Another last king of Scotland?

Dallas Observer commentator Jim Schutze initiates the first "mainstream media" discussion I have seen about whether George Bush will go down in history as a war criminal:

. . . Writing on the op-ed page of The Dallas Morning News recently, [political science professor Matthew Wilson]went on to cite immigration reform, expanded free trade and global democratization as themes of the Bush presidency that will be of interest to scholars in the years to come.
I don't think so. Let me ask this bluntly: How much scholarly or general interest is there in Idi Amin's monetary policy? Long before anybody can get to the administrative details, history must address the butchery issue.
Is the Iraq war of a fabric with the American history of warfare? Or does the fact that we initiated a war against a nation that had not attacked us place the Iraq war in a dark category of its own? We see Democrats like Hillary Clinton trying to parse their patriotism now by speaking as if the holocaust in Iraq is the fault of the Iraqis, but what if that's bullshit?
These bombs that kill 150 human beings at a time, that send children flying from apartments and litter the pavement with burned skulls: What if the conclusion of history is that these events would not have taken place if George W. Bush had not decided to launch this war?
And what about us? What if, on careful examination, history concludes that Bush/Rove were able to knit together the overwhelming support we gave them at the outset of this war by a subliminal manipulation of our own anti-Arab, anti-Muslim xenophobia?
Afghanistan was war. The Taliban sheltered bin Laden. But Iraq is not Afghanistan.
The questions around Bush and Iraq are going to be whether Iraq was war or holocaust. I don't draw any direct parallel here between Iraq and the Nazi Holocaust, which stands unique in human history. But man can make other human holocausts—terrible mass murder expressing only evil, not any legitimate national interest.
I don't know on which side of the line the answer will fall. But I do know what the question is. Long before history develops a big interest in George W. Bush's immigration policy, historians will have to labor long and hard on the question of whether Bush was the white Idi Amin . . .

Much of their answer will likely depend on what happens next.
Saddam can be blamed for the deaths of half a million Iraqi children, not due to the Gulf War itself but due to the UN sanctions which resulted from his continued anti-semetism, his posturing and blustering through the 1990s about his non-existant weapons programs. But Bush's total is now ratcheting upwards of that.
If the Democrats succeed in shutting down the Iraq war, and if the Middle East returns to some level of stability, then history may well just find Bush to be just an incompetent, misguided by the neocons but fundamentally ineffective. But if Bush starts a war with Iran and engulfs the Middle East in war, with Israel, the Saudis, Lebannon, Syria and the Turks getting involved, resulting in the needless deaths of millions of people, then chances are likely pretty good that Bush will be one of history's war criminals. And the judgement on those who aided and abetted him won't be kind, either.

Great line of the day

From The Poor Man about diplomacy vs war:

One school of thought has it that all war represents a failure of diplomacy. Our current smart set on the Right, on the other hand, presupposes that all diplomacy represents a failure to go to war. “Negotiating doesn’t work” is truth so basic to this world view that it is never questioned, even when all evidence points out that, yeah, it actually does. It is a fact that the North Koreans are irrational, disagreeable, and enjoy making trouble. While this makes it a real bother to negotiate with them, it also makes it necessary, because these are precisely the sort of people who should not have the bomb. And it is also a fact that the North Koreans have very little in common with us, and have many goals which are entirely at odds with ours. This also makes negotiating hard, but, then again, there isn’t much point in negotiating with people who agree with you on everything. While it might seem a lot simpler to just invade and be done with it, this course of action would kill hundreds of thousands of people, and, in the ensuing chaos, put DPRK’s nuclear arsenal up for grabs. And, not to nitpick, but it is customary for invasions to involve these things called “armies”, and ours is currently bogged down in Iraq, a result of the last time we decided that diplomacy was for pussies. There’s probably a lesson there.

Emphasis mine.

Evolution of Dance

Talking cats and dogs

Good, Bad, Ugly

Good.

In Bismarck, N.D., Saturday, almost nine thousand people took part in the world record snow angels event. The previous world record was 3,784. (AP Photo/Will Kincaid)

Bad.

Bad idea -- Prince Harry is going to Iraq. What he is trying to prove, I don't know, but he is endangering his own life and the lives of his whole regiment. They didn't sign up to be Harry's bodyguards but that is what they will be, while Harry himself might as well be wearing a bullseye. (AFP/Pool/Steve Dock)

And Ugly (but funny).

Cam Cardow

Shorter

Shorter Father Raymond J. De Souza:

Us religious people should have the right to discriminate against gay people or anyone else we hate anytime anywhere, so there!

