The Anniversary

Ganked from elsewhere: When the only tool you have is a Krauthammer, everything looks like a fail.

So a Krauthammer unit is 5/6ths of a Friedman Unit, I guess.

Well here in Ireland Good Friday is marked by a prohibition on the sale of alcohol. I think you could have a similar prohibition on NRO, Weekly Standards, copies of the Washington Post with the editorial pages left in, and of course the massive quantities of crystal meth that fuel such nonsensical prose.

How about a recitation of WMD-Dayenu:

If we had found poison gas in five months,
Dayenu!
If we had found plutonium in ten months,
Dayenu!
If we had found bio-weapons in fifteen months,
Dayenu!
If we had found super-artillery in twenty months,
Dayenu!
…
Et cetera.

I propose an annual fictoid of the year contest. The best fabrication justifying the most outrageous political position – an idea that first came to me when thinking about the meaning of the “Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.” http://www.deliberatelyconsidered.com/2010/11/fact-versus-fictoid-in-the-age-of-cable/

#3:

Set up a scholarship for research into why people like Krauthammer don’t die of shame, and to find a cure.

Oh, the best example yet is Greenspan. As I’ve said many times, the fact that he hasn’t committed ritual suicide is a huge embarassment for our species.

. . . after all it has been five months plus five months plus five months plus five months plus five months . . .

That works out to about 16 Friedman Units, if my humanist’s math is correct.

Combining suggestions from George W. Bush and Hugh Hector Munro, one possibility might be an Exploding Easter Egg Hunt. But then, this would perhaps prove simultaneously too dangerous to be very attractive to participants, and not dangerous enough to really mark the occasion properly. Better suggestions invited in comments.

Isn’t the obvious solution to have a hunt for eggs of mass destruction that aren’t really there?

Each year it is the start of a new politically-motivated doomed-to-fail five-month search. This year, say, Barack Obama’s birth certificate a true statement in Jerome Corsi’s latest book.

I’m going to listen to MC Hammer and shout “Krauthammer Time!” at the top of my lungs.

Celebrate by parking large, unmarked tractor-trailer trucks at various right angles in varying numbers in large, open areas across the US. Next, take high altitude photography of the trucks. Then have children of government officials sit around tables and speculate on the exciting possiblities the photos reveal.

Isn’t it obvious? Krauthammer day should be when media institutions across the country evaluate whether they are robustly enforcing their right-wing affirmative action programs.

The WMD are obviously in the next country we plan to attack. Although they have been moved by the time we actually do attack.

Seriously? You’re just going to ignore the 500 metric tons of yellow cake? The bio and chemical weapons stores found? The satellite images showing WMD’s being moved across the Iraq-Syrian border into Iraq?

I used to wonder how Japan could have people so nuts and in love with authority that they would stay in the jungle for decades, convinced World War II was still going on. But not anymore.

“Seriously? You’re just going to ignore the 500 metric tons of yellow cake? The bio and chemical weapons stores found? The satellite images showing WMD’s being moved across the Iraq-Syrian border into Iraq?”

Ken’s a traditionalist. He celebrates this solemn occasion by doubling down on the crazy!

Obviously, the tag failure is a result of Iraqi sabotage.

“Uranium Ore is not a WMD”

I see. What is uranium ore used for and what was Saddam’s interest in it? What does yellow cake get processed into? You really think that Saddam just like the color yellow and wanted to display the color yellow available in all sorts of materials?

“No biological weapons were found”

Don’t “anthrax, aflatoxin, botulinum toxin, gas gangrene, ricin, and wheat smut, and was also known to be working on cholera, mycotoxins, shigellosis, and viruses (including camelpox, infectious hemorrhaghic conjunctivitis and rotavirus) as well as genetic engineering” count as biological weapons?

“Don’t “anthrax, aflatoxin, botulinum toxin, gas gangrene, ricin, and wheat smut, and was also known to be working on cholera, mycotoxins, shigellosis, and viruses (including camelpox, infectious hemorrhaghic conjunctivitis and rotavirus) as well as genetic engineering” count as biological weapons?”

Wheat smut, definitely. Especially if it comes in a tiny little vial. Yuck.

Ken’s quote regarding biological weapons comes from hawkish gibberish dating back to 1990, repeated ad nauseum by warhawks and the CIA prior to the invasion in 2003, and now given here as a list of biological WMDs “found” during the recent war. This is funny, and echt Krauthammer, if you ask me. What better way to celebrate Krauthammer Day then to lie your ass off in as transparently lame a way as possible. Ken for the win. Well played, sir!

Ken for the win.

Someone deserves an extra portion of BarbieCake; gluten and smut free of course.

#27 Warren! Where have you been? The best comment I’ve read in awhile.

“Wait, Bush acknowledges in Decision Points that his administration was wrong about the WMDs, right? So “discrediting Bush” would mean finding some.”

