A Love Letter to America’s Mesopotamian Friend With Benefits

I found this letter buried beneath John Ashcroft’s Water Wiggle in a trunk in the basement. I wonder if we forgot to mail it? Gonna have to go get some stamps…*

mjs

++++

Dear Snuggle Pumpers,

Look, baby, you know I love you. Your belly full of oil, your eyes full of desire, your swarthy swarthiness—I wanted you in the worst way, which is the best way I want things. When I want something, I take it, and I slap it around and punch it and go to town, you know what I mean? And I wanted you, baby. You. It was always you. Well, since the internal combustion engine anyway…

I knocked you off your feet, and then picked you up by your feet, and then I dropped you…I admit I dropped you—but I picked you up again, and then, admittedly, dropped you once more, oh, but darn it, I just kept on picking you up. And dropping you. It was all good fun…at first. I slapped your thighs but good and gained the golden hall without so much as a titty-tickle and wham! came off like Speed Racer—it was good. Damn good. Get the bleach out good. Emission accomplished good. Jack-off in the shower while visualizing Max Boot good, now-that-I-think-about-it-good.

And remember when I found your daddy and got his buddies to fuck his ass up something fierce so we could be together, just you and me and some contractors? And then it was mostly just you and me (and the contractors, but what can you do?) and a future filled with flying carpets and easy money and then…oh, criminey, but I went soft. I’ll admit it. I went soft like a White House reporter full of cocktail weenies and Swedish vodka. Yeah, that soft.  Read more 

I’m not sure this is a method that will work.

April 16 (Bloomberg) — Coalition forces in Iraq shot dead three Iraqi policemen by mistake today during a raid on a suspected terrorist cell near the town of Ramadi, the U.S. military said in a statement.  Read more 

I was waiting to see what Juan Cole had to say about this matter from yesterday, as he is The Source on the ins and outs of politics in this entire region. He did not let me down:

King Abdullah followed up on these harsh criticisms of the US by cancelling his planned appearance at a White House dinner in April. The Saudi royal family is fit to be tied that Bush gave Iraq away to fundamentalist Shiite parties that have close ties to Iran.

Although the Saudi statement is remarkable for its brutal frankness and coldness toward the United States, its real significance is its slam of the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. Abdullah has not only said that the US presence is an illegal occupation, he has said that the al-Maliki government is nothing more than Shiite sectarian hegemony. The Saudis are known for their behind the scenes diplomacy and their public discretion. King Abdullah is hopping mad, to talk this way.  Read more 

Recently, in the comments of this post reader and blogger Mark from Ireland made the suggestion that the term “civil war” isn’t the right one to describe what’s happening in Iraq right now. In response, I offer this devastating article by Nir Rosen. It is probably one of the top five articles I’ve read about Iraq since the war started, and I cannot encourage you enough to read it. And reread it. It’s long, detailed, and has the context and background so missing in so much “reporting” about Iraq. I will be blogging more on this piece and the questions raised here, but that will have to wait until I’m back in DC. I’ll say this: I’m glad my nephew is too young to read, because I don’t know what I’d tell him about what he would find in this article.  Read more 

“Wartime president.”

Those words have an amazing power over the American mind it seems. Along with the myth that *we* only go to war for good causes, and invariably in self-defense, we buy into the myth that we must cede greater power than is usually considered to be the norm to The Leader in such times. Because all our experience from childhood on seems to confirm that when you have a big job to do, you need one person to direct things, and for everybody else to do what that person says, or else everybody just runs around higgledy-piggledy or Keystone Kopsishly, getting in each other’s way, whacking each other’s heads with long boards, trying to go through narrow doorways three abreast, and the like.  Read more 

Can’t wait till they get home:

Julian Borger in Washington
Monday June 5, 2006
The Guardian

The marine unit involved in the killing of Iraqi civilians in Haditha last November had suffered a “total breakdown” in discipline and had drug and alcohol problems, according to the wife of one of the battalion’s staff sergeants.  Read more