On Thursday night there was a press conference by President Bush, and there were almost no questions about Iraq and Afghanistan. At one point Bush said, "I believe we're making really good progress in Iraq."
Meanwhile, on Earth, there was a set of seventeen coordinated bombings on Friday, killing at least fifty, including a few from our country. Baghdad was the focal point of most of the mayhem, and it appears that the U. S. hold on the city is tenuous at best. It didn't get any better on Saturday, as five more bombs went off in the capital, killing at least eleven people and wounding a bunch, including some government officials. The Shiites announced their intention to purge the Sunnis from the Iraqi security forces, and several Sunni organizations pulled out of negotiations on the new government. In the U. S., people appear to be under the impression that things are relatively calm in Iraq, and that the new government is solid if unspectacular.
It's really bad news, but I didn't hear about it on the news. It was very strange. Tonight on NBC, it was something about a runaway bride (which I really don't know anything about), and there was a whole segment on Michael Jackson's trial. Also, they ended the newscast with a clip from First Lady Laura Bush telling Desperate Housewives jokes about her husband at the White House Correspondents' Dinner.
On "60 Minutes" right now, the lead story is about torture at Guantanamo Bay. I suppose I'll test my unbeaten streak one more time: the Army is saying no one has been tortured at Guantanamo Bay, so I'll take the contrarian position and argue that prisoners HAVE been tortured. The real weird thing is this: I suspect there are many, many millions of people in this country who watched "60 Minutes" and are actually in favor of sexually abusing and torturing prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. It seems about as close to a black-and-white, right-and-wrong issue as there is in geopolitics. Torture is bad. It appears our country is at odds with the Earth on this issue.
All right. Now on "60 Minutes" there is a segment about near-human fossils that have been studied near remote villages. You know what? There's a bunch of people watching that don't even buy the premise of the story, because they deny that evolution occurs; ergo, a story about fossils isn't to be believed. It's another issue that isn't nearly as controversial over on Planet Earth.
Oh, and one more thing! The trade wars start today, where the European Union and Canada slap steep tariffs on certain U. S. imports to punish the U. S. for its failure to repeal the Byrd Amendment, which was a trade policy found to be in violation of WTO guidelines. Now, I don't care about this all that much, since countries have many trade disputes, mostly minor. But, I wonder if the EU and Canada realize just how far they'll have to veer from Planet Earth in order to have a dialogue with our people.
Perhaps I'll visit Earth this summer. It's where my relatives are from, and some of them still live there. If I don't get to go, I'll have to continue to read about it...
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