Masterful

Billmon
Quoting Gibbon...

Random 10

Can't work, feel dizzy, so Ipod Iaudio random 10....

1. White Stripes: Jumble, Jumble (De Stijl)
   
2. The Avalanches: Diners only
3. Gorillaz: DARE
4. Radiohead: Lozenge of Love (Live) ...... It's RARE!
5. Nick Drake: Sunday (Bryter Later)
6. Beatles: Yer Blues
   
7. Radiohead: Treefingers
8. Phil Parnell: Barcelona (from You Are Here, Incidental records compilation)
9. Mogwai: O I Sleep (Rock Action)
10. Nirvana: Plateau (Unplugged)

Slip

Lovely, revealing slip in the Guardian:

Downing Street said he was determined to find a way around such 'barmy' court rulings.

Ich bin das folk!
Who's the barmy one though I'll let anyone guess...

No peace in our time

Scott Ritter sums up the crux of the Iraq/n matter really well:

That’s why when I speak of Iran, I say be careful of falling into the trap of nonproliferation, disarmament, weapons of mass destruction; this is a smokescreen. The Bush administration does not have policy of disarmament vis-à-vis Iran. They do have a policy of regime change. If we had a policy of disarmament, we would have engaged in unilateral or bilateral discussions with the Iranians a long time ago. But we put that off the table because we have no desire to resolve the situation we use to facilitate the military intervention necessary to achieve regime change. It’s the exact replay of the game plan used for Iraq, where we didn’t care what Saddam did, what he said, what the weapons inspectors found. We created the perception of a noncompliant Iraq, and we stuck with that perception, selling that perception until we achieved our ultimate objective, which was invasion that got rid of Saddam. With Iran, we are creating the perception of a noncompliant Iran, a threatening Iran. It doesn’t matter what the facts are. Now that we have successfully created that perception, the Bush administration will move forward aggressively until it achieves its ultimate objective, which is regime change.

That's what I keep coming back to and is little mentioned, particuarly amongst anti-war folks. The "containment of Saddam didn't work" and "would you have let him in power?" are critiques that come often, but the answer is that the situation was frame for a bad outcome and that all peaceful diplomatic options were more or less subtly aborted. This is what I sensed during the Bustani affair and made me oppose the war.

The latter affair was apparently on the behest of John Bolton, the moustachioed twit that keeps blabbering on about the weakness of the UN and how it constrains the US etc. But as in this case he is part of the problem.

If the UN is weak it's precisely because the big 5 permanents of the (so-called) security council castrate it for their own geopolitical reasons.
The UN has no army and no power! Well who will fund and provide that army: does anyone expect the big powers to relinquish theirs?
The UN could do nothing about Saddam! It could not do the right thing because it didn't fit the plans of the US. All peaceful paths were blocked, the inspectors taken out and regime change was then inevitable, despite the best efforts of rational people.

Quick learner

Link:
"In an exclusive interview with the Guardian in Baghdad - his first since Condoleezza Rice and Jack Straw pleaded with him and his rivals for an immediate agreement to prevent a slide to civil war - Ibrahim Jaafari insisted he would continue to carry out his duties.
"I heard their points of view even though I disagree with them," he said, referring to Ms Rice and Mr Straw's hectic arm-twisting visit to the Iraqi capital which ended on Monday."

Looks like the un-enlightened "natives" are quickly picking up UK-style democracy! The Blair-style mantra: "yes I understand what you are saying but I don't want to resign."
They'll be selling peerages anytime now...

Das Capita

So the chairman from Capita resigns:

Capita's chief executive, Paul Pindar, said: "Rod has played a key role in establishing Capita as the leading service transformation partner to both public and private organisations across the UK."

At great cost!

Fantastic, I thought this aspect of the "loans controversy" was totally underplayed in the news. Who cares about the bloody lords and knights, all that rotting feudality, what matters is that many of these people bought access to the PM and shaped his decision-making. They expect us to believe that it was "just a loan, at commercial rates" with no afterthought...
All the crazy bloody-mindedness ("it is essential that this reform of the schools goes through (even though most of my party is against it)" suddenly makes sense: there was a debt to repay, in many ways, and only Blair knew it. This hidden guilt explains the stubborness.

What an ironic end to the Blair era: all these loans were to pay for an election campaign, desperatly trying to turn opinion and the labour hemorragy from the Iraq decision.

For the record...

"Oh, it was breathtaking. I mean I was almost starting to think that we had become inured to everything that we'd seen of this war over the past three weeks; all this sort of saturation. And finally, when we saw that it was such a just true, genuine expression. It was reminiscent, I think, of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And just sort of that pure emotional expression, not choreographed, not stage-managed, the way so many things these days seem to be. Really breathtaking."
(Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly, appearing on Fox News Channel on 4/9/03, discussing the pulling down of a Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad, an event later revealed to have been a U.S. military PSYOPS operation [stunt]--Los Angeles Times, 7/3/04)

Breathtaking? If only...
link.

These other one show what the war was really about... and how successful it was.

"If image is everything, how can the Democratic presidential hopefuls compete with a president fresh from a war victory?"
(CNN's Judy Woodruff, 5/5/03)

"It is amazing how thorough the victory in Iraq really was in the broadest context..... And the silence, I think, is that it's clear that nobody can do anything about it. There isn't anybody who can stop him. The Democrats can't oppose--cannot oppose him politically."
(Washington Post reporter Jeff Birnbaum-- Fox News Channel, 5/2/03)