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DOES BUSH CRAVE SADDAM’S OLD JOB?
MORE REPORTS OF IRAQ CIVIL WAR ON HORIZON
SEX POSTERS UPSET AUSTRIA

On my trek home last night, I passed a sign for a “Lumber Liquidator” and I realized that I could be, without knowing it, in the ‘news liquidation business,’ dumping on but never quite getting rid of news that makes no sense. Much of it stopped making sense along time ago to borrow a phrase from the Talking Heads.

As we know, humor often seems to cut through the media zeitgeist best and so I began thinking that maybe The Onion is on to something in helping us understand the repressed hopes and unstated dreams that drive our Presidente in his obsession to “save” Iraq (and himself ). In the same spirit that PBS’ Frontline interviewed a psychiatrist who specializes in telling companies what consumers really crave, I think there may be a motive or some transferance here we are missing.

The humor pub must have watched all those repetitive Bushian speeches on Iraq which seemed to be turning people off more than on and asked: but what if they really weren’t meant for us, what if his real audience was somewhere else, not over the rainbow, but on the road to Babylon? What if the love he needs and the job he wants is not to be found in a country that is tiring of him but in the mythic land he thinks he believes he is fighting to free? Is he being driven by a conquering hero fantasy? If impeachment ever gets on the agenda—he will be looking for a new job. Could this be it? Has The Onion gone further than all the the other “analysts” put together and somehow wiretapped into W’s secret and personal dreamscape (without a warrant, of course)?

BUSH ELECTED PRESIDENT OF IRAQ

”BAGHDAD—In a vast outpouring of gratitude to the man they call “Our Great Savior From The West,” the people of Iraq flooded the polls during yesterday’s first free elections, voting overwhelmingly for President George W. Bush as their first democratically elected leader.

“Bush, whio spent nearly half a trillion dollars of U.S. taxpayer money on his campaign, received a concession call from Abu Musaiya at 11:30 EST last night.

“After the Bush landslide was announced on Al-Jazeera, ecstatic crowds chanted in the streets throughout the recently liberated nation: “Hail George Bush, the president of Iraq!”

TheOnion.com

BUSH MAY BE DOWN BUT NOT OUT

The Washington Post today reports on a new strategy and conflict at the White House as advisors work hard to put humpty dumpty together again.

”President Bush shifted his rhetoric on Iraq in recent weeks after an intense debate among advisers about how to pull out of his political free fall, with senior adviser Karl Rove urging a campaign-style attack on critics while younger aides pushed for more candor about setbacks in the war, according to Republican strategists.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/12/28/AR2005122801517.html?referrer=email&referrer=email

UN ACCEPTS IRAQ VOTE

Even as election experts and Sunni politicians reject the vote in Iraq as deeply flawed, the UN is standing by it as the NY Times reports:

“A United Nations official today stated publicly for the first time that the results of the Iraqi parliamentary election were valid.”

Schizophrenia Erupts on Turtle Bay

Ironically, just as the UN—an organization frequently denigrated by the Bush Administration was validating (questionably in my view) the election the US wants so desperately to be perceived as legit, the US Ambassador to the UN is denigrating the organization as Maxims News reports:

The Bush administration has put its foreign policy on very public display this holiday season, and as often happens, it is hard-line conservatives’ obsessive-compulsive fixation with the United Nations that is triggering the current episode.

“Just as President Bush was citing the support of the United Nations as the crucial international pillar of his strategy for victory in Iraq, his representative in New York was threatening its financial strangulation.

“In the same week that the United States insisted on Syria’s complete cooperation with the UN investigation of the assassination of Lebanon’s former prime minister, it warned it might itself walk away from the organization.

“Either we need to fix the institution or we’ll turn to some other mechanism to solve international problems,’” the president’s emissary in New York, John Bolton, told guests of the Jesse Helms Center in North Carolina.

