“‘What about Kofi Annan?’ Bush asked Blair. ‘I don’t like the sequence of it. His attitude is basically cease-fire and everything else happens.’” Dubya and Tony Blair get caught (apparently) off-guard and on tape discussing the escalating crisis in the Middle East. “Bush said that he feels ‘like telling Kofi to get on the phone with [Syrian President Bashar] Assad and make something happen. We’re not blaming Israel, and we’re not blaming the Lebanese government.’” (A lot of news sources seem to be fronting Dubya’s use of the S-word — “See the irony is what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it’s over.” — but, really, who gives a shit about his language?) “Bush also told Blair that he would be sending Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to the region soon. ‘She’s going,’ Bush said. ‘I think Condi’s going to go pretty soon.’” Update: Watch it online, just to get a sense of how boorish and out-of-his-depth our president seems on the world stage. (Exhibit B: Dubya’s ill-fated and cringeworth back-rub attempt.)
Category: Europe
Viva Italia!
A belated congrats to Italy on winning the 2006 World Cup. I was rooting for France, and a PK shootout is a truly terrible way to choose the Cup champion, but — after headbuttgate and the Baggio mishap in 1994 — Italy seemed karmically due. At any rate, see y’all in 2010. And, now, alas, we’ve hit the sports dead zone until September…perhaps it’s time to give MLS another go, what with Red Bull United now on the pitch… Update: Zidane speaks.
The Win Done Ghana.
Well, that’s that, then. Ghana knocks the US out of the Cup with a 2-1 victory that may have hinged partly on a questionable PK. (Being in research mode, I didn’t see the game — Still, it seems like a lot of the games this Cup have swung on bad calls, and we needed a win, not a tie, regardless.) Oh well, there’s always 2010, I guess. At any rate, congrats to Ghana on getting through, and here’s hoping the Togo Sparrow Hawks can play spoiler to France tomorrow…
Seed Capital.
Authors of postapocalyptic sci-fi yarns, take note: Norway has announced it will host a post-Doomsday seed bank on the Svalbard archipelago. “While the facility will be fenced in and guarded, Svalbard’s free-roaming polar bears, known for their ferocity, could also act as natural guardians, according to the Global Diversity Trust.“
Czech yourself, soccer fans.
Ugh. And I thought Miami’s performance last night was bad: America’s hopes for this Cup pretty much wither away entirely after an egregious 3-0 loss to the Czech Republic this morning. The US now must beat — or maybe tie — Italy this Saturday to have any chance of moving on to the second round…It’s not looking good.
Joga Bonito, trabalho feio.
As if the Dallas-Miami NBA Finals (ok, I was way off) weren’t sports bliss enough ’round these parts, the 2006 World Cup has begun, with host Germany defeating Costa Rica 4-2 and Ecuador besting Poland 2-0 on Day 1. Alas, since I have to maximize my research time while I’m briefly back in the 202, and since the Manuscript Reading Room of the Library of Congress aggravatingly keeps bankers’ hours (and charge $0.20 a photocopy, but that’s a whole ‘nother rant), it looks like I’ll be missing much of the first round. But I promise to make it up on the back end.
Special Agent Bimmler?
“The CIA based its decisions about using former SS men or unreconstructed Nazis solely on operational considerations…Hiring these tainted individuals brought little other than operational problems and moral confusion to our government’s intelligence community.” New documents unearthed by UVa historian Timothy Naftali make clear the Cold War-era CIA had no qualms about using former Nazi assets, and even neglected to flush out infamous war criminal Adolf Eichmann from his hiding place in Argentina after being tipped off about his location. For shame.
Regrets, We’ve Had a Few.
“Saying, ‘Bring it on’; kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong signal to people. I learned some lessons about expressing myself maybe in a little more sophisticated manner, you know. ‘Wanted, dead or alive’; that kind of talk. I think in certain parts of the world it was misinterpreted. And so I learned from that.” In a joint press conference, Dubya and Tony Blair own up to some mistakes in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib — “the biggest mistake“, according to Dubya — and de-Baathification, according to Blair. “The prime minister’s examples appeared to be a direct rebuke of both the Pentagon’s insistence that a detailed “nation-building” plan was unnecessary before the invasion and the push by key members of Bush’s administration for broad de-Baathification.“
No Mercy Shown.
This is why events unnerve me…By way of Ed Rants, the new trailer for Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette is out, and it maintains the New Order conceit of the teaser. (Although this time the background ditty is “Ceremony,” not Age of Consent.”)
And Tyler Too.
“The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy.” Retired CIA officer Tyler Drumhiller, formerly the highest ranking CIA officer in Europe, calls out the Dubya administration anew for their manipulation of intelligence during the lead-up to Iraq. “‘It just sticks in my craw every time I hear them say it’s an intelligence failure,’ Drumheller told CBS’ Ed Bradley. ‘This was a policy failure. I think, over time, people will look back on this and see this is going to be one of the great, I think, policy mistakes of all time.’“