Tuesday, March 06, 2012

What to do with that slightly used mega-embassy in Baghdad? The winners are . . .

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by Ken

Today in his Washington Post "In the Loop" column, Al Kamen revealed the winners in the Feb. 8 'Embassy for Sale' contest, "which was to come up with ideas for what to do with the enormous, 104-acre embassy complex in Baghdad as the mission winds down." The contest generated "hundreds of entries from around the world." Coveted "In the Loop" T-shirts were awarded to the top 10 entries as chosen by a panel of three judges:
* former New York Times and CBS News reporter Terence Smith;
* our former colleague, formerly an AP foreign affairs correspondent in the Middle East and now ProPublica reporter Dafna Linzer;
* and Aaron Blake, a key member of the wildly popular Fix Blog.

Since I was so excited by the contest when it was originally announced, I can't help but make sure DWT readers know how it came out. So here are the nine winners responsible for those top 10 submissions, "in no particular order":

One Loop Fan submitted two winning entries:
"Turn it into the Fertile Crescent Community College. (Sports chant: 'Go Tigris!')"
And the other entry:
"Turn it into a 5-star luxury hotel and spa experience. Market it as 'America's Last Resort.' "
-- Randy Brown, freelance journalist in the Des Moines, Iowa, area

"Trump Baghdad Casino Hotel. Only U.S. Government officials with more than $1 billion in cash can play and they are required to lose everything as quickly as possible. Casino Management: Blackwater USA and the Iraqi Government."
-- retired foreign service officer James F. Schumaker of San Clemente, Calif.

"Turn the compound into an educational institution for the study of government folly: 'The College of Woefully Misguided Decisions.(WMDs).' "
-- retired journalist and former Loop contest winner Maurice R. Fliess of Brentwood, Tenn.

"A new stadium for the Redskins named 'The Daniel Snyder Edifice for Annual Hope, Eternal Dreams and Everlasting Disillusionment' "
-- information technology specialist Dave McDermott of Brambleton, Va.

"Retirement Home for American Neo-Cons. Name: The Open Arms"
-- Federal government retiree Kirk Augustine of Camano Island, Wash.

"Convert the complex into a full-service, game-themed restaurant specializing in desserts. New Name: The Yellowcake Factory."
-- federal contractor program manager Kevin Dopart of Washington, D.C.

"An open-air market. It can be called Very Eastern Market."
-- former Loop contest winner Matt Neufeld, news editor at Carroll Publishing in Greenbelt

"The embassy should be turned into the world's largest bowling alley. It could be called 'Dubya's.' "
-- Daniel Bazan, a federal government employee

"Move the Redskins, Capitals and Wizards to a new facility. Rename it 'Camp Victory.'"
-- retired Agency for International Development attorney Bob Lester of The Villages, Fla.

In addition, notes, Al, "Many of the entries reflected earnest efforts to think of something to do with the complex that would actually be useful and needed in Iraq, such as a university or hospital." The contest brass picked one winner in this category:
"Make a rehab centre for war affectees there as well as a wellness centre for war-affected children. Name it Al Noorani. The Light (or 'The Illuminated One'). "
-- Nighat Mir of Karachi, Pakistan
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Friday, February 10, 2012

Could we interest you in a slightly used 27-building, 104-acre embassy? (Condition: as is)

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It's 104 acres with 27 buildings, and hardly used (okay, that last part is a wee exaggeration): How might we repurpose that intergalactic embassy we built in Baghdad?

by Ken

The Bush regime war criminals who brought us the iraq invasion and occupation undoubtedly thought they were settling into Baghdad for, well, forever. Otherwise it's hard to explain how this monstrosity of an embassy came to be built, at a total cost of -- well, I can't imagine that anyone can, or would dare to try to, estimate the total cost. But then, the Bush regimistas never had much trouble extracting money from Congress to throw down its proprietary Iraq sinkhole.

Now, as our "In the Loop" pal Al Kamen notes, "After the withdrawal of U.S. troops, the American diplomatic presence in Baghdad may be cut drastically, making the new $750 million embassy compound a monstrous white elephant." And he poses the obvious question: "What do we do with the 104-acre complex -- the largest embassy on Earth, with 27 blast-proof buildings and housing for more than 1,000 employees?"

If you sensed an "In the Loop" contest in the offing, you sensed right.
Loop Fans can help!

