A stiff dose of self-loathing can be a good thing.

Just look at the sort of people who lack shame -- they're awful! Britney Spears, for instance, and Paris Hilton. Now there's a case of high self-esteem and hemlines run amok.

Many argue that the reason Britney ditches her children for knickerless pole-dancing sessions and Paris persists in being Paris is simply that they are confused, insecure young women with more fame and money than good sense.

Personally, I suspect they're quite pleased with themselves and enjoying their pampered lives just fine, thank you very much.

Like most self-satisfied dimwits, they are ignorant of their own failings and, thus, unable to address them.   more »

In an attempt to intervene between the supine and the stubborn, the Iraq Study Group last month offered Bush a stern rebuke - but also a way out.

This week it will receive his response as he plans to rebuff popular opinion, political opposition and establishment advice and call for a "surge" of between 20,000 and 40,000 troops in Iraq to "stabilise" the situation.

The word surge, like every other premise for this war, is misleading. It suggests a brief increase when, in fact, his advisers have told him the extra troops would have to be there for at least 18 months.

"Clearly, this is not a move to shift public opinion," explains Gelpi. "The only thing that Bush can do to turn around public opinion is turn around the situation on the ground. It's a gamble. It's his last chance. This is about his legacy."   more »

Whether the president is wetting his lips or not, he might need the all-purpose alcohol excuse just to get out of the public doghouse he finds himself in. It might work for Mel Gibson. It might even work for Mark Foley.

Bush in late 2008: "I was drunk when I invaded Iraq—there, I've said it." Then it's off to Silver Hill for two months of drying out, followed by a book contract with Simon & Schuster, a teary confession on 60 Minutes, and the $250,000-a-pop speaking circuit.

Experts differ on the subject of the president's drinking. Alcoholics Anonymous veterans of my acquaintance say that Bush is a "dry drunk"—someone who quit one day and is just holding on for dear life.

My esteemed colleague Christopher Hitchens claims that the president was no more a heavy boozer than any other wealthy layabout his age—but that he used drinking as a hurdle to overcome in order to be saved by the Lord, and thereby get in good with Christian evangelicals.   more »

Most Iraqis support attacks on American occupiers. Two-thirds of Baghdad’s residents want U.S. forces out immediately.

Support for attacks on American forces is especially high among the 80 percent of Iraqis who think that the U.S. is building permanent military bases in Iraq.

Contrary to dominant political and media rhetoric claiming that the U.S. must stay in Iraq to guarantee stability and prevent civil war (already well underway), 80 percent of Iraqis think that the U.S. presence increases violence.

The heavily disseminated U.S. claim – ritually repeated by elite “liberals” and “conservatives” alike – that we invaded Iraq in order to "spread democracy" is believed by probably no more than 1 percent of the Iraqi people.

Iraqis have the strange idea that Uncle Sam invaded to take control of their petroleum reserves.   more »

>The lynching of Saddam Hussein - for that is what we are talking about - will turn out to be one of the determining moments in the whole shameful crusade upon which the West embarked in March of 2003.

Only the president-governor George Bush and Lord Blair of Kut al-Amara could have devised a militia administration in Iraq so murderous and so immoral that the most ruthless mass murderer in the Middle East could end his days on the gallows as a figure of nobility, scalding his hooded killers for their lack of manhood and - in his last seconds - reminding the thug who told him to "go to hell" that the hell was now Iraq.

"Nothing in his life became him like the leaving it," Malcolm reported of the execution of the treacherous Thane of Cawdor in Macbeth.

Or, as a good friend of mine in Ballymena said to me on the phone a few hours later, "The whole bloody thing was obscene." Quite so. On this occasion, I'll go along with the voice of Protestant Ulster.   more »

U.S. imperialism continues to pursue its main goal of dominating the Middle East and countries in the proximity of the region.

Any country or force that maintains even the slightest independence from U.S. plans in the larger region remains a target.

In Somalia, as elsewhere, the United States government fears political movements that rally the people on the basis of independent development.

The United States also fears China’s growing economic partnerships with countries in Africa. Defeating competitors for access to newly discovered oil in Africa is a primary objective of U.S. imperialism.   more »