. But the immigration debacle is going to crucify them with Hispanics and seeing John McCain holding hands with the likes of Hagee certainly isn't going to help with the rest of them.
Hagee also called Hurricane Katrina "the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans." because the city was planning a gay pride parade. Do serious people actually believe shit like that? I thought saying things like that got you in a straightjacket and not presidential politics.
When presented with Hagee's quotes, McCain distanced himself from them. However, just two weeks ago, McCain said to George Stephanopolous that he was "glad to have his endorsement." After the Obama / Wright conflageration, that isn't going to fly for very long. The press knows that and I think McCain does, too.
Look, I think John McCain is the first decent human being to run for president since Bob Dole 12 years ago and he doesn't want to attack Barack Obama's faith, particularly when the media and Hillary Clinton are doing it for him. I think, like the first President Bush, that he would like to avoid a presidential election becoming a stupid debate about an invisible man who lives in the sky.
Idiot bloggers are screaming for McCain's head because he won't jump on the Jeremiah Wright gravy train of glory. That's why I call them idiot bloggers. John McCain has been in politics for a very long time and is savvy enough to know that the second he attacks Wright, he opens himself up to questions about his relationship with Hagee and the ghost of Jerry Falwell returns to haunt him.
The stupid pricks in the GOP's evangelical base hate McCain and he isn't real fond of them either. But, while I disagree with his assessment, he feels he needs those jackals and doesn't need the hassle of throwing an evil crank like Hagee under the bus.
I'm not sure that's true. If any Republican can win without evangelicals, it's John McCain. Furthermore, it isn't like those assholes are going to vote for Obama. The worst thing that can happen is that they stay home. McCain is already on the record calling Falwell and Robertson "agents of intolerance" and Obama wrote a book about how wonderful Wright is. If it the argument stays at that level, McCain wins.
But McCain was almost killed by his little pantomine of kissing Falwell's ring at Liberty University last year and I'm not sure that the Lazarus act works twice. If Hagee becomes an issue - and the New York Timesstarted the ball rolling this morning - he can't do any less than Obama did in denouncing him personally without getting killed.
Let's quit pretending that Obama isn't already the nominee. At this point, Hillary Clinton is little more than a highly effective McCain surrogate. As time goes by, it is increasingly clear that McCain can beat Obama with independents and what I like to call "Ed Rendell Democrats" who cower in fear at the prospect of voting for a brown person.
But if this campaign becomes an inspid Ecclesiastical debate, all bets are off and you're likely looking at a President Obama. After all, religious psychopaths who publicly indentify with the Republicans outnumber those who identify with Democrats by about a hundred to one. The only thing saving McCain from answering questions about his strange relationships with lunatics is Howard Dean's insane "50 state strategy" that adorably assumes that the Democrats have a shot in the South. When the eventual nominee takes over the DNC, I assure you that this will change.
I know that this little missive is going to piss off any number of my readers, including several of my friends. But faith is a private thing and is best left that way. If you insist on making that faith a spectacle in your elections, I reserve the right to mock both it and you mercilessly.
I'm also not dumb enough to say in public that Jeremiah Wright is any better or any worse than John Hagee. Does anybody seriously believe that if Barack Obama becomes president that he'll establish a black republic, go on television and say that the United States deserved 9/11, or establish a federal Department of Chicken Roosting? Really? I certainly don't think that John McCain is going to go on a whore church tirade although it would be awfully funny if he did.
I love the United States and its people with all of my heart. I've spent the better part of my life studying the country and its politics. But Americans have this highly distrubing quirk that makes their elections about God even more than the fucking Iranians do. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad didn't get elected president because he was closer to Allah. He got elected because he promised to kill more Jews.
Maybe Obama's pastor hates America. His plumber might, too. So the fuck what? In the end, making your elections about your religion is like my making my blog about my cock. And I'd never do that. I'm far too classy.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day:GodBy: John Lennon From:Plastic Ono Band
You will get different estimates about precisely how close he is. We do know that he is actively pursuing a nuclear weapon. We do know that there have been shipments going into Iran, for instance -- into Iraq, for instance, of aluminum tubes that really are only suited to -- high-quality aluminum tools that are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs. We know that he has the infrastructure, nuclear scientists to make a nuclear weapon. And we know that when the inspectors assessed this after the Gulf War, he was far, far closer to a crude nuclear device than anybody thought, maybe six months from a crude nuclear device.
The problem here is that there will always be some uncertainty about how quickly he can acquire nuclear weapons. But we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.
-Condolezza Rice, September 8, 2002
My last post seems have really stirred the shit in the comments. I like it when that happens and I'd particularly like to thank Mook for being a psychopath. It keeps things interesting around here, particularly when my writing sucks, which seems to happen a lot.
In the comments, Mook makes a couple of interesting assertions that underscore both how batshit fucking crazy he is and how goddamned dumb the Bush administration is. You have to work awfully hard to be that uninformed and I don't want him thinking that I don't appreciate his effort. When Bill O'Reilly finally has the good sense to commit suicide, Mook is more than capable of taking over that chair.
First, he states "Vietnam is a fair parallel to Iraq in that it was a large scale war in which we were not seeking to conquer and rule the country," which is true for what it's worth. It just doesn't happen to be worth much.
You see, Americans live with this adorable notion that people care what American motives are when the United States bombs or invades their country. I can assure you that they don't. Americans can get away with this because they consume half of the world's illegal drugs and possess half of its nuclear weapons. I learned a long time ago not to argue with heavily armed, stoned people and hopefully you did, too.
South Vietnamese villagers didn't like having their huts burned down and accordingly worked with the Viet Cong more than they otherwise would have. The Filipinos didn't enjoy being waterboarded and their liberation from Spain did little to alieviate that dislike. And I'm pretty sure that your average Iraqi doesn't feel especially "free" when he can't go to mosque without getting blown up. Also, replacing Abu Ghraib with, well, Abu Ghraib was probably less than wise. Just sayin'.
Americans like to point to the post-war occupations of Germany and Japan, yet neglect to mention that anyone capable of forming an insurgency in either country was fucking dead. Oh, and the allies had something approaching a proper force to population ratio in Germany and Japan, which they don't in Iraq. As you may have noticed by now, airplanes and smart bombs aren't particularly effective in civil pacification operations.
Mook continues; "Saddam was a nutjob threat to the region with a history of producing and using chem(ical) weapons. That threat was successfully removed."
Actually, that was true in 1998, as we later learned. As one can read about in Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons by Adrian Levy and Catherine Scott-Clark, the Clinton "blowjob bombings" of December '98 were devastatingly effective in wiping out what remained of Iraq's WMD capacity while Republicans questioned the need for those bombings at all.
Mook suggests that Saddam "had expelled weapons inspectors back in 1998", which isn't the case. The inspectors left because he stopped giving them access to suspect sites. After they left, Saddam refused to readmit them.
Furthermore, the United States is the last country on earth that should bitch about the production and use of weapons of mass destruction. First, America actually invented most of those weapons and is the only country to have used a nuclear weapon. Second, the US government has excelled at (often accidental) proliferation and looking the other way when really scary countries like Pakistan get the bomb.
You know who else has WMD and a history of using them, Mook? The United States, the United Kingdom and France. You might know them as a majority of the permanent members of the Security Council.
Second, the US had a complicated history with Iraq's WMD program. Specifically, they provided the original funding for it during the war with Iran with agricultural credits and dual use technology transfers from the Reagan administration. This is something that Donald Rumsfeld doesn't like to talk about much, but knows quite a bit about.
Third, the idea invading a country that you presume has WMD and will use it on you or give it to terrorists is the single craziest fucking thing I've ever head. If Saddam did have them, the invasion would make it a self-fulfilling doom prophecy.
Here's how it works. No national leader would pass along a weapon like that and expect to long survive. Someone would only do something like that if the destruction of his regime was a certainty. It seems to me that if you're announcing that you're going to take a guy out, you're assuring that he'll either use those weapons on your troops or pass them along to terrorists so that he can exact his revenge from beyond the grave. The Bush administration is goddamned lucky that Saddam didn't have WMD. If he did, Pittsburg might no longer exist today.
That's not to say that Iraq shouldn't have been invaded, just that WMD was a laughably silly reason for doing it.
Saddam seemingly couldn't get out of bed in the morning without making a monsterously dumb strategic miscalculation. "I'll invade Iran. What could happen?" "I'll invade Kuwait. What could happen?" With the cocksucker French and Russians determined to lift the UN sanctions, it was only a matter of time before Iraq went on a shopping spree and Saddam did something dumb again and the United States would inevitably have to come to the rescue.
That being the case, better to take him down when he's weak than when he's strong. But that's a complicated argument to make to an uneducated public. It also lacks the peppiness of "mushroom clouds" and makes for a very busy bumper sticker.
Then there's the matter of unintended consequences, which President Bush seems to be the poster boy for.
In his 2002 State of the Union, the president and David Frum created an artificial "axis of evil" consisting of Iraq, Iran and North Korea, and specifically cited the dangers of their weapons programs. Then the US invaded Iraq. Predictably, Iran and North Korea accelerated those very programs to deter the United States. They might be evil, but Iran and North Korea aren't stupid. The best part? Deterrence seems to have worked. At least against the United States. Once the Commies and Persians figure out how containment works, Bush is fucked.
Mook took great exception to my contention that Operation Iraqi Freedom was "the most underplanned and undermanned military operation of its size in human history." Perhaps I could have stated that more clearly and I'll use this space to elaborate.
When one country decides to invade another, it usually knows two things before proceeding. First, they figure out what it will cost. Second, they decide what should happen when they win. The Bush administration was unique in resolving neither.
Paul Wolfowitz famously had the balls to go before Congress and say with a straight face that the war would cost no more than $50 billion and that would be financed through Iraqi oil revenues.
Both predictions turned out to be patent horseshit. Once you factor in the damage to the American economy and the continuing health care needs of the wounded veterans, this war is well on the way to eventually costing three trillion dollars. And that's three trillion in borrowed money, teenagers. For the first time in American history, a war is going to be paid for by the children and grandchildren of those who fought it. And to think that Larry Lindsey was dumped on his ass for suggesting that it was only going to cost $200 billion.
And you know what Iraq has been doing for the five years since "Mission Accomplished?" Importing gasoline. They sit on the second largest patch of it, but they're actually importing it. Turns out that three decades of war and sanctions rips the tits off of your production and refinery capacity. Who knew?
More importantly, the suggestion that the resources of a conqured nation could be exploited to pay for the conquest sort of undercuts the assertion that it was an operation where "invader does not seek to control the invaded country." The Wolfowitz plan would have been brilliantly original if the Germans hadn't thought of it first. But it does explain why the only arm of the fallen Iraqi government that was protected when the looting started was the Ministry of Oil.
