Gassing and Oil

Via This Modern World comes this link to an Institute for Policy Studies report on a very interesting piece of US-Iraqi history. It seems that when Bechtel wanted to build an oil pipeline from Iraq to Jordan in the mid-1980s, the US foreign policy machine revved up to pressure Saddam to agree to the deal. A major player in this effort was none other than Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who was then Reagan's special peace envoy to the Middle East.

Of course, Iraq at the time was busy gassing Iranian soldiers, but a little thing like possession and use of weapons of mass destruction didn't derail the pipeline project. It did result produce a public scolding of Iraq, and a back-channel appeal not to buy any more chemical weapons from US companies lest it embarrass everyone involved, but that was pretty much it.

As the report's author Jim Vallette puts it:

The men who courted Saddam while he gassed Iranians are now waging war against him, ostensibly because he holds these same weapons of mass destruction. To a man, they now deny that oil has anything to do with the conflict. Yet during the Reagan Administration, and in the years leading up to the present conflict, these men shaped and implemented a strategy that has everything to do with securing Iraqi oil exports. All of this documentation suggests that Reagan Administration officials bent many rules to convince Saddam Hussein to open up a pipeline of central interest to the US, from Iraq to Jordan. … In their own words, we now see that for Administration officials, a dictator is a friend of the United States when he is willing to make an oily deal, and a mortal enemy when he is not.

Of course, this should only come as a suprise to those who thought that we went to war because of Iraq's WMDs, a notion that even the Bush Administration has been busily debunking in recent days.

The Moron Lifestyle

Richard Cohen, in today's Post, confronts the recent statements by Senator Santorum, and hilarity ensues:

Deconstructing Santorum is no easy matter. His logic is Euclidean, his analogies Limbaughian, and he has, I must add, a stern countenance that in no way bespeaks the resolute voice for inclusion he really is. But he does, I think, raise a profound question that he ought to answer himself: If you have the orientation of a moron, do you still have to talk like one?

So What Are We Doing?

This story in the Washington Post gives a pretty good idea just how far out-of-control events in Iraq are spinning, and just how ineptly some of our military and civilian leaders are dealing with the situation.

In brief, in the city of Kut, a man named Fadhil has declared himself to be mayor and is busily consolidating power. Fadhil clearly has a lot of popular support, and therefore his less-than-friendly take on the American occupation would appear to be cause for concern. So what has been the US reaction? "Marine officers here said they do not have the authority to decide who can be mayor." Fair enough, but as Fadhil whips up anti-American sentiment in Kut, you would think that we would try to do everything we can to defuse the situation, right? Nope.

Lt. Col. Erik Grabowsky, "leader of the Marine civil affairs unit in charge of dealing with local leaders and rebuilding the city's infrastructure", has chosen to ignore the "dealing with local leaders" part of his job description: "We don't really pay attention to him." Fadhil isn't taking this very well: "The cold shoulder is annoying Fadhil, who declared open season on former Baathists during a meeting with his supporters. He said he had earlier ordered his followers not to engage in revenge attacks — but no more."

There is obviously no love lost in Kut for the Ba'athists. As Fadhil himself has said, "There should be no room in the government for these people, these criminals and opportunists." Yet Grabowsky of the civil affairs unit has decided that even acknowledging this problem really isn't part of his job either: "Simply having a Baath affiliation isn't enough to disqualify them. We should ask — and we are — 'Is he a criminal? Is he a bad guy?' But beyond that, it's not our job to vet people right now."

I hope the situation in Kut isn't typical, but reading this story, it's really hard to come away with the impression that we know what the hell we are doing over there, unless endlessly pissing off the locals is precisely the point, in which case we're doing super.

Pull the Plug

Bob Herbert, in his NYT column today, comes right to the point:

It is time to pull the plug on the death penalty in the United States. Shut it down. It is never going to work properly. There are too many passions and prejudices involved (and far too many incompetent lawyers, prosecutors, judges and jurors) for it to ever be administered with any consistent degree of fairness and justice.