Josh, please. This is Krauthammer Day, a solemn day devoted to Charles Krauthammer’s crapulent obstinence in the face of Truth.

Bush’s lame, dollar-short-and-day-late “admission” will have to wait until Codpiece Day.

You’re like one of those execrable shopkeepers who puts up the Christmas decorations right after Halloween!

Wait, Bush acknowledges in Decision Points that his administration was wrong about the WMDs, right? So “discrediting Bush” would mean finding some.

All that proves is that Bush has Bush Derangement Syndrome too.

Kenneth:

I see. What is uranium ore used for and what was Saddam’s interest in it? What does yellow cake get processed into? You really think that Saddam just like the color yellow and wanted to display the color yellow available in all sorts of materials?

Sigh:

http://www.snopes.com/politics/war/yellowcake.asp

Don’t “anthrax, aflatoxin, botulinum toxin, gas gangrene, ricin, and wheat smut, and was also known to be working on cholera, mycotoxins, shigellosis, and viruses (including camelpox, infectious hemorrhaghic conjunctivitis and rotavirus) as well as genetic engineering” count as biological weapons?

Genetic engineering? WTF?!

Was Saddam also planning to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids?

How many months has it been since Obama said he would shut down Gitmo? cease millitary trials? keep unemployment below 8%? and how long has it been since Harry Reid declared the Iraq war lost? Just curious since you are so good at marking the anniversary of dubious declarations.

Keith:
I miss that wit of yours every night at 8 PM. Please hurry back, and bring some of your friends from the newly-wingnutty Comcast network, if at all possible. Now that you will be in charge of the “Current TV” news, Rachel, Ed, Cenk, Tamron , Contessa (after the
birth of her baby), and David Shuster would be a fantastic addition to the “Current” line-up, and would give you an instant ratings boost. I’m sure they’d be very happy to leave what looks like a very toxic environment. I’m sure that Current could beat MSNBC in the ratings with the addition of you and some of these other people that we have grown to love over the years. Please think about it.
Truthglow

‘The depressing truth is that our pundits really are that shallow, ignorant and incurious. ‘

Pundits merely accommodate themselves to the shallowness, ignorance and lack of curiosity of their political associates. The French Foreign Minister for example has just expressed puzzlement that Gaddafi hasn’t abdicated like Mubarek and that other guy from Tunisia, cos that’s what everyone (he and his NATO buddies I guess that means) expected to happen … who knew Arab dictators did unpredictability? Well apart from bloggers who read the news, that is.

Oh, the best example yet is Greenspan. As I’ve said many times, the fact that he hasn’t committed ritual suicide is a huge embarassment for our species.

I find that statement intriguing. Obviously you don’t mean it literally, but the underlying premise that Greenspan should take responsibility on a supererogatory, personal fashion is interesting.

My position in such matters is that Greenspan should be ignored henceforth and should be able to otherwise do what he likes with his life, rather than repent endlessly. He had a job. He was incompetent at the job. There’s no need to do penance; it’s just a job. That you think otherwise, I think, is revealing.

If incompetence isn’t an issue, I want one of them jobs. I’ll even do penance (as long as it is not painful and certainly does not involve spending days in an area without clean rest rooms).

Henry’s update on Glenn Reynolds was ill-advised. When you wrestle with a pig, the mud sticks to you and the pig rather enjoys it. Within the Crooked Timber community, nobody can possibly be libelled by Glenn Reynolds.

@Barry: I believe that Greenspan’s official pension (if he has one) should be removed, and as I said, the public should ignore him from now on, and that media should not book him for appearances.

Other than that: he’s not a military officer. There is no civilian equivalent of the court-martial. But the scale of botching has got nothing to do with it, as long as no fraud was involved. A trader who loses $2-billion in trading by honest means is not suddenly more culpable morally than someone who loses $2-million. John Meriweather helped lose $4.6-billion in LTCM; it does not follow that he’s morally worse than any unsuccessful ordinary trader.

The Donalde is calling you a wannabe assassin, Henry. You may never be able to speak at Long Beach City College again

“Other than that: he’s not a military officer. There is no civilian equivalent of the court-martial. But the scale of botching has got nothing to do with it, as long as no fraud was involved. A trader who loses $2-billion in trading by honest means is not suddenly more culpable morally than someone who loses $2-million. John Meriweather helped lose $4.6-billion in LTCM; it does not follow that he’s morally worse than any unsuccessful ordinary trader.”

What Greenspan did amounted to criminal negligence and the bastard doesn’t even have the common deceny to be embarassed by it. Though it must be said that I am hardly suprised that you are against holding the powerful responisble for their misdeeds.

A trader who loses $2-billion in trading by honest means is not suddenly more culpable morally than someone who loses $2-million.

