Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Is Donald Rumsfeld A Comedian?

I'm thinking that he must be. How else could he deal with the cognitive dissonance of this:
US defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld warned Iraq's new leaders against political purges and cronyism that could create "lack of confidence or corruption in government".
But the most unwittingly ironic part of his speech was this:
"It's important that the new government be attentive to the competence of the people in the ministries and that they avoid unnecessary turbulence," he said
Just imagine if the Bush administration had been "attentive to the competence of the people in the ministries" during the leadup to this war. Then maybe they wouldn't have had to make up intelligence and smear every Government official who spoke out against their justification for war with Iraq and their "plans" for the occupation.

This couldn't have been better timed if it was an episode of Seinfeld.

John Bolton is being questioned in front of Congress for pressuring analysts who were looking at Cuba's alleged bio-weapons program into exaggerating the threat Cuba posed.

Then we have John Negraponte, picked by Bush to become the first Director of National Intelligence. Well, as reported in today's Washington Post, it turns out that he played one of the more central roles in Iran-Contra:
The day after the House voted to halt all aid to rebels fighting to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua, U.S. Ambassador to Honduras John D. Negroponte urged the president's national security adviser and the CIA director to hang tough.

The thrust of the envoy's "back channel" July 1983 message to the men running the contra war against Nicaragua was contained in a single cryptic sentence: "Hondurans believe special project is as important as ever."

"Special project" was code for the secret arming of contra rebels from bases in Honduras -- a cause championed by Negroponte, then a rising diplomatic star. In cables and memos, Negroponte made it clear that he saw the "special project" as key to the Reagan administration's strategy of rolling back communism in Central America.
But who needs to respect the laws when there's a war on? Those damned "activist-legislators" need to start carrying out the wishes of the President of the United States. To paraphrase Steven Colbert of the Daily Show- "that would interfere with their 'Constitutional' right of 'separation' and 'Powers'"

And, of course, we can't leave out Bill Luti, a man who supposedly called Anthony Zinni a traitor for giving his professional opinions on the lack of threat posed by Iraq, and who had his fingerprints all over the pressuring of the intelligence community into overhyping Saddam's WMD capabilities.

Oh well, the Bush Administration may be seriously damaging our abilities to deal with the emerging threats that we face around the world, but at least they can provide some dark comedy to lighten up my mood.