Just Like Houston

Ol' Tom Tomorrow had a puzzling (to me) post today. Under the title "Just Like Houston," he excerpted a bit of a NY Times article:

In Iraq last week, multiple car bombs on successive days in Baghdad killed more than 40 people and wounded at least 100, and a police official was assassinated. More than 700 people have been killed in the capital by insurgents in the past month.

This made me say, "Huh...?" But fear not: Google News to the rescue. The reference turns out to be my favorite corrupt politician from Sugarland, Tom Delay, who put not just his foot but the entire urban sprawl of Houston in his mouth.

"You know, if Houston, Texas, was held to the same standard as Iraq is held to, nobody'd go to Houston, because all this reporting coming out of the local press in Houston is violence, murders, robberies, deaths on the highways," DeLay said.

Leaving aside for the moment the facts that nobody does go to Houston if they can at all help it, and that it is regularly referred to as "an armpit" by myself and every other Texan I know, including many that live there, this is either just plain idiotic, or Orwellian. Maybe both.

Other good (that is, bad) stuff in that NYT article:

THE SCHOOL FOR TERRORISTS

The News: A classified assessment by the Central Intelligence Agency says Iraq may be an even more effective training ground for Islamic extremists than Afghanistan was for Al Qaeda in the days of the struggle against Soviet occupation. Iraq, unlike Afghanistan, is serving as a real-world laboratory for urban combat.

Behind the News: The assessment, as described by several Congressional and intelligence officials, says the urban nature of the war in Iraq is helping combatants learn how to carry out assassinations, kidnappings, car bombings and other kinds of attacks that were never a staple of the fighting in Afghanistan during the anti-Soviet campaigns of the 1980's.

The report says that, for now, most potential terrorists are expected to focus their energies on attacking American forces in Iraq, but that Saudi Arabia, Jordan and other countries would soon have to contend with well-trained militants from the conflict.

Way to take the fight to them, George.