October 29, 2003
Quote Of The Moment #0029
As I walked away from the well I noticed a small film crew setting up in front of the silhouette and realized that Rufina Amaya, the sole adult survivor of those days of horror in El Mozote, was there. I got up the courage to introduce myself, but what the hell could I say? My government trained the men that ordered the deaths of her children and the rest of her village, and she witnessed it all. On top of that, I am a former Marine. On top of that, our government effectively rewarded the Salvadoran military for the massacre of her village by increasing military aid after the incident. I told her how sorry I was that my government caused so much harm to her village and to her country.
Posted by Eddie Tews at 07:44 PM
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Interesting reporting (as usual) from Seymour Hersh. This time, a New Yorker piece and concurrent online Q&A concerning the Bush Administration's "stovepiping" (the relaying of "raw" data to the White House before proper vetting by the CIA) of pre-war intelligence.
The specific data concern (what else?) the infamous Niger uranium claims -- which have already spawned the scandal of the "sixteen words", and the scandal of the White House leaker.
Both pieces items well worth reading, especially for the glimpse offered of a White House completely given over to corruption and (what we might call) the politicisation of reality. But it seems, to this blogger, that Hersh is missing (or more accurately, not giving enough attention to) the larger point. Namely, that the "sixteen words" in no way, shape, or form impacted the Bush Administration's decision to go to war. Its mind was made up long before the "discovery" of Iraq's alleged attempts to purchase the African uranium.
Hersh himself writes that, "By early March, 2002, a former White House official told me, it was understood by many in the White House that the President had decided, in his own mind, to go to war."
But in point of fact, former Reagan Administration officials -- who were later to become Bush II Administration officials -- had been planning for the war since the mid-'90s.
They lamented that such a war would be politically unpopular in the absence of "some catastrophic and catalysing event, like a new Pearl Harbor". So, September 11 gave the Administration the political cover it needed to set loose the dogs of war -- to "sweep it all up. Things related and not," in the words of Donald H. Rumsfeld's infamous "attack memo", penned on the afternoon of September 11.
All that was needed to win over an ambivalent public -- still thirsting for the blood of Osama, but reluctant to "sweep it all up" without good cause -- was to link Saddam to bin Laden. Indeed, Congress' granting of permission for the Administration to have its miserable war was contingent upon the Administration's ability to demonstrate this link. Try as it might (and desperately return to the well as it might following the tepid public reactions of every other supposed justification for war), it was never able to do so. But with the help of its mainstream media allies, it was able to convince 70% of the American public that it had done so. (The Bush Administration's recent attempts at incredulity with regards to the public's "misperceptions" played out like a sick joke. These fuckers are very poor liars.) Q.E.D. -- and good enough for Congress, which never raised a peep.
WMD were a red herring. Essentially, they were the Administration's hard-right elements' concession to the more "reasonable" wing of the Administration -- led by Colin Powell -- to get some allies on board, and to try to gain Security Council authorisation. (The United States had not, after all, even attempted to win authorisation for the blitzing of either Yugoslavia or Afghanistan). Thus the decision to have, for "bureacratic reasons", according to Paul Wolfowitz, "settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction" as the principle justification for war.
Alas, Powell's February 5 dog-and-pony show -- now wholly debunked -- went over like a lead balloon: China, Russia, and France vowed to veto a Security Council resolution authorising war; 90% of the world's people were opposed to the war; and the resolution was withdrawn because even the ostensibly easy-to-push-around non-permanent members of the Security Council were strongly opposed -- despite massive pressure and overt attempts at bribery.
(Coverage of this last was an especially sickening trick, played by a media corps fully aware that thousands of people were about to be slaughtered, and that the "coalition" was planning to deploy radiological munitions and cluster bombs. The "reporting" of the President's plaintive last-hour phone calls to recalcitrant Security Council members as some kind of fucking game -- "'Today is a very busy day of phone diplomacy at the White House,' says Ari Fleischer. Nyuk, nyuk. And now, here's Tom with some incredible footage of four hang-gliding gophers!" -- was possibly the mainstream media's lowest hour: imagine an Iraqi citizen, days away from being bombarded by the greatest military machine in history, viewing this ignominious spectacle on satellite television.)
But the Administration, which, anyway, had by that time decided (presumably for "bureaucratic reasons") that it was not planning its invasion to save the United States from "imminent" danger but instead to "liberate" the Iraqi people (and/or to create a "model" democracy in the Middle East), went ahead with its war despite the opposition of essentially the entire world community -- a distressing proportion of which (primarily those sitting upon gigantic banned-weapons piles of their own), it should be noted, would have been rabidly on board with even the slightest evidence of an Iraqi WMD programme.
At any rate, the Bush Administration was well aware that Iraq had long since been purged of its WMD. It's worth reading to the bottom of Hersh's article, in fact, to get at the testimony given to the CIA by Iraqi defector Jafar Dhia Jafar:
Up until the '91 Gulf War, our adversaries were regional. ... But after the war, when it was clear that we were up against the United States, Saddam understood that these weapons were redundant. "No way we could escape the United States." Therefore, the WMD warheads did Iraq little strategic good.
So:
Jafar insisted that there was not only no bomb, but no WMD, period. "The answer was none." ... Jafar explained that the Iraqi leadership had set up a new committee after the '91 Gulf War, and after the UNSCOM inspection process was set up...and the following instructions [were sent] from the Top Man [Saddam]: "give them everything".
Just one example among many of defectors, scientists, and weapons inspectors all strongly avowing that Iraq's WMD had all been destroyed by 1998 at the latest -- but more likely by 1995.
The point being, in other words, that WMD -- including the piddling "sixteen word" subset of the WMD equation -- were never the real issue. The real issue was and is the Administration's "pre-determination" to capture Iraq's oil fields ("...a stupendous source of strategic power and one of the great material prizes in world history"); and (perhaps more importantly) the mainstream media's willingness to function as a the propaganda arm of the National Warfare State.
The path to war may have been engraved in stone even before the second aeroplane rammed into the World Trade Center. This blogger has argued before now, if for no other reason that the Administration's reaction doesn't otherwise make any logical sense, that the White House was probably complicit in the events of September 11. But even if this reading of events is in error (and even if the events of September 11 had not occured), it's patently clear that Iraq was destined to be taken down some time during Dubya's reign.
This much was engraved in stone the second Dick Cheney and his gaggle of deranged accomplices -- Perle, Wolfowitz, Bolton, Feith, Rumsfeld -- ascended to the throne. September 11 was a particularly effective (because so deadly, shocking, and spectacular) ace-in-the-hole.
But if the history of U.S. foreign policy should teach us anything, it should teach us that the American public is maddeningly gullible when it comes to swallowing whole the supposed "threats" to our "way of life" posed by the nefarious schemings of this, that, or the other member of the Pentagon's demon-of-the-month club.
Cuba, anyone? Vietnamese communists preparing to overrun San Francisco, anyone? Sandanistas two days' march from Texas, anyone? Noriega and Qaddafi, anyone? Kuwaiti incubators, anyone? Grenada, for god's sake?
The Bush Gang would have got its war one way or the other.
Hell, even The Onion knew that much. "America's Finest News Source" despatched an eerily prescient "report" just a few days before the inauguration: "'You better believe we're going to mix it up with somebody at some point during my administration,' said Bush, who plans a 250 percent boost in military spending. 'Unlike my predecessor, I am fully committed to putting soldiers in battle situations. Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?'"
Here's hoping that Hersh -- or somebody else with similar contacts, ambition, and integrity -- can turn his attentions to exposing how it came to be that the mainstream media (which has since the war -- et voila! -- begun to question the war's premises, if only timidly) would, in the run-up to war, uncritically regurgitate every single one of the Bush Administration's flaming lies -- especially the obssessive linking of Saddam and Osama which ultimately sold the American public on the war -- as gospel truth.
