Why we are the bad guys, synopsized by Harper’s Weekly
The U.S. director of national intelligence released a declassified version of a new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq; the report found that “the term ‘civil war’ accurately describes key elements of the Iraqi conflict” and that “widespread fighting could produce de facto partition.” Iraqi refugees were flooding Syria and Jordan, where they now account for 5 and 12 percent of those countries’ total populations, and a massive bombing in a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad killed 130 people, making the attack the second deadliest in the country since the March 2003 invasion. In Hillah, where a further 45 people were killed, a police officer attempted to smother the blast from a suicide bomber. “He hugged him” said a witness, “and the explosives tore apart both bodies.” The U.S. military announced that insurgents had shot down four helicopters in the past two weeks in Iraq, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski warned that the White House was looking for an excuse to attack Iran, and President George W. Bush asked for an additional $100 billion to fund the United States’s wars through the end of the current fiscal year. Detainees at Guantánamo Bay complained of “infinite tedium and loneliness,” and a German court issued an arrest warrant for 13 CIA operatives involved in the abduction and torture of a German citizen.
President Bush staged an impromptu visit to the Sterling Family Restaurant in Peoria, Illinois, but few of the diners wanted to talk to him. “Sorry to interrupt you,” said Bush. “How’s the service?”
So, I’m thinking — what if we used the $100 billion more that Bush wants to spend on the war and allocate $100,000 to every Iraqi family who wants get out of the country in order to help them relocate to Syria or whatever country is willing to take them. Let the United Nations use some of that $100 billion to hire ombudsmen to work with the families and the country to which they would be moving to use the family’s allotment to establish housing and businesses and/or find employment. Some of the emigrating Iraqi people and some of the American soldiers who are interested could also be trained and paid to act as ombudsman for the émigrés.
Get all of the non-Iraqi fighters out of Iraq and turn the battleground over to the Iraqi factions. They will have to figure out what to do – fight to the finish of or find a way to compromise. Either way, the non-warring citizens of Iraq will be safe, the American soldiers will be safe, and the $100 billion of our American tax dollars would be used for positive rather than destructive activities. And the Iraqi idiots who want to fight with each other can be left to war amongst themselves.
And then make sure our Homeland Security and FBI and CIA people concentrate on tracking down whatever terrorists are out there as well as in here. And then the National Guard can be available to help our own citizens it times of natural disasters and other large scale emergencies.
Oh, I know. ” It’s the oil, stupid.”
Unimportant news you might have missed (excerpted from the same Harper’s Weekly):
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change announced that global warming was expected to heat up the atmosphere by 4 to 7 degrees within the next century, and the Bush Administration suggested that scientists find ways to counteract greenhouse-gas emissions by blocking out the sun. “Possible techniques include putting a giant screen into orbit,” suggested the White House. “[Or] thousands of
tiny, shiny balloons.”
“Hot” patients who had recently received medical treatment using radioisotopes were setting off Homeland Security radiation detectors, and the U.S. market for female-arousal liquids continued to grow.
Japanese Health Minister Hakuo Yanagisawa apologized for calling women “birth-giving machines.”
Hospital staff in Yekaterinburg, Russia, were gagging crying babies.
Rubber genitals were stolen from the set of the new “Hannibal” movie.
Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan was awarded France’s highest civilian honor, the Legion d’Honneur, and was kicked in the head by a camel.
The Indian Army was preparing to hunt down man-eating leopards in Kashmir, and elephants in Thailand were head-butting and robbing trucks.
An Australian man sold his life on eBay.
After it ransacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Washington, D.C., residence, a small black bird was captured in a brown bag and released. “She kept thinking to herself,” said a spokesman, “‘Quoth the Raven, Nevermore.”‘