Random Nuts

Home stretch of grading and other stuff, so just a few random rare bits here, with a focus on the nuts:

Nut 1: Iyad Allawi. Apparently, the rotund one has been nominated by the Governing Council to be Prime Minister after June 30. Chalabi would be the worst, but Allawi is not much better. An exile politician with no local support or base, really no base at all outside the CIA. Not a widely respected technocrat or a unifying, nonpolitical figure. Suggests the IGC desperately looking for a way to maintain its role against the possibility of democratic elections which would turn most of them out on their kiesters. If true, would be a pretty bad pick. UPDATE: Juan Cole, on the other hand, thinks that Brahimi wants precisely a politician with no local support so that the PM won't be able to use the power of incumbency to seize power. Perhaps I was too hasty.

Nut 2: Stephen Hayes. The Wall Street Journal asks why we aren't spending more time searching Iraqi archives for proof that Saddam was behind 9/11. The possibility that we have, and haven't found anything, is not considered a possibility, even though one might suspect that the slightest hint of such evidence would within half a second be on its way to the Wall Street Journal and to Stephen Hayes at the Weekly Standard. Speaking of uber-hack Stephen Hayes, quite possibly the worst working "journalist" today (not that Judith Miller doesn't seem to be working), did you know that he has published a book called "The Connection"? Apparently, it is supposed to be chock full of the "evidence" like the stuff in the Feith memo which Hayes published in the Weekly Standard - could someone remind me again why leaking highly classified documents full of unfiltered counter-terrorism intelligence is legal? Anyway, speaking of nuts, I would put Hayes in touch with Laurie and Edward, but don't all these guys already know each other? Surely they met at the big "Saddam Conspiracies" conference in Bethesda last year? Anyway, the Wall Street Journal describes Hayes's book like this: "There's no single "smoking gun," but there sure is a lot of smoke." Since the Journal desperately, painfully, tragically wants the "connection" to exist, this evaluation can only be translated as "this book is full of cow poopie, darn it."

Nut 3: Claudia Rossett. She's been writing about the Oil for Food "scandal" for so long and so obsessively that the lack of blood is starting to get to her. Shorter Claudia Rossett: Five different investigations of the Oil for Food Program are not enough. This is not the time for a coverup! Roswell! Roswell!

Nut 4: Dave Sim. The Cerebus creator answers questions - at rather dismaying length - on the Yahoo! Cerebus newsgroup. If you skip past the "let me explain again why the feminist conspiracy keeps you from understanding me" parts at the beginning, he actually has some fascinating interpretations of his own work. Especially recommended are the discussions of the "round glowing white thing"/Regency Elf and Rick's binding spell. Sim's explanations might sound a bit bizarre - I would love to hear Dave Fiore or Marc Singer or John Holbo take a crack at them - but they do suggest quite effectively both the depth of thought Sim brought to the table throughout the book... and how nuts it seems to have driven him.

Comments

[Kuas]

What a bunch of hacks.

I'm surprised Slate hasn't offered to host blogs for them all.

[bob mcmanus]

Holbo scared me yesterday with his long post on the mock-pastoral. Part 2 today (or soon) is supposed to deal with Cerebus.

[paper tigress]

Abu, is Allawi an Alawi?

[Rachel]

Three unrelated comments, apropos of nothing.

I just found your blog via someone else's blogroll, and am reading back entries voraciously. Thank you for your excellent analysis of current events.

I met Dave Sim once -- stood in line to get him to sign one of my volumes of Church & State, back when Cerebus made sense. It bums me out that he turned into such a gynophobic nutjob.

Also, your tagline from Once More, With Feeling is cracking me up, because it's such a dazzling commentary on the aftermath of the war in Iraq, and I'd never thought of putting those two things together before. :-)

[the aardvark]

Rachel, thanks! Sim and I exchanged a couple of letters over the years, and I always appreciated his wit and his patience. How times have changed. I just can't express how disappointed I am at how Cerebus and Sim degenerated over the last few years.

Bob, Holbo answers your nightmares!

On Allawi... after mulling on it a couple of days, I'm sticking with my initial reaction. Allawi is the closest thing to the ex-Baathist strongman type that was always the likeliest (and ugliest) outcome of any Saddam regime change. Whether it came from Brahimi (which does not seem likely to me at this point) or from the Council (more likely, and outrageous), Allawi's pick should be seen as a disaster by anyone who cares about that whole "democracy" thing that we used to hear so much about.

[mitch]

Iraq supported the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood and Baluchi nationalism in Pakistan, and invaded Kuwait. Al Qaeda's attacks on the USA were organized by a Pakistani Baluch born in Kuwait, and implemented with the assistance of the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood.

What connection?

[the aardvark]

Oooh, I love word problems! OK, let's see, if you take one Baluch and add three Muslim Brotherhoods, and then divide by Syria, you get... um... Saddam Hussein assassinated John F Kennedy! It's true! Thank god for the new, new math!

[mitch]

The World Trade Center was bombed in 1993 on Kuwait's Liberation Day. During the New York trial of the chief bomber in 1996, Flight TWA800 blew up, on Iraq's National Day.

What connection?

[the aardvarkthe]

Mitch,
Seriously now, we could play this game all day. You'll post these "connections" and I'll laugh at them, and neither one of us will change our minds. If you start with the answer and then look back for pieces that "fit," you can prove almost anything. It's bad social science, or just bad methodology more generally. Correlation, as they say is not causation... and connecting random dots to draw a pretty picture is not evidence. To this point, all arguments for a Saddam-Al Qaeda connection fall into one of those two categories.