Perhaps the answer is as simple as the knowledge that a major war portended a ratings and circulation bonanza. But if so, these decisions were, in the final analysis, made editorially -- and it is these decisions which an author of Hersh's stature could bring to light.
For therein lies the real key to unlocking Washington's grisly safe-deposit box of deceit-fueled wars of conquest and empire.
October 26, 2003
Stovepipin' Down The Potomac
Interesting reporting (as usual) from Seymour Hersh. This time, a New Yorker piece and concurrent online Q&A concerning the Bush Administration's "stovepiping" (the relaying of "raw" data to the White House before proper vetting by the CIA) of pre-war intelligence.
The specific data concern (what else?) the infamous Niger uranium claims -- which have already spawned the scandal of the "sixteen words", and the scandal of the White House leaker.
Both pieces items well worth reading, especially for the glimpse offered of a White House completely given over to corruption and (what we might call) the politicisation of reality. But it seems, to this blogger, that Hersh is missing (or more accurately, not giving enough attention to) the larger point. Namely, that the "sixteen words" in no way, shape, or form impacted the Bush Administration's decision to go to war. Its mind was made up long before the "discovery" of Iraq's alleged attempts to purchase the African uranium.
Hersh himself writes that, "By early March, 2002, a former White House official told me, it was understood by many in the White House that the President had decided, in his own mind, to go to war."
But in point of fact, former Reagan Administration officials -- who were later to become Bush II Administration officials -- had been planning for the war since the mid-'90s.
They lamented that such a war would be politically unpopular in the absence of "some catastrophic and catalysing event, like a new Pearl Harbor". So, September 11 gave the Administration the political cover it needed to set loose the dogs of war -- to "sweep it all up. Things related and not," in the words of Donald H. Rumsfeld's infamous "attack memo", penned on the afternoon of September 11.
All that was needed to win over an ambivalent public -- still thirsting for the blood of Osama, but reluctant to "sweep it all up" without good cause -- was to link Saddam to bin Laden. Indeed, Congress' granting of permission for the Administration to have its miserable war was contingent upon the Administration's ability to demonstrate this link. Try as it might (and desperately return to the well as it might following the tepid public reactions of every other supposed justification for war), it was never able to do so. But with the help of its mainstream media allies, it was able to convince 70% of the American public that it had done so. (The Bush Administration's recent attempts at incredulity with regards to the public's "misperceptions" played out like a sick joke. These fuckers are very poor liars.) Q.E.D. -- and good enough for Congress, which never raised a peep.
WMD were a red herring. Essentially, they were the Administration's hard-right elements' concession to the more "reasonable" wing of the Administration -- led by Colin Powell -- to get some allies on board, and to try to gain Security Council authorisation. (The United States had not, after all, even attempted to win authorisation for the blitzing of either Yugoslavia or Afghanistan). Thus the decision to have, for "bureacratic reasons", according to Paul Wolfowitz, "settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction" as the principle justification for war.
Alas, Powell's February 5 dog-and-pony show -- now wholly debunked -- went over like a lead balloon: China, Russia, and France vowed to veto a Security Council resolution authorising war; 90% of the world's people were opposed to the war; and the resolution was withdrawn because even the ostensibly easy-to-push-around non-permanent members of the Security Council were strongly opposed -- despite massive pressure and overt attempts at bribery.
(Coverage of this last was an especially sickening trick, played by a media corps fully aware that thousands of people were about to be slaughtered, and that the "coalition" was planning to deploy radiological munitions and cluster bombs. The "reporting" of the President's plaintive last-hour phone calls to recalcitrant Security Council members as some kind of fucking game -- "'Today is a very busy day of phone diplomacy at the White House,' says Ari Fleischer. Nyuk, nyuk. And now, here's Tom with some incredible footage of four hang-gliding gophers!" -- was possibly the mainstream media's lowest hour: imagine an Iraqi citizen, days away from being bombarded by the greatest military machine in history, viewing this ignominious spectacle on satellite television.)
But the Administration, which, anyway, had by that time decided (presumably for "bureaucratic reasons") that it was not planning its invasion to save the United States from "imminent" danger but instead to "liberate" the Iraqi people (and/or to create a "model" democracy in the Middle East), went ahead with its war despite the opposition of essentially the entire world community -- a distressing proportion of which (primarily those sitting upon gigantic banned-weapons piles of their own), it should be noted, would have been rabidly on board with even the slightest evidence of an Iraqi WMD programme.
At any rate, the Bush Administration was well aware that Iraq had long since been purged of its WMD. It's worth reading to the bottom of Hersh's article, in fact, to get at the testimony given to the CIA by Iraqi defector Jafar Dhia Jafar:
Up until the '91 Gulf War, our adversaries were regional. ... But after the war, when it was clear that we were up against the United States, Saddam understood that these weapons were redundant. "No way we could escape the United States." Therefore, the WMD warheads did Iraq little strategic good.
So:
Jafar insisted that there was not only no bomb, but no WMD, period. "The answer was none." ... Jafar explained that the Iraqi leadership had set up a new committee after the '91 Gulf War, and after the UNSCOM inspection process was set up...and the following instructions [were sent] from the Top Man [Saddam]: "give them everything".
Just one example among many of defectors, scientists, and weapons inspectors all strongly avowing that Iraq's WMD had all been destroyed by 1998 at the latest -- but more likely by 1995.
The point being, in other words, that WMD -- including the piddling "sixteen word" subset of the WMD equation -- were never the real issue. The real issue was and is the Administration's "pre-determination" to capture Iraq's oil fields ("...a stupendous source of strategic power and one of the great material prizes in world history"); and (perhaps more importantly) the mainstream media's willingness to function as a the propaganda arm of the National Warfare State.
The path to war may have been engraved in stone even before the second aeroplane rammed into the World Trade Center. This blogger has argued before now, if for no other reason that the Administration's reaction doesn't otherwise make any logical sense, that the White House was probably complicit in the events of September 11. But even if this reading of events is in error (and even if the events of September 11 had not occured), it's patently clear that Iraq was destined to be taken down some time during Dubya's reign.
This much was engraved in stone the second Dick Cheney and his gaggle of deranged accomplices -- Perle, Wolfowitz, Bolton, Feith, Rumsfeld -- ascended to the throne. September 11 was a particularly effective (because so deadly, shocking, and spectacular) ace-in-the-hole.
But if the history of U.S. foreign policy should teach us anything, it should teach us that the American public is maddeningly gullible when it comes to swallowing whole the supposed "threats" to our "way of life" posed by the nefarious schemings of this, that, or the other member of the Pentagon's demon-of-the-month club.
Cuba, anyone? Vietnamese communists preparing to overrun San Francisco, anyone? Sandanistas two days' march from Texas, anyone? Noriega and Qaddafi, anyone? Kuwaiti incubators, anyone? Grenada, for god's sake?
The Bush Gang would have got its war one way or the other.
Hell, even The Onion knew that much. "America's Finest News Source" despatched an eerily prescient "report" just a few days before the inauguration: "'You better believe we're going to mix it up with somebody at some point during my administration,' said Bush, who plans a 250 percent boost in military spending. 'Unlike my predecessor, I am fully committed to putting soldiers in battle situations. Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?'"
Here's hoping that Hersh -- or somebody else with similar contacts, ambition, and integrity -- can turn his attentions to exposing how it came to be that the mainstream media (which has since the war -- et voila! -- begun to question the war's premises, if only timidly) would, in the run-up to war, uncritically regurgitate every single one of the Bush Administration's flaming lies -- especially the obssessive linking of Saddam and Osama which ultimately sold the American public on the war -- as gospel truth.
Perhaps the answer is as simple as the knowledge that a major war portended a ratings and circulation bonanza. But if so, these decisions were, in the final analysis, made editorially -- and it is these decisions which an author of Hersh's stature could bring to light.
For therein lies the real key to unlocking Washington's grisly safe-deposit box of deceit-fueled wars of conquest and empire.
Posted by Eddie Tews at 08:20 PM
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"Contractors insist their fees are modest and profit margins slim."
