WUT RT @dcexaminer: Pentagon creates essay contest to honor Saudi king http://t.co/anFfuD6QMo pic.twitter.com/Tny8XJCmZx
— JustinGreen? (@JGreenDC) January 26, 2015
From the official Dept. of Defence press release:
The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has established a research and essay competition in honor of Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah Bin Abdul-Aziz hosted by the National Defense University…
“This is an important opportunity to honor the memory of the king, while also fostering scholarly research on the Arab-Muslim world, and I can think of no better home for such an initiative than NDU,” [Army Gen. Martin E.] Dempsey said in a statement announcing the competition.
The competition will focus on issues related to the Arab-Muslim world and is designed to encourage strategic thinking and meaningful research on a crucial part of the world. The program will be in place at NDU for the next academic year, officials said…
Dempsey first met Abdullah in 2001, when he was a brigadier general serving as the U.S. advisor to the Saudi Arabian National Guard. “In my job to train and advise his military forces, and in our relationship since, I found the king to be a man of remarkable character and courage,” Dempsey said…
From the NYTimes:
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — President Obama met with King Salman of Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, leading a bipartisan delegation of prominent current and former officials to shore up an important relationship and offer condolences for the death of King Abdullah…
Mr. Obama was in Riyadh for only a few hours, detouring from the return leg of a three-day visit to India. Still, the fact that he made the stop was significant, because he rarely travels overseas to mark the death of a foreign leader; more often, he dispatches the vice president, secretary of state or other dignitaries to represent the United States…
Joining the president for the visit on Tuesday were his Republican opponent from 2008, Senator John McCain of Arizona, and several veterans of Republican administrations, including two former secretaries of state, James A. Baker III and Condoleezza Rice.
Ms. Rice was also one of four former national security advisers in the delegation, which also included Brent Scowcroft, Stephen J. Hadley and Samuel Berger.
Senior figures from the Obama administration who joined the delegation included Mr. Kerry; Susan E. Rice, the current national security adviser and former ambassador to the United Nations; John O. Brennan, the director of the C.I.A.; and Gen. Lloyd J. Austin III, who oversees Middle East operations. Democratic members of Congress also took part, including Senator Mark Warner of Virginia and Representatives Nancy Pelosi and Ami Bera of California and Eliot L. Engel and Joseph Crowley of New York…
DFH Billmon has a couple of twitter essays discussing the harsh reality behind the airy eulogies. One selection from each:
3. Sharp swords do shake the severed heads of May,
And summer’s oil lease hath all too short a date.
— Billmon (@billmon1) January 26, 2015
7. A month after opening Saudi HQ, Lockheed Martin received a $253 million contract from KSA for work on F-15SA training systems.
— Billmon (@billmon1) January 26, 2015
Villago Delenda Est
Oh, holy fuck.
This shit has got to stop. Fucking Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Madison are spinning at near-relativistic speeds in their graves right now.
Baud
Wait, how many foreign leaders have died during Obama’s term in office?
And I’m disappointed it’s not a haiku contest.
Tree With Water
What would make for fascinating reading would be the Armed Forces (et.al.) psychological profiles of the entire cast of mideast characters. This particular essay competition, while harmless enough (I guess), is a pointlessly inexplicable excercise by any fair measure.
sm*t cl*de
We can have dirty limerick competition?
Baud
OT: I know we all prefer Wonkette to Newsmax, but this is hilarious.
Peale
@Baud: No one is hiring him. It must mean that everyone is broke.
Bobby B.
The Junkie (USA) will always grovel to The Man (Saudi Arabia) for another fix. Never mind beheadings, Kerry might be an enthusiastic volunteer to suck the sultan’s cock.
Cacti
The NYT’s hagiography of the dead despot as a “force for moderation” is projectile vomit inducing.
Yep, just a benign, tolerant ruler who was okay with people getting beheaded for witchcraft or being gay.
Calouste
@Baud: The President of Poland died in an air crash in 2010. Can’t think of an other. Obama was going to go, but cancelled due to the volcanic ash affecting air travel in Europe at that time.
Joe Biden is usually to person to go to funerals of former foreign leaders, I don’t think the President attends those according to protocol.
Baud
@Bobby B.:
If it keeps the price of gas down, it’s a sacrifice I’m willing to let Kerry make.
BGinCHI
Sample essay opening:
I am a junior Saudi prince at a large Midwestern university.
BGinCHI
@Cacti: Cheap gas equals fuck human rights.
Peale
I don’t find it unusual at all that he President would stop by since he was in the neighborhood so to speak.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
I have a feeling that the flight from India to Saudi Arabia is a lot shorter than the flight from DC to Saudi Arabia. It would be silly NOT to have the president detour there.
Baud
@Calouste:
So that paragraph was basically made-up bullshit?
BGinCHI
@Baud: You play James Taylor’s “You’ve got a friend” as background music and this little film is really starting to come together.
schrodinger's cat
Asking the same question that I did in the last thread, why not even a single thread for Obama’s India trip? Surely, the Indian Republic is at least as important as the Saudi King and Steve King.
