War is over?

Which it really is right now, and it's been quite something. Winning the 'peace' is going to be hella difficult, but right this second what's been happening today is, as Ed noted, exactly what was desired when it came to the flowers and all (the looting, another story entirely). Took a bit longer than they anticipated but they avoided the Berlin 1945 scenario; they're still going to be outright hated in Baghdad if they don't try and fix basic things up quickly and then get the hell out. If (and personally I think this might just be the biggest if yet) they can get a temporary civil admin in place and get the water and the power going at full speed again at the least, along with medical help, then the crapshoot might pay off for BushCo (and the propaganda gets even better for them, though there's still that 'pesky' WMD question...).

War's not over yet, of course -- the northern front is still a question, and I'll be very interested to see what happens up in Tikrit, Hussein's home base. And more consequences have yet to be addressed...

Imagine if you lowered the age of consent to 14 because Donald Rumsfeld wanted to screw a teen. Then he did that, and zipped up his pants. Would you say 'Phew, it's all over. No more underage sex'? No, you would expect a lot more 14 year olds to get fucked. Because the laws against it lie in tatters, and the social work department is allowed to do no more than mop up the sperm.

See Ned, your argument's on shaky ground from the get-go.

The cameras catch some protesters waving banners at the tanks. They zoom in on one, and the commentators try to spell it out, but the words aren't clear.

'What does it say? 'Go home...' I can't see... 'Go home American...'

Then the wind bulges the banner until the word 'WANKERS' comes into view. The commentators stop their transcription. 'Some strong language there,' they say, as the camera pans back to the tanks.

>>>>> Zimbabwe and crush that evil Mugabe.

Jack Straw in flames.

Burning Bush.

Brilliant! Was that actually directed at those who came there as human shields or just the troops? Either way, hilarious and telling.

This is what I like about live coverage and changeable situations. You get to see the fiction threadbare and barefaced.

It's also rather fascinating to see the long, slow process of building what will undoubtedly be the lead image in all the major news bulletins tonight and on the front of tomorrow's papers: a statue of Saddam getting a rope slung around it, ready for toppling. This image is being constructed with great difficulty. The Iraqis (protected, and, one suspects, encouraged or even paid, by the US troops) are both chipping away at the pedestal with hammers, and slinging rope around Saddam's neck. But to topple the statue they'll need a US tank to help. But the US military stage managers probably want it to look like a totally Iraqi gesture, so they're staying at a distance. So it's going very, very slowly. The statue is four times the height of the little men clustering around its knees. They won't be able to topple it alone. But the evening news and tomorrow's papers are waiting for that image, and BBC, CNN and Euronews are broadcasting the scene live.

Or maybe, just maybe, public opinion in Baghdad at the moment is far more divided than people on both sides of the debate are giving it credit for.

I think this whole thing is actually a rather accurate metaphor for the entire Iraq shenanigen.

We keep hearing how 'extraordinary' the scene is, how 'the symbolism' is 'simple and powerful', denoting the toppling of the man who oppressed his own people, etc. There is a real sense of 'the money shot'. The commentator keeps repeating 'extraordinary'. He sounds like the guy on the mike when the Hindenberg caught fire or something. 'Breathtaking...'

The marines are now moving the crowd back. No more pretense that it's Iraqis doing it. Two more 'extraordinaries'.

Ragi: 'Extraordinary powerful symbolism... the symbolism of this, beamed all around the world, any moment now they're going to pull the statue down, it's a breathtaking moment, it really is'. (Sounding more like a Brazilian football commentator at the moment of the winning goal.) Remarkable. There's Saddam Hussein, his arm outstretched, and in front of the world's television cameras, he's about to be torn down. It's symbolic of utter humiliation. They're pulling it down out of sheer gratitude. I'm just going to try and find out what the problem is. The cable needs to be around his neck.'

they should leave the statue up: it looks more like peter lorre than saddam.

Yikes! I wonder what ol' Immanuel "the ends don’t justify the means" Kant would have to say about that?