As to the planning of what "victory" would look like, the history is there for anyone who wants to read it. The planning of the war took a year and a half. The planning for the aftermath only started about 3 months before the invasion. America's two proconsuls, Jay Garner and L. Paul Bremmer arrived in Iraq mere weeks after their appointments and had no documented directives on what precisely they were expected to accomplish. That, in a nutshell, is how Iraq ended up with a fucking flat tax before it had anything that even remotely resembled security. It's almost as if President Bush invaded a country to decide whether Steve Forbes was right all along.
Anyone who has read Rajiv Chandrasekaran's majestic Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq's Green Zone knows that the Coalition Provisional Authourity was little more than resume padding for budding young hacks from the Bush/Cheney 2000 campaign. If you once blew the guy who got coffee for the deputy director of lying in the Wyoming Republican Party, there was a better than even chance that you were going to rebuild Iraq's electrical infastructure. The results are obvious. Iraq still has no reliable electricity, but they do know all about the Bush vision of hack power. Of course, they already learned that from Saddam.
Worse still, the CPA went about attempting to sell off Iraqi state industries in direct violation of the Geneva Conventions, which explicity prohibit that sort of thing. That only further undercut the Bush administration's already battered reputation for competence and respect for the rule of law.
Now, I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators. . .
Q: If your analysis is not correct, and we're not treated as liberators, but as conquerors, and the Iraqis begin to resist, particularly in Baghdad, do you think the American people are prepared for a long, costly, and bloody battle with significant American casualties?
Cheney: Well, I don't think it's likely to unfold that way, Tim, because I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators. . . . The read we get on the people of Iraq is there is no question but what they want to the get rid of Saddam Hussein and they will welcome as liberators the United States when we come to do that.
-Vice President Dick Cheney, "Meet the Press," March 16, 2003
The above quote by Vice President Hunty McShootaguy seems to be the total and full extent of postwar planning in Iraq. "They'll love us like the Japanese love Ratt," the thinking went. "We'll get the genetically criminal Ahmed Chalibi in there and everyone'll be happier than pigs in shit. Besides, who doesn't love a little sexual humiliation in jail?"
Anyone who knows anything about anything will tell you that you can't provide basic security with a ratio of occupiers to occupied that thin, let alone transform a society that is older than most, riven with historical sectarian divides, and is famously fucking cranky. The idea that you can take over a country as big and as crazy as Iraq with a force that thin and placate it with a guy who has actually convicted of a massive bank fraud right next door is worse than insane, it's criminal negiligence. Congress must have created a Department of Fairy Tales when I wasn't looking because I can't think of anywhere else that such "planning" could have taken place. On the other hand, it is perfectly representative of the entire Bush presidency.
If you were curious about what I meant by "the most underplanned and undermanned military operation of its size the human history", now you know. No intellectually honest person would say that the occupation of Iraq is a a testament to superior planning, manpower and execution.
Which leads me to the other points Mook has to make to make.
"Name another large scale war in history involving 150,000 invading troops where only 4,000 were lost over a 5 year period in in-country battle. Whether you all are honest enough to admit it, those relatively minimal losses, miniscule by historical standards, are a testament to superior planning, manpower and execution."
Oh.....
I can't think of another large scale war in history where over 90% of the casualties occured after the mission was described as accomplished and the major combat operations were deemed "over." You see, Mook suffers from a case of Bush Derangement Syndrome, too. He conveinently forgets major policy statements from his masturbatory Jesus when they conflict with his hallucinatory world view.
What Mook also doesn't work out in his retarded calculus is the number of Iraqis who have been killed in that 5 year period. Surely, you remember them, right? Those are the folks you liberated! Well, the insurgents have killed nearly a hundred of them for every American they've smoked. Of course, that number is just a guess since the Bush administration can't be bothered to acttually count how many of the people it liberated have been subsequently murdered. Also remember that the one of the only things an occupying power is legally obligated to provide the occupied is security.
If you agree with the position that the insurgent tactics are indeed those of terrorists, you have to recognize what the point of terrorism is. And that's not to achieve a stellar body count, it is to instill fear. That's where the "terror" part comes in, see? And it seems to me that your average Iraqi is plenty scared.
The Vietnam analogy is being bandied about quite a bit in the comments of my previous essay, and that's worth exploring.
Mook contends that "we didn't deliver any semblance of democracy in Vietnam or in the entire region, whereas Iraq has had democratic elections. Sure Iraq's political alliances are fragile, but they are undeniably steps toward democracy like nothing we were able to accomplish in Vietnam. And so on. That progress in Iraq costing 4,000American lives vs. 58,000 Americans killed in Vietnam."
Categorical nonsense. South Vietnam had plenty of elections. They just didn't mean a whole lot because those governments were incapable pf providing basic services, such as security, to their constituents. Sound familiar?
The Vietnam analogy also falls apart in the face of the "what if America wasn't there in the first place" test. If America wasn't in Vietnam, the north would have swallowed the south and bunch of people would have died. That's tragic, but ultimately what happened anyway.
If America never went to Iraq, Saddam would be running a criminal government that targeted political dissidents and ethnic rivals. But since America went into Iraq the way that it did, anarchy has broken out where the violence is completely random and no one of any faction is safe. Worse still, a Kurdish declaration of independence remains a distinct possibility, which would provoke a Turkish invasion with the United States in the middle.
That's your "superior planning, manpower and execution" at work.
But you're right and I'm wrong, Mook. Bush is Clauswitz in a fucking cowboy hat. You finally got me. I'm the deranged one. George W. Bush will remembered as the greatest military mind in recorded history!
I may be wrong and engaging in faddish "truth to power" rhetoric. But you're consciously and despite all of the available facts, speaking "truth" for power, which is usually infinately worse, son.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day:Gimmie ShelterBy: The Rolling Stones From:Let It Bleed
Every president wants to be remembered for something. Harry Truman will always be remembered for his "The Buck Stops Here" sign, the Marshall Plan, NATO and desegregating the military. Bill Clinton will always be remembered interrupting a blowjob so that he could masturbate into a sink and inspiring a government report detailing same. If you were to ask most Americans, they would tell you that Clinton was the more consequential president. This is but one reason that the American government should get out of education entirely.
George W. Bush is lucky enough to preside over what I like to call the O.J Simpson period of world history. It really doesn't matter what you're famous for, all you need is to be famous to win. It is for this reason that the Juice gets more pussy than I do and Saddam Hussein was probably getting pictures from Kurdish girls showing their cooters in the mail as he was awaiting execution. What O.J and Saddam were famous for isn't nearly as relevant as the simple fact that they were famous.
President Bush currently has an approval rating of 22% - lower than Richard Nixon's was the day he became the only man to resign the presidency and faced the very real prospect of going to jail - a new record. Most people would look at a number like that feel emotions like shame, disgust or anger. I feel bewilderment, if only because it tells me that 22% of Americans would vote for Bush again if they could. For that reason, I firmly believe that a quarter of all Americans should be randomly sterilized.
Today marks the day that things went horribly, terribly and publicly wrong for the second Bush presidency. Historians will someday detail how things went awry almost from the second that Prince Hal W assumed office, but his contemporaries will always point to May 1st 2003.
The first of May always struck me as an odd day for an American president to celebrate anything as it is traditionally a day for communists to remember thier misadministration of half of humanity. But as time went by, May 1 was as good a day for the president of the United States to declare "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq. The only way that this war could have been more aptly framed is if it had started five days earlier.
President Bush's little stunt on the USS Abraham Lincoln was one for the ages. There was the president's crotch-enhancing flightsuit, his aerial dynamics and the declaration that "major combat operations in Iraq have ended." The Democrats were of course hapless before such a spectacle. Everyone knows that liberals are afraid of heights and have tiny penises.
Had things not gone as they did, we would have seen endless footage of it throughout the 2004 election season. The camera crews were there and ready, the jet was fuelled and the candidate had the single greatest backdrop in the history of political advertising. Best of all, the whole thing had been paid for by the American taxpayer.
But things didn't go the way the way they were supposed to and major combat operations in Iraq were far from completed. As it happened, the removal of Saddam Hussein and his thuggish Ba'ath regime was the easy part, and the season in hell was just beginning. History's most expensive photo-op instead will be forever remembered as a monument to hubris, as garish and impractical as any of Saddam's many palaces.
May 1st, 2003's declaration of "Mission Accomplished" was a fitting tribute to the most underplanned and undermanned military operation of its size the human history. And the signs of what was to come were already evident to anyone who was paying attention. After the April 9 fall of the Ba'ath government every city south of Mosul was racked by looting. Donald Rumsfeld called this a consequence of freedom, which is a "messy thing," but the Iraqi opposition saw it as something different. They saw that they could defy the United States with impunity.
By May 1st, suicide bombing in the Sunni triangle had already started and the fearsome rumbling of the Sadrist militias were already being heard in the south. But it would be over a year before any administration official said the word "insurgency" out loud and a year after that before the phrase "geurilla war" was uttered. By the time the Bush administration recognized the reality of May 1, 2003 - which didn't happen until January of 2007 - the country was engulfed in a civil war.
"Mission Accomplished" is something that should be forever remembered by those who care about history. May 1st is a day to remember not only the short-sighted foolishness of President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowiz and Douglas Feith; but it is also a day to remember men like General Eric Shinseki and Lawrence Lindsey, who didn't oppose the war, but knew what it would require. They turned out to be low estimates - particularly Lindsey's - but the were intellectually honest and they lost their jobs for their trouble.
Today is "Mission Accomplished" day and the White House's minister of propoganda press secretary, Dana Perino, couldn't be more insulted that anyone would have the temerity to bring that up.
"President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said `mission accomplished' for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission," White House press secretary Dana Perino said Wednesday. "And we have certainly paid a price for not being more specific on that banner. And I recognize that the media is going to play this up again tomorrow, as they do every single year."
That begs an important question. What price, specifically, did the White House pay? After all, it did get re-elected, which is precisely what the big show on the Lincoln was designed to ensure. They took a hit on what little credibility they had left, but that's hardly comperable to the price being paid by the young men and women of the American military each and every day.
They are under-manned and under-equipped. They are fighting a war that their political masters spent literally years denying the existence of. One day they are told that they're fighting for Iraqi liberity and the next they're told that they're little more than terrorist flypaper. In fact, the White House even blamed the "mission accomplished" banner on the very people it was designed to celebrate.
And Dana Perino has the gall to complain about the press pointing that out? For a pretty girl, she has an exceptionally large set of balls on her.
