November 15, 2005
The More Things Change
A compilation of several first-hand accounts of the initiation of the Spanish conquest of the Incas, in 1532; from Jared Diamond's 1997 book Guns, Germs, And Steel makes for interesting reading in light of events since its publication.
"Governor Pizarro wished to obtain intelligence from some Indians who had come from Cajamarca, so he had them tortured."
Q I'd like you to clear up, once and for all, the ambiguity about torture. Can we get a straight answer? The President says we don't do torture, but Cheney --
MR. McCLELLAN: That's about as straight as it can be.
Q Yes, but Cheney has gone to the Senate and asked for an exemption on --
MR. McCLELLAN: No, he has not. Are you claiming he's asked for an exemption on torture? No, that's --
Q He did not ask for that?
MR. McCLELLAN: -- that is inaccurate.
Q Are you denying everything that came from the Hill, in terms of torture?
MR. McCLELLAN: No, you're mischaracterizing things. And I'm not going to get into discussions we have --
Q Can you give me a straight answer for once?
MR. McCLELLAN: Let me give it to you, just like the President has. We do not torture. He does not condone torture and he would never -- -- November 8, 2005
A top White House official on Sunday refused to unequivocally rule out the use of torture in a bid to prevent a terror attack, arguing the US administration was duty-bound to protect the American people. [...]
The US Senate voted 90-9 early last month to attach an amendment authored by Republican Senator John McCain to a defence spending bill that would prohibit "cruel, inhuman, or degrading" treatment of detainees in U.S. custody.
But the White House has threatened to veto the measure and has lobbied senators to have the language removed or modified to allow an exemption for the Central Intelligence Agency. -- November 15, 2005
"The booming of the guns, the blowing of the trumpets, and the rattles on the horses threw the Indians into panicked confusion. The Spaniards fell upon them and began to cut them to pieces. The Indians were so filled with fear that they climbed on top of one another, formed mounds, and suffocated each other. Since they were unarmed, they were attacked without danger to any Christian. The cavalry rode them down, killing and wounding, and following in pursuit. The infantry made so good an assault on those that remained that in a short time most of them were put to the sword." [...]
"If night had not come on, few out of the more than 40,000 Indian troops would have been left alive. Six or seven thousand Indians lay dead, and many more had their arms cut off and other wounds."
Colonel James Naughton of U.S. Army Materiel Command said Iraqi complaints about depleted uranium (DU) shells had no medical basis.
"They want it to go away because we kicked the crap out of them," he told a Pentagon briefing. [...]
"In the last war, Iraqi tanks at fairly close ranges -- not nose to nose -- fired at our tanks and the shot bounced off the heavy armour... and our shot did not bounce off their armour," Col. Naughton told the briefing.
"So the result was Iraqi tanks destroyed -- U.S. tanks with scrape marks." -- March 18, 2003
Mr. Rumsfeld's comments, made at a press conference, amazed U.S. diplomats. He accused Syria of sending various military items, including night-vision goggles, to Iraq, saying: "These deliveries pose a direct threat to the lives of coalition forces. We consider such trafficking as hostile acts and will hold the Syrian government accountable for such shipments." -- March 31, 2003
As coalition forces approach Baghdad, the city has been under round-the-clock air attack. U.S. war planners say most strikes are being directed at communications facilities and Republic Guard installations. -- March 30, 2003
General Richard Myers says days of relentless airstrikes have reduced some Republican Guard units to less than 50 percent of their prewar ability.
U.S. war planners want to be sure the elite units are significantly weakened before coalition troops take them on in ground fighting. -- March 30, 2003
In a city brought to a standstill by the dysfunction of war, the rites of death have turned into a macabre carnival of corpses unearthed, moved and buried anew; of sun-dappled city parks hastily converted to communal graves.
