General Distrust Reporting for Duty, Sah!

Good morning.

How ironic (and shrewd) that tomorrow, just in time for “the tipping point of September,” IraqSlogger would erect a flowah-insurmountable ($60 per month!) subscription wall. I’m not sure what this will do to my efforts to keep you informed — slow them down some, I imagine, add a little more spottiness than before, probably — but I’m certainly going to miss Slogger’s invaluable help in finding the pattern of things.

Today, though, as the editors of NYT observe, that pattern is indelible:

Mr. Bush has invoked Vietnam to argue against leaving Iraq. That argument is specious, but there is a chilling similarity between the two American foreign policy disasters. In Vietnam, as in Iraq, American presidents and military leaders went to great lengths to pretend that victory was at hand when nothing could be farther from the truth.

Even as we KNOW we’re being lied to, the liars redouble their efforts. Yesterday emptywheel ticked off the various reports “that have come and will come in the next month”:

– “the Petraeus White House report,”
– the (reportedly Petraeus)-”softened” NIE,
– an independent study by ex-Marine general James Jones (“Who knows how they’ll try to ’soften’ this report? Already, though, Anthony Cordesman has been predicting the report will deliver bad news, perhaps (as with this GAO report) to pre-empt any ’softening’ of the conclusions by the military”),
– and the leaked-to-WaPo GAO report itself.

As emptywheel sighed on our behalf, “Well, the propaganda has gotten so thick that now, when people liberate reports to ensure their harsh conclusions see the light of day, they tell you they are doing so.”

Wide stance in a narrow party

Good morning.

Alberto Gonzales may be thanking his stars for Larry Craig just now, but it’s passing hard to imagine what other Republican is (by the look of them, certainly neither Mr. nor Mrs. Larry Craig). Larry’s excruciating performance on camera yesterday probably gave even some of us bystanders flopsweats, and then there was forlorn Suzanne — as Dana Milbank described her, wearing sunglasses and looking as if she felt ill. Yes, Larry owned, he’d gotten himself arrested in a men’s room at Minneapolis airport and had pled guilty to disorderly conduct, BUT

“Let me be clear: I am not gay. I never have been gay,” Craig said. Evidently, Craig did not think this was clear enough, because moments later, he explained why he kept the arrest a secret. “I wasn’t eager to share this failure, but I should have anyway — because I am not gay!”

The Associated Press rushed out a bulletin: “Sen. Larry Craig says, ‘I am not gay.’ ” CNN put up a “Breaking News” banner announcing, “Sen. Craig: I am not gay, and never have been gay.”

The Drudge Report went with the headline “Brokeback Bathroom.”

“Bartleby the Attorney General”

Good, good morning.

It’s so especially good a morning because — imagine that! — Karl Rove and Alberto Gonzales are gone. The pair who more than any others, more even than Dick Cheney, have seen to it that the personality and character of George W. Bush became the personality and character of America, are history. Glorioski!

Having been struck at waking by a certain literary echo, I was all set write about Alberto Gonzales as Bartleby, so you can imagine my “D’oh!” upon opening WaPo and discovering that Ruth Marcus beat me to it. Oh well, perhaps by way of apology, she saved me the trouble of looking up some quotes I wanted:

Like the maddening scrivener of Melville’s short story who would not leave his job, Gonzales was possessed of a “wonderful mildness.” Senators of both parties might rage at his transparent evasions, but “not a wrinkle of agitation rippled him.” He was passive in the face of partisan and even bipartisan aggression.

“It was truly a beautiful thought to have assumed Bartleby’s departure; but, after all, that assumption was simply my own, and none of Bartleby’s,” Melville’s narrator observed. “The great point was, not whether I had assumed that he would quit me, but whether he would prefer so to do.”

Ragged, ancient — and oh so costly

Good morning.

The thing about a hand-woven Oriental rug is, no matter how ancient and raggedy it gets, it’ll still hold its colors in their intricate pattern, and its value only increases. Even fragments of very old rugs cost dear.

Remind you of anything?

Regard an ancient rug receiving heavy tromping these days, Iraq, and the news of it today . . .

Pirouetting on razorblades

Good morning.

You like today’s headline? Bummed it from a poet who won’t mind. More about him in a minute, but right now let’s just appreciate how nicely it captures the latest doings-in/of Iraq. I can well imagine that all persons and entities appearing in this post must have the sensation of dancing on blades, some more literally than others.

Nouri’s bad day in Washington

Senators Levin and Warner are back from Baghdad, and McClatchy, NYT, WaPo, the Boston Globe, and WSJ bear bad tidings for Nouri al-Maliki.

Kabuki? Noh, thanks.

Around here, we occasionally refer to the songs-and-dances issuing from Washington and the Green Zone as “Kabuki” — a fitting description, since

Kabuki (歌舞伎, kabuki) is a form of traditional Japanese theatre[; t]he word kabuki is believed to derive from the verb kabuku, meaning “to lean” or “to be out of the ordinary”, so kabuki can be interpreted to mean “avant-garde” or “bizarre” theatre.

But now that I think about it, maybe we’d better capture the essence of what goes on in Iraq if we just say “Noh”:

Noh (能, Nō), or Nōgaku (能楽, Nōgaku) is a major form of classic Japanese musical drama that has been performed since the 14th century. … By tradition, Noh actors and musicians never rehearse for performances together. Instead, each actor, musician, and choral chanter practices his or her fundamental movements, songs, and dances independently or under the tutelage of a senior member of the school. Thus, the tempo of a given performance is not set by any single performer but established by the interactions of all the performers together.

This morning’s Eugene Robinson certainly sounds like Noh to me: