Is waterboarding “torture?” A modest proposal for YOU, Dick Cheney, Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo, Michael Mukasey, and George Bush.

I know, I know. It’s not “torture.” It’s merely “enhanced interrogation.”

Sounds lovely, sort of like “enhanced perfume” or “enhanced natural sweetness” — a way to improve and expand upon the wonderful quality of the experience.

In fact, Dickey Cheney, you recently said:

I think there were a total of about 33 who were subjected to enhanced interrogation; only three of those who were subjected to waterboarding…Was it torture? I don't believe it was torture. We spent a great deal of time and effort getting legal advice, legal opinion out of the Office of Legal Counsel, which is where you go for those kinds of opinions, from the Department of Justice as to where the red lines were out there in terms of this you can do, this you can't do. The CIA handled itself, I think, very appropriately.

So I have a life-enhancing experience for you, Dick, and your buddies who defended “enhanced interrogation,” such as John Yoo, Alberto Gonzalez, your mutual boss George W. Bush, and I’ll in throw Attorney General (for the next few days) Michael Mukasey, for saying he isn’t sure whether waterboarding is torture or not.

Here’s what we’ll do

I propose that the Fox TV network introduce a new TV reality show called, “That’s Not Torture, That’s Enhancement.”

During each episode of the show, one of you will be strapped to a board and subjected to "enhanced interrogation," consisting of tightly covering your faces with a cloth and pouring a steady and powerful stream of water on the cloth to create the feeling of getting enhanced.

If you put up with this continuously for the hour the show is on air, you win and get awarded a free resort hotel room in beautiful Guantanamo-by-the-Sea, Cuba, yours to enjoy for the next, oh, 20 or 30 years.

However, if you find the enhancement so disagreeable that you want it to stop instantly, you may make that happen by admitting that

A) Waterboarding is torture
B) That you raped and strangled 50 prostitutes in the Washington DC area and that
C) You ate their corpses and picked your teeth with their bones

Since waterboarding is such a reliable means of obtaining useful intelligence, the world will instantly know it is true that you have done these things and you will be arrested and put on trial for your lives.

However, since by your own admission waterboarding is not torture, I am confident that after a half hour you will have admitted to nothing that that you will feel vindicated and enhanced beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Gentlemen, America
is waiting for you

All you need to do, Dick, John, Alberto, George and Michael is step forward and volunteer to be a subject in this televised experiment demonstrating that waterboarding is not torture but merely a charming way to enhance an interrogation.

I’m waiting, guys.

C’mon, c’mon, which of you is going to step forward and volunteer to enjoy an enhanced interrogation experience?

I’m still waiting.

Nobody?

But I’m still waiting.

I’m waiting.

I’m still waiting….

Give me that old soft shoe...a short meditation on flying footwear, despotism, bad jokes and violence

Are you old enough to remember 1960, when Nikita Khrushchev took off his shoe at the UN and began banging it on the table where he sat?

Wow, what an uproar! The press — and there were seven New York daily newspapers at the time — went bonkers. People were horrified at the notion that a world leader could remove his shoe and disruptively bang away during what should have been the dignified (if unproductive) proceedings of the United Nations.

But the President of the United States, at the time Dwight David Eisenhower, had the class to withhold direct comment.

A clodhopper to the head

Now we have another shoe indicident, in this case a shoe-throwing member of the Iraqui press who tossed his clodhoppers, one at a time, toward President George Bush’s head in Bagdad.

Admittedly, this is not to be taken lightly. A shoe to the head can hurt. Add to that the fact that evidently anything having to do with shoes in Muslim culture is an insult — from showing your soles to someone to a direct hit with flying footwear.

To his credit, the President seemed alert enough to duck — probably his first and only display of diplomatic prowess in eight years.

Never screw up an opportunity
to undo what you’re doing right

President Bush’s followup comment, however, proved that you can take be quick on your feet when it comes to ducking flying shoes, but at the same time come off as an agile-tongued boor with an ill-suited sense of humor.

“All I can report is it is a size 10,” he [the President] said, continuing to take questions and noting the apologies. He also called the incident a sign of democracy, saying, “That’s what people do in a free society, draw attention to themselves,” as the man’s screaming could be heard outside.

Screaming? Well, evidently the shoe-thrower was “calling attention to himself” by getting “kicked and beaten” by the Iraqui authorities until he “cried like a woman,” according to a witness whose statement was reported in the New York Times.

Well hey, the protesting shoe-thrower certainly shouldn’t have done it. But on the other hand, the President’s flip remarks were completely uncalled for when the sounds of a man getting kicked and beaten was audible from inside the room.

Otherwise, if you can believe what George Bush says, that’s what we do in a free society — beat the living crap out of anybody who protests against the guys in power.

I mean, if it’s not to stifle protest, what the hell is democracy for?

Attention Yale and Harvard: Are you proud of yourselves for admitting and graduating this guy on a legacy? Or is it just that in America, idiots rule?

There are several ways to get admitted to an Ivy League college.

You improve your chances if you have outstanding high school grades, perfect scores on your SATs, write a terrific essay, and spend your spare time feeding the homeless, doing insightfully original but reproducible experiments in astrophysics, and serve as captain of the high school football team.

Or you can be a complete idiot but come from a fabulously wealthy family, have a grandfather and father who attended the same Ivy League college, one of them a United States Senator, the other an important senior U.S. Government official.

Guess which one describes how President George W. Bush got into Yale?

Not only Yale, but after that, the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. He must have been quite an achiever, right?

No such luck. For example, there’s this report from a book by Kitty Kelley.

At Harvard Business School, class of 1975, Bush would sit in the back, "chewing tobacco and spitting it into a dirty paper cup," recalled one unidentified classmate.

Another classmate, Steve Arbeit, said Bush was "so inarticulate it was frightening. The reason I say that he is dumber than dumb is not that I saw his test scores or his grades; it's the comments he made in the classes we had together that scared me."

Macroeconomics professor Yoshi Tsurumi recalled showing the Depression-era movie "Grapes of Wrath" to help the class empathize with the poor.

Bush asked, "Why are you going to show us that Commie movie?" When Tsurumi called on Bush to discuss how the Depression affected people, Bush answered: "Look. People are poor because they are lazy."

Tsurumi said Bush "came across as totally lacking compassion, with no sense of history, completely devoid of social responsibility and unconcerned with the welfare of others."