And: "The fee is part of our competitive position and not something we disclose -- but I can disclose that it is quite small."
However: "White House officials did not respond to requests for comment."
October 18, 2003
Quote Of The Moment #0028
"Contractors insist their fees are modest and profit margins slim."
And: "The fee is part of our competitive position and not something we disclose -- but I can disclose that it is quite small."
However: "White House officials did not respond to requests for comment."
Posted by Eddie Tews at 09:11 PM
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The Bush Administration has made a habit of announcing controversial policy formulations on Friday afternoons -- reasoning that any resultant furor would be dimmed by the news cycle's weekend snooze. The practice seems especially pronounced with regards to environmental policies.
We saw two such examples last week, and this week comes another: "The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said yesterday it will not regulate dioxins in sewage sludge used as farm fertilizer..."
Your mouth is watering already, isn't it?
Must Be Friday
The Bush Administration has made a habit of announcing controversial policy formulations on Friday afternoons -- reasoning that any resultant furor would be dimmed by the news cycle's weekend snooze. The practice seems especially pronounced with regards to environmental policies.
We saw two such examples last week, and this week comes another: "The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said yesterday it will not regulate dioxins in sewage sludge used as farm fertilizer..."
Your mouth is watering already, isn't it?
Posted by Eddie Tews at 08:31 PM
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"...we have a great, very compassionate foreign policy." -- George W. Bush
Quote Of The Moment #0027
"...we have a great, very compassionate foreign policy." -- George W. Bush
Posted by Eddie Tews at 08:18 PM
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So then my trunk arrived. They found it. They opened it up and there was nothing in it. Everything was gone. The notes to Fanshen were all gone. I asked, "Do you always break into things and take whatever you find or whatever you want?"
They said, "We never break into anything. We have keys that fit everything."
"So, welcome to the land of the free and home of the brave," I was told.
From octogenarian William Hinton's highly entertaining oral account of the troubles he encountered in trying to publish, during the McCarthy era, his history of agrarian reform in a Chinese Village. He concludes the tale thus:
The American Constitution, the Bill of Rights, is a very precious thing, but you have to fight for it in every generation. You have to keep it alive or they’ll take it away from you.
October 15, 2003
Quote Of The Moment #0026
So then my trunk arrived. They found it. They opened it up and there was nothing in it. Everything was gone. The notes to Fanshen were all gone. I asked, "Do you always break into things and take whatever you find or whatever you want?"
They said, "We never break into anything. We have keys that fit everything."
"So, welcome to the land of the free and home of the brave," I was told.
From octogenarian William Hinton's highly entertaining oral account of the troubles he encountered in trying to publish, during the McCarthy era, his history of agrarian reform in a Chinese Village. He concludes the tale thus:
The American Constitution, the Bill of Rights, is a very precious thing, but you have to fight for it in every generation. You have to keep it alive or they’ll take it away from you.
Posted by Eddie Tews at 11:42 AM
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What better way to celebrate "in honor of Columbus" the culmination of our "manifest destiny", begun on this date 511 years ago, that with our 26th President, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt?
Some brief selections from The Winning Of The West, his four-volume history of this "most vital part of that great movement of expansion which has been the central and all-important feature of our history -- a feature far more important than any other since we became a nation, save only the preservation of the Union itself."
After the great Teutonic wanderings were over, there came a long lull, until, with the discovery of America, a new period of even vaster race expansion began. ...
The vast movement by which this continent was conquered and peopled cannot be rightly understood if considered solely by itself. It was the crowning and greatest achievement of a series of mighty movements, and it must be taken in connection with them. Its true significance will be lost unless we grasp, however roughly, the past race-history of the nations who took part therein. ...
When, with the voyages of Columbus and his successors, the great period of extra-European colonization began, various nations strove to share in the work. ... Among the lands beyond the ocean America was the first reached and the most important. It was conquered by different European races, and shoals of European settlers were thrust forth upon its shores. These sometimes displaced and sometimes merely overcame and lived among the natives. They also, to their own lasting harm, committed a crime whose shortsighted folly was worse than its guilt, for they brought hordes of African slaves, whose descendants now form immense populations in certain portions of the land. Throughout the continent we therefore find the white, red, and black races in every stage of purity and intermixture. ...
The English had exterminated or assimilated the Celts of Britain, and they substantially repeated the process with the Indians of America; although of course in America there was very little, instead of very much, assimiliation. ... The English-speaking peoples now hold more and better land than any other American nationality or set of nationalities. They have in their veins less aboriginal blood than any of their neighbors. Yet it is noteworthy that the latter have tacitly allowed them to arrogate to themselves the title of "Americans", whereby to designate their distinctive and individual nationality. ...
Australia, which was much less important than America, was also won and settled with far less difficulty. The natives were so few in number and of such a low type, that they practically offered no resistance at all, being but little more hindrance than an equal number of ferocious beasts. ...
When the whites first landed, the superiority and, above all, the novelty of their arms gave them a very great advantage. But the Indians soon became accustomed to the new-comers' weapons and style of warfare. By the time the English had consolidated the Atlantic colonies under their rule, the Indians had become what they have remained ever since, the most formidable savage foes ever encountered by colonists of Euorpean stock. ...
For the record, the "aboriginal" population in the New World was roughly 75 million, and had decreasing to about 6 million a few hundred years later.
October 13, 2003
Happy Columbus Day!
What better way to celebrate "in honor of Columbus" the culmination of our "manifest destiny", begun on this date 511 years ago, that with our 26th President, Mr. Theodore Roosevelt?
Some brief selections from The Winning Of The West, his four-volume history of this "most vital part of that great movement of expansion which has been the central and all-important feature of our history -- a feature far more important than any other since we became a nation, save only the preservation of the Union itself."
After the great Teutonic wanderings were over, there came a long lull, until, with the discovery of America, a new period of even vaster race expansion began. ...
The vast movement by which this continent was conquered and peopled cannot be rightly understood if considered solely by itself. It was the crowning and greatest achievement of a series of mighty movements, and it must be taken in connection with them. Its true significance will be lost unless we grasp, however roughly, the past race-history of the nations who took part therein. ...
When, with the voyages of Columbus and his successors, the great period of extra-European colonization began, various nations strove to share in the work. ... Among the lands beyond the ocean America was the first reached and the most important. It was conquered by different European races, and shoals of European settlers were thrust forth upon its shores. These sometimes displaced and sometimes merely overcame and lived among the natives. They also, to their own lasting harm, committed a crime whose shortsighted folly was worse than its guilt, for they brought hordes of African slaves, whose descendants now form immense populations in certain portions of the land. Throughout the continent we therefore find the white, red, and black races in every stage of purity and intermixture. ...
The English had exterminated or assimilated the Celts of Britain, and they substantially repeated the process with the Indians of America; although of course in America there was very little, instead of very much, assimiliation. ... The English-speaking peoples now hold more and better land than any other American nationality or set of nationalities. They have in their veins less aboriginal blood than any of their neighbors. Yet it is noteworthy that the latter have tacitly allowed them to arrogate to themselves the title of "Americans", whereby to designate their distinctive and individual nationality. ...
Australia, which was much less important than America, was also won and settled with far less difficulty. The natives were so few in number and of such a low type, that they practically offered no resistance at all, being but little more hindrance than an equal number of ferocious beasts. ...
When the whites first landed, the superiority and, above all, the novelty of their arms gave them a very great advantage. But the Indians soon became accustomed to the new-comers' weapons and style of warfare. By the time the English had consolidated the Atlantic colonies under their rule, the Indians had become what they have remained ever since, the most formidable savage foes ever encountered by colonists of Euorpean stock. ...
For the record, the "aboriginal" population in the New World was roughly 75 million, and had decreasing to about 6 million a few hundred years later.
Posted by Eddie Tews at 02:24 PM
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This blog, and the left in general, can frequently be seen lambasting the mainstream media for its lips' permanently conjoined status to the Pentagon's perpetually leaking sphincter.
