You Kunt Say That!

So I have a hobby of looking at old DOD transcripts and this one came up with Wolfowitz on Fox News with Tony Snow. And Snow, as you will see if you read this mostly boring interview is hinting towards invasion of Syria and Iran, and Wolfie kind of ducks it saying we have to focus on the task at hand.

Smart guy.

Anyway, so Snow winds up and gives Wolfie this one.

Snow: There is not a long history in recent years of democracy in Iraq, and many of these people have no residual notion how it works. We saw in East Germany it took quite a while for people to get accustomed again to any kind of freedom -- that's a Westernized nation. What makes you confident that democracy can take hold in a nation that has been more or less under the thrall of Ba'athist dictatorships for more than 40 years and does not have the kind of history that other nations have?

Now this is a sensible question especially at the time of the interview. Score one for Snow, he was so smart the White House had to hire him. But read his response and watch for the Freudian slippage.

Wolfowitz: I don't think you can be confident. I think cautiously optimistic might be the right word. But look, we've had a -- I was going to use the word "experiment," it's not an experiment -- we've had an experience for the last 12 years in northern Iraq where Saddam Hussein's forces were pushed out of that part of the country in early April of 1991 by a coalition force that included U.S. and British and several other European countries contributed. That force left, I believe, on September 1st, 1991, and the people of northern Iraq have been running their own affairs reasonably successfully for 12 years now.

This really shows the true pathos of the mindset behind this invasion. An experiment. An experiment only possible within a certain window. Earlier that week on an even more boring interview on 60 Minutes II Wolfie made this analogy with regards to planning of a new government in Iraq.

But the other task is to work with the various disparate Iraqi groups. Some of them outside the country, and more and more will be from inside the country, to help design a process that leads to a free and representative government. It's a process, someone, in fact it was George Schultz really, whom I once worked for, who said that that kind of process is more like tending a garden than building a house. You don't go buy a blueprint. You create conditions in which plants can grow. You clear out the weeds and you discover what it turns into.

In this case I think Wolfie's little garden is in trouble. Perhaps he should have consulted his Farmers Almanac.

Driving around listening to the radio this morning. After suffering through the end of the Diane "Nauseating Voice Disorder" Rehm show I was "treated" to Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Anyway the discussion was on FCC rules and penalties and the chilling effect it has on the broadcast industry. One of the guests was Federal Communications Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein.

Terry was asking him some decent questions and Adelstein really had no good answers to why the FCC was behaving in such a queer fashion. Specifically flip flopping on Bono saying fucking at the Golden Globes and the allowance of cussing in Saving Private Ryan but not in a Scorcese documentary about the blues.

Adelstein acted as if he's a member of some giant body in which his voice of reason is overruled by a huge majority. In actuality he is on a board of five members that decides what is and isn't decent in this country. The board is appointed by the President and confirmed by the Senate. And as a matter of safe guard, only 3 of the 5 members can be of the same party. Or in other words, a majority of the board, which bases it's ruling on a simple 3:5 majority, can be of the ruling party.

 This board truly has it's head up it's ass. There is no consistency. And just in case you thought the FCC didn't have enough power, the minimum fine for a reported violation will increase from 32,500 to 325,000. That's per station. So if CBS re-airs the 9/11 documentary previously seen on television, and somebody complains, they could be fined close to 6 million dollars just for the affiliates they own and operate. And each individually owned station has to cough up 325,000. And they might even be charged per cuss word.

 Fuck,fuck,fuck,piss,cunt,cocksucker,shitbag. Thank god they have no power over the internet. Yet

Well they've done it, maybe. For what it's worth, the Iraq Constitution has most likely been voted in by the Iraq people, fraud or no fraud.

What concerns me, besides the meager reporting on the possible fraud, is this paragraph from the article:

Iraq's Electoral Commission said on Monday it would follow international practice by examining "unusually high" results from provinces which recorded margins of 90 percent or more in favour or against the new draft constitution.

 Now does that mean that they won't investigate the Ninevah province where voter fraud might have actually made a difference in the election?

What adds to the anti-climactic flavor of this historic event is the actual constitution itself. Beyond the fluffy language and self-aggrandizement of the great Mesopotamian empire, there is much ambiguous language in this document. For example

Article (2): 1st - Islam is the official religion of the state and is a basic source of legislation: (a) No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam. (b) No law can be passed that contradicts the principles of democracy. (c) No law can be passed that contradicts the rights and basic freedoms outlined in this constitution. What are the "undisputed rules of Islam?"

And what if those rules contradict the "principles of democracy?" Another issue with the constitution are the ramifications the document might have on our occupation. For example:

12th _ (a) (Arbitrary) detention shall not be allowed. (b) Arrest or imprisonment is not allowed in places other than those designated for that according to prison laws that are covered by health and social services and are under the control of the state.

or

Article (21): 1st - An Iraqi shall not be handed over to foreign bodies and authorities.

These laws should certainly affect the status quo of U.S. military operations. For the Iraqi government to have any sort of credibility they must enforce these laws. But can you imagine an American soldier being tried in an Iraqi court. That would definitely be a Fox News Alert.

For a comprehensive breakdown of the constitution check out Riverbend Blog

I wish I could get better info on this shit, but alas, I have a day job. Back to work...