Baud
@schrodinger’s cat:
Nothing to criticize?
schrodinger's cat
@Baud: Michelle Obama’s floral dresses were reminiscent of my grandmother’s curtains, so there is that.
ETA: Michelle did manage to make them look better than almost anyone else could have, but still.
Baud
@BGinCHI:
Oh, lordy, that’s gonna haunt my dreams tonight.
Peale
@BGinCHI:
I am a junior Saudi prince at a large Midwestern university.
I never thought it would happen to me and I would have something to write to you about. But you won’t believe what happened to me last week as I went to check out a turkey sandwich at the Wawa. There she stood, tall, with firm breasts. Her friend was there, too. Darker maybe, but both of them looked hungry.
Peale
@schrodinger’s cat: He was chewing gum. It was in the papers.
Baud
@Peale:
If this letter ends with Kerry, a Saudi prince, and James Taylor, I’ll never forgive any of you.
jl
@sm*t cl*de:
” We can have dirty limerick competition? ”
Can’t think of anything dirty right now, so maybe this is appropriate and respectful gesture for a valued ally:
Let us all say “Howdy”
To the new ruling Saudi
We were planning to frack!
‘Till they got off our back!
But their oil is so cheap,
We got guzzlers to keep,
Our oil biz busts proudly
And soon we’ll bitch loudly.
Monkeyfister
I can’t wait to hear which Corporate CEO wins the prize.
I am willing to bet the winning essay begins with, “Pay To The Order Of:…,” and involves a LOT of zeroes and commas.
Baud
@schrodinger’s cat:
Curtaingate or florghazi?
schrodinger's cat
@Peale: Probably because he could not smoke. The Republic Day parade can be long and at times boring. I didn’t read about the chewing gum gate, either on BBC or Hindu (India’s Guardian)
BGinCHI
@Peale: I think we can win this thing.
Baud
@Peale:
He should have said he was chewing paan.
Peale
@schrodinger’s cat:
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/obamas-chewing-gum-raises-a-few-eyebrows/article6823824.ece
schrodinger's cat
@Peale: OK I had missed that.
gratuitous
“I can think of no better home for such an initiative.” Oh, Gen. Dempsey, surely you can. You’re a military man, after all. Been overseas. Lonely. Just looking for a little companionship. You know.
Calouste
@Baud: That paragraph exhibits the usual grasp of facts and reasoning by journalists. Most monarchs abdicate these days, and the mortality rate of Prime Ministers and Presidents isn’t particularly high, considering most of them are younger than 60.
ETA: Hugo Chavez also died during Obama’s Presidency. The US delegation to that funeral was really low-level.
Baud
@Calouste:
I’m surprised we sent anybody. Chavez wasn’t even nominally an ally.
Still, that sort of journalism makes me angry, assuming it was in fact made up out of thin air.
Peale
@gratuitous: Oh. I think that lonely military man is going in my letter as well. They’ll meet him at Culvers before the second act.
Bjacques
Rocky Rococo’s Opium Gum
Nothing became the King’s life so much as the leaving of it. Allah, the Beneficent and Merciful, grant he lie still. Let the Game Of Thrones begin.
Howard Beale IV
The House of Saud does feel betrayed ‘cuz Obama is working with the P5+1 to bring Iran back into the world in exchange for Iran to curtial their nukulur bomb making (as Agustus C+ would say)-never mind the fact that the Saudi’s probably have a few special-order Tel Aviv-tac nukes of their own.
When your own government has a ‘special relationship’ with a county whose form of capital punishment is beheading-what does that say about the people who established and continue to approve that relationship? Shit, maybe we should ship our condemmed prisoners over there-at least we know their deaths will be quick unlike the rapacious reprobates here in our death chambers who can’t find a fucking vein, let alone figure out that drugs we use to put our beloved pets down are more humane that what these state assholes dream up.
Major Major Major Major
Shrug. Realpolitik.
burnspbesq
@Major Major Major Major:
That doesn’t make it right, it just makes it understandable.
Helen
NBC just showed Obama in Saudi Arabia. The entire all male Saudi delegation chose not to shake Michelle’s hand. They shook the president’s and just walked right past the first lady.
She was not amused.
dedc79
@Howard Beale IV: we don’t have a leg to stand on criticizing their method of capital punishment. What we can fairly criticize is the list of “offenses” that qualify for it over there.
jl
@Helen: I would think The First Lady would have been briefed in what to expect over there. But that is still a sad story.
If we can convince Louie Gohmert that he doesn’t have to be a feared of them Saudi type Muslims, maybe we should designate him to deal with the Saudis and pay respects when necessary. He has more in common with them than he thinks:
Gohmert: ‘Republican Females’ Who Derailed Abortion Bill Made GOP Look Bad
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/gohmert-republican-females-abortion-wrong-message
Glad Louie is dong some more GOP outreach.
BillinGlendaleCA
@jl: As long as they don’t cast aspersions on his asparagus, Louie’s good.
