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The Gist: Veni Vidi Filchy
Iraqi “Reconstruction” by Bush Sopranos
Candide's Notebooks, Jan. 24, 2006
When Gengis Khan Khan’s grandson leveled Baghdad in 1258, in characteristically bloody Mongol fashion, the city was essentially ruined until the twentieth century. Only oil money, post-colonialism’s repressive efficiencies and Western-sponsored regimes, Saddam Hussein’s among them, helped revive the city that was once the center of the world. The American “reconstruction” of Iraq is turning into another Mongol experience for Iraq.
The Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, a sort of internal investigative arm of America’s pro-consular affairs in Iraq, is required by law to submit quarterly “progress” reports to Congress on reconstruction. The reports, like last October’s 21 pages of lingo and acronyms and “please to report” qualifiers, usually point to corruption and shambles only behind velvety euphemisms and the promise, always the promise, of improvements. That’s the public face of American know-how: Identify the problem, identify a solution, implement the solution, then advertise it to the public (and make sure the APPLAUSE sign is flashing).
Except that the non-public version of the Inspector General’s report of reconstruction to date paints only a picture of incompetence, corruption, turf battles, cluelessness, staffing shortfalls: It is Iraqi reconstruction by The Sopranos (HBO miniseries to follow, one assumes). Iraqi oil production is below what it was before the war. So is electricity production. It’s easy and convenient to blame the insurgency, which is doing its share of destruction. But as always in these wars of convenience and quick-grasp profiteering, the bandits, in the justified eyes of Iraqis, are insurgents as much as the occupiers and their subcontracted minions a-la-Halliburton (remember, 80 percent of Iraqis mistrusted the occupation in a poll taken before the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.) What did we expect from the Bush junta? Preparedness and accountability are the twin evils they equate with “lawyering things to death” (Bush’s phrase) and what they sneeringly call “business regulation,” thus revealing what this whole little adventure in saving the world from democracy is to them: a business. Dirty, but not little.
—Pierre Tristam
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Vienna, Sunday, June 29, 14:45 EST |
Live Blogging
Germany v. Spain
Pierre / June 28
Set your alarm clocks, prep your laptops, give your chihuahua a swift kick in the arse and stock your fridge full of Carlsberg: This is the place to be Sunday afternoon for completely pointless, malinformed and likely inebriated live-blogging of the Euro final. Unlike 2004, we won't have an undeservedly dull upstart (Greece) playing a collection of Deco-Ronaldo whiners (Portugal). This time it's two goal-oriented powerhouses of football who, Turkey's Jannissary-like displays and the Netherlands' joyfully premature peaking aside (I wanted to see those two go head to foot), earned their place in the final. Somehow finding time for a little football between their inquisitions, their new-world genocides and old-world holocausts, Spain and Germany have played each other 19 times. Germany has the advantage with eight wins against Spain's five. They've tied six times. Germany has the goal-scoring advantage too, 26-21, although this time it looks like Spain is slightly favored. Coming into the game, Germany is 4-1 at the Euro, losing to Croatia, 1-2, and scoring 10 goals while conceding six. Spain is undefeated at Euro 2008, beating Italy on penalty kicks for its quarterfinal victory and scoring 11 goals along the way while conceding just three—and not one in its last two matches. Keep in mind that in qualifiers, when Germany faced its only true challenge (the Czechs), Germany lost 0-3, at home in Munich. (To be fair, the Germans defeated the Czechs earlier in the Czech Republic, 2-1). Germany has won the Euro three times, tops on that continent of warmongers. Spain faced no competition in qualifiers (unless you can call provinces like Iceland, Latvia and Liechtenstein competition. Spain won the European Championships once, in 1964. Anyway, be sure to tune in right here, the live-blogging should be fun with this new tool that I discovered while keeping up with the Supreme Court's Valdez-guzzlin, child-raping, gun-toting decisions. Go figure. No need to refresh your page: it's all really live. You can stay here on go to the dedicated page.
Meanwhile, since we're in Vienna, here's a little Mozart.
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