Tuesday, May 25, 2004

Bush Speaks Out It took a lot of guts for President Bush to say the following in last night's speech: This vile display shows a contempt for all the rules of warfare, and all the bounds of civilized behavior. Errr, wait a minute. I'm sorry ... he wasn't speaking about Abu Ghraib there. Here's what he said on the prison scandal: A new Iraq will also need a humane, well-supervised prison system. Under the dictator, prisons like Abu Ghraib were symbols of death and torture. That same prison became a symbol of disgraceful conduct by a few American troops who dishonored our country and disregarded our values. One other point on last night's speech: conservatives have been complaining that the SCLM only reports the bad news from Iraq and buries stories on the positive things that are happening there. Perhaps they should also complain about the President's speech-writers. The positive plan for Iraq (the body of the speech) was sandwiched between 10 paragraphs about "terror," "enemies," "murder," "death," "torture," "fear," "peril," "bombing," and "violence." Hell, they even inserted mention of "ricin," "orange alert," and "dirty bomb." 2:28:27 PM    comment [] Iraqi Universities Not Rebuilt One of the Administration's favorite Iraq talking points is that "the schools are open." However, as the AP reports, the claim does not include the universities. The United States has failed to rebuild Iraq's university system just weeks before the planned handover of control, the top American education adviser to Iraq told The Associated Press on Friday. Congress has provided only about $8 million of the $500 million needed to repair damage resulting mainly from postwar looting, and foreign governments have done little more, John A. Agresto said in an interview at Samford University, where he was scheduled to give a commencement speech Saturday. As a result, Agresto said thousands of Iraqi university students and faculty members do not have basic supplies like desks and chairs, and teaching equipment stolen from technical schools has not been replaced. At some vocational colleges, students learn "theoretical carpentry" because they lack tools, he said. "This has been the fault of America and the rest of the coalition," said Agresto. "We've put all our resources into electricity, oil, sewer (and) security, and we've said from the very beginning that we are going to rely on the international community to help." The article notes that some blame Agresto himself for the problem. Agresto is a conservative who chaired the National Endowment for the Humanities under former President Reagan and was a former university president. Keith Watenpaugh, a history professor who visited Iraq last year and has followed the U.S. work at Iraqi universities, said Agresto was part of the problem. Agresto is one of a number of politically connected American advisers in Iraq whose views are shaped by "a narrow partisan, cultural or religious agenda," said Watenpaugh, of Le Moyne College in Syracuse, N.Y. At least both sides agree that the condition of Iraqi universities is intolerable and needs to be rectified. [Thanks to the Iraq Crisis listserve.] 11:00:07 AM    comment []

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