Kelley anonymously quotes two of Bush's former classmates at Yale as saying he snorted cocaine. One classmate claimed to have sold cocaine to Bush. The second recalled "doing coke" with Bush.

What troubled other classmates more than the drugs, however, was the future president's generally unimpressive character. "Georgie, as we called him then, has absolutely no intellectual curiosity about anything," said Tom Wilner, a 1966 Yale grad. "He wasn't interested in ideas or books or causes. He didn't travel; he didn't read the newspapers; he didn't watch the news; he didn't go to movies."

Still more of Kelly's report available on the Internet adds a few additional enchanting details such as:

Alf Nucifora, another classmate, recalled George as a "nonentity with a rich boy's attitude who obviously got into school because of the divine right of kings...You did not see a great future for this man. There's no way that any sane individual could ever have made such a prediction."

During his first year George came to the attention of Yoski Tsunumi ...

Professor Tsurumi continued: "His strong prejudices soon set him apart from the rest of the students. This has nothing to do with politics, because most business students are conservative, but they are not inhumane or unprincipled...even among Republicans his kind was rare....I gave him a 'low pass.' Of the one hundred students in that class, George Bush was in the bottom 10 percent. He was so abysmal that I once asked him how he ever got accepted in the first place. He said, 'I had lots of help.'”

If you want to know why “legacies” at ivy league schools have a bad name, all you have to do is look at the current President of the United States, who evidently still seems to be in the bottom ten percent — this time among presidents. What does this tell us about the value of a Yale or Harvard degree?

I’ll leave that to you. Meanwhile, if you think the military academies are any better, consider the student whose father and grandfather were admirals and who legacied his way into Annapolis, the United States Naval Academy. Guess what? He graduated fifth from the bottom of his class of 899 midshipmen.

His name? You guessed it:

John McCain.

The birdbrains who are pecking America to death. Part 2.

Back in May, before the election heated up, I posted a piece called “Pecked to death by birdbrains.” I was railing against the U.S. Post Office. That was nothing compared to what’s going on today.

Now I have to rail against my fellow citizens — a nation overwhelmingly of birdbrains about to pigeon step in single file off a cliff.

As I write this, the stock market is failing. Our savings institutions are trembling on the brink of collapse. The newspapers are beginning to write stories about potential runs on banks, something that hasn’t happened since the Great Depression of 1929, which threw our nation into ten years of abject poverty.

Right now, Americans are still dying in Iraq, while the Taliban is regaining territory in Afghanistan, and Iran may be futzing around with a nuclear bomb.

And how are Americans reacting to this? According to the polls, we’re drifting from favoring Obama to favoring the know-nothing McCain-Palin ticket. Which essentially means four more years of mindless Bush policies that got us into this mess in the first place.

We’re talking, folks, about two people who know zilch about what affects stock prices, less than zilch about banking, and squat about how to deal with the mess we’re in today.

Denial of on-the-record facts

John McCain recently denied he said he didn’t know much about economics. If he truthfully believes his denial, he’s also suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease. Here, Senator McCain, is the truth:

Actually, the quote came from a 2005 piece by Stephen Moore, in which McCain said: “I’m going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics that I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated.”

McCain also said this, per a December 2007 Boston Globe article: "The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should. I’ve got Greenspan’s book.”

He’s “got” a book? One book, by one at least partially discredited economist? And on that, assuming he ever reads it, he’s going to base policies that could help the United States survive hard times or drown in a sea of red ink? He's going to get an economic education when he gets around to it, and meanwhile sink the rest of us if he gets an F? Or even a C minus?

What McCain, Palin and Bush are for is “less government.” Except, it was “less government” — the elimination, for example, of the Glass-Steagall Act — that sent the banks and brokerage firms of America reeling toward a round of disaster that hasn’t been equaled since, but may be equaled again shortly.

The U.S. Government lacks the money to pay off all the FDIC-insured bank accounts that will become worthless along with the banks that hold those deposits. Yet John McCain, who may or may not have gotten around to reading one not-entirely-trustworthy book on economics, wants to cut taxes as a cure all for everything from low housing prices, to collapsing banks, to failing brokerage houses, to troubled automobile companies to — well, to warts, for all I know.

But wait, there’s more!
Like starting a nuclear war!

Georgia invades South Ossetia. So Russia invades Georgia. And suddenly, we’ve got Bush-McCain-Pallin responding to this near-nuclear situation by pouring gasoline on the fire and encouraging NATO membership for Georgia. This would require us to invade Russia. And you know what that means in terms of nuclear war.

Kaboom!

McCain-Pallin agree with Bush that we should surround the Russians with NATO nuclear missiles, right in the countries that border them. When the Russians tried the same trick in Cuba back in 1962, we wouldn’t stand for it. The event was called the “Cuban Missile Crisis” remember? We nearly risked World War III to get the Russians out of a neighboring country. Why should the Russians stand for it when we wouldn’t?

We’re heading for a meltdown — financial, international, diplomatic, nuclear. When it comes, most of the people reading this won’t be alive long enough to get past the next sentence.

But America “feels good” about the McCain-Palin continuation of the Bush program of national suicidal idiocy.

P.T. Barnum and the
North American Birdbrain

P.T. Barnum, the father not only of the three-ring circus but also of the theatrical con job once said that, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”

But today’s North American Birdbrain exceeds anything even P.T. Con-em could have imagined.

The one thing I don’t have to worry about is this: When your bank collapses and your city explodes, you won’t come running to me. The reason?

Both of us will be nothing but a small, radioactive cinder.

"Shallow, incurious, indifferent to the facts"

For a moment I thought I was reading about George Bush. But no, the nouns attached to all these adjectives in the headline were "John" and "McCain."

My friend Underbelly has some interesting thoughts about John McCain, George W. Bush, what makes them similar and what makes them different. I recommend that you spend a few minutes here, reading his short essay about what does – and doesn't – make John McCain the worst kind of "old fogey."

Do we really need or want another intellectual dud in the White House?

Quick: Which of these men got more Americans killed?

Huffington Post’s Jon Soltz comments today on the 4,000 Americans (there may be even more by the time you read this) who have perished in Iraq since the George W. Bush administration decided it would be cool to invade and have the natives strewing rose petals at our feet.

