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July 31, 2003

Bedfellow payoff

Posted by Phil on July 31, 2003 10:13 PM

I wonder if there are better uses for 30 million American dollars than paying Iraqi gangsters to turn rat.

This won't be good for morale. Jessica Lynch didn't get $30 million. Neither did any of the hundred-thousand sweating grunts who won't be having Lifetime movies made about them. Neither did the guys who actually waxed the Torture Twins.

There's no telling how many $30-million-dollar prizes we'll have handed out in the end, but I doubt if any of the recipients would be declared "good guys" by a jury of their peers. Anybody who can finger Saddam Hussein or his family has to be compromised in some way. But then, we're used to having their kind on the payroll.

Maybe the prizes are coming out of President Bush's primary-campaign warchest. Maybe that's what he meant when, asked how he could possibly spend it (since, you know, he's not running a primary campaign), he said, "Just watch me." After all, there aren't sufficient Treasury funds to extend the child tax credit to poor families, so that can't be where the bag money for Iraqi turncoats is coming from.

In other news: Poindexter is out. That's only "good" news in the sense that it's no longer bad news. The question remains: Why the fuck was Poindexter ever allowed back in?

Comments

The only problem with Poindexter's departure is that he was just hamfisted enough and had just enough of a rap-sheet that he made a good lightning rod: People wanted to keep an eye on him. My guess is that we get another Lott-to-Frist transition, with the new guy being just as disinterested in the things Poindexter was disinterested in (the Constitution, privacy, avoidance of a police state), but with a better way of hiding it.

Posted by: mph at July 31, 2003 10:39 PM