ThePoliticalCat: News this past week

Hurricane Katrina: Isn't it just wonderful, I mean, downright fucking miraculous, that the Federal Government found time to assist in the rescue of frozen embryos from the rising waters of Hurricane Katrina? While ignoring the many drowning ill, elderly, poor, and otherwise trapped residents of NOLA?

The "New Iraq Plan." Has everyone in the U.S. gone stark raving insane? Newsweek talks about blaming the army, and winning hearts and minds, and the like. More here. My understanding is that the army is at the command of the, uh, commander in chief. He's the shithead who formulates policy and communicates his decisions on how that policy is to be implemented to the army chiefs, who then pass the orders down the chain of command. This is an oversimplification, granted. But I hardly think blaming the "boots on the ground" is going to save the Idiot-in-Chief's backside at this late stage of the game. There's a reason grunts are called grunts and a war criminal is addressed as "Mr. President." And mode of address is a major criterion in determining culpability for war crimes.

Also, Mr. War Criminal, it's a little late to be "winning hearts and minds." The vast majority are no longer winnable, and you've apparently already offed those who were.

You bomb someone's independent sovereign nation, rape and murder their daughters, subject their wives and sisters and mothers to unacceptable humiliation, not to mention bullets, kill their children, torture their husbands, brothers, and fathers, destroy their hospitals and schools, all while ensuring your best buds, the war profiteers, make their cut of the spoils - and then you want to win their hearts and minds. The man is clearly stark raving crazy.

Meanwhile, he's babbling on about how Nouri al-Maliki has promised to go along with his "Surge" plan. Likely story. I just can't see al-Maliki welcoming some 3,000 or more Kurdish Peshmerga units (part of the "surge") into Baghdad.

The Kurds are mostly followers of a very ancient religion known variously as Yazidi, Yarsani, or Alevi. This religion predates Zoroastrianism, although some of its mystical doctrines seem to resurface in various Sufi sects. This religion also instructs its followers to dissemble about its existence, which, when you think about it, is likely a means of ensuring the survival of its adherents, since conversion by the sword was the order of the day among the various religions that sprang up in the Middle-East.

The Kurds are also not Arabs ethnically, nor native Arab speakers. They are hated by the Turks, the Arabs, and the Persians (Iran). Most Muslims think of them as devil-worshippers. And these well-armed folk are going to be sent to Baghdad, home of Sunni and Shia Iraqi Arabs. They don't even speak the same language!!! Read about it, ye mighty, and despair.

While the Kurds deny that the Peshmerga are going to Baghdad at all, a spokesman for the Baghdadi Arabs has said that Sunni and Shia Baghdadis will unite against the Kurds. Regrettably, I can no longer find the article to cite it.

Oh, surprise: A spokesman for the Shia followers of Moqtada al-Sadr has already stated that any additional troops can expect to go home in coffins.

This does not bode well.

In other news, Saddam Hussain's half-brother and a former aide were both hanged with indecent haste today, and one of them was apparently decapitated as a result of the hanging. Tasty news. Sunni Arabs in Baghdad are furious, the whole world is disgusted, and the incompetents in charge of both countries are wetting their pants. What's that line from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner?