More headlines from the torture front: “General Is Said To Have Urged Use of
Dogs” and “Abuse of Captives More Widespread, Says
Army Survey.” It wouldn’t surprise us, given those headlines, that the
administration arranged to take our minds off them with today’s alert: “U.S. Warns of Al Qaeda Threat During
Summer,” but there’s “Nothing
Specific.”
We’re glad somebody
noticed:
A senior diplomat from a country on the Security Council complained recently
that the United States needed to provide consistent signals about Iraqi sovereignty. As an
example, he said [Colin] Powell’s recent statement that the United States would pull its
forces out if asked after June 30 was at odds with Mr. Bush’s statement that the United States
would persevere and not allow itself to be driven from Iraq. “It’s a complete contradiction,” the
diplomat said.
We’re also glad somebody noticed Mr. Nice Guy’s shortcomings as an author and
book “Bobos in
Paradise,” which felt like a padded magazine article, we’ve had our
doubts about him.
Back in October we put it gently when we said he was “still trying to find his
rhythm” as a columnist. In November we described him as “increasingly
irritating” but admitted he “got off a funny satire about Wal-Mart’s
lad-magazine ban.” In December, when we were into purple prose alerts, we called him a “swiftly rising
purplemeister” both for his writing style and his politics.
OK, you know we’re talking about David Brooks, who claimed “Bush believes the U.S. has a
unique role to play in [the] struggle to complete democracy’s triumph over tyranny and so drain
the swamp of terror.” We hoped then that when the “triumph over tyranny” did “drain the swamp
of terror,” it would also do a clean-up job on the purplemeister’s prose.
The last time we mentioned him, in February, we were struck by his assertion that the White
House nitwit is inarticulate, “like most of us.” We took that as an insult, believing
as we do that in the inarticulate department the nitwit is peerless.
