Tonkin Mark-II

For starters, I'm not dead. Thanks for asking. Been a little busy trying to write a book.

But something made headlines around the world today that got my Conspiracy Senses tingling. Apparently, a "fleet" of Iranian high speed boats manuevered agressively in the presence of a bunch of American warships and for no apparent reason threatened to blow them all up. Bush goes on air calling this "provocative action" and, lo and behold, hops on a plane the very next day for a trip to Israel.

Now, normally I'm not one to get swept up into conspiracy theories. I'm quick to concede that alot of really weird things happen in this world that, if you didn't know better, would look as if someone planned them. But the timing of this just seemed really odd. Is it possible that President Bombsalot had the foresight to pull a Tonkin just before he boarded a plane to one of the most warlike countries on the face of the Earth? Surely his BFF Olmert would take that as face value, even if he thought it was fake, and the U.S. Corporate media--which so far has missed no opportunity to regurgitate Bushite propaganda on Iran--would be slow as hell to call him on it.

At first I thought I was just being paranoid, but then I saw this:


It comes in about the last thirty seconds of the tape where the video suddenly cuts away and goes to an audio clip, apparently from the bridge of the USS Hopper. Now, let's look past the fact mister "I'm coming for you... you are going to explode in a few minutes" has this weird sort of Midwestern accent that sounds like he's from Milkwaukee. Let's even look past the fact that he's talking in a growl like he's trying to disguise his voice. Let's even look past the fact that there's no logical reason for the audio to be so thoroughly disconnected from the video, seeing how the first part of the clip was shot from the bridge anyway. Let's look past all of these peculiarities and ask, "What is this?"


It doesn't look like warship to me. Doesn't even look like a motor torpedo boat. It looks a civilian speedboat with a couple of Yamaha outboard motors. It's not flying any flag, it has no visible markings, and if you watch the video you find that at least one of the other boats cruising around is painted black and grey. So what was it exactly that prompted Seaman Too-Busy-Shooting-Home-Movies-To-Report-To-My-Battle-Stations Jones to conclude that these were Iranian Revolutionary Guard boats?

Color me paranoid, but the more I chew on this the more it tastes like a sad Bush publicity stunt to sell yet another meaningless war that nobody really wants. It's a stunt that expects us to believe that the Iranian Military would be stupid enough to threaten--much less attack--three U.S. warships with a couple of unarmed speed boats. But then, the Bush Administration expects us to buy most of their other lies (the economy is strong, the Iraqis like being occupied, Chavez is a dictator and Musharraf isn't) no matter how ridiculous they appear, so I guess this one shouldn't be all that surprising. It's just history--and the Vietnam War--repeating itself.

The Surge is Working. We’re Kicking Ass. War is Peace.

Reflections on a Sick Puppet Show
What the hell kind of man did Diebold put into office? Everything he touches seems to blow up, fall apart, or otherwise disintegrate in a chorus of gnashing teeth. The Bush Effect seems to manifest in everything from the American economy to Wolf Blitzer’s manhood, and precious few things survive an encounter with this life-sucking black hole of a man who reaps misery and destruction everywhere he goes.

Seems somebody forgot to explain this fact to Shattar Abu Risha, who found out the hard way the price of making a Deal with the Dubya. The late puppet-warlord of the Anbar Salvation front was relatively unknown here in the United States, but was already a household name for Iraqis in Anbar Province (well, in the same sense that “Al Capone” is a household name for people in Chicago). But we also know that Dubya never meets in person with anyone who isn’t either in his pocket or somehow on board with his “vision” of the universe, so what exactly does that say about Abu Risha’s motives?

Well, before you answer that, what does everyone else say about Abu Risha?

According to Captain Martin Wohlgemuth:

“Sattar Abu Risha, a living legacy in his own right. He's probably better known as Lawrence of Arabia to the Americans. His legacy is what allowed this to happen in a lot of different places. And it’s happening in Amiriya, they've got freedom fighters. In Abu Ghraib, they’ve got some freedom fighters. And they all say it's generally because of that, because he was first one to really do it. The major sticking point is trying to get the government of Iraq to buy into groups of armed Sunnis so close to Baghdad.”

