Yo Blair

Don't let the door hit you when you leave office on June 27th.

I used to compare Blair favorably to Chimpy McFlightsuit, because he could speak English fluently unlike President Malaprop, but he also made the historically foolish decision to invade Iraq. He will not be judged well by history.

"Yo Blair" greeting audible at second 17 of this NBC Today Show report

'Iraq: A country drenched in blood'

Iraq: A country drenched in blood
Four years to the day after US and British troops invaded Iraq, its people are full of fear. Iraqis often have a look of half-suppressed panic in their eyes as they tell how violent death has touched them again and again.

Independent (uk): Four years of the most grievous suffering

Poodle Screwing British Veterans, Too

Independent (uk): Blair is called to account over abandoned troops

British soldiers returning from war are suffering unprecedented levels of mental health problems amid claims that the long-standing "military covenant" guaranteeing them proper care is in tatters.

More than 21,000 full-time servicemen and women who have served in Iraq, as well as army reservists, have developed anxiety and depression, an Independent on Sunday investigation can reveal today.

Official figures suggest two dozen military personnel have killed themselves since the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 ­ a figure which includes 17 confirmed suicides and six where inquests are pending. Combat Stress, the charity for war veterans suffering from mental problems, has warned that it is seeing an annual rise of 26 per cent in its caseload; more than 1,000 former soldiers are homeless.

Independent (uk): The betrayal of British fighting men & women
The son of a military family Pte Johnathon Dany Wysoczan

Sunday Observer (uk): Scandal of treatment for wounded Iraq veterans
· Soldiers 'denied proper hospital care'
· Letters reveal anguish of families

Whither Bush & Poodle?

Front page of The Independent (uk), December 6, 2006

It Was 108 in Central Massachusetts Last Wednesday

Yeah, that's my excuse for missing all these stories:

National Tennis Center to be named after foremother Billie Jean King.

The Iraqi blogger Riverbend describes the exodus from Baghdad, and why it's happening.

Tom Friedman has run out of six month segments (Friedmans), and even he now says we must 'disengage' from the civil war we created in Iraq. Better late than never.

Hillary Clinton, finger in the wind, ripped Donald Rumsfield a new one in a Senate Hearing. Five years too late, baby. It was the wrong war in the wrong place at the wrong time. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Brent Wilkes, Duke Cunningham's benefactor, told the New York Times how he funneled bribes to Republican Congressman to get government contracts.

Hundreds of thousands of Shiites marched in Baghdad chanting 'death to Israel.' I love to see democracy flowering in the middle east. Great job by the Cheney Administration.

In a new book, our former ambassador to Croatia says Bush didn't know there were two different sects (Shia and Sunni) in Iraq before the invasion. I'm shocked. At this point it would be news to learn that Bush understands anything.

Two nuclear power plants in Sweden shut down after almost melting down. As we said after Three Mile Island, We All Live In Pennsylvania. We all live in Sweden.

There's a parody making fun of Al Gore's movie An Inconvenient Truth on YouTube. Guess who made it? A PR firm that works for Exxon Mobil.

Mel Gibson, drunk as a skunk, goes on a tirade about Jews. You know, when I get drunk I don't go on racist tirades. I might say 'men can be such pigs', but that's because I believe that. You think Mel is really sorry? Neither do I.

The Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and The Poodle, Tony Blair, had a big press conference announcing a new initiative to combat global warming. Its centerpiece? Voluntary cooperation by industry. That should do the trick. It's been working so well so far.

Daryn Kagan to leave CNN to start a blog. Hah! Nobody leaves a job to start a blog. She's getting shitcanned. Her blog is supposed to be inspirational. I'd be inspired if she started posting dirt on former boyfriend Rush Limpaugh. Daryn?

And here's a story I missed two weeks ago. The US rushed a shipment of laser-guided missiles to Israel after the Israel-Lebanon war started. Maybe that's why we're having a hard time getting Lebanon to talk to us about a cease fire.

Kissinger Barbie: Midwife From Hell

Commondreams: Condoleezza Rice: Midwife From Hell

After being one of the most inept national security advisers in the nation’s history, Condoleezza Rice is now earning the same grade as secretary of state.

Her description of the conflagration in Lebanon as the “birthpangs of a new Middle East” was about as callous as it gets, matched only by Bush’s remark that the conflict represents “a moment of opportunity.”

Nor were families of the Israeli victims (about 50 so far, and most of them soldiers) cheering the new day, either.

Rice’s cruel opposition to an immediate cease-fire has left the whole world outside of Israel (and Tony Blair’s kennel) aghast.

[]

Politically naïve, Rice also appears woefully jejune about human nature.

Smirky McChimp Tells Another Lie

What Bush said at his joint press conference with Bliar (no, that's not a typo) last night:

Q Mr. President, you spoke about missteps and mistakes in Iraq. Could I ask both of you which missteps and mistakes of your own you most regret?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Sounds like kind of a familiar refrain here -- saying "bring it on," kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong signal to people. I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner -- you know, "wanted dead or alive," that kind of talk. I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted, and so I learned from that. And I think the biggest mistake that's happened so far, at least from our country's involvement in Iraq is Abu Ghraib. We've been paying for that for a long period of time. And it's -- unlike Iraq, however, under Saddam, the people who committed those acts were brought to justice. They've been given a fair trial and tried and convicted.

The look on his face after he said it:



What a journalist who observed the whole thing had to say.

... the big giveaway was at the end of that answer, I don't know if you can see it on camera, but the President flashed a big grin to those of us sitting in the front rows. It didn't seem that he was quite as contrite as his performance.

- Richard Wolffe, Newsweek.

Vile excuse of a human being.