Are you saying that if a prominent politician proposed spending $2 million on homeopathic “remedies”, he’s as culpable as one who proposed spending $2 billion on such crap?

Myles, I very mich recommend a career in other fields than trading floor management.

Are you saying that if a prominent politician proposed spending $2 million on homeopathic “remedies”, he’s as culpable as one who proposed spending $2 billion on such crap?

Interesting question. I actually don’t know, to be honest. The problem is that politicians who propose only $2-million for homeopathy are indubitably just pandering, so it’s not morally the same.

Is it inappropriate to suggest marking the anniversary by feeding a little bit of Krauthammer (starting, one would assume, with the littlest bit!) into one of Saddam Hussein’s legendary people shredder?

““Uranium Ore is not a WMD”

I see. What is uranium ore used for and what was Saddam’s interest in it? What does yellow cake get processed into? You really think that Saddam just like the color yellow and wanted to display the color yellow available in all sorts of materials?”

Well, uranium ore (which isn’t what they had actually, they had yellowcake, which is a mildly processed form of the ore) makes a very nice indeed deep yellow glaze for pottery. Every few years there’s yet another report of someone finding a pound or two in the back of some forgotten high school arts department. We tend not to use it these days but there’s some gorgeous pre WWII pottery that does use it.

But there’s a much more important point to be made about yellowcake. Yes, it’s a necessity to start a U bomb making program. But it’s trivially easy to get (hey, Lehman Brothers had a pile of it when they went bust) and extremely non-trivial to do anything useful with.

You see, you need to enrich it, raise the ratios of U235 to U238 from the natural 0.7% U235 to, for a bomb, 70 to 80%. And that simply isn’t trivial. You need an enrichment plant, current cost some $10 billion. A couple of different ways of doing it and what has people scared witless about Iran’s programs is that this is indeed just what they’ve done. Built an enrichment plant.

Oh, and Snopes hasn’t quite got the Osirak plant right, nor the raid on it. The yellowcake wasn’t for that plant, for it came with HEU (highly enriched uranium) from France along with the plant itself. As is entirely normal in the civilian nuclear world. You get your reactor, plus your enriched fuel, from one of the extant plants (umm, UK, Canada, US, Russia, France, umm, that’s it I think) and then when the fuel has been used you send it back to where you got it from for it to be reprocessed (and this is everyone’s problem with Iran’s programme again, that they’re not doing this but enriching themselves).

Now it’s feasible that Saddam had that yellowcake in order to enrich it, then feed it through Osirak, to make plutonium. Or that he was going to build an enrichment plant and make his own HEU. But it would have been hugely, hugely expensive if that’s what he was trying to do. And as above, it’s pretty generally agreed that he wasn’t trying anything like that after 1991.

As an aside, I do know of a few people who served time for trying to sell nuclear materials to Iraq after 1991. Please note, know of, not know directly. The sort of nuclear materials that you would need if you were to try and build an enrichment plant. But that was honeytrap stuff. No evidence at all that Iraq had anything to do with it. Just people seemingly willing to try and ship the stuff around without the correct licences. And the reason I know this is because I did have the right licences and had a non-nuclear use for the same materials. The people who were selling them eventually, on my fourth or fifth try to buy them, had to point out to me that I wasn’t their target market at all. Given that I had the licences and a legit use for the material….

Maybe there should be a ritual recounting of the Al Qa’qaa timeline. As folks probably recall, a place where we did “find” dangerous high explosives (of course they were under IAEA seal and we had been told all about them* ). Subsequently found by an embedded TV news team from Minneapolis and bunch of looters in white pickups. Finally reported over a year later.

*But the Bush administration would not allow the agency [the IAEA] back into the country to verify the status of the stockpile. Since the pretense that the IAEA was full of shit needed to be maintained at all costs.

“I was thinking about becoming just a trader, actually.”

Just figured that this deserved a reposting.

@55 – Yes, they found dilapidated shells, some precursors, and small amounts of chem and bio stuff. Not surprising, given that Iraq did have robust programs prior to the First Gulf War (or Second, depending on how you like to count them). But that’s not/not evidence of serious Weapons of Mass Destruction, however much “WMD” has come to mean “anything related to nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons even if no significant delivery system exists, little weaponized stuff remains, and the actual capabilities are less than a platoon could muster in World War I.”

Apologies for the shameless blog linkage.

@82:

…however much “WMD” has come to mean…

Actually, I’m pretty sure that the official, “legal” definition of WMD in the US would include a pipe bomb. (Not that I agree with that…)

How about the anniversary of the time that Conor Foley said that the Libya intervention was all about protection of civilians? Are we going to celebrate that one too, maybe with an explanation of the civilian-protecting effects of bombing government buildings in Tripoli?

Or is cheerleading for war fine as long as it’s done by One of Us?