Saturday, April 18, 2009

Baghdad Basics, Somewhere Off the Somali Coast...


Dana Millbank
Kathleen Parker
Yossi Melman
Sumit Ganguly


"The vitriol of last year's presidential campaign has outlasted the election" - Dana Millbank

"But on the plus side, if Texas did secede from the Union, we could then invade them for the oil." --Jay Leno

“If I had my way, I’d destroy all the mosques and spread the whores around a little more” - Iraqi police detective



Ahh, such delight journalists take in their craft. These days, no matter what you write, you will be criticized in the most mean and vitrolic way. People are not very nice when commenting over the Internet, as Dana Millbank found out, writing for the Washington Post: "On Tuesday, I learned that I am a right-wing hack. I am not a journalist. I am typical of the right wing. I am why newspapers are going broke. I write garbage. I am angry with Barack Obama. I misquote Obama. I am bitter. I am a certified idiot. I am lame. I am a Republican flack.

On Thursday, I realized that I am a media pimp with my lips on Obama's butt. I am a bleeding-heart liberal who wants nothing more than for the right to fall on its face. I am part of the ObamaMedia. I am pimping for the left. I am carrying water for Obama. Lord, am I an idiot."
Of course, I haven't experienced any of this, because all that I write is sweetness and light...

According to the NY Times, life in the ancient city of Baghdad is returning back towards normal: "Nightclubs have reopened, and in many of them, prostitutes troll for clients. Liquor stores, once shut down by fundamentalist militiamen, have proliferated; on one block of busy Saddoun Street, there are more than 10 of them.

Abu Nawas Park, previously deserted for fear of suicide bombers seeking vulnerable crowds, has now become a place for assignations between young people so inclined. It is not that there are hiding places in the park, where trees are pretty sparse; the couples just pretend they cannot be seen, and passers-by go along with the pretense.

It is a long way from Sodom and Gomorrah, but perhaps part way back to the old Baghdad. The Baathists who ruled here from the 1960s until the American invasion in 2003 were secular, and more than a little sinful. Baghdad under Saddam Hussein was a pretty lively place, with street cafes open until 2 or 3 a.m., and prostitutes plying their trade even in the bowling alley of Al Rashid Hotel." I wonder where the US troops get their R&R, do they use the local Iraqi whores, or do they fly the boys and girls out to Dubai, Kuwait, or some other place to furnish them with good old Western vices?

Some interesting facts provided by the Angry Arab: "1) There are 41,000 prisoners in Iraq: 15,000 of whom are in US custody. Of course, as we all remember, the US had surrendered sovereignty of Iraq to the Iraqis. Oh, yeah.

"2) Published this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, the report examined the causes of death for 60,481 Iraqi civilians killed violently during the first five years of the war, using statistics compiled by Iraq Body Count. The findings are surprising to anyone familiar with the regular headlines from Iraq blaring explosions around the country. Executions with firearms, not bomb blasts, have killed most civilians in Iraq. Researchers say 33% of the victims examined in the study died by execution after abduction or capture. And 29% of those victims had signs of torture on their bodies such as bruises, drill holes or burns. Suicide bombers in cars or on foot were responsible for 14% of the victims in the study, while U.S. airstrikes killed 4%."

"3) Between 2006 and 2008, some 40 women who served in the Iraq War spoke to me of their experiences at war. Twenty-eight of them had been sexually harassed, assaulted or raped while serving. They were not exceptions. According to several studies of the US military funded by the Department of Veteran Affairs, 30% of military women are raped while serving, 71% are sexually assaulted, and 90% are sexually harassed." Locally, we have the Air Force Academy, which was noted for the amount of sexual harassment of the women students, and the willful ignoring of those incidents by the good old boys who ran the place, oh, I mean the Captains and Generals that ran the Academy found the complaints had no merit... Besides Don't Ask, Don't Tell, our Armed Forces have to be pulled kicking and screaming out of the caves from the Neanderthal Period... Statistically, sexual crimes have been on the rise here for the past two years, where other forms of violent crime has gone down...


The fun and games continues off the Somali coast, where, according to the NY Times: "Dutch commandos freed 20 Yemeni hostages on Saturday and briefly detained seven pirates who had forced the Yemenis to sail a "mother ship" attacking vessels in the Gulf of Aden, NATO officials said.

In a separate incident, gunmen from Somalia seized a Belgian-registered ship and its 10 crew, including seven Europeans, further south in the Indian Ocean. A pirate source said the vessel, the Pompei, would be taken to the coast."


