At le Ritz

Don't tell M. Soutric, but yesterday I stopped off at le Ritz for a glass of pineapple juice in the bar. Actually, I'd just bought a pair of Zizis at Repetto and needed to get out of the rain, which lasted long enough for me to eavesdrop on Natacha Amal being nicer to a film director than she needed to be--nice in the sense of polite and nothing beyond that. As I sat gazing out at the rain falling on the empty patio, I suddenly had a vision of the Bush definition of success in Iraq.

When GW was Governor of Texas, he was committed to the death penalty and was loathe to grant reprieves. He boasted that no innocent person had ever been executed on his watch with the same fervent conviction that he proclaimed WMDs in, well, you-know-where.

More recently, he encouraged a man who crafted torture-friendly policy memos--it remains to be seen whether or not the fellow was merely taking dictation--and in the face of a mounting body count and a 16 to 1 injury to death ratio, GW, the President, wants to double-down on the Iraq campaign; his way of supporting the troops.

This man is cloaked in death and suffering, whether we speak of his indifference to the Katrina debacle, the Walter Reed showcase or the goings on in the secret prisons that have sprung up like McDonalds franchises around the globe. They aren't secret because everyone wants in; they're secret because people like you and me would drop our doughnuts if we ever had a clear view of the daily curriculum in these places.

So, it occurred to me that, for such a man as this, the only definition of success in Iraq would be an on-going, escalating body count whilst giving everyone who'll listen the implanted idea that stopping would be a destructive alternative. I may be a little off the mark; in any event, that's exactly what we've got.

In other words, an unqualified success.