To people like President Bush and Ms. Perino, this is about the troops, the war, or even American foreign policy. Instead, it's another exercise in "the press isn't being fair to us." It's whining from people who pretend that they're the only ones grown-up enough to to govern.
During his last press conference as president, Dwight Eisenhower was asked if he thought he was treated fairy by the media. In response he said "I don't see what a reporter can do to a president, do you?"
That's something that all of his successors forgot. Reporters don't destroy presidencies, presidents so. And this one more than most. That's something else that should be remembered on this, the fifth "Mission Accomplished" day.
I'm not a huge enthusiast for what journalism has become. When Paris Hilton takes up more space than Robert Mugabe, journalism ceases to be something anyone should take seriously. But they got it right on "Mission Accomplished." That's precisely what they should focus on and that's precisely the debate the public should be having. For an administration that urges democracy and open dialogue is the sands of Mesopotamia, they sure don't seem to encourage it much at home. And that's something else we should take "Mission Accomplished" to mean.
"Mission Accomplished" will ultimately be remembered by history as the 21st century equivilent of "I am not a crook." But they are different in that George Bush survived and Richard Nixon didn't. And nobody died because of Watergate.
"Mission Accomplished" is the legacy that President George Walker Bush refuses to embrace but will haunt him through the ages.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Thorn in My Pride By: The Black Crowes From: The Southern Harmony and Musical Companion
I know that picture really doesn't pertain to anything ... other than your immortal soul and it's relationship to 18 wheelers, but my future bride bought it on ebay, and I thought that I would post it to show you all why I love her so. Think about it, Jesus and an 18 wheeler? Painted on velvet? If that doesn't indicate a woman that should decorate my home for the rest of my life, I just don't know what does.
There's another reason that I love my Zombiegirl so. You see, she told me that she wouldn't stop me if I had the opportunity to sodomize Lindsay Lohan. How fucking great is that? My girlfriend is exactly what Hillary Clinton would be if Hillary was smart, honest and had the greatest rack in human history. Next I'm going to ask if I can sodomize Penelope Cruz!
Now I don't want to turn this enitre blog about my love for the Queen of America. Okay, not all of it. There's other shit that I want to talk about, too.
For example, there's something else that I've always loved with all of my heart. That would be a little feature I used to run here called "Ask skippy." I loved it so because it allowed me to interact with my readers in way altogther different than they way I usually did, which was sleeping with them. Plus, those posts pretty much wrote themselves.
However, after only seventeen short installments, the questions stoppped coming. I guess everyone got tired of my having all of the answers. Or you wanted to resume sleeping with me. Or something.
But the loyal chronicler of my good works, Luke Baggins, wanted to bring back the feature just as badly as I did. So he asked skippy ... quite a few questions, actually.
I've mentioned repeatedly in this space that I don't think that Canada's national heath care program will last much longer. Maybe 20 or 30 years on the outside. If my American readers are skeptical of Social Security's solvency - and almost all of them are - multiply it by 12 and you'll get an idea of how health care is run in my home and native land.
More recently, I've also suggested that some variant of that system is inevitable in the United States.
This compelled Luke to ask;
So your expectations are that the US will be adopting it sometime in the future while the Canadian system goes bankrupt sometime in the future. Do you expect these two events to coincide in any way? Which one do you expect first?
I should note that my predictions are made based on different realities. My thoughts on Canadian health care are based on fiscal reality, factoring in things like demographics and projected tax income. My projections for the United States is based entirely on American political reality, which you might have noticed has been quite different from fiscal reality for the last seven years.
During the Bush administration, the American people have gotten a healthy dose of Republican socialism, and let's face it, if voters didn't like getting free shit, President Bush wouldn't have given it to you in time for the 2004 election, now would he? Some of you might quibble with me on this, but the "free" prescription drug benefit added to Medicare is projected to cost over $800 billion over 10 years. But voters don't give a shit about that. They just hear the words "free" and "benefit," and they practically come in their pants.
Here's another reason the plan was Marxist. Your jabbering dupe of a fucking president gave up one of the most powerful tools capitalism provides: the right to bargain. Not only are your goddamn happy pills not free, you schmucks are actually paying retail for them. WalMart bargains on price with the pharmacutical companies based on bulk purchasing, but the United States government can't. Way to go.
Public heath care will almost certainly be a consequence of the "slippery slope." Free prescription drugs are of little use if you can't afford to see someone who can actually precribe them. Eventually, even your average American voter will figure that out.
My theory is that voters will someday figure out if the government is handing out free shit, it may as well be free shit that benefits them personally. Whether of not socialized medicine helps anybody is entirely beside the point. Voters, particularly of the American variety don't care about that. They care about giant ballon drops, "Misson Accomplished" banners, and Barack Obama's taste in lapel-wear. Everything other than that is considered incidental and best left until after the election.
Times have changed since 1993, folks. Not only is Hillary Clinton a raving fucking socialist, but so is the majority of the GOP. There is now effectively no real political opposition to national health care in America. Add to that the fact that health care costs are rising at something like seven times the rate of inflation and you've got a incubator for a pretty serious political cause.
Worse still, big business is increasingly lobbying for it. In the few places left in America where Taft-Hartley didn't destroy unions, health care benefits are rapidly becoming the single biggest expense for the employers of unionized workers. And in most unions, you carry your health benefits with you into retirement.
And that was fine in a pre-globalization world. There was no real competition then. But with NAFTA and GATT, it is much easier for American business to pack up and move to countries with educated workforces and national health care systems. Employers aren't like governments. If they can find someone else to pay for something, they will. Each and every fucking time.
That's why more "American" cars were built in Ontario last year than in Michigan.
As a rule, Canadians are better-paid than Americans and have a better standard of living. We also pay quite a bit more in taxes. Why then would they American automotive industry move here? Health care. If the federal government pays for it, it means that General Motors doesn't have to. What they lose in taxes, they more than make up for in savings on their collective agreements.
If anything, the northern exodus of the American industrial sector might keep our health care system afloat longer than I originally thought. God knows that that, oil, and being the only G8 country with balanced budgets are the only things keeping us out of the financial abyss the United States is slipping into.
I'm totally against socialized medicine, but I'm afraid you might be right about the way the U.S. is headed. On the other hand, I don't see it as set in stone. One thing I read about recently (I'm too lazy to look up the link) was that some fucker with a French name who was credited as one of the author's of Canada's national healthcare system had written an op-ed about the need to allow more choice as to private insurance and private care. This seems like a really big deal to me. It seems like a substantial retreat from the generally internationally accepted position on socialized medicine by someone who matters. But I don't know shit.
"Choice" is one of the great asshole Republican misrepresentations of the Canadian health care system. Under the Ontario Health Insurence Plan (OHIP), I can see any doctor I want for any reason I want. Under private insurance, you can only see the doctor who accepts that company's plan. There's probably far more "choice" under my system than yours, particularly for the 47 million of you who have no choice at all.
Furthermore, while the Canada Health Act disallows private insurance for procedures covered by the provincial plans, private insrance itself isn't illegal. And any Canadian who can afford it has an alternative option. You might have heard of it, Luke. It's called the United States. Servicing rich Canadians has become something of a cash cow for American doctors in recent years.
Luke's argument mirrors that of Canadian liberal fuckheads who decry a "two-tier" health care system and don't recognize that we already have one and always have. The people who are going to be hardest hit by socialized medicine are going to be wealthy Canuks who just can't wait for their foreskin tuck.
Lest I be accused of "praising" or "defending" Canada's system by people like Mook, let me point out that I'm firmly convinced that the system won't long survive my generation. And there are currently any number of massive problems within the system. These include wait times and the exodus of nurses in particular who move south for a big payday.
But national health care is a political question and not a rational one. And voters have a great deal of trouble distinguishing between the two. And the politics pretty much dictates that America will join the rest of the industrialized world in our delusion before the rest of us go broke. On the other hand, The United States is doing just fine going broke without socialized medicine. I find it incredibly amusing that you're heading toward our system when you can least afford it.
Having said that, the Bush administration has already created a welfare state for the pharmacuetical, credit and investment banking industries. Companies like Archer Daniels Midland and Lockheed Martin continue to profit enormously from government practices so patently fucking silly that even Moscow and Beijing don't engage in them anymore. If the American people can afford that, have fun explaining to them why they have to worry themselves stupid when their kids get sick.
Once voter sentiment joins with the whims of big business, you can bet your ass that politicians aren't far behind. And that's a hard rain that's a-gonna fall in the not too distant future.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Dear Doctor By: The Rolling Stones From: Beggar's Banquent
THE BUSH DOCTRINE IN THEORY AND PRACTICE: INCOMPETENCE, HYPOCRISY AND GAZA
Almost from the second he was sworn in as president, George W. Bush began building a foreign policy on a foundation of falsehoods, fantasy and delirium tremens. During the 2004 Democratic primaries, Dick Gephardt described the incumbent president as a "miserable failure," which was something of an understatement. The message however was lost in the fact that Dick Gephardt has no eyebrows.
Despite campaigning on the premise that nation building was something that the United States was best kept far away from, Bush soon decided that he couldn't be a truly failed president until he embraced democracy without ever considering it's implications. This is seemingly key. For that reason, the Iraqi people were relentlessly bombed into the freedom to persue their deepest desire, murdering one another.
To be fair, the president couldn't possibly have known the consequences of the sudden liberation of repressed and atagonistic ethnic groups. It's not like there was any precedent for that. If only there was an experience to draw upon, like in the Balkans, say, ten years before ...
Anyhow, getting people of different ethnic and religious backgrounds to annhiliate one another with car bombs gets tired after a while. That's when you graduate to getting competing terrorist groups to kill one another.
It's kind of a complicated process, so you'll need to bear with me.
First, you get a bunch of terrorists together, give them two slivers of shithole land and let them think it might actually be a country. It's also important that said assholes of land sandwich a country that everybody wants destroyed. Then you force an election that all but the craziest motherfuckers in the region don't want. Then you just add water and stir.
From the enshrinment of the Oslo accords through 2006, the Palestinian Authority was ruled by the Fatah faction of what was formerly known as the Palestinian Liberation Organization. Fatah, and the PLO before it, was little more than a personality cult built around its leader, Yasser Arafat, and defined by his almost physically overwhelming corruption. From time to time, Arafat would allow one of his factions, the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, to launch terrorist assaults into Isreal as a means of keeping his kleptocracy undisturbed. When Arafat finally had the common decency to die in November of 2004, things got complicated fast.
However, and this is important to remember, the government of Israel continued to deal with Fatah at some level if only because the alternatives were so much worse than Arafat was. Even when the Israeli Defense Force was launching offensives into Gaza and blockading Arafat in his own headquarters, they still recognized Fatah as the legitimate government of the Palestinian Authority.
