Month: March 2003

The War Show

CNN has it goin’ on. Baghdad Under Seige, Part I put them on the map and they own the sequel, too, so far. Nic Robertson is the only guy worth watching. Aaron Brown’s trying to be Dan Rather, but Dan Rather is still here and he does this verbose sanctimony so much better.

FoxNews proves what we always knew. It is to real news as professional wrestling is to boxing. Fake. They have nothing to offer when something real is happening. Colonel Ollie is unintentionally hilarious.

CBS has the insignia of the military unit in which their correspondent is “embedded” up as a huge logo on the side of the screen, while said correspondent, all dressed up like big grown-up soldier, broadcasts by video phone which delivers its images in an otherwoldly green.

Brokaw suddenly and shockingly looks old and Ted Koppel looks uncomfortably like Dukakis in a tank. Big hair just doesn’t work with the military thing.

And, according to Strangefeld, the war hasn’t even started. When “Shock and Awe” does start, it will be “something we have never seen before.” Cool. Maybe phasers and lasers and MOABS. So, there is still time to get the show together. Tom Friedman’s poppin’ up the Reddenbacher as we speak, rootin’ for president Quarterback’s Hail Mary to hit Saddam right between the eyes. I’ll bet he’s got that CD of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” playing on a loop..

We’re at blinking, neon orange. Tents are being pitched all over Washington as we speak. Atrios calls it “War Porn.”

Who said that? I can’t find the quote in the story.

Isn’t it strange that this quote, “the evil one will run in defeat” is completely believable coming from either Saddam or Bush? ?

Resistance Is Futile

The United States knows all and sees all. Schwartzkopf said he’s never seen anything like this “awesome” technology. The BBC said “it’s as if the US has a 3 dimensional picture of every single thing that is happening in Baghdad.” No need to tell the Brits about the strike, though. Gotta move fast. They may represent 70% of the coalition ‘o the willin’, but Blair is still a limey twit, always making Bush sound stupid. Killing Saddam’s like swatting a fly. We have X-Ray vision and he’s probably dead. We think. Like Osama.

Oh wait.

We got to watch Bush putting on his make-up on the BBC feed for about 5 minutes before the speech. He looked psyched. I believe he mouthed the words “what, me worry?”

Aaron Brown may cry at any moment with all this “exquisite tension.” I believe he soiled his trousers when Nic Roberts said the word “anti-aircraft.” Brian Williams needs some of that white stuff under his eyes but his shirt is mighty crisp. Oliver North is “embeded” with the Army and can’t stop himself from screaming “charge, you cowards, charge!” The troops smile indulgently.

The war show is, so far, very disappointing. When Bernie and Peter were hiding under their beds back in ’91 at the Baghdad Hilton, and a handsome gas masked Bibi spoke calmly from Tel Aviv in his mellifluous American accent, it was new and exciting. The Patriot missiles were faster than a speeding scud and could pluck that baby right out of the sky. Cool fireworks. (Of course, we later found out they couldn’t hit water if they were pushed over the side of a boat.)

Still, it all was new and so post-pac man. I’m not seeing it now, no matter how they rhapsodise about the technology. I wonder if people are still watching. Especially since there’s nothing to watch. We just turned on “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

But, I imagine it’s pretty darned exciting in Baghdad this morning. I imagine it feels pretty real and stimulating to them.

In fact, I would imagine that in a day or two all those men and women and kids in Baghdad are going to feel like New Yorkers on the morning of September 11th .

They deserve it just as much as we did.

The opening stages of the “disarmament” of Iraq has begun.The President will speak to the nation at 10:15.

Fasten your seatbelt and start praying. Human beings are on the other end of those bombs.

I Can See Clearly Now

Real life has unfortunately intruded, so blogging is light at the moment. I hope to find some time later today.

Meanwhile, I find that my earlier post, “where’d they get all those flags?” has been answered.

Jesse links to the Chicago tribune article reporting that Clear Channel “sponsored” all those pro-war rallies of the last few days.

Now, why do you suppose they did that?

Clear Channel is by far the largest owner of radio stations in the nation. The company owned only 43 in 1995, but when Congress removed many of the ownership limits in 1996, Clear Channel was quickly on the highway to radio dominance. The company owns and operates 1,233 radio stations (including six in Chicago) and claims 100 million listeners. Clear Channel generated about 20 percent of the radio industry’s $16 billion in 2001 revenues.

The media giant’s size also has generated criticism. Some recording artists have charged that Clear Channel’s dominance in radio and concert promotions is hurting the recording industry. Congress is investigating the effects of radio consolidation. And the FCC is considering ownership rule changes, among them changes that could allow Clear Channel to expand its reach.

