All Men Are Smelly Rutty Ibexes

[from 12/15/10]

Top ten Wikileaks revelations so far.

#10. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange favors Golden Trojans. Old joke recalled from college: what do you call a man who uses Golden Trojans? A. Dad. New joke for a post 9/11 world: What do you call a man who uses Golden Trojans? A. Surprising.

#9. All US State Department employees and dependents agree that Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai is a ‘smelly rutting ibex.’ [Actually a mild family-friendly euphemism. The exact kinds of things they say about him can’t be repeated in front of impressionable children, because they’d just repeat it back to us endlessly, and spoil the fun of it.]

#8. That Hamid Karzai knows that he is a ‘smelly rutting ibex’, but he doesn’t feel that should keep him and the US apart. He is enjoying having ‘a dance’ with us.

#7. Iyyad Allawi, former US-appointed puppet leader of Iraq, begged us to invade Iran, at a time when we had already invaded two countries, including his, also at his insistence. We wrote him back a very polite letter, the gist of which was, “Get a life.”

#6. Egyptian Dictator Hosni Mubarak actually told US officials America should install our own dictator in Iraq once and for all, and forget this silly democracy business. At that time we told him we had Iyyad. Hosni said he had an uncle that would dictate for us for half what Iyyad was charging. We said, “no thanks,” money is no object, we just steal from the Iraqis.

#5. After a German of Lebanese descent was kidnapped, rendered to Afghanistan, and tortured under the direction of the CIA, the CIA discovered they had the wrong guy and released him, and he complained. Germany was all set to prosecute the CIA operatives involved in the kidnapping, then dropped the effort after one of our ambassadors told them the United States would spank Germany if they arrested any of them.

#4. While Germany was making us mad by wanting us to obey laws, a naughty judge in Spain was getting ready to prosecute no less than Alberto Gonzales, our attorney general, for allowing Spanish citizens to be tortured at Guantanamo. We sent Spain a very firm cable reminding them that children don’t tell their betters how to behave, and threatened to spank them, as well.

#3. Pakistan is providing safe havens for the Taliban. We should spank them. Oh, wait, they have nukes. Never mind that, then. But we’ll keep sending soldiers to Afghanistan to die, because otherwise the terrorists will have won.

#2. Hillary Clinton authorized spying on UN officials, including the Secretary General, in violation of international law that the United States has ratified. But let’s cut her some slack. After all, she’s married to Bill. She’s bound to be a little paranoid. We need to recognize, too, that paranoia is as much an ability as it is a dis-ability, and be accepting and celebratory of that fact.

#1 It’s not really a Wikileak, but the main thing we’ve learned from the whole affair is that Americans believe that the US government can withdraw freedom of the press from anyone merely by unilaterally declaring that they are not a journalist. Like all the other “revelations” from Wikileaks, this only surprises the inattentive. We already knew that the average American thinks that a citizen’s legal rights can be cancelled by arbitrarily being declared an enemy combatant. So, big whoop.

Nevertheless, Julian Assange and Co deserve awards, if only for proving to the rest of us that Pay Pal, Amazon.com, and MasterCard are also as cowardly as the German and Spanish governments, or as uncaring about freedom of speech and the rights of all the people of the world to know how much their governments violate their trust.

And now, a completely off-topic facetious remark. There’s a rumor Hillary Clinton advised Obama to compromise on continuing the Bush tax cuts for the rich. I’m sure she did, with his best interests at heart.