How did it feel? It was out of control.

I watched Control Room the other night. It's a documentary about Al Jazeera, both their reporting and their reception, in the build-up to and beginning of the Second Gulf War, to be known to history as "Bush's Folly." It's not a terribly thick slice of the network, focusing mainly on 3-5 Al Jazeera journalists and staff, a few US cable and network news reporters, and one military information officer. There's tremendous file footage of Bush and Rumsfeld lying through their teeth (especially Rumsfeld...the quotes they found for that guy are more damaging than anything someone could have made up). Example: in the early going, Rumsfeld tells the cameras that "Al Jazeera will say anything, they'll make up anything, to validate their point of view" (Quote not exact because it's been a week and I don't remember it exactly). Sure, I'm willing to bet that in spring 2003 that sounded great, but since two years later it turns out that Rumsfeld himself engages in precisely that behavior, the proverbial shit has hit the fan and scattered its fecal residue all over his morally bankrupt face.

Which probably excites him a bit, because I bet anything that guy's into scat.

Oh yeah, back to my point. It's all like deja vu all over again, as Yogi would say. As kidnappings, murders, and good old fashioned unrest continue to spread across Iraq, Rumsfeld stands before reporters and attempts to blow more smoke up their asses -- thinking to himself that if it worked before it should work again. Sorry, Rummy, but you've gone once too often to the well. He puffs and puffs, according to CNN:

However, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, while criticizing media coverage of the war Tuesday, told reporters at the Pentagon he didn't think there was a civil war in Iraq.
"They want just the opposite," Rumsfeld said of the Iraqi people. "And they've demonstrated the courage to show that they want just the opposite."

Uh huh. When you have nothing to say and no facts to back you up, simply repeat the assertion. "Blue is my favorite color. And I have demonstrated the leadership to show that blue is my favorite color."

Here's another gem from the Rumsfeld Rose-colored World Almanac:

Rumsfeld acknowledged that violence is slowing Iraq's progress and that militias
pose problems for the government, but he said the number of attacks hadn't increased substantially.
"I think that these things go in bursts, and the burst has passed," he said. "And it's been handled pretty well. And there will be another burst at some point down the road, simply because that's the nature of that part of the world and the situation."

I'm glad the burst has passed, because just this morning another 50 workers were taken hostage, this time from a private Iraqi security firm. Must be a false report... And of course, when in doubt, you can always go to the ace in the hole: it's the Mideast and things just happen. WTF? This explanation is about as useful as frozen shit on a stick. I guess the "situation" he's referring to is the Bush administration's illegal and ill-conceived invasion of Iraq with subsequent occupation and power vaccuum. Yeah, that situation. I guess they forgot to requisition the thousands of roses needed for the Iraqi civilians to strew them at our feet.

So let's recap. You create all the conditions necessary for a civil war, in other words, you create the "situation," then you blame it on "the nature of that part of the world and the situation."

I'm sure the Johnson and Nixon administrations were just as duplicitous during the Vietnam War, but now we've thrown sheer incompetence and outright bungling into the mix. In a different world with a functioning UN, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld (at least those three) would be sitting in the dock much like Saddam Hussein. However, we're stuck with this world and the sad reality that like Henry Kissinger before them, use of state power to murder thousands, perhaps millions in Kissinger's case, of innocents can be done with impunity if you're big enough.

Oh boy, I guess I got ranting. Sorry.