The Bush administration went much further than did even Israel. They refused to meet with Arafat at all. President Bush and then-National Security Advisor Condolezza Rice, neither of whom even pretended to know very much about the Middle East, positioned themselves to the right of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon vis-a-vis the Palestinans.
Upon Arafat's death, the Fatah leadership was assumed by Mahmoud Abbas. Within a year, Ariel Sharon slipped into an irreversible coma and was succeeded by Ehud Olmert. Unfortunately, Bush and Rice stayed exactly where they were and and made destroying the region something of a hobby.
As we have seen in both Afghanistan and Iraq, President Bush has something of a democracy fetish. The problem is - as scholars of German history have noted - that when you inject democracy into chaos, Adolf Hitler tends to wind up in power. And the Middle East has a long and storied history of chaos.
Bush continued his nonsensical chorus for elections in the Palestinan Authority that began in January of 2001. What followed demonstrates that President Bush not only doesn't understand the Middle East, it also shows that he doesn't understand electoral politics very well.
Fatah was a cauldron of corruption that supported limited terrorism, yet was publicly defined by a personality cult. When the personality heading the cult left the scene, all that was left was the corruption and the conflicting measures in dealing with Israel.
On the other hand, there was never any doubt what Hamas stood for; unlimited terrorism and the ultimate destruction of the Jewish state. But Hamas was also socially active in ways that Fatah never was. They built schools and maintained sewer services, y'know, the kind of shit that you cast ballots for. Much of the infastructure that should have been built and maintained by Fatah was instead the creation of Hamas.
Whether the Palestinian people support terrorism is debatable and electorally insignificant. Hamas made the trains run on time and put the kids in school, which is something that Arafat and Abbas never could. Anyone who knows anything about politics could have told the president of the United States who would win an election between the two.
In fact, both Fatah and the Israelis told the administration what would come of an election in the PA. They knew that Hamas would not only win, but win in a landslide that would destroy the peace process, perhaps forever.
The upcoming issue of Vanity Fair tells the story of what happened next in almost excruciating detail. After reading it, the only people left defending the competence of the Bush foreign policy will be drunkards, the addled, the insane and the most evil people among us.
Dahlan says he warned his friends in the Bush administration that Fatah still wasn't ready for elections in January. Decades of self-preservationist rule by Arafat had turned the party into a symbol of corruption and inefficiency - a perception Hamas found it easy to exploit. Splits within Fatah weakened its position further: in many places, a single Hamas candidate ran against several from Fatah.
"Everyone was against the elections," Dahlan says. Everyone except Bush. "Bush decided, 'I need an election. I want elections in the Palestinian Authority.' Everyone is following him in the American administration, and everyone is nagging Abbas, telling him, 'The president wants elections.' Fine. For what purpose?"
The elections went forward as scheduled. On January 25, Hamas won 56 percent of the seats in the Legislative Council.
Few inside the U.S. administration had predicted the result, and there was no contingency plan to deal with it. "I've asked why nobody saw it coming," Condoleezza Rice told reporters. "I don't know anyone who wasn’t caught off guard by Hamas’s strong showing."
This begs the very important question of just who the Secretary of State is hanging out with?
For a time, the United States believed that Hamas could be brought into the "roadmap" process defined by the U.S, U.N, Russia and the European Union. That illustrates an almost stunning ignorance of not just foreign policy, but basic electoral politics. Expecting Hamas to abandon antogonism to Israel is like expecting the Republican Party to abandon poorly thought out tax cuts and bending over for people like Pat Robertson, which is to say it that isn't something that would happen after a smashing success at the polls. Imagine Lincoln recinding the Emancipation Proclomation in March of 1865 and you sort of get an idea of how well it would work.
What Bush and Rice did in the aftermath of the Palestinian elections not only undermined their own silly "freedom agenda," it set back the credibility of the United States in the region for decades.
Essentially, the administration sought to reverse the results of a free and fair election that nobody wanted but them. And they did so by actually giving military aid to the losers of the election. As you might imagine, overturning the popular will of the Palestinian people tends to undermine your committment to freedom somewhat. That's particularly true if that popular will would never have been expressed in the first place but for your insistence.
The problem was that the newly Democratic Congress refused to authorize lethal military aid for Fatah for fear that it would end up in the hands of Hamas and be used to threaten Israel. But, as Karl Rove teaches us, the Democrats are almost always with the terrorists, so they could be safely ignored.
Of course, the go-to guy in the subsequent scheme was Elliott Abrams. Observers of recent American history might remember Mr. Abrams as a guy who pled guilty to his role in the Iran - Contra affair and was pardoned by the current president's father. That he served the current administration on the National Security Council, which doesn't require Senate confirmation, demonstrates that even the craveness of the Republican Congress of the day had its limits.
What essentially happened afterward is that the United States solicited military aid and training for Fatah's security services from third-party Arab governments, which is sort of what should have gotten President Reagan impeached.
The scheme bore some resemblance to the Iran-contra scandal, in which members of Ronald Reagan’s administration sold arms to Iran, an enemy of the U.S. The money was used to fund the contra rebels in Nicaragua, in violation of a congressional ban. Some of the money for the contras, like that for Fatah, was furnished by Arab allies as a result of U.S. lobbying.
But there are also important differences - starting with the fact that Congress never passed a measure expressly prohibiting the supply of aid to Fatah and Dahlan. "It was close to the margins," says a former intelligence official with experience in covert programs. "But it probably wasn’t illegal."
There are other similarities to Iran-Contra in this scheme. The original Reagan scheme was run out of the National Security Council in the White House basement. The NSC had absolutely no experience in running covert operations on its own and it was a miracle that Iran-Contra survived for the two years that it did. The more recent Bush plan was directed by the State Department, which has even less operational experience in covert action and a widely known reputation for leaks.
And leaks are exactly what happened. The operation, and the American fingerprints on it, leaked to the Arab media and gave Hamas plenty of time to prepare for and crush it. The secret coup against Hamas by Fatah and the United States was no longer secret. Yet, the plans and arms transfers continued. A covert operation that was no longer covert continued as if it was.
The results were disasterous. Not only did Hamas launch a preemptive strike that not only defeated Fatah, they slaughtered its loyalists in the streets. It was a horrific thing to watch, especially if you happened to be an Israeli within striking distance of Hamas' new terrorist stronghold. The arms that the United States skirted the law to transfer to Fatah now belong to Hamas and directly threaten Israel.
The operation was so badly bungled that the Fatah-loyalist al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades refused to participate in the defence of Gaza.
Others who stayed out of the fight were extremists. "Fatah is a large movement, with many schools inside it," says Khalid Jaberi, a commander with Fatah's al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, which continue to fire rockets into Israel from Gaza. "Dahlan's school is funded by the Americans and believes in negotiations with Israel as a strategic choice. Dahlan tried to control everything in Fatah, but there are cadres who could do a much better job. Dahlan treated us dictatorially. There was no overall Fatah decision to confront Hamas, and that's why our guns in al-Aqsa are the cleanest. They are not corrupted by the blood of our people.”
Jaberi pauses. He spent the night before our interview awake and in hiding, fearful of Israeli air strikes. "You know," he says, "since the takeover, we've been trying to enter the brains of Bush and Rice, to figure out their mentality. We can only conclude that having Hamas in control serves their overall strategy, because their policy was so crazy otherwise."
You know that a policy is fatally flawed in it's concepetion and execution when even your enemies think that a disaster is what you specifically intended.
As a result of the incredibly awkward stumbling of President Bush and Secretary Rice, not only is Gaza gone, so is the somewhat moderate Fatah. If President Abbas has any hope whatsoever of maintaing power, he is going to distance himself from the United States and Israel in a demonstrable way, thus making an acheivable peace agreement even more difficult than it was before.
Ironically, during the 2000 campaign, President Clinton's Camp David summit was one of the things that George W. Bush railed against the most. His entirely Palestinian policy during the first term comprised of not being a tool of Yasser Arafat. That policy turned Gaza into a dagger pointed at Israel's heart. And it certainly doesn't help Egypt, which trained and participated in arming the Fatah security forces either.
And it isn't like the Bush administration wasn't warned. There were true American patriots like Brent Scowcroft who sounded the warning bells all along.
The status quo, Scowcroft said, is not necessarily a good thing, but it might be better than what follows. "My kind of realism would look at what are the most likely consequences of pushing out a government. What will replace it?" What will replace autocratic but stable governments, neoconservative thinkers say, is whatever the people of the Middle East decide will replace them. Robert Kagan, of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and a Kristol ally, has written critically of the Bush Administration’s incomplete adherence to its own anti-tyranny doctrine. Referring to President Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, Kagan wrote, "Perhaps there is concern that too much pressure on Mubarak might produce a victory by the Muslim Brotherhood, the most popular Egyptian opposition party, which has been outlawed by the government. That's a risk, of course, but if the Bush Administration isn't willing to let Islamists, even radical Islamists, win votes in a fair election, then Bush officials should stop talking so much about democracy and go back to supporting the old dictatorships."
Scowcroft believes that the Administration has already gone too far in Kagan's direction. "Let's suppose Mubarak disappears and we have an election," he said. "The good guys are not going to win that election. The bad guys are going to win that election. The bad guys are always better organized. Always. The most ruthless, the tough ones, are the ones who are going to rise to the top in a chaotic society. That’s my fear."
The Bush Administration does not, as a rule, concede that democratization in the Middle East could lead to a series of Islamist states. One day, I mentioned to Scowcroft an interview I had had with Paul Wolfowitz, when he was Donald Rumsfeld’s deputy. Wolfowitz was the leading neoconservative thinker in the senior ranks of the current Bush Administration. (He is now the president of the World Bank.) I asked him what he would think if previously autocratic Arab countries held free elections and then proceeded to vote Islamists into power. Wolfowitz answered, “Look, fifty per cent of the Arab world are women. Most of those women do not want to live in a theocratic state. The other fifty per cent are men. I know a lot of them. I don’t think they want to live in a theocratic state."
Scowcroft said of Wolfowitz, "He's got a utopia out there. We're going to transform the Middle East, and then there won't be war anymore. He can make them democratic. He is a tough-minded idealist, but where he is truly an idealist is that he brushes away questions, says, 'It won't happen,' whereas I would say, 'It's likely to happen and therefore you can't take the chance.’ Paul's idealism sweeps away doubts." Wolfowitz, for his part, said to me, "It's absurdly unrealistic, demonstrably unrealistic, to ignore how strong the desire for freedom is."
Maybe not so much.