But, truth be told, one can't help wonder how quickly the Bush regime would be strung up by its collective ears if Americans would simply turn off the teevee, and pick up a newspaper.
Let's look, for example, at the October 11 edition of the Seattle Times. The Times is known as the more establishment-friendly of Seattle's two major dailies -- owing largely to its bewitching thrall in matters concerning Microsoft and The Boeing Company. But it's an interesting case in that it largely relies on the so-called "agenda-setting" media -- the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times -- for its national news, picking and choosing between them, and even frequently combining text from different sources into a single article.
So here's what a reader of Saturday's Times would find. (Before we begin our tour, you may want to install an advertising filter onto your computer....)
The Bush Administration, whose environmental policies -- burning, pillaging, toxifying, polluting, & cetera -- could only evoke a single word (viz., "terrorist"), is at it again. First, in taking up a cause that "involves an interpretation of the Endangered Species Act that deviates radically from the course followed by Republican and Democratic administrations since President Nixon signed the act in 1973," "The Bush administration is proposing far-reaching changes to conservation policies that would allow hunters, circuses and the pet industry to kill, capture and import animals on the brink of extinction in other countries," in order to "feed the gigantic U.S. demand for live animals, skins, parts, and trophies".
Our "Joe Sixpack" newspaper-reader -- who if he can be expected to voice strong opinions about any issue, will be expected to be firecely opposed to environmental depredations -- will next discover that the Bush Administration, in "a reinterpretation of the 1872 Mining Law" "yesterday announced that it would start allowing companies that mine gold, silver, and other precious metals as much public land as they need to help them develop their claims."
Noted sexist, racist homophobe -- and "staunch drug war advocate" -- Rush Limbaugh has admitted an addiction to pain-killers, and "potentially could face a prison term if he is found to have illegally obtained such painkillers as hydrocodone and OxyContin."
"President Bush yesterday ordered a crackdown on U.S. travel to Cuba..." Okay, good to know the state is in the business of telling us where we can or can't spend our vacations.
In a pique of Hitler-ite rage, "Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday capped a White House effort to regain its equilibrium over the Iraq occupation by delivering a blistering rebuttal to critics of the administration's foreign policy and arguing that a consensus-based foreign policy is obsolete." Cheney's tirade was comprised of lie after lie after lie after lie. But how would we know this, having just migrated to print from teevee-land? Because Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus, the story's authors, helpfully annotate each the would-be Fuhrer's utterances with facts contradicting his ridiculous spewing. Would that the Post and the rest of its "Free Press" brethren had taken up this task before the invasion....
Continuing the Iraq theme, we'll find "Shiite Muslims brimming with anti-American fervor." Right. So much for "liberation", and the "Sunni Triangle" theory.
We'll also note that Japan is gearing up to send troops to Iraq, despite "polls showing the Japanese people largely opposed".
"Federal tax receipts relative to the overall economy have reached their lowest level since Dwight Eisenhower was president, while government spending has climbed to the highest point since Bill Clinton declared the era of big government over..." At least the "tax-and-spend" liberal ideology, whatever its faults, has a leg up on the "tax-break-and-spend" conservative dogma: it doesn't result in $400 billion deficit projections.
"A Syrian camp bombed by Israeli warplanes this week was an active training base that had been used recently by militant groups, Israeli and U.S. officials said yesterday." How do they know? "Our intelligence," on the strength of "fairly good evidence", "indicates that it was a camp in active use by terrorist organizations." Is there still a soul, anywhere, placing faith in our "fairly good" (AKA "darn good") intelligence? Didn't think so.
To summarise, a casual reading of just one day's mainstream newspaper reveals that the Bush Administration is fucking the environment, fucking Iraq, fucking the economy, fucking Americans' liberties, and threatening to fuck the world at the drop of a dime; while the country's leading talk-show host is exposed as a miserable hypocrite, even the most modest measures of international assistance to the Iraq occupation will meet with great internal opposition, and our "intelligence" is up to its old tricks.
...And Saturday is supposed to be a slow news day!
October 09, 2003
Let's Read The News Today, Oh Boy
This blog, and the left in general, can frequently be seen lambasting the mainstream media for its lips' permanently conjoined status to the Pentagon's perpetually leaking sphincter.
But, truth be told, one can't help wonder how quickly the Bush regime would be strung up by its collective ears if Americans would simply turn off the teevee, and pick up a newspaper.
Let's look, for example, at the October 11 edition of the Seattle Times. The Times is known as the more establishment-friendly of Seattle's two major dailies -- owing largely to its bewitching thrall in matters concerning Microsoft and The Boeing Company. But it's an interesting case in that it largely relies on the so-called "agenda-setting" media -- the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times -- for its national news, picking and choosing between them, and even frequently combining text from different sources into a single article.
So here's what a reader of Saturday's Times would find. (Before we begin our tour, you may want to install an advertising filter onto your computer....)
The Bush Administration, whose environmental policies -- burning, pillaging, toxifying, polluting, & cetera -- could only evoke a single word (viz., "terrorist"), is at it again. First, in taking up a cause that "involves an interpretation of the Endangered Species Act that deviates radically from the course followed by Republican and Democratic administrations since President Nixon signed the act in 1973," "The Bush administration is proposing far-reaching changes to conservation policies that would allow hunters, circuses and the pet industry to kill, capture and import animals on the brink of extinction in other countries," in order to "feed the gigantic U.S. demand for live animals, skins, parts, and trophies".
Our "Joe Sixpack" newspaper-reader -- who if he can be expected to voice strong opinions about any issue, will be expected to be firecely opposed to environmental depredations -- will next discover that the Bush Administration, in "a reinterpretation of the 1872 Mining Law" "yesterday announced that it would start allowing companies that mine gold, silver, and other precious metals as much public land as they need to help them develop their claims."
Noted sexist, racist homophobe -- and "staunch drug war advocate" -- Rush Limbaugh has admitted an addiction to pain-killers, and "potentially could face a prison term if he is found to have illegally obtained such painkillers as hydrocodone and OxyContin."
"President Bush yesterday ordered a crackdown on U.S. travel to Cuba..." Okay, good to know the state is in the business of telling us where we can or can't spend our vacations.
In a pique of Hitler-ite rage, "Vice President Dick Cheney yesterday capped a White House effort to regain its equilibrium over the Iraq occupation by delivering a blistering rebuttal to critics of the administration's foreign policy and arguing that a consensus-based foreign policy is obsolete." Cheney's tirade was comprised of lie after lie after lie after lie. But how would we know this, having just migrated to print from teevee-land? Because Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus, the story's authors, helpfully annotate each the would-be Fuhrer's utterances with facts contradicting his ridiculous spewing. Would that the Post and the rest of its "Free Press" brethren had taken up this task before the invasion....
Continuing the Iraq theme, we'll find "Shiite Muslims brimming with anti-American fervor." Right. So much for "liberation", and the "Sunni Triangle" theory.
We'll also note that Japan is gearing up to send troops to Iraq, despite "polls showing the Japanese people largely opposed".
"Federal tax receipts relative to the overall economy have reached their lowest level since Dwight Eisenhower was president, while government spending has climbed to the highest point since Bill Clinton declared the era of big government over..." At least the "tax-and-spend" liberal ideology, whatever its faults, has a leg up on the "tax-break-and-spend" conservative dogma: it doesn't result in $400 billion deficit projections.
"A Syrian camp bombed by Israeli warplanes this week was an active training base that had been used recently by militant groups, Israeli and U.S. officials said yesterday." How do they know? "Our intelligence," on the strength of "fairly good evidence", "indicates that it was a camp in active use by terrorist organizations." Is there still a soul, anywhere, placing faith in our "fairly good" (AKA "darn good") intelligence? Didn't think so.
To summarise, a casual reading of just one day's mainstream newspaper reveals that the Bush Administration is fucking the environment, fucking Iraq, fucking the economy, fucking Americans' liberties, and threatening to fuck the world at the drop of a dime; while the country's leading talk-show host is exposed as a miserable hypocrite, even the most modest measures of international assistance to the Iraq occupation will meet with great internal opposition, and our "intelligence" is up to its old tricks.
