China is prowling for oil deals and selling advanced weapons. German businessmen fill the lobbies of Iranian hotels (one can’t be sure what they’re selling).

Yeah, why can’t everyone just speak English?

CAPTION CONTEST

“I’m ready for my next hot, talking-point injection, Mr. Cheney!”
.

Few people remember that after the first most glorious Iraq War ever — Gulf War 1 — right wingers like Krauthammer were enraged that the U.S. still pretended to have won because of a supposedly huge, giant, awesome coalition, and the multilateral stuff was just a bunch of crap you sold to the idiot public so they’d think it was some serious international action, so they advocated with the fall of the Soviets that it was time for the U.S. to be the ruff & tuff, inyaface hyperpower they always fantasized at night.

They got their wish, nothing like that ever happened again and no one ever again pretended that a US-UK war was some sort of grand coalition, and, of course, everything worked out astoundingly well for everyone but our enemies.

…and while Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, has been outspoken in her disparagement of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, her words — like our president’s — fly up, while her (and his) government’s thoughts remain below.

How insidious! Her words and our president’s words, they fly up! In direct contradiction to the laws of gravity! Diabolical!!

Seriously, this is writing that is allowed to be featured in the Washington Post? a million unhinged blog commenters, typing blindfolded for a million years, could come up with something better than this trash.

fiawef39q3.

Why do these people still have a public platform from which to speak? If we have learned anything in the last 8 years, it is that these are “the dumbest fucking people on earth”. They should be mercilessly ridiculed by all every time they appear in public, pilloried in the public square, and cast back into the primeval sewage slime swamps from which they slithered.

So he’s arguing that abandoning the international community and going with cowboy diplomacy is the best solution to prevent Iran from getting nukes? That’s certainly a hard argument to refute.

Seven and a half years after denouncing Iran’s nuclear weapons program, a hapless president and his coalition can only look on while the Iranians rush to the finish line.

Trashing a President as “hapless” when he got that way by following your moronic warmongering policies = chutzpah.

Two things stood out for me:

The dirty Russians, crafty Chinese and inscrutable Huns are undermining our grand coalition for nasty commercial reasons but the true-blue U.S. of A. is apparently only pursuing Iranian disarmament (non-acquisition-of-armament?) for the purest of reasons and the good of the world.

I thought the unfettered pursuit of commerce was a good thing. Did I miss a wingnut memo somewhere? And the U.S. has no commercial interest in Iran and the region? Really?

Also, what does Mr. Perle think America could do unilaterally that it couldn’t do with international help? Impose sanctions? I know, we could blockade Iran! Well maybe not, seeing that our military assets are, er, otherwise occupied (heh) at the moment.

As usual, Richard Perle speaks from his sphincter.

Dicky P is in da house!!
Swinging his wee little willy all about!!

Yeah, that AEI, such a supernova of fucking genius there to be sure.

To an oyster, a pearl is just a cyst. Now just change two letters & substitute “intelligent reader” for “oyster.”

To judge from how the world community’s been steadfastly ignoring NK for the last year or so, China, Russia & Germany could do little better at this point than to send Iran some nuke-tipped Scuds & Exocets. Whereupon, naturally, everyone in the Bush Junta would be discovering what an imminent menace to Western Civilization SYRIA is, just all on a sudden like.

Funny how the most extreme theocratic dictatorship in the region, with a well-known track-record of supporting Al-Queda (remember them?) -Saudi Arabia – always gets a pass, isn’t it? You’d almost think there was some kind of ulterior motive at work there – like, oh, maybe, Bush’s “let’s hold hands, my darling” BFF Prince Saud owning a ton of Yankee stocks & real estate? Nah, couldn’t be!

Must be those damn magic unicorns again.

German businessmen fill the lobbies of Iranian hotels (one can’t be sure what they’re selling).

He’s right, you know, and Iranian tourism has been ruined by that sort of thing. What’s the point of being carted around in buses, surrounded by sweaty mindless dumbasses from Des Moines and Cincinnati in their FDNY hats and their Hawaiian shirts and their iPods and their US News and World Reports, complaining about the coffee, ‘Oh, they don’t make it right here, do they, not like at home’, stopping at Yazd bodegas, selling burgers and fries and Bud Lite and “crunch patties” with “flavor sauce” and being herded into endless Holiday Inns and Ramadans and Motel Sixes with their international luxury modern roomettes and their Bud Lite and their swimming pools full of fat German businessmen pretending to be acrobats and forming pyramids and frightening the children and selling who knows what, and then, once a week, there’s an excursion to the ancient Persian Ruins where you can buy cherryade and melted ice cream and Bud Lite

Also hey, why not Bill Kristol?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/23/opinion/23kristol.html?hp

Form your link, Doctorb:

And it might be picky to remark that when McCain was asked whether U.S. troops might have to remain in Iraq for as long as 50 years, he replied, “Maybe 100” — explaining, “As long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, it’s fine with me, and I hope it would be fine with you if we maintain a presence in a very volatile part of the world. …”

In other words, McCain is open to an extended military presence in Iraq, similar to ones we’ve had in Germany, Japan or Kuwait.

Ohh… well that makes sense. No wait, it doesn’t. WHY do we need permanent bases in Germany and Japan and Kuwait? Why would we need them in Iraq? So John McCain doesn’t really want a century-long guerilla war, he would much prefer a peaceful, submissive colony. Well, good. He’s not a sadistic monster, just a greedy, callous imperialist. Much better, thanks.

“…endless Holiday Inns and Ramadans…”

The Ramadans are nice enough, the rooms are furnished with very nice couches and beds but the food service…well, it’s just not up to Western standards.

The bases in Germany were to keep a lid first on leftover Nazis, then Commies. The bases in Japan were first to run the country (MacArthur is considered the only foreigner to ever rule Japan), then to keep an eye on the Chinese, and fill in for an actual Japanese military (for reasons both constitutional, public relational, and cheap). Nowadays, its to serve as staging areas and money for the Bavarian economy.

The Ramadan hotel food is great, you just have to have breakfast really, really early.

Oh yeah another thing about Kristol’s quoting of McCain: while St BBQ did in fact say sure let’s stay there for a hundred years as long as nobody’s attacking us — we can leave aside the bone-headedness of that statement, because a few months later he was all we should get out in less that 20 years (“eventually I think because of the nature of the society in Iraq and the religious aspects of it that America eventually withdraws”).

Apparently, though McCain deserves praise for his “intellectually honest answer”, in which he uses a false premise to support a dumbass conclusion.

Just thought I’d point out that Richard Perle is, you know, evil.

Rufus at 16:15: he’s quoting Claudius in Hamlet. Well, actually, he’s plagiarizing it, since he’s not bothering to credit Willie the Shake or even use quotation marks. I blame the WaPo management for being too cheap to hire copy editors, and Perle himself for not realizing that Angela Merkel isn’t the modern equivalent of Claudius — a conscienceless murderer and usurper; he is.

Apologies to Carl Levin, how can we take seriously the opinions of a man clueless enough to think his comb-over fools anyone?

I think using lines from Hamlet counts as allusion; if you had to cite every time you did that, pompous windbags would never get anything done.