One of the excuses for the Iraq invasion, according to George W. Bush, was that, "Saddam Hussein is a man who is willing to gas his own people, willing to use weapons of mass destruction against Iraq citizens. " (link)

Well, I suppose you can get picky here. George W. Bush didn’t gas American soldiers. He simply put them (and continues to keep them) in harm’s way, where 4,000 of these courageous young people have been fatally shot and bombed.

The death count after 9/11, excluding the hijackers, was 2,998. Which means George Bush has gotten roughly 1,000 more Americans killed than Osama Bin Laden.

And still he sticks to keeping us in that damned war.

Feeling good? Too bad! It’s time to start worrying again. Here are six nightmare scenarios to help ruin your sweet dreams.

All of us who count ourselves as Democrats are getting a tetch too comfortable. All of us who want to toss George Bush back into his Crawford brush…all of us who see light at the end of the gloomy economy...and peace at the end of the Iraq quagmire…all of us had better take a deep, deep breath.

Remember, Murphy’s Law roars back into operation whenever you let your pessimism take a nap. If anything can go wrong, somebody is already plotting how to make it happen. And somebody else with offices on K Street is already lobbying for it.

So here are a handful of bone-chilling scenarios (Guaranteed: all of them straight off the top of my cranky head) to keep you pacing the floor tonight.

1. The Democrats win the election. But George Bush declares martial law, announces that for some reason or other the election process was illegal, and appoints himself “Interim President for Life.” Troops occupy the streets to put down any dissent. Dissidents "disappear" to dungeons abroad and are later found in mass graves. Hey, you say that only happens in third world countries? And what world does our nation’s growth in the fields of government cronyism, torture chambers, inflation, poverty rates and shrinking the economy make us these days?

2. Ralph Nader draws just enough votes from the Democratic presidential candidate for John McCain to win. It is later determined that Nader’s campaign was funded all along by Republicans, arch-conservatives and neo-conservatives who realized that their only hope of victory was Nader denouncing them while running for office. I mean, who else is funding Ralph? Certainly not Democrats.

3. New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg decides to run for president, after off-and-on flirtations with the idea. (See Nader, Ralph, above.) [NOTE: In a deliberate effort to confound and confuse The New York Crank, Mayor Bloomberg announced, the very evening that this post got posted, that he will not be a candidate for president. Immediately, New York 1, the CNN local news cable station, began speculating that he's running for vice president. Go figure.]

4. The reason we haven’t seen an Al Qaeda attack recently is that Osama Bin Laden was caught several years ago and is being held incommunicado in Guantanamo. Three days before the 2008 election, George Bush in a last-minute attempt to undo a Democratic sweep, will announce Bin Laden’s capture.

5. Al Qaeda hasn’t attacked us in the United States since 2001 because its leaders have been following Napoleon’s advice never to interrupt the enemy when he is making a grave mistake. Our grave mistakes under the Bush Administration include destroying the morale of our armed forces, stretching the nation’s defenses thin, wrecking our own economy, and sabotaging our goodwill abroad. When we get a rational president who begins improving the economy, restoring civil rights, pulling us out of the hopeless quagmire in Iraq and uniting the nation, then Al Qaeda will attack. Loud gloating will be heard from under a shady tree on a mountain bike trail in Crawford, Texas.

6. On his last day in office George Bush will issue a blanket pardon for himself – and for every member of his administration – for any and all crimes discovered or yet uncovered, ranging from corruption, to cover up, to destroying government property, to contempt of Congress. And more.

Anything else disturbing your dreams? Feel free to send in your nightmares.

At last, real market intelligence: Bush speaks, stock market plunges

It happened last Friday. The stock market, oddly optimistic, opened higher. The Dow began more than 100 points above where it had been the previous day and started fluctuating upward from there.

Then President George Bush announced his plan to give the floundering U.S. economy what he called a “shot in the arm.”

A shot in the head would be more like it. As predicted in my last cranky post, “…you can be certain the Bush Administration – said to be frantically working on an economic “fix” to save Republican rear ends in the next election – will compound the problem they’ve created by offering tax cuts for the rich as part of the fix."

And that’s what the Bush administration did.

Economic “stimulus” for the 

greed glands of billionaires 

and corporate officers only

The Republican “economic stimulus package” would offer “tax incentives for business investment” (meaning less tax on the profits returned by investments made by the rich) plus “quick tax relief for individuals,” which means income tax cuts primarily for the rich.

Conservatives who believe in the natural wisdom of the markets should pay close attention to the chart (above left) showing what the market quite wisely did when it heard the Bush plan.

It plunged to a low that was even lower than it had been before it began recovering, then bounced around in the doldrums for the rest of the day.

Interestingly, every Republican presidential candidate is talking about how he would be the bigger tax cutter. The sole exception to this lunacy is Mike Huckabee, who has an even crazier plan to eliminate all income taxes and replace them with a national sales tax which would be the ruination of the poor, punishing to the middle class, and another windfall for the filthy rich.

All the Republicans are wrong. And so is any Democrat in the House or Senate who lacks the guts to stand up and cry foul to the President.

Here’s a my own cranky 

economic stimulus plan

What we need to do is raise taxes – on high income individuals only – and then begin plowing the money into three areas:

1. Infrastructure repair, so that our nation’s bridges, highways, water systems, levees, airports and other important structures begin to recover from the years of Republican neglect – before we have another New Orleans precipitated by failing levees, bridge collapse or airplane disaster. Infrastcture repair would also put thousands back to work, put money in their pockets, and provide real economic stimulation.

2. Begin repaying the horrendous national debt incurred by a Republican administration backed by a conservative congress. That way your dollars will be worth a little more to the rest of the world and the U.S. will become a stronger magnet for investment.

3. Lots of national spending on health care and education, among our best investments for the future.

Getting out of the war in Iraq as fast as possible would also be a huge help, by stopping the billions of dollars that pour down that sinkhole every week instead of into the U.S. economy where they could be supporting economic growth. And remember, this is a Republican war.

That’s why, two years from now, we need to return not one Republican to the House, Senate or White House. Got that? Not…one…Republican.

Not…one…Republican!

You now owe nine trillion, 136 billion, four hundred and eighteen million, sixty-two thousand, 457 dollars and twenty nine cents. Thanks to this guy.

Hey, you want nightmares? Here’s a nightmare for you. Your share of the unpaid and growing national debt means that you or your heirs owe the IRS $30,000. Right now. Tomorrow it'll be worse. Matter of fact, it'll be worse by the time you finish reading this post.

