April 21, 2005
The Long Haul
"God help anybody that sits at this desk and doesn't know as much about the military as I do"
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower
BAGHDAD, Iraq [AP] - A commercial helicopter was shot down by missile fire north of the Iraqi capital Thursday, killing 11 people, including six American contractors, officials said.Bulgaria's Defense Ministry said the helicopter was downed by missile fire and the victims included a three-member Bulgarian crew.
A Toronto-based charter company said there were two bodyguards from Fiji on board, while Bulgaria's Transport Ministry said they were from the Philippines.
The Philippine mission in Baghdad said it had no information that any of its nationals were on the helicopter.
The six Americans worked for security contractor Blackwater USA, the U.S. Embassy said. The North Carolina-based contracting firm provides security for State Department officials in Iraq.
Two U.S. military officials in Baghdad initially said the helicopter was contracted by the Defense Department, but the U.S. Embassy later said that was untrue. It gave no information on the contractor.
It was unclear whether the civilian employees of Blackwater were under contract to the Pentagon or the State Department, U.S. officials in Washington said....
The deaths touched off a Marine assault on insurgents in the city.
According to Global Security.org there are at least 30 military facilities currently operating in occupied Iraq under the auspices of allied forces. Their layout suggests a "strategic crescent", from the northeast around Mosul down to the southeast, Basrah and the Persian Gulf. Months ago Global Security reported on the establishment of at least a dozen facilities that had all the hallmarks of permanent installations. Combine those with the sprawling twenty-first century air base in Qatar and you see the true scope of the empire's ambitions in the region. But Iraq is far from stable and the exact aims of the administration seem murkier now than ever.
The occupants of the helicopter were private military contractors--who are paid many times more than most members of the actual military--and their bodyguards. This helicopter was privately chartered, presumably at significant expense. The expense is even more significant when one considers Federal Reserve Chairman Allen Greenspan's testimony today before the House Budget Committee that federal budget deficits were really, really out of control.
You cannot continuously introduce legislation which tends to expand budget deficits because down the road the impact of an ever-rising deficit, especially as a percent of the GDP, creates some significant weakness in the structure of the economy... Addressing the government’s own imbalances will require scrutiny of both spending and taxes. However, tax increases of sufficient dimension to deal with our looming fiscal problems arguably pose significant risks to economic growth and the revenue base.
Greenspan's subsequent remarks appeared to suggest that cutting Social Security benefits was the answer, though he later denied that was his intention. The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) were all over that one: "Social Security should not be a resource for negotiators over the federal budget deficit," AARP CEO William Novelli said in a statement.
Novelli is absolutely correct. The argument over crazy deficit spending begins and ends with military operations, their scope, their aims and their outcomes. But you won't hear Greenspan touching that one any time soon. Oil is too important, or rather, control of oil is too important. As it is, Americans have no idea what's going on but they do know the price of gasoline is really, really out of control.
For anyone concerned about rising gasoline prices or, maybe, just maybe the connection between those prices and deficit spending, I suggest taking a look at the BBC documentary Why We Fight.
Then maybe take a look at this:
April 13, 2005
Let Them Eat Bombs
Let Them Eat BombsThe doubling of child malnutrition in Iraq is baffling
By Terry Jones
A report to the UN human rights commission in Geneva has concluded that Iraqi children were actually better off under Saddam Hussein than they are now.
This, of course, comes as a bitter blow for all those of us who, like George Bush and Tony Blair, honestly believe that children thrive best when we drop bombs on them from a great height, destroy their cities and blow up hospitals, schools and power stations.
It now appears that, far from improving the quality of life for Iraqi youngsters, the US-led military assault on Iraq has inexplicably doubled the number of children under five suffering from malnutrition. Under Saddam, about 4% of children under five were going hungry, whereas by the end of last year almost 8% were suffering.
These results are even more disheartening for those of us in the Department of Making Things Better for Children in the Middle East By Military Force, since the previous attempts by Britain and America to improve the lot of Iraqi children also proved disappointing. For example, the policy of applying the most draconian sanctions in living memory totally failed to improve conditions. After they were imposed in 1990, the number of children under five who died increased by a factor of six. By 1995 something like half a million Iraqi children were dead as a result of our efforts to help them.
Mr. Jones is no stranger to The Absurd. If you were born somewhere in mid-60s America and raised by Monty Python's Flying Circus re-runs on PBS, you might even swear that he had a hand in inventing The Absurd in much the same way that, say, Hugo Ball and his cohorts invented Dada. But delivering capital-A Absurd is no easy thing, namely because there is so much damn material. Amateurs believe they can simply point in the general direction and expect The Credulous to figure it out for themselves. The true master holds up a mirror for us to see the sheer absurdity in the world rampant behind our backs. And then there's someone like Mr. Jones, passing out tickets to a hall of mirrors where you get to see not only what's going on back there, but also what's being done In Your Name.
