Here are some of the best quotes of the day, and there were lots to choose from:

From Mark Kleiman:

Just in case you had, even for a moment, considered paying attention to Rush Limbaugh’s whining about how partisan Democratic prosecutors are mistreating him by not letting him walk on charges of illegally buying prescription drugs, here’s what happens to someone who’s (1) a genuine pain patient rather than someone feeding a habit and (2) not a politically powerful multimillionaire: a 25 year mandatory prison term.

From Harold Meyerson, Washington Post:

The only unequivocally good policy option before the American people is to dump the president who got us into this mess, who had no trouble sending our young people to Iraq but who cannot steel himself to face the Sept. 11 commission alone.

From Josh Marshall:

At the critical moment the president has the toxic mix of the bulldog will of a Winston Churchill and the strategic insights and imagination of a Neville Chamberlain.

He has no plan. And will without policy just equals death.

The gap between the reality in Iraq and the White House’s Potemkin village version of it is closing rapidly, like an upper and lower jaw about to shut tight. And the White House’s penchant for denial is being squeezed between the two.

The winner of the day is Doonesbury, however, for a cartoon that is sure to raise a firestorm. (Click to enlarge.)

Brown Sugar?? Ouch.

Update: I know I’m quoting Marshall a lot lately, but he’s the smartest blogger in the world. This just in:

Ages and ages ago we told you how Undersecretary of Defense Doug Feith ran the office charged with doling out Iraqi reconstruction contracts. And we told you how Feith’s law partner, Marc Zell — amazingly contravening the law of averages — had happened to set up a special lobbying shop to lobby for companies looking for sweet Iraq contracts.

And then, because we didn’t want to leave out any details, we noted that Zell had opened that new operation with Salem Chalabi. And, yes, Salem is Ahmed’s nephew.

Now it turns out that in addition to his entrepreneurial activities, Salem is also in charge of setting up the Iraqi war crimes tribunals, which will eventually try Saddam Hussein.

All of which should reassure you that as messy as things may be at the moment, we’re at least freeing this sad land from corrupt dynasticism and clan rule.

I remember last spring when the US made its march into Baghdad. We were so invincible. It was made to so perfect. Gweilo Diaries put up one of the most beautiful posts, headlined “Victory!” with a photograph of an old Iraqi woman approaching the US troops, arms outstretched with beautiful flowers, looking at them as true liberators, as her saviors. (I’d link to it, but I can’t pinpoint it on Conrad’s site.) For a moment it all seemed so right. We were heroes. We had done the right thing. The feeling lasted what now seems like only a few minutes. Soon any hope I may have had for a quick resolution were shattered, my hopes, skeptical to begin with, all vanished.

It’s been hard going ever since, but I don’t think America was at all prepared for the horrors of the past seven days, which I think it’s safe to say constitute nothing less than a meltdown.

The atrocities in Fallujah were bad enough, but they were at least understandable; we always knew the Sunni triangle would be a major challenge. It was only more recently, early this week, that the scales fell from our eyes. The Shi’ites were the ones who were supposed to support us. To see them mobilize en masse against us, and in so doing murdering 12 US marines and many more Iraqis today alone — that crossed a line. Suddenly, the conversation shifted to a new plane, and the buzzwords of the day were Vietnam, quagmire, no way out, and hopeless.

Amazing, how far we have come from Bush’s Top Gun landing on the aircraft carrier, under the huge banner announcing, “Mission Accomplished.”

I’m not posting to tell of what I think the solutions are, how we can get out of it, what we should do next or what we should have done earlier. I’m posting to tell my friends in Asia how shocking it is to be in America right now, how different it is today than it was even three weeks ago when I arrived in New York.

Listening to the chorus of most (not all) Republicans, you’d think the horrors of the past week were mere blips, minor disruptions. The way they’re talking we can just pick up and go on June 30 and Iraq will be a fully functional democracy. Bremer insists we are in “complete control” in Iraq, and has no idea how surreal such a claim appears to us in the US, where scenes of butchered Americans and flaming cities and soaring death tolls tell a somewhat different story.