Saddam is seeking refuge in the Russian embassy!

uh, no:

"It burst into flames! Get out of the way! Get out of the way! Get this, Charlie! Get this, Charlie! It's fire and it's crashing! It's crashing terrible! Oh, my! Get out of the way, please! It's burning, bursting into flames and is falling on the mooring mast, and all the folks agree that this is terrible. This is the worst of the worst catastrophes in the world! Oh, it's crashing...oh, four or five hundred feet into the sky, and it's a terrific crash, ladies and gentlemen. There's smoke, and there's flames, now, and the frame is crashing to the ground, not quite to the mooring mast...Oh, the humanity, and all the passengers screaming around here!"

"I told you...I can't even talk to people...around there. It's -- I can't talk, ladies and gentlemen. Honest, it's just laying there, a mass of smoking wreckage, and everybody can hardly breathe and talk...I, I'm sorry. Honest, I can hardly breathe. I'm going to step inside where I cannot see it. Charlie, that's terrible. I -- Listen folks, I'm going to have to stop for a minute, because I've lost my voice...This is the worst thing I've ever witnessed....."

http://play.rbn.com/?url=aplive/nynyt/live/live.smi&proto=rtsp

Yeah, they just pulled down the U.S. flag. Brilliant.

O, the society of the spectacle!

Iraqi flag NOW.

Still going on Saturday's march here in London, where I hope people will rail against all gentlemen's agreements being sorted out in various for-profit boardrooms (there are already scaremongering May Day previews going up in all the papers). Anyone else besides me, Ed and Kate up for this?

We can only dream (KIDDING!).

I suggested St. Patrick's not because it's Catholic, but because it's prolly the most famous church in NYC, and hey this city's been struck before, of course.

"I don't see the problem, if someone said they were going to bomb here I'd, you know, get on a train and leave. Why do these stupid people hang around?"

I wanted to cry. But in another conversation this dumbass (called Hedy) said:

"All I keep hearing is about our foreign policies and stuff. What foreign policies does America have?"

So I began...

"Oh now hold on - is this going to make America look bad?"

"Well, I imagine you might be shocked"

"I... uh... you know, I don't really want to know then"

Sigh. One week my best mate came down and the Americans had this huge lunkhead Jock friend over and he was such a redneck, rattling on about bombing China and Muslims and any other country that wasn't America and we both started chatting to him. Sadly, he was about in tears after 5 minutes because he just could not accept that America actually has some bad points to it...

This worries me. It worries me enormously. I don't dislike America at all, never have and never will - I love a lot things about America and that the country has to offer, but I don't speak from a lot of experience of being there. I just wish some of the people from there were a bit more informed about the other 96% of the world that exists away from them, so that we can finally become a bit more global and start caring about those of different creeds and colours instead of shrugging it off and saying: "What does the Third World have to offer me?"

you're still a dick, though.

Endless love video

This thread has become petulant and ridiculous and I am inclined to be a dismissive prat

"It is now the time where it's time to engage proactively the current situation right now"

...or you hate America. Why o why do you hate America so?

On the other hand, there's Hanlon's Razor.

If wishful thoughts were horses....

Let commerce, er, freedom ring!

"Don't think of them as terrorist states. Think of them as terrorist markets."

Pretty blantantly ballsy of the junta to announce they want control directly to the U.N. like that who are, surprise surprise, not gonna be too happy. But hey, if our gun-toting Prez can land airplanes on the deck of an aircraft carrier, nothing's too shocking.

"The Bush administration today offered the Security Council a resolution calling for the elimination of more than a decade of international sanctions on Iraq [mm'hey! wowwy zowwy!] and granting the United States broad control over the country's oil industry and revenue [oh my God I'm SO SURPRISED!!!! < /sarcasm til it HURTZ>] until a permanent, representative Iraqi government is in place."

Wow.

"The agency was out to disprove linkage between Iraq and terrorism. That's what drove them. If you've ever worked with intelligence data, you can see the ingrained views at CIA that color the way it sees data."

