Backseat driver from America

Nanci Griffith sings about one of the main reasons the world is in such a mess. Teach your children well.

It's A Hard Life Wherever You Go

Lyrics at site.

Three Crazy Bastards and Maverick

On Siegelman and Rove

I'm sure we're all aware of the case of Repugs v Siegelman.

My earnest hope is that the current DoJ does not prosecute Rove. If they do, Bush will pardon Turdblossom before it ever gets anywhere near a courtroom. They might do it for just that reason. Bush might just preemptively pardon him anyway.

Since the end of this maladministration is in sight, I think everybody needs to wait until these crooks are out from behind 'executive privilege' and back down on the farm before coming down on them like a ton of bricks.

Panama

Crazy day yesterday, but an extraordinary trip across Panama.

Cristobal

Gambon

The Canal

There was a feeling of sadness throughout though, as yesterday was Mom-in-law's funeral. We called Dad-in-law when we got back to the ship though it wasn't the same as being there. He's doing as well as can be expected and I'd like to thank you all for your words of condolence, on his behalf and Mrs. F's. It means quite a lot to us at this sad time. Thank you.

Aargh, Mateys, there's buggery aboard!

No, I'm not talkin' about the Fixers' cruise on the Raging Queen Mary, although you never know...

The U.S. Navy seems to be returning to its original purpose and taking on pirates in the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf. Ah, for the good old days of rum, sodomy, and the lash...

From the Beeb:

Pirates are not just peg-legs, parrots and pistols. In this three part series, Nick Rankin finds out how they have adapted to changing times.

They sure have! Sounds like a Jimmy Buffett concert...

Thanks to PaleMoon.

Normalcy = Bush is Insane

You can go to Cursor and click on the 23 links in the following paragraphs, but I put this in because of the last sentence.

In Basra, a complex conflict generates multiple theories about what's really going on, as U.S. planes join the attack on militia strongholds in an attempt to break the stalemate, and Prime Minister Nuri al Maliki extends the deadline for militants to turn in their weapons.

Also in Basra, an oil pipeline bombing and unstable conditions send world oil prices up, and British commanders, who were apparently "unaware of the operation until just before it began" find their exit strategy unraveling, while Al Hayat reports more deadly U.S. bombings in Hilla.

With Baghdad under curfew and Green Zone diplomats urged to take cover, U.S. armor forces appear to take the lead in the offensive against the militia in Sadr City, and Maliki vows to "fight to the end," despite protests and setbacks.

As 'Blackwater fever' spreads across Iraq, and lack of sanitation and drinking water exacerbates the humanitarian crisis, an Iraqi lawyer and refugee explains his unwillingness to return: "Iraq is not a suitable place to live as a human ... Everything is broken there."

Revelations about dungeon-like conditions in an Iraqi-run prison in Fallujah appear to undermine the narrative of success in Anbar, as the British government admits "substantive breaches" of a human rights convention that prohibits torture.

In a speech at the Air Force Museum, President Bush talks of "normalcy returning back to Iraq," [...]

Abso-fucking-lutely un-fucking-believable. All I can say is, will someone puh-leeze fast forward us to 1.20.09.

Because It's Right

Excellent article by Anna Quindlen on the need and moral obligation for a better GI Bill. Today's 'please read'.

It's hard to serve your country in Baghdad or Kabul. It shouldn't be hard to pay for college once you've come back home.

In 1944 President Roosevelt signed the Servicemen's Readjustment Act, commonly known as the GI Bill. It was one of the most visionary and transformative pieces of legislation in American history, providing free education for returning veterans. Its champions believed it was the moral response to the sacrifice those service members had made, but it also solved an economic and social problem. An influx of millions of unemployed and untrained men into the labor force could have triggered another Great Depression. But with 5 million of those soldiers becoming students instead, the result was the ascendancy of the middle class and a period of enormous prosperity. Every dollar spent on the GI Bill was multiplied many times over in benefits to the postwar U.S. economy.

