BottleOfBlog

Cease Fire

BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 31 — At least five American soldiers died in Iraq over a 24-hour period that began Sunday, two of them fighting insurgents in the holy city of Kufa during the unraveling of a cease-fire agreement with a rebel Shiite cleric, military officials said Monday.

It's Nowhere You Want To Be

It's funny until we have to pay the fucker off.

Saw it at Bartcop.

For Shame

CHICAGO - Roman Catholic gay-rights supporters wearing rainbow-colored sashes to Mass were denied communion Sunday, while dozens in Minnesota had to walk around protesters to receive the holy sacrament.

Is the Roman Catholic church denying communion to people who are in favor of the goddam death penalty? How about Americans who were in favor of going to war in Iraq? What about divorced Americans?

I mean, shit, Jesus was pretty clear about how he felt about that.

What about Americans who eat shellfish? What about Americans who touch dead pig skin?

What about the big ten? What about liars and adulterers? Coveters? What about imbeciles like Moore and his idolotry?

What about pedophilic priests? Are they still getting communion?

Christ would puke if He saw the hypocracy and hatred being carried out in His name.

Happy Memorial Day

WASHINGTON - American troops in Iraq (news - web sites) died in May at a rate of more than two per day, pushing the combined death count for April and May beyond 200, according to Pentagon (news - web sites) figures.

For the National Guard and Reserve, whose part-time soldiers make up at least one-third of the 135,000 American troops in Iraq, the trend in casualties during May was especially troubling.

At least 22 citizen soldiers died, nearly one-third of all U.S. losses in May. As a percentage of the month's death toll, that is about double what it had been in most previous months of the war. It also shows that the Guard and Reserve are bearing an increasing combat load.

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At least 69 American troops died in May, according to the Pentagon's published tally. That figure does not include three Marines who died in action Saturday in western Iraq.

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May was deadlier than most previous months, but far less so than April, when the death toll was 136. That was by far the highest for any month since U.S. forces invaded in March 2003. The bloody fight for the city of Fallujah raged throughout April but has calmed down in the past few weeks.

In total, the Iraq conflict has taken the lives of more than 800 American troops so far, and last week the Pentagon reported that the number wounded in action is approaching 4,700.

The military says it continues to make progress in stabilizing Iraq, but the steadily rising death toll has become a political burden for a White House that also is focused on re-election.

May was deadlier than most previous months? Really? Because the goddam "liberal" media was almost silent about how deadly it was. Frankly, if you were watching American TV or reading American papers, May seemed pretty darned quiet.

Lots of reports on "progress" and excited gibberish about the upcoming turnover of "sovereignty".

What is it going to take for our national media to wake the fuck up and start reporting what's actually going on in this country and in the world??? What is it going to take to convince these people to live up to the First Amendment???

Karl Rove's Blues

Well, someone has to know something.

New York Times Regrets Hiring Public Editor

New York Times' Omsbudsman Daniel Okrent writes:

CODDLING SOURCES There is nothing more toxic to responsible journalism than an anonymous source. There is often nothing more necessary, too; crucial stories might never see print if a name had to be attached to every piece of information. But a newspaper has an obligation to convince readers why it believes the sources it does not identify are telling the truth. That automatic editor defense, "We're not confirming what he says, we're just reporting it," may apply to the statements of people speaking on the record. For anonymous sources, it's worse than no defense. It's a license granted to liars.

The contract between a reporter and an unnamed source - the offer of information in return for anonymity - is properly a binding one. But I believe that a source who turns out to have lied has breached that contract, and can fairly be exposed. The victims of the lie are the paper's readers, and the contract with them supersedes all others. (See Chalabi, Ahmad, et al.) Beyond that, when the cultivation of a source leads to what amounts to a free pass for the source, truth takes the fall. A reporter who protects a source not just from exposure but from unfriendly reporting by colleagues is severely compromised. Reporters must be willing to help reveal a source's misdeeds; information does not earn immunity. To a degree, Chalabi's fall from grace was handled by The Times as if flipping a switch; proper coverage would have been more like a thermostat, constantly taking readings and then adjusting to the surrounding reality. (While I'm on the subject: Readers were never told that Chalabi's niece was hired in January 2003 to work in The Times's Kuwait bureau. She remained there until May of that year.)

Then, we'll be hearing from the Times about who the fuck outed Valery Plame?

