The Rag Blog

Bush denigrates Iraqi leader in Spanish

New man to sit in Maliki’s chair when the music stops?

Washington, DC
By Paul Crassnerd, NY Times Washington Bureau

In an apparently unprecedented public show of cynicism for a sitting US president – and some say, of bad taste – George Bush appeared on last Thursday to slander and to crudely dismiss current Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki, calling him in Spanish a “pendejo” who was “already gone yesterday”, apparently meaning gone from the political scene, said a journalist today who covered the November 30 meeting.

“Este pendejo is ya se fue ayer,” said Bush, in a comment picked up by New York Times reporter’s boom extension microphone. Bush apparently believed reporters had not yet set up their gear, and that none spoke Spanish, said one reporter also at the meeting.

Asked by veteran Washington-beat journalist Robert Martinez, who speaks Spanish, about the comment, Bush said his comment had not been meant to be overheard and was “all in fun between I and the Prime Minister.” Bush did not respond when asked if Maliki spoke Spanish.

Martinez said on Tuesday that “the word pendejo has no literal translation into English.” But many people along the border “think it means a pubic hair, a kind of a sweaty pubic hair,” said Martinez. “It’s like a pubic hair with something still on it from sex, but dried,” he said. “It’s not a compliment,” he added.

Martinez said he was shocked at the time, but thought the comment had no real significance until Monday, when he also covered a meeting between rising-star Iraqi Shia leader Abdel Aziz al-Hakim and Bush.

“It was so heavily scripted, that I honestly have never seen anything like it, even with Bush,” said Martinez, who said Bush had a Teleprompter several feet away from which he appeared to try to read with some difficulty.

First, Bush praised the Shia leader, whose militia until last year fought and killed US soldiers before he joined the Iraqi government more recently.

“I’m proud of the courage of the Iraqi people, but we’re not satisfied with the pace of progress in Iraq,” said Bush, with a smiling Mr. Hakim sitting next to him.

Then, Mr. Hakim, apparently also reading from the Teleprompter in halting English, said, “Iraqis should resolve problems by themselves, but I would like American troops to remain in the country,” said Martinez.

The sequence of statements – Bush saying he is not satisfied with progress in Iraq, and Hakim saying he wanted US troops to stay in Iraq – made Martinez think of the earlier meeting in which Bush apparently belittled the unaware Maliki, said Martinez.

“Then you throw in the ‘leaked’ memo the other day, saying Maliki can’t cut the mustard, and it all makes sense,” said Martinez, who has covered the Bush presidency since 2000. “It’s like they’re looking for a ‘new fool by the Whirlpool’ in Iraq, he noted.

A memo from White House security advisor Stephen Hadley became public last week was apparently what Martinez was referring to. In it, Hadley questioned whether PM Maliki fully understood or could control events in Baghdad, and by extension, the rest of Iraq.

Martinez said his biggest shock, which caused him to go public with a story that he says could end his White House access, came when Bush left the meeting with Hakim. Bush, apparently leaving attached to his suit lapel the cordless microphone that had picked up his earlier comment, was met by Vice-President Cheney immediately outside the meeting room, and was heard to speak disparagingly of Hakim as well.

“Dick, I don’t know if either of those two [Iraqi leaders] you found could [defecate] and breathe at the same time,” Bush was heard to say to Cheney.

The Vice-President’s reply was equally shocking. “I could give a [care],” said Cheney. “The troops stay, the ones that live for a while get fed. They get fed, Halliburton gets paid. HAL gets paid, I get paid,” said Cheney. “Six more months and HAL will be out of the hole and my HAL options will be worth something. Now go work out, or better yet, practice reading,” Cheney was heard to say as the two parted.

Services were planned on Thursday for Martinez, whom Homeland Security officials, speaking on condition of anonymity said had died suddenly late Monday night in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after apparently mistaking a small amount of polonium 210 for a recreational drug he is believed to have bought soon after what would be his last meeting with White House security officials seeking to clear up questions about whether Martinez was “authorized to make or release the Hakim and Maliki meeting recordings.”

