Sunday Instahoglets

It's Sunday again, and I have entered the "Long Dark Teatime of the Soul". Being thus incapable for the nonce of conceptually creative analysis, I will restrict myself to the winning formula of the Instapundit and Atrios - pushposts accompanied by a snarky comment or two. It's Instahoglets!

Yet again we are on Iraqi Constitution watch - and yet again it looks like Iraq's sectarian and ethnic groups remain seriously at odds over a draft constitution, despite urgent pushes by U.S. diplomats to accept a deal which basically involved giving the OK to the region's newist Islamic theocracy.

Since the idea may have originally come from "Axis of Evil" member, Iran, one has to conclude the Bush administration is desperate for any kind of deal they can claim is a "victory" worth so many dead.

Already, the scene is set for more of the same old same old:

Shiite and Kurdish militias, often operating as part of Iraqi government security forces, have carried out a wave of abductions, assassinations and other acts of intimidation, consolidating their control over territory across northern and southern Iraq and deepening the country's divide along ethnic and sectarian lines, according to political leaders, families of the victims, human rights activists and Iraqi officials.

It's hardly surprising then that more and more veterans and even serving soldiers are concluding, like Chuck Hagel, that "we’re not winning". The question now becomes do we get out or do we radically change the ways we are going about things? My answer is in my Twin Wars series of posts (links on the sidebar).

Oh, and if you wonder how Iraqis view all this then look no further than Baghdad's "Azzaman" newspaper - "By any standards our government is a total failure."

MEANWHILE, in other stories:

Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Oakland, has embarked on a truly herculean task - quantifying to the penny the extent of Pentagon waste, fraud, and abuse. Given that over two TRILLION dollars (that's $2,000,000,000,000 folks!) can't be tracked in any case, it's a difficult task. In fact, the Government Accounting Office say it is an impossible one.

In an article that, unsurprisingly, none of the US conservative lovers of the London Times mentioned at all, ex-Conservative MP and former Defence Secretary Michael Portillo suggested that Bush should show Iran some respect. (Oh, he also calls Iraq a "quicksand.")

In the Jerusalem Post a member of Israel's Parliament complains that senior State Department officials, some generals in the Pentagon and FBI security types are uncomfortable with the economic power, media presence, academic importance and political clout of American Jews and prevent them rising too far if they have family in Israel. He also says "We have never had a friendlier president in the White House than George W. Bush, except perhaps Bill Clinton."

Heh. There goes all those wingnut allegations of liberal anti-semitism.

From today's Independent:

Chimpanzees not only copy each other like humans, but are also victims of peer pressure, scientists have found. A study of how chimps learnt a new trick from another member of their group has demonstrated that man's closest relative possesses the very human characteristic of wanting to be like everyone else.

Oh, so that explains the Rightwing echo chamber!