Certainly, we can win “control,” at least in military terms. But if the Iraqis despise us and see us as murderous occupiers, what hope is there of Bush’s grand vision that Iraq will follow in our footsteps, serving as a beacon of democracy in the Middle East that will inspire others to renounce terrorism and seek democracy for themselves? At the moment, that vision seems so unrealistic, so preposterous — so patently absurd. And Bremer is talking as though all is going according to plan.

I once believed Iraq and the world would be much better off without Saddam. I had huge doubts along the way, especially as Bush destroyed alliances, vilified those who questioned and displayed a smugness I never imagined the American people could find acceptable from their president. All things considered, it would have been better if we’d held off and focused more on the true threat of terrorism in places where al Qaeda thrives.

A spectacular mess, and one that is likely to plague us for years and years to come, courtesy of our “war-time president,” the most venal, unscrupulous, arrogant piece of shit ever to desecrate the White House.

UPDATE: My blog can be accessed in China. It’s just my recent post on Looking back at China” that’s causing the problems. That’s what one Beijing reader told me in an email, and Emile writes in the comments:

I find this incredibly stupid, but I’ll have to live with it.

I’m being told by three separate friends in Beijing that my site isn’t loading there. I thought it was a problem on my end because I had trouble getting onto my site tonight, but now it’s fine. If anyone has any problems or theories, please email me. The Chinese government wouldn’t bother trying to block this little site — would they?

It’s kind of surreal, scannning the cable news stations today. It’s a one-topic news day, and that’s Iraq and the threat of civil war. There seems to have been a major shift over just the past few days. A tipping point? I don’t know, but Josh Marshall, who is usually pretty level-headed and able to keep his emotions out of his posts today sounds downright grim. Not that he’s ever been pro-war or a great optimist that Bush is doing the right thing. But today he sounds depressed and hopeless.

Gloom…has been building over Iraq. Increasingly, the Wise Heads are forecasting disaster. Wise Heads say they see no realistic plan, hear no serious concept to get ahead of the situation. Money, training, jobs…all lagging, all reinforce downward spiral highlighted by sickening violence. There seems to be no real “if”, just when, and how badly it will hurt U.S. interests. Define “disaster”? Consensus prediction: if Bush insists on June 30/July 1 turnover, a rapid descent into civil war. May happen anyway, if the young al-Sadr faction really breaks off from its parents. CSIS Anthony Cordesman’s latest blast at Administration ineptitude says in public what Senior Observers say in private…the situation may still be salvaged, but then you have to factor in Sharon’s increasing desperation, and the regional impact.

Note: “quagmire”…when you are in a bad situation you created yourself, and would quit in a minute if you could, but which if you did, it would make everything else worse. So you can’t…and it gets worse anyway.

I wish I could give snippets of all the Iraqi stories on the news today. Things seem to be coming to some sort of head. But as Marshall says, there’s no way out. Maybe all we can do right now is be grim and depressed.

From the HK Standard, a ferocious attack on the lying liars of the CCP and the lies they tell us in regard to the arrest and release of Ding Zilin, one of the three “Tiananmen Mothers.”

On the day Ding was released, Xinhua, the official state mouthpiece, issued a statement saying that she “and others have been detained based on evidence that they have participated in illegal activities sponsored by overseas forces. They were released by police after being admonished and showing repentance”.

The Xinhua report continues: “According to Ding’s confession, they conspired with overseas forces to evade Chinese customs and import illegal goods to China with fabricated labels and documents, and engaged in other activities in violation of China’s Customs Law, the State Security Law and detailed rules on the implementation of the State Security Law.”

The reality is that they were arrested two weeks before the anniversary of Hu Yaobang’s death – the anniversary that sparked the democracy protests. Hu, the former head of the Communist Party, is seen by many Chinese as one of the few leaders who genuinely believed in reform. The mass mourning that followed his death demonstrated a widespread feeling of loss.

This anniversary is a sensitive time in China although few people besides the Tiananmen Mothers are brave enough to launch a public manifestation of protest. The true reason for their arrest is therefore not difficult to work out.

Few people in China are inclined to believe the official version of events. Their cynicism is rooted in long-term experience of consistent official mendacity. So deep is this cynicism that officials find it hard to persuade the public that they are telling the truth even when they actually refrain from lying.

