A Busy Person’s Guide to the Bush Press Conference
Since most people don’t like to watch an hour of Bush on television (and for some reason I don’t mind even though it drives me nuts), I decided to boil down the questions and answers from tonight’s press conference in the East Room of the White House to their bare essentials. The questioners (Q:) are not identified. All answers (A:) are (paraphrases) from George W. Bush. (transcript of the conference)
Thanks, criticalviewer!
Afghanistan is about to get its first taste of true western-style democracy since the overthrow of the Taliban government. Holding a presidential election? No, that can wait. Drawing up a constitution? No, that can wait. Ah, but paying taxes? Now that’s at the top of the agenda!! So as we here in the United States grind out our last minute income tax returns, it is heartwarming to know that the people of Afghanistan will soon be joining us in doing the same thing. Just one big happy family.
I can’t watch the 9/11 hearings anymore. Everyone testifying, and every talking head and pundit, have agreed on one thing. The bureaucrats can’t do their jobs because they don’t have enough money. And people are buying it!
This is the standard cry of every bureaucrat since the beginning of time. “We need to steal more of your money to take better care of you.” One would think that people would catch on.
Here’s an excerpt from Rahul Mahajan’s Empire notes. For those who still hope the Americans in Iraq will ever learn anything about Iraqi culture this will be a sad disappointment, but for those of us who never harbored such unrealistic expectations it will come as simply another example of counterproductive American hamfisted blunders.
This is a followup to the Fallujah story. I wrote earlier about the massive relief collections for Fallujah, coordinated through the moseques of Baghdad and beyond, with the mosque of Abu Hanifa in Aadhamiyah as the epicenter. We saw that on April 7, within hours of the beginning of the operation.
Later on, as we saw when we were in Fallujah, there was a massive exodus of refugees from Fallujah, many of whom were taken into people’s homes in Aadhamiyah.
The U.S. military has many suspicions that mujaheddin are leaving Fallujah and that guns and fighters are being smuggled in through the relief program for Fallujah. So they paid a visit to the mosque on Sunday.
Built around the tomb of Abu Hanifa, the founder of the moderate Hanafi school of Islamist jurisprudence and one of the most important figures in the history of Sunni Islam, the mosque is 1250 years old. Although Umm al-Marek is bigger, Abu Hanifa is probably the most important Sunni mosque in Baghdad, and a site of pilgrimage for Muslims around the world.
We talked with Issam Rashid, the chief of security for the mosque. He told us the story. At 3:30 am on Sunday morning, 100 American troops raided the mosque. They were looking for weapons and mujaheddin. They started the riad the way they virtually always do — by smashing in the gates with tanks and then driving Hummer in. The Hummers ran over and destroyed some of the stored relief goods (the bulk of the goods had already been sent to Fallujah — over 200 tons — but the amount remaining was considerable). More was destroyed as soldiers ripped apart sacks looking for rifles. Rashid estimated maybe three tons of supplies were destroyed. We saw for ourselves some of the remains, sacks of beans ripped apart and strewn around.
The mosque was full of people, including 90 down from Kirkuk (many with the Red Crescent). They were all pushed down on the floor, with guns put to the backs of their heads. Another person associated with the mosque, Mr. Alber, who speaks very good English, told us that he repeatedly said, “Please, don’t break down doors. Please, don’t break windows. We can help you. We can have custodians unlock the doors.” (Alber, by the way, was imprisoned by Saddam for running a bakery. As he said, “Under the embargo, you could eat flour, you could eat sugar, you could eat eggs, all separately. But mix them together and bake them and you were harming the economy by raising the price of sugar and you could get 15 years in prison.)
The Americans refused to listen to Alber’s pleas. We went all around the mosque and the adjacent madrassah, the Imam Aadham Islamic College. We saw dozens of doors broken down, windows broken, ceilings ripped apart, and bullet holes in walls and ceilings. The way the soldiers searched for illicit arms in the ceiling was first to spray the ceiling with gunfire, then break out a panel and go up and search.
They even went and rifled through students’ exam papers (in Arabic), messed up offices. An old man who is a “guard” at the mosque (actually a poor man with a large family who is slightly lame and is missing several teeth) was hit in the head with a rifle butt and then kicked when he was down — all because he was a little slow in answering the door. He says he never carries a weapon — the whole mosque has only three Kalashnikovs, for security, kept in the imam’s room. The Americans took the ammunition there too. And, of course, they entered the mosque with their boots on.
Read the rest (this is the entry April 13, 10:50 am EST., no permalinks) at Empire Notes and chip in to help Rajul defray expenses if you appreciate his work.
The company said the decision was made after supply trucks protected by U.S. soldiers were attacked Friday by Iraqi insurgents just outside Baghdad, resulting in the death of one employee from Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown & Root. Seven others are missing or held hostage. A soldier was also killed in the incident, and two others are missing.
Privately, company officials expressed concerns about the level of security provided to the convoy. Halliburton’s fuel convoys are protected by U.S. soldiers under the terms of a contract signed in December 2001.
“For the safety and security of convoys, the Army and KBR jointly made the decision to suspend some convoys at this time until additional security efforts can be put in place by the military to provide the new level of security necessary to move supplies into Iraq,” said Wendy Hall, a Halliburton spokeswoman. “KBR is resolved to continue support of the U.S. troops and to fulfill all contract obligations.”
Halliburton’s inability to move freely about the country offers evidence of how the rapidly declining security situation in Iraq — and the military’s reliance on private contractors to supply troops and rebuild the country — could hurt the U.S. mission.
This is not surprising, considering the number of convoys that have been destoyed in the past week or so. It’s likely that the troops around Fallujah especially are running out of fuel for their vehicles, and this heretofore unreported angle is a major consideration in the “ceasefire” the US was practically begging for this weekend.
Glenn Reynolds contemplates nuclear annihilation with a chuckle. There is no longer any excuse for any decent person, much less libertarian, to associate with this vile SOB. I realize that the appellations “decent” and “libertarian” don’t in any way describe most of the folks on this list, but if Kos is a monster who must be de-linked, then what can one say of “Kill ’em all” Glenn?
I’m not one of these “evil evil evil” simpletons; Reynolds certainly advocates many evil things, but if he ever wrote anything interesting, I could see keeping him blogrolled. Hey, some people read Mein Kampf for its insights into propaganda. But lifting huge chunks from the same people day in and day out (Jarvis, Steyn, Sullivan, Frum) and appending “indeed” or “this strikes me as a good thing” to the end is hardly indispensable commentary.
