juan cole weighs in

on wasted money and new power plants in Iraq built with American money. Yes, Juan, it's quite possible they're using American equipment and techniques the Iraqis are unfamiliar with. But let's make the final step in the equation and note that nobody in our current regime gives a flying poo if the Iraqis can make the equipment work. They're creating contracts for their fiscally fluent friends, such as Bechtel. In fact, the less functional things are in their current environment, the longer the people who get to determine how lazy the Iraqis are get to stay there - and they will continue to get paid. The only way you could convince me that the Bush administration is making even a laughable pretense at establishing a sustainable power infrastructure is if you can show me a report, any report, even a right-wing maniac report, which "proves" that hiring businesses and people from outside of a community would revitalize rather than destabilize and impoverish that community.

this is kind of getting to be a big issue for me. I'm sick of liberals making half-statements. "Bush is wasting our money!" Yeah. Finish that sentence with intentionally. Let's finally put on the table what we all know to be true - these people have an agenda they're only thinly masking with platitudes. Saying stuff like "Bush is wasting our money" only serves to reinforce those platitudes because they allow the unstated goal - strong Iraq power grid, in this case - to continue accepted, if unstated. Saying something like "Bush is siphoning money meant to reinforce an Iraq power grid into a cash cow for corporate friends" would be far more accurate - because it would at least admit baldly that there's goals other than those stated. Babbling about poor Iraqis unfamiliar with American technology just goes far off the point. Even responding to their laughable charges of Iraqi laziness (hey, the slaves were lazy too! and Deaf people are lazy every time we decide to use sign language!) just lets them set the damn agenda again and again and again and we never get to the actual bloody POINT.

No personal attack whatever, Juan, just a personal gripe I happened to use your latest comments to illustrate. This applies for pretty much everything that's been going on lately, from Schiavo to Social Security. Bush wanted to save Schiavo's life? Suuuuuure. Like that wasn't a bald distraction from the SS Sinkhole he's trying to pilot into Congress. Liberals can't seem to get out of letting others set the damn agenda. I mean, the whole Social Security thing? If someone came up to you and said "There's a big meteor headed towards earth RIGHT NOW! Let's stop it with nuclear missles!" and you look up in the sky - no meteor! - you say "Look, idiot, go away." You don't respond to them with meteor analysis. Especially when the damn rock isn't heading your way or anyone else's.

*fume over*