Despite America's orangeness, the BHC has seen a relatively benign week, as boneheads seem to be taking a break this holiday season. But, nonetheless, there is still some grazing to be done. The Pentagon has a new "support the troops" program and the White House administration announces that the case of mad cow is not a "terrorist act." And...oh yeah, Tony Blair is an idiot.

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No Terror Here

Bush Administraton officials are trying to make their increase in the Terrorist Threat Level look like it has some meaning by trying to scare the bejeezus out of the public with claims of terrorist plots and the cancellation of flights last week. French officials, responding to what they should, by rights, expect to be legitimate concerns, cancelled six Air France flights from Paris to Los Angeles and, in doing so, fell victim to the Bush administration's flailing as they found no "terrorist links" among any of the people claimed by the White House to be terrorist suspects. An example of the "solid intelligence" the Bush administration continues to rely on: one person on the list, a Tunisian with supposed ties to Al-Qaeda, was not even in France at the time. By appearances, it looks like the White House is pulling a chain just to watch the French jump. And the French will jump as they certainly won't want the fall out from any perceived lack of cooperation should anything actually happen. But how many more times can this happen?


www.nytimes.com/2003/12/26/national/26TERR.html

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Or Here

The US beef industry has been skewered by its own petard of animal abuse as the first case of mad cow disease in the US was reported last week. Many countries immediately closed their borders to American beef. In a comforting statement, Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman declared that the single reported case of BSE was "not terrorist related." Apart from Tom Ridge and the venerable Ms. Veneman, does this strike anyone as an effective terrorist strategy? Statements like that are designed to do one thing and that is distract most Americans from the real fear that the beef industries in general have been engaged in horrendous practices for decades and that a major outbreak of the disease is skirting the doorstep. Bush's own deregulation of the cattle industry here has been a setback to anyone who sees the need to improve practices and the quality of the food supply in this country.


www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml

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MIA Brother

Howard Dean, though the entire Democratic party is guitly of this, appears to be trying to sabatoge his own campaign with some ill-advised back-slapping which is, no doubt, in response to accusations that he has no foreign policy experience (and Bush did?) and bugged out of Vietnam. It seems he is taking heat for completing a sentence beginning "My closest living relative in the armed services is," with "is a POW/MIA in Laos, but is almost certainly dead."

Now that certainly looks like a fishing expedition to the BHC and Dean took the line right up to the sinker. Dean's brother was never in the military and was in Laos as nothing more than a civilian. Dean, though, seems to be answering these assaults with an almost Bush-like teflon coating. Nothing said, either erroneous or dumb, seems to be sticking.


www.nytimes.com/2003/12/23/politics/campaigns/23DEAN.html

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Stop Loss

The Pentagon is back to pissing off US military forces, always a good move in time of war, by issuing a "stop-loss" order which now prevents enlisted personnel from leaving the military when their contracts are over, either through retirements or other departures. Of course, the stop-loss order demonstrates clearly that the Pentagon is fearful that troop strength is not sufficient to continue the mission in Iraq despite Rumsfeld's proselytizing to the contrary. What the Pentagon has done, in effect, is started a draft. They are simply drafting those who are already enlisted. Conscription doesn't get any easier than that.


www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36979-2003Dec28.html

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Blair Witch Project

By what curious political calculus does Tony Blair arrive at the notion that, on Christmas day, the world needs once again to hear that there is indeed, "massive evidence of a huge system of clandestine laboratories" in Iraq? Long after the Bush administration abandoned the rubric of WMD and refracted their rhetoric down the path of humanitarianism and despite Bush's own Iraq Survey Group finding nothing and essentially declaring that there is nothing to find, Prime Minister Blair seems bent on a good flogging. And a good flogging he shall receive: Paul Bremer, de facto head of the Iraqi Governing Council, flatly dismissed the claim as untrue. Blair's source of the massive evidence remains unknown as does the massive evidence. Why Blair would choose to even talk about this now remains a mystery, sealed forever away in the recesses of his oddly shaped mind.

observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,6903,1113182,00.html

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Almanac Maniacs

With an insightful stroke, the FBI is now encouraging local law enforcement agencies to be on the alert for people carrying almanacs. The bold move, which will surely see the demise of terrorism as the world currently knows it, saw a bulletin sent to about 18,000 police organisations around the country which urged officers to watch out for suspicious almanac carriers during traffic stops and other investigations, "especially if the books are annotated in suspicious ways." Like with drawings of anthrax bombs and such. Apparently the bulletin noted that almanacs might also be used for good and not just evil. Doubtless the FBI thinks the innocent use of alamanacs is an unlikely byproduct of what are essentially tools of the devil.


www.salon.com/news/wire/2003/12/29/fbi/index.html

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Thanks to Spud for that last one. That was choice.