Songs of the day: Sonic Youth - "Unmade Bed"; King Crimson - "Three of a Perfect Pair"; Public Enemy - "She Watch Channel Zero".

Another day, another transmission from the George W. Bush Bizarro World. Today brings two examples of such intense lunacy, distinguishing themselves from the daily madness, that I can't help but mention them.

First, the latest developments in Fallujah. We'll set aside for the moment that on a day when 10 US soldiers died, Paul Wolfowitz is saying "we've had some success." We'll ignore the continued statements about supposed cease-fires when hundreds of Iraqis have been killed and each day brings new clashes. We'll not discuss that almost a year after Bush declared an end to major combat operations, our troops are in the middle of one of the biggest yet--and have been stopped in their tracks by fierce Iraqi resistance. Instead of those pesky details, let's focus on something I find most disturbing of all: that part of our government's attempted solution to this bloody standoff is to send in an Iraqi army--I hope you're sitting down--that is led by a former general from Saddam's military. Yes, that's right. A former general from the army of the tyrant whose country we invaded is now going to help us put down resistance. Which is...yes, that's right, probably exactly what he was doing before we invaded. This, I think, will certainly reassure the people of Iraq that we have their best interests at heart. Sure, we've slaughtered ten thousand of their civilians, but at least Saddam is gone...oh, except his generals are running our new "protective" army, and members of his party are being let back in to our government. Ah yes, this is much better. (By the way, one laughable "improvement" in Iraq I've heard attributed to our crusade there is that women now have access to education. News flash: Iraq, long ruled by a secular government, has long provided much more access for women than other middle-eastern countries. That is, until changes sparked by our first invasion of the place in 1991 started a major backslide. See http://www.hrw.org/backgrounder/wrd/iraq-women.htm.)

Read more at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4824213/.

But international diplomacy has never been Bush's forte, so let's visit another area his government is excelling in--environmental science. It seems that the Bush administration has decided to include hatchery-bred salmon in counts determining the endangered status of wild salmon. Once again, let's set aside minor quibbles--such as the logic of this decision being analogous to counting zoo animals in studies of how endangered apes or pandas are--and focus on the most notably insane qualities of this decision. The Bush administration consulted six scientists, among the world's foremost experts on salmon ecology, but subsequently told the scientists that their conclusions were "inappropriate for official government reports". What apparently clinched the decision for our anti-intellectual administration was--wait for it--the opinion of a U.S. district judge. Judge Michael R. Hogan ruled that the federal government was making a mistake in not counting genetically similar hatchery-produced fish in overall wild population counts. According to Bob Lohn, chief of federal salmon recovery in the Northwest, "there was an inescapable reasoning to Judge Hogan's ruling". Apparently a much stronger reasoning than the considered scientific opinion of the world's foremost experts on salmon ecology.

Read about it at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4856765/.

Labels: Environment