...And Saturday is supposed to be a slow news day!
Posted by Eddie Tews at 07:02 PM
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In response to the United States' rampaging, the Eurasian powers -- China, Russia, France, Germany -- have been cooperating in an effort to check U.S. power.
There are now even plans in the works for an EU Military Headquarters -- separate, that is, from NATO.
This development is a clear violation of the Bush Doctrine, which asserts that any threats (indeed, any threat of a threat) to U.S. power will be met with military devastation.
So, we begin bombing Paris and Moscow pretty soon, right?
Well, not so fast. The U.S. is none too pleased, to be sure. But, as is its wont, it is following the Bully's Code on this one: never pick on anybody that can hit back, only pulverise the smallest, weakest, most put-upon sectors of the schoolyard.
So it is that we find the U.S. response -- "We would hope that those plans would not be materialised because it would not be productive for the future of NATO-EU relations" -- to be one at the same time in violation of the Bush Doctrine and in league with the Bully's Code.
Therein lies the paradox. Will any in the mainstream media dare to call the administration out?
"You may commence holding your breath at your discretion."
October 08, 2003
"You May Commence Bombing Caucasians At Your Discretion"
In response to the United States' rampaging, the Eurasian powers -- China, Russia, France, Germany -- have been cooperating in an effort to check U.S. power.
There are now even plans in the works for an EU Military Headquarters -- separate, that is, from NATO.
This development is a clear violation of the Bush Doctrine, which asserts that any threats (indeed, any threat of a threat) to U.S. power will be met with military devastation.
So, we begin bombing Paris and Moscow pretty soon, right?
Well, not so fast. The U.S. is none too pleased, to be sure. But, as is its wont, it is following the Bully's Code on this one: never pick on anybody that can hit back, only pulverise the smallest, weakest, most put-upon sectors of the schoolyard.
So it is that we find the U.S. response -- "We would hope that those plans would not be materialised because it would not be productive for the future of NATO-EU relations" -- to be one at the same time in violation of the Bush Doctrine and in league with the Bully's Code.
Therein lies the paradox. Will any in the mainstream media dare to call the administration out?
"You may commence holding your breath at your discretion."
Posted by Eddie Tews at 08:41 PM
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Your humble servant has again been busy with the OCR.
Check out "Is The Pentagon Giving Our Soldiers Cancer?", from the October 2, 2003 edition of Rolling Stone magazine. The piece, an expose of the use of "Depleted" Uranium (AKA the "Silver Bullet"), is not available on Rolling Stone's website, but is now available here -- including photographs and graphics.
This excellent and damning piece -- while it doesn't touch on the likelihood that the U.S. military utilised non-"depleted" uranium in both Afghanistan and Iraq -- is very possibly the best (as well as most current) general introduction to the vagaries of the United States' radiological warfare.
In addition to a thorough examination of the topic, the article offers harrowing eyewitness accounts from a Gulf War vet since stricken with all manner of disabilities and sicknesses, as well as from the venerable Maj. Doug Rokke (the Vietnam veteran originally tasked with looking into the Gulf War's DU "externalities", since become whistle-blowing nemesis of the Pentagon).
Also notable are two fairly astounding quotes from U.S. Colonel James Naughton.
In first trying to minimise the effects of DU, he asserts that, "DU is not any more dangerous than dirt," and wonders whether, "Aside from the fact that we're bombing the crap out of Iraq, and did so twelve years ago, what is the general state of the environment over there?"
The U.S. military might've tried to determine the answer to that question before it began "bombing the crap out of" Iraq a second time. (Moreover, one can't help wonder how preclusive this rather candid admission that the "coalition" was busy "bombing the crap out of Iraq" renders the military's vaunted claims of "liberation" through the use of "sophisticated precision weaponry" such as "smart" bombs and missiles.)
Later, Naughton comes clean (so to speak), acknowledging that, "It's radioactive -- I wish it wasn't, but I can't change the laws of physics. The issue is...did the crew survive long enough to really care whether it was tungsten or DU that hit them? Anyone who does should count themselves damn lucky. I'm sure every one of them would thank God that they lived forty years to contract lymphoma."
Gotta love the "Support Our Troops" team spirit, huh? Wonder how long they'd have survived if there hadn't been an unneccessary, illegal, immoral, barbaric, unjustifiable war in the first place?
Anyway, read the article. Then, if you're as sickened and disgusted as you're sure to be, pass on the link, link it to your website, cut-and-paste it into an e-mail, print and distribute it, etc..
Then contact your congressperson, demanding a ban on all future use of radiological munitions, as well as a serious attempt to clean up the mess left behind in Iraq, Afghaniston, the Balkans, Okinawa, and Vieques, as well is in our own back yard.
Pollinate
Your humble servant has again been busy with the OCR.
Check out "Is The Pentagon Giving Our Soldiers Cancer?", from the October 2, 2003 edition of Rolling Stone magazine. The piece, an expose of the use of "Depleted" Uranium (AKA the "Silver Bullet"), is not available on Rolling Stone's website, but is now available here -- including photographs and graphics.
This excellent and damning piece -- while it doesn't touch on the likelihood that the U.S. military utilised non-"depleted" uranium in both Afghanistan and Iraq -- is very possibly the best (as well as most current) general introduction to the vagaries of the United States' radiological warfare.
In addition to a thorough examination of the topic, the article offers harrowing eyewitness accounts from a Gulf War vet since stricken with all manner of disabilities and sicknesses, as well as from the venerable Maj. Doug Rokke (the Vietnam veteran originally tasked with looking into the Gulf War's DU "externalities", since become whistle-blowing nemesis of the Pentagon).
Also notable are two fairly astounding quotes from U.S. Colonel James Naughton.
In first trying to minimise the effects of DU, he asserts that, "DU is not any more dangerous than dirt," and wonders whether, "Aside from the fact that we're bombing the crap out of Iraq, and did so twelve years ago, what is the general state of the environment over there?"
The U.S. military might've tried to determine the answer to that question before it began "bombing the crap out of" Iraq a second time. (Moreover, one can't help wonder how preclusive this rather candid admission that the "coalition" was busy "bombing the crap out of Iraq" renders the military's vaunted claims of "liberation" through the use of "sophisticated precision weaponry" such as "smart" bombs and missiles.)
Later, Naughton comes clean (so to speak), acknowledging that, "It's radioactive -- I wish it wasn't, but I can't change the laws of physics. The issue is...did the crew survive long enough to really care whether it was tungsten or DU that hit them? Anyone who does should count themselves damn lucky. I'm sure every one of them would thank God that they lived forty years to contract lymphoma."
Gotta love the "Support Our Troops" team spirit, huh? Wonder how long they'd have survived if there hadn't been an unneccessary, illegal, immoral, barbaric, unjustifiable war in the first place?
Anyway, read the article. Then, if you're as sickened and disgusted as you're sure to be, pass on the link, link it to your website, cut-and-paste it into an e-mail, print and distribute it, etc..
Then contact your congressperson, demanding a ban on all future use of radiological munitions, as well as a serious attempt to clean up the mess left behind in Iraq, Afghaniston, the Balkans, Okinawa, and Vieques, as well is in our own back yard.
Posted by Eddie Tews at 05:39 PM
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#0024: "Asking questions or perspectives about ongoing and/or future operations or investigations can result in restricted access on Gitmo, removal from the installation, and/or revocation of DoD press credentials," because "we have an ongoing operation. ... To discuss details about ongoing investigations may prejudice the outcome."
#0025a: Third, as in the Wen Ho Lee case, the government has chosen to prosecute Yee first through the nation's news media, primarily through leaks. As with Dr. Lee, government sources leaked the story to a newspaper -- this time, the extremely conservative and administration-friendly Washington Times.