More Global Warming News

This walrus pup alone in the Arctic Ocean, separated from its mother, was a troubling sight for researchers in 2004. (By Phil Alatalo -- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
WaPo: Warming Arctic Is Taking a Toll
Peril to Walrus Young Seen as Result of Melting Ice Shelf

The rapid melting of Arctic sea ice appears to be separating walrus young from their mothers, leaving them likely to die at sea, a team of researchers said.

During a two-month cruise off northern Alaska in 2004, a Coast Guard icebreaker came across nine lone walrus calves swimming in the deep waters -- what the scientists called a highly unusual sighting.

They report in the journal Aquatic Mammals that the pups most likely fell into the sea when a shelf of sea ice that they lived on with their mothers collapsed because of an influx of unusually warm water.

[]

The team found that water flowing from the Bering Sea to the shallower continental shelf of the Chukchi Sea off northern Alaska was six degrees warmer than it had been at the same time and place two years earlier.

WaPo: British Expert Warns of Global Warming

LONDON -- Global temperatures are likely to rise by 5.4 degrees by the end of the century, sharply increasing drought and water shortages, Britain's chief scientist said.

[]

A British government report said a 3 degree increase would cause millions of tons of cereal crops to fail and put between 1.2 billion and 3 billion people at risk of water shortages.

The Washington Post article, from the AP, is poorly written, as it does not specify which scale the degrees are measured in. I think they mean to say 5.4F and 3C, as the British research is measured in celsius temperatures, and 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit is the same as 3 degrees Celsius. The international press captures the truly dire scientific warnings:

The Scotsman: Three billion lives hang on three degrees, warns scientist

GLOBAL temperatures are set to rise by more than 3C, sparking a massive drought that could put 400 million people at risk of hunger, the government's chief scientific adviser has warned.

Professor Sir David King called for the world to take immediate action to alleviate the looming crisis, which could also jeopardise water supplies for up to three billion people.

His warning, on the back of an official report by a leading UK climate change centre, highlights the huge gulf between government's goals on gas emissions and the level of cuts needed to curb global warming.

Even by the most optimistic assessments, carbon dioxide levels are set to rise to double what they were during the industrial revolution, Prof King said.

In Britain, the main threat would come from flooding and "coastal attack" as sea levels rose. He said it was essential that the world began to take action to cope with the changes over the next 100 years.

"We don't have to succumb to a state of despondency where we say, 'There is nothing we can do so let's just carry on living as per usual'. It is very important to understand that we can manage the risks to our population."

Global levels of carbon emissions need to be cut by 27 per cent more than the current goal of 550 parts per million in the atmosphere to achieve a 2C rise in temperatures - the level deemed acceptable by the EU and Tony Blair. Going beyond this level would force temperature and sea-level rises which would be "extremely difficult for populations to manage".

Prof King was also scathing about politicians who believed they could rely on new technologies to produce cleaner fuels. "There is a difference between optimism and head in the sand," he said. His criticism will be seen as a clear swipe at President George Bush, who has refused to sign up to international agreements to cut gas emission and has instead pledged to look to new technologies to combat climate change.

Bush Lies Memorialized in British Document

Doug Mills/The New York Times
Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and President Bush arriving for a White House news conference on Jan. 31, 2003, after a meeting about Iraq that would be summarized in a memorandum by an adviser to Mr. Blair.

The war plan was definite at least by January 31, 2003: three days after Bush's State of the Union speech (filled with lies like: Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production") the date for invasion was set. (The actual invasion took place nine days later than anticipated, on March 19, 2003.) And I imagine the war plan was 'set' long before this. Contrary to Bush's lies at his press conference last week, he was set to go to war all along.

NYTimes: Bush Was Set on Path to War, Memo by British Adviser Says

LONDON — In the weeks before the United States-led invasion of Iraq, as the United States and Britain pressed for a second United Nations resolution condemning Iraq, President Bush's public ultimatum to Saddam Hussein was blunt: Disarm or face war.

But behind closed doors, the president was certain that war was inevitable. During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, he made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times.

"Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," David Manning, Mr. Blair's chief foreign policy adviser at the time, wrote in the memo that summarized the discussion between Mr. Bush, Mr. Blair and six of their top aides.

"The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March," Mr. Manning wrote, paraphrasing the president. "This was when the bombing would begin."

Update: Was my face red ... must have more coffee before posting ... this is just another one of the Downing Street memos, which has been out there on the web for two months. It was reported in the Guardian (uk) on February 3, 2006:

Blair-Bush deal before Iraq war revealed in secret memo
PM promised to be 'solidly behind' US invasion with or without UN backing

I even blogged about these very documents before:

Going to the UN Was a Sham; War Was Already Decided (Feb. 3, 2006)

The charge: Blogging while sleepwalking. The verdict: guilty as charged. Penalty: We report, you decide.

Going to the UN Was a Sham; War Was Already Decided.

From The Guardian (UK)

Blair-Bush deal before Iraq war revealed in secret memo
PM promised to be 'solidly behind' US invasion with or without UN backing

Tony Blair told President George Bush that he was "solidly" behind US plans to invade Iraq before he sought advice about the invasion's legality and despite the absence of a second UN resolution, according to a new account of the build-up to the war published today.

A memo of a two-hour meeting between the two leaders at the White House on January 31 2003 - nearly two months before the invasion - reveals that Mr Bush made it clear the US intended to invade whether or not there was a second UN resolution and even if UN inspectors found no evidence of a banned Iraqi weapons programme.

"The diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning", the president told Mr Blair. The prime minister is said to have raised no objection. He is quoted as saying he was "solidly with the president and ready to do whatever it took to disarm Saddam".