April 11th, 2008
It’s been a few weeks since they showed up, and I have to say that we’re all getting pretty tired of the CAVE people around here.
Ever since a controversial show several weeks ago, we’ve been playing host to a group from Citizens Against Virtually Everything, who, as a rule of thumb, are against… well… virtually everything, including this show.
I came across some other great rules of thumb earlier today, which were so good that I ordered my staff to begin stealing them wholesale.
A quick search will pull up my source for these rules of thumb. I’ll also make sure that we have a direct link posted to them in this evening’s News transcript for all the lazy cheaters.
Assuming that they’re accurate, which I won’t promise, a person could get pretty far in life by following these rules of thumb. Like the rule for winning at blackjack: assume that any unseen card is an 8.
If you don’t like cats, then don’t make eye contact with them. Eye contact is an invitation for them to jump into your lap.
When marketing to the elderly, remember that they imagine themselves to be 15 years younger than they are. Hmm… actually that’s an odd one when you think about it. When I used to watch TV, I saw a lot of commercials with 85 year-olds in them. Are there that many 100 year-olds active in the consumer realm?
Water, and pretty much anything that has mostly water in it, weighs 8 pounds per gallon.
When breeding cattle, aim to have one bull for every 25 cows. They get tired after that. A corollary asserts that every cow will eat as much as seven sheep.
Swimming for one mile is equivalent to running for five, or cycling for 12.
And finally, the circumference of a normal infant’s head should equal the distance from the crown of the head to the rump; which I offer only because I wanted to say rump.
It’s time to park your rump down, because this is the Timothy Jordan Show News for the 11th of April, Ought-Eight.
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General Petraeus and Ambassadr Crocker, representing U.S. military and civilian leadership in Iraq respectively, were in Washington this week, explaining to Congress and anyone else with a microphone and a conference room, just why it is that the U.S. military needs to maintain 140,000 personnel in Iraq into the indefinite future.
Dedicated listeners will remember that it was about this time last year when the surge really entered the popular imagination. Apparent levels of violence have declined since then from the levels of late 2006, when over a thousand people were being killed per week.
Now it’s only a few hundred, which is, to be fair to the surge’s supporters, less than a thousand. This, they claim, is proof of success.
And yet the occupation remains highly unpopular among the American public. Could it be that the average American has actually reached a limit upon which no more tripe may be shoveled?
Unlikely, but then so’s the chance of the surge representing anything but a short-term decline in violence.
We’ve seen the beginnings of this in the recent weeks. Open sectarian warfare between rival Shiite political factions, one in charge of the government, the other enjoying broad-based popular support, has drawn the U.S. military in to defend the Iraqi government.
Once again the U.S. is engaged in fighting the Mahdi Army of Muqtada al-Sadr. The fragile peace of the surge broken when the Iraqi government sought to remove the allies of Sadr before the upcoming provincial elections. The Mahdi Army had been abiding by the cease-fire originally set up by al-Sadr himself. Now, thanks to the short-sighted power grab by our allies in the Iraqi government, Sadr will again look the elder statesman as he negotiates a peace settlement.
Meanwhile the Sunni tribes collect their checks from the U.S. government. We’re giving them money and guns, bribes to ensure that they attack foreign Arabs passing through their territory instead of us. Here’s a rule of thumb: don’t give guns to people who are likely to use them against you later.
To date the Sunni regions are peaceful, but General Petraeus tried to claim that they’re about to be under Iraqi government control. If the Iraqi government tries to really assert control in those regions, we’d see a repeat of the violence in Basra a few weeks ago. In a sign of willfull disregard, the visuals accompanying General Petraeus’ Congressional testimony this week showed Basra under Iraqi government control.
The thousands of Mahdi Army militiamen in that city may believe differently.
Baghdad is relatively peaceful post-surge, but it’s also home to fewer Sunnis than before. Tens of thousands living in formerly mixed neighborhoods have fled, and the remaining areas are now gated communities surrounded by armed guards and concrete blast walls.
So don’t buy the rhetoric. The surge happened to coincide with a downturn in violence, and even contributed, but it didn’t bring any lasting change.
•via Threat Level, Charts of Gen. Petraeus PDF (1.1MB)
• via Threat Level, Testimony of Gen. Petraeus PDF (37.3KB)
• via The Poltico, Testimony of Amb. Crocker PDF (732.3KB)
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That was supposed by be accomplished by the Iraqi government. Remember the Benchmarks?
There were eighteen benchmarks laid out as a gauge to judge the success of the surge, ranging from specific security goals and political reforms, to “Ensuring that Iraq’s political authorities are not undermining or making false accusations against members of the ISF.”
Well there’s one, sorta.
Of the eighteen benchmarks, only five have been clearly achieved to varying degrees, nearly all of them in the security realm. Political reforms, the true goal of the surge, have been underwhelming. There is no national oil law, no agreement on de-baathification reform, no protections for minority political groups, disregard for the rule of law by governing authorities, and an incomplete constitutional review.
Yes, the levels of violence have been reduced to 2005 levels, but the underlying issue of which Shiite political faction will in the end control Iraq has not been resolved.
It took a violent and terrible civil war for our own country to bleed out its differences, and we were only divided between North and South. Iraq has some painful days of its own to work through.
We at the Timothy Jordan Show News have been saying this for years now. It was nice to see, reading through this morning’s World Politics Review, that Lt Col. Gentile, just back from his second tour in Iraq, agrees.
He tells the World Politics Review that the surge was little more than an extension of what American forces in Iraq were already doing, calling them classical counter-insurgency operations packaged with a new label.
• Interim Benchmark report PDF (147.4KB)
• World Politics Review, The Limits of the Surge: An Interview with Gian Gentile
The Fourth Amendment was repackaged for the Global War on Terror, as we learned last week. The 2001 memo written by controversial former government attorney, John Yoo, remains classified. According to documents published last week, Mr. Yoo believed that the 4th Amendment doesn’t apply in the case of domestic military operations.
This made all of us uncomfortable on many levels, and a few people in Congress had similar reactions. It wasn’t enough to regain much of our lost opinion of her, but Sen. Feinstein grilled Attorney General Mukasey on whether the memo was still considered a valid legal opinion.
“I’m just asking you,” she said, “‘Is this memo in force that the Fourth Amendment does not apply?’”
He refused to directly answer her question, saying instead that the 4th Amendment applied, “… across the board whether we’re in wartime or peacetime.”
Evasive to the last.
• Talking Points Memo, Mukasey Refuses to Say Yoo Fourth Amendment Memo Withdrawn
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As a rule of thumb, if a lawyer doesn’t answer a very specific question, it’s because he has a very specific reason to avoid answering the question.
We have a specific reason to wrap things up, but it’s only because we need sushi. We wrap up with excellence.
Our winner this week did something very unusual in this day and age, she trusted her child with freedom.
Writing about the experience in the New York Sun, Lenore Skenazy, earned a great deal of outrage. Hundreds of people wrote in to say what a horrible person she is.
What did she do to earn this outrage?
She let her son ride the subway alone.
• Why I Let My 9-Year-Old Ride the Subway Alone
Editor’s Note: We’re fed up with this “Political Correspondent”. He keeps winging the Award of Excellence. Listen to the damn podcast, because we’re not transcribing his drivel.