Inside Iraq

Via Yglesias, the McClachy Baghdad Bureau has a blog written by its Iraqi staff, called Inside Iraq. This one is by a staffer writing as "Sahar":

At the Morgue.
We were asked to send the next of kin to whom the remains of my nephew, killed on Monday in a horrific explosion downtown, can be handed over. The young men of the family, as was customary, rose to go.
“NO!” cried his mother. “Isn’t my son enough?? Must we lose more of our youth?? You know there are unknowns who wait at the Morgue to either kill or kidnap the men who dare reach its doors. I will go.”
So we went, his mum, his other aunt and I.
I was praying all the way there.
I never thought a day would come when it was the women of the family, who would be safer on the roads. All the men are potential terrorists it seems, and are therefore to be cut down on sight. This is the logic of today, is it not? To kill evil before it even has a chance to take root.
When we got there, we were given his remains. And remains they were. From the waist down was all they could give us. “We identified him by the cell phone in his pants’ pocket. If you want the rest, you will just have to look for yourselves. We don’t know what he looks like.”
Now begins a horror that surpasses anything I could have possibly envisioned. We were led away, and before long a foul stench clogged my nose and I retched. With no more warning we came to a clearing that was probably an inside garden at one time; all round it were patios and rooms with large-pane windows to catch the evening breeze Baghdad is renowned for. But now it had become a slaughterhouse, only instead of cattle, all around were human bodies. On this side; complete bodies; on that side halves; and EVERYWHERE body parts.
We were asked what we were looking for, “upper half” replied my companion, for I was rendered speechless. “Over there”. We looked for our boy’s broken body between tens of other boys’ remains’; with our bare hands sifting them and turning them.
We found him millennia later, took both parts home, and began the mourning ceremony.
Can Hollywood match our reality?? I doubt it.

I am speechless, too.

I read the news today, oh boy

Good -- Hardaway dumped from NBA events for anti-gay tirade. The NBA did the right thing and did it fast.

Here's good news for Ralph and the Liberals -- and it's about time.

Sometimes its just more fun being in the Opposition -- it means you can say things like “With friends like that, you don't need enemies” when the 800-lb. gorilla insults us.

Tbogg points out:

... it looks like Al Franken is in to run against a very vulnerable Norm Coleman in Minnesota (they even elect Mooslims! there). We will now await the inevitable comments about a know-nothing Hollyweirdo running for the Senate from the same people who think that Curt Schilling should run against John Kerry.

And lots of other people have pointed out that the Bush deal with North Korea is the same as the Clinton deal with North Korea, but the Poorman sums it up best:

John “The Walrus” Bolton [says] "This is the same thing that the State Department was prepared to do six years ago. If we going to cut this deal now, it’s amazing we didn’t cut it back then." Except back then they wouldn’t have had so many warheads, or be so confident in their ability to put them together, or to defy the US without consequence, or just generally tell us to go fuck ourselves. This is, sadly, the best that could be hoped for. I get few enough chances to say “I told you so”, but, you know, I told you so.

Over at Firedoglake, Scarecrow writes an excellent summary of the week's events with the Bush administration and Iran:

Suppose you've elected an administration that is so completely incompetent that it has bungled almost everything it has done, so belligerant that it has squandered the almost universal international support it enjoyed in the weeks after 9/11 while alienating most of its historic friends and allies, and so dishonest that no one can trust what it says, making it impossible to discern whether any threat the Administration claims to see in Iran (or anywhere else) is real, exaggerated or "hyped" . . . That is the unstated dilemma that floated just below the surface all week long, as the Bush Adminstration blundered its way towards a war it claims it is not planning against Iran.

In my opinion, the whole "blame the Quds" story is being ginned up so that Bush would be able to attack Iran without congressional authorization, by claiming he was just protecting the US troops in Iraq.
Hmm, so young to be so cynical...

When science isn't

So here's another case where a wrongful conviction was at least partly based on "wrongful science" -- a presumption of forensic certainty which wasn't actually accurate at all.
We watch CSI and its clones every week, but I must say I'm gettimg more and more impatient with the plots -- maybe its the CSI effect in reverse.
I think the writers have run out of ideas for these shows.
Every week now, some science geek runs all over the city breaking into houses and slamming witnesses into the wall -- apparently, there are virtually no actual police officers in Las Vegas or New York or Miami who investigate crimes anymore. Then the Science Geek decides, on the basis of virtually no evidence at all, that the wife or the husband or the long-lost uncle or the stranger across the street is guilty of the crime and then, after an incredible chain of coincidence and luck, that very same Geek finds a fingerprint at the bottom of a well or a hair lying on an otherwise-pristine carpet or a scrap of fabric at the top of a tree which proves it. The accused, who never hires a lawyer, immediately breaks down and confesses all. Case solved.
Cue the three-minute song so they don't need any actual dialogue for the final "end of the shift/going home/life in the big city" scenes and they can expand it or cut it depending on how many commercials have been sold.
Hmmm, I guess I'm getting just a little jaded these days...

Ingrates!

In this USA Today story Bush says the children of Iraq will be grateful:

. . . Bush also was asked how he thinks Iraqi children will view the United States in 15 to 20 years.
"If we can help this government be able to create the conditions so that a mother can grow up — raise their child in peace, I think people will look back and say they'd be thankful of America," Bush said. "If America leaves, however, before the job is done, I think there will be great resentment toward America."

Really?

Shorter

Shorter Iraq War neocon analysis, from the new Vanity Fair article about the coming war with Iran:

Iraq isn't a failure. It's merely a success which hasn't occurred yet.

TOLD ya this was the greatest talking point ever.