The answer is no, but Senator Webb is the author of legislation that would help change that. His revamped GI Bill would cover the full cost of the most expensive public institution in any given state; World War II vets like Lautenberg and Warner are enthusiastic supporters, as are dozens of other senators. (Oddly enough, Webb has not been able to get John McCain, who received the ultimate taxpayer-funded education at the Naval Academy, to take a position on the bill.) The source of the opposition is shocking: the Department of Defense, whose leaders argue that offering enhanced educational opportunities to soldiers would hurt retention. Military brass apparently tremble at the notion that multiple deployments, starvation wages and inadequate medical care might not be enough to hold on to their people.)my em)

[...] That's half what is spent annually on recruitment and the cost of only a couple of days' worth of war in Iraq. But, more important, Rieckhoff says it's one of those costs he suspects the American people would support happily. "If the president stood up tomorrow and said, 'I need $2 billion to send vets to college,' people would be doing bake sales and carwashes across America," he says. "They can find that kind of money in the seat cushions on Capitol Hill."

The original GI Bill set the standard for innovative and audacious legislation. It was right in both senses of that word: the sensible thing to do, and the moral thing as well. And it helped expunge the shameful treatment of World War I veterans, many of whom had found themselves unemployed and destitute. The Department of Defense says it's a different era now, with a war that drags on and a volunteer Army, than it was when the GI Bill was first signed. But it's the same era, too. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that unemployment among young veterans is three times the national average. Already some Iraq vets are homeless and have substance-abuse problems.

Offering these men and women a college education is the least we can do. It's not free; they've already paid, in Fallujah and Kabul. If Congress wants an economic-stimulus package, this is a great one. A Topeka, Kans., lawyer and national commander of the American Legion, Harry Colmery, was the architect of the original GI Bill. He asked a question that is as resonant today as it was then: "If we can spend 200 to 300 billion dollars to teach our men and women to kill, why quibble over a billion or so to help them to have the opportunity to earn economic independence and to enjoy the fruits of freedom?"

I received benefits under the Vietnam-era GI Bill. $200 a month while I was in college and a loan guarantee to buy my first house. It wasn't very much, but I was glad to get it.

That was 35 years ago. It's a different world and we need to do a lot more for today's Vets than we are doing.

If it comes down to bake sales, don't swim for several days after eating my bagels.

Switching sides

This headline in the TimesUK about the intra-Shia war in Basra says it all:

Iraqi police in Basra shed their uniforms, kept their rifles and switched sides

I don't really know how many 'sides' there are in Iraq, but it appears to me that the U.S. is arming them all so they can fight it out amongst themselves to see who will have the honor of throwing us out.

We used to play a game in Marine Corps recruit training called 'Switch'. Here's how it went: you put one thumb in your mouth and the other in your ass. At the signal, 'switch'.

I got an idea: let's divert the faulty ammo we're sending to Afghanistan to Iraq. Oughta be good fer a few laughs...

The fruits of my research...

As you may know I will stoop very low overcome any obstacle in my never-ending quest to research subject matter. Besides, when Fixer's away, this ol' mouse will play!

Whilst researching the BAR for the post a couple down, I came across this one:



I counted 19 rounds. Now put yer hand on the barrel, stud...

That was just a tease. Here's one with a history and demonstration of the Tommy gun and the BAR. About 5 minutes. This one shows what firing the BAR is really like. Note how the shooter walks the rounds in from a coupla hundred yards almost to her feet! Heh.

Now the 'stooping' part. Here's one that I have retitled from a phrase common in my motorcycle club days, "Duck! It's another drunk broad with a gun!".

See? I told ya automatic weapons are fun!

The tour ...

A few shots from around the Queen. Here and here.

Your Tax Dollars At Work

NYTimes. Links at site.

Since 2006, when the insurgency in Afghanistan sharply intensified, the Afghan government has been dependent on American logistics and military support in the war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

But to arm the Afghan forces that it hopes will lead this fight, the American military has relied since early last year on a fledgling company led by a 22-year-old man whose vice president was a licensed masseur.

Looks like DoD paid extra for a stroke job. Read on.

With the award last January of a federal contract worth as much as nearly $300 million, the company, AEY Inc., which operates out of an unmarked office in Miami Beach, became the main supplier of munitions to Afghanistan’s army and police forces.

Since then, the company has provided ammunition that is more than 40 years old and in decomposing packaging, according to an examination of the munitions by The New York Times and interviews with American and Afghan officials. Much of the ammunition comes from the aging stockpiles of the old Communist bloc, including stockpiles that the State Department and NATO have determined to be unreliable and obsolete, and have spent millions of dollars to have destroyed.

Moreover, tens of millions of the rifle and machine-gun cartridges were manufactured in China, making their procurement a possible violation of American law. The company’s president, Efraim E. Diveroli, was also secretly recorded in a conversation that suggested corruption in his company’s purchase of more than 100 million aging rounds in Albania, according to audio files of the conversation.