“And he elaborated for Britain’s Financial Times: “The UN is simply one of many competitors in the global marketplace for problem solutions and problem solvers.”

www.MaximsNews.com

IN IRAQ—MERCENARIES AT WORK

Latin Americans reported working as mercenaries in Iraq. Press reports say more than l000 have been recruited to do the dangerous jobs once handled by the US militaries.

And there are others:

Israel Ex-commandos Training Kurds in North Iraq:

CAIRO, December 1, 2005 (IslamOnline.net) - Dozens of former Israeli commandos have been training Kurdish security forces in northern Iraq, supplying them with equipment worth millions of dollars, Yedioth Aharonot newspaper reported Thursday, December 1.

“Over the past 18 months, these ex-commandos, who were sent to Iraq by several Israeli corporations, have been training special security units as part of a program organized by the Kurdish authorities, said Israel’s top-selling daily.

CONFLICT IN IRAQ: IS CIVIL WAR NEXT?

Knight Ridder, the newschain that has covered the war best, reports: “The U.S. plan for leaving Iraq is in trouble, with more than 10,000 Kurds in the Iraqi army prepared to seize control of northern Iraq for an independent state.” (and an oil region.)

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/13497060.htm

also this earlier piece:

”KIRKUK, Iraq - Passions run deep for the Arab and Kurdish soldiers who wear the Iraqi army uniform.

Kirkuk lies just a few miles from one of the nation’s largest oil fields, worth billions of dollars. Arabs figure that the city’s oil wealth should belong to Iraq, while ethnic Kurds see it as part of a future nation of Kurdistan.

“If the Kurds want to separate from Iraq it’s OK, as long as they keep their present boundaries,” said Sgt. Hazim Aziz, an Arab soldier who was stubbing out a cigarette in a barracks room. “But there can be no conversation about them taking Kirkuk. … If it becomes a matter of fighting, then we will join any force that fights to keep Kirkuk. We will die to keep it.”

….Five days spent interviewing Iraqi army soldiers in northern Iraq - who are overwhelmingly Kurdish - made clear that many soldiers think that a civil war is coming.”

Remember Dr. Germ? She was portrayed as a major threat. Now she’s been set free:
http://www.alternet.org/story/30168

Iraq Resistence Web Site: http://www.freearabvoice.org

ELSEWHERE IN THE EMPIRE: AFGHAN WAR TAKES MORE LIVES

China’s Xinua reports : Nine US Soldiers Killed, Injured In Bomb Attack, Vehicle Accident in Afghanistan.
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-12/28/content_3982368.htm

Constitution loses in Haiti election fight: analysts

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2005-12-27T165159Z_01_FOR760696_RTRUKOC_0_US-HAITI-CONSTITUTION.xml&archived=False

WHO WON NY TRANSIT STRIKE?

After weeks of media bashing of the union—what does the NY Times report today in the aftermath of a final deal between the city and the union:

“If there is a real winner in the walkout that hobbled the city, it is the workers who went out on strike, and their leader.”

TIBET; DALAI LAMA DENOUNCES PRAISE OF CHINA

Reuters reports:

” DHARAMSALA, India (Reuters) - The Dalai Lama said on Wednesday the most senior Buddhist in Tibet had obviously wanted to please Chinese authorities by praising Tibet for its political stability and prosperity.

“In an interview with Reuters, the 70-year-old Nobel Laureate painted a very different picture of Tibet saying that torture and human rights abuses were still the norm.

“The Dalai Lama, the head of Tibetan Buddhism and its political struggle, said he was saddened by reports monks had been killed and tortured by Chinese authorities for refusing to denounce him as a “separator'’ bent on damaging China.

“I had stressed if they have to denounce me then please denounce me — no problem,'’ he said firmly in his palace beneath snow-tipped Himalayan peaks in northern India. Their safety is more important. Just please denounce me,'’ he said, wearing traditional Buddhist purple robes.”