Yes, it's the Loop “Embassy for Sale” Contest, our first contest of 2012. Simply tell us what the United States should do with the compound and -- this is a two-parter -- name the new facility (or facilities, if that's the plan).

Just go to wapo.st/
baghdadembassycontest and leave your submission in a comment. The top 10 entries will receive one of those coveted In the Loop T-shirts and mentions in this column.

But hurry! Entries must be submitted by midnight Feb. 17. In case of duplicates, the first in will win. (You may want to double-check that there's an active e-mail address associated with your washingtonpost.com log-in. If we're unable to contact a winner within three days, the prize will go to a runner-up.) Winners will be determined by an independent, distinguished and un-bribe-able panel of judges.

Here's what you've got to work with: The ultra-secured complex, which opened in 2009, is on the banks of the Tigris River. It has swimming pools, basketball courts, tennis courts and other athletic facilities. The ambassador's residence is 16,000 square feet, and the deputy's cottage is a cozy 9,500 square feet.

The embassy, built when money was no object, has a 17,000-square-foot commissary and food-court building and its own water supply, power plant and waste-treatment facility, so it doesn't have to rely on the Iraqis for essential services.

Think of the possibilities!


If you need inspiration, here are some of the comments that have been posted:
from vallas576: Move the Bush Presidential Library there and include the papers of Dick Cheney and use a portion of the compound to build a memorial for all the brave American military that were killed there. Name the compound "Mission Accomplished."

from Geetaar: There is no need to find a new use for the embassy. Keep it in its present use, as a monument to stupidity.

from Econoblaster: Sell it to the Emir of Bahrain as a summer home.... and a place to go when the people of Bahrain finally succeed in throwing him out. Call it "Hijrah al Khalifa".

from jgmann: Turn it into a football stadium and see if you can get the Raiders to move again.

from petert45: Name the compound -- "The George W Bush--Richard Chaney Center" with a full dedication ceremony.
Then, in grand American-style, we Americans do best, make a spectacle of this white elephant with---
HUGEST IMPLOSION of the George W Bush-Richard Chaney Center. And do invite all the top world officials to be witness including Bush and Chaney pushing the button.


from DCsandiego : As for the Embassy in Baghdad, let's revisit who advocated this obviously stupid idea (George Bush, Condi Rice, Dick Cheney, Bremer, Petraeus, and Gates come to mind) and ask them to explain the short sightedness of this ridiculous waste and inefficiency. Then ask them to invite many of their former colleagues, including the Congress, to hold a press conference in the structural monstrosity to explain the whole Iraq debacle and attendant horrendous decision making. After the press conference, Obama can announce formally that the Embassy compound has been turned into a minimum correctional center where they must all stay locked up for at least one year. That should send a useful message just in time for Iran.

from jkersey1: The extra space in the embassy should be converted to a Retirement Home for the Neo Cons, Rush Limbaugh, and the Halliburton executives. They will be greeted as heroes with roses and parades I am sure.

As a special bonus, a number of these comments are grace by insightful responses from on cstrasburger along the lines of: "Ahhh, the blissful ignorance of the liberal mind......" (Nothing left out -- that's the entire comment.) This presumed life form even has its own suggestion:
I have a great idea!
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Let's turn it into barracks, and send all the liberals there so they can "care" about the muslim brotherhood! They can talk about abortion rights, women's rights gay rights, minority rights........not that they really care about any of them; they wouldn't have to worry about our Constitution, which they hate, and could create their own mindless adaptation, to include the unicorns and fairies they so love and everyone could love each other! Oh, the bliss!!!
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That ought to be fun to watch!
Hmm, a mind is a terrible thing to waste, but if there was no mind to start with, I guess there's no waste.
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Thursday, August 18, 2011

Is There Such A Thing As An Austerity Riot That Isn't "Political"... Anywhere?

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While Matt Taibbi, on this side of the Atlantic, asks the question we all know the answer to-- Is the SEC covering up Wall Street crimes?-- and an increasingly uncomfortable English public on the other side of the Atlantic wants to understand what happened to the independence of their judiciary, Naomi Klein bridges the vast expanse of ocean by explaining just how "political" Austerity Riots are. Let's start with the massive looting in post-invasion Baghdad.
Back then the people on cable news thought looting was highly political. They said this is what happens when a regime has no legitimacy in the eyes of the people. After watching for so long as Saddam and his sons helped themselves to whatever and whomever they wanted, many regular Iraqis felt they had earned the right to take a few things for themselves. But London isn’t Baghdad, and British Prime Minister David Cameron is hardly Saddam, so surely there is nothing to learn there.