But problems with the ammunition were evident last fall in places like Nawa, Afghanistan, an outpost near the Pakistani border, where an Afghan lieutenant colonel surveyed the rifle cartridges on his police station’s dirty floor. Soon after arriving there, the cardboard boxes had split open and their contents spilled out, revealing ammunition manufactured in China in 1966.

“This is what they give us for the fighting,” said the colonel, Amanuddin, who like many Afghans has only one name. “It makes us worried, because too much of it is junk.” Ammunition as it ages over decades often becomes less powerful, reliable and accurate.

Lemme 'splain a little what 'less powerful' can mean. I haven't fired an automatic weapon in over forty years (One of these. Me want!), but I remember it fondly. It's bigtime fun on the range, not so fun if you're in an assault. Either way, just one 'less powerful' round can ruin yer whole day. When you pull the trigger, the thing goes 'blametyblametyblamety' until you release the trigger. What you do not want to hear is 'blametyblametypfft', for the next thing you will hear, if you hear it at all, is liable to be 'ker-fucking-POWIE' as the next good round runs into the one that only made it halfway down the barrel and the weapon explodes in your face.

Not to mention the thrill, I am sure, of taking aim at an attacking enemy and ending up with a pile of corroded smoldering bullets around your feet.

Several officials said the problems would have been avoided if the Army had written contracts and examined bidders more carefully.

Gee, ya think? 'Examining bidders' has not been Bush administration policy.

But records provided by an official concerned about the company’s performance, a whistle-blower in the Balkans and an arms-trafficking researcher in Europe, as well as interviews with several people who work in state arsenals in Europe, show that AEY shopped from stocks in the old Eastern bloc, including Albania, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Montenegro, Romania and Slovakia.

These stockpiles range from temperature-controlled bunkers to unheated warehouses packed with exposed, decaying ammunition. Some arsenals contain ammunition regarded in munitions circles as high quality. Others are scrap heaps of abandoned Soviet arms.

The Army’s contract did little to distinguish between the two.

Yeah, a bullet's a bullet. It's just for the wogs. Ship it.

Problems with Albania’s decaying munitions were apparent earlier this month, when a depot outside Tirana, Albania’s capital, erupted in a chain of explosions, killing at least 22 people, injuring at least 300 others and destroying hundreds of homes.

Oops...

The company also hired a local businessman, Kosta Trebicka, to remove the ammunition from its wooden crates and hermetically sealed metal boxes — the standard military packaging that protects munitions from moisture and dirt, and helps ensure its reliability and ease of transport in the field.

Mr. Trebicka, in interviews, said Mr. Diveroli wanted to discard the crates and metal boxes to reduce the weight and cost of air shipments and maximize profits. Several American officials said they suspected that the packaging was removed because it bore Chinese markings and the ammunition’s age.

“Put very simply, many of the people involved in smuggling arms to Africa are also exactly the same as those involved in Pentagon-supported deals, like AEY’s shipments to Afghanistan and Iraq,” he said.

The article runs to seven pages but reads pretty quick. It goes into a lot of detail. Our procurement system is as faulty as the ammo.

Maybe we better budget for some bayonets for our Afghani troops so they can defend the other half of the outfit who are clearing stoppages. Yeesh.

Abduction Ad Absurdio

Raw Story

A spokesman for the Baghdad security plan, Tahsin al-Sheikhly, was kidnapped from his Baghdad home by armed men on Thursday, security officials told AFP.

The officials said Sheikhly, a Sunni who often appeared with U.S. military and embassy officials at news conferences to tout the successes of the crackdown that began in Baghdad and surrounding areas more than a year ago, was abducted from his home in Baghdad's Al-Amin neighbourhood at around 2:30 pm (1130 GMT).

Irony is deader'n a carp.

Surreal ...

Yesterday was the most surreal day I've ever had aboard a cruise ship.

As I was making this post yesterday, and email popped in my inbox. It was from my brother-in-law and as soon as I saw his name, I knew what it was. Mrs. F can read me better than anyone and all she said was "what's wrong?"

I had to tell the Mrs that her mother passed away at 0200 Wednesday morning. Now, regular readers know this was not unexpected. Mom-in-law has been on hospice care since August of last year and we planned for this contingency. A few calls on the sat phone to Dad-in-law assured us that everything was being handled according to plan (a word of advice, do not call ship to shore unless it's absolutely necessary; God it's fucking expensive). That accomplished, we continue on.

