The 455 Billion-Dollar Burning Bush

The conflagration in Iraq is about to get worse, with US efforts at damage control going nowhere. Turkey is spreading the killing flames to the north with US weaponry to rid its border of Kurdish separatists, all in the name of fighting terrorists. Once the north goes to hell, all bets for peace are off the table, and Bush knows it. This would all be so pathetically ironic if it weren't so tragic. What radioactive material is Bush's chutzpah made of that he can tell the Turks not to invade Iraq to avenge the killing of 40 of their soldiers? At least the Turks have a reason to invade. Were any Americans killed by Saddam? Were any weapons of mass destruction ever found? This war has been about blood for oil, fanned by the greedy lies of Bush and his cronies. A war started in the name of democracy has been waged by the greatest terrorist of them all. Tens of thousands of lives lost. Hundreds of thousands of bodies disfigured. Millions of families displaced. Half a trillion dollars gone up in smoke and ashes. I wonder if he knows California is burning. Perhaps he's too busy fiddling.

"Dilly-Dalai"ing On the Way to Higher Moral Ground

Bush has tea with the Dalai Lama in the White House today. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is in Egypt enlisting that country's support for a Palestinian-Israeli peace conference in Anapolis at the end of the year. The House of Representatives will soon vote on a resolution branding as "genocide" Turkey's massacre of Armenians from 1915-17. The things America will do to reach that mythical place called Higher Moral Ground. Never mind that it has sold 23 million Taiwanese to China for the price of doing business in Shanghai. Never mind that it is still destabilizing Iraq and searching for imaginary weapons of mass destruction in an effort to consolidate oil rights. Never mind that Rwanda was too poor and too black for anyone to give a damn. But the politicians are absolutely right when they say there's nothing wrong with America's Moral Compass--the dollar bill and missile that serve as its needles are functioning perfectly fine, thank you.

Is there a moral obligation to find a cure for HIV? Or is the hunt for a vaccine driven by the egos of philanthropists and scientists? What does it matter as long as I'm alive? What does it matter if I die without any answers?

The Last Spokesman Standing

Call it idiocy. Call it hypocrisy. But the U.S. State Department is now warning Turkey about the dire consequences of launching an attack against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq. "If they have a problem, they need to work together to resolve it and I am not sure that unilateral incursions are the way to go, the way to resolve the issue," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. This is where comedy and tragedy blur and blend seamlessly, where the stand-up act becomes so awful that it starts becoming hilarious, where the laughter causes you to shake so hard that you end up requiring serious medical attention. When the United States "had a problem" with Saddam, "unilateral incursion" was strongly condemned by the world community and yet, Bush had no problems ripping the lives, hopes and dreams of Iraqis to shreds. The words coming out of the State Department today had no air of contrition, no blush of embarrassment regarding the miscalculated gravity of launching an invasion into Iraq--it was, instead, the blabber of arrogance, blindness and mental paralysis, diplomatic-speak for "don't fuck with our oil-stealing, Iraqi-killing mission until it's over." Is the world only about strong destroying weak? Rich vanquishing poor? Does this give me the right to infect someone with HIV simply because I can?