Speech
 

I read the text of the speech this morning. Gerson writes beautiful rhetoric. Would that Bush could deliver it well.

Speech
 

On the pro-democracy stuff, Yglesias points out that Bush gave essentially the same speech 14 months ago, criticizing our past policy for preferring stability to democracy, but hasn't done anything differently since then.

Noonan says:

• To the extent our foreign policy is marked by a division that has been (crudely but serviceably) defined as a division between moralists and realists--the moralists taken with a romantic longing to carry democracy and justice to foreign fields, the realists motivated by what might be called cynicism and an acknowledgment of the limits of governmental power--President Bush sided strongly with the moralists, which was not a surprise.

Indeed, not a surprise. But then why does he let the realists working for him keep doing things the same way? Where are the actions to match the words?

Well it's not a 100% so it must be a failure
 

Interesting.

Well it's not a 100% so it must be a failure
 

Let's hope everyone who wants to vote, can.

• VOTING IN IRAQ....On ABC News tonight they had a report about preparations for voting in the city of Mosul. The original plan was to have 100 polling places, but because of the violence there that's been cut down to 40.
  
  The population of Mosul is 2 million, and you can probably figure that about two-thirds of that number are eligible to vote. That means each polling place will have to handle 33,000 voters. Even if turnout is only 50%, that's still about 16,000 people per polling station.
  
  Even 100 polling stations sounds like far, far too few. But 40?

Drum

Well it's not a 100% so it must be a failure
 

Only?

Curious - if turnout is, say, 45%, will that signal to you that democracy didn't work there?

Well it's not a 100% so it must be a failure
 

There are no doubt going to be logistical problems, but the extent of them is an unknown. I recall a lot of the same issues being raised before the Aphgan elections, and those came off better than expected.

Well it's not a 100% so it must be a failure
 

I'm still waiting for answers to the questions about democracy I asked you yesterday that you have been ignoring since then, but in the spirit of amity and bipartisanship, I think that whether or not democracy "works" in Iraq will have very little to do with the level of voter participation. Obviously, the higher the turn-out the better, but the problem right now is not that most Iraqis do not want to vote -- I think they do -- but that a significant minority is well-armed and using violence to thwart the kind of government we'd all like to see there. And one election does not a democracy make.

Well it's not a 100% so it must be a failure
 

Do you think an election might provide a government that the people can rally behind? Isn't that really the first necessary step?

Well it's not a 100% so it must be a failure
 

In many of the former British colonies, the elections were about the last step. Had we installed people with more popular support, this might not be an issue, but I think the bigger problem is that the Ba'athists are killing people who participate in the government in an incredibly ruthless way. Hard to install democracy if we can't keep this from happening. And so far we can't. We are having a hard enough time keeping them from killing us.

Well it's not a 100% so it must be a failure
 

Sorry. Not willfully - situations change, posting/reading time vanishes, life goes on . . .

Well it's not a 100% so it must be a failure
 

Board motto.

torture
 

This account of the obstacles faced by Gulf War veterans who were tortured and their familymembers who tried to recover damages from Iraq is really awful. Shame on the people in our government who let this happen.

torture
 

Odious debt.

I'm not trying to be callous about the suffering these people saw, but they say they started the lawsuit to "make the bad guys pay". Well, the bad guys are either in prison, or dead, or on the run. Justice has been done, in that regard. If they truly just want bucks, well, we need to start looking at the questions of, how do we compensate our soldiers who went through hell, and, who gets to rank the respective hells, and, do we pay enough to the soldier who lost a leg, or an eye, or a psyche, or a marriage, or . . . .?

Hook 'em
 

*sigh* I think we should invade Norway.

• Norwegians Confused by Bush Salute
  
  
  OSLO, Norway - Many Norwegian television viewers were shocked to see U.S. President George W. Bush and family apparently saluting Satan during the U.S. inauguration.
  
  But in reality, it was just a sign of respect for the University of Texas Longhorns, whose fans are known to shout out "Hook 'em, horns!" at athletic events.
  
  The president and family were photographed lifting their right hands with their index and pinky fingers raised up, much like a horn.
  
  But in much of the world those "horns" are a sign of the devil. In the Nordics, the hand gesture is popular among death metal and black metal groups and fans.
  
  "Shock greeting from Bush daughter," a headline in the Norwegian Internet newspaper Nettavisen said late Wednesday above a photograph of Bush's daughter, Jenna, smiling and showing the sign.
  
  Bush, a former Texas governor, was simply greeting the Texas Longhorn marching band as it passed during a Washington D.C. parade in the president's honor, explained Verdens Gang, Norway's largest newspaper.
  
  Just the same, the Internet was abuzz Thursday with speculation about what the Bushes really mean by the sign.

torture
 

(1) They should recover for the same reasons that other tort victims should recover. Money cannot make them whole, but it compensates. And it sounds like these folks suffered more than your average (G.I.) Joe, and in a different way.

I understand that reptilian insurance-defense types and Chamber of Commerce shills would say otherwise, but please.

(2) More importantly (to me, anyway) is the principle of vindicating these rights. The position our government is taking adds up to less than full opposition to torture. I have no idea whether it's because of the optics of the juxtaposition of this and Abu Ghraib, or what, but it's wrong.

You have posted in the past about how people want their government to reflect their values, regardless of the efficacy of a policy initiative. Well, here you go. Whether or not it really helps these vets to get money as compensation for what they endured, the bigger point here is the moral one. We ought to be against torture.