The SideKick & Mrs. SideKick & I went out to dinner last night. At the SideKick's suggestion, I ordered a herb encrusted whitefish filet. It was absolutely great. It was so good I bought dinner to celebrate my new grandfatherhood. It put me in a good mood. We also talked about this article in The Washington Post. One of the interesting things about the present hubbub about the early clusterfuck in Iraq in regards to the Coalition Provisional Authority is that we already knew about it. See here & here & here. There is so much to read on this subject, that I will stop at those three links. However, the present interest is of use, as well. It helps focus attention on Bu$hCo's ideological extremism. Bu$hCo is no fearless leader defended the homeland, I hate that word. He is an ideologue of the worst bent. Here's a bit of Rajiv Chandrasekaran's article in today's WaPo. The article is from his book Imperial Life in the Emerald City. You can buy the book here.
After the fall of Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans -- restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O'Beirne's office in the Pentagon. To pass muster with O'Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn't need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration. O'Beirne's staff posed blunt questions to some candidates about domestic politics: Did you vote for George W. Bush in 2000? Do you support the way the president is fighting the war on terror? Two people who sought jobs with the U.S. occupation authority said they were even asked their views on Roe v. Wade .
Oh, yeah it's important for the rebuilding of Iraq that your views on the constitutional right to an abortion are known to the President. Of course, O'Beirne is the husband of this person:
who said this in Salon. If you want to read it all, just listen to the ad.
O'Beirne blames the feminist movement for the breakdown of the family, the feminization of society, a weakened military, an exaggerated sense of the epidemic of domestic violence, an invented wage gap, and the degradation of motherhood.Oh yeah, again. The Kid's brand new identical twins, the loving son-in-law, her feminist mother, me, her feminist mother-in-law, her father-in-law, her brother-in-law have just been destroyed by feminism. What a fucking loon.
The reasons for the CPA's FEMA-like failures were both polymorphous and perverse, but the biggest problem (not counting the complete lack of pre-war planning, the petty bureacratic squabbles between Defense and State, the utter cluelessness of Doug Feith and Donald Rumsfeld, and the sheer absurdity of trying to govern Iraq with a few thousand Americans, most of whom didn't speak Arabic and couldn't have found Baghdad on a map before they arrived -- and in some cases even after they did) was the Cheney Administration's deliberate decision to fill the CPA's ranks almost entirely with GOP party workers, campaign donors, hack politicians, think tank interns and assorted relatives of neocon VIPs, like Michael Ledeen's daughter. Thus the nickname. I'm tempted to call it the Mayor Richard J. Daley theory of colonial administration, but his patronage machine actually managed to deliver public services. .... But it wasn't the Washington Post or the New York Times or The Wall Street Journal or any of the other corporate media that originally broke the story. It was the blogosphere's own Josh Marshall, Laura Rozen (of War and Piece) and Colin Soloway, writing for the Washington Monthly, in December 2003. That was almost three years ago. And now -- only now -- it's showing up on the front page of a major national newspaper.
Yes. Thanks for the SideKick, once again, for a great recommendation for dinner & the inspiration for this post. Oh yes, this is a whitefish:
They are a lot of fun in that incarnation, but just as much fun, in the hands of a good person, in this form:
1 comment:
With apologies to Jon Stewart this whole thing in Iraq is the work of our MESS-ianic president who was supported in his election by a Pope who should more properly be named Ratzo I.
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