Lying is one part of the equation, character assassination is another. Authoritarian systems cannot tolerate differences of opinion. Those who depart from the party line are routinely denounced as traitors, criminals, degenerates and whatever else comes into the colourful minds of the heavily staffed propaganda machine.

As ever, these highly creative machines cannot help themselves and usually end up stretching the truth to levels of absurdity that make them a laughing stock. It was, however, hard to laugh during the Cultural Revolution when alleged counter-revolutionaries were being butchered in the streets and sent away to starve in the remote regions.

Yes, I want to be a kinder, gentler blogger, but this story simply has to be told.

[Note: I meant this to be a brief post about my plans for blogging in the future, and how China would fit into that plan. Then it took on a life of its own. If it is a bit polemical and/or boring, I apologize in advance.]

I’m going through a major change of heart regarding what I want this blog to be. I don’t want to chronicle the malfeasances of the CCP as I used to (though I’ll do so when I think it’s important enough). I don’t want to spend the day proving and re-proving that the Communist leadership in China is evil. This will probably disappoint some readers who come here for the daily litany of CCP sins. But I decided during my last few visits to China that my former approach can be misleading, or at least incomplete.

I saw (and see) what can be safely described as evil in the current system in China. The stories of corruption and brutality against the disenfranchised underclasses are true and they are important. The government’s approach to SARS will always be fresh in my mind, as I was so in the thick of it and saw first-hand just how dreadful this government can be. This topic is usually greeted with a chorus from those who see the CCP as an instrument of positive change: The CCP learned from SARS and they are getting better. I’m still open-minded to this argument. I just haven’t seen enough evidence of it yet.

But I believe now that the CCP is not monolithically evil. I know there’s a number of CCP members who truly hold a vision of a free and democratic China. Such reform-minded individuals have always been a part of the CCP. Unfortunately, they are up against a formidable entourage of party dinosaurs who cannot simply be swept under the carpet. Nice guys in the CCP always seem to finish last.

Scanning The Tiananmen Papers, I understand even more just how divided the party has been, and how actively some of its members have fought for real reform. Those who fight against such reformers are not necessarily evil. I think many of them really believe they are doing what is best for the country. But their first concern is their own political survival and preservation of their power base. If, in ensuring their ongoing power, they have to trample on the innocent, it’s a shame, but it simply has to be done. Like an elephant brushing up against a sapling and crushing it. Not malevolent, but destructive nonetheless.

I also have understood for a long time that the current CCP is amazingly similar to the ancient emperors’ regimes, in which government was to be used not for the benefits and protection of its subjects, but for ensuring the survival of its leaders. So the CCP is not so unique in China’s history and it did not materialize in a vacuum. And it’s not going to change drastically overnight.

So while I’m trying to consider all sides of the picture, I’m trying to cut the leaders a little more slack. A little. I remain adamant when it comes to the issue of political reform (though I’d love to be convinced otherwise). So far, the reforms have really been about guaranteeing the CCP’s power, not about diminishing it. In the wake of the Cultural Revolution, Deng had the wisdom to realize that the ongoing descent into radical leftist insanity would ultimately turn China into a nation of isolated, fanatacized cretins. His reforms did as they were intended to: they ushered China into the modern world, gave the people new hope and often new wealth, and set the stage for China to become a true superpower.

But at the heart of it, these reforms were true to the CCP’s traditional ideal of maintaining total power and control, of self-preservation. They totally failed to end the awful caste system, in which the party members are entitled to all sorts of luxuries and privileges, and the subjects are powerless to complain about their leaders’ excess and cruelties. (A bit of credit here: more and more lawsuits are being filed against the government in China, and some plaintiffs have actually won. A teensy-tiny drop in the bucket, but still a positive sign)

The economic reforms have been dazzling, the envy of the world, and social reforms, especially recently, have been impressive. But when it comes to political reforms, we’re still in the dark ages. Yes, there have been some important improvements. Obviously, people are far more free to speak their minds, and some clever journalists are subtly getting out their messages about the government’s failings. And the Internet has become a key instrument in sharing ideas and information, despite the frenzied attempts of the CCP to control it.