Great line of the day

From the German version of the Financial Times, as translated by Maccabee, in his Kos diary The Coming Fall Of The Right Wing.:

Ronald Reagan is dead, Margaret Thatcher is senile and the ideological world that they created is now dying with them. From 1979 to 2004, the political Right won the Western world's battle of ideas. Conservatives triumphed because they were correct about the two biggest issues of that era: They were for free markets and against communism. But now confusion on the Right prevails, because today it is they who are on the wrong side of the West's two greatest political issues: climate change and the Iraq War.

UPDATE: Dana linked to the original English for this article, here, on Jan. 25 -- sorry, Dana, I hadn't seen this post earlier.

The domino theory

Simple questions

Glenn Greenwald reads the New York Times' latest fear-mongering article about Iran so you don't have to. And he gives us another chance to play Simple Answers to Simple Questions:

What is the point of this sort of article? Why would the New York Times just offer itself up again as a mindless vessel for what are clearly war-seeking accusations by the administration? Have they learned nothing?

What is the point? To give Republicans something to talk about on the Sunday talk shows.
Why would they do it? See next question.
Have they learned nothing? No. No, they haven't.
UPDATE Sunday: Juan Cole points out the dumbest aspect of the NYT story -- the Iranians have been supporting the Iraq SHIITES, while the Americans are being killed by the Shiite enemies, the SUNNIS:

Some large proportion of US troops being killed in Iraq are being killed with bullets and weapons supplied by Washington to the Iraqi army, which are then sold by desperate or greedy Iraqi soldiers on the black market. This problem of US/Iraqi government arms getting into the hands of the Sunni Arab guerrillas is far more significant and pressing than whatever arms smugglers bring in from Iran . . .
If 25 percent of US troops are being killed and wounded by explosively formed projectiles, then someone should look into who is giving those EFPs to Sunni Arab guerrillas. It isn't Iran.
Finally, it is obvious that if Iran did not exist, US troops would still be being blown up in large numbers. Sunni guerrillas in al-Anbar and West Baghdad are responsible for most of the deaths. The Bush administration's talent for blaming everyone but itself for its own screw-ups is on clear display here.

War by PowerPoint?

Via Raw Story and Laura Rosen we find this recent National Journal article on the politics of Iran intelligence:

Amid the continued political fallout over the faulty intelligence case for going to war in Iraq, the Bush administration is newly cautious about the specific intelligence it plans to present to the public to back up its claims that Iran is fighting a kind of proxy war with the United States in Iraq.
At least twice in the past month, the White House has delayed a PowerPoint presentation initially prepared by the military to detail evidence of suspected Iranian materiel and financial support for militants in Iraq. The presentation was to have been made at a press conference in Baghdad in the first week of February. Officials have set no new date, but they say it could be any day.
Even as U.S. officials in Baghdad were ready to make the case, administration principals in Washington who were charged with vetting the PowerPoint dossier bowed to pressure from the intelligence community and ordered that it be scrubbed again . . . the presentation was sent "back into the interagency process" . . .

I know this is a apparently-trivial side issue, but . . . PowerPoint?
They're promoting a war with PowerPoint? Haven't they ever heard of this?
Yes, its funny, but there is a more serious discussion about the problem of technical presentations on PowerPoint here.
Edward Tufte writes about the Columbia disaster and the findings of the investigation board that faulted NASA's reliance on PowerPoint presentations rather than technical reports as a primary cause of its inability to properly assess the risks of damage to the Columbia space shuttle mission:

In the reports, every single text-slide uses bullet-outlines with 4 to 6 levels of hierarchy . . . the rigid slide-by-slide hierarchies, indifferent to content, slice and dice the evidence into arbitrary compartments, producing an anti-narrative with choppy continuity . . .

As information gets passed up an organization hierarchy, from people who do analysis to mid-level managers to high-level leadership, key explanations and supporting information are filtered out. In this context, it is easy to understand how a senior manager might read this PowerPoint slide and not realize that it addresses a life-threatening situation. At many points during its investigation, the Board was surprised to receive similar presentation slides from NASA officials in place of technical reports. The Board views the endemic use of PowerPoint briefing slides instead of technical papers as an illustration of the problematic methods of technical communication at NASA.

So I wonder if the reporters who are going to have to analyze the Pentagon's PowerPoint slides to evaluate Iranian activity in Iraq have ever read the Columbia report?
But maybe it doesn't really matter, anyway. Returning to the National Journal article, it makes the point that the war is on regardless of any actual intelligence or evidence:

"Even if this PowerPoint presentation eventually gets made public ... what does this show us as to where Iran is really coming from?" [former National Intelligence Council Middle East analyst Paul] Pillar asked. "What is the larger significance? Even if Iranian assistance to an Iraqi group is proven to everyone's satisfaction, the [administration's] policy never rested on that. The policy [is being driven by a] much larger sense of Iran as the prime bete noire in the region, and that is why the administration is trying to put together these coalitions with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, the Sunni states, that we've been reading about. None of this hinges [on the Iran dossier]. We are not going to call this off if we can't prove that Iran is furnishing munitions to Iraqi groups. ..."

Oh, well, that's alright then...