How can you call Afghanistan a democracy when the elected government only controls approximately 30% of its terroritory? How can you say that the surge in Iraq is a success when you don't know what will happen when the surge draws down? How can any rational person look at the Palestinian Authority or Lebanon and say that democracy is working? How can any right thinking human being look at what George W. Bush has done to the world and not say "What in the fuck has happened to American foreign policy?"
How can anyone call themselves a conservative and support anything that this president has done? President Bush has not only reversed the trends of the end of the Cold War, he's rapidly sending the world back into the Dark Ages.
Don't think that the next president is going to fix this, either. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are promising to further antagonize the rest of the world by reopening settled trade and defence agreements and John McCain is going to be a captive of his own idiot right.
Unfortunately, reasonable people like Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford are dead and Henry Kissinger, James Baker, Brent Scowcroft and the first President Bush are too old to do the decades of work that it will take to undo the disaster this administration has wrought.
A few years ago, I compared George W. Bush unfavorably to Lyndon Johnson. In retrospect, I was far too charitable in my evaluation of the current president. President Johnson only destroyed Vietnam and did a decade's worth of damage to the American economy. Even that was mitigated by his heroic stands in civil rights and the establishment of Medicare. Everything President George Walker Bush has gotten close to has been ruined almost beyond repair. The man is either incompetent, malevolent, cursed or all three.
Anyone who has ever wondered what Mr. Magoo would be like as president can put down their hashpipes.
Comparing Bush to other American presidents is a fool's game. By almost any standard, the guy falls short of even a shitheel like Fidel Castro in the leadership sweepstakes. Both have detained people under questionable circumstances in Cuba, but Castro was at least able to raise his nation's literacy rate. Cuban hospitals might be cesspools, but so is Walter Reed.
I love the United States and the American people with all of my heart, but I despair over what it's become over the last twenty years. As voters become increasingly disengaged with the electoral process, idealogical "base turnout" has become the most effective way to win. That means what P.J O'Rourke once lovingly described as "Bullshit, Money and Television" carries the day. And that's how people like Bill Clinton and George W. Bush come to power. I've spent way too many years and too much money studying the American presidency to see it become a tool by which one can get more blowjobs and wage epic Oedipal battles. The last sixteen years should demonstrate better than anything else what "process politics" brings.
I'm not going to stand here and tell you that my country is any better politically. In a lot of ways, Canada is far worse. We build up leaders only to destroy them forever and we're much better at it than Americans are.
But we don't tout ourselves as the "leader of the free world." We don't have a nuclear arsenal, a giant army or a tendency to fuck about in the politics of other nations. All of those things carry with them a special responsibility.
I know that Americans get awfully pissy when foreigners like me point out the flaws in your electoral process, but the decisions you make when you aren't eating pork rinds and beating your wives during Super Bowl commercials are felt around the world. Like it or not, that gives the rest of us the right to an opinion. I don't remember all of you Republican assholes getting all that uppity when a ton of Iraqis were waving purple fingers and sitting next to Laura Bush at the State of the Union address. You don't get to play policeman of the world unless we can see your badge.
Besides which, when American foreign policy irredeemably fucks up a place like, say, Central America or Somolia, Canadian peacekeepers get to go in and try to fix it without things like money and guns.
Any halfway smart person will read the next issue of Vanity Fair and ask what's worse; a country that deliberately arms and empowers terrorists, or one that does so by accident.
THE BUSH DOCTRINE IN THEORY & PRACTICE: KURDISTAN EDITION
We will starve terrorists of funding, turn them one against another, drive them from place to place, until there is no refuge or no rest. And we will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism. Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime. -President George W. Bush, Address to a Joint Session of Congress, 20 September 2001
In the lead-up to his invasion of Iraq, President Bush opined forcefully and frequently that the United States was justified in toppling the government of Saddam Hussein because it was a state sponsor of terrorism and posed a direct threat to the America and its allies.
The Turkish parliament yesterday voted to allow military strikes against Kurdish separatists in northern Iraq, despite stiff U.S. opposition and appeals from Baghdad for time to purge the rebels.
A government motion seeking a one-year authorization for one or more incursions into Iraq was approved with the support of 507 lawmakers in the 550-seat house, with 19 voting against. The motion leaves it up to the government to determine the timing and scope of the operation and the number of troops to be sent.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has stressed that parliamentary approval would not mean immediate military action, signalling room for diplomacy.
Baghdad and Washington scrambled to dissuade Ankara from following through on military action.
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said he was determined to act against the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party, which attacks Turkey from its bases in northern Iraq.
The PKK has waged a bloody campaign for Kurdish self-rule in southeast Turkey since 1984. The conflict has claimed more than 37,000 lives.
Any fair-minded observer has to agree that, under this president's own doctrine of international relations, Turkey has a much stronger case for attacking Iraq than did the U.S in 2002-03.
In 2002, Washington argued that Iraq harbored terrorists and may have allowed the establishment of al-Qaeda training camps on its territory. That those camps were in the autonomous Kurdish zone and protected by U.N resolutions and American air power was wisely left unsaid.
Since the end of the first Gulf War nearly 17 years ago, the Kurdistan Worker's Party (or PKK) has escalated its terror attacks against Turkey and not infrequently engaged the militaries of both Turkey and Iran. Turkey responded with a low-level attempts at the ethnic cleansing of its southeastern frontier, which only served to invite more terorrism from the PKK.
Between the American wars in Iraq, the PKK fought rival factions in the autonomous zone. However, since the overthrow of Saddam, neither the Kurdish regional government, the Iraqi government in Baghdad, or the United States military - which has been charged with unrooting terror wherever it is found - has done much of anything about the PKK. To Turkish ears, the president's declaration that "you are either with us, or you are with the terorists" must ring hollow indeed.
Turkey has been a close American ally since the the end of the First World War and, as a member of NATO and under the Truman Doctrine, it enjoys an American security guarantee. There are currently 160,000 U.S forces in Iraq and the United States has done nothing to stop terror attacks against an ally by a group that the U.S itself has designated as a terrorist organization from a country it occupies. Indeed, Washington holds Iraqi Kurdistan up as an example for the rest of the region.
It then stands to reason that Ankara has every right to ask the United States with whom it stands, Turkey or the terrorists.
Of course, the fledgling government of Nouri al-Maliki would very much like to avoid a second foreign invasion of his country in less than five years and has pledged to Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan that such an exercise will be unnecessary.
Maliki told Erdogan on the telephone that Baghdad "is absolutely determined to end the activities and the presence" of the PKK in Iraq, the semi-official Anatolia news agency reported, quoting unnamed sources.
He asked for "a new opportunity" to resolve the issue through diplomatic means and proposed talks.
Erdogan welcomed the proposal but warned that Ankara cannot tolerate any "further waste of time."
I think after 23 years, Turkey has been more than patient.
The obvious question is with what army will al-Maliki "end the activities and presence" of the PKK? The army under his control has yet to prove itself equal to the task of quelling the insurgency that has engulfed the territory under his direct command, and Maliki has little, if any, influence in Kurdistan. Indeed, one would be hard pressed to find anything as trivial as an Iraqi flag north of Kirkuk.
The United States currently has no forces at all in the north and even if it did, lacks the will or domestic political support to take on the PKK and face the possibility of a third major insurgency against its forces.
Therefore, there are few options other than Turkish unilateral action. Ironically, the White House is strssing diplomacy.
In Washington, President George W. Bush said the U.S. was "making it very clear to Turkey that we don't think it is in their interests" to send troops into Iraq. But Washington has lost leverage with Ankara because of a pending Congressional vote on a resolution branding the 1915-17 Ottoman massacres of Armenians as genocide.
Turkey strongly rejects the "genocide" tag and has threatened unspecified reprisals against its NATO ally.
For George W. Bush to call for patience and diplomacy is certainly one of the more interesting phenomenons in recent history. That he decides what is and is not in the interest of other countries certainly is not. He is, when all is said and done, the decider.
Bush's evaluation of Turkish interests is certainly fascinating. Saddam Hussein presented no direct threat to the American homeland, all fantasies about "mushroom clouds in American cities" aside, and the terrorism he sponsored targeted few, if any, American citizens or interests. But terrorism was one of the two stated justifications for the March 19, 2003 invasion.
Yet "democratic" Iraq is currently providing both safe harbor and a base of operations to the PKK, which has attacked Turkish terroritory, interests and nationals repeatedly for years. Those were precisely the reasons the United States was justified in taking down the Taliban in Afghanistan.
It is important to remember that Turkey is not acting pre-emptively to some distant (and laughable) threat. It has been and continues to be attacked by a group that even the United States has declared a terrorist organization. And the Bush Administration is trying to slam the brakes down on that.
That begs an important question; "What is the War on Terror really about if not terror and going to war against it?" The United States was never attacked by Iraq, not even by proxy. One attack against the American homeland was launched from Afghanistan. Yet, this administration levelled two (albeit highly unpleasant) governments and engaged in a doomed exercise in nation building that it mocked just seven years ago.
Turkey, on the other hand, is in its third decade of attacks on its terrority by a group that everyone recognizes as terrorist. The Iranians know that the PKK is a terrorist group. But Turkey is supposed to wait around around for the United States and its puppet regime in Baghdad to do .... nothing. George W. Bush and Nouri al-Maliki have spent more time fighting Carl Levin than they have the Kurdistan Workers Party.
When one country invades another, it faces the risk of a native insurgency. That's the nature of war. The Turks have invaded no one. No, they find themselves invaded by a Kurdish foreign insurgency that believes it has found protection in the rhetoric of Washington. And for all intents and purposes, the PKK does have President Bush's protection.
It couldn't be more obvious that this president believes that his country alone has the right to respond to a threat - real and perceived - however and whenever it sees fit, yet reserves the right to restain other nations with clear and justified national security interests at stake. It is equally obvious that he is about learn a powerful lesson; that the world doesn't work that way.
Five years ago, President Bush was rather more liberal in using words like "terrorist" and "genocide" than he is today. He's now learning that those words have real long-term, and probably permanent, implications on America's relationship with Turkey.
The Kurds are the world's largest ethnic group without a nation of their own. Consisting of approximately 55 million souls, they are nearly twice the population of Canada. They have been oppressed, betrayed and slaughtered by every country in the region. Their tragic history, however, does not give them licence to engage in terrorism.
Ankara has the same right to self-defence that Washington does and they have a far more compelling case for conducting military operations in Iraq now than did the United States four and a half years ago. In fact, since America assumed responsibility fot Iraqi security by virtue of its occupation and disbanding of the Iraqi military, the Bush Administration has a special duty to prevent precisely what is happening now. It is now clear that it has been derilect in that duty.