But the fact is that censorship is worsening, corruption still reigns supreme and many of the antique laws of the old days contniue to cause the Chinese people terrible and unnecessary grief. I look at one example, the hukou system (a grotesquely unfair entitlement system that determines where a person can and cannot live and work) and I have no choice: I have to conclude some of the most revolting aspects of Maoist rule are alive and well. The word of the day is Reform; it’s all we hear about. And yet, aside from racier magazines on the racks and more sex on TV, we still see no signs of true political reform.

I have some good friends and lots of acquaintances in China who believe in what the CCP is doing. Basically, this faith is generated by the improving quality of life for so many Chinese — more people have more money. This is important. Money can be the determining factor between comfort and misery. Where I disagree with them strongly is that this is the result of any grand scheme of the CCP’s, that they designed it all to be this way. What happened after Deng took power was that he gave the people an inch and they grabbed a mile — once there was room for capitalism, the Chinese — the world’s most capitalistic people — made their own wealth, just as they have done in every country they’ve gone to. (This has nothing to do with race or genetics, but about culture. The Chinese have always been taught to save money, and to use it to make more.)

As far as trade and commerce goes, I think the CCP has been a bungler, hardly the geniuses some would have it. The people made their money because the government got out of their way, not because the CCP offered great financial wisdom. With foreign trade, the party deserves even less credit. Ask any foreign company doing business in China what kind of hoops they had to jump through and how many palms they had to grease along the way. It’s as though the CCP has put up every conceivable obstacle to real free trade for outsiders. This is a key component of the corruption system that keeps party members rich and that created the “princeling” phenomenon.

My friends who are more positive about the CCP always tell me that the sheer size of China’s population makes it impossible for the government to control what its local cadres are doing. These cadres, they tell me, are the source of many of the evils and the CCP cannot be blamed for their crimes. The CCP is more concerned about the massive general population, not about a group of AIDS patients who are beaten up by local police, or of a group of coal miners jailed and tortured for protesting the outrageous taxes collected by their local leaders.

There’s a lot of truth to this. When we’re talking about a population so vast and distributed over so much space, controlling what happens in each village is a dizzying challenge. And yet, and yet….

Let’s look at how well China has done in controlling this vast population from Mao to now. Every single person is registered in the aforementioned hukou system. Meticulous records are kept on most of them. Government checkers go door to door of every home and make sure the women are not producing too many babies. About 30,000 government bureaucrats spend their entire day watching the Internet for signs of subversion. Under Mao, the type of corruption that runs rampant today was trifling. It was controlled. (Of course, this was more than compensated for by mass murder, famines and unspeakable tyrannies.) So is it really so impossible to keep the behavior of local cadres in check? Or is this corruption the main reason cadres remain loyal to the CCP? Is it insurance against disloyalty? I can’t say for sure, but it’s something to think about.

So those are some of my personal feelings about the CCP. But as I said at the start, I’ve tempered some of my animosity because I believe there are forces at work for real change and increased freedom. I know it takes time, and there really are risks of moving too quickly. But Deng seized power more than a quarter of a century ago. I’m not convinced that constantly allowing them more time, showing patience and understanding, giving them “space” and always forgiving their excesses as “teething pains” — I’m not convinced that such coddling is the way to go. Look at SARS: It wasn’t coddling and patience that brought about the extraordinary press conference in which the party actually admitted its crimes. No, it was the international outcry, precipitated by a Beijing whistleblower and brought to a crescendo on the world’s editorial pages, that blew the CCP’s cover and literally forced them to account for themselves. The soft and gentle approach might at times be appropriate, but the evidence tells me they are more likely to respond to international pressure. Pressure that threatens investment and damages the reputation the CCP has worked so painstakingly to build over the past ten years.

But even after saying all that, I have more hope than I did before, if only because the dinosaurs are dying out and the new generation appears more open to democracy and real freedom. My attitude is, keep up the pressure, call them on their misdeeds, but don’t approach them as a force of pure evil. Our best hope is to continue to lead by example, so the new generation of leaders continues to see liberty and democracy as goals to strive for.

So back to my blog. I am finding it really difficult to maintain Peking Duck’s persona as a China-focused blog. I am going to try, but as I said, I’m not inclined simply to list all the CCP’s outrages or to scold them ad infinitum. So please don’t be surprised if this blog focuses a little more on US politics and my personal situation, and a bit less on China. I think it will always be a China blog; I feel too attached to the community to simply give it all up. But it can’t be quite the same as when I was living and working in Asia.

