So Long, and Thanks for All the Lies and Murder and Corruption and Barbarism

Yasser Arafat says he doesn’t think much about Bush’s speech yesterday — but believe me, he’s not thinking about much else.

From the BBC:

Yasser Arafat has brushed off a call by US President George Bush for the Palestinians to find a new leader, saying it is up to the Palestinian people alone to choose.

Insisting that he himself had been democratically elected, he pledged to pursue reforms and to hold elections early next year.

In the fine, democratic tradition of Zimbabwe, of course. Arafat was “elected” in 1996 in a rigged vote watched over by loyal men with machine guns. The next regularly scheduled vote somehow got pushed off the regular schedule. In any case, by “early next year,” how much of Palestine will Arafat still control under Israel’s new re-occupation policy?

Arafat is trying to buy time we won’t give him to rule lands under the IDF. He really is finished, you know.

He knows it, too.