Hypcocrites (Junior Delgado)

Junior Delgado: Hypocrites (I am not at home right now, so no song, I'll add it later)

First of all the news of the day if not week or even month (this being a lil' German-centric I admit it). Turns out German intelligence units seem to have helped the US-government quite a bit. The question now is, did the government know about this? The NYTimes says that the two agents working in Baghdad 'sent it [the report regarding the Saddam Hussein's defense instructions] up their chain of command' and that then some superior officer in Qatar passed in on to the Americans. Would he not give this information to his superiors in Germany? Would they not inform the administration? The chancellor, the secretary of state? How about the parlamentary controll unit (sucky translation, sorry)? Excepting the last one I just cannot see how these people would not know about this, maybe Fischer (secretary of state) wasn't informed but the - then - Kanzleramtsminister Steinmeiner (and nowadays secretary of state) was responsible for the BND (the German CIA), how could he not know about this? And if he doesn't what does this say about the information policy of German intelligence? I kind of take it for granted that the parlamentarian intelligence controll council (dammit, I really don't know how to say this properly in English, but I am too lazy to check what the NYTimes called that thing) and that is bad enough as it is. So, yeah, fucked up all around I'd say. Here is the article in the NYTimes, I am sure German papers will follow tomorrow.

While we are on the topic of German political failures, check out this one. Quite easily, it is the foremost task of a state to protect its citizens, dating back to Hobbes' Leviathan (and potentially before him) the 'contract' between government and citizen says that the citizen gives up certain rights (like the use of force) in exchange for receiving protection by the state. The German government not doing anything regarding this case is an embarrassment.

I really liked this Bill Simmons' column, I thought he had kind of lost his touch, but this one was really good. Lastly, the 2008 Olympic team (the US one that is) has been announced. Trust me and check it out, even if you are not that much into basketball, completely cracked me up.

PS:
Is there any way to describe the mess called Iraq as anything else than an utter failure. Did the US-administration actually prepare anything for after the war or did they really think it would all just fall into place? Is that naivety, arrogance or stupidity and how happy should we Germans be that it was a different administration that planned the German reconstruction?