Thanks for your patience if you made it to the end of this over-long and all-over-the-place post.

[Updated at 4:50 pm Mountain Time]

When it comes to the Bush entourage, Colin Powell stands apart as perhaps the least duplicitous of the lot. I realize that is a dubious distinction, but it’s the best i can do.

Last week, Powell alone refused to damn Richard Clarke, and noted the respect he has had for him over the years. He disagreed with many of Clarke’s points, but he wouldn’t join in the smearing. And yesterday, he admitted the evidence he gave to the United Nations 15 months ago on Iraq’s supposed WMDs may have been flawed.

One needs to remember that this is an administration that never admits to mistakes. Nothing is their fault. No one ever raised the threat of airplanes flying into buildings. Al Qaeda was a No. 1 priority for them from the instant they stepped in. Things in Iraq are progressing well. Saddam Hussein may have been a factor behind 911 (if you listen to Dick Cheney). The economy is doing great, but can do even better if there are bigger, permanent tax cuts for the wealthy.

Powell certainly isn’t perfect. But considering the company he keeps, he emerges as a pearl among the swine. Needless to say, there are rumors floating through Washington that he won’t be part of the next phase of the Bush Dynasty, scheduled to begin in early 2005. If he’s bounced, if he leaves “to spend more time with his family,” all I can say is good for him. How he has managed to swim in the same pool for so long with Condi, Ashcroft, Cheney, Rove, and of course George W., without choking on the raw sewage is beyond me.

Update: Be sure to check out Mark Kleiman’s post on essentially the same topic.

Up-update: Josh Marshall, however, judges Powell a bit more harshly. He begins by pointing out that only in the Age of Bush would Powell’s admission (that the Iraq invasion was based in part on poor intelligence) be the number one story in all the media. After all, anyone with functioning gray matter knew this six months ago, of course. A very funny, cynical post.

This is not a good time to be criticizing the Chinese government, implicitly or explicitly. From AFP:

Chinese state security officials have arrested a popular Tibetan singer and a composer, apparently because of the implicit political content of their music, an official said.

The singer and composer, known as Namkha and Bakocha respectively, were taken into custody around March 10 in Tongde county, a traditionally Tibetan area now part of northwest China’s Qinghai province, a police officer and the US-based Radio Free Asia (RFA) said.

“It was the state security police who arrested them,” said a Tibetan police officer in Tongde county’s public security bureau.

“I don’t know what charges were filed against them, but it was because of political reasons,” said the officer, who identified himself as Wu Jianchu. The two men sang folk songs and were popular in the area and famous throughout the province, Wu told AFP.

The arrests appear to have been prompted by the mildly political content of Namkha’s songs, RFA sources said. The songs in question are titled “Tsenpoe Poinya,” or “King’s Messenger,” and “Amdo Pogoe,” meaning “Courageous Amdo Man.”

But an RFA source said: “There isn’t actually any serious (explicit) political content, but it all depends how you interpret them.”

Chinese state security officials in Qinghai’s Hainan prefecture are confiscating all CDs made by the men.

“All their CDs have been confiscated by the police,” Wu said.

Both men come from a nomadic area in Qinghai. Bakocha is a monk at the Ba Shangtse Monastery in Tongde county.

Local security officials went to the monastery and instructed the monks to surrender those CDs, RFA said. They warned the monks that they would face “serious consequences” if they were found to possess Namkha’s music, the source said.

Chinese state security officials in the area could not be reached for comment. The two men’s whereabouts are unknown. The arrests follow reports indicating that Chinese officials were taking a tougher stance on dissent among Tibetans.

I am watching carefully for the reforms to materialize, even hints, in regard to political expression. There has been a slew of recent stories of repression, from the arrest of newspaper editors to the spreading “blogout” to the continuing persecution of cyber-dissidents, that don’t make me optimistic. All the stories indicate that in this area things are getting worse, not better.

See my new update to the post, and follow the links to see the ad, to learn who paid for it, and to see exactly what the Chinese characters I refer to say!

Via a commenter — don’t miss it.