The cause? Well, actually there are two causes – cutting taxes, and simultaneously firing up a war over nothing in Iraq. In other words, the two key features of the Bush conservative administration.

“Like a ticking time bomb, the national debt is an explosion waiting to happen. It's expanding by about $1.4 billion a day -- or nearly $1 million a minute,” said the Associated Press, in an article quoted in this revelatory horror story.

More from the nightmare tale:

"In short -- we're issuing debt like it's going out of style. That means the Bush's tax cuts were in fact tax deferments because they'll have to increase in order to pay for the spending for the last six years. It also means that further tax cuts should be off the table. It also means the further spending for new programs are off the table."

But do leading Republican presidential candidates get it? Nope. George Romney wants to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, while Rudy Giuliani wants even more of them.

That’s like trying to stave off foreclosure on the house by maxing out your credit cards.

But wait, it gets worse!

The "conservative" Bush financial policies are driving all of us into such a hole that foreign investors are snapping up – as if it's Halloween candy – all kinds of American property, American businesses, and the rights to control American technology. Others include investors in fairly undemocratic places like  Dubai, Saudi Arabia the UAR, Russia and China. Click here for an example.

That means those folks are gaining more and more control over everything from the water you drink, to tolls collected on some of the highways you may drive, to the Pentagon's supply chain, to the U.S. Government’s staggering debts. If those foreign investors ever call in their chits, friend, chances are you’ll be on a breadline the next morning.

Somewhere in a cave in Pakistan, Osama bin Laden must be thanking Allah for giving the United States the reign George Bush and the so-called conservative policies that are sabotaging everything we have.

Tis the season to be kind to car thives, election fraudsters, and extractors of defense contract kickbacks

Washington: President Bush today granted pardons or commuted the sentences of an assortment of thugs, petty crooks, drug dealers and other sleazy smallfry.

Maybe next year, on his way out the door, he’ll finally commute Karla Fay Tucker’s death penalty.

Posthumously.

War? Or no war? The dangerously stubborn fool in the White House is bruising for a fight with Iran. Any reason will do. Or no reason.

Say one thing for President George W. Bush. When it comes to war, he sticks to his guns.

He called for war with Iraq because Saddam Hussein was supposedly harboring weapons of mass destruction. Remember?

When an American inspector said there were no weapons of mass destruction, George Bush said uh uh, they really were there and we had to send in troops to find them.

When the troops discovered there was nothing to find, the reason we were in Iraq changed. We were there to topple Saddam Hussein.

When Saddam toppled, the reason became that we were fighting Al Queda. Nevermind that there hadn’t been an Al Queda in Iraq until we jumped in there.

Oh, and now we’re there to give Iraq democracy. Well, they’re not exactly interested in democracy, but we’re there to give them stability.

Stability? Saddam Hussein gave them stabililty.

Now we’re up to our necks in an Iraqi morass. The nation is broke because Genius George cut taxes and started a war in almost the same breath. So what does he want to do? He wants to invade Iran.

First the reason was that Iran was building nukes. Now our own intelligence says the Iranians discontinued their nuke program four years ago.

So now the excuse is, Iran wanted to build nukes before they decided not to build nukes.

Or if that doesn't work, the excuse is that Iran could build nukes if they ever decide to.

The same could be said of Uganda, Norway, Latvia, Poland, Ghana, Japan, Brazil, South Africa, and just about any other nation you could name. Not to mention a very bright kid in a basement somewhere. So what’s different about Iran? George Bush feels like starting a war with Iran, that’s what’s different.

His philosophy of national security got articulated on this blog a while ago. It’s time to reiterate his brilliant philosophy:

“We won’t be safe ‘till everybody’s dead.”

Looks like George Bush can read Pooty-Poot-Poot about as well as he can read “My Pet Goat”

Remember back in June of 2001 when President George Bush met President Vladimir Putin of Russia?

Putin got nicknamed “Pooty-Poot-Poot” by our dim bulb president who said, “I looked the man in the eye. I was able to get a sense of his soul.”

Well hey, it’s possible Georgie-Duh-Duh’s sense was based on a heartfelt admiration of evil, which given the White House view on matters such as torture, warfare, healthcare and taxes may well be the case.

Or it may be that Bush’s sense of character runs as deep as his sense of diplomacy – in other words, about as deep as a puddle left on a sidewalk by someone’s pet poodle.

Thanks in part to President Bush’s stubborn diplomatic stances, President Pooty-Poot-Poot has just in effect torn up a painfully negotiated arms treaty, “a move which could allow it to deploy more forces close to western Europe.”

Cold war, here we come again! And say, isn't that exactly what we need to contend with at the same time we’re dealing with Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and a collapsing economy?

It takes a special kind of person to drag this nation back into the cold war, but Pooty-Poot-Poot’s pal Georgie-Duh-Duh managed to pull it off.

What comes next? Revival of 1950s school nuke drills where the teacher barks “Take cover” and the whole class dives under their desks to protect themselves from atomic radiation?

Well, while we’re all down under there, I suppose we all could read “My Pet Goat” again. Maybe with the book rightside-up this time.

Who wants to see us roasting in hell? Thanks to the Bush Administration, bigger questions are 1) who doesn’t? And 2) who will nuke us first?

Last Sunday night, the CBS News program 60 Minutes interviewed Afghan President Mohammed Karzai, installed in his position largely with the help of the United States. Karzai is a man who radiates dignity and self control, but in this CBS interview , he seemed trying to keep his temper from boiling over.

His complaint: That U.S. air strikes, aimed at Al Quaida bigwigs, are killing innocent civilians instead.

Civilian dead: 270.
High value targets: 0

Indeed, in further interviews with Air Force Colonel Gary Crowder, and a former Pentagon official, CBS uncovered that we’ve managed to kill 270 civilians with these air strikes, but not a single “high value target.”

Col. Crowder tut-tutted that while the civilians 270, Al Quaida 0 statistics are correct, “we have come a very long way in getting that intelligence to be more accurate. We will collect human intelligence, signals intelligence, overhead full-motion video, all of that tied together, very often in real time. That gives us a better understanding and a significantly higher confidence that the targets we're engaging are in fact valid military targets."

All very nice, one supposes, but Col. Crowder still didn’t offer any evidence that our new, improved techniques have netted us so much as one high value target either. Which leads one to wonder how much gas this Air Force brass gas bag can hold.