How about a democratic example then? Argentina, circa 2001. The economy was in freefall and thousands of people living in rough neighborhoods (which had been thriving manufacturing zones before the neoliberal era) stormed foreign-owned superstores. They came out pushing shopping carts overflowing with the goods they could no longer afford-- clothes, electronics, meat. The government called a “state of siege” to restore order; the people didn’t like that and overthrew the government.

Argentina’s mass looting was called El Saqueo-- the sacking. That was politically significant because it was the very same word used to describe what that country’s elites had done by selling off the country’s national assets in flagrantly corrupt privatization deals, hiding their money offshore, then passing on the bill to the people with a brutal austerity package. Argentines understood that the saqueo of the shopping centers would not have happened without the bigger saqueo of the country, and that the real gangsters were the ones in charge.

But England is not Latin America, and its riots are not political, or so we keep hearing. They are just about lawless kids taking advantage of a situation to take what isn’t theirs. And British society, Cameron tells us, abhors that kind of behavior.

This is said in all seriousness. As if the massive bank bailouts never happened, followed by the defiant record bonuses. Followed by the emergency G-8 and G-20 meetings, when the leaders decided, collectively, not to do anything to punish the bankers for any of this, nor to do anything serious to prevent a similar crisis from happening again. Instead they would all go home to their respective countries and force sacrifices on the most vulnerable. They would do this by firing public sector workers, scapegoating teachers, closing libraries, upping tuitions, rolling back union contracts, creating rush privatizations of public assets and decreasing pensions-- mix the cocktail for where you live. And who is on television lecturing about the need to give up these “entitlements”? The bankers and hedge-fund managers, of course.

This is the global Saqueo, a time of great taking. Fueled by a pathological sense of entitlement, this looting has all been done with the lights left on, as if there was nothing at all to hide. There are some nagging fears, however. In early July, the Wall Street Journal, citing a new poll, reported that 94 percent of millionaires were afraid of "violence in the streets.” This, it turns out, was a reasonable fear.

Of course London’s riots weren’t a political protest. But the people committing nighttime robbery sure as hell know that their elites have been committing daytime robbery. Saqueos are contagious.

The Tories are right when they say the rioting is not about the cuts. But it has a great deal to do with what those cuts represent: being cut off. Locked away in a ballooning underclass with the few escape routes previously offered-- a union job, a good affordable education-- being rapidly sealed off. The cuts are a message. They are saying to whole sectors of society: you are stuck where you are, much like the migrants and refugees we turn away at our increasingly fortressed borders.

David Cameron’s response to the riots is to make this locking-out literal: evictions from public housing, threats to cut off communication tools and outrageous jail terms (five months to a woman for receiving a stolen pair of shorts). The message is once again being sent: disappear, and do it quietly.

At last year’s G-20 “austerity summit” in Toronto, the protests turned into riots and multiple cop cars burned. It was nothing by London 2011 standards, but it was still shocking to us Canadians. The big controversy then was that the government had spent $675 million on summit “security” (yet they still couldn’t seem to put out those fires). At the time, many of us pointed out that the pricey new arsenal that the police had acquired-- water cannons, sound cannons, tear gas and rubber bullets-- wasn’t just meant for the protesters in the streets. Its long-term use would be to discipline the poor, who in the new era of austerity would have dangerously little to lose.

This is what David Cameron got wrong: you can't cut police budgets at the same time as you cut everything else. Because when you rob people of what little they have, in order to protect the interests of those who have more than anyone deserves, you should expect resistance-- whether organized protests or spontaneous looting.

And that’s not politics. It’s physics.

Extra credit if you put together Taibbi's hypothesis with Naomi's:
For the past two decades, according to a whistle-blower at the SEC who recently came forward to Congress, the agency has been systematically destroying records of its preliminary investigations once they are closed. By whitewashing the files of some of the nation's worst financial criminals, the SEC has kept an entire generation of federal investigators in the dark about past inquiries into insider trading, fraud and market manipulation against companies like Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and AIG. With a few strokes of the keyboard, the evidence gathered during thousands of investigations-- "18,000 ... including Madoff," as one high-ranking SEC official put it during a panicked meeting about the destruction-- has apparently disappeared forever into the wormhole of history.

