Thursday, November 15, 2007

The Mines of Moriya

Today in the House of Councillors---and on live national television--former Vice Minister Moriya Takemasa offered a more complete accounting of the depths of his selfishness and the bottomlessness of his mendacity.

Much of the movement of his lips could be called "testimony" only if one were in a charitable mood. Seemingly due to extensive contacts with officials of the the Bush Administration, he is suffering from Alberto Gonzalez levels of memory loss and inattention to detail.

"I do not remember..."

"I have no recollection..."

"I did not see any such possible connection at the time..."

"I did not notice such a notation in the documents at the meeting..."

Ah Moriya-san, nice try. But you should known this was not to be your day. You should have just told everything after:

- the Diet member soliciting your responses had to ask you if you understood that you had sworn to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

- after dissembling, you coughed up the names of two former heads of defense as recipients of the largess of your arrested buddy. The revelation then triggered in one of the named, the one who is currently Minister of Finance, an attack of Sudden Party Time Attendance Memory Loss Syndrome.

(Pssst. Minister Nukaga. The PM in his press conference said that as a minister, your answer has got to be better.)

- you were forced to beg those assembled to please not think that everyone in the Ministry of Defense is as rotten as you are.

What a total [expletive deleted] disaster.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

that title gets my vote as the best of the year.

the thing i find most frightening is that if we repeated this exercise across the ministries and agencies i have a hunch we would find the same across every last one of them.

it does amazing things for transparency and democracy when the opposition actually has some power to wield. more power to them i say.

Anonymous said...

Sir,

My colleagues and I were amused by your JRR Tolkien reference. If we may, we would like your thoughts on how deep this scandal might go? If you do not have the time or if this question is irrelevant, we understand.

We noted in the Japanese press that Naoki Akiyama was mentioned. Is he related to the Akiyama that was just arrested? For nearly 10 years, every Golden Week, he holds with the Heritage Foundation a US-Japan Security strategy session in Washington. My colleagues who attend in Washington find that it is considered an important series of talks and get togethers (introductions) for big American defense companies. There is always a public program, a private lunch, and then a series of private briefings. Akiyama also arranges for meetings with current and past US government officials.

Many prominent Japanese Diet members are on the delegations. The delegations are usually similar and my colleague recalls Mr Nugaka on all the recent ones. However, only in 2003, we recall was there a member of a private Japanese defense company, MHI. Unfortunately, my colleague can only find our reports from 2002 and 2003, even though we have attended all of them. However, most of the same people come every year. This year, Former House Speaker Hastert was the luncheon speaker.

In 2002 attending: Hon. Fukushiro Nukaga, Liberal Democratic Party; Hon. Fumio Kyuma, Liberal Democratic Party; Hon. Masao Akamatsu, New Komeito Party; Hon. Syozo Azuma, Liberal Party; Hon. Yoshinori Suematsu, Democratic Party; Hon. Kiichi Inoue, New Conservative Party.

In 2003 attending: Rep. Fukushiro Nukaga (LDP, former JDA Dir. Gen.); Rep. Seiji Maehara (DPJ; Ranking Member, Responses to Armed Attacks Special Committee); Mr. Takashi Nishioka (President, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries); Mr. Noboru Hoshuyama (Former Director-General, Defense Facilities Administration Agency); Rep. Kiichi Inoue (New Conservative Party; Constitutional Research Committee); Rep. Masahiro Tabata (New Komeito, Ranking Member, Responses to Armed Attacks Special Committee); Rep. Shigeaki Tsukihara (New Conservative Party, former JDA Official).

You can actually watch the various public programs and see the Japanese delegations at http://www.heritage.org/Press/Events/archive.cfm The meetings are generally the first day or so of May. Please note that the listed speakers are less than the delegation present.

I hope this information is not too much or useless to you. We apologize if this is so.

Zhao-Hong Wenguo

MTC said...

Dear Commander Zhao -

You have given me a tremendous amount of information to consider. Please do not be offended if I do not respond with dispatch.

Anonymous said...

Sir,

I command nothing.

My disorganized colleague has finally found the program from this year's Heritage Foundation 9th US-Japan Security Strategy Conference. We thought you might like to learn of those names too. This year's Japanese Diet delegation consisted of: Fukushiro Nukaga (LDP); Hiroshi Imazu (LDP); Katsuyuki Kawai (LDP); Kosaburo Nishime (LDP); Shigeki Sato (LDP); and Seiji Maehara (DPJ). In the past Ishiba and Nakatani have attended, my colleague recalls.

We regret that we have overwhelmed you. Again, there is no need to consider our humble and unimportant observations. We hope we have been some help to you. We will refrain in the future if not.

We appreciate how busy you might be. You are so fortunate to have time for trips to the quiet mountains to clear the mind.

The philosophers and thinkers like the mountains, no? It is also said that "to climb the mountain is to see the lowlands."

Zhao-hong