Slothrop's Dream

Tuesday, February 22, 2005

Yojimmy Battles the Pink Rabbits

TIM:: There he is!
ARTHUR:: Where?
TIM:: There!
ARTHUR:
What, behind the rabbit?
TIM:: It is the rabbit.
ARTHUR:: You silly sod!
TIM:: What?
ARTHUR:: You got us all worked up!
TIM:: Well, that's no ordinary rabbit!
ARTHUR:: Ohh.
TIM:: That's the most foul, cruel, and bad-tempered rodent you ever set eyes on!
ROBIN:: You tit! I soiled my armour I was so scared!
TIM:: Look, that rabbit's got a vicious streak a mile wide! It's a killer!

This week saw the dedication of the third of our most powerful submarines in

the U.S. fleet, the Seawolf class. Named for a former nuke, the USS Jimmy Carter

is specially outfitted with a hull extension allowing for spy and special

operations missions. The reason I inkoved Monte Python (if the internet is now

so non-geek that I need a reason) is to remind and educate you of a more

recent naval battle won by president Carter. In April of 1979 the president was met

with an unusual occurance, alone on a canoe. The Washington Post summed up

the story as follows:

While home fishing in Georgia during a summer when his popularity was at low

tide, President Jimmy Carter's small boat was "attacked" by a mysterious

swimming rabbit, which the president warded off with a paddle. Once leaked into

print by Brooks Jackson of the Associated Press, the bizarre story captured the

press's and the public's imagination, becoming a metaphor for Carter's hapless,

enfeebled presidency. The incident encouraged Massachusetts Sen. Edward M.

Kennedy's primary challenge to Carter's renomination, and it became a symbolic

preamble to Carter's landslide loss in November 1980.

With nuclear war with the Ruskies on the line, stagflation choking the American

economy, and the Islamic revolution in Iran (oil embargo, hostages), president Carter

had defeated a bunny. This anecdote alone should serve as a reminder that nice guys

should never be Commander in Chief. For that matter they shouldn't be your stock broker,

your lawyer,or your mountain climbing instructor. Nice people avoid conflict when it is

the best resolution to a problem, even when it is the only way out of a problem. Nice

people don't like to correct others or to argue, even if they believe passionately in

their argument. Nice people are not always nice: How often have you heard that ominous

preface "he's a nice guy, but... "?

Why president Carter thought he was under seige from a paddling rodent is unknown. Perhaps,

holding the highest office in the land during times Confucius would call interesting, required a physical

release of all that psychic pressure, compunded by the burden of always having to appear "nice."

As the USS Jimmy Carter finishes sea trials and enters into comissioned service in

defense of the United States, pray those giving the orders are those detail

oriented, compulsive, gruff, workaholic jerks; men and women with no fear of doling

out tough news, or amphibious rabbits.

7:10:14 PM

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Sunday, February 13, 2005

The Greatest Scandal in the History of the World

In last Thursday's Wall Street Journal you'll find an editorial by Paul A. Volcker, the former head of the Federal Reserve and chairman of the independent Inquiry Committee into the United Nation's Oil for Food Program. He writes about the Committee's release of its first Interim Report. He writes that the report's conclusions "do not make for pleasant reading." It may be only the initial report, but he is clearly pessimistic about what has been found so far. While he goes into little detail, citing pending investigations into Kofi Annan, his son, Kojo, and the Executive Director of Oil for Food Benon Sevan, he does hint at the corruption being uncovered. Volcker laments that, "The evidence is conclusive that Mr. Sevan ...placed himself in an irreconcilable conflict of interest, in violation of both specific united nations rules and of the broad responsibility of an international civil servant to adhere to the highest standards of trust and integrity." Ominous words from a a man not prone to hyperbole.

The report was released Thusrsday to Kofi at 11am EST, and then publicly four hours thereafter. Earlier this year the Committee released internal audits showing how millions of dollars meant to go for food and medicine for the Iraqi people were instead wasted on mismanagement and corrupt over payments. During the late 90's when the Oil for Food Program was being implemented, many on the left had cried for an end to it stating that its implementation was killing thousands of children in Iraq through starvation and inadequate healthcare. In truth, even with the corruption Saddam was able to siphon off most of the money for his own uses, with the assistance of corrupt oil businessmen and bureaucrats.

In January Samir A. Vincent, a naturalized American citizen, was convicted of four counts relating to the Oil for Food scandal for taking money from Iraq in order to lobby the U.S. to drop the sanctions, fraud, conspiring with another government without registering, and tax evasion. He earned between 3$ and 5$ million dollars doing the work that liberals, socialists, commies, and greens were doing on Saddam's behalf for free. Saddam was building gaudy palaces with the money, leaving his people to suffer horribly, and a few criminals, like Samir and those soon to be revealed by Volcker's committee, went along for the blood-money ride.

The sanctions on Iraq, and the Oil for Food program amending them, were designed to constrain a diabolic, vicious, and unpredictable dictator. Had the U.N. lived up to its obligations and properly enforced and audited the transactions perhaps they would have worked. Instead, we will likely soon have evidence that the organization that appoints Sudan to the Commission on Human Rights, was apart to the greatest fraud in the history of the world. Billions of dollars, and untold thousands of lives were wasted on greed, incompetence, and sloth.

6:10:38 PM

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