That leaves it with nothing but bad options, and those options are getting worse by the day.
Mr. President, are you with the Turks or are you with the terrorists?
Editor's Note: I wrote this post in longhand at work yesterday. Of course, most of the arguments were also used in a far more humorous way by the Daily Show last night. I just can't win, can I?
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Welcome To The Terrordome By: Public Enemy From: Fear of a Black Planet
WHO KNEW? GENERAL RICARDO SANCHEZ AND THE CATASTROPHY IN IRAQ
As you probably know, the former commanding general of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Ricardo Sanchez yesterday came out against the war. And to think it only took him three years after leaving the theatre to do so.
The former top commander of U.S. troops in Iraq slammed the handling of the war and gave a bleak assessment of the current situation in Iraq.
"There is no question that America is living a nightmare with no end in sight," retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez told a convention of military journalists on Friday.
Sanchez commanded U.S. troops in Iraq from June 2003 to July 2004. His controversial tenure saw the capture of Saddam Hussein and the handover of sovereignty to the Iraqi government, but also the rise of the insurgency and the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
(...)
But Sanchez reserved most of his venom Friday for U.S. officials, saying the U.S. government still has not brought all the resources needed to win in Iraq.
"From a catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan, to the administration's latest surge strategy, this administration has failed to employ and synchronize the political, economic and military power," Sanchez said.
Continuing changes to military strategy alone will not achieve victory, rather it will only "stave off defeat," he said.
"The administration, Congress and the entire inter-agency, especially the State Department, must shoulder the responsibility for this catastrophic failure and the American people must hold them accountable."
No shit, Rick? Really? And here I was thinking that things were going so well.
Firstly, let me re-affirm that I supported the war, lest you think me some manner of lefty fuckhead. I've written more than enough about that support and the reasons behind it that I needn't restate my position here.
Having said that, the stated reasons for the war were incredibly stupid and the administration's projections were almost criminally optimistic. No one should ever tell people that their soldiers are going to "be greeted as liberators" as they are being sent into battle because most people - and Americans especially - are dumb enough to believe them. Not only were predictions criminally misleading, they were politically suicidal.
In the summer of 2002, I privately told a couple of friends in California that I wouldn't be at all surprised that the United States would suffer something in the neighbourhood of 10,000 casualties in the battle to eject Saddam alone. While the Iraqi army and, more importantly, the Republican Guard didn't put up much of a fight to hold Kuwait in 1991, defending their own homeland was very different. I, and more importantly, the military planners, envisioned a months-long siege of Baghdad that looked more like Stalingrad that what actually occurred.
Furthermore, if you really believed that the Ba'ath regime had WMD, it follows that they would use it to ensure its survival or to make the cost of destroying it unacceptably high. After all, Iraq used chemical weapons in its war against Iran and that didn't involve its own homeland defence.
Obviously, I was wrong, but I shouldn't have been, and the Bush administration should have told the American people to expect something along the line of my predictions. Firstly, they were entirely possibly and any student of history knows that. Secondly, even if proven wrong, such a casualty projection would let people see the current numbers, 4,500 dead, for what they are, incredibly low in a historical context.
No responsible leader should ever say that they are going to invade a country that is roughly equal to Texas in terms of size, geography and population without anyone getting hurt. One of the great lessons of Vietnam is that if the country isn't prepared for the inevitable casualties, domestic support for the war quickly evaporates. And that's pretty much what happened in Iraq. Cheney never tired of saying that American forces would be greeted with candy and blowjobs, and when the insurgency started, support for the entire exercise melted away.
The most important factor in any military conflict is the domestic will to win. Once that's gone, you're finished. Christ, even a monster like William Randolph Hearst understood that if you're going to manufacture a war, you had damn well get the public on board and keep them there.
Sanchez is generally right in his criticism, but wrong in the specifics. It wasn't Congress or the Department of State that set the troop levels for the invasion which ultimately led us to where we are today. That was done by the civilians at the Department of Defense and specifically approved by the President of the United States.
This president's father determined that nearly 600,000 troops were necessary for the relatively simple task of ejecting Iraq from Kuwait, yet Donald Rumsfeld and George W. Bush figured that they could pull off the infinitely more difficult job of invading, occupying and pacifying a much larger country with less than a third of that force level. And no one - not the president, the generals, Congress, or the media ever question the wisdom of that in public. Everyone in official Washington thought that invading a huge country with fourteen Americans, eight Englishmen and a Pollack was a good idea.
Asked why he did not speak out about his concerns, Sanchez said general officers take an oath to carry out the orders of the president while in uniform.
“The last thing that America wants, the last thing that you want, is for currently serving general officers to stand up against our political leadership,” he said.
However, general officers do have the option of stepping down if they disagree with the country's leaders.
Sanchez said he felt he could not resign and go public with his reservations while he was in Iraq, because he feared that move could further jeopardize troops serving there.
“I think once you are retired, you have a responsibility to the nation, to your oath, to the country, to state your opinion,” he said.
Horseshit.
If there's one thing that I'm getting good and goddamn tired of, it's these generals who only speak out when they are safely retired and on the payroll of a super-enormous defence contractor. By staying silent while in uniform, these generals are guilty of a dereliction of duty.
And it should be remembered that General Sanchez was in command from June 2003 to July 2004. This is when things went from merely bad to irretrivably lost. I'm confident that the doomsday rubicon was crossed when Sanchez himself was in charge.
Sanchez's thoughts on his responsibilities as a retiree are nothing short of absolute nonsense and they suggest that he had no responsibilities as an active-duty flag officer. And that is wrong. The first responsibility of any officer is the protection of the men who serve under him to the maximum extent possible. Officers have the responsibility to not send their men into a suicide mission unless doing so is absolutely necessary to the success of the overall mission.
And the way that Rumsfeld and Bush constituted the invasion made the mission itself a suicidal. There was no way that the pacification of a hostile population that large could occur with a force that small in theatre and the senior uniform command knew it. They history on that is pretty clear at this point.
Knowing this, if a general has a "responsibility to the nation," it is to immediately resign and tell the country why. At a minimum, they have a legal obligation to testify truthfully to Congress about their reservations. Of the generals who have come out against the war since the 2003 invasion, a grand total of none have done so while still in uniform. Only one, General Eric Shinseki, fulfilled his obligations to Congress and the American people.
For Sanchez and his ilk to say that his resignation would "further jeopardize troops serving there" makes him either a liar or an idiot. How does his current critique jeopardize the troops any less now than it would have then? He would have been equally retired.
Sanchez makes the equally silly assertion that "general officers take an oath to carry out the orders of the president while in uniform."
Not so. If an officer receives an order that is either illegal or unduly dangerous to his men, he has the legal and moral obligation to disregard it and resign his commission. "Just following orders" hasn't been a defence - legal or otherwise - since the 1940s.
General officers achieve their rank because of their leadership qualities. To follow a political/military strategy that one knows to be dangerously flawed is the antithesis of leadership. It is nothing less than careerism of the lowest order. And for generals like Sanchez to continue to collect their pensions as they criticize a policy they themselves executed is an act of moral cowardice.
I hate what this war has become with all of my heart, but I refuse to take common cause with assholes like Ricardo Sanchez in doing so. This is a matter of principle for me, and dare I say, it's more principle than Sanchez himself ever demonstrated.
If there's anything worse than Monday morning quaterbacking from the guy who was actually throwing the ball on Sunday afternoon, I can't see it.
Easy Listening Recommendation of the Day: Masters of War By: Bob Dylan From: The Freewheeling Bob Dylan
State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration by James Risen Finished, Thursday 19 January 2006
A Simple Twist of Fate: Bob Dylan and the Making of Blood on the Tracks by Andy Gill and Kevin Odegard Finished, 23 January 2006
Grits: An Intimate Portrait of the Liberal Party By Christina McCall-Newman Finished, 17 March 2006
Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architechts of American Power by David Rothkopf Finished, 6 April 2006
Strategery: How George W. Bush is Defeating Terrorists, Outwitting Democrats and Confounding the Mainstream Media By Bill Sammon Finished, May 10, 2006
George Wallace: American Populist By Stephan Lesher Finished, June 15, 2006
Secrets of the Kingdom: The Inside Story of the Saudi - U.S Connection By Gerald Posner Finished, June 20, 2006
Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan By Robert D. Kaplan Finished, June 27, 2006
Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus By Rick Perlstien Finished, July 4, 2006
Flawed Giant: Lyndon Johnson And His Times 1961-1973 By Robert Dallek Finished, August 10, 2006
Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential By James Moore and Wayne Slater Finished, October 7, 2006
The Fall Of Baghdad By Jon Lee Anderson Finished, October 31, 2006
The Way It Works: Inside Ottawa By Eddie Goldenberg Finished, November 12, 2006
Child Of God By Cormac McCarthy Finished, November 18, 2006
Right Side Up: The Fall Of Paul Martin And The Rise Of Stephen Harper's New Conservatism By Paul Wells Finished, December 8, 2006
The Private Life Of Chairman Mao By Dr. Li Zhisui, Translation By Tai Hung Chao Finished, December 14, 2006
Exile On Main Street: A Season In Hell With The Rolling Stones By: Robert Greenfeild Finished, February 21, 2007
"Work Hard, Study ... And Keep Out Of Politics!" Adventures And Lessons From An Unexpected Public Life By: James A. Baker, III with Steve Fiffer Finished, March 7, 2007
Supreme Conflict: The Inside Story Of The Struggle For Control Of The United States Supreme Court By Jan Crawford Greenburg Finished, March 14, 2007
Imperial Life In The Emerald City: Life Inside Iraq's Green Zone By: Rajiv Chandransekaran Finished March 18, 2007
Memories Of My Melancholy Whores By: Gabriel Garcia Marquez Finished, March 21, 2007