Meanwhile, we’re convincing more and more Afghans – neighbors, relatives, friends of the innocent bystander civilians killed by our “better understanding” – that they want to kill us in return. Can you blame them?

Imagine that a foreign power came to the United States, chasing people that none of us like – such as drug dealers and gang leaders. You might or might not like it, depending how much you mind a bunch of foreigners with weapons running around your home town. But suppose, that without killing a single thug, they managed to kill hundreds of Americans, destroy your home, and ruin your business. How would you feel then?

How do others hate us?
Let us count the ways.

Okay, that’s why now we’ve got the citizens of Afghanistan wanting to kill us. I don’t need to tell you about Iraq. They’re not putting out those IED’s because they really, really love us. So that’s two countries that would see us in hell.

How about Turkey? While trying to run interference for a group of Iraqui Kurds that’s creating hostile action on the other side of the Iraq-Turkey border, we’ve managed to alienate this once-strong NATO ally. That’s three nations that would see us in hell.

How about Iran? We’re threatening sanctions, and we’re barely veiling a threat to bomb them. Judging by the Presidential mumbo-jumbo that got us into Iraq, President Bush and his crowd seem to want to go beyond the threat, ASAP.

Okay, that’s four nations that want to see us all in hell. But wait, there’s more!

While we’re stretched out in the Middle East
why not go pick some fights in Latin America?

We’ve made it perfectly clear to Cuba that we’re not budging on our embargo there. Since the Cuban Missile Crises in 1962, we’ve been embargoing them, but quietly. Now, with Fidel Castro evidently dying and his younger brother Raul running things, we seem determined to poke a sharp stick into the Raul Castro’s eye. What will we get for this effort – unless it’s another invitation from Cuba to Russia to re-install those guided missiles pointed at the U.S. – you know, the ones that Jack Kennedy negotiated out of there more than 40 years ago?

That’s five countries whose citizens, for the most part, might be inclined to see us in hell, protestation of the Cuban career refugees in Miami notwithstanding.

Then there’s Vladimir Putin. Not a nice guy, which may be why George Bush seems to consider Putin something of a pal.

But with “friends” like Vladimir, you don’t need World War III. Which makes it puzzling why George Bush is now poking a finger in Putin’s eye by trying to ring Russia’s western flank with missiles, purportedly to shoot down missiles from Iran that actually don’t exist.

Synergy for a nuclear firestorm

That’s six countries that would like to see us in hell. And now we’ve got some synergy going. For example, instead of negotiating with Iran to cut out the nuclear stuff we keep threatening them, thus providing the irrityation that makes them work faster on developing a nuclear bomb and nuclear ICBMS, neither of which they have just now.

This makes us rush to get those missiles installed in Poland and Czechoslovakia, which infuriates the Russians enough to retaliate by installing missiles pointed at us in Cuba. So, lacking troops which are bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan, we nuke Cuba, which causes Russia to nuke us back.

Oh yes, did I mention North Korea and its own nukes?

How about Pakistan, which is unquestionably armed nukes and in peril of being taken over by Muslim extremists who hate our guts?

And for good measure, have you notice we have no good friends in Venezuela any more? That’s pretty important, because each time we offend someone in the Middle East, the price of oil goes through the rough again, driving our economy deeper into a hole. $10 a gallon gas, anyone?

Death Wish Infinity – The Ultimate Finale

What it boils down to – on the questionable assumption that he isn’t a total imbecile – is that George Bush is in the thrall of a powerful death wish. He wishes to die in a nuclear firestorm. Or to see the U.S. economy die in a financial firestorm. Or both. And he wishes for the rest of us Americans to die with him.

When people are dangerous to themselves or others, they are usually deemed insane, taken off the streets and confined to a mental institution where they can't do any harm. In this case, the body with power to get George Bush off the streets is Congress. Think they'll do it in time? Think they'll ever do it?

Oh, forget about it. Just pass the Kool-Aid.

The Kurds have no friends. But wait, there’s more! More tragedy. More pitfalls for America. And more danger for the world.

There’s an old Kurdish saying that, “The Kurds have no friends.”

They say this because they are a people and a nation divided into territories of other nations (see red areas of the map above) who have never been helped by anyone in their quest for independent nationhood. Parts of Iran are Kurdish. Parts of Iraq are Kurdish. Parts of Turkey are Kurdish. Parts of Syria are Kurdish. Part of what’s left of the Russian empire is Kurdish.

The enemy of my enemy is
the friend of my...oh nevermind!

Until recently, the Kurdish territory in Iraq was reportedly the least hostile to American troops of all Iraqui territory. After all, the Kurds were the people who got bombed with poison gas by the late Saddam Hussein. Watching Baghdad get busted up was something they must have enjoyed. I don’t imagine a single Kurd shed a single tear when Saddam met his end at the end of the rope. Moreover, chaos in Baghdad meant more autonomy in Iraqi Kurdistan.

But there a few small problems with Kurdistan’s good news. First of all, a Kurdistan that's feeling its oats makes various other nations – none of them friends of the Kurds – nervous. That includes the United States which doesn't want an independent Kurdistan either. Or so we say. We still take the position that Iraqi Kurdistan is part of Iraq. Just like our old pal Saddam Hussein used to say.

A big passel of "what ifs...?"

What if Iraqui Kurdistan somehow actually won its independence? Would Turkish Kurdistan want to join them? What about Iranian Kurdistan? What about a Syrian Kurdistan? Did I mention Armenian Kurdistan, the Kurdistan located in the Soviet Union? This could raise hell with the internal management of the entire area.

When Kurds on the Turkish border get, uh, a bit frisky, as they seem to have been doing, ambushing, killing and kidnapping Turkish troops, Turkey gets highly peeved, as it has just done. So Turkey is massing troops in the Iraq border, not as part of a “coalition of the willing” but more likely as an expedition of the pissed off.

That in turn has led to frantic negotiations between the U.S. State Department and the Turks. Condi Rice herself is trying to hold this tiger by the tail.

But if Condi fails to mollify the Turks, they may cut off American military access via their country to Northern Iraq. And they may invade.

On the other hand, if the Iraqui Kurds somehow actually prevail, this may somehow give Iranian Kurds inspiration to rebel, which I speculate could provide Iran with a causus belli to get disagreeable about their nuclear weapons enterprises and blow something up. As for Syria – who knows?