...Many of the destroyed files involved companies and individuals who would later play prominent roles in the economic meltdown of 2008. Two MUIs involving con artist Bernie Madoff vanished. So did a 2002 inquiry into financial fraud at Lehman Brothers, as well as a 2005 case of insider trading at the same soon-to-be-bankrupt bank. A 2009 preliminary investigation of insider trading by Goldman Sachs was deleted, along with records for at least three cases involving the infamous hedge fund SAC Capital.


Even Chuck Grassley (R-IA) seems to have noticed that "it looks as if the SEC might have sanctioned some level of case-related document destruction... "It doesn't make sense that an agency responsible for investigations would want to get rid of potential evidence. If these charges are true, the agency needs to explain why it destroyed documents, how many documents it destroyed over what time frame and to what extent its actions were consistent with the law."

No rioters or looters will have this in mind when they're rioting and looting, but no understanding of the cause will be complete without it. And Joel Kotkin over at Forbes seems as pessimistic as I am about anything ameliorating the roots causes of what looks like will be some pretty bad upheavals worldwide.
The riots that hit London and other English cities last week have the potential to spread beyond the British Isles. Class rage isn’t unique to England; in fact, it represents part of a growing global class chasm that threatens to undermine capitalism itself.

The hardening of class divisions has been building for a generation, first in the West but increasingly in fast-developing countries such as China. The growing chasm between the classes has its roots in globalization, which has taken jobs from blue-collar and now even white-collar employees; technology, which has allowed the fleetest and richest companies and individuals to shift operations at rapid speed to any locale; and the secularization of society, which has undermined the traditional values about work and family that have underpinned grassroots capitalism from its very origins.

All these factors can be seen in the British riots. Race and police relations played a role, but the rioters included far more than minorities or gangsters. As British historian James Heartfield has suggested, the rioters reflected a broader breakdown in “the British social system,” particularly in “the system of work and reward.”

In the earlier decades of the 20th century working class youths could look forward to jobs in Britain’s vibrant industrial economy and, later, in the growing public sector largely financed by both the earnings of the City of London and credit. Today the industrial sector has shrunk beyond recognition. The global financial crisis has undermined credit and the government’s ability to pay for the welfare state.

With meaningful and worthwhile work harder to come by-- particularly in the private sector-- the prospects for success among Britain working classes have been reduced to largely fantastical careers in entertainment, sport or all too often crime. Meanwhile, Prime Minister David Cameron’s supporters in the City of London may have benefited from financial bailouts arranged by the Bank of England, but opportunities for even modest social uplift for most other people have faded.

The great British notion of idea of working hard and succeeding through sheer pluck-- an idea also embedded in the U.K.’s former colonies, such as the U.S.-- has been largely devalued. Dick Hobbs, a scholar at the London School of Economics, says this demoralization has particularly affected white Londoners. Many immigrants have thrived doing engineering and construction work as well as in trades providing service to the capital’s affluent elites.

A native of east London himself, Hobbs maintains that the industrial ethos, despite its failings, had great advantages. It centered first on production and rewarded both the accumulation of skills. In contrast, by some estimates, the pub and club industry has been post-industrial London’s largest source of private-sector employment growth, a phenomena even more marked in less prosperous regions. “There are parts of London where the pubs are the only economy,” he notes.

What’s the lesson to be drawn? The ideologues don’t seem to have the answers. A crackdown on criminals-- the favored response of the British right-- is necessary but does not address the fundamental problems of joblessness and devalued work. Similarly the left’s favorite panacea, a revival of the welfare state, fails to address the central problem of shrinking opportunities for social advancement. There are now at least 1 million unemployed young people in the U.K., more than at any time in a generation, while child poverty in inner London, even during the regime of former Mayor “red Ken” Livingstone last decade, stood at 50% and may well be worse now.

Hobbs claims that the current “pub and club,” with its “violent potential and instrumental physicality,” simply celebrates consumption often to the point of excess. Perhaps it’s no surprise that looting drove the unrest.

This fundamental class issue is not only present in Britain. There have been numerous outbreaks of street violence across Europe, including in France and Greece. One can expect more in countries like Italy, Spain and Portugal, which will now have to impose the same sort of austerity measures applied by the Cameron government in London.