Thousands of soldiers are missing; bodies have been turning up in urban dumping grounds -- some marked, some not -- at the military airport, alongside city bridges and in parks. Bodies of civilian war victims -- some of them children -- remain unclaimed, too. -- April 22, 2003
Certainly Iraqi military casualties must have been tremendous. The Iraqi military was thought to number 300,000 to 400,000 troops, with the strength of the Republican Guard estimated at 80,000. Several days before the fall of Baghdad, U.S. Central Command believed that two of the Republican Guard's six divisions -- exposed in their front-line positions to the inconceivable firepower of the U.S. Air Force -- had been smashed to the point where they no longer constituted an effective fighting unit. (Assuming a division comprises 13,000 men, that means a significant percentage of 26,000 troops had been killed or wounded.) During the fighting in and around Baghdad the International Committee of the Red Cross reported that one front-line hospital, Yarmouk, was confronted with an incredible influx of 100 wounded people, mostly military, per hour. -- April 22, 2003
"We come to conquer this land by his command, that all may come to a knowledge of God and of His Holy Catholic Faith; and by reason of our good mission, God, the Creator of heaven and earth and of all things in them, permits this, in order that you may know Him and come out from the bestial and diabolical life that you lead. It is for this reason that we, being so few in number, subjugate that vast host. When you have seen the errors in which you live, you will understand the good that we have done you by coming to your Land by order of his Maiesty the King of Spain. Our Lord permitted that your pride should be brought low and that no Indian should be able to offend a Christian."
According to Abbas, immediately thereafter Bush said: "God told me to strike at al Qaida and I struck them, and then he instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. -- June 26, 2003
Posted by Eddie Tews at 12:56 PM
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"I think a lot of us would really stop and think a moment before we would ever vote for war or to go and take military action," Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said on Fox News Sunday.
Fucking Liberal Republicans
"I think a lot of us would really stop and think a moment before we would ever vote for war or to go and take military action," Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said on Fox News Sunday.
Posted by Eddie Tews at 12:03 PM
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Um...huh? The intelligence was "clear"? He's probably right: it was crystal clear, to anyone (in practice, about 90% of the World's population) bothering to look at the facts, that Iraq was not in possession of WMD.
But, even if the Bush Administration had honestly (don't laugh) perceived the "intelligence" to "clearly" indicate that Saddam was in possession of WMD; you'd think that Hadley could at least preface his sentence with a "We really, truly, cross-our-hearts thought that".
That the Clinton Administration used the same lies as did the Bush Administration; and that the Democrats by-and-large fell all over themselves to endorse Dubya's war (even while 90% of the World's population was strongly opposed) only proves that the Democrats are even larger fuckholes that the Republicans. So? Tell us something we don't know.
But the last sentence is the true prize: "once it was clear that [nobody else, save fuckhole Blair supported his war] the President had no alternative [but to go it alone -- along with fuckhole Blair, and, of course, The Poles].
But Hadley was just warming up. He just a few minutes later assured himself the doublethink-of-the-year award:
Methinks, incidentally, that it truly is doublethink we're dealing with here. That Hadley, in other words, truly does believe that when the "Multinational Force" blows up wedding parties, and kills and maims large numbers of small children; that it does so in the service of "spreading freedom".
But, who knows? Maybe he's just a fucking hypocrite. Either way, he's a fucking fuckhole.
November 11, 2005
Non-Sequitur Of The Moment
Q It was, however, the weapons of mass destruction that was used to justify the urgency, and that, of course, is what my question dealt with.
MR. HADLEY: The intelligence was clear in terms of the weapons of mass destruction, and after 9/11, what we learned was that the coincidence between a rogue regime that was -- supported terror and pursued weapons of mass destruction was a serious risk that the United States needed to deal with. Having tried for 12 years and 17 resolutions to address it through diplomacy, and continuing to try to address it through diplomacy, trying to maintain the international consensus, once it was clear that that international consensus had broken down, the President had no alternative.
