Busy, busy week folks. Tony Blair stands proudly behind his credulity and insists that he really is an idiot while Bush is getting tagged from all sides as a steady stream of officials are coming forth and speaking out about the WMD fiasco. Condi and "evil genius" Cheney try futilely to buffer the blows. The Kuwaitis are looking like Southern Baptists, the truth comes out about stonewalling elections in Iraq and Joe-mentum is in full swing.

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All Sexed Up

Judge Lord Hutton this week cleared Tony Blair of any wrongdoing in the apparent suicide death of former UN weapons inspector, David Kelly. Readers will recall the Dr. Kelly was named as the source for a BBC story which claimed that Blair, et al, had "sexed up" intelligence to support invading Iraq. After being exposed as the source, Kelly immediately slit his wrist.

Now the real issue here is did the government believe the ridiculous claims they were making? Another way we might word the question: is the British government populated by clodpolls? The BBC report said no, and David Kelly was the source of that allegation. Lord Hutton comes along and confirms that, indeed, the government is populated by clodpolls:

"The allegations reported by [BBC reporter] Mr. Gilligan on 29 May, 2003 that the government probably knew that the 45-minutes claim was wrong before the government decided to put it in the dossier was an allegation that was unfounded."

What does that mean exactly? This: the claims were false but Tony Blair did not know that. Statistically, Blair's claimed ignorance is not surprising. There is a vast universe of things which Tony Blair does not know. But he certainly should have known this. Given all the other intelligence which contraindicated or contradicted the crazy claims of 45 minute missile strikes and nuclear armaments, Blair firmly believed the fictional phooey, peed himself and set off to warn the world. Why? The BHC imagines Blair and his finely honed logical skills reasoned thusly: there is no evidence that Saddam cannot deliver a missile strike within 45 minutes, therefore, he must have this capability. Really, that is the kernel of the Blair government's position. There certainly was no evidence that he had this capability. How could there be? He didn't have the capability. This is much like the logical quandry the UN found itself in when Rumsfeld, unsatisfied that UN weapons inspections were finding nothing, haughtily demanded proof that Iraq did not have WMD and that failure to find them was simply proof that Hussein was hiding them.

Great Bloody Lord Hutton has no mandate in this case to pass judgement on the veracity of the intelligence in question and admits this. He is merely there to hang the BBC out to dry, which he does. And Tony Blair proudly struts on, his idiocy vindicated.


http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2004/01/28/hutton040128
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/28/international/europe/28CND-BLAI.html?hp

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Rice Paddy

Condoleeza Rice (no, not the Chevron oil tanker, but that is confusing) is bristling after a series of political body shots were administered to Bush and the gang regarding the WMD situation and the intelligence the White House used to justify the invasion of Iraq. The heaviest of these blows was the resignation of David Kay, chief of the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), who came out and said matter of factly that there is simply nothing there and, even better, that the UN weapons inspections had done the job of ridding Iraq of its weapons stockpiles. Perhaps sensing things spinning a tad out of control, Rice, who famously claimed that the next evidence of Saddam's WMD might come in the form a mushroom cloud, unremarkably says:

Saddam Hussein had contemptuously rejected many opportunities to tell the world about the weapons of mass destruction that he had or did not have.

Now, imagine a world wherein every nation, or at least the ones Bush wants to invade, need continuously proclaim that they do not have weapons of mass destruction. Nothing much would get done.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/29/international/middleeast/29CND-WEAP.html?hp

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The Wrong Way

In discussing the impending vote in Iraq and the possible ramifications of a direct election, the Coalition Provisional Authority's constitutional law adviser said, "if you move too fast, the wrong people could get elected."

We know we don't want that because an unremitting hell will be loosed upon the world when the wrong people get elected. And we know this from first hand experience: Florida, 2000.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/27/opinion/27HIRO.html?pagewanted=2

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Downgraded

The professional development of most wild-eyed despots around the world generally sees a steady progression from the larval, tinpot dictator stage, through the "grave and gathering danger" phase to finally become an "imminent threat," a state to which every ambitious tyrant aspires. Amazingly, Saddam Hussein seems to be regressing through these stages and is doing so through no action on his part at all. At least, we might believe that listening to Bush and Cheney these days. A year ago, Hussein most definitely was an imminent threat, capable of launching chaos on the world in 45 minutes, which had Tony Blair quaking. Today, he hovers in the "grave and gathering" phase. Another year of this and he'll just be a mean bully in a Tikrit school yard.


http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040127-3.html

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Swear on the Bible

Two Kuwaiti lawmakers have submitted a bill calling for jail terms of up to 10 years and hefty fines for anyone who insults the Muslim, Christian or Jewish holy books and religious prophets.

When W. gets word of this, a few simple changes, like deleting the words Muslim and Jewish, and the BHC can imagine the bill being marched up to Congress for approval as the next Constitutional amendment. Right after the marriage thing, of course.

http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/38515A21-3BC4-4D32-BE7C-C0C837E0E150.htm

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MoJomentum

The American Physical Society has convened a special panel session to decide whether the term, Joementum, label a physical state achieved by a complete absence of momentum in all possible frames of reference or that it might describe the anti-parallel momentum of a single, annoying particle relative to other particles in a system.

http://We just made this up.

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Pure Evil

Responding to the description in a Los Angeles Times interview that he is "the sinister force behind the president's policies", Dick Cheney asked, "What's wrong with my image?" Cheney apparently sees nothing wrong with being a sinister force, indeed, fesses up and admits to reveling in the role: "Am I the evil genius in the corner that nobody ever sees come out of his hole?"..."It's a nice way to operate, actually."
Of course, we at the BHC and many others have known this for sometime. The confession is oddly satisfying and, we suspect, a load off his evil-genius mind, too.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47467-2004Jan25_2.html

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Double D

In a speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland this week, Dick Cheney continued to reveal himself and warn others:

"There comes a time when deceit and defiance must be seen for what they are. At that point, a gathering danger must be directly confronted."

This ominous utterance is something that could have, and may have already come out of Howard Dean's mouth, or any other concerned American citizen who sees the Bush tribe as the grave and gathering danger they really are.


http://www.azdailysun.com/non_sec/nav_includes/story.cfm?storyID=80910

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NEA, No Way

In an apparent about-face from his Rebublican base of self-righteous, xenophobic goons, W suddenly wants to seem urbane and refined. Bush will seek a major increase in funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. Inspiring a reaction close to that evoked by the trip-to-the-moon speech, people associated with the NEA are probably pleased and, no doubt, completely mystified. Immediately, conservatives vowed to fight the proposal as they generally view the NEA "as a threat to the nation's moral standards." Those shining moral standards which George W. Bush has so proudly held up before the world.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/29/politics/29BUDG.html?hp

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