Kunt

When the bombs are blasting And the war is lasting Too long
There is a howl in the Baghdad streets Werewolfowitz, cleaning the streets of thugs and Mafia types Like the Baathists. Exterminate with extreme predjudice! Thursday, June 26, 2003 Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz Interview with The Washington Post (Interview with Tom Ricks, The Washington Post.)    
      Q:Are we going to change U.S. policy in Iraq or do you think things are basically on course despite this rash of attacks?  
     Wolfowitz: We're dealing with a very -- what's the right word -- remnants of a really horrible regime much like a very large Mafia gang. Ruthless and intimidating.  And we need to clean them out.. . .Going after the foreign terrorists that are trying to kill Americans too, and we don't know the level of association between the two, but I wouldn't say there isn't one just because we don't know it.  
     Q:  So you don't anticipate any change in direction or policy or posture?  
     Wolfowitz:  Gary Anderson was maybe a little ahead of everybody else recognizing that -- almost perhaps because the regime failed so quickly -- that the major remnants of the regime were still around, quite dangerous, and they've got to be cleaned up... ...And it's not uniform.  It's much better in the south and in the north than it is in Baghdad, and it's better in Baghdad than it is in that sort of Suni triangle north and west of Baghdad.  
They're out to kill Americans in the mistaken belief from Somalia and Lebanon that we'll give up and go home. We're not going to.  
This is a major important battle and we've got the staying power to beat them...
     Q: It's funny you mention the word thugs because actually one of the impressions I took away from Iraq was the best way to understand Saddam Hussein is to watch the “Sopranos”.  
     Wolfowitz:  I've been saying the Godfather for 15 years.  It really is.  It's the offer you can't refuse.  It's the unbelievable brutality combined with occasional lucrative rewards.  And a code of silence.        I think that's why we're getting so little out of the high-level defectors that we're holding, at least for now.    
     I guess this is, and I'm going to have to go, but I think it is worth emphasizing that these guys lack the two classical ingredients of a victory in a so-called guerilla war if that's what you want to say they're conducting.  They lack the sympathy of the population and they lack any serious source of external support.  They are getting some of these foreign killers coming in which is fine.  It's better to kill them in Iraq than have to have them come and get killed in the United States.  But basically they're on their own in a population that I think can and will be turned.  
     It's interesting, there was a paper called, I have the Arabic name here somewhere, at any rate, it's an Arabic newspaper in An Najaf that published a public opinion poll.  I can't vouch for its scientific validity or sampling techniques, but the results sound pretty reasonable.  Eighty percent of those polled wanted the American troops to stay for a limited duration; 70 percent rejected a lengthy stay by the Americans.  In other words these people are happy to be liberated.  I'm sure they want us to stay and finish the job, and when the job is done they want to be left to run their own affairs.  That's our plan.  It's been our plan from the beginning.    

Kunt here, Thought I'd have an exhumation of sorts this evening, digging up the skeletons of civilian and military people alike. I'm gonna take you on a trip back to the innocent weeks surrounding the initial invasion of Iraq. These were the genius days of Ari Fleischer, when he could catch the slow media bullets of the White House Press Corp and spit them back as diamonds. The Mouthpiece of the Devil. Our first stop on memory lane is a press conference on March 3, 2003, I will call "The Regime Change Shuffle." Here Fleischer floats Bush back to safer ground after a declaration has already been made by the cowboy in the Whitehouse. I will be the questioner and Fleischer will be himself. Q Ari, the past couple of weeks you've said a number of times that we know what disarmament looks like, and you've cited the examples of South Africa and other nations that have disarmed. If the Iraqis continue -- that's a big "if" -- but if they continued on a daily basis getting rid of missiles or buried bombs that they suddenly happened to discover, would that -- if this is a sustained issue, would that begin to look like the disarmament you have in mind? And why have you given us no matrix by which to measure what this disarmament would look like? MR. FLEISCHER: Well, here's the Catch-22 that Saddam Hussein has put himself in: he denied he had these weapons, and then he destroys things he says he never had. If he lies about never having them, how can you trust him when he says he has destroyed them? How do you know he's not lying, he doesn't have tons more buried under the sand somewhere else? How do you know this is not the mother of all distractions, diversions, so the world looks in one place while he buries them in another? And this is the point to which Saddam Hussein has brought himself as a result of defying the U.N., having created an environment where the inspectors were removed in the late 1990s. And on their way out, in their final conclusive report, they indicated that Iraq had up to 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulin, 1.5 tons of nerve agent VX, 6,500 aerial chemical bombs. We don't know where those are. We have yet to see any accounting for all of these. And so the fact that he may have destroyed some 16 missiles has nothing -- nothing to do with the anthrax, the botulin and the VX. It also contradicts the fact that he said he doesn't have any weapons in violation of the United Nations resolutions. He's put himself in an awfully bad Catch-22, and this is from his own doing...
...Q Ari, going back to your answer to David's question, if I understand you correctly, there is no way that Saddam Hussein can ever truly satisfy this administration because no matter how much or how little he disgorges in the way of illicit weapons, you will always say, well, how do we know there isn't more buried somewhere, how do we know he doesn't have some here or some there? If that's the case, if that's the administration's attitude, that he's simply so untrustworthy that we can never know, no matter how much he gives up, how can he possibly satisfy you?
MR. FLEISCHER: Well, that's why I put it the way I did. That Saddam Hussein has put himself in a Catch-22, where he says, I do not have any weapons that violate the United Nations resolutions -- but I just found a few that I'm about to destroy. Why does he keep finding things that he says he never, ever had? Which gives rise to the question, what does he have that he is continuing to hide when we know, as a starting point, that the United Nations found the anthrax, found the botulin, found the VX? If Saddam Hussein would all of the sudden come out with the 26,000 liters of anthrax, the 38,000 liters of botulin, the area chemicals that 30,000 empty chemical warheads -- which, of course, I think at last count some 12 had been found, leading to the question, where's the other 29,900? These are the issues that decide whether Saddam Hussein has disarmed completely, totally or not. And these are the issues that Saddam Hussein still will not answer.

Well, see you next time, hope you enjoyed our first installment of this series.
Kunt