Yep, he’s the Uniter, the guy who brings all the freedom fighters together. Wonderful guy!

According to Yahoo news:

Abu Risha's killing — just 10 days after his meeting with Bush — dealt a blow to one of the few success stories in U.S. efforts to stabilize Iraq. The tribal leader brought together Anbar sheiks into an alliance against extremists, after years of American failure to tame flash points such as Ramadi and fallujah.

I guess we’re lucky to have such a valuable ally.

Sort of. According to Time Magazine before his inevitable death:

So what sort of a deal could the U.S. strike? General Odierno, an Iraq veteran with a reputation for cold-eyed realism, has cited the military's partnership with formerly anti-American tribes in the restive Anbar promise. There, U.S. Marines have supported a coalition of tribes, known as the "Anbar Salvation Front," fighting al-Qaeda. The group's leader, Sheikh Sattar al-Risha, is ostensibly cooperating with the U.S. and Iraqi forces to drive out the foreign fighters who make up much al-Qaeda's ranks in Iraq. And since the alliance has been in effect, the number of attacks against U.S. forces in Anbar has halved.

But that's only part of the picture. Sheikh Sattar, whose tribe is notorious for highway banditry, is also building a personal militia, loyal not to the Iraqi government but only to him. Other tribes — even those who want no truck with terrorists — complain they are being forced to kowtow to him. Those who refuse risk being branded as friends of al-Qaeda and tossed in jail, or worse. In Baghdad, government delight at the Anbar Front's impact on al-Qaeda is tempered by concern that the Marines have unwittingly turned Sheikh Sattar into a warlord who will turn the province into his personal fiefdom.

Exactly the kind of person who deserves American tax dollars! Just ask Ali Suleiman from the Dulaim confederation (the largest tribal organization in Anbar), who described Abu Risha as a "traitor" who "sells his beliefs, his religion and his people for money," and suggested that Abu Risha is essentially a disaster-capitalist who specializes in highway robbery, oil smuggling, gun running, ransom kidnapping, blackmail... with a resume like this, Abu Risha might as well work for Halliburton.

Given his reputation, Sheikh/Warlord Abu Risha’s death is probably the least surprising thing that’s happened in Iraq in the past eighteen months. Almost as unsurprising is the fact that the Imperialist intelligentsia has already gone out of its way to blame it on Al Qaida. Apparently, the idea of America’s pet-gangster being bombed by his own men is an image that pokes too large a hole in the already-sinking ship of General Betrayus’ credibility. But then, when you think back to some of those one hundred and ninety thousand missing weapons the U.S. was supposed to give to the Iraqi Military... well, you get the idea.

And then the treasonous little kissass has the nerve to sit in front of congress and talk about the success of Dubya's "troop surge". How is this supposed to work, exactly? The Surge was supposed to create "breathing room" for the Iraqi Government to make adequate progress; instead, the al-Maliki Government met 7 out of 18 benchmarks. It was supposed to create room for a reconciliation process that could end (or at least reduce) sectarian violence; instead, the death toll has actually climbed every week since the Surge began. And for the icing on the cake: the most that General Betrayus has to show for the surge is having sold a bunch of weapons to a vicious Sunni gangster with delusions of grandeur, and even that dubious success has just come to a calamitous end.

Now the Iraqi People want our troops to leave (79% of them at last check), and wouldn't you know it, so do the American people in pretty much the same proportions. To most of us, it's plainly obvious what's going on here: Dubya's just gambled away our entire life savings at the blackjack table, and now he's about to bet the house and car. He says he's got a system now, he says he can turn it around with a couple more hands. Finally got a good deck, says Dubya, and tosses the car keys on the table.

No more bets, George. We've had enough for one century.