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Lost Weekend How the junta uses idiocy to hide fiascos by Bryan Zepp Jamieson 02/14/03 http://www.zeppscommentaries.com/VRWC/lostweekend.htm Yeah, America’s probably had worse weekends than the one just past. There was the time the Brits burned down Washington, for instance. That wasn’t too good. There was that time the south American mob almost greased Nixon. Most Americans found that pretty upsetting, although if they knew then what we know now, they might have been routing for the mob. There was the Tet offensive, and when the My Lai story broke. Pearl Harbor. Various civil war battles. This weekend was different. No howling mobs, no cities in flames, no shots being fired. And we can all take solace in the fact that this time around, Nixon is still dead. The man most responsible for turning American politics into the vicious reactionary circus we see today is dead. There’s that, at least. Now, the set backs for America were in the quiet and cloistered halls of the diplomatic community, that realm of colorless little men discussing the unspeakable in calm and placid tones. It started with Colin Powell’s UN address. Even as he was giving it, the story broke that a British "white paper" which was supposed to be an up-to-date risk analysis of Iraq’s capabilities, and one on which Powell was basing much of his argument, was in fact stale data largely plagiarized from a position paper written by a grad student some twelve years earlier. Another big element of Powell’s testimony, a chemical weapons lab in Iraq run by al Qaida elements (and one which Powell himself admitted was in a part of Iraq not under Saddam’s control) was opened to the media by gleeful militia types. It turned out to be a ramshackle collection of shacks without plumbing and with only a generator for electrical power. Oops. Later in the week, it came to light that the administration told the media the previous August that they had examined the facility, and had concluded that it was, in fact, too primitive to be capable of any significant military purpose. So Powell not only looked foolish, but he was proven a liar. Double oops. Powell was the token decent guy in this administration. The resident bums fared much worse. Rumsfeld, for example, got a dressing down from the German Foreign Minister. Just so there could be no mistake, the minister addressed Rumsfeld personally, in English. He said, "...in a democracy, you have to make a case, and you have not made your case. You have not convinced me." Mild enough, except for the little jibe about how people do things in a Democracy. Well, it would be understandable if Rummy needed reminding. Rummy had just enough brains to realize that the minister had taken a shot at him. He was openly livid, and for a moment, I wondered if he was going to jump up and start a fistfight. That would have been entertaining. Instead, he snarled that Germany and France were "old Europe" (Spain and Italy are apparently "new Europe"), which didn’t mean much except that Rumsfeld is an ignoramus who makes empty insults when frustrated in negotiations. Just the sort of guy you want representing your country, right? Rummy and the rest of the administration forgot one little detail about the UN and diplomats in general. They exist for the main purpose of trying to AVOID war. This little nicety seems to have eluded the semi-literate stumblebum in the white house, and his handlers are too ideological to notice little things like that. So when France and Germany proposed a peaceful way of bringing Saddam to heel, the Americans went right out of their tiny little minds. The French and German proposal, which would be competing in the Security Council with the American demand to simply start bombing the hell out of Baghdad, was to triple the number of inspectors in Iraq, and station 150,000 UN troops there. This would give the Putsch junta the constraints and guarantees on Saddam that they claim is what they want, and pretty much finish off Saddam’s schemes, such as they are. That’s when the Americans pretty much came unraveled. From across the blasted and desolate wasteland of the American right came a huge chorus of vituperation and insults, the like of which hasn’t been seen in years. Ranking members of the administration, Senators, and Congressmen joined the trashiest of talk show hosts in calling the French cowards and appeasers, and comparing the Germans to the Nazis. Rumsfeld, apparently with no sense of irony, said the UN risked "ridicule and discredit." He didn’t say who was going to discredit them – it certainly wasn’t going to be the juvenile clowns of the Putsch junta. This so impressed Belgium that they were the first of three countries to vote to hold off on sending UN troops to defend Turkey. This was a lynchpin of the US/UK efforts to get good staging areas around Iraq. The Turkish government, mindful of the unpopularity of the American stance among its own people, and concerned that Saddam might lash out at Turkey, or that Kurds might engage in an uprising in both Northern Iraq and southern Turkey after the fall of Saddam, had demanded UN protection, along with guarantees from Britain to help get the financially wobbly Turkey into the European Union. The right wing response here pretty much pushed American-German relations to a level not seen since 1945. The Republicans pulled out a memorable line about the French that was uttered on the cartoon show "The Simpsons," and characterized the French as "cheese eating surrender monkeys." This succeeded in simultaneously delighting and appalling the British media, who never think there’s a situation so grim that they can’t set aside a few moments to make fun of the French. I wouldn’t say this particular overture greased the skids with the French. They probably aren’t going to be real helpful when the Security Council meets over the next few days. It probably wouldn’t have made much difference. China, Syria and Germany are all going to veto it anyway, and there’s a pretty good chance the Russians might, too. Which means Putsch acts unilaterally, with all that entails. The Republicans know that with their followers, the best way to distract from the fact that they just made fools of themselves is to come up with something truly idiotic and scary. So they bumped Tom Ridges’ color bar up to Orange (It falls between yellow, which is "poke under your bed with a broom handle before getting in" and red, which is "Shit! We’re all gonna DIE!!!" and is officially classified as "Ohshitohshitohshitohshitohshitohshit!") They made a big production of placing stinger missile launchers around the capital, deployed a whole bunch of cops, and in a genius burst of staged idiocy, sonorously warned everyone that if they hoped to survive what might come, they should seal their homes with plastic sheeting and duct tape. This might be the single most idiotic suggestion an administration has made to the public since the time the Reagan administration advised one and all that nuclear war was quite survivable – all you had to do was dig a hole, get in it, pull a board over yourself, and pile three feet of dirt on top of the board. (The actual mechanics of this were left unexplained). It seems that the three feet of dirt is what really turns the trick, and with it, you can handle a direct hit from a 10 megaton warhead, no problem.) The administration didn’t explain whether it was the plastic sheeting or the duct tape that was going to save you from the big whatever, but in a reaction reminiscent of the Orson Welles panic, thousands of people ran out and cleared the hardware shelves of duct tape and plastic sheeting. It’s been cold in Washington. Carbon monoxide might present a problem in those sealed homes that Republican loyalists are creating. As Larry Niven says, Think of it as evolution in action. |
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| aus der Diskussion: | Guten Morgen Mr. Bush |
| Autor (Datum des Eintrages): | Joerver (16.02.03 01:19:31) |
| Beitrag: | 26 von 35,423 (ID:8626050) |
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