The official said the memorial service might have to proceed “before the actual body is actually returned,” since custodial officers “apparently had lost track of it for now.” “Now there’s no habeas corpus, some of the guys aren’t that careful any more with the bodies,” said the source. “If there are any bodies,” he added.

Paul Crassnerd

“FIDELISMO” Means Never Having to Say, “You’re Too Late”

News this week that Premier Fidel Castro didn’t attend his delayed 80th birthday celebration has further stoked barely-repressed official U.S. jubilation that perhaps, soon now, the iconic Cuban leader’s time on earth will end. Bush & Co. are rooting for cancer as Castro’s secret diagnosis, something intestinal, they hope, probably involving pain and bloody stools.

I cannot join the vultures’ anticipatory fiesta.

Whatever anyone thinks of Castro’s policies, of his influence, of his rule, this is a man, a human being, and he is hurting.

I lived with my gentle mother in the final two years of her life, cruelly cut short by a cancer which jumped across demographics and lifestyle factors, robbing her family and community of a leading light. We were fortunate that she did not suffer much pain, and could feed, clothe and clean herself — those basic indicators of independence — until the very end. Dying in her own bed, surrounded by love and borne up in her faith, this was nonetheless a cruel end, and cruel to watch as red blood cells were daily replaced by imposters and my vibrant, energetic, strong Mom was replaced by a pale, tired shadow.

Seventy-five or 80 years is not enough, you know, for one who loves living.

A few weeks ago, Alice and Thorne and I visited our old opponent, former Austin Police Department Lt. Burt Gerding, so that Thorne could satisfy the Texas Observer’s desire that he interview Gerding before they published Thorne’s piece on police spying on radicals here in the 1960s. Knowing Burt from old as a consummate gamesman, three of us went together just to be sure that no one let slip the latest plans for The Revolution. We found an old man on a walker, whose home shows the unintentional neglect of one who moves now only on circumscribed paths through his own life, still the gamesman at heart but betrayed by his body, his habits, his sins. A feisty little terrier, Asta, is a bright spot there, as the cardinals we fed on the front lawn, and her elderly cats inside, were warm places in Mother’s that last winter. I found myself still wary of Gerding’s half-truths, but believing him when he said he no longer viewed us — the 60’s rads upon whom he’d spied and played a multitude of tricks — as “the enemy”.

No. The only real enemy is the Grim Reaper.

I wanted to get people to send get-well cards and letters to Fidel, to counter the death energy being projected towards him by our government. Death comes soon enough to everyone, and it is wrong to cast el mal ojo on another’s life. But I am reliably informed that mail to Cuba from the U.S. is held up, scanned, and mostly never delivered. There must be some way to achieve this notion — perhaps through friends in Mexico? — but time may be short. So, for Fidel, that bearded, defiant, laughing, virile, devil-may-care, chicken-bones-in-Harlem and guerillas-in-the-mountains revolutionary hero, I have lit an 8-day candle, to burn until el dia de la Virgen, for courage and for strength.

Fellow Austinite and cancer survivor Lance Armstrong strongly criticizes the U.S. government’s lack of commitment to cancer research and care. Fellow blogger David pH recently wrote about what could be done with the $500 kazillion we would save annually just by becoming peace-loving citizens of the planet.

If U.S. citizens must have a war, a war on cancer (and poverty, illiteracy, homelessness, and everything else David mentioned) would be a most righteous jihad.

Hasta la victoria siempre,
Mariana

Conversion from a military dependent society.
How to save $500 billion annually and human society in the process.

Iraq was a trap that America imperialists could not resist. That trap has sprung and the result will be US defeat. Regardless of all talk in Washington and elsewhere of what is to be done next in Iraq (e.g., Baker’s Iraq Study Group), the essential fact is that those doing that talking will have very little or no impact on the situation developing in Baghdad. There basically exist only two options for the Bush regime: 1. Stay and bleed and cause greater suffering among all others. 2. Leave, so as to mitigate further damage. The latter course, may cause an escalation of the civil war, but one is reminded of how for years it was claimed that our leaving Vietnam would trigger a blood bath. It did not. This is a different situation, but Sunnis and Shiites are more likely to eventually reach a modus operandi if the US military isn’t in their midst.