This article, coupled with what I've been seeing at work and what I am observing, makes me feel just a tad betrayed and deceived. I'm sure this 'Special Plans' tripe is the same gang of geniuses who found that oh-so-cunningly forged shipping invoice for uranium from Nigeria or wherever, signed by a man who hadn't worked in the relevant department in years, and reported it as fact. "put it under the microscope" my white, skinny buttocks. I'm actually pretty insulted by the idea that policy decisions were being made on the basis of this blatantly cooked-up 'Special Plans' department and not on, say, actual intelligence collected and reported by professionals who don't have an axe to grind or a bullshit economic initiative to justify.

The news regarding Halliburton's receipt of further contracts for distribution and facilities operation of the Iraq oil industry is also excrutiatingly frustrating. I'm really ready to punch a lot of people. I'm sure somebody will be extremely clever and post a 'told you so' or a 'what did you expect' and treat me as a naive bastard - but that's not it. I'm disturbed because this is all being treated as page 13 news and not blasted across the cover like it should be. Where the fuck is Bob Woodward? What the fuck are we going to let these shitheads get away with? The reason the war went so well was because the scrutiny was so intense - now we're at the important part and the media/protestors et al. seem to have given up/abandoned the entire issue. Fucking A.

I'm going to be spraypainting 'FOUR MORE FOUR MORE FOUR MORE YEARS' all over the damn downtowns if we don't crank it back up. George Will is a smug piece of shit.

Halliburton admits it paid Nigerian bribe
Fri May 9, 1:51 PM ET

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Oil services giant Halliburton, already under fire over accusations that its White house ties helped win a major Iraqi oil contract, has admitted that a subsidiary paid a multi-million dollar bribe to a Nigerian tax official.

Halliburton, once run by Vice President Richard Cheney, revealed the illicit payments, worth 2.4 million dollars, in a filing Thursday with the Securities and Exchange Commission (news - web sites) (SEC).

"The payments were made to obtain favorable tax treatment and clearly violated our code of business conduct and our internal control procedures," Halliburton said.

Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root (KBR), which paid the bribe, has been in the political spotlight since it was awarded a no-bid US government oil contract in Iraq (news - web sites) in March.

KBR is building a liquefied natural gas plant and an offshore oil and gas terminal in Nigeria.

Halliburton told the SEC the bribe was discovered during an audit of KBR's Nigerian office.

The payments were made in 2001 and 2002, Halliburton spokeswoman Zelma Branch told AFP's business ethics news service, AFX Global Ethics Monitor.

Cheney led the company as chief executive from 1995 until August 2000, when he became President George W. Bush (news - web sites)'s running mate.

"Based on the findings of the investigation we have terminated several employees," Halliburton said in the filing, adding that none of its senior officers was involved in the bribe.

"We are cooperating with the SEC in its review of the matter," Halliburton said.

"We plan to take further action to ensure that our foreign subsidiary pays all taxes owed in Nigeria, which may be as much as an additional five million dollars, which has been fully accrued."

Halliburton said its code of business conduct and internal control procedures were "essential" to the way it ran its business.

The group is already facing questions over its business in Iraq and its accounting practices.

On Tuesday, a US lawmaker said the military had revealed for the first time that KBR had a contract encompassing the operation of Iraqi oil fields.

Previously, the US Army Corps of Engineers had described the contract given to Halliburton as involving oil well firefighting.

But in a May 2 letter replying to questions from Henry Waxman, a Democrat, the army said the contract also included "operation of facilities and distribution of products."

Waxman, the top-ranking Democrat in the House of Representatives' committee on government reform, asked for an explanation.

"These new disclosures are significant and they seem at odds with the administration's repeated assurances that the Iraqi oil belongs to the Iraqi people," Waxman said.

The Army Corps of Engineers had said it decided to forgo competitive bidding on the first contract because of time constraints.

But in a May 2 letter responding to questions from Waxman, military programs chief Lieutenant General Robert Flowers said the military assigned the work to KBR's services division in November 2002, under a pre-existing contract for the firm to provide logistical support to the US Army worldwide.

Waxman has also criticized Halliburton for dealings with countries such as Iran, Iraq and Libya, cited by Washington as state sponsors of terrorism or members of the so-called "axis of evil".

The idea on Talking Points Memo that these are also the guys that leaked information to Ahmed Chalabi amuses me in my cold black heart.