Cold war and nuclear standoffs, anyone?
Or perhaps we could do World War III

I can’t even imagine where the Russians will come out on this one, given what else is going on. At the very least it’s more kindling for a cold war revival. Or for some hapless American troops to get caught in the crossfire between Kurds and Turks. Or Iranians and Kurds. Or Russians and Kurds. Or Iranians and Iraqis. Or Iranians and Russians. Or any strange combination of the above.

Maybe the U.S. will decide to solve the problem and mollify the Turks, Iranians, Russians and possibly the Syrians by bombing the Kurds, just the way Saddam Hussein did. That would bring this insane war full circle. One of our excuses for invading Iraq was that Saddam Hussein “bombed his own people,” meaning Iraq's Kurdish people. Shucks, we may start to think that’s our job. Of course, when that happens we won’t call them Kurds. We’ll call them “terrorists.”

I see by your swagger
that you are a cowboy...

“Bring ‘em on!” said George Bush, some time ago, his voice full of cowboy swagger. Now look at the constantly expanding mess we've got.

Well George, here’s an old cowboy maxim for you, even if I just made it up:

Never stick your bare arm in a bagful of rattlesnakes.

Laura busted in men’ room, Bin Laden gets his kidney dialysis here, and other previously unreported news

The news that a former French news correspondent, Alex Debat, (that’s him at left) faked interviews for the pretigious French magazine Politique Internationale and may have done so as a consultant for ABC News brings joy to my heart. http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/09/pelosi-greenspa.html

If the “professional” journals are no more reliable than the blogsphere, why can’t we blogists fake a few interviews, too?

Below, my suggested submissions of major news stories, based on authentically faked interviews and genuinely made-up facts:

FIRST LADY ARRESTED IN AIRPORT MEN’S ROOM
Minneapolis: First lady Laura Bush was arrested for disorderly conduct today in a Men’s Room of the Minneapolis airport. Mrs. Bush denied the charges claiming that in the first place she wandered in by mistake thinking it was the ladies room, that in second place she was entrapped, and that in the third place the motions she was making only had to do with a practice run at applying her lipstick, and fourth, she thought that if she pled guilty to disorderly conduct and went home, the whole thing would go away. Furthermore, she said, “I was only looking for George…”

OSAMA BIN LADEN GETS KIDNEY DIALYSIS AT WALTER REED ARMY HOSPITAL
Washington: In an exclusive interview, top terrorist Osama Bin Laden revealed today that he has been getting regular kidney dialysis treatments at Walter Reed Army Medical Center under the auspices of the CIA. The super-secret U.S. intelligence agency, he said, thinks his name is Hassan Ben Gladhand, and that he is an informant from Beirut. “During my last debriefing,” he said with a chuckle, “I told them I had definite information that Bin Laden was in Iraq running an Al Qaeda operation there, and also that they are definitely ‘winning’ the Iraqi war. The dummies bought it hookah, line and sinker…”

GEORGE BUSH PLANS TO DECLARE MARTIAL LAW IN THE U.S. AND REAPPOINT HIMSELF TO THE PRESIDENCY
Washington: Faced with continued gloomy news about public support for his Iraq policy, President George Bush today revealed that the nation “needs me too much” to replace him and that therefore he has called off the Presidential election, declared martial law, and named himself President for Life. “This is the only way we can continue our winning policy and war against terrorism,” he said in an exclusive interview.


TANTRUM-THROWING RUDY GIULIANI DISCOVERS A “VAST CONSPIRACY TO ELECT HILLARY” BUT NOW PLANS TO RUN AS A WOMAN
Complaining that his rival Hillary Clinton is “too pushy and taking all the attention away from me,” Former New York mayor and Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani threw a temper tantrum in front of an interviewer, lay down on the floor and kicked, then held his breath until he turned red. Finally, he began to spit. "Hillary is part of a vast conspiracy to elect Hillary," Giuliani complained bitterly, "but if the electorate wants a woman, I'll run as a woman."

FED UP WITH PRESS ATTENTION, CELEBS
DECLARE A GLOBAL NEWS BLACKOUT
New York: “We’re tired of tabloids, dumb headlines, false and misleading news about us, paparazzi and gossip,” a group of celebrities declared today. They included Tom Cruise, Brittney Spears, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and others. The celebrities had set up a joint press conference to declare, “We will no longer cooperate with the press.”

What? A disastrous war in Iraq isn’t enough? Now he’s rekindling the cold war with Russia!

The casualty figures from Iraq are getting so bad it's easy to get a deep-down, bottom-of-the-gut sick feeling every time you look at them. Each day, more American kids are dead. For what? (More Iraqis are dying every day, too.)

The Iraqi civil war, whose existence once was denied by the administration, is now so bad that the locals are busy blowing up one another’s mosques. As one acquaintance of mine remarked, out of the side of his mouth, “Good thing they have us to persecute them, otherwise they’d spend all their time persecuting each other.”

So in the midst of this what do we need more than anything else? Right – renewal of the nearly forgotten cold war with Russia.

This new ham-handed tactic of ours springs from Boy George’s brilliant idea to place anti-missile missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic, former Iron Curtain satellite countries. The administration purports that the sole purpose of these missiles would be to shoot down Iranian nukes aimed at the United States. Only a few small problems with that one, starting with the fact that Iran doesn’t have ICBM capabilities.

Second small problem, even if Iran ever figures out how to make a nuclear ICBM: if a missile from Poland hits a nuke from Iran while it’s sailing over Russia, who gets nuked? Can you blame the Russians for feeling antsy? Shoot those missiles down over the ocean instead? Nah!

Third small problem: Imagine if Russia set up a weapons system only miles from our border in Mexico, claiming the anti-nukes were only there to shoot down Chinese missiles. Would we believe it? Would we allow it even if we believed it?

Vladimir Putin attempted to defuse the issue in a meeting with Boy George. Condoleeza Rice responded essentially by poking Putin in the eye. She changed the subject to Russia’s execrable human rights record. Two problems with that.

First, it’s a non-sequitur. Second, given our recent record for secret prisons, water torture and other human rights abuses, we seem to have the equivalent of a dungeon calling a Siberian salt mine black. (You’ll find URLS you can cut-and-paste to read more about Condi, Boy George and Putin below.)