Um...huh? The intelligence was "clear"? He's probably right: it was crystal clear, to anyone (in practice, about 90% of the World's population) bothering to look at the facts, that Iraq was not in possession of WMD.
But, even if the Bush Administration had honestly (don't laugh) perceived the "intelligence" to "clearly" indicate that Saddam was in possession of WMD; you'd think that Hadley could at least preface his sentence with a "We really, truly, cross-our-hearts thought that".
That the Clinton Administration used the same lies as did the Bush Administration; and that the Democrats by-and-large fell all over themselves to endorse Dubya's war (even while 90% of the World's population was strongly opposed) only proves that the Democrats are even larger fuckholes that the Republicans. So? Tell us something we don't know.
But the last sentence is the true prize: "once it was clear that [nobody else, save fuckhole Blair supported his war] the President had no alternative [but to go it alone -- along with fuckhole Blair, and, of course, The Poles].
But Hadley was just warming up. He just a few minutes later assured himself the doublethink-of-the-year award:
I mean it is a shocking attack. In one of the hotels -- the President talked to the King of Jordan this morning -- one of the hotels, there was a wedding going on. And a large number of the casualties are small children. The bride and the groom each lost large portions of their family. I mean, this -- it shows the brutality of this enemy.
Methinks, incidentally, that it truly is doublethink we're dealing with here. That Hadley, in other words, truly does believe that when the "Multinational Force" blows up wedding parties, and kills and maims large numbers of small children; that it does so in the service of "spreading freedom".
But, who knows? Maybe he's just a fucking hypocrite. Either way, he's a fucking fuckhole.
Posted by Eddie Tews at 05:20 PM
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The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, released Wednesday night, finds that all five of Bush’s job approval ratings -- on overall job performance, the economy, foreign policy, terrorism and Iraq -- are at all-time lows in the survey.
* * *
Q Can I ask you on a different topic, on politics -- the Democrats are looking at the results on Election Night yesterday and saying this is an indication that the President is really unpopular and is a drag on the Republican Party now, going into midterm elections.
MR. McCLELLAN: I'm sure they're going to say a lot of things like that, but I think the facts say otherwise.
November 10, 2005
Welcome To Scottie's World
The latest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, released Wednesday night, finds that all five of Bush’s job approval ratings -- on overall job performance, the economy, foreign policy, terrorism and Iraq -- are at all-time lows in the survey.
Q Can I ask you on a different topic, on politics -- the Democrats are looking at the results on Election Night yesterday and saying this is an indication that the President is really unpopular and is a drag on the Republican Party now, going into midterm elections.
MR. McCLELLAN: I'm sure they're going to say a lot of things like that, but I think the facts say otherwise.
Posted by Eddie Tews at 09:07 AM
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Earlier, the tone was struck by the former football star Diego Maradona, who wore a "Stop Bush" T-shirt to an anti-Bush "counter-summit" that drew some 4,000 protesters from around the world and easily eclipsed the official summit in the public's attention. "I'm proud as an Argentine to repudiate the presence of this human trash, George Bush," said Maradona. [...]
The 15,000-strong crowd broke out in a roar as Maradona, riding high on his rebirth as Argentina's leading television personality with his own weekly talkshow, embraced Mr Chávez at the microphone and roared: "Argentina has its dignity! Let's throw Bush out of here!"
November 05, 2005
Quote Of The Moment
Earlier, the tone was struck by the former football star Diego Maradona, who wore a "Stop Bush" T-shirt to an anti-Bush "counter-summit" that drew some 4,000 protesters from around the world and easily eclipsed the official summit in the public's attention. "I'm proud as an Argentine to repudiate the presence of this human trash, George Bush," said Maradona. [...]
The 15,000-strong crowd broke out in a roar as Maradona, riding high on his rebirth as Argentina's leading television personality with his own weekly talkshow, embraced Mr Chávez at the microphone and roared: "Argentina has its dignity! Let's throw Bush out of here!"