And how about the United States? Many of the same forces are at play here. Teen unemployment currently exceeds 20%; in the nation’s capital it stands at over 50%. Particularly vulnerable are expensive cities such as Los Angeles and New York, which have become increasingly bifurcated between rich and poor. Cutbacks in social programs, however necessary, could make things worse, both for the middle class minorities who run such efforts as well as their poor charges.

A possible harbinger of this dislocation, observes author Walter Russell Mead, may be the recent rise of random criminality, often racially tinged, taking place in American cities such as Chicago, Milwaukee and Philadelphia.

Still, with over 14 million unemployed nationwide, prospects are not necessarily great for white working- and middle-class Americans. This pain is broadly felt, particularly by younger workers. According to a Pew Research survey, almost 2 in 5 Americans aged 18 to 19 are unemployed or out the workforce, the highest percentage in three decades.

Diminished prospects-- what many pundits praise as the “new normal”-- now confront a vast proportion of the population. One indication: The expectation of earning more money next year has fallen to the lowest level in 25 years. Wages have been falling not only for non-college graduates but for those with four-year degree as well. Over 43% of non-college-educated whites complain they are downwardly mobile.

Given this, it’s hard to see how class resentment in this country can do anything but grow in the years. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke claimed as early as 2007 that he was worried about growing inequality in this country, but his Wall Street and corporate-friendly policies have failed to improve the grassroots economy.

The prospects for a widening class conflict are clear even in China, where social inequality is now among the world’s worse . Not surprisingly, one survey conducted the Zhejiang Academy of Social Sciences found that 96% of respondents “resent the rich.” While Tea Partiers and leftists in the U.S. decry the colluding capitalism of the Bush-Obama-Bernanke regime, Chinese working and middle classes confront a hegemonic ruling class consisting of public officials and wealthy capitalists. That this takes place under the aegis of a supposedly “Marxist-Leninist regime” is both ironic and obscene.

This expanding class war creates more intense political conflicts. On the right the Tea Party-- as well as rising grassroots European protest parties in such unlikely locales as Finland, Sweden and the Netherlands-- grows in large part out of the conviction that the power structure, corporate and government, work together to screw the broad middle class. Left-wing militancy also has a class twist, with progressives increasingly alienated by the gentry politics of the Obama Administration.

Many conservatives here, as well as abroad, reject the huge role of class. To them, wealth and poverty still reflect levels of virtue-- and societal barriers to upward mobility, just a mild inhibitor. But modern society cannot run according to the individualist credo of Ayn Rand; economic systems, to be credible and socially sustainable, must deliver results to the vast majority of citizens. If capitalism cannot do that expect more outbreaks of violence and greater levels of political alienation — not only in Britain but across most of the world’s leading countries, including the U.S.

Scary to think of the mediocre individuals offering themselves up for leadership at this time-- Obama and Romney-- or the much less than mediocre-- a Michele Bachmann or Rick Perry. Why not the very best for a change, someone with real vision and real political courage... a Bernie Sanders?

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Friday, January 01, 2010

Out of the muck of the Year-End News Dump: Gummint can't touch Blackwater's (Xe's?) Baghdad shooting brigade

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AP video from Dec. 6, 2008, when the identities of the five Blackwater guards indicted for the Baghdad shootings were made public

by Ken

One of the features I loved in Rachel Maddow's old Air America Radio morning show was the regular Monday-morning Friday News Dump report. It's one of those things that everybody, or at any rate lots of folks, know about, but hardly anyone does anything about.

Anytime anyone in government has news that has to be made public, but that they would like to draw the minimum of attention, they dump it in with their Friday news dump, secure in the knowledge that all the media and an awful lot of media consumers tune out on Saturday. Anything that happens to get into the Saturday papers and newscasts gets hardly any attention, and by Sunday they're all off on the Sunday Round of Grand Pontificating -- you couldn't wedge any real news in there with a hatchet.

I'm sure there are any number of blogs doing what Rachel did: combing through those leavings to see what embarrassments, not to mention revelations, were concealed there. But you see, that's the thing: It's just some lonely, no-account-paid bloggers, and the bureaucratic blunder bundlers can easily live with that -- that's almost better than silence, in that they can always say, if they're challenged about a particular news dump, that they put it out there and heck, somebody picked it up -- are they supposed to be doing the journalists' job for them too?