Pogonip
@Howard Beale IV: Yes, beheading appears a much quicker way to go than gassing, electrocution, or drugs, and the head can be sewn back on for the funeral, the stitches hidden by a high collar (beheadings are fairly routine in serious car accidents). And there are at least several hundred serious students of the Japanese sword in the U.S.; these men are qualified to behead and maybe some would be willing to do it, out of kindness if nothing else. There is no logical reason not to switch to beheading.
There may be serious students of the European edged weapons in the U. S. as well.
The only reason, if you can call it that, not to switch to beheading is that our glorious leaders think it’s icky.
MomSense
@Helen:
I saw a photo of FLOTUS exiting Air Force One without a head scarf!
Howard Beale IV
@dedc79: True: their’s is more modern-day Levitical.
Howard Beale IV
@Pogonip: The real sad thing is that we got some seriously potent barbiturates that are used on very large mammals-naturally, the FDA never approved them for human use.
Catch-22.
Roger Moore
@dedc79:
They’re even more trivial than jaywalking and selling loosies?
Buddy H
“A man who says he operated a drone that crashed on the White House grounds early Monday is an employee of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency,” law enforcement officials told the New York Times today.
“He told Secret Service investigators that he had been drinking at an apartment nearby before he lost control of the craft, the officials said.”
vhh
@Baud:
An entry into the Saudi royal haiku contest:
Saudi hijackers
Flew airplanes into buildings
Three thousand are dead
Mike in dc
Our favorite ruthless Wahhabi anachronistic oil rich despot. Who only occasionally exported terrorism and religious extremism and was therefore somehow moderate.
Roger Moore
@Pogonip:
I still think that asphyxiation with nitrogen would be the logical choice for a more humane method of execution. If you’re going to go with beheading, the guillotine would probably be better than a sword; it was designed specifically to do a better job of it than a sword or axe. I’d still be happier banning the process as barbaric, no matter how much we do to make it faster and less painful.
srv
This is a President who has to think about his legacy and the tributes required to haul in big checks for his Library.
I’m sure Lockheed will have an extra drone for the atrium ceiling.
@Howard Beale IV: Who do you think funded the Pakistani program? I’m sure they got a couple units in exchange.
Howard Beale IV
@Roger Moore: If you want to make it quick and leave no trace I figure a megawatt x-ray laser should do the trick. POOF!
Mike in NC
Disgusting to honor Saudi Arabia, a state sponsor of terrorism.
Pogonip
@Roger Moore: Asphyxiation sounds like a rough way to go.
Don’t know about Europe, but contemporary Japanese accounts of beheading make it sound like about the quickest possible death. Either way the U.S. process has nowhere to go but up.
Howard Beale IV
@srv: That’s why I’m in favor of a non-trivial field test of our variable-yield warheads-just to make sure that our friends (and enemies) remember that the United States of America is the ONLY nation in the world to use nuclear weapons IN ANGER.
These last 30-40 years we’ve just been pussy-footing around.
Don’t make us angry.
Roger Moore
@Pogonip:
It depends on how it happens. Our breathing is actually regulated by the CO2 level in the blood, not the O2 level. So if you asphyxiate because you can’t breathe at all (e.g. drowning, choking, etc.) it’s nasty because you try desperately to breathe but can’t. If you asphyxiate by breathing an inert gas, CO2 never builds up- you can exhale it just fine- so you never get desperate to breathe. It’s actually a very serious danger to people (like underground utility workers) who risk going into oxygen-poor environments, since they can pass out and die without ever noticing that they aren’t getting enough oxygen.
Keith P
I’d love to see a roast win.
SRW1
@Calouste:
Nelson Mandela.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@Pogonip:
I don’t have links at the moment, but one of the things that turned the tide against beheading as a method of execution was the persistent reports of the severed heads appearing to continue to have some consciousness after being severed from the body. It’s obviously difficult to get scientific evidence that people who have been beheaded are aware of what happened for X amount of time afterwards, but that was the reasoning.
catclub
@Howard Beale IV:
fact? I would be surprised.
Now, I would not be surprised if the Israelis offered tactical nukes if Saudi Arabia and Iran were at war. But they aren’t.
catclub
@Roger Moore: method for painless execution? Nitrogen chamber?
ETA:Dept of redundancy dept. I missed your comment # 52
Tree With Water
@Roger Moore: If my head is ever deliberately chopped off, in my final seconds of consciousness I’d like to stare my executioners square in their eyes, and proceed to hurl a clearly audible curse at them all (make that my head AND my vocal chords). Because that would really be cool.
Beyond that scenario, I find all other discussion concerning methods of execution to be straight out of the Third Reich .
Mnemosyne
Some experiments with severed heads
Short version: the experiments were not conclusive in any way (and not very scientific, to boot), but people were/are still convinced that consciousness continues for 15-30 seconds after decapitation.
Amir Khalid
@Tree With Water:
You would also need your lungs.
sm*t cl*de
Or someone else blowing.