AYBABTU Upgrade

It's been over two years since the original All Your Base are Belong to Us flash animation first came out. But now, of course, someone else has updated this classic to reflect recent events. Add in a couple of strategically placed periods, and you have All Your Base Are Belong to U.S.

American Greed

American Airlines is having a tough time. It is losing money and on the verge of bankruptcy. Executives told the unions that they could sacrifice now, or risk losing their jobs entirely if the operation goes under. Faced with that choice, the unions gave a lot back to management in a series of difficult membership votes.

Now, however, it appears that management doesn't believe that its talk of tough times ahead really applies to them. According to CNN, American's top executives gave themselves big fat "retention bonuses" and a healthy supplemental pension fund that would continue to pay out even in the event of bankruptcy. For management, it's a win-win situation; for the rest of the employees, it's lose-a-lot or lose-it-all.

The unions are fighting back, as well they should. The flight attendants union is going to take another vote on the give-backs it agreed to just a few days earlier. I'm not sure how all this will play out, but workers everywhere should understand the lesson here. When management talks about "pulling together" or "working as a family", always check the books first before you believe one word. American isn't the first company to believe that sacrifice in tough times shouldn't apply to the named executive officers.

Sex Tips from Rummy

This Esquire piece seems to be making the rounds, but I thought I'd post it here nonetheless (although the thought of Donald Rumsfeld and Mrs. Donald Rumsfeld in a threesome is a bit, er, gross).

Happy Tax Day

As always, I waited until the last minute to do my taxes, but done they are. I owe a few hundred, but that is less than I predicted, so I'm declaring victory and moving on.

Look Out Spain!

You heard it here first.

Science Not Good Enough for Blount County, TN

Via Atrios, this item from the Maryville, TN Daily Times which reports that a local schoolboard voted 2-1 to reject three new biology textbooks because they don't teach creationism as a theory alongside of evolution. There are a few things to note here:

First, creationism is not a scientific theory. Creationism appeals to supernatural causes and is in principle unfalsifiable. But creationists continue to use the rhetorical trick of calling both evolution and creationism "theories", even though they clearly mean "ideas" or "narritives", which are very different things. Yes, there are people who reject the science in certain instances where they think it conflicts with their religious beliefs, but that rejection of science should not be taught as science.

Second, when creationists call evolution "merely a theory", they are again using the common meaning of the word to imply evolution is not well-accepted in the scientific community — it's a theory, not a "fact". Laying aside for a moment the question of whether there really are any "facts" (in the strict epistemological sense, I say no), evolution, while still "merely a theory", is still as close to being a "fact" as science allows. There is still vigorous scientific debate as to the mechanisms of evolution, but the — excuse me — fact of evolution is not seriously disputed by the mainstream scientific community, and indeed, serves as one of the fundamental underpinnings of modern biology.

Third, the actions of this local school board provides additional evidence of why a national curriculum would be a good idea. "Local control" of schools never made education better; and as cases like this one show, it is positively counter-productive.

Fourth, four members of the school board didn't even vote on this issue. "The four nonvoting board members apparently were reluctant to get involved in the discussion with memories of the Scopes' Monkey Trial in the not so distant past." If these four could have changed the outcome, and didn't vote out of fear of political reprisals, they are guilty of something far worse than just the abject stupidity of two of their colleagues.

Deficit Attention Deficit Disorder

Jeff Madrick has a solid and sobering piece on the economy in today's New York Times. Starting with Bush's ill-advised tax cuts and the cost of the (current) war, he ends up with a coherent, if depressing, picture of how this will prevent us from addressing our key domestic policy priorities. In summary: it's bad now, and it's going to get a lot worse. And then, when the baby-boomers start to retire in about 10 years, it's going to be become far worse still.

World War IV

The soon-to-be new Iraqi Minister of Information, ex-CIA director James Woolsey, has apparently just declared war on the Middle East, specifically Iraq, Iran and Syria. Oh, and also on Egypt and Saudi Arabia. What should we think about this?

"Our response should be, 'good!'" Woolsey said.

Enough said.