You might think of the Holday News Dump as the Friday news Dump on steroids, and maybe the dumpiest dump of them all the one that ushers out the old year, a veritable sea of forgottenness. Come Monday we'll see, assuming anybody looks, what got dumped in this year's New Year's Holiday-Plus-Weekend Dump.

But who knew that federal judges also know how to do the Dump? Note the time stamp on this Washington Post report:

Judge dismisses all charges in Blackwater shooting

By Del Quentin Wilber
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, December 31, 2009; 4:15 PM

A federal judge on Thursday threw out charges against five Blackwater Worldwide security guards accused of killing 14 people in a 2007 shooting in downtown Baghdad.

In a 90-page opinion, U.S. District Judge Ricardo M. Urbina ruled that the government violated the guards' rights by using their immunized statements to help the investigation. The ruling comes after a lengthy set of hearings that examined whether federal prosecutors and agents improperly used such statements that the guards gave to State Department investigators following the shooting on Sept. 16, 2007.

"The explanations offered by prosecutors and investigators in an attempt to justify their actions and persuade the court that they did not use the defendants' compelled testimony were all too often contradictory, unbelievable and lacking in credibility," Urbina wrote.

Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said, "We're obviously disappointed by the decision. We're still in the process of reviewing the opinion and considering our options."

[And so on and so on.]

Now I'm not disupting the judge's call. Not that I'm any expert, but I do recall reading about this basic problem in this investigation of having to use immunized statements, and I'm prepared to believe that the facts and law left the judge no alternative. Also, there may be court-specific factors I don't know about, like a need or desire to clear certain rulings within the 2009 calendar year. Still and all, I guess I am suggesting that the judge knew this was a hot potato and did everything he could, short of quitting the bench, to direct heat away from his ruling.

The insidious thing about the root problem in this case, the taking of those forever-off-limits statements, is that really it can't ever be fixed. Even if there were other sources of evidence (my recollection is that in this case there weren't), how would you ever establish that you've gathered that evidence independent of the unusable statements? I would point out that the "investigative" work was done by Bush regimistas, raising the possibility that it wasn't entirely by accident that uncorrectable errors happened in the early stages of the case, which as I recall the regime had no interest in pursuing to begin with. But then hey, with the regimistas, how would you go about separating deliberate incompetence (i.e., sabotage) from the natural kind?

One obvious question: What happens now to the poor schlub who pled guilty and was presumably standing ready to testify against the five other suspects? Presumably he gets whatever sentence he was going to get anyway. I guess that's the roll of the dice in such matters. Nevertheless, I bet he (and his lawyers) are feeling pretty silly.

It's easier if we just don't think about it. The Super-End-of-Year News Dump is perfect for that.
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UPDATE: The Iraqis Don't Have The Luxury of Burying The News Though

As Timothy Williams pointed out in this morning's NY Times, Iraqis went through some more shock and awe when they read about the decision Friday, reacting "with disbelief, anger and bitter resignation to news that criminal charges in the United States had been dismissed against Blackwater Worldwide security guards who opened fire on unarmed Iraqi civilians in 2007."

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Sunday, December 14, 2008

Extra, extra: Bush beaned in Bagdad!

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Following up on our report on the Bush regime's excellent adventure in Iraq, we can't resist passing on this report from ThinkProgress (note that their own version contains both links and video clips):
Iraqi Journalist Throws His Shoes At Bush During Press Conference In Baghdad (Updated)

President Bush is in Baghdad today on a surprise farewell visit highlighting the security deal recently reached between the U.S. and Iraq. CNN Baghdad correspondent Michael Ware reports this afternoon that during a press conference with Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, an Iraqi man threw a shoe at Bush — "a grave insult in the Arab world" — but "it just sailed past his head":

WARE: Well, Wolf, the most extraordinary thing. You may or may not believe this. We're getting reports from the press pool that flew in with President Bush and apparently just a short, short time ago in a press conference with Prime Minister Maliki, an Iraqi man stood up in the press conference and threw a shoe at President Bush. But the reports we're getting, it just sailed past his head and while the man was dragged out of the room, President Bush is said to have remarked that, “This was a size 10 shoe he threw at me you may want to know,” even as the man was heard screaming in the hallway.

McClatchy identified the man as Iraqi television journalist Muthathar al Zaidi and reports he threw both of his shoes at Bush just after he finished prepared remarks.