#0025b: At the briefing, press secretary Scott McClellan ruled out senior political aide Karl Rove, vice-presidential chief of staff Lewis Libby, and National Security Council senior director Elliott Abrams as being involved in the [Valerie Plame] leak.
The comments by Bush and McClellan prompted some legal experts to question the independence of the investigation as well as the propriety of unilaterally attempting to clear top aides before the Justice Department has seen and heard all the evidence.
Mary Cheh, a Georgetown University law professor, called such statements "quite irregular" and said they could have a chilling effect on the investigation. "It will take someone of considerable fortitude [in the Justice Department] to look past such statements" and investigate any of the three men, she said.
Quotes Of The Moment Nos. 0024 & 0025
#0024: "Asking questions or perspectives about ongoing and/or future operations or investigations can result in restricted access on Gitmo, removal from the installation, and/or revocation of DoD press credentials," because "we have an ongoing operation. ... To discuss details about ongoing investigations may prejudice the outcome."
#0025a: Third, as in the Wen Ho Lee case, the government has chosen to prosecute Yee first through the nation's news media, primarily through leaks. As with Dr. Lee, government sources leaked the story to a newspaper -- this time, the extremely conservative and administration-friendly Washington Times.
#0025b: At the briefing, press secretary Scott McClellan ruled out senior political aide Karl Rove, vice-presidential chief of staff Lewis Libby, and National Security Council senior director Elliott Abrams as being involved in the [Valerie Plame] leak.
The comments by Bush and McClellan prompted some legal experts to question the independence of the investigation as well as the propriety of unilaterally attempting to clear top aides before the Justice Department has seen and heard all the evidence.
Mary Cheh, a Georgetown University law professor, called such statements "quite irregular" and said they could have a chilling effect on the investigation. "It will take someone of considerable fortitude [in the Justice Department] to look past such statements" and investigate any of the three men, she said.
Posted by Eddie Tews at 11:39 AM
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You've seen them, right? The earnest ops-eds, popping up at the rate of about one per week, speaking in so-called opposition to the war in Iraq, urging the Bush Administration to "declare victory" and leave.
What the fuck?
First of all, this insipid argument couldn't possibly be more naive. If the Bush Administration leaves Iraq behind, it also leaves behind the "reconstruction" and "services" contracts awarded in Iraq to its cronies, it leaves behind the World's second-largest proven oil reserves, and it leaves behind its master plan to privatise every inch of Iraqi soil. Ain't gonna happen.
Secondly, what right have we to declare "victory"? Declare "victory" over what? Over Saddam's non-existent weapons stash that, if it had existed would have been dwarfed in size by the stashes of the "P-5" overlords of world morality? Over Saddam's non-existent links to al-Qaeda that, if they had existed, should somehow given us the right to blitz tens of thousands of innocent civilians' and conscripted teenaged soldiers' lives into "collateral" oblivion? Over Saddam's dictatorship that, at its height was lovingly supported and nurtured by current Bush Administration higher-ups, and that in its latest stages was a shadow of its former self -- and in any case was virtually indisinguishable from a long line of similarly lovingly supported and nurtured tyrannies on ever continent?
Followed by which, we'd then be free to watch without regret at Iraq's inevitable descent into the chaos and misery now holding forth at the scene of the Bush Administration's first battle of the Great Crusade?
Fuck that. We need to declare ourselves guilty of the war crimes we have committed, pay reparations to the victims, promise not to do it again, and lock up the perpetrators.
Yeah, yeah. That, in the current political climate, ain't gonna happen either. Which is why it's the responsibility of opponents of the war to create a political climate in which it will happen.
Foregoing honesty, integrity, and responsibility in the quest to practice "I-told-you-so" one-upsmanship and the desire "wash our hands" of the affair and just "get back to normal" is no way to go about attaining justice.
October 06, 2003
Perplexing
You've seen them, right? The earnest ops-eds, popping up at the rate of about one per week, speaking in so-called opposition to the war in Iraq, urging the Bush Administration to "declare victory" and leave.
What the fuck?
First of all, this insipid argument couldn't possibly be more naive. If the Bush Administration leaves Iraq behind, it also leaves behind the "reconstruction" and "services" contracts awarded in Iraq to its cronies, it leaves behind the World's second-largest proven oil reserves, and it leaves behind its master plan to privatise every inch of Iraqi soil. Ain't gonna happen.
Secondly, what right have we to declare "victory"? Declare "victory" over what? Over Saddam's non-existent weapons stash that, if it had existed would have been dwarfed in size by the stashes of the "P-5" overlords of world morality? Over Saddam's non-existent links to al-Qaeda that, if they had existed, should somehow given us the right to blitz tens of thousands of innocent civilians' and conscripted teenaged soldiers' lives into "collateral" oblivion? Over Saddam's dictatorship that, at its height was lovingly supported and nurtured by current Bush Administration higher-ups, and that in its latest stages was a shadow of its former self -- and in any case was virtually indisinguishable from a long line of similarly lovingly supported and nurtured tyrannies on ever continent?
Followed by which, we'd then be free to watch without regret at Iraq's inevitable descent into the chaos and misery now holding forth at the scene of the Bush Administration's first battle of the Great Crusade?
Fuck that. We need to declare ourselves guilty of the war crimes we have committed, pay reparations to the victims, promise not to do it again, and lock up the perpetrators.
Yeah, yeah. That, in the current political climate, ain't gonna happen either. Which is why it's the responsibility of opponents of the war to create a political climate in which it will happen.
Foregoing honesty, integrity, and responsibility in the quest to practice "I-told-you-so" one-upsmanship and the desire "wash our hands" of the affair and just "get back to normal" is no way to go about attaining justice.
Posted by Eddie Tews at 08:06 PM
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In a three-hour interview Saturday, Russia's big cheese, Vladimir Putin, chided the United States for its invasion of Iraq: "How would the local population treat forces whose official name is the occupying forces?"
Contrariwise, he in another section of the interview, while making sure to laud Dubya's "courageous" defence of his exceedingly brutal war upon Chechnya, at the same time decried the crticisms of Russia's Chechnya policy offered up by other American "agencies and ministries".
Interestingly, he was correctly able to detect the existence of a double-standard here, viz., that "Islamic fighters in Chechnya were called democrats, while those in Afghanistan and Iraq were viewed as criminals."
Okay, but finding the Bush Administration guilty of utilising double-standards is like finding the ocean guilty of being wet. True enough, but hardly Earth-shattering news.
Rather than touching the match to this driest of straw men, he might care to note that 80% or more of the world's population was opposed to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, and 90% or more was opposed to the invasion of Iraq -- consistent with his Chechnya policy's status as an "open sore in Russia's standing in the world".
Putin can, after all, "boast" of having sentenced innocent civilians to suffer casualty and internal-displacement levels commensurate with those of U.S. client regimes in Turkey, Colombia, and Indonesia during the same period -- though not quite in the same league as the United States' own obliteration of Iraq during the '90s.
Let's call a spade a spade, eh, Vlad?
Behold The Mind Of A Champion Doublethinker
In a three-hour interview Saturday, Russia's big cheese, Vladimir Putin, chided the United States for its invasion of Iraq: "How would the local population treat forces whose official name is the occupying forces?"
Contrariwise, he in another section of the interview, while making sure to laud Dubya's "courageous" defence of his exceedingly brutal war upon Chechnya, at the same time decried the crticisms of Russia's Chechnya policy offered up by other American "agencies and ministries".
Interestingly, he was correctly able to detect the existence of a double-standard here, viz., that "Islamic fighters in Chechnya were called democrats, while those in Afghanistan and Iraq were viewed as criminals."
Okay, but finding the Bush Administration guilty of utilising double-standards is like finding the ocean guilty of being wet. True enough, but hardly Earth-shattering news.
Rather than touching the match to this driest of straw men, he might care to note that 80% or more of the world's population was opposed to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, and 90% or more was opposed to the invasion of Iraq -- consistent with his Chechnya policy's status as an "open sore in Russia's standing in the world".
