The Daily Grasshopper

Well, we haven't had a "Predictable Headline of the Day" for a while, so I'm going to revive that little feature with this gem of a no-brainer from today's New York Times:

"Ridge Warns That Iraq War Could Raise Terrorist Threat" (p. A10)

I guess that's why he gets paid the big bucks, being able to sniff out the terrorist threats like that. Check out this actual quote from the Secretary of Homeland Security: "I think we can anticipate more noise in the system, more threats, because of a potential invasion. I mean, it's fairly predictable, and we see some of that now."

Apparently, the fact that a heightened threat of terrorism is "predictable" isn't grounds for rethinking the "potential invasion." Help me out - am I missing something here, or is our government being aggressively, breathtakingly stupid?

OK, on to the news...

Great quote from White House spinmeister Ari Fleischer on the front page of the New York Times today. Here it is, direct from the horse's mouth:

"Here's the Catch-22 that Saddam Hussein has put himself in. He denied he had these weapons, and then he destroys things he says he never had. If he lies about never having them, how can you trust him when he says he has destroyed them?"

The article is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/04/international/middleeast/04IRAQ.html

If I could be so bold as to pose a couple questions, here, Ari. Is that kind of like the Catch-22 President Bush is facing because he's promising to bring democracy to the Middle East, but now he's taking the rather undemocratic approach of twisting arms to overturn the Turkish parliament's vote rejecting our troops? Or maybe it's like the Catch-22 the president is facing because he insisted that Saddam Hussein disarm, but now that he's disarming, the President is insisting on "regime change" again? Is it kind of like that, Ari? If he lies about these things, Ari, how can we trust him?

Of course, you'll almost never hear a White House correspondent ask questions like these of Fleischer. For the most part, it's softballs, waist-high, and the nation's top-ranking flack swats them out of the park, with little reason to fear that he'll actually face difficult questions like the hypothetical ones I've posed above.

But I wrote "almost never" because there is this one guy, Russell Mokhiber, who has been getting into White House briefings on occasion for a while now, and trying to pin Fleischer down whenever he gets called on (which is not too often, considering that he regularly tries to pin Fleischer down - that sort of thing is discouraged at the White House). Here's an exchange the two had recently:

Russell Mokhiber: You said last week that, "Every step will be taken to protect civilian and innocent life in Iraq." But Pentagon officials have said that under a battle plan called 'shock and awe,' "there will not be a safe place in Baghdad when we attack." Baghdad is a city the size of Paris, with five million residents. If there will not be a safe place in Baghdad when we attack, then how do you plan to protect every civilian life?

Ari Fleischer: First of all, I think that any construing of any statements that are made by anybody at the Pentagon to suggest that the Pentagon does not and will not take every step to protect innocent lives is an unfair representation of what the Pentagon would say. It's well-known how the United States conducts itself in military affairs. We are very proud of the fact that any time force is reluctantly used, the force is applied to military targets and innocents are protected.

Of course, you'll never see any of Mokhiber's questions on the nightly news. All the networks' cameras are there, mind you. And running. You can read more of "Ari and I," Mokhiber's ongoing attempt to flap the unflappable flack, here:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0303-11.htm

Reading Fleischer's attempts to parry Mokhiber's prying questions is even funnier if you've already gotten a look at the "Global View" column in today's Wall Street Journal. There, George Melloan takes French Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin to task for responding to questions on a Sunday morning talk show "with non sequiturs, such as, 'Our position is exactly the same as Russia's.'" He writes further that "Giving clear answers to direct questions is just not French." Well, maybe not, but it doesn't seem to have many adherents in the Bush administration, either, Mr. Melloan.

So the attack on the Turkish stock market materialized, which wasn't much of a surprise when you consider that yesterday officials in Washington were calling it their "best hope of resurrecting the deal" (not counting regime change - I know I'd be sleeping with one eye open if I was Abdullah Gul). The wise old men of the Wall Street Journal are in real high dudgeon today about "The Inscrutable Turks," as their lead editorial calls them. Here's a taste:

"These columns said hopefully last week that democracies are messy but they usually end up doing the right thing. We'll admit we didn't immediately expect to see the exception that proves the rule in Turkey.

Rarely has shortsighted domestic politics sabotaged national interest quite as clearly as in Ankara on Saturday. Stock prices in Istanbul tumbled by more than 12% yesterday on the surprising news that Turkey's parliament had rejected the use of the country (and about $15 million in aid) as a staging area for U.S. troops preparing to invade Iraq. Investors realize that the Turkish political elites have thoroughly botched this one...

To be sure, the Turks have ample cause to be wary of U.S. promises after the first President Bush walked away from the Gulf War with Saddam Hussein still in power. And Turkish opinion polls show large opposition to an Iraq war. But then the role of political leaders is supposed to be to shape public opinion, not follow it, especially when the benefits of assisting the U.S. are so obvious."