Somehow, the Bush administration’s clever propensity for turning everything – absolutely every last damn thing there is – into a life-threatening disaster brings to mind an old song that once ridiculed a Democrat. Fortunately, it can be easily updated to describe the disaster that is George W. Bush and Friends.

President George Bush
Had brains made out of mush
He started fights with everyone
(“Just bring ‘em on,” he said)
And he said,
“You know I’m pro-life
“And so’s my lovely wife
“But we won’t be safe
‘Till everybody’s dead.”

P.S. Look, I know this is pathetic, but I still – after a year of blogging – haven’t figured out how to imbed links into text on my Mac. Sorry sorry sorry. So if you want to refer to the URLs below, just copy and paste them into your browser.

There’s plenty more where these come from, but you’re a big kid. I figure, if you’re still hungry for more after reading these, you’ll find ‘em on your own.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/05/31/russia.tensions/index.html


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/31/AR2007053102391.html

Trickledown Incompetence

I was in Santa Monica, CA on business a few weeks ago. I took a stroll along Ocean Avenue, a pretty boulevard with upmarket hotels and shops overlooking the Pacific. All you had to do to consider it idyllic was ignore the hundreds of homeless people who camp under the palm trees each sunset in an adjacent park.

But more about that later.

Right now I want to talk about a national malady called Trickledown Incompetence.

All this is old news, but worth repeating:

The Bush administration incompetently started a war, managed by incompetents who couldn’t think ahead five seconds to what they’d do once they blew up half of Iraq. And those incompetent dum-dums never imagined that enraged Iraqis, instead of scattering rose petals at our soldiers’ feet, would be blowing up our guys up with IEDs.

The Bush administration based its decision to go to war in Iraq on incompetent interpretations of incompetent intelligence. It was provided by an incompetent CIA director. Well, it’s true he had to act incompetently or he’d get fired. But you’d figure a competent guy in that position would resign in a huff. He didn’t.

For in-your-face incompetence, there was nothing – and still is nothing two years later – like the “You’re doing a helluva job, Brownie” management of the Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans.

The past couple of days, we’ve been hearing about the deliberate hiring of incompetents in the Justice Department. Monica Goodling, graduate of a fourth or maybe seventh rate religious law school, was in charge of deciding who would or would not be a good local U.S. Attorney. Monica worked for Alberto Gonzales. She’s an – let’s call her what she really is, either a nearly brainless bimbo or a clever but poorly educated liar and career assassin. Well, let’s be kindly and charitable and assume she’s merely a brainless bimbo and not a corrupt and lying thug.

Goodling, that brainless incompetent bimbo, has been testifying before Congress that she, uh, “went over the line” by violating Federal law in her hiring practices. That’s called “lawbreaking” where I come from, folks. But gee, she’s so cute and sweet sounding and blonde, the Republicans on the Senate committee that was taking here testimony tried to give her a pass.

The trouble with incompetence is that it’s like water. It follows the law of gravity. You get an incompetent president and the next thing you know you get an incompetent Secretary of Defense and an incompetent Attorney General below the President.

From them you get incompetent generals and Monica Goodling. Next thing you know, you’re in a restaurant on Ocean Avenue in Santa Monica, CA, suffering through completely incompetent table service.

To get back to where I started, incompetent table service is what happened a few weeks ago. I walked into this nice-looking Italian restaurant on Ocean Avenue. I ordered two courses: a salad and a braised lamb shank.

I stuck a fork into my salad and poof! A sub-waiter who looked as if he came out of a casting call for Fawlty Towers holds a steaming lamb shank literally inches under my nose and says, “Are you ready yet?”

“No," I said politely. "As you can see, I just started my salad.”

The wait-captain ran up to my table and apologized. “I’m sorry sir. He’s new here. I’ll have him take that lamb shank back and bring you a new one when you’re ready.”

I thanked him. I took two more forkfuls of salad. And poof! There was the same sub-waiter again, with the same lamb shank, a little less steamy this time.

“Ready yet, sir?” He asked.

“No no no. I’m still eating my sald. Look. See that stuff on my plate? It’s salad!”

The wait-captain reappeared, at least making an attempt to seem horrified. “I’m sorry,” he said, “some people just don’t listen.”

He hustled the sub-waiter away again and I went back to my salad. Two forkfuls later – you guessed it!

This time I felt myself rising to my feet. I felt my arms waiving wildly in the air. I was about to explode. The only reason I didn’t was, I was afraid I might kill somebody on the waitstaff and then have to get defended by an incompetent lawyer.

The fourth time the lamb shank came (by now a genuinely different one, and steaming again) there was only a little bit of salad left on my plate. I figured, the hell with it. It was either start eating the damn lamb shank or start throwing dishes. I ate the lamb shank before I finished my salad.

Unlike money, which under the Bush Administration trickles up from the poor and middle class to the filthy rich, incompetence always seeks its own level. As the old Italian saying goes, “The fish rots from the head.”

So I blame George Bush for everything. I blame him for the war. I blame him for the nearly incomprehensible size of the national debt. I blame him for the huge economic pressure on the poor and middle class in a time of plenty. I blame him for a still-devastated New Orleans. I blame him for the Justice Department scandal. I blame him for blonde bimbos. I blame him for the hordes of homeless people sleeping in what ought to be one of the most beautiful little parks in California. I blame him for a U.S. Supreme Court that’s starting to make Neanderthal inroads into years of established constitutional law. I blame George Bush for mindless water torturers in secret prisons. I blame him for our failing healthcare system.

And most of all, I blame him for an idiot waiter in a Santa Monica restaurant, shoving a lamb shank in my face, over and over again.

It’s time Congress stiffed Bush with an act of impeachment.

Fly me to the moon, George. In other words, I love your syntax.

Wasn't it Frank Sinatra who sang a song called "Fly Me To the Moon?" And wasn't the key refrain, "In other words, hold my hand. In other words, I love you?"

The phrase "in other words" is now popping up with alarming frequency in other words -- the words of President George Bush. In fact, it's popping up so many times in a short speech that I'm ready to fly to the moon, provided I can take his Iraq policy with me and leave it there.

In other words, his speech patterns are getting weirder and weirder.

I'm grateful to New York journalist and advertising writer Richard Rosenthal, who sent me the following "other" words:

>>This is your president speaking: the utterances of George W. Bush either April 9 or 10, 2007 as reported in the Congressional Quaterly, taken from a transcript of his talk at an American Legion post in Fairfax, VA


>>"This is a -- this is an unusual era in which we live, defined on

September the 11th, 2001. See, that's a date that reminding us the

world has changed significantly from what we thought the world

was ... My attitude about the world changed, and I know the attitude

about the world from a lot of folks here in America's attitude

changed ...