Guests Of The Ayatollah: The First Battle In America's War With Militant Islam By: Mark Bowden Finished, April 4, 2007
Screwjack By: Hunter S. Thompson Finished, April 19, 2007
State Of Denial: Bush At War, Part III By: Bob Woodward Finished, April 22, 2007
31 Days: Gerald Ford, The Nixon Pardon, And A Government In Crisis By: Barry Werth Finished, May 6, 2007
At The Center Of The Storm: My Years At The CIA By: George Tenent with Bill Harlow Finished, May 28, 2007
No Excuses: Concessions of a Serial Campaigner By: Robert Shrum Finished: July 1, 2007
Chief of Staff: Lyndon Johnson and His Presidency By: W. Marvin Watson with Sherwin Markmarn Finished: July 12, 2007
Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power By: Robert Dalleck Finished: July 17, 2007
1912: Wilson, Roosevelt, Taft & Debs - The Election That Changed The Country By: James Chace Finished: August 5, 2007
Becoming Justice Blackmun: Harry Blackmun's Supreme Court Journey By: Linda Greenhouse Finished: August 20, 2007
President Reagan: The Triumph of Imagination By: Richard Reeves Finished: September 20, 2007
Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush By: Robert Draper Finished: October 1, 2007
Harper's Team: Behind the Scenes in the Conservative Rise to Power By: Tom Flanagan Finished: October 9, 2007
Full Circle: Death and Resurrection in Canadian Conservative Politics By: Bob Plamondon Finished: October 17, 2007
My Years As Prime Minister By: Jean Chretien Finished: October 23, 2007
The Thumpin': How Rahm Emanuel and the Democrats Learned to Be Ruthless and Ended the Republican Revolution By: Naftali Bendavid Finished: October 25, 2007
Not A Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency By: Richard A. Posner Finished, October 29, 2007
Slash By: Slash and Anthony Bozza Finished: November 1, 2007
The Heroin Diaries: A Year in the Life of a Shattered Rock Star By: Nikki Sixx and Ian Gittin Finished: November 2, 2007
Clapton: The Autobiography By: Eric Clapton Finished: November 5, 2007
Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet By: James Mann Finished: November 13, 2007
Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the American Political Conventions of 1968 By: Norman Mailer Finished: November 15, 2007
Memoirs: 1939-1993 By: Brian Mulroney Finished: December 3,2007
Peace Kills: America's Fun New Imperalism By: P.J O'Rourke Finished: December 4, 2007
The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 By: Lawrence Wright Finished: December 11, 2007
The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 By: Ron Suskind Finished: December 19, 2007
Cheney: The Untold Story of America's Most Powerful and Controversial Vice President By: Stephen F. Hayes Finished: December 25, 2007
When Trumpets Call: Theodore Roosevelt After the White House By: Patricia O'Toole Finished: January 1, 2008
America's First Dynasty: The Adamses, 1735-1918 By: Richard Brookhiser Finished:January 7, 2008
The Road By: Cormac McCarthy Finished: January 9, 2008
The Conviction of Richard Nixon: The Untold Story of the Frost/Nixon Interviews By: James Reston, Jr. Finished" January 11, 2008
Write It When I'm Gone: Remarkable Off-the-Record Conversations with Gerald R. Ford By: Thomas M. DeFrank Finished: January 15, 2008
The Bush Tragedy By: Jacob Weisberg Finished: January 18, 2008
When All You Have Is Hope By: Frank O'Dea with John Lawrence Reynolds Finished: January 21, 2008
Confessions of a Political Hitman: My Secret Life of Scandal, Corruption, Hypocrisy and Dirty Tricks That Decide Who Gets Elected (and Who Doesn't) By: Stephen Marks Finished: February 8, 2008
The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court By: Jeffery Toobin Finished, February 18, 2008
The Architect: Karl Rove and the Dream of Absolute Power By: James Moore and Wayne Slater Finished, February 21, 2008
Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln By: Doris Kerns Goodwin Finished, February 26, 2008
Post Office By: Charles Bukowski Finished: March 6, 2008
Factotum By: Charles Bukowski Finished: March 7, 2008
Women By: Charles Bukowski Finished: March 10, 2008
Queer By: William S. Burroughs Finished: March 12, 2008
To Live's To Fly: The Ballad of the Late, Great Townes Van Zant By: John Kruth Finished: March 17, 2008
Twenty Thousand Roads: The Ballad of Gram Parsons and His Cosmic American Music By: David N. Meyer Finished: March 24, 2008
W.A.R: The Unauthorized Biography of William Axl Rose By: Mick Wall Finished: April 4, 2008
Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Secret Trade in Nuclear Weapons By: Adrian Levy & Catherine Scott-Clark Finished: April 21, 2008
The Assassins' Gate: America in Iraq By: George Packer Finished: May 5, 2008
Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush By: John W. Dean Finished: May 7, 2008
Clinton in Exile: A President Out of the White House By: Carol Felenthal Finished: May 12, 2008
Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America By: Rick Perlstein Finished: June 2, 2008
Infidel By: Ayaan Hirsi Ali Finished: June 11, 2008
The People's Machine: Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Rise of Blockbuster Democracy By: Joe Mathews Finished: June 20, 2008
The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate By: James Rosen Finished: June 30, 2008
American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate & Beyond By: E. Howard Hunt w/ Greg Aunuapu Finished: July 4, 2008
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA By: Tim Weiner Finished: July 16, 2008
The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder By: Vincent Bugliosi Finished: July 21, 2008
War by Other Means: An Insider's Account of the War on Terror By: John Yoo Finished: July 25, 2008
Your Government Failed You: Breaking the Cycle of National Security Disasters By: Richard A. Clarke Finished: July 31, 2008
The Persian Puzzle: The Conflict Between Iran and America By: Kenneth M. Pollack Finished: August 13, 2008
The Human Factor: Inside the CIA's Dysfunctional Intelligence Culture By: Ishmael Jones Finished: August 19, 2008
Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba ... And Then Lost It to the Revolution By: T.J Enjlish Finished: August 25, 2008
Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of Nation Building in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia By: Ahmed Rashid Finished: Sepember 9, 2008
The Case Against the General: Manuel Noriega and the Politics of American Justice By: Steve Albert Finished: September 25, 2008
Condolezza Rice: An American Life By: Elisabeth Bumiller Finished: October 10, 2008
Presidential Courage: Brave Leaders and How They Changed America, 1789-1989 Michael Beschloss Finished: October 13, 2008
What People Are Saying About skippy
"hands down, Canada's most underrated blog" Damian Penny, The Undisputed Dean of Canadian Political Bloggers. Posted at Daimnation , Saturday October 21, 2006
"You can count on “Skippy” to make you think in different ways about familiar issues. You can also depend on him to be rude, offensive, and outrageous – if you're offended by completely uninhibited sexual imagery (and imagination!), don't read Skippy – but your prudery will keep you from an often interesting perspective." Posted On: Jamulblog, July 12, 2007
"Your Maximum Leader is beginning to think that the less he posts, the better Skippy’s political posts are. Indeed, your Maximum Leader even thought (just a few short moments ago) that if your Maximum Leader just stopped blogging all together would Skippy just keep on writing enough good material for two blogs? (Admittedly one of those blogs would be an X-rated social commentary/diary site and the second a remarkably well-informed and insightful political commentary site…)" Posted On: Naked Villainy, September 18, 2007
"I love your writing. few could pull off sarcastic humor and self-loathing like you do. You've turned self-disgust
into an art form." Posted By:Ophelia July 19, 2003
"hahaha um, not funny" Posted By: Ophelia July 17, 2003
"This is not fucking funny." Posted By: Bee August 21, 2003
"I join Bee in saying that this isn''t funny AT ALL. jesus christ, Skippy." Posted By: Ophelia August 23,
2003
"You are obiviously being kept down by the Mud People." Posted By: DrReverend August 21, 2003
"I''ll give you $50.00 if you kill yourself." Posted By: DrReverend August 19, 2003
"Last time I read this blog." Posted By: Dave, October 24, 2003
"I think you should stop talking about killing yourself and ACTUALLY kill yourself. For fuck's sake, everybody is
tired of hearing about how you might, just do it or face the fact that you are too pathetic to even kill yourself."
Posted By: A Caring Guy, October 25, 2003
"If Joey Ramone were alive today he'd probably shit in your mouth." Posted By: DrReverend November 11,
"When you're good, you're good. When you're bad, you're even better. See you in hell." Posted By: Anna
November 11, 2003
"Skippy, if you can prove to me that giving head and swallowing will without a doubt keep lung cancer and heart
disease at bay, you've earned yourself a BJ." Posted By: Mary Magdalicious, December 5, 2003
"Wow...you know nothing about politics." Posted Dr. Reverend, December 26, 2003
"You are a dick and should think seriously about killing your stupid blog - go get a job, you big fag"Posted
By: Princess Paragonian, December 29, 2003
"You have a, how shall i say.... appealing 'tough', yet gently gay look." (Univited PM) Posted
by:Jus20012002, January 2, 2004 .
"I hope jesus doesn't kick you in the nuts."Posted By: Mary Magdalicious February 2, 2004
"Stumbled on to your blog by accident and i must say alot of the stuff had me in stitches. Love it" Posted
By:Jeremy February 4, 2004
" .....sick."Posted By: Bee February 7, 2004
"Hey Skippy, you ever consider running for public office in the states? I know some people in the West Virginia state
government and our Senator can't live forever.Hell, even Strom, Thomas-Jefferson-Fan, Thurmond died
eventually.Posted By: Ford W. Mavrick, February 9, 2004
Wow, for someone who is so opinionated, you really don't know shit about American or Canadian culture. You appear to
know even less about history." Posted By: Dr. Reverend February 13, 2004
"Your blog's the best I have come across in a long time. I may not agree with all you say but the verve with which
you say it and the humour and irreverance is terrific. These days when the media just reproduces the handout from central
control, blogs like yours do a great deal to form informed opinion in a democratic society. Thanks. Keep it up."
Posted By:Anandan February 13, 2004
"SKIPPY pities ME? Where's my noose?" Posted By: Kilgore Trout March 22, 2004
"Jesus Skippy. Now Allah is going to kick you in the nuts" Posted By: Mary Magdalicious March 22, 2004
"I could make one that says "Skippy has a small penis" although his cock is superb. Posted By: Bestest Pussy March 23,2004
"Cunt sucking is for bitches.You're considered one of the girls because you dress like one. Posted By: Dr. Reverend March 24, 2004
"John Malkovich is one sexy bastard. I have such a thing for him. And I never realized til now, Skippy, how much you resemble John Malkovich...this, by default, makes you also one sexy bastard. See how that works?" Posted By: Zombie March, 26, 2004
"Too bad you live up north. It could have been beautiful.
Ever since I started coming here and saw your pic I wondered why you weren't getting more action. You are not a bad looking guy at all.
Maybe the girls are just...well, that's enough kindness for one day." Posted By: Serenity March 26, 2004
"Hell, if they make gay marriage legal, I'll marry you..." Posted By: Outpatient March 26, 2004
"You look creepier than the REM faggot. But he looks much more like a homersexual." Posted By: Dr. Reverend March 27, 2004
"Skippy, your hits will go up again if you post pictures of your man nipples. Lots of man nips." Posted By: Mary Magdalicious April 15, 2004
"What the fuck? You turning faggot? Posted By: Dr. Reverend April 16, 2004
"Sometimes it gets to be just a little too much. Sharing, that is." Posted By: Bee May 23, 2004
"I'll give you $5.00 if you make the fucking font you use on your blog bigger.