Being three days from land when we got the news and Dad-in-law is adamant we don't cut our vacation short, we took yesterday to pay our respects privately. Being Jewish, she'll be buried on Friday and there's no way we could have made it home for the funeral anyway.

I know we have some of the most generous readers here at the Brain, and though not necessary, in lieu of flowers or the like, a donation to Sloan Kettering Cancer Center would be appreciated if you're inclined to do something. Thanks in advance if you do.

I'll be back to regular blogging this afternoon with a drunken tour of Queen Mary 2 once I finish my breakfast and a cigarette on deck.

Ooops!

Given the fast response time of modern counter-battery radar, this is the modern equivalent of the WWI adage not to light three cigarettes with one match. I saw an Iraqi mortarman on TV today drop the round into the tube and haul ass. This is why.

Or maybe his own round cooked off. In any case, you are about to see a guy's health record get seriously fucked up.

"I am an idealist" and other bullshit

From McCain't's speech in L.A. today:

I hold my position because I hate war, and I know very well and very personally how grievous its wages are. But I know, too, that we must sometimes pay those wages to avoid paying even higher ones later.

Boy, that's a Repug policy if I ever heard one: avoid paying higher wages at any cost.

He's lying about 'hating war' too. He just hates to lose. Which we're going to, after, of course, paying the highest of 'wages'.

The envelopes, please ...

Here's some designs for the Bush library at The Back-of-the-Envelope Design Contest.

Bush's War

In case you missed the two-part special on Frontline, four and a half hours on the lies, deceit, politics, and incompetence that got us to where we are in Iraq, take your time and go watch it in one nice neat pile.

Update:

I thought 'Bush's War' was pretty good. It tamped the events of the last 5 years into a nice neat brick. Ray McGovern calls it "Frontline's Timid Iraq Retrospective". The show was right as far as it went, but he's right.

Notably missing was any allusion to the unconscionable role of the Fourth Estate as indiscriminate cheerleader for the home team, nor any mention that the invasion was a serious violation of international law. But those omissions, I suppose, should have come as no surprise.

Nor was it a surprise that any viewer hoping for insight into why Cheney and Bush were so eager to attack Iraq was left with very thin gruel.

“(1) To establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of United States Armed Forces in Iraq,” or

“(2) To exercise United States control of the oil resources of Iraq.”

Much more.

A prayer

Please Lord, grant me just one earthly desire. All the punches I should have thrown and didn't rolled into one. Just one. Amen.

"Maybe now is when the real dark period begins."

Mark Morford

Maybe now is when the real dark period begins. Sure the last seven years of the inept Bush regime have been miserable and shameful, sure we've been humiliated, mortified a thousand ways from Sunday by an administration that would yank the legs off a dog if it meant a thank-you note from Dubai.

But now Bush is in his final year. This is both the good news, and also the very, very bad news. Because we are now in the death throes of the worst administration in modern history, entering the period of serious consequences, of economic collapse, environmental impact, record oil prices, international recoil, rashes, boils, inexplicable vomiting. Fun for the whole family.

Know this for a fact. Bush does not care. He is detached, supercilious, viciously ignorant of anything but how beautifully he has served his corporate masters, of how he has raked in billions of dollars for Halliburton and Lockheed Martin and Exxon and the coal industry, mercenary armies and military manufacturers and his dad's Saudi friends. He is on no one's side but theirs, and he always has been.

...

But I'm more with those who say, no, the truth is we will never truly recover, that America's former ranking as Gilded and Irreproachable Empire No. 1 is dead and gone. India and China are dramatically changing the game, peak oil is nigh, fresh water is the new gold, the planet itself is in paroxysm, Mother Nature is quickly revealing her hand — or rather, maybe just that one big, stormy middle finger.

But maybe this is the best news of all. Because the sort of gluttonous empire Bush so disgustingly represented was doomed to failure. The center could not hold. Dubya may not have hastened the apocalypse like the evangelicals desperately prayed he would, but he certainly is hastening the end of the bloviated American ego.

So maybe the real question is not can we return to our former ill-gotten superpower glory, insular and unparalleled and reckless and arrogant, or even peaceful and defensive and ironclad. The true question is, do we have the slightest clue what we want to become instead?

I am reminded of the old saying, "Be what you wish to seem".

Fat chance.

Leaving ...

Well, we're just south of D.C. and the weather is unsettled. Makes for a good night's sleep but going on deck today doesn't look like it's gonna happen. Anchors aweigh ...