If Bush and his handlers had half a brain between them, they would order the Green Zone government to “insist” on our withdrawal. But they don’t. Since the Bush regime cannot yet swallow option 2, it will stay with option 1, the horrendous status quo, which gets ever worse as the contradictions continue to manifest at an accelerating pace. Besides the human damage, the greatest damage will be to US diplomatic power and to the political power of those who lied to justify and continue what has become “the greatest foreign policy debacle in American history”. This likely consequence is the silver lining.

What would be the economic consequences of abject defeat in Iraq for average US citizens? Outside of those who might own large holdings of stock in Hummer or other similar capitalist ventures associated with the military-industrial complex, the economic consequences would very likely all be very positive. Just the supplemental appropriations for Iraq alone are hundreds of billions annually that your tax dollars wouldn’t necessarily be wasted on. That would be thousands of dollars per American household that each taxpayer could hypothetically keep. Alternatively, those savings could be spent on pressing domestic needs, such as universal healthcare, which would be an economic boon to almost everyone except insurance company executives. But we need not stop there. If the US citizenry had the same attitude toward war and the proper use of one’s national military forces that Europeans have, we could save half a trillion dollars a year.

Nearly constant warfare was a staple of European history for millennia. From Athenians vs Spartans through the Hundred Years War to Waterloo and eventually to Hitler’s bunker, European internecine warfare was endemic and almost perpetual. But the technology of slaughter became so overwhelming that after WWII some incredibly prescient individuals in France including Charles de Gaulle decided that further punishment of the Germans would be counterproductive in the long run and that a new era of relations must be initiated, subordinating nationalism. They inaugurated multi-national boards to jointly conduct their mutual rebuilding and reindustrialization. The French-German rapprochement involved reaching out to old enemies and seeking means of to a cooperative and integrated future. The European Union, the world’s most successful experience of transcending nationalism, was the eventual fruit of this process. As a result, there has not been a war between European nations since 1945, despite the Cold War, a historically unprecedented achievement. Now, such a war is hard to imagine.

In the course of its development, a corollary foundational belief has become deeply entrenched throughout Europe; that war is not a legitimate means of conflict resolution between nations (nor a legitimate means to enrich your ruling class). An extension of this corollary is that it is not legitimate to station large numbers of your nation’s soldiers outside your national boundaries unless they are requested by international authority. These European attitudes towards militarism were learned through centuries of experiences so gruesomely bloody as to dwarf anything in American history, culminating in the over 40 million European casualties in WWII (over 100 dead Europeans for every American killed in that conflict) along with immense destruction of vital infrastructure and cultural treasures. The resultant anti-militarism now manifests in their near complete reliance on diplomacy and international authority to resolve international issues.

These anti-militarist attitudes on the part of Europeans stands in dramatic contrast with attitudes of Americans who believe it is quite normal to use force to achieve foreign policy objectives, who belittle international authority and who consider having one’s military personnel stationed all over the Earth as quite normal. The most central objective of any effort to reform the US must be a huge diminution of US military power, including the unilateral disarmament of 99% of the US nuclear arsenal (and the rest through negotiation) and the closing of all US military bases in other countries. This is not some radical socialist idea. Name any other country that has bases scattered all over the globe as does the US. There is no comparable example.

Demilitarization would also free up hundreds of billions of tax dollars annually for more useful purposes that actually benefit the great majority of the US population. We could have universal healthcare, massive infusions of money in public education, bolstering low income public housing stocks, and the development of environmentally friendly energy sources and public transportation systems, just to mention of few alternative expenditures that would become possible. The amount saved would be so vast that the US could end global hunger as a side line. No argument would remain against the US endorsement of the International Court and the rule of law in international affairs.

Adopting the attitude toward war held by the overwhelming majority of Europeans would not be such a radical idea. We would not be asking everyone to convert to being socialists. But such a conversion would provide the funds for many other desirable alternatives. It would also remove the US form the top of the list of pariah states and lead to the reestablishment of the US as a respected global citizen.