I'll give you $50.00 if you stop fucking writing about American politics.
I'll give you $500.00 if you fucking kill youself." Posted By: Dr. Reverend May 26, 2004
"Of course women like jerks.
Why the fuck do you think they like me?
I guess you've learned nothing from me over all these years." Posted By: Dr. Reverend May 29, 2004
"Sometimes a bitch just has to die." Posted By: Ford W. Maverick May 29, 2004
"It looks like we have more in common than the swastikas carved in our foreheads."Posted By: Dr. Reverend May 29, 2004
"This might be a shallow and 'Waiting-for-Godot-like' comment but...you seem to have not only brains but also beauty." Posted By: Nietzscheswife June 7, 2004
"Skippy, you are such a twisted bastard. Seriously. Why haven't we had sex yet?"Posted By: 0phelia June 25, 2004
"Just found your site. I find some of the things you say quite disgusting. And really quite enjoyable,so keep up the good work."Posted By: Big Al June 28, 2004
"I've read most of your blog. I'd say that so far it's the best I've come across, and believe me, I've seen a few. It's funny, well written (except for the spelling...) and interesting. There will always be those few idiots who just don't get it. It's useless to get worked up about it." Posted By: Johnny June 30, 2004
"Skippy... Go for the facial tattoo. I dig em', and fuck what those other bitches think. You can always bite their tits off if they back talk you." Posted By: Mary Magdalicious July 1, 2004
"Go fuck yourself up your butt." Posted By: Reek Stankleberry July 6, 2004
"Well if ass-fucking won't keep Satan away, I just don't know what will." Posted By: Dr. Reverend July 7, 2004
"dude, you're killing me. keep it up." Posted By: Son of Nixon July 22, 2004
"Are you always either naked or in a suit?" Posted By: Rehella July 22, 2004
"That person should speak for himself or herself. 'Cause you really are that much of a cunt, skippy." Posted By: Kilgore Trout August 4, 2004
"I've read you for a long time but have never commented before. That isn't a slight to your great writing ability, it's mainly because I don't want to be seen here!" Posted By: Paul August 4, 2004
" Dead on. Bulls-eye. I take back what I said about you being a cunt. For now." Posted By: Kilgore Trout August 4, 2004
"Know what, Skippy? You're alright." Posted By: Anna August 18, 2004
"Excellent work. Damn you for being so dead on." Posted By: The Maximum Leader August 24, 2004
"Skippy, fuck the puppy idea. Try getting a monkey that smokes. That will get you laid." Posted By: Mary Magdalicious August 27, 2004
"As to the beard - I like the clean shaven better - and what's wrong with a bald head? Bald heads are hot on some guys - unfortunately most can't pull it off * sigh * You look like you can pull it off though and that's a good thing - not a bad.
BTW, love your blog. I saw it in my referrers and thought it was just a random hit. Then I started reading and found you to be hilarious - it was only after about 10 posts that I noticed you linked me. I was more than flattered - linked by someone I was about to link anyway - awesome. Thanks" Posted By: Kinky August 27, 2004
"Fuckin' Goy bastard." Posted By: Dr Reverend December 19,2004
"Who does a guy have to sleep with to get one of his Skippy quotes pasted to the sidebar?
Great googly-moogly." Posted By: Smallholder December 20, 2004
"Are you a child molester or what's the story?" Posted By: Fukinator, December 28, 2004
"Sick dude." Posted By: DCayer December 29, 2004
"You officially suck." Posted By: Sorry, January 22, 2005
"I heart you, Skippy" Posted By: Karinsky, January 25, 2005
"As I've stated before, you were quite skilled in bed and I had no need to fake any of my multiple orgasms." Posted By: 0phelia, June 30, 2005
"I love Skippy. I swear I do. The only blogger more twisted than me." Posted on: Velociworld, July 26, 2005
" You are so fucking ignorant about America. And while the American people ARE stupid, so are you." Posted By: Bill Lassiter, August 2, 2005
"How can you not love a man who hates himself so viciously?" Posted on: It's All About De , August 31, 2005
"If I wasn't positive that all Canadian men had tiny penises, I'd be all over that Skippy." Posted On: It's All About De
"I've seen pictures of you and I'd say you're fuckable." Posted By: Joan, September 29, 2005
" I love your posts on Canadian politics even more than I love your posts on porn.
And I love your porn posts.
Why the hell do you waste all this talent on the internet? Write a book or something, goddammit! Posted By: Cliff S., November 17, 2005
"Let it never be said that underneath your self-cavilling, bitter (yet strangely egomaniacal) surface that you never take the time to give the people what they want. Even if it's just one people. Gawd bless you, Skippy! Posted By: Locke, November 18, 2005
"Wow! I don't know that I've ever been flattered and yet somewhat revolted at the same time... It's an interesting sensation." Posted By: Dewey in Toronto, December 1, 2005
"Very often, debating you is like playing whack a mole: You pop up some premised assertion moles, I pull out my mallet and start whacking, then you pop up more premised assertion moles - which are mostly or completely unrelated to the original moles I was whacking at. Your stock of moles seemingly stretches into infinity. And yet, an endless supply of moles does not equate to cogent argument.
Very often, debating you is like speaking to a salesman who will not answer a particular direct question, and instead flies off on the flight of rhetorical splendor known as "baffling them with bullshit." I'm impressed with your rhetorical skills, and your IQ, and your accumulation of knowledge. I'm impressed that I'm the American citizen, yet you might have a more thorough knowledge of the American Constitution than I. And yet, these impressive things are not substitutes for cogent argument."Posted By; gcotharn, December 21, 2005
"Besides, you seem to think you're the least respectable person I know. While you're often right, you're wrong on that count. Careful, I might out YOU as a nice guy. Or something." Posted By: Dewey In Toronto, December 27, 2005
"I've been to Toronto. The most dangerous thing I saw there was an 11 foot tall red head with shaved balls."Posted By: Judy, December 31, 2005
"There was this "Caught on Tape!" video I watched back in my highschool days where one of the scenes shows two people starting to cross the railroad tracks. One looks up at the last minute and sees the train, the other does not. In the commercial, it cuts away just before the train does its thing, but the video...
Your blog is like a twisted version of the video. We know the train is going liquify you in shocking gory fashion, but that's why we keep coming back. It's so much more fun that we both know the train is coming and you still gleefully walk into its path...and we love you all the more for it." Posted By:Locke, January 13, 2006
"Fuck. I'm hooked." Posted By: DeAnna, January 14, 2006
"Your Maximum Leader has found Skippy's commentary more insightful and interesting than anyone elses. So now he supposes that Skippy will go back to writing about porn and strippers he meets in the subway." Posted By: The Maximum Leader on Naked Villainy January 24, 2006
"Slightly crazed is fine, but with the beard you look like a total nutjob. If you ever hope to get laid again, for fuck's sake, Skippy, NEVER, EVER grow a saddam beard. You're welcome."Posted By: The Lady O, 28 January, 2006
"Maybe we should get married. My readers could support us by purchasing my worn panties and you could be the panty pimp." Posted By; Joan 28 January 2006
" I know it must be hard for you...being objectified by women all the time. But come on, how can they really help themselves? Have you seen yourself lately? Your pheramones preceed you into a room (as does your crotch). Don't blame it all on them...you did choose to leave your house. :D" Posted By: Joan, 3 February, 2006
"Skippy, you sarcastic twerp." Posted By: Arwen, 8 February 2006
"Just so you know.. if I had to choose between Moussaoui or Skippy.. You'd win. Even if I know what an asshole you are. Posted By; Judy, 13 February 2006
"I'd be willing to sign a legal document stating that is IS ok, in fact, to masturbate whilst thinking of me." Posted By: DeAnna (Who seems unaware of my reputation as an outlaw) February 24, 2006
"Feel free to masturbate while thinking of me...actually, do you need some of my panties to help you with that?" Posted By: Joan, February 24, 2006
"I blame myself for this. I have been too lenient with you. Your Godless behaviour must come to an end. You will receive a severe beating this weekend and I am contemplating removing your testicles." Posted By: Dr. Reverend, February 24, 2006
"Just remember skippy, the US never threw a fit when you smuggled your own personal WMD over the border twice a year. After all, it wasn't like you were hiding in your pants or anything.
All's fair in love and war, so to speak." Posted By: Judy, April 4, 2006
"Wow...nothing hotter than a man willing to issue fatwas for pussy." Posted By: Joan, April 16, 2006
"You sir, are a brilliant writer." Posted By: Judy, May 4, 2006
"I think I'm falling in love." Posted By: DeAnna, May 11, 2006
"THIS IS THE MOST DIABOLICAL FALSITY YOU HAVE EVER ENGAGED IN!!!!
I was intending to kick you in the face upon our next meeting, but now it's obvious that I must douse your scrotum in kerosene and set your testicles aflame. Alas, it is the only way you will learn." Posted By: Dr. Reverend, May 12, 2006
"And i would like to commend you on some excellent blogging. This particular story would normally warrant a few cryptically humorous lines and a link. To an ordinary blogger. But you managed to wring an essay of New Yorker-esque proportions out of it. That takes talent. Your beautiful young friend is right. I see big things for you in the future." Posted By: Annika, June 4, 2006
" I like a man who will unabashedly tell someone his penis size because hes unashamed. Thats hot.
*raises hand* I'll take that 6.5, thank ya" Posted By: Kinky, June 6, 2006
"Elvis, like skippy, is the very definition of rock and roll. Posted By: Rube, June 10, 2006
" I'm beginning to think you're the only good man left in the world, skippy. WTF?" Posted By: By: DeAnns, June 11, 2006
"Just so everyone knows.
Skippy does indeed, taste like bacon.
And, any guy who doesn't know cum tastes good to real women, is clueless." Posted By: Judy, July 2, 2006
"There was a British columnist whose work was described as 'a suicide note in weekly installments.'
This blog is sort of like that." Posted By: Gadfly, July 6, 2006
"Jeez, Skippy. Sometimes I really hate coming here." Posted By: Cynlee, July 18, 2006
"Someone needs to throttle you with a riding crop...truly!" Posted By: Joan, July 18, 2006
"Holy mother of god. I just had an orgasm. It's official: I'm devoting the rest of my life to you, skippy." Posted By: DeAnna, July 19, 2006
"Skippy, sometimes I'm not quite sure of your sanity, but you are without a doubt the baddest morning news reading, quiz show hosting, talent introducing PIMP in the motherfuckin' blogosphere." Posted By: Shank, July 19, 2006
FUN WITH WMD, DEMOCRACY, STUPIDITY & IRAQ