>>"I vowed that day that we would go on the offense against an enemy,

that the best way to defeat this enemy is to find them overseas and

bring them to justice so they will not hurt the folks here at home.

In other words, we don't have the luxury of hoping for the best, of

sitting back and being passive in the face of this threat. In the

past, we would say oceans would protect us and, therefore, what

happened overseas may not matter here at home.



>>"That's what changed on September the 11th. What happens overseas

affects the security of the United States ...



>>"I vowed that, 'If you harbor a terrorist, you're equally as guilty

as the terrorist.' That's a doctrine.



>>"In order for this country to be credible, when the president says

something, he must mean it. I meant it. And the Taliban found out

that we meant what we said. And therefore, we ended al-Qaida's safe

haven in a failed state.



>>"The two points I want to make is, doctrine matters; and secondly, a

failed state can lead to severe consequences for the American people ...



>>"In other words, there was reprisal ...



>>"In other words, the lack of security would have created an

opportunity for extremists to move in ...



>>"In other words, in sending troops in, it is -- I recognize that this

is more than a military mission ...


>>"In other words, this operation is just getting started ...


>>"In other words, part of the effort is not only to provide security

to neighborhoods, but we're constantly training Iraqis so that they

can do this job ...


>>"So, in other words, it's a combination of providing security in

neighborhoods through these joint security stations, and training ...


>>"I'm always amazed at the men and women who wear our uniform. Last

week, before I went down to Crawford -- for a snowy Easter, I might

add -- I was in California at Fort Irwin. And I had a chance to visit

with some who had just come back from Iraq and some who were going

over to Iraq. And it just amazes me that these young men and women

know the stakes. They understand what we're doing. And they have

volunteered to serve.


>>"We're really a remarkable country and a remarkable military. And

therefore we owe it to the families and to those who wear the uniform

to make sure that this remarkable group of men and women are strongly

supported -- strongly supported, by the way, during their time in

uniform and then after their time in uniform through the Veterans

Administration.


>>"I tried to put this war into a historical context for them. In other

words, I told them that they're laying the foundation of peace. In

other words, the work we're doing today really will yield peace for a

generation to come."<<

Recalling the Big Muddy syndrome: Did these two guys share a Vulcan Brain Meld? Don’t answer until you read this.

In the earliest incarnation of the Star Trek TV series, Spock and his Vulcan friends could download the complete contents of other Vulcans' brains into their own brains. It was called the Vulcan Brain Meld. Hold that ridiculous thought for a minute.

As I write this, George Bush has just finished addressing the nation about Iraq, loading us up with essentially the same bull we heard during Viet Nam – that we're on our way to winning this thing and all we need is the right number of troops and – after four years – some more time.

I wish somebody would revive the Viet Nam war song about the – Was it a sergeant? A captain? – who led his troops into a swamp on a training exercise at a southern military base, going deeper, deeper, deeper into the swamp, until most of them drowned. The song was based on an actual event that became the perfect pop metaphor for what was going on in Washington then. And now.

This is all from memory, mind you, but here’s the way I remember it. Lyndon Johnson – yes, a Democrat, but not one of My Democrats – was President at the time. He suffered from the same vision problems that the current occupant of the White House has inflicted on himself vis-à-vis a war going from bad, to worse, to still worse, ad infinitum. He refused to acknowledge, or see, what was happening. All we needed were more troops and more time and all our problems would be solved. The word escalation seemed to have been made for Viet Nam, as it now does for Iraq.

So as long as it's "deja vu all over again," maybe it's time to revive the Big Muddy song.

One refrain to the song warned, “Now we’re knee deep in Big Muddy, and the big fool says move on.”

And then it was waist deep. And then later, “Now we’re neck deep in Big Muddy, and the big fool says move on.”

Got the idea?

Which brings me back to the first thought: I wonder whether Lyndon Johnson and George W. Bush somehow, years ago, did a Vulcan Brain Meld.

Of course, I’m only kidding.

But also, I’m not kidding.

NEXT DAY'S ADDENDUM

With a bit of extra time on my hands today, I was able to locate complete text of the original song and a bit about the attempt to keep it off the air.

But memory plays funny tricks. The song was about a WWII captain and now I have no way of telling whether the songwriter, folks guitarist and lyricist Pete Seeger, invented the incident or based his ballad on something that actually happened.

At any rate, you'll find the whole shebang at the URL below. As you'll see, the song relevantly stands up, even today. Read the words and think George Bush.

http://history.sandiego.edu/gen/snd/waistdeep.html

George, George, yo George, listen up, willyuh George? Could we please have just one damn incompetence-instigated catastrophe at a time?

I mean…

•Iraq invasion

•People who once loved us now despise the USA

•Returning power of the Taliban in Afghanistan

•The unresolved Katrina mess

•Truckloads of paper money “vanished” in Iraq

•“Recycled” soldiers on their third tour of duty

•Wounded America vets at Walter Reed, treated like garbage

•Private contractors do shoddy work and make out like bandits – leading one to think they really are bandits

•Staggering national debt

•A handful of multi-millionaires becoming billionaires while the middle class grows poorer

•Americans without health insurance

•Banks are legally permitted to charge credit card interest on money we’ve already paid them

•Dick Cheney with a hunting rifle

•Exposing our own CIA operatives for partisan political advantage

•Libby Libby Libby in a prison prison prison

•Good U.S. Attorneys fired, evidently for not kowtowing to the party line

•Hack U.S. Attorneys retained

•The current composition of the U.S. Supreme Court

• Mission Accomplished – we’ve won the war in Iraq. Well, actually we didn’t win, but the fact that our guys are getting killed wholesale proves the enemy is desperate. Well, maybe they’re not desperate, but we’re winning anyway. Well, maybe we weren’t winning anyway, but now we’ve got a plan to win. Well, the plan isn’t working yet but it’ll work if we surge the troops for a few months. Well, maybe not for just a few months, maybe until 2008, Well…

•Iraq has WMD. No, actually Iraq doesn’t have WMD but North Korea has the bomb. No, maybe North Korea doesn’t have the bomb. Iran has the…oh, nevermind!

•Plus many, many more. But I have a headache.