First, a story that is still giving me a happy–perhaps the second happiest U.S. politics story going after Fitzgerald’s perseverence:
Texas Court Issues Warrant for DeLay
A Texas court issued a warrant Wednesday for former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to appear for booking, where he is likely to face the fingerprinting and photo mug shot he had hoped to avoid.
…
DeLay is charged with conspiracy to violate state election laws and money laundering, felony counts that triggered House Republican rules that forced him to step aside as majority leader.
Sigh. I love how far old Tom has fallen from threatening judges over Shiavo. I bet that preparing to face a courtroom DeLay is regretting (or maybe reconsidering in a different context) his comments about how judges were out of control and that “Judicial independence does not equal judicial supremacy”
I was also amused to read this morning the Financial Times’ transcript of remarks made by Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, chief of staff to former secretary of state Colin Powell, to the New America Foundation, a Washington think-tank. [via]
But if you want to read how the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal flummoxed the process, read that book. And, of course, there are other names in there, Under Secretary of Defense Doug Feith, whom most of you probably know Tommy Frank said was the “stupidest blankety blank man in the world.” He was. Let me testify to that. He was. Seldom in my life have I met a dumber man. And yet, and yet, after the Secretary of State agrees to a $400 billion department, rather than a $30 billion department, having control, at least in the immediate post-war period in Iraq, this man is put in charge. Not only is he put in charge, he is given carte blanche to tell the State Department to go screw themselves in a closet somewhere. That’s not making excuses for the State Department. That’s telling you how decisions were made and telling you how things got accomplished.
No real surprises there–the ineptitude of the people appointed by the Bush administration has passed from shocking to accepted as humourous. This part is pretty blunt, though, for someone who actually worked at the top levels:
So you’ve got this collegiality there between the Secretary of Defense and the Vice President. And then you’ve got a President who is not versed in international relations. And not too much interested in them either.
Again, no surprises in content, but surprising to see it actually said.
So we started with happy, moved to you-have-to-laugh, and now I’m closing with the actually tragic.
I refer you once again to the always perfect Body and Soul, for a discursive post about Human Rights First’s new report on deaths in U.S. custody. “Twenty-seven of those cases are suspected or confirmed homicides — at least seven in which prisoners were tortured to death.” It’s not pleasant, but it’s our job not to turn away; as the report says “Lax policies and inadequate investigations create a culture of impunity”, and we can’t have that in a civilized society.