Now, let me get this straight. Celebrities are stepping out of bounds when they express political views opposing the President. But, large media companies sponsoring phony pro-military “rallies” replete with free flag swag is perfectly a-ok. Just trying to get the rules straight.

“I think this is pretty extraordinary,” said former Federal Communications Commissioner Glen Robinson, who teaches law at the University of Virginia. “I can’t say that this violates any of a broadcaster’s obligations, but it sounds like borderline manufacturing of the news.”

No kidding. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this story is the fact that while rallies were extremely well covered this past week-end, they were presented as spontaneously growing up out of the pro-military grassroots. They were not portrayed as having corporate sponsorship and they certainly were not reported as being a product of a concerted talk radio campaign of right wing nut jobs and their GOP corporate masters.

And I didn’t hear one journalist ask the obvious question of where they got all those damned flags! Somebody was handing them out and nobody asked who paid for them. More good work from the DeVry Institute School of spokesmodel journalism

Clear Channel stations are still banning the Dixie Chicks, as well, with the full support of their parent company. Since they own vast numbers of radio stations, and already practise a form of legal payola that is rivaled only by the Mafia, we can consider this a “Luca Brazzi sleeps with the fishes” kind of message to the beleagered recording industry. Of course, the fact that the Dixie Chicks’ next tour is sponsored by Clear Channel may explain why they dragged poor Natalie out to make one of those SOS eye-blinking POW statements. They’ve got those girls by their black-roots.

Clear Channel plays Mighty Wurlitzer music only. And they are more than happy to pay for the privilege.

Crony Hegemony

Seeing The Forest quotes Drudge today :

THE BLITZ, THEN SIEGE OF BAGHDAD STARTS IN FOUR DAYS: Troops hope to have Saddam Hussein surrounded in Baghdad within four days after an unprecedented aerial blitz which will obliterate one in 10 major buildings in Iraq… Developing…

He then comments:

This fits with one of these rumors we have been hearing — that the Iraq war is happening because the right wingers want to demonstrate America’s superior power to the world. They want to show the world what we can do to anyone that opposes us.

Destroying one of every ten major buildings in Iraq? Because we think Iraq might attack us someday? Because, as Bush said in his speech last night, they might attack us in five years?

I might add that there now appears to be several other very important reasons to destroy one in ten buildings in Baghdad:

Bechtel

Halliburton

Fluor

Parsons

LBG

etc

These are American owned international construction firms. In a move so cynical and so audacious that it is hard to wrap your arms around, it would appear that the Bush administration is preparing to destroy the infrastructure of an entire country and then repay their largest campaign contributors with huge no-bid contracts to rebuild it.

And, happily for all concerned, these companies — operating outside the onerous regulatory climate of the United States — can cut corners to their hearts content while obscenely overbilling the government by the billions, all under the fog of war. And nobody pays any taxes at all!

This is not unprecedented, of course. There is a long history of war profiteering on the part of major players in this administration going all the way back to the 30’s. Crony capitalism is nothing new. National corporatism has been seen before (notably Nazi Germany.) Colonialism is the oldest story in the book. But, this takes it to a new audacious level.

It’s not all about oil. It’s simpler than that. It’s just all about money. Big Business spent over 100 million dollars installing the idiot sock-puppet to do its bidding and he is doing it — not that he, or even many of those surrounding him probably know it explicitly. He thinks he’s been ordained by God and some others are sincere, if deluded, in their belief that the best thing for the world is American “benevolent hegemony,” however oxymoronic that is in the context of “Shock and Awe.” Being generous one could say that those neocon idealists like William Kristol, who laid out the positive vision for the Pax Americana, are the most useful idiots the corporatists could have ever dreamed of.

The real question now is whether the businesses who own the Bush administration are thinking long term or short term. Do they value stability and predictablity to protect their long term investments or are they modern quick hit artists? If it is the latter then we are led back to the corporate scandals and find that the scariest aspect of this is that Bush’s single most enthusiastic big money supporter was a company built on a foundation of quicksand — Enron.

It’s bad enough that the powers behind the throne are ruthless enterprises that care nothing for democratic institutions. What if the truth is that the modern American crony-run operations that really call the shots are not only undemocratic but incompetent as well? It’s literally the worst of all possible worlds.

Corporate Welfare Queens

Yglesias posts this shocker via Marshall:

The Bush administration’s audacious plan to rebuild Iraq envisions a sweeping overhaul of Iraqi society within a year of a war’s end, but leaves much of the work to private U.S. companies.

The Bush plan, as detailed in more than 100 pages of confidential contract documents, would sideline United Nations (news – web sites) development agencies and other multilateral organizations that have long directed reconstruction efforts in places such as Afghanistan (news – web sites) and Kosovo. The plan also would leave big nongovernmental organizations largely in the lurch: With more than $1.5 billion in Iraq work being offered to private U.S. companies under the plan, just $50 million is so far earmarked for a small number of groups such as CARE and Save the Children.

