That Administration Is Inoperative
Gosh, John Bolton forgot that he answered official questions regarding the Burning Plame case when responding to the Senate committee about his nomination to the UN ambassadorship.
Meanwhile, a few days ago, retired General Keane told a luncheon that the US has “killed or captured” 50,000 Iraqi insurgents in toto. I am pleased to report that Keane is not presently an active-duty officer, so this blatant whopper is less official than it might otherwise be. I’m also pleased that it’s a blatant whopper – if we’d really put 50,000 insurgent effectives hors de combat to date and the enemy was still able to ratchet the tempo of their operations to the present level, well, that would be depressing. And I certainly wouldn’t want the news from Iraq to be depressing.
Meanwhile, RSN Syndrome claims no less a victim than Kevin Drum of Washington Monthly, who finds the latest, typical collection of rhetorical gestures and pious hopes merit “kudos” for the Administration exhaling them through their bullshit apertures.
UPDATE: Corrected an apparently inaccurate statement re Bolton. Current info is that he answered questions from the State Department IG regarding the Plame case, not the grand jury.
Comment by Sven —
July 29, 2005 @ 7:55 am
Did he testify before the jury, or State’s inspector general? The article’s so poorly written it’s hard to tell.
Comment by Nell —
July 29, 2005 @ 8:40 am
Josh Marshall says the State IG, not the Plame grand jury. Still highly relevant to the question Bolton was asked. They’re certainly mortaring the stones up as fast as they can, eh?
Comment by mawado —
July 29, 2005 @ 11:55 am
Has anyone seen Steve Martin recently? Did he join the WH staff?
It seems on trival matters (Did you belong to the federalist society? Did you testify?) The Bush Admin just dusted off his old comedy routine -
Pay Taxes…I FORGOT
Comment by ASteele —
July 29, 2005 @ 2:18 pm
50,000 insurgents, they won’t even admit that they killed 50,000 people.
Comment by Mike Trettel —
July 29, 2005 @ 2:38 pm
Insurgents ain’t people, don’t ya know? I have to assume though that you’re referring to the , uh, collateral damage type people. It’s so damn depressing simply because it brings back memories of my lost childhood, when the term “body count” was introduced. Sigh.
Comment by X-height —
July 29, 2005 @ 2:44 pm
“And I certainly wouldn’t want the news from Iraq to be depressing.”
Indeed why would you?
what a jerk.
Comment by Alan Sullivan —
August 2, 2005 @ 8:42 am
Evidently you’ve never heard of ‘catch and release.’ The general might more honestly have said 5,000 killed, 5,000 held, and 40,000 loosed to resume their activities. (I’m just guessing here.)But then it would look like the problem with the war was failure of US nerve. That wouldn’t suit your agenda any more than it suits the general.
Comment by Jim Henley —
August 2, 2005 @ 9:08 am
Heh. But Alan, surely even you would agree that SOME of those 40,000 had no “activities” to resume – they were suspects detained in a sweep and released after the Army satisfied itself that they were not in fact insurgents. (What portion? I don’t know, but I suspect my guess would be higher than yours.) Such folks shouldn’t properly be included in either the general’s, your or my metrics. Their catch and their release represent no material hit to the insurgency. It may represent a boon to it by radicalizing whoever gets inadvertantly swept up, but I don’t think we can quantify that effect, so we’ll table the possibility.
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It remains then, that the “50,000″ is a whopper no matter how you look at it. The 40,000 are either irrelevant because they were never insurgents, or they represent a failure to keep genuine bad guys off the battlefield. So why does the general toss the number out there? Usual statist bvllsh;t reasons – it’s a number that makes it look like the government is doing something. Kind of a Kyoto Protocol for counter-insurgency.