Okrent's column is great. Mainly, because it's someone at the paper admitting--not discovering--what millions of Americans were shouting, bitching, and e-mailing about for months. Mainly because it was almost surreal to watch "The Paper of Record" read like some freaking state run propaganda rag. Mainly because all of this stuff was so goddam obvious to anyone with any kind of common sense at the time.

But the big question becomes, after the incredibly gullible, horrendous and inaccurate reporting of the Clinton "scandals", the 2000 election, and the Rush To War, is the New York Times going to actually learn anything?

Specifically, are they going to ever, ever learn that sources from the RNC, the Bush administration, and Republicans in the House, the sources that have completely humiliated the New York Times and its reporters and editors, are not credible no matter how much they throw the word "credible" around?

Like Harry Truman, a great, great Democrat, once said: How many times do you have to get hit on the head before you figure out who's holding the hammer???

15 Year Old Boy Running United States

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A handgun that Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was clutching when U.S. forces captured him in a hole in Iraq (news - web sites) last December is now kept by President Bush (news - web sites) at the White House, a spokesman confirmed on Sunday.

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"He really liked showing it off," Time quoted a visitor as saying. "He was really proud of it."

What an idiot.

Bush Squeezing Every Last Penny Out Of Taxpayers While He Still Can

WASHINGTON - President Bush (news - web sites) is using Air Force One for re-election travel more heavily than any predecessor, wringing maximum political mileage from a perk of office paid for by taxpayers.

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Usually, that means paying a few hundred or a few thousand dollars for the president and a handful of aides. It's a minuscule sum, compared to the $56,800-per-hour the Air Force estimates it costs to run Air Force One.

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Bush has logged more than 68,000 miles this year on Air Force One, all within the continental United States except for a quick run to Mexico in January. With rare exceptions, he confines his travels to the more than a dozen states he and Kerry are fighting hardest for, and to places where he is raising campaign money.

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But of the more than $203 million Bush has raised for his re-election, less than 1 percent has gone to reimbursing the government for travel costs this year.

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It is difficult to say precisely what the Bush campaign is repaying the government per trip. The White House refuses to:

_Provide lists of political aides who travel with Bush and whose travels are financed by the re-election campaign; or say how many political aides go on any given trip, or even offer a range.

_Provide dollar figures on reimbursements for specific trips. Bush's re-election campaign periodically reports to the FEC lump reimbursement sums for unspecified travel.

_Say how it decides which trips are official rather than political.

But this is all nothing. Just wait until the GAO gets a look at the honor bar.

No Wonder Bush Is So Optimistic

BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Gunmen attacked three civilian vehicles carrying foreigners in northwest Baghdad Sunday, killing two Westerners and seizing three others, witnesses and police at the scene said.

Two of the four-wheel-drive vehicles, of the type used by foreign contractors, employees of the U.S.-led administration and some media in Iraq (news - web sites), appeared to have collided after coming under fire on a main highway, and two bodies could be seen.

Locals and police said the attackers had dragged away three survivors of the attack. Their fate was unknown.

In one of the cars, a dark-colored sports utility vehicle, both front airbags had inflated and were stained red with blood. Bloodstains were also soaked into the back seat.

Nearby, a white four-wheel-drive vehicle had its front staved in by the force of the collision.

After the attack, locals set the two vehicles ablaze, and later shooting erupted between gunmen and police at the scene.

In April, dozens of foreigners were taken hostage on Baghdad's highways. Most were released, but some are still being held and at least two were killed.

Dozens?

Jesus, I think I read about, like, maybe three.

Democracy In Iraq

The row threatens to delay the appointment of a new interim government. A ceremony scheduled for today appeared last night to have been postponed.

On Friday the governing council voted unanimously to endorse Ayad Allawi, a British-educated neurosurgeon with close links to the CIA, as the new prime minister - a move that seems to have caught Mr Brahimi by surprise.

At a stormy governing council meeting yesterday, Mr Bremer bluntly warned members not to hold another vote on who should be the new president. If they did he would ignore it.

"The behaviour of Mr Bremer and Mr Brahimi has been shameful," Dr Mahmoud Othman, a leading council member told the Guardian. "It's like being in a dictatorship again. Adnan follows the Americans around like a puppy. If the Americans told Adnan that yoghurt was black, he would go along with it."

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The bickering has done little to help the new government's credibility. "The people were never involved in the political process for 35 years. So what's new," Kareem Mahmoud, a Baghdad street vendor said.

What did anyone expect? Christ, Bush appealed to the Supreme Court to thwart democracy in the United States. Did anyone really believe he had any interest in democracy in Iraq?

Aside from our disgraceful and foolish national press, I mean.