Iraqis try to comfort a weeping man at the site of a suicide car bomb in the holy city of Karbala, central Iraq, 28 April 2007. A suicide car bomb attack near a revered Shiite shrine in the central Iraqi city of Karbala killed at least 55 people and wounded nearly 160 today, a health ministry official said. By Mohammed Sawaf/AFP/Getty.
David Kurtz assesses the latest from the Bush administration’s talking points on the war.
Just use your imagination.
Ace of Spades grapples with a … vagina.
It’s legal and may not be stoppable if a father decides to go ahead with it.
Bush’s main point-man for promoting abstinence as a first-line defense against HIV transmission was Randall Tobias:
As the Bush administration’s so-called "AIDS czar," Tobias was criticized by some for emphasizing faithfulness and abstinence over condom use to prevent the spread of AIDS. In a 2004 interview, Tobias explained his approach as "A and B and C … Abstinence works. ‘Be faithful’ works. Condoms work. They all have a role. But it’s not a multiple choice, where there is only one answer."
As a top official overseeing global AIDS funding to other countries, Tobias was responsible for enforcing a U.S. policy, enacted during the Bush administration, that requires recipients to swear they oppose prostitution and sex trafficking. USAID adopted a similar policy in 2004.
You can almost predict the rest.
There’s a link in the accusations against them. Their humane treatment of detainees and resistance to abuse and torture may be the real reasons they’ve been targeted by the Pentagon. Yee was ruined but cleared in the end.
Approaching San Juan Island, Washington, on a ferry, 3.30 pm.
A real conservative understands what is happening in this country and in the war. He’s also prepared to tell the truth:
It is simply untrue that we are making decisive progress in Iraq. The indicators rise and fall from day to day, week to week, month to month. In South Vietnam there was an organized enemy. There is clearly organization in the strikes by the terrorists against our forces and against the civil government in Iraq, but whereas in Vietnam we had Hanoi as the operative headquarters of the enemy, we have no equivalent of that in Iraq, and that is a matter of paralyzing importance. All those bombings, explosions, assassinations: we are driven to believe that they are, so to speak, spontaneous.
When the Romans were challenged by Christianity, Rome fell. The generation of Christians moved by their faith overwhelmed the regimented reserves of the Roman state. It was four years ago that Mr. Cheney first observed that there was a real fear that each fallen terrorist leads to the materialization of another terrorist. What can a ‘surge,’ of the kind we are now relying upon, do to cope with endemic disease?
Read the whole thing.
We have another Bush Orwellianism: "outputs", as opposed to "outcomes," in Iraq. Money NYT quote:
If lawmakers remain in Baghdad, said one senior American official who did not want to be identified because he was discussing internal White House deliberations, ‘we’ll have some outputs then." He added, "That’s different from having outcomes," drawing a distinction between a sign of activity and a sign of success, which could take considerably longer.
So the bar for the Iraqis keeps getting, yes, lower. Now the president is telling us not to expect any measurable progress by September – no actual "outcomes." Instead, we are to look for "activity." Did Maliki shave this morning? Did Sadr take his afternoon walk? I guess this might be another device to lower expectations – lower them? – but it’s essentially a statement that we have no reason to believe that the current strategy can do anything serious to affect the entire country – but that we’re staying with it anyway. By September, there will be a reckoning. My guess is that September is the moment that a critical part of the Congressional Republican party abandons this war. Bush needs a miracle to avoid that. And it appears he isn’t expecting one.
