BY TOM TOMORROW
A while back I spoke to Matt Taibbi by phone. Technical difficulties prevented me from getting to it immediately, but I’ve finally posted it here. I can’t claim it’s timely now, but Taibbi was just as entertaining as you’d expect.
Taibbi’s latest piece for Rolling Stone, “The Great Iraq Swindle,” is here. His new book Smells Like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire, is coming out in October.
So China loans the US government money, which it gives to Iraqi contractors, which they give partially to insurgent groups, which they use to attack Americans:
Iraq’s deadly insurgent groups have financed their war against U.S. troops in part with hundreds of thousands of dollars in U.S. rebuilding funds that they’ve extorted from Iraqi contractors in Anbar province.
The payments, in return for the insurgents’ allowing supplies to move and construction work to begin, have taken place since the earliest projects in 2003, Iraqi contractors, politicians and interpreters involved with reconstruction efforts said.
So in the end, American taxpayers end up with everything: the death, the crippling injuries, and the foreign debt!
All we need is for the Bush administration to borrow still more money to put down internal US rebellions, and Americans will truly come to understand the exciting third world experience of odious debt.
SEE ALSO: Matt Taibbi on “The Great Iraq Swindle”
(McClatchy story via)
From Dirk Voetberg & co., this is quite genuinely funny. Be sure to vote for it after watching:
Last week Michael Cohen, former speechwriter to the US Ambassador to the UN during the Clinton administration, wrote unhappily about progressive bloggers engaging in name-calling toward people like himself:
[I]nstead of demonizing those we disagree with, we should debate them on the merits…Why [Atrios] feels the need to wrap his criticism in childish and tasteless attacks is beyond me. If you don’t agree with me or any other blogger, explain why. Calling me stupid might make you feel good, but it does nothing to advance the debate.
This led to a lengthy back and forth between Cohen and me, in particular regarding the Clinton administration’s policies toward Iraq during the late nineties. Sadly, it consisted of exactly what you’d expect: childish, tasteless name-calling on my part, while Cohen patiently attempted to debate me on the merits.
If you want to read it all, it’s here, here, and here. But all you really need to know about it can be found in this exchange:
1. Cohen wrote: “Saddam never acknowledged that he didn’t publicly have WMD.”
2. Childishly and tastelessly, I pointed out that (a) the Iraqi government passed a law banning WMD in February, 2003; (b) Saddam Hussein stated Iraq no longer had WMD in a February 26, 2003 interview with Dan Rather; and (c) Saddam then said the same thing in Arabic on Iraqi national television.
3. In comments, Cohen understandably responded: “Why you put so much faith in the words and deeds of Saddam Hussein is beyond me.”
Thus in the end, we find ourselves where we began, with the same unanswered questions. Why do bloggers like myself persist in our childish name-calling toward serious, sober foreign policy professionals? And why do we refuse to advance the debate on our faith in Saddam Hussein’s words and deeds?
AND: Remember this problem predates blogs—serious foreign policy professionals have long had to deal with this unseemly behavior by the public. For instance, here’s Madeleine Albright at a “national town hall meeting” on Iraq at Ohio State on February 18, 1998. As you see, she attempted to advance the debate, only to be met with childish, tasteless name-calling:
QUESTIONER: What do you have to say about dictators of countries like Indonesia, who we sell weapons to, yet they are slaughtering people in East Timor? What do you have to say about Israel, who are slaughtering Palestinians, who imposed martial law? What do you have to say about that? Those are our allies. Why do we sell weapons to these countries? Why do we support them? Why do we bomb Iraq when it commits similar problems?
ALBRIGHT: I really am surprised that people feel that it is necessary to defend the rights of Saddam Hussein.
ALSO: Thanks to SteveB for pointing out how Cohen, when confronted elsewhere with childish name-calling, wrote this in another patient attempt to advance the debate:
[Y]ou have as much right to hate America as I do to love it
If you haven’t already read Democracy Now’s interview with Nir Rosen, perhaps the best American journalist covering Iraq, you should read it now.
It’s all interesting, and all hideous. Did you know Sweden’s taken in 40-50,000 Iraqi refugees? And America’s only allowed in 700? To be fair, of course, America is just 1% of the size of Sweden.