Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
by John Cole| 5 Comments
This post is in: Democratic Stupidity
Major General Lambert, chief Atriette, dissects the operation that yielded the Hussein brothers, and once again, finds that the tactics were lacking:
We could have done a Noriega, no problem. Perp walk, Hague Tribunal, UN loves us, Europe throws some cash and more troops our way, and
by John Cole| 3 Comments
This post is in: Foreign Affairs
This also was an amusing exchange from the Wolfowitz press briefing:
Q Secretary Wolfowitz, could I just also ask you, what did you really mean when you said people in the Middle East will believe almost anything?
Mr. Wolfowitz: It’s a — here’s what I mean. And thank you for giving me a chance to clarify. It’s a comment on how we are seen as a country that can do anything, that can restore power overnight. Sometimes it’s nice to have the reputation for being almost godlike, but frankly, I think it produces this phenomenon that if something isn’t happening, it must be because the Americans don’t want it to happen; and they begin to invent the most elaborate reasons to explain it. And the fact is — you know it — we often just make mistakes. We do stupid things. And then people spend years and years afterwards with elaborate explanations of not, “Gee the Americans are stupid,” but, “There must be some very ingenious plot here.”
by John Cole| 3 Comments
This post is in: Foreign Affairs
Paul Wolfowitz had a speech which got little play today (NYC shooting and the Huseein kids got all the press), in which he essentially told the quagmire crowd and the “Iraq is worse off’ fools (which to date now includes 8 of the 9 Democrat candidates- save Lieberman) that they don’t know what the hell they are talking about:
The entire south and north are impressively stable, and the center is getting better day-by-day. The public food distribution is up and running. There is no food crisis. I might point out we planned for a food crisis; fortunately, there isn’t one. Hospitals nationwide are open. Doctors and nurses are at work. Medical supply convoys are escorted to and from the warehouses. We planned for a health crisis; there isn’t one. Oil production has passed the 1 million barrels per day mark. We planned for the possibility of massive destruction of this resource of the Iraqi people; we didn’t have to do it.
The school year has been salvaged. Schools nationwide have reopened and final exams are complete. There are local town councils in most major cities and major districts of Baghdad, and they are functioning free from Ba’athist influence.
There’s been a lot of talk that there was no plan. There was a plan, but as any military officer can tell you, no plan survives first contact with reality. Inevitably, some of our assumptions turned out to be wrong. Fortunately, many things turned out to be much better than our assumptions, in no small measure, I think, because of a brilliant military plan that achieved extraordinary surprise.
There is no humanitarian crisis. There is no refugee crisis. There is no health crisis. There has been minimal damage to — to infrastructure; minimal war damage, lots of regime damage over decades, but minimal war damage to infrastructure except for telecommunications, which we had to target. There has been no environmental catastrophe, either from oil well fires or from dam breaks. And there has been no need for massive oil field repair.
So, fortunately, much of what we planned for, much of what’s captured in the title of the initial office, Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance, what we planned for and budgeted for, has not proved necessary.
Nanny nanny boo boo, in other words. He also admitted to some problems and unexpected issues:
by John Cole| 3 Comments
This post is in: Democratic Stupidity
What do Charlie Rangel and Al Jazeera have in common?
United States Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY): The U.S. acted illegally when its soldiers attacked and killed Uday and Qusay Hussein, a leading Democratic congressman complained on Tuesday, before mocking the military maneuver that succeeded in eliminating the brutal duo.
“We have a law on the books that the United States should not be assassinating anybody,” Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., told Fox News Channel’s “Hannity & Colmes.”
Al Jazeera Correspondent: Not all the reaction was positive, however. The correspondent for Al Jazeera, the Arab satellite television network that has been a staunch critic of the war, described the two men as having been killed “in cold blood,” and one analyst brought on to comment called the method of their deaths a “crime.”
Apparently, this is the new strategy to win back the red states for the Democrats. Hurts to watch, doesn’t it? Meanwhile, even the ARAB NEWS editorializes in favor of the death of these two villains:
That Uday and Qusay Hussein are dead is a victory for the Americans and, far more important, a victory for the Iraqi people. Both needed the break.
by John Cole| 11 Comments
This post is in: General Stupidity
By now everyone has heard of the Berkeley news release of a study that states the following:
Four researchers who culled through 50 years of research literature about the psychology of conservatism report that at the core of political conservatism is the resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality, and that some of the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism include:
Fear and aggression
Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
Uncertainty avoidance
Need for cognitive closure
Terror management
And of course, this gem:
Disparate conservatives share a resistance to change and acceptance of inequality, the authors said. Hitler, Mussolini, and former President Ronald Reagan were individuals, but all were right-wing conservatives because they preached a return to an idealized past and condoned inequality in some form. Talk host Rush Limbaugh can be described the same way.
Yawn. Here is the original study and their response to a peeer crtique (which I can not find), both in .pdf format.
by John Cole| 2 Comments
This post is in: General Stupidity
The American Prospect staff, in another anonymous posting on their political blog Tapped, heaps praise on the NY Times, for, of all things, transparency:
THE NEW TRANSPARECY. Check it out! The New York Times has launched a page with bios and headshots of the paper’s editorial board members. Great idea! Tapped hopes The Washington Post follows the example and does the same. Posted at 01:34 PM
Apparently the irony of it all has escaped them. And they are the ones who misspelled transparency.
This post is in: General Stupidity
This is sort of amusing:
The Chicago Police Department has apologized for issuing a community alert that described a man suspected in a series of sexual assaults as resembling hip-hop artist and actor Ice Cube after a local television station aired one of the rapper’s videos during its evening newscast.
Police are searching for a man who sexually assaulted three woman in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood, a trendy area on the city’s North Side.
A police alert released Sunday described the man as a black male in his mid-20s who “resembles the popular rap artist ‘Ice Cube.'”
The Chicago TV station owned and operated by CBS, WBBM-TV, subsequently broadcast one of Ice Cube’s videos when it reported the story Monday night.
“We acknowledged the information should not have been on the alert,” Police spokesman David Bayless said Tuesday. “We took immediate corrective action. We apologize to Ice Cube for what was an honest mistake and came with no ill intent.
According to my brother, who lives in Chicago, some policeman went on television and made matters worse by apologizing to “Ice-T.” I guess all black people look alike to the Chicago police. I dunno whether I would attribute this to racism or, as I have filed it, general stupidity.