Loose Cannons

How true

"And so I want to thank you for being a good host. It's not easy to host all these countries, particularly not easy to host, uhh, perhaps, me." — Emperor George Bush II, speaking at the Summit of the Americas, in Buenos Aires, November 4.

Wow!

"Wow, Brazil is big." — Emperor Bush's comment, November 6, after being shown a map of South America by Brazilian President Luiz Inacio da Silva.

Only now?

"Some Democrats and anti-war critics are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the American people about why we went to war." — Emperor Bush, November 11.

Reconstruction

"A criminal complaint unsealed in federal court in Washington on Wednesday alleges a web of corruption and bid rigging in Iraq by officials who worked with the now-defunct Coalition Provisional Authority. The complaint accuses an American-Romanian businessman, Philip H. Bloom, of paying officials from the coalition's south-central region 'bribes, kickbacks and gratuities, amounting to at least $200,000 per month', in order to obtain reconstruction contracts through a bid-rigging scam... Bloom or companies he controls made bank deposits of $353,000 on behalf of at least two CPA officials and bought them real estate in North Carolina as well as vehicles and jewelry worth more than $280,000 in 2004 and 2005." — NBC News, November 17.

From Green Left Weekly, November 23, 2005.

Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.

From GLW issue 650