The New York Times notes that the first shoe “narrowly missed” and the second shoe also missed. “This is a farewell kiss, you dog,” Zaidi shouted.

Apparently, Bush was unfazed by the incident. “I didn’t feel the least bit threatened by it,” he said.

UPDATE: MSNBC has video of the incident with correspondent Patty Culhane reporting that Bush was "not injured" but that White House Press Secretary Dana Perino received a black eye in the scuffle of trying to contain Zaidi. Watch it [clip on TP site].

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Tuesday, July 17, 2007

So how're we doin' in Iraq? Well, you could listen
to Bill Kristol, or to Arianna Huffington, or to
those worrywarts at the embassy in Baghdad

to Bill Kristol, or to Arianna Huffington, or to
those worrywarts at the embassy in Baghdad'>
to Bill Kristol, or to Arianna Huffington, or to
those worrywarts at the embassy in Baghdad'>
to Bill Kristol, or to Arianna Huffington, or to
those worrywarts at the embassy in Baghdad'>
to Bill Kristol, or to Arianna Huffington, or to
those worrywarts at the embassy in Baghdad'>>
to Bill Kristol, or to Arianna Huffington, or to
those worrywarts at the embassy in Baghdad'>

Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk: Has our Bill missed his true calling?

If it weren't so terrifyingly apparent that Bill Kristol (above) has actual influence on affairs of state, his pathetic imbecility combined with his grotesque self-importance would make him one of the funniest stooges since Curly Howard (below). [Or wait, could we have the photos mixed up? We always have such a terrible time telling them apart.--Ed.]

It appears that our Bill thinks we're doing hummingly in Iraq, and has been given humiliating prominence in today's Washington Post (The Newspaper for People Who Matter) to say so. Luckily, Arianna Huffington is on the case ("Bill Kristol: On the Train to Delusionville"), and has a personal scoop of sorts. Hint: On the train, she heard our Bill in full screeching yammer on his cell phone.

And if you want to know how we're really doin' in Iraq, then in today's Washington Post turn not to Bill Kristol but to our trusty pal Al Kamen. (What I had in mind was the lead item, the one about the "limited number of cots" available at the Baghdad embassy for the security-sensitive. But once you've read that, you really have to read the following item as well.)


Personnel May Wish to Sleep in Another Country

More signs of progress in Iraq. In response to the recent increase in mortar and rocket attacks in Baghdad's Green Zone, U.S. Embassy officials announced yesterday that "a limited number of cots are available for use by authorized . . . personnel who wish to sleep in their offices for security reasons."

Why? Offices tend to be in concrete buildings, affording better protection against mortars and other projectiles than the metal-roofed trailers commonly used for housing.

Remember, though, the notice continued, "cots will be issued on a first-come, first-serve basis, according to the time stamp on e-mail requests received," and you needed to pick them up between 2 and 5 p.m. yesterday.

But, if you missed the deadline, not to worry. A "Duck and Cover Alert" from the embassy security office yesterday offered important tips on what to do if you're in an "unfortified structure (e.g. trailer, self-serve laundry facility, etc.) or outdoors."

"If there is a nearby Duck and Cover bunker" -- echoes of an earlier era? -- "quickly seek cover within and remain there until the All Clear signal is given." But "if no fortified structure is near-by, get as low as possible and protect your vital areas." (Of course, these may vary from person to person.) "Remain in place until the initial salvo has ended," the notice says, then hightail it to "the nearest Duck and Cover bunker."

If you are, say, in the embassy itself or in the "Palace pool restroom, etc." you should "quickly muster in an interior room or hallway, stay clear of windows and doors [and] seek cover underneath" your desk or a table.


Lawyer Wanted; Must Not Scare Easily

Are you an attorney looking for adventure? Do you have your own cot? Then remember, today's the deadline to apply for what a State Department notice rightly calls "an exciting opportunity . . . for an energetic, self-motivated U.S. citizen to serve as a Senior Rule of Law Advisor in Embassy Baghdad."

Yes indeed, this "full-time, permanent" job will ensure you "play a central role . . . in developing policy and programs to assist in developing the Iraqi justice system." You'll also run "programs to train and build the capacity of judges, provide security for courts, judges and witnesses" and "promote the development of an independent judiciary and functioning legal and criminal justice system in Iraq."

The idea apparently is to wean the militias off their deplorable penchant for summary beheadings. And your personal safety is assured. (See item above.)

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