Behold the Lord of the Flies.

Posted by: Lupin | Mar 28 2005 10:13 utc | 1

Today the Wall Street Journal denounced him in its lead editorial.

Posted by: alabama | Mar 28 2005 15:04 utc | 2

Can you provide a link Alabama? Jerome has a good post at Kos about the economy and Greenspeak. Recommended reading with the comments.

Posted by: jdp | Mar 28 2005 16:24 utc | 3

I don't know how to do that, jdp (rather to my chagrin). Also, I read it in the hardcopy, and I think there's an entry-fee to the website.

Billmon's picked up on it, and maybe he could also find the link (he's a wizard at that sort of thing).

Posted by: alabama | Mar 28 2005 21:39 utc | 4

Thanks Alabama. I don't know how to provide links either. I guess we're in the same boat. Over at Kos they have excerpt some of the article in a post.

Posted by: jdp | Mar 28 2005 22:04 utc | 5

@jdp

Try Opinion Journal - they will ask you for an email address and you probably have junk address spare.

Smells Like Beltway

The real reason Tom DeLay is in political trouble.

By now you have surely read about House Majority Leader Tom DeLay's ethics troubles. Probably, too, you aren't entirely clear as to what those troubles are--something to do with questionable junkets, Indian casino money, funny business on the House Ethics Committee, stuff down in Texas. In Beltway-speak, what this means is that Mr. DeLay has an "odor": nothing too incriminating, nothing actually criminal, just an unsavory whiff that could have GOP loyalists reaching for the political Glade if it gets any worse.

The Beltway wisdom is right. Mr. DeLay does have odor issues. Increasingly, he smells just like the Beltway itself.
...
[list of sins]
...
Nor does it seem very plausible that Mr. DeLay never considered the possibility that the mega-lucrative careers his former staffers Michael Scanlon and Mr. Buckham achieved after leaving his office had something to do with their perceived proximity to him. These people became rich as influence-peddlers in a government in which legislators like Mr. DeLay could make or break fortunes by tinkering with obscure rules and dispensing scads of money to this or that constituency. Rather than buck this system as he promised to do while in the minority, Mr. DeLay has become its undisputed and unapologetic master as Majority Leader.

Whether Mr. DeLay violated the small print of House Ethics or campaign-finance rules is thus largely beside the point. His real fault lies in betraying the broader set of principles that brought him into office, and which, if he continues as before, sooner or later will sweep him out.

Posted by: | Mar 28 2005 22:06 utc | 6

Iraqi assembly to meet in effort to form government (Part 3,568)

UN reports irregularities in Iraq elections

BAGHDAD, March 28, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Two months after an election described as “historic,” a new United Nations report revealed irregularities in the legislative election process.

The report, quoted by the Independent Electoral Commission of Iraq, said the election was far from being competitive, Reuters news agency reported Sunday, March 27.

Money also played a key role in the election with the absence of regulations on the sources of campaign funds.
The UN report also criticized election officials for failing to put a ceiling on spending, a matter that did injustice to some cash-strapped candidates.

Election officials, it added, have not taken concrete steps to guarantee accountability and transparency in the spending process.
The document further said that candidates were not given enough time to market their platforms or even to introduce themselves to the voters.

Iraqi pundits had said that most of the voters were left in the dark as they knew nothing about the more than 7,000 candidates.....

Posted by: Nugget | Mar 29 2005 2:49 utc | 7

Gary Leupp speculates on why it has taken the new Iraqi govt. so long to form:

"On page A8 of the Boston Globe this morning....the maybe, maybe-not next prime minister of Iraq Ibrahim al-Jaafari says what he's been saying for weeks: "God willing, the government could witness its birth in the coming few days."

With all due respect to those who believe them identical, I think Bush's will is more operative here. Bush and other administration officials have stated several times, because they must, that should a sovereign elected Iraqi government ask the U.S. to remove its forces from Iraq (which according to a Zogby poll last December, 82% of Sunni Arabs and 69% of Shiites favor), it will indeed withdraw them. But Bush in his wisdom has prophesized this will not happen, and that troops will remain as long as it takes to train Iraq's army. Meanwhile the U.S. establishes Iraqi bases designed to be permanent, and to respond to "threats" in Iran, Syria, or anywhere within convenient bombing range, confident that the Iraqi government will bless their presence.

To fulfill Bush's prophesy, the U.S. must make sure that the unpunctually anointed regime indeed will state, with fulsome praise for the American liberators, that a U.S. military presence is indeed indefinitely welcome. But the reality-based community knows that Shiites risked death to vote two months ago, not because they wanted to legitimate the occupation with that balloting ritual so trumpeted by the U.S. corporate press (and so pathetically manipulated to suggest that U.S.-style "democracy" is now on a roll from Georgia to Kyrgystan due somehow, mystically, to our brave troops' actions in Iraq), but because they thought it would hasten those unwelcome troops' overdue departure.

The Globe's AP story refers to "desultory talks" which "have dragged on" between different Iraqi parties who participated in the January circus, as though the incomprehensible petty byzantine politicking in that part of the world involving groups that all look alike and are all Muslim anyway somehow worked against the universally applicable principles of American democracy and "freedom" which Bush has stated is given by God to all peoples. I suspect that in fact, with 150,000 troops on the ground, U.S. officials are all over this "Iraqi" process, so opposed by those Iraqis whom they in their Orwellian arrogance term "anti-Iraqi" because they want the U.S. out of Iraq. (Amazing to see the straight faces of these officers talking about "anti-Iraqi" Iraqis, and about "foreign troops" from Arab countries in an Arab country with borders drawn by western imperialists.) Seems to me the announcement of the puppet regime line-up is delayed by the U.S. requirement that the new ministers adequately support U.S. military and corporate goals for the nation and region.

So let me too prophesy, aware that should my prophecy not come to fruition, the people may come to doubt prophecy in general. But this is what the Lord's telling me, personally, through dreams, visions, and internet communications: There will indeed be a government of Iraq announced in the next few days, because the Iraqis are getting angry at this inexplicable delay. It will have the appearance of some independence, and will even criticize the occupation forces to some extent, by prior arrangement with them, to garner credibility. But it will indeed state that U.S. forces are welcome and necessary to deal with the "insurgency" and train Iraqi forces. There will be widespread disillusionment among the Shiites who voted. There may even be some disillusionment with al-Sistani, depending on how faithfully he follows God's will. U.S. plans for Iraq will crumble in a growing, ideologically diverse uprising against the occupation. But the bases will remain, and will be used for actions in Iran and Syria following the Israeli attack on Iranian nuclear facilities this summer."

Short version: Americans are more responsible for the dely, not Iraqis.

Posted by: lonesomeG | Mar 29 2005 20:21 utc | 8