Author: BooMan

Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.

MOJO FEST- This is a Give Each Other Mojo Thread

“I’m hopeful. I know there is a lot of ambition in Washington, obviously. But I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure.”

-The Shrubinator in an interview with the Associated Press, Jan. 18, 2001

Wolfowitz at the World Bank?

John Kerry opposes the nomination of Paul Wolfowitz to be President of the World Bank.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

March 16, 2005

Statement by John Kerry on Paul Wolfowitz’s Nomination to be President of the World Bank

“Coming on the heels of the appointment of John Bolton to be ambassador to the United Nations, this is now another mystifying choice by the Bush administration for an important role in the community of nations. It makes you wonder whether all the administration’s words about mending fences with our allies are just lip service. After Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz’s repeated and serious miscalculations about the costs and risks America would face in Iraq , I don’t believe he is the right person to lead the World Bank.”

But what Kerry doesn’t know is that Wolfowitz is really good with numbers.

Wolfie proved it prior to the war when he appeared before the House Budget Committee.

See below:

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, who appeared before the House Budget Committee, refused to be pinned down, however, saying that uncertainty over the course that the war might take makes meaningful estimation of cost almost impossible. “If we cost every single (scenario), we’d maybe give you a range between $10bn and $100bn and you’d say that’s useless, and you’d be right,” he said. On the question of financial assistance from other nations, Wolfowitz said that he expects lots of contributions after the war, including from nations that oppose military action. CBS Article

Ten billion? Did he throw 10 billion out there?

Complaint Department

Update [2005-3-15 19:16:3 by BooMan]: Hey! What’s Wrong With You People? Post some friggin diaries!

Update [2005-3-15 22:35:29 by BooMan]: You guys/gals are having a lot of fun in the diaries and the regional open threads. And that makes me happy. But please give some love to Pastor Dan and SusanHbu for contributing great content to the site.

This site has been up for almost 48 hours. We’ve been making improvements on the fly and a lot of issues y’all have raised have been corrected. A few others are in the queue.

Consider this an open thread to complain about the site, and make suggestions. Also, you could be nice if you want. I mean, if you have anything nice to say.

How does everyone like the colors?

Do you like the regional threads?

What do you think about the ‘World Recommended Diary’ feature?

How do we get more ‘World’ people to post diaries?

Does it bother you that the threads have East on the left coast and West on the right coast, or do you feel that since the East was settled first it should take place of honor?

Are the grey boxes too dark?

Do you spell it grey or gray?

And finally, about those default comment titles:

vote in the poll

Open Discussions (threads)

Up above you see East, South, Midwest, West, and World boxes.

Click on them.

They are Open Discussions.

Decide what part of the country/world you live in, and post away. Meet people from your area and marry them.

If you live abroad, use the World thread to talk about how strange Americans are.

And if you don’t want to limit your comment to just the Midwesterners, you can treat the World thread as a kind of all-purpose open thread.

Blowing My Cover

Blowing My Cover

Everybody has lives that they might have led if some little detail had been different, or if they just hadn’t been lacking some critical skill.

For me, that critical skill was learning foreign language. I never could get the spoken part. I did best in dead languages, particularly Ancient Greek. But after 5 years of Spanish, even though I could read a newspaper, I couldn’t understand the soap operas on Telemundo.

My inability to catch on to foreign languages led to my aversion to studying them. And that led to me giving up on pursuing a Doctorate of Philosophy and a career in academics.

I don’t know if it started after seeing The Return of the Pink Panther or The Spy Who Loved Me but I have been fascinated with the clandestine services ever since I was a young boy.

I didn’t play with decoder rings or anything, but I read anything I could about espionage. During the Cold War spying seemed glamorous to me. And I often fantasized about being sent off to Tashkent or Cairo to glean the secrets of our enemies.

I always wanted to be a case officer, never an analyst. Of course, I figured that once I was inducted into the CIA that I would learn all our nations secrets, and the answers to every nagging question. I’d learn who killed JFK, and lord it over my friends that still were in the dark.

But I didn’t keep the kind of lifestyle that would impress the CIA, and I knew I never would be able to understand spoken Arabic.

So that dream died too.

Unlike Bob Baer, George Clooney will not be starring in a movie about my adventures and exploits in far off lands.

And I guess that’s a good thing. Amor fati as they say. After reading Lindsay Moran’s book (which I consumed in a few hours) I finally learned exactly what the training is to become a clandestine officer. And it is not for the weak-willed.

But it’s also become clear over the years that there is something fundamentally wrong-headed about our intelligence services. It’s not at all clear that they are the good guys anymore, if they ever were.

For anyone really interested in the origins of the CIA, and the building of our national security infrastructure this is a good resource.

L. Fletcher Prouty headed up the Air Force liaison office with the CIA. Technically, he was in both services, and he designed a lot of the architecture for how the CIA procured weapons from the military and handled accounting.

He later left the service and remained convinced till the day he died that JFK had been killed by a “high cabal” within the US Government, including the CIA. But conspiracy theories aside, he gives a fascinating history of the period between 1955 and 1964.

He gives a kind of a behind the scenes review of the Cuban revolution, the Gary Powers U-2 incident, the Bay of Pigs, and the Cuban missile crisis.

Prouty helped build our clandestine services, but he ended up being highly critical of what they do, and what they became. Now, with Porter Goss and John Negroponte in charge, I do not foresee any improvements.

Bob Johnson’s Dog

I almost crapped my pants reading this iz not bob jonsen riting over at dKos.

Here’s a sample:

u shood no that bob duz not scrach my stumick wen i wont him to. an wen i wont him to scrach beehine my eers he wil not do it awl the time. he taiks me for wawks but maik me stop wen i chais skwerls.