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April 20, 2006

We Are Surrounded By Swedes

Here's what John Batiste, a general who commanded the First U.S. Infantry Division in Iraq wrote yesterday:

The national embarrassment of Abu Ghraib can be traced right back to strategic policy decisions...The tragedy of Abu Ghraib should have been no surprise to any of us.

And here's Colin Powell, back when the scandal first was made public:

The photos that we all saw last week and into this week stunned every American.

Apparently Batiste, like myself and so many other people living in this country, is Swedish.

Posted at April 20, 2006 11:26 AM | TrackBack
Comments

I think I ordered the referentiality roll the last time I had sushi. It has cream cheese in it, along with several kinds of fish.

Snarky, snarky Swedes. What is a Swede doing commanding the US First Infantry anyway? Liberating Magdeburg? Damn commies in the Pentagon.

Posted by: Aaron Datesman at April 20, 2006 01:37 PM

Come on! With a name like Batiste, he's obviously FRENCH. And we hate everything about the FRENCH. Cheese-eating surrender monkeys! We will take nothing from them except for their astonishingly bad guest worker policy.

Posted by: Ted at April 20, 2006 03:42 PM

I for one certainly was not, well, umm.. As we say in Sweden, "Med skägget i brevlådan" or literally, "With his beard in the mailbox" meaning of course, to be surprised.

Other useful Swedish idioms:

Hello jump in the blueberry forest!
Hej hopp i blåbärsskogen!
A cheerful expression to be used when you are a bit surprised.

Now you have shit in the blue cupboard.
Nu har du skitit i det blå skåpet.
When you really have made a fool out of yourself.

How much yawns the cracker?
Hur mycket gäspar skorpan?
Stockholm slang for "what time is it?"

Posted by: Jake Lowen at April 20, 2006 05:08 PM

At least he used the word 'tragedy' and not the ubiquitous 'failure' (as in '"The failure of Abu Ghraib, etc.")

Posted by: sk at April 21, 2006 12:40 AM