0681 - NIE!NIE!

Sometimes, the news is as satisfying as it can get. The news this morning is that the idiot Charles “Cully” Stimson, the (get this title) Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Detainee Affairs, has resigned. This dolt is the guy who said that all big corporations should fire any law firms that had people working (free) to represent so-called “Detainees” held without trial by Cully-boy and his Guantanamo crowd. Since there was a big stink about his stupid remarks, he’s gone. We suggest he be held at Gitmo without trial or charge or lawyer. Which reminds us that at dinner on Anguilla recently (we dine a lot), a smart Englishman asked The OO why America, formerly so proud of its Bill of Rights and its Constitution, was violating both so regularly. The answer to that also came this week in the form of a new National Intelligence estimate, or NIE.

This NIE is quite a remarkable paper to come from the present Administration. For the benefit of those who don’t follow the intricacies of U.S. bureaucracy, the NIE is not a search for intelligent life, there being none discernible at the White House recently. Instead, this document is called “Prospects for Iraq’s Stability” and it says they – the prospects – are pretty punk, as if we didn’t know. Of course, the public doesn’t get to see the whole document, which is classified, but what is remarkable is that the “key judgments” were released. This comes after a most curious and contentious interview of Vice President Cheney by Wolf Blitzer, where Cheney said all was good and getting better in Iraq. So what does our savvy Staff deduce? That Cheney is in deep eclipse. Also, of course, as the NIE says, “The term ‘civil war’ does not adequately capture the complexity of the conflict in Iraq.” To us here, this is startlingly good news, not for the bloody conflict, of course, but because at last somebody is thinking and not reciting slogans.

If you can spend another moment about Iraq, all is not better. The street gang habit of calling names (Axis of Evil, smells of the Devil, stuff like that) has turned into street gang threats from the U.S. against Iran interference in Iraq, and the usual nonsensical screaming from that unshaven Iranian fellow. This is bad, and both sides should be quiet at once. The world just does not need a bigger mess made in the Middle East. Right, NIE?

OK, OK, we hear you, that’s enough about Iraq. How about Anguilla? Well, Anguilla is still in full boom mode, with hyper-expensive villas and condos planned everywhere, zero unemployment, and absolute impossibility of getting anybody to work on one’s house. Many shipments of workers from abroad have arrived, the last being Chinese. Meanwhile, the Touristi are here in force, all congratulating themselves for escaping the ice storms all over the U.S. or similar stuff in Europe. [Side remark: have you noticed how useless the predictions of weather a month ahead have been? If you can do better, you ought to speculate in Natural Gas futures.] But all here are smiling, eating, and yes, drinking a bit, and having a high old time. Jealous? That’s good.

Tomorrow, the Objective Observatory is the site of yet another Super Bowl party. The party is sponsored by a Staff member we rarely mention, going by the title of Bob the Bookie. Bob the B is a strange bookie, in that he charges no “vigorish” (means edge, commission), just accepts bets and pays them off as necessary. So, if the bets on one team are the same as on the other then Bob the B will break even. Right? No, wrong. In all past years, when the books are cast up at the end of the eating of high-cholesterol food and healthy beverages, then at the end the Bookie has had money left over. Odd, but not patentable.

Next time: So? [OO #682]

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