Drop your bombs between the minarets

Now confident that Iraq will be a disaster the next administration will have to repair, GWBush has set his sights a little further west, but still in the Middle East:

US President George W. Bush is an optimist. That's why he's visiting the Middle East this week in order to speed up the peace process that he started in Annapolis (more...) at the end of 2007.

He wants to use the 12 months left to him in the White House to solve the 60-year-old Middle East conflict, he says, and he gushes bravely about a two-state solution -- with Israel and Palestine living in harmony, side by side.

But during his visit, which ends Friday, he has achieved exactly the opposite. Instead of bridging the divide between the Israelis and the Palestinians, he has made it wider. Neither has he accelerated the peace process. Instead, he has merely managed to make it more difficult. On the red carpet that was laid out for him in the Holy Land, he has managed to bury the Palestinian state before it was even born.

Like Custer at The Little Big Horn, he insists on doing it his way, never mind that his was is the way of an idiot:

Speaking at Abbas' side, Bush said that he was confident that "with proper help, the state of Palestine will emerge." Sources close to the negotiations said that Bush had offered to visit the region again if this was required to give the peace process fresh impetus. And the White House also announced on Thursday that Bush had named Lt. Gen. William Fraser as his envoy to monitor the Israeli-Palestinian "road map" peace plan.

. . . By pointing out Abbas' shortcomings in public, Bush has made him even weaker. There were admittedly friendly words when Abbas received Bush in Ramallah on Thursday. In order to avoid offending Bush, Abbas even eschewed the Russian fur hat he usually wears when it is cold.

But Abbas is not in a position to fulfill the great expectations that Bush has placed on his shoulders. Since the summer putsch by Hamas in the Gaza Strip when Abbas lost much of his power, the radical Islamists have been steadily building and securing their power in Gaza. All the important functions -- from the police chief through the teachers and up to the most senior judges -- are now occupied by Hamas. For Abbas, this means there can be no return to Gaza. The division of the Palestinian territories in two is irreversible.

Sad. And yet many feel the same will happen in Iraq: Shi'a, Sunni, and Kurdish regions, or even states, may be the final result of the meddling there

Gunpowder, gelatine, dynamite with a laser beam

The Benazir Bhutto assassination story has gotten even stranger:

A police officer who witnessed the assassination said that a mysterious crowd stopped Bhutto's car that day, moving her to emerge through the sunroof. And a document has surfaced in the Pakistani news media that contradicts the government's version of her death and contains details on the pistol and the suicide bomb used in the murder.

The witness was Ishtiaq Hussain Shah of the Rawalpindi police. As Bhutto's car headed onto Rawalpindi's Liaquat Road after an election rally Dec. 27, a crowd appeared from nowhere and stopped the motorcade, shouting slogans of her Pakistan Peoples Party and waving party banners, according to his account.

Bhutto, apparently thinking she was greeting her supporters, emerged through the sunroof of the bulletproof car to wave.

It was Shah's job to clear the way for the motorcade. But 10 feet from where he was standing, a man in the crowd wearing a jacket and sunglasses raised his arm and shot at the former prime minister. "I jumped to overpower him," the deputy police superintendent said later. "A mighty explosion took place soon afterwards."

But Musharraf is a good friend of the USofA, and would never, ever do anything to compromise that friendship:

To many in Pakistan, it all raises questions about whether the government was complicit in the assassination. To others, it points at the very least to a concerted attempt to hide the massive extent of a security failure.

Indeed. As the phrase goes, cui bono: To whose benefit?

Every time I thought I'd got it made, It seemed the taste was not so sweet

On Pace with the ch-ch-changes in Iraq:

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs says he's seen a major change in security in Iraq in recent months, and says that will influence his recommendation to President Bush on how long to continue the current strategy.

General Peter Pace says a "sea change" has been taking place in many places in Iraq, which he says should help give local police and the military "a chance to get on their feet."

Pace has conferred with several commanders in Ramadi, west of Baghdad, and says he's gathered a positive picture of the security environment there and in Baghdad.

Is he high? Did he mistake the title 'Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ' in a hand rolled sort of way? I mean WTF is he smoking!?

The civilian and US casualties are higher than before the surge escalation began.

There are mortar rounds impacting the Green Zone daily.

Visiting US congresscritters have to wear armor in the most protected area of Baghdad, can't leave the Green zone during the day and can't spend the night, (and that's what you might call a downward trend from their visit to a market in Baghdad, “like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime” a couple of months ago.)

If we gather any more positive pictures like that we can claim a Pyrrhic victory ... and get out!





Cross posted at Vidiotspeak

I'm sleeping in a fighter plane

Those on the right who blindly trust capitalism and free markets should be thrilled with this LATimes story:

THEY DON'T CALL US the sole superpower for nothing. Paul Wolfowitz might be looking for a new job right now, but the term he used to describe the pervasiveness of U.S. power back when he was a mere deputy secretary of Defense — hyperpower — still fits the bill. Consider some of the areas in which the United States is still No. 1:

Any guesses? Anyone, anyone? In what area are we the leaders:

Certainly not progress, as Reagan used to intone on GE's General Electric Theater, during his salad days as an actor in the '50s: "Progress is our most important product."

Hardly. Today we are world leaders in:

• First in weapons sales: Since 2001, U.S. global military sales have totaled $10 billion to $13 billion. That's a lot of weapons, but in fiscal 2006, the Pentagon broke its own recent record, inking arms sales agreements worth $21 billion.

• First in sales of surface-to-air missiles: From 2001 to 2005, the U.S. delivered 2,099 surface-to-air missiles like the Sparrow and AMRAAM to nations in the developing world, 20% more than Russia, the next largest supplier.

• First in sales of military ships: During that same period, the U.S. sent 10 "major surface combatants," such as aircraft carriers and destroyers, to developing nations. Collectively, the four major European weapons producers shipped 13.

• First in military training: A thoughtful empire knows that it's not enough to send weapons; you have to teach people how to use them. The Pentagon plans on training the militaries of 138 nations in 2008 at a cost of nearly $90 million. No other nation comes close.

Cool! And just to prove that we are Equal Opportunity enablers:

Turkey and the U.S. signed a $1.78-billion deal for Lockheed Martin F-16 fighter planes. As it happens, these planes are already ubiquitous — Israel flies them; so does the United Arab Emirates, Poland, South Korea, Venezuela, Oman and Portugal

Catch that? Israel, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Oman all have the same war planes from the U.S.

The article continues:

Maybe the only way to break through this paralysis of analysis would be to stop talking about weapons sales as a trade and the export of precision-guided missiles as if they were so many widgets. Maybe we need to start thinking about them in another language entirely — the language of drugs.

After all, what does a drug dealer do? He creates a need and then fills it. He encourages an appetite or (even more lucratively) an addiction and then feeds it.

"Just Say No" worked so well in the Drug War, maybe it will work for arms as well.

Nope, not when we can make a buck. Still, I wonder how many American soldiers have been killed by munitions we sold Iraq and Iran?

(Graphic from ControlArms.org)

Update: From Peromyscus in comments:

The LA Times on Sunday reported that the US is 32nd in longevity, 29th in preventing maternal deaths during childbirth and 38th in preventing infant mortality. So, number one at death-dealing, not so great at life-preserving.