Well, someone should alert the Turkish people about all the obviously wonderful benefits they're giving up. But, then again, as we saw yesterday, part of their reluctance had to do with the fact that the U.S. was imposing International Monetary Fund-type "austerity measures" on the loans that were being offered for the troops deal. Today's Wall Street Journal, in a separate article, is pretty explicit about what that means for the people of Turkey:

"The measures unveiled by Mr. Gul as part of the budget package, long demanded by the IMF, include cuts in expenditure on the military, social security, health and investment in the public sector as well as additional revenue-raising measures such as new taxes on property and motor vehicles."

Compare that to what I wrote in yesterday's essay about IMF-mandated structural adjustment:

"Basically, in exchange for foreign investment, governments have to agree to radically restructure their domestic economies to create a favorable climate for corporate interests. That includes raising taxes and interest rates, slashing social spending, loosening restrictions on foreign investors, and gearing the domestic economy for export production. The interests of the people, sort of like the overwhelmingly antiwar position taken by the people of Turkey, typically get short shrift in this process."

Anyone think the Turkish people don't have a right to be a little skeptical about this deal? I mean, I can see how the editors of the Wall Street Journal think it's just grand, and all, but the Turks? Sorry.

I'll tell you who else has a right to be a little skeptical right now: the U.S. troops. Here's a frightening sentence from the Times article quoted earlier:

"While the issues surrounding basing troops in Turkey might seem to argue for a delay in military action, both White House and Pentagon officials say that President Bush is as determined as ever to move forward quickly, and is not likely to be distracted by either logistical or diplomatic obstacles."

Why should he worry about logistical obstacles? It's not his blood that's going to be staining the sands of Iraq. Check out this load of horseshit from President Bush, as reported in today's Boston Herald, which was one of a handful of newspapers that got an exclusive interview yesterday: "I understand the consequences of committing troops, I understand the risks."

And, you know what? For once, I believe him. In fact, he understood the risks so well that when it was his turn to serve, he wanted to go to a place that wasn't risky at all. So while other, less privileged young men went off to fight and die in Vietnam, the Chickenhawk-in-Chief scored himself a nice stateside gig in the Texas Air National Guard. He understands the risks, all right.

Here's something else he said:

"I'm reading the Bible every day. I've thought long and hard about this issue, as you can imagine. This is a difficult decision for any president to make."

Seems like he's been catching up on his Book of Revelations, if you ask me. If anyone out there has Karl Rove's ear, tell him I have one for Boy Wonder to read up on, when he's done with Gog and Magog:

Matthew 7:1-5
"Judge not that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you. And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me cast the mote out of thine eye; and lo, the beam is in thine own eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye."

Of course, there are those who think the "difficult decision" to which Bush refers so piously has already been made. Going back to the "Global View" op-ed in the Wall St. Journal:

"What the UMP [Union for the Parliamentary Majority] leaders in the French National Assembly have clearly realized is that the war in Iraq has already begun. U.S. and British aircraft are attacking Iraqi mobile ground-to-ground missile sites that have been moved south to threaten U.S. troops in Kuwait. U.S. forces are showering Iraqis with leaflets telling them how to surrender when they come under attack. The Shiite tribes in the south are seeking assurance from the Americans that, if they come over the U.S. side, they won't be deserted again to Saddam's tender mercies as they were in 1991. the Kurds in the north already are functioning as an autonomous state and will most likely provide a staging area for U.S. troops if Turkey's parliament persists in denying the U.S. use of Turkish soil."

The Times confirms the airstrikes, meaning that my prediction about the U.S. trying to provoke a "hot incident" to get this war kicked off could very well come to pass:

"Iraq said six civilians were killed and 15 were wounded, although it denied reporters the chance to visit the site or interview residents. The United States military said the planes struck air defense targets in response to antiaircraft fire.

In Washington, military officials said that of some 60,000 troops ordered over the weekend to begin moving toward the Persian Gulf region, 26,000 were from the First Armored Division, based at Fort Riley, Kan., and in Germany; 24,000 from the First Cavalry Division, based at Fort Hood, Tex.; and 10,000 from the Second Armored Cavalry, based at Fort Polk, La.. President Bush visited the First Calvary in early January, from his ranch in Texas, and told the troops that they might soon be called upon to make sacrifices for the country."

You put that many troops that close to Iraq, and something's just bound to happen. Just the way the Bush Gang wants it. And then buckle in, because it's going to be an awful ride.

You know what else Bush told the Herald reporter yesterday? "I'm sleeping well at night. I'm sustained by the prayers of the people."

At least someone's sleeping well at night.