Doom Patrol
Speaking of stories with ridiculous plot holes, the case of Aafia Siddiqui suggests that the US government has been secretly taken over by the Brotherhood of Dada. Cab Drollery discusses how bizarrely underreported the story of her arrest has been, given the sensational aspects of the government’s case. (Via Eschaton.) The New York Times story on Siddiqui’s arraignment and supposed arrest in Afghanistan that Cab Drollery links to is so transparently absurd you have to suspect they’re just rubbing our faces in their impunity at this point: they don’t even bother to come up with good lies any more.
But it gets better! Because some poking around led me to the Administration Stenography Department’s (aka Foxnews.com) report on the Siddiqui case, which adds details of her iniquity so farcical you’d think someone expanded the annual Bulwer-Lytton contest from opening sentences to entire thrillers:
NEW YORK — Long before Aafia Siddiqui allegedly tried to kill U.S. agents and military officers in Afghanistan, the MIT-educated neuroscientist once plotted to assassinate former presidents George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, government sources told FOXNews.com.
According to sources, Siddiqui was concocting a plan to use biological agents to contaminate former president Carter’s water.
“This was very serious, the investigations will go on for some time,” a government source told FOXNews.com.
Of course she did. Al Qaeda has been maniacally focused on contaminating Jimmy Carter’s water for decades. (You would think Foxnews would be all for this too; I don’t get the disapproval.) All of which leads to the formulation that
There are two kinds of countries in the world:
- Countries where judges and reporters hear the kind of nonsense the government is putting about re Siddiqui and sputter, “What? Do you think I’m some kind of moron???”
- This country.
Mind you, it’s all fun and games until, as followers of the Siddiqui case point out, three children completely disappear.
UPDATE: Of course the “two kinds of countries in the world” principle is pure snark. In most countries throughout most of history the job of the designated judiciary has been to validate the actions and claims of the executive and the job of the media has been to amplify them. The Siddiqui case just shows, in world-historical terms, the US acting like a “normal country.”
Comment by abb1 —
August 17, 2008 @ 10:22 am
What a story.
Comment by abb1 —
August 17, 2008 @ 10:23 am
…I mean the wiki article, not the Carter’s water thing.
Comment by Dan —
August 17, 2008 @ 10:46 am
Jim, I’ve linked to this post over here.
Comment by Karen —
August 17, 2008 @ 10:48 am
This kind of thing gives me nightmares. I want the people responsible tried for war crimes, and not like Abu Ghraib, where a few red-shirts got wasted. I want to see Cheney and Rumsfeld and Gonzalez and Woo in a box at the Hague wearing those big earphones. I’m sure Obama won’t do it and I don’t know what we have to do to get enough people to demand it. Maybe put pictures of HER kids on milk cartons?
Comment by Nell —
August 17, 2008 @ 11:14 am
Thanks for posting on this; I only heard of the case for the first time yesterday, via a link in comments at Emptywheel.
Surely the aspect that three children have [been] disappeared can help this case become better known. Sadly, they could become, literally, poster children for the senseless cruelty of the war on terra.
Comment by abb1 —
August 17, 2008 @ 1:23 pm
Too bad Graham Greene is dead, it sounds like it could be one of his novels.
Comment by Thoreau —
August 17, 2008 @ 1:31 pm
I heard about it, but not about the kids part. I refrained from blogging because, well, honestly, don’t they find yet another high-ranking Al Qaeda member every other week? Yeah, I blog some of those stories, but eventually I get fatigued.
Perhaps if I had gone to a sexual harassment training, I’d realize that I need to give equal opportunity blogging to stories about high ranking female terrorists and high ranking male terrorists.
Comment by Thoreau —
August 17, 2008 @ 1:53 pm
I just read Jim’s links. I read these things, and I get angry, and I want to….I will not say it, because I know it’s wrong and I would never do it, and I don’t want to be sent to Gitmo for even joking about it.
I will, however, say that I want to find somebody who voted for Bush in 2004 and punch him or her. I won’t do that one either, but goddamn would it feel good.
Comment by von Laue —
August 17, 2008 @ 5:29 pm
Thoreau, there’s lots better candidates for thumpin’ than someone who just voted. C’mon, your imagination is broken.
Comment by IOZ —
August 17, 2008 @ 7:37 pm
She’s also responsible for chemtrails.
Comment by Thoreau —
August 17, 2008 @ 8:11 pm
von Laue-
True, there are much better candidates for thumping, but at the end of the day this will continue as long as we have a society willing to excuse it. And the people who voted to continue it need to be forced to look at their handiwork and comprehend the monsters that they have unleashed.
Pre-emptive to IOZ: No, none of these things are new, but this gang took it up another level, and removed the last remaining constraint–shame. When you no longer have to say “A few bad apples,” when you openly say “Yep, we do it–and we like it!” that’s when they no longer have to keep it on a sufficiently small scale that “a few bad apples” is plausible. “Plausible deniability” carries with it certain limitations, one of them being that the scale has to be small. Once they stop denying it, we lose that final obstacle.
Comment by von Laue —
August 17, 2008 @ 8:57 pm
And the people who voted to continue it need to be forced to look at their handiwork and comprehend the monsters that they have unleashed.
I love you man. So when I say: fooooooor rrrr rrrrr rrrrr (phew) rrrr getit, because, man, it’s gone; what I mean to say is LET IT GO BECAUSE MAN, ITS GONE.
Comment by Thoreau —
August 17, 2008 @ 10:10 pm
This isn’t about 2004. This is about lessons learned for the future. If people can look at what they wrought and see nothing wrong, they’ll do it again.