Phew! Posted by Michael Signer

From Iraq's interior minister, CNN reports:

"Nobody was beheaded or killed," a defiant Bayan Jabr told a news conference Thursday, saying that only seven of 170 detainees showed marks of torture.

Now that's a relief!  The only thing is... maybe he didn't go far enough.  Actually, the President's new high-school speechwriters could have helped out.   Just imagine the story then:

"Nobody was disemboweled with a garden trowel," a defiant Bayan Jabr said.  "Nobody's thumbnails were removed.  Look, I've seen Hannibal.  Nobody was even forced to eat their own brains."

As we've learned from this President, it's all about setting expectations.  It all reminds me of that great quote from the Albert Brooks character in Broadcast News:

What do you think the Devil  is going to look like if he's around? Nobody is going to be taken in if he has a long, red, pointy tail. No. I'm semi-serious here. He will look attractive and he will be nice and helpful and he will get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation and he will never do an evil thing... he will just bit by little bit lower standards where they are important. Just coax along flash over substance... Just a tiny bit. And he will talk about all of us really being salesmen.

Pinch me -- but is it really true nobody's even been fired yet for the Iraq intelligence? 

And that Andy Card really said about the Iraq War (before staging the vote three weeks before the mid-term Congressional elections in 2002), "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August"?

And that the Vice-President is essentially endorsing torture today?

Yes, it is.

Low standards, indeed.

Comments

[James]

Kind of a related issue. It recently came out that the US
used white phosphorus while fighting insurgents in Falluja last year. A close friend of mine who is serving in the Marines in Iraq says the that rumors started in the Sunni community shortly after the offensive that the US was using chemical weapons in retaliation for their use against the Kurds in the '80's. Its kind of a side note but it reinforces the fact that this administration is so clueless on the history and realities of Iraq.

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