David Hamilton

Bush’s Meeting With A Murderer
Robert Dreyfuss
December 04, 2006

During a stop in Amman, Jordan, on his way to the United States, al-Hakim point blank tried to torpedo the idea of an international conference that might bring together Iraq’s various factions. Such a conference was explicitly proposed by U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan last week, who offered to host it. A similar conference, or one like it, is likely to be part of the recommendations that will be issued on Wednesday by the Iraq Study Group, the panel co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Indiana Representative Lee Hamilton. But al-Hakim trashes the idea. “It is unreasonable or incorrect to discuss issues related to the Iraqi people at international conferences,” said the Shiite radical. “The proposal is unrealistic, incorrect and illegal.” (It is, of course, perfectly legal.)

Read it here.

Thank you, Charlie.

Frank Rich: Has He Started Talking to the Walls?
Saturday, December 2, 2006

But that’s not the half of it. Mr. Bush relentlessly refers to Iraq’s “unity government” though it is not unified and can only nominally govern. (In Henry Kissinger’s accurate recent formulation, Iraq is not even a nation “in the historic sense.”) After that pseudo-government’s prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, brushed him off in Amman, the president nonetheless declared him “the right guy for Iraq” the morning after. This came only a day after The Times’s revelation of a secret memo by Mr. Bush’s national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, judging Mr. Maliki either “ignorant of what is going on” in his own country or disingenuous or insufficiently capable of running a government. Not that it matters what Mr. Hadley writes when his boss is impervious to facts.

Read the rest here.

GSA Chief Seeks to Cut Budget For Audits
Contract Oversight Would Be Reduced
By Scott Higham and Robert O’Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writers
Saturday, December 2, 2006; A01

“There are two kinds of terrorism in the US: the external kind; and, internally, the IGs have terrorized the Regional Administrators,” Doan said, according to the notes.

Read the rest here.

If you have forgotten that the Miltary Commissions Act allows the detention and torture of any person suspected of being a terrorist, you had best read this carefully and give thought to how you behave.

The Torment of Jose Padilla
By Jeralyn
Posted on Mon Dec 04, 2006 at 01:33:00 AM EST

His lawyers argue, and a psychiatrist who evaluated Padilla agrees, he is not competent to stand trial.

Read all of it here.

I still find it unfathomable that modern society cannot eliminate warfare from the lexicon.

Women face emotional wounds of war
By SHARON COHEN, AP National Writer Sun Dec 3, 3:54 PM ET

“I’m fine with what I did over there …,” Flores says. “In my eyes, I did a good thing. It really doesn’t bother me. The only thing that bothers me is I just want to sleep more.”

Read it here.

FOREIGN FIRM BIDS FOR CONTROL OF TEXAS FREE TRADE CORRIDOR
By Mark Anderson

According to Spencer, McQuarie will also be involved in the TTC. Steve Bonney, a Lafayette, Ind., farmer who helped fight this arrangement in Indiana courts, revealed then that some of that money would be used to extend Interstate 69 from Indianapolis to the Kentucky border. From there I-69 would proceed into south Texas by the Mexican border, eventually becoming yet another conduit in the vast network of “NAFTA tollways” being envisioned. Interstate 69 ends to the north in Port Huron, Mich., at the Canadian border.

Read the rest here.

KBR’s Violations Run Deeper, Wider
by Shreema Mehta

According to the settlement, in return for paying the government $8 million, KBR will admit no wrongdoing.

Read the rest here.

For years the old pattern went on. People were jaded by megacorporate control of so much of their lives, but couldn’t see how they might take some power back. We decided to launch a counterattack. The result is the world’s first global anti-brand: Blackspot Shoes. Earth- friendly, anti-sweatshop, cruelty free, and pro-grassroots, Blackspots are the only rough-and-ready shoes designed to give toxic megacorporations what they need the most: a swift kick in the brand.- Kalle Lasn, CEO, The Blackspot Anticorporation