BobHarris.com - "I Could Be Killed Any Time" says the ordinary Iraqi

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Books I'm Getting

Who Hates Whom:
Well-Armed Fanatics, Intractable Conflicts,
and Various Things Blowing Up —
A Woefully Incomplete Guide™

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"I Could Be Killed Any Time" says the ordinary Iraqi

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Wednesday, 29 June 2005

I don't know how to describe how badly Bush's speech looked on this side of the Atlantic. The tiny little hotel room I'm in has a tiny little TV with a tiny little remote, but the system is rigged up with channels from Denmark, England, Sweden, France, Germany, and Italy, as far as I can tell. And hoo-boy. Bad.

"No Plan B" is how the BBC characterized the speech. The tone was understated but plain sarcasm.

As far as my limited language skills allow me to tell via my room's Minibar of Babel, that seems to be the nicest thing anyone can say.

Meanwhile, here's a little snidge from today's Times of London:

Qassem Mohammed recites the Shahada, the Muslim prayer for those about to die, twice a day: once when he leaves home for his first job at a cooking oil factory, and again after lunch when he leaves for his second job in a barber shop.

"I could be killed at any time," said Mr Mohammed, 37, a father of three with sunken eyes and a prematurely grey beard.

Make no mistake: this ordinary working-class Joe is now giving himself the last rites basically every time he leaves the goddam house.

That's what newspaper readers over here are seeing. And then Bush stands before the most controlled audience possible, trying to re-link Iraq to 9-11 to justify the extraordinary tragedy he has personally overseen.