[…]

European officials, and even some prominent Iraqi dissidents, have reacted to the current U.S. plans with disbelief. They charge that efforts to keep the U.N. and non-U.S. contractors on the sidelines will delay reconstruction in Iraq and stir deeper ill will toward Washington. Some U.S. humanitarian groups charge the Bush administration has downplayed the difficulty of the postwar work in the hopes of scoring some quick public-relations points.

[…]

Much of the heaviest work will fall to U.S. companies through a growing web of contracts with the Pentagon and the U.S. Agency for International Development. USAID is expected this week to pick the prime contractor for a $900 million job rebuilding Iraq’s infrastructure, including highways, bridges, airports and government buildings. The agency is also contracting for five other large jobs, worth a total of between $300 million and $500 million, administering Iraq’s seaport and international airports, revamping its schools and health-care system, and handling large scale logistics such as water transport. The Army Corps of Engineers is also taking bids for work worth up to $500 million for building projects such as roadways and military barracks. Additional contracts to refurbish Iraq’s neglected oil industry would likely be handled through the U.N., which currently administers Iraq’s oil exports.

Four groups of U.S. companies are competing for the $900 million contract, which was put out for bids in secret last month. The companies were picked under rules that allow U.S. agencies to skirt open and competitive bidding procedures to meet emergency needs. All have done government work for years and have deep political ties to Washington. Vice President Dick Cheney once served as head of Halliburton Co., whose subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root is part of one bidding consortium.

Other big bidders are Bechtel Group Inc.; Parsons Corp., which has allied with Brown & Root; and Louis Berger Group and Fluor Corp., which are bidding as a team. These companies made political contributions of a combined $2.8 million between 1999 and 2002, more than two-thirds of which went to Republicans, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a watchdog group. Bechtel was the largest single donor, having given $1.3 million in political contributions.

[…]

The U.S. postwar plans for Iraq, being directed by the new Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance in the Pentagon, are striking in their scope and intended speed. The administration’s plan to rehabilitate the Iraqi school system, for example, envisions the chosen contractor sending in teams to obtain payroll lists and assess teacher salaries just as U.S. military forces secure parts of Iraq, according to a 10-page USAID contract proposal that went out to companies last month. The contract, officials say, could total $100 million, and will cover five pilot programs for “accelerated learning” to be launched within three months, and then rolled out nationwide within 10 months. Only a third of Iraqi children now enroll in secondary school, but within a year the contractor will have “all children back in school.

I see. Sure. Piece of cake.

I hear there are quite a few former Enron executives who are “at liberty.” They should be brought in immediately to show some of that good ole Murikan know-how. Lord knows we have oodles of Americans who have the requisite knowledge of Iraqi culture. We should be able to bring this one in under budget and ahead of schedule, no problema.

I’m awfully relieved, though, that President GI Joe is eradicating evil and terror because it sure seems like it would be a teensy weensy bit dangerous for all those American targets there in Iraq if he doesn’t. It’s damned lucky that he has the whole world on our side so we won’t have to keep hundreds of thousands of troops there to protect the corporate welfare queens from those pesky suicide bombers.

Jesus. This just keeps getting better and better…

A River Of Refugees

Seth D. Michaels has a very good post up about the possible scenarios facing American troops within the next week or so.

Excerpt:

Picture this scenario: a war some decades in the future between the U.S. and Canada. Canada informs us that in three days, Chicago will be no more, so people had best evacuate. How would they all get out? Cars would be clogging the roads, people would leave on foot, panic would set in. Where would these people go? Stay in hotels? Stay with friends? Imagine the impact of three million people, proud owners only the possessions they can carry, suddenly thrust into the suburbs and countryside. What would they eat? Where would they sleep? How many would have no choice but to stay and be killed?

Now, consider that Baghdad is bigger than Chicago, and that the area around has less infrastructure – no motels, no ATMs, no supermarkets. This is the humanitarian crisis the U.S. will be faced with – not at some unknown hypothetical future point, but in a matter of ten days or so.

Again, despite the unprecedented incompetence that defines this administration so far, we have to hope against hope that they achieve virtual perfection in this military operation. If they screw this up as badly as they have screwed up the federal budget, national security and world opinion we are in big trouble. We must place our faith in the professional military and hope they are less bloodthirsty and more competent than their civilian bosses — and that they are allowed to run the show once the fighting begins.

The thought of Junior, Newt and Rummy in the war room scares the living shit out of me.

Let Me Introduce To You…

The one and only “Compassionate Conservatives!”

Where did all those exact same sized flags come from, anyway? Who paid for them?