Putin can, after all, "boast" of having sentenced innocent civilians to suffer casualty and internal-displacement levels commensurate with those of U.S. client regimes in Turkey, Colombia, and Indonesia during the same period -- though not quite in the same league as the United States' own obliteration of Iraq during the '90s.
Let's call a spade a spade, eh, Vlad?
Posted by Eddie Tews at 04:36 PM
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From former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook's diary of the months leading up to war:
The most revealing exchange came when we talked about Saddam's arsenal. I told him, "It's clear from the private briefing I have had that Saddam has no weapons of mass destruction in a sense of weapons that could strike at strategic cities. But he probably does have several thousand battlefield chemical munitions. Do you never worry that he might use them against British troops?"
[Blair replied:] "Yes, but all the effort he has had to put into concealment makes it difficult for him to assemble them quickly for use."
There were two distinct elements to this exchange that sent me away deeply troubled. The first was that the timetable to war was plainly not driven by the progress of the UN weapons inspections. Tony made no attempt to pretend that what Hans Blix might report would make any difference to the countdown to invasion.
The second troubling element to our conversation was that Tony did not try to argue me out of the view that Saddam did not have real weapons of mass destruction that were designed for strategic use against city populations and capable of being delivered with reliability over long distances. I had now expressed that view to both the chairman of the JIC and to the prime minister and both had assented in it.
Quote Of The Moment #0023
From former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook's diary of the months leading up to war:
The most revealing exchange came when we talked about Saddam's arsenal. I told him, "It's clear from the private briefing I have had that Saddam has no weapons of mass destruction in a sense of weapons that could strike at strategic cities. But he probably does have several thousand battlefield chemical munitions. Do you never worry that he might use them against British troops?"
[Blair replied:] "Yes, but all the effort he has had to put into concealment makes it difficult for him to assemble them quickly for use."
There were two distinct elements to this exchange that sent me away deeply troubled. The first was that the timetable to war was plainly not driven by the progress of the UN weapons inspections. Tony made no attempt to pretend that what Hans Blix might report would make any difference to the countdown to invasion.
The second troubling element to our conversation was that Tony did not try to argue me out of the view that Saddam did not have real weapons of mass destruction that were designed for strategic use against city populations and capable of being delivered with reliability over long distances. I had now expressed that view to both the chairman of the JIC and to the prime minister and both had assented in it.
Posted by Eddie Tews at 03:50 PM
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Cover the children's faces -- the New York Times is on the attack. Er, sort of.
A story in the October 5 Times demonstrates that the Bush Administration knowingly inflated pre-war estimates of post-war Iraqi oil production capabilities.
The Times bites Dick Cheney's hand, for example, in noting that "when Vice President Cheney was asked about Iraq's oil during an appearance before newspaper editors, he cited higher numbers rather than the [Energy Infrastructure Planning Group] task force's more sober findings."
The issue is of some import because the Bush Administration had, prior to the war, assured that "Iraq's oil wealth, not American taxpayers, would cover most of the cost of rebuilding Iraq". Or, in the words of Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz: "We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."
Now, reality has shewn that it is the American taxpayer, after all, that is having to foot the bill -- and that the Bush Administration was more less aware all along that this would be the case. Scandalous indeed.
Yet the reader will search the piece's nearly 2,000 words in vain for even the slightest questioning of the logic of us obliterating Iraq and then making the Iraqis pay for the pleasure of "rebuilding".
If a mal-content rampages through a proverbial China Shoppe, smashing up all the inventory in sight while killing a goodly number of the employees and releasing asbestos particles (or what have you) into the air, is it anywhere suggested that the Shoppe-owner should pay to clean up after the mal-content's depredations?
Yet this is precisely the logic that the mainstream media accepts without so much as a blink. If one can turn up even a single example of such a "blink" in all of America's mainstream press, this blogger would dearly love to see it.
Free Press "Bites" Bush
Cover the children's faces -- the New York Times is on the attack. Er, sort of.
A story in the October 5 Times demonstrates that the Bush Administration knowingly inflated pre-war estimates of post-war Iraqi oil production capabilities.
The Times bites Dick Cheney's hand, for example, in noting that "when Vice President Cheney was asked about Iraq's oil during an appearance before newspaper editors, he cited higher numbers rather than the [Energy Infrastructure Planning Group] task force's more sober findings."
The issue is of some import because the Bush Administration had, prior to the war, assured that "Iraq's oil wealth, not American taxpayers, would cover most of the cost of rebuilding Iraq". Or, in the words of Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz: "We are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."
Now, reality has shewn that it is the American taxpayer, after all, that is having to foot the bill -- and that the Bush Administration was more less aware all along that this would be the case. Scandalous indeed.
Yet the reader will search the piece's nearly 2,000 words in vain for even the slightest questioning of the logic of us obliterating Iraq and then making the Iraqis pay for the pleasure of "rebuilding".
If a mal-content rampages through a proverbial China Shoppe, smashing up all the inventory in sight while killing a goodly number of the employees and releasing asbestos particles (or what have you) into the air, is it anywhere suggested that the Shoppe-owner should pay to clean up after the mal-content's depredations?
Yet this is precisely the logic that the mainstream media accepts without so much as a blink. If one can turn up even a single example of such a "blink" in all of America's mainstream press, this blogger would dearly love to see it.
Posted by Eddie Tews at 03:41 PM
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"If America can strike Afghanistan for the international crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001, when 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, and if America can invade Iraq, which had absolutely nothing to do with 11 September, why shouldn't Israel strike Syria?"
Quote Of The Moment #0022
"If America can strike Afghanistan for the international crimes against humanity of 11 September 2001, when 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis, and if America can invade Iraq, which had absolutely nothing to do with 11 September, why shouldn't Israel strike Syria?"
Posted by Eddie Tews at 03:16 PM
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As the previously ballyhooed "Autumn Surprise" regarding Saddam's weapons programmes, forthcoming from David Kay, has in fact turned up, well, nothing, the Bush Administration is trying to revive the shuck-'n'-jive postulate.
The SNJP works like this: having "put in place a double-deception program aimed at convincing the world and his own people that he was more of a threat than he actually was," sneaky Saddam was "bluffing, pretending he had distributed them to his most loyal commanders to deter the United States from invading." Saddam, we are told "may have misled the world" and "is thought to have...made ambiguous statements about his WMD programme as an elaborate bluff that backfired." [Emphasis added.]
There's only one problem with the SNJP: Saddam forgot to pull off the "double" half of his dastardly "deception". When in the fuck did he ever imply that he was in possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction? Never, that's when. "May have" and "thought to have" isn't really going to cut it.
Unless, you know, the entire world missed the "double-deception" when Saddam, during his Dan Rather interview, said something like, "Well, you see, I don't have any WMD on me, because I distributed them to my most loyal commanders [nudge nudge, wink wink, snigger snigger]." Following which, Saddam, having failed to notice the world's failure to notice his "slip" of the tongue, and having failed to notice that his "double-deception" had not succeeded in "deterring" the United States (indeed, having suffered hallucinations to the effect that the massive military force surrounding his country had turned around and gone back home), popped open a bottle of champagne to celebrate his wisdom and cunning.
In point of fact, Saddam repeatedly, consistently, and unambiguously denied having retained a WMD programme. As it turns out, these claims were more less corroborated by the pre-war inspections, by UNSCOM's pre-"Desert Fox" activities, and by high-level defectors.
While we now know he was "mostly telling the truth", it was certainly within the realm of possibility (or at least, conceivability) that he could have been lying.
If he did have the weapons, and assuming his "aim" was to prevent an attack by snookering the world into believing that he didn't have the weapons, lying would have been a logical course of action.
But if his "aim" was to deter an attack by duping the world into believing that he did indeed possess, say, weapons in the quantities suggested by Colin Powell on February 5, why the fuck would he need to pull a "double-deception" when he could simply sign off on Powell's testimony?
