Welcome to the Circus
Life is a circus, and we pundits are the ringmasters, and so, as we segue into the weekend, let’s take a look at what the clowns are up to ....
The Prosecution Rests -- In a new report issued by Physicians for Human Rights, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba—the officer in charge of the Abu Ghraib investigation—writes: “
“After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.”
“The commander in chief and those under him authorized a systematic regime of torture,” Taguba, now retired, wrote, a regime that utilized “beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices.”
White House spokeswoman Kate Starr had no comment.
Okay, you’re trying to get a terrorist to talk, to spill the beans about whatever vile terroristic plots he knows about, and it’s easy to imagine beatings and even electrical shocks being utilized to this end—but the key that the torturers were just having a little sick fun with their charges is signaled with all this “sexual humiliation” stuff. I mean, let’s get real—is that hardboiled Al Qaeda type over there really going to break once you break out the dildo, or will waterboarding work just as well?
I’m just sayin’ ....
Tick, tick, tick .... If the US doesn’t strike Iran before GWB’s term is up, then the Israelis seem more than ready to do so, as the New York Times reports:
“Israel carried out a major military exercise earlier this month that American officials say appeared to be a rehearsal for a potential bombing attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Several American officials said the Israeli exercise appeared to be an effort to develop the military’s capacity to carry out long-range strikes and to demonstrate the seriousness with which Israel views Iran’s nuclear program.”
Over 100 Israeli F-16 and F-15 fighters flew over Greece, in early June, in a demonstration of Israeli military might, in what is clearly a threat to strike at Iran. And don’t say I didn’t warn you ....
Quote of the Day—Commenting on the news that Western oil companies are preparing to re-enter the Iraqi oil market with a brace of no-bid contracts, Matt Yglesias writes in The Atlantic blog:
“I think the evidence is clear that the Bush administration went to war in Iraq because it’s run by crazy people. The oil money more plausibly comes into play in explaining the desire to stay at war forever.”
Department of Greymail -- Three years after the AIPAC spy case was made public, and three people—former Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin, AIPAC top lobbyist Steve Rosen, and Keith Weissman, AIPAC’s Iran specialist—were indicted, the case drags on without getting to trial. The latest: the government loses a rare appeal on the admissability of top-secret evidence. The defense strategy is to get the government to drop the case for fear of exposing US secrets to public view. Whether this case will ever go to trial is now an open question ....
The Stewart Threat—Martha Stewart was refused entry to the UK the other day, on the grounds that she’s a dangerous felon: her conviction for a crime that nobody can really figure out kept her out of the Queen’s domain, and she was put on the next flight back to the US. That was a close call, and I’m glad Merrie Olde England has been saved from the Stewart Threat, i.e. potpourri pillows and recipes for homemade Apple tarts. Now if only they’d do something about these guys ....
Welcome to the Circus -- Every presidential election in the US has that circus feel to it, but it’s a little early for things to get this crazy, to wit: the accusations of “Larry Sinclair, a gay man from Minnesota who alleges he snorted cocaine and had sex with the Democratic nominee,” as the Sydney Morning Herald reports:
“His allegations have been sloshing around on the internet for six months, ever since he posted a YouTube video. But after he took a polygraph test and failed, he has struggled to get mainstream media interest in a story he said began in the back of a limousine in Chicago in 1999.
“On Wednesday Sinclair booked a room at the National Press Club to produce the evidence and try to capture the national spotlight for his claims. But he spent much of the time answering questions about himself. He has what is called a colourful background: a 27-year criminal career which includes convictions for fraud, forging cheques, and stealing credit card numbers.
“Sinclair was accompanied by his kilt-clad lawyer, Montgomery Blair Sibley. Sibley has had his own problems: a Florida court struck him off for vexatious litigation, most of it directed against his former wife. ‘I don’t mean to be impudent,’ said one reporter, ‘but why are you wearing a kilt?’ Sibley explained: ‘It has to do with genitalia. If you are on the smaller side, then pants are not uncomfortable.’ As for the evidence, it was scant....”
Scant, indeed.....
My favorite line: “Sibley has his own problems.”
Comments
Lets not forget the Rachel Ray terrorist scarf!
I Can Haz Clownz!!
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Umm. We’re not all like that, us kilt wearing folks.
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Mr. R, is Israel really planning to attack Iran with all the attendant difficulties? Given the dog-wagging of the AIPAC case & so much more, isn’t it more likely the saber-rattling is but a bluff to provoke the US to do the attacking since, by Congressional lights, USA would have to anyway if Israel & Iran went to war? A potential bluff worthy, in any event, of your column’s perspicacious consideration I should think.