If anything, the pirates seem to be escalating their efforts; maybe they know that this way to make some money is coming to an end. Or it could be that when you are seventeen you have no idea of what death is, and willing to go out and perform daring and foolish acts; which is why we like to make our kids into soldiers...

"Most of Somalia's pirate gangs operate from the semi-autonomous northern region of Puntland, where many of them say they first took to the seas to stop illegal fishing by European fleets and the dumping of toxic waste.

In a Reuters interview late on Friday, Puntland President Abdirahman Mohamed Farole also blamed ship owners for paying ransoms that encouraged impoverished youths to join the gunmen. "But the root cause of this piracy, as everyone knows, is illegal fishing," Farole said in neighboring Kenya.

"That situation still exists, so any activity directed at eliminating piracy should also be combined with the elimination of illegal fishing by foreign trawlers."

Late night jokes:

"We have a new 'border czar.' His job is to make sure nobody sneaks into the United States from Texas." --Jay Leno

"Do you know about this? Texas Gov. Rick Perry fired up an anti-tax tea party this week by saying that Texas has the right to secede from the Union if it wants to. And former President Bush, who now lives in Texas, is of course against the idea. Bush said if Texas leaves the Union, they'll be a foreign country, 'like Alaska and Hawaii.'" --Jay Leno

"President Obama's now in Mexico. He has already met with the FWEA, the Future Wal-Mart Employees of America." --Jay Leno

"And, you know, Obama is the consummate politician. You see him trying to appeal to the Mexican people? Like, he even changed his slogan to 'Yes, we Mexi-can.' That's what he said today." --Jay Leno

"Newsweek magazine reports that the reason there are so many of these pirate hijackings is that the shipping companies have decided it's cheaper just to pay a ransom than to change the shipping route to sail out of the pirates' way. So even though these are evil crooks, we give them the money anyway. It's the same way the bank bailout works." --Jay Leno

"In Philadelphia, a government program offering a $10,000 tax credit to any business hiring an ex-con had no takers. In fact, you know the way most ex-cons actually get jobs? They get re-elected." --Jay Leno

"Oh, well, here is something that makes me proud to be a member of the NBC family. NBC has signed disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to star in a reality series. It's called, 'I'm a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here!' This is different from the show he did in Illinois. That was, 'He's an Idiot, Get Him Out of There.'" --Jay Leno

"The state of California says that singer Dionne Warwick owes $2.2 million in back taxes. I feel kind of sorry for her. I mean, if there had only been some sort of group or network of psychics she could have consulted with." --Jay Leno

"And New York Governor David Paterson announced that he will support legalizing gay marriage in New York. Well, you can understand why New York politicians are for this. Let's look at the problems. I mean, David Paterson and his affair, Eliot Spitzer with the hookers, Hillary and Bill. Straight marriages obviously don't work in New York. Let's try the gay thing." --Jay Leno

"George W. Bush has reportedly landed a $7 million book deal. The book will be about his years as president and is tentatively called 'Decision Point,' because every time Bush had to make a decision, he would point to Cheney." --Jay Leno

"Did you hear what Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, said about Obama yesterday? He called his new policies 'unsubstantial and overrated.' Then Hillary Clinton said, 'That's exactly what I've been saying.'" --Jimmy Fallon

"To pay off her campaign debt, Hillary Clinton is auctioning off a day with Bill Clinton. She is. Bill says he's thrilled to do it, as long as Hillary isn't allowed to enter the auction." --Jimmy Fallon

"President Obama is in Mexico right now. So if you want to break any laws or anything, this is the time to do it." --Jimmy Kimmel

"Yesterday, the governor of Texas, Rick Perry, said Texans are fed up with Washington. He said they might secede from the rest of America. If Texas forms their own country, they could be invaded by Mexico. They'll have to change their name to Texico." --Craig Ferguson

David Letterman's Top Ten Signs the Government Is Spying On You

10. Your kitty has a satellite dish on his head.
9. At restaurant waiter urges, "Speak directly into the dinner rolls."
8. Your car's GPS unit has an awful lot of questions.
7. "Girl Scout" delivering your thin mints is 6'4, 270.
6. Keep finding underpants labeled "Agent Morales."
5. Mailman warns you, "This conversation may be recorded for quality control purposes."
4. NSA sends over sexy lingerie they'd like your wife to wear.
3. You sing in the shower, a mysterious voice responds, "A little pitchy."
2. There's a Navy Seal hiding in your fish tank.
1. Several times a week, you get chloroformed, stuffed in a trunk and dumped in Mexico

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