Inside Donald Rumsfeld's office

"I've got a plan, boss. How about we give the terrorists who attacked us exactly what they want, while shitting on the Iraqi civilian majority in a way guaranteed to generate a new terrorist insurgency?"

"I like it, Joe-Bob, let's do it!"

Quote lifted from Charlie's Diary, the weblog of Charles Stross. The context is that the US is removing most (though not quite all) troops from Saudi Arabia; the infidel presence in the Land of the Two Mosques was #1 on Osama bin Laden's Reasons to Hate the Crusaders.

Charlie also blogged an article from the Times (the London one) about how Iraqis in Basra have gone on strike against their imperial overlords, because the official occupation government pay rates are insanely low. Here's the money quote:

"I am so disappointed with the British," Ahmed Ali, a former geography teacher who has been working for the UK force, said. "If you make an agreement, you should keep to it--not reduce pay after one week. Mr Bush talked so much about freedom and how we would live in great conditions after the war. Well, that was all bullshit."

I had no idea that you could say "bullshit" in the Times of London. Cool.