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An Israeli Air Force attack on Iran could wind up being “suicidal”. The distance is great, the number of aircraft needed to do the main job of taking out nuke sites just don’t exist, their ability to keep sorties going constantly just isn’t there, and an Iranian counter-missile attack on Tel Aviv is just about a sure thing and could result in 10s of thousands of civiian casualties which in turn would require an Israeli nuclear counter-attack (who needs that?????). The United States could certainly do the whole job but it would require nearly all of it’s non-nuclear air and naval military capabilities, a long build-up - at least a few months (think back to Gulf War I), and the plausible deaths of many US Forces in Iraq from an Iranian counter-attack and from riled up Iraqis.
Rather than focus on this idea of an attack on Iran, you might just as well form a mental image of Bush and Ahmadinejad, shaking hands and smiling, on the little door that leads to your gas tank every time you open it to fill up.
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The sooner Iran builds a bomb, the better.
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LOL @ Iran building a bomb.
Iran has been on the verge of building a bomb for 25 years if you listen to the Israeli announcements.
1992
June 15, 1992, Press-Telegram (Long Beach, CA)
ISRAEL HINTS AT ATTACK ON IRAN NUCLEAR PROGRAM
JERUSALEM - Military and political action may be needed to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, Israel’s air force chief said Sunday. Maj. Gen. Herzl Budinger told Israel television that if Iran’s intensive effort to develop atomic weapons isn’t ``disrupted’’ the fundamentalist Islamic nation would become a nuclear power by the end of the decade.
1995
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE0DB113EF936A35752C0A963958260
January 5, 1995
Iran May Be Able to Build an Atomic Bomb in 5 Years, U.S. and Israeli Officials Fear
“Iran is much closer to producing nuclear weapons than previously thought, and could be less than five years away from having an atomic bomb, several senior American and Israeli officials say.
“The date by which Iran will have nuclear weapons is no longer 10 years from now,” a senior official said recently, referring to previous estimates. “If the Iranians maintain this intensive effort to get everything they need, they could have all their components in two years. Then it will be just a matter of technology and research. If Iran is not interrupted in this program by some foreign power, it will have the device in more or less five years.”
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Speaking of the devil- er, I mean Israel, I saw Bill Kristol on this morning with the Fox News All Stars (of David). Kristol made a freudian slip when talking about this possible air strike. He said along the lines of “Israel with nuclear weapons...” and then corrected himself by saying “I mean Iran,” etc. I hope someone posts this clip as it is revealing. I wonder what the Likudniks have been telling the “little Lenin” in private?
Maybe Kristol should be water boarded to find out.
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This depiction of the blend of popular culture with our government is spot on. There is a kind of mongrel hybridism at work where the simultaneously banal and sensational have merged into an aptly characterized “circus” of Change Utopianism.
We’ve been falling for this “change” mantra in politics for several decades and we’ve gotten it “good and hard”. Unfortunately it is a kind of Totalitarian Change, a relentless slide into the crude and salacious where the sensation- submersed culture is desensitized to the simple truths that once grounded it. Religion is enraptured by the dark trend as well, cheering itself on in arena swooning and the wonderfully hilarious realms of consumer spiritualism and Christian Rock. It all makes the pagans of yore seem positively chaste in their mild sport of entrails reading.
We have the Western Titans of Capitalism turning themselves into a wide scale bunko operation and Britain turns a fastidiously busy Martha away as a dangerous fiscal criminal. The Media-Government Conjugal Edifice has just completed a kind of apotheosis of high self-regard in the form of a protracted elegy for the untimely death of Mr. Russert. Meanwhile, pre-meditated law breaking at the highest levels will now unleash the kind of Government Surveillance that will make Chicken Little look like Silent Cal Coolidge.
It would all be simply high comedy if it did not reflect the clinical psychosis that is a civilization of millions fixated upon idle amusement spiced by paranoia. As this carnival of delusion rolls out, nobody should be at all surprised by the extent of human suffering spawned by a culture that hears one of it’s leaders talk about obliterating another nation in between smiling high jinks on a morning television show.
This generation of America is stuck in an extended period of juvenile delinquency and to suggest that our “way of life is non-negotiable” is but one of many bits of cockeyed hilarity that record the arc of a people who have fully surrendered to artificial intelligence.
Death, destruction, dog collaring, diddling and decorating.....that change you’re looking for is at the end of your own arm, the one caught firmly in a bear trap baited with a remote control.
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Here’s that clip of Kristol.
http://rawstory.com/news08/2008/06/22/kristol-bush-might-attack-iran-if-he-thinks-obama-will-win/
I’m a little off in what I wrote above, but the thrust is correct.
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