Please excuse the Dramatic Capitalization. It's downright contagious these days. It's also closely associated with absurdity and, therefore, perfect for the following segue:
"Remedies to Judicial Tyranny"
Shudder.
Sounds ominous, doesn't it? If genuine Judicial Tyranny were afoot, I'd be terrified and positively clamoring for a remedy. But it's only the poster for the latest production by The Sound of One Right Wing Flapping comedy revue:
Conservative leaders meeting in Washington yesterday for a discussion of "Remedies to Judicial Tyranny" decided that [Justice Anthony M.] Kennedy, a Ronald Reagan appointee, should be impeached, or worse.Phyllis Schlafly, doyenne of American conservatism, said Kennedy's opinion forbidding capital punishment for juveniles "is a good ground of impeachment." To cheers and applause from those gathered at a downtown Marriott for a conference on "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith," Schlafly said that Kennedy had not met the "good behavior" requirement for office and that "Congress ought to talk about impeachment."
Next, Michael P. Farris, chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association, said Kennedy "should be the poster boy for impeachment" for citing international norms in his opinions. "If our congressmen and senators do not have the courage to impeach and remove from office Justice Kennedy, they ought to be impeached as well."
Not to be outdone, lawyer-author Edwin Vieira told the gathering that Kennedy should be impeached because his philosophy, evidenced in his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute, "upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law."
Three giants of American Comedy; Schlafly, Farris and Vieira. First there's Schlafly's brilliant turn as the finger-wagging school marm, chiding Justice Kennedy for being naughty, i.e., performing his job as if he has a mind and opinions of his own. Then there's Farris and his brilliant dystopian satire about the perils of accepting the relevance of interational norms. Finally, Vieira brings down the house by simultaneously invoking the revenants of the Cold War and equating them with even older superstitious twaddle about Satan. Who even thinks about Satan anymore? Brilliance!
Shouts of "Encore!" ring through the hall.
Schlafly called for passage of a quartet of bills in Congress that would remove courts' power to review religious displays, the Pledge of Allegiance, same-sex marriage and the Boy Scouts. Her speech brought a subtle change in the argument against the courts from emphasizing "activist" judges -- it was, after all, inaction by federal judges that doomed Schiavo -- to "supremacist" judges. "The Constitution is not what the Supreme Court says it is," Schlafly asserted.
Waka Waka Waka!
Dr. M. Bacchus Stern, longtime Ritual Reality supporter and expert on all things even remotely funny, was moved to tears by the performance. Writing for a small but select group of Terribly Clever People, Dr. Stern astutely dissected the social subtext of Schlafly's comedic coup de grace.
Dr. Stern: Since it obviously wasn't invited to this pow-wow, I asked the Constitution for a response. Article 3: "The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court" and "The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority."
You have to admire Ms. Schlafly's audacity. She simultaneously preys on her constituents' fears that the Constitution is being inexorably undermined by a radical, godless judiciary while clearly demonstrating that no one, not even Ms. Schlafly herself, has read the damn thing recently.
That, my friends, is the very definition of A Tough Act To Follow. Yet the show's emcee, former representative William Dannemeyer (R-Calif.), proved he was up to the task. After intoning the Sacred Unction to Our Lobbyists and Special Interests, Dannemeyer had one final zinger:
"[America's] principal problem [is not Iraq or the federal budget but whether] we as a people acknowledge that God exists," he thundered. The hall eruptued in rapturous applause, leaving Dannemeyer to bask in the irony that many of his fellow Americans would never again doubt God's existence if, at that very moment, an absurdly outsized God-like fist crashed through the ceiling and punched him right in the fucking balls.
Rumors of a national tour are swirling like mad. Sources close to this writer indicated that negotiations were already under way for confessed Pro-Life serial bomber and murderer Eric Rudolph to join up as the opening act.
Mr. Jones explains:
In the UK there may now be 3.6 million children living below the poverty line, and 12.9 million in the US, with no prospect of either government finding any cash to change that. But surely this is a price worth paying, if it means that George Bush and Tony Blair can make any amount of money available for bombs, shells and bullets to improve the lives of Iraqi kids. You know it makes sense.
Oh, damn, I'm sorry. That didn't explain a fucking thing. Please stand by while we sort out the problem.
