Don't blame me!

Today, W. is on his third tour of the Katrina disaster area. This time he’ll be flying into the Big Easy from the assault ship USS Iwo Jima, where there are apparently no “mission accomplished” banners in sight, and on to a military convoy to tour the city formerly known as New Orleans. (Another great opportunity for soldier dressup!) Now that the city is safely emptied of angry black citizens who might have made an earlier appearance somewhat embarrassing, the president can, according to Scott McClellan, “visit those who are overseeing the operations on the ground” in peace. Hopefully, he didn’t forget the bullhorn and pre-tattered American flag.

A black republican supporter was quoted in the NYT as saying the White House didn’t want Bush meeting with black hurricane survivors during his first trip down to that part of the world, because they were “scared to death” of the reaction. (Jimmy Carter’s visit to Overtown in 1980 comes to mind.) “If I’m Karl, do I want the visual of black people hollering at the president as if we’re living in Rwanda?” Of course, all this is just the liberal media playing the race card.

The Blame Game:

W. says today, now is not the time for the blame. There will be time later to find out what happened and he wants to know what happened, too. Those of us who are a little less apt to take the president’s word as gospel might ask why he doesn’t already know what happened. According to a Knight/Ridder postmortem, administration spokeswoman Dana Perino said, “Overall, the president is in charge at the White House,” in response to a question about who was running the show at the White House while the storm raged. So, again, why does he need an investigation to find out what was going on while he was firmly in charge of the situation?

Its not only the liberal left asking where the buck stops in the Katrina relief debacle. That well known fellow traveler Charles Krauthammer writes that the president was, “late, slow, and simply out of tune with the urgency and magnitude of the disaster.” Of course, he then covers his political ass by blaming everybody else for the Katrina response disaster, too, including the Mayor of New Orleans, the governor of Louisiana, the congress and even the American people.

There’s no doubt that the state and local authorities messed up big time, but even before the storm hit the scale of the destruction had already been predicted by FEMA itself. There’s no way an impoverished city and two of the poorest states in the Union should have been expected to deal with this on their own, before or after.

You hear a lot about Mayor Nagin swearing on the radio from these FOX watcher types, like this is something very distasteful for a public official to do, (Nobody in the White House ever uses naughty language; well, except for Cheney who told a US senator to go fuck himself), but if he hadn’t done that interview, God knows how much longer it would have taken the federal government to wake up.

By the way, how is it that the media could get in and out of New Orleans and report from there live, yet city officials and doctors in destroyed hospitals were reduced to begging the media to tell the feds what was going on? Don’t worry, dubya, dubya, dubya, is on it.

In other news:

If it wasn’t for all this blame going on, someone would have noticed the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on the Jose Padilla case. Judge Michael Luttig wrote that the president has the right to lock up an American indefinitely without being charged. In this case, the president has the authority to designate someone as an “enemy combatant” and throw away the key without a trail or anything else. Luttig says al-Qaeda is “an entity with which the United States is at war.”

That’s an interesting reading of the law. When did congress declare war on that bunch of turbaned wackos hiding out in a Pakistani cave? This is a judge people are taking about possibly replacing Sandra Day! Do you think this ruling had anything to do with that? [AP]

Who’s to say the president doesn’t decide that the US is at war with liberal bloggers one of these days? He can count on Yahoo to help out in hunting down every one of them just like they helped put Chinese journalist Shi Tao in jail for 10 years.

The WaPo writes that Yahoo cofounder Jerry Yang said, “to be doing business in China, or anywhere else in the world (Here for instance?), you have to comply with local law. I don’t like the outcome of what happens with these things, but you have to comply with the law.”

Another great victory for Iraqi security forces:

Once again, the Iraqis are victorious in routing the insurgents, this time in Tal Afar. AP reports "almost 200 suspected militants" were dead. Intersting how they kill these guys in such even numbers. Since they fight in civilian clothing, how do the Iraqis determine who is an insurgent and who is a civilan? No wait, this just in: "six civilians died in the fighting." Talk about precision!

The reports goes on to say, "invading force(s) discovered a network of tunnels below the city through which the insurgents were believed to have fled to the surrounding countryside." The offensive was a "was a great shock to al-Qaida," according to Interior Minister Bayan Jabr. I'm so sure!

Notice how the insurgents "fled" to the surrounding countryside. Just like the insurgents in Fallujah "fled" to Mosul and alomst completly took over while the Marines were busy "mopping up" there.

Defense Minister Sadoun al-Dulaimi said the "Syrians have to stop sending destruction to Iraq. We know the terrorists have no other gateway into Iraq but Syria." My question is; why can't the Iraqis secure their own borders after all this time?

It's one thing if the Syrians are letting these insurgents get to the border, even though the US military says only about 10% of the people they're fighting are foreigners, but it should be another thing when they try to get in. Saddam didn't have any trouble keeping his border closed, right?

Defense minister al-Dulaimi warned those giving aid and comfort to the insurgents, "that they must stop, kick them out or else we will cut off their hands, heads and tongues as we did in Tal Afar." Is this hand and tongue cutting on while we've got their back?

Send Michael Brown to Iraq?

Amidst this great victory for freedom and democracy, the tens of thousands of civilians from Tal Afar, mainly Turkmen, are living in tents in the desert. I wonder what the Turkish governemnt thinks about that?

Reports say, "Food, water and medical supplies are scarce." Have no fear, "the Iraqi and Turkish Red Crescent societies have rushed aid to the refugees."

When will Al Qaim and Qusaybah be liberated and once they are how long will it be before the insurgents "flee" back into Tal Afar? Hold your tongue!

[See this blog from May for more on the war on the Syrian border.]