The postulate becomes even more bizarre when we learn that it apparently derives from "pre-war Iraqi communications collected by U.S. intelligence agencies indicating that Iraqi commanders...were given the authority to launch weapons of mass destruction against U.S. troops as they advanced north from Kuwait."
So in order for Saddam's "double-deception" to work, he has to know either that his group of "most loyal commanders" has been infiltrated, or, if he's given this authority through radio communications, that U.S. intelligence will be able to intercept and decode the communications. And he has to trust that, once armed with this "knowledge", the United States will share it with the world, and the world will accept that the United States' intelligence (the same intelligence that failed to prevent September 11, and that made such a botch-job of the February 5 presentation, remember) is competent to obtain such information, and that George Bush is telling the truth in the first place.
All this rigamarole in order to convince the world that he has the weapons!
Furthermore, given that Bush and Blair were accusing him all along of lying -- that is to say, accusing him of actually retaining a weapons programme -- and were planning to invade anyway, where in the fuck would Saddam get the idea that pulling a "double-deception" (or, assuming his logical facilities were intact, a "single-deception") would deter an attack?
Are we really expected to swallow this garbage?
October 01, 2003
Seriously Reaching
As the previously ballyhooed "Autumn Surprise" regarding Saddam's weapons programmes, forthcoming from David Kay, has in fact turned up, well, nothing, the Bush Administration is trying to revive the shuck-'n'-jive postulate.
The SNJP works like this: having "put in place a double-deception program aimed at convincing the world and his own people that he was more of a threat than he actually was," sneaky Saddam was "bluffing, pretending he had distributed them to his most loyal commanders to deter the United States from invading." Saddam, we are told "may have misled the world" and "is thought to have...made ambiguous statements about his WMD programme as an elaborate bluff that backfired." [Emphasis added.]
There's only one problem with the SNJP: Saddam forgot to pull off the "double" half of his dastardly "deception". When in the fuck did he ever imply that he was in possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction? Never, that's when. "May have" and "thought to have" isn't really going to cut it.
Unless, you know, the entire world missed the "double-deception" when Saddam, during his Dan Rather interview, said something like, "Well, you see, I don't have any WMD on me, because I distributed them to my most loyal commanders [nudge nudge, wink wink, snigger snigger]." Following which, Saddam, having failed to notice the world's failure to notice his "slip" of the tongue, and having failed to notice that his "double-deception" had not succeeded in "deterring" the United States (indeed, having suffered hallucinations to the effect that the massive military force surrounding his country had turned around and gone back home), popped open a bottle of champagne to celebrate his wisdom and cunning.
In point of fact, Saddam repeatedly, consistently, and unambiguously denied having retained a WMD programme. As it turns out, these claims were more less corroborated by the pre-war inspections, by UNSCOM's pre-"Desert Fox" activities, and by high-level defectors.
While we now know he was "mostly telling the truth", it was certainly within the realm of possibility (or at least, conceivability) that he could have been lying.
If he did have the weapons, and assuming his "aim" was to prevent an attack by snookering the world into believing that he didn't have the weapons, lying would have been a logical course of action.
But if his "aim" was to deter an attack by duping the world into believing that he did indeed possess, say, weapons in the quantities suggested by Colin Powell on February 5, why the fuck would he need to pull a "double-deception" when he could simply sign off on Powell's testimony?
The postulate becomes even more bizarre when we learn that it apparently derives from "pre-war Iraqi communications collected by U.S. intelligence agencies indicating that Iraqi commanders...were given the authority to launch weapons of mass destruction against U.S. troops as they advanced north from Kuwait."
So in order for Saddam's "double-deception" to work, he has to know either that his group of "most loyal commanders" has been infiltrated, or, if he's given this authority through radio communications, that U.S. intelligence will be able to intercept and decode the communications. And he has to trust that, once armed with this "knowledge", the United States will share it with the world, and the world will accept that the United States' intelligence (the same intelligence that failed to prevent September 11, and that made such a botch-job of the February 5 presentation, remember) is competent to obtain such information, and that George Bush is telling the truth in the first place.
All this rigamarole in order to convince the world that he has the weapons!
Furthermore, given that Bush and Blair were accusing him all along of lying -- that is to say, accusing him of actually retaining a weapons programme -- and were planning to invade anyway, where in the fuck would Saddam get the idea that pulling a "double-deception" (or, assuming his logical facilities were intact, a "single-deception") would deter an attack?
Are we really expected to swallow this garbage?
Posted by Eddie Tews at 08:20 PM
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''It appears, and I hate to say this, that the Iraqis were mostly telling the truth."
Quote Of The Moment #0021
''It appears, and I hate to say this, that the Iraqis were mostly telling the truth."
Posted by Eddie Tews at 05:09 PM
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Jack Straw, in trying to justify the war on Iraq despite the failure to find any WMD or any programme capable of producing same:
What we're dealing with here is hindsight. What we have to make is judgments about future events. That's what we did ... I think that it was justified then and it is justified now.
Just think for a moment what position the world would have been in and the Iraqi people would have been in if we had failed to take action at that critical moment. The authority of the United Nations would have been gravely weakened.
The Iraqi people would have suffered grievously because Saddam would have re-established his reign of terror worse ever than before.
What in the fuck is this supposed to mean?
What was "critical" about the "moment" chosen for invasion? The invaders said it was because Saddam had "failed to disarm". Who told them that? UNMOVIC? No. Quite to the contrary. In the absence of any "smoking gun" (or any other sort of proof, for that matter) the "critical moment" had nothing to do with the stated justification for the invasion. We can make guesses at what did prompt the specific timing of the invasion, in other words, but it's obvious to those with eyes to see that it was not the sudden appearance of WMD.
Using Straw's logic (maybe it's just too cruel and unusual, when all is said and done, to use the Bush and Blair Administrations' own logic against them -- it's certainly as easy as taking candy from a baby), the Anglo-Americans should have launched the invasion no later than September 24, 2002 -- the date that Tony Blair insisted before the British Parliament "that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes..."
That the Americans and British then spent the next six months dicking off even while they were (for the sake of argument) painfully aware that Saddam was ready and willing to lay an attack upon the United States at any moment should (again, by the Administrations' own logic) be considered an inact of criminal negligence.
Moving along, the assertion that if the "coalition" had not launched its invasion before obtaining Security Council authorisation then, "The authority of the United Nations would have been gravely weakened," is possibly the purest, most textbook example of doublethink ever put on display. But ever!
Finally, the claim that, "The Iraqi people would have suffered grievously because Saddam would have re-established his reign of terror worse ever than before," besides being grammatically and semantically challenged, is contrary to the evidence given in Human Rights Watch's annual country reports for Iraq -- which harshly denounced the Human Rights abuses in Saddam's Iraq, but which, if one cares to read the successive reports from the late-'80s until the time of invasion, clearly demonstrate that Saddam was either incapable of or not willing to "re-establish hs reign of terror worse than ever before".
The magnitude of his crimes steadily declined from their CIA-asset-era peak until Dubya's invasion. A period during which, it should be noted, he was able to remain in power because the Anglo-American sanctions so deprived the populace that it was completely dependent upon the state to survive. That is to say, the sanctions, in addition to killing 5,000 children per month, allowed Saddam to "re-establish his reign of terror", to the extent that he was able to, for well over a decade.
Maybe Straw was merely off his meds. If he wasn't, we can only conclude that he must've been under the influence of some sort of Martian brainwave device.
Beyond The Pale
Jack Straw, in trying to justify the war on Iraq despite the failure to find any WMD or any programme capable of producing same:
What we're dealing with here is hindsight. What we have to make is judgments about future events. That's what we did ... I think that it was justified then and it is justified now.
Just think for a moment what position the world would have been in and the Iraqi people would have been in if we had failed to take action at that critical moment. The authority of the United Nations would have been gravely weakened.
The Iraqi people would have suffered grievously because Saddam would have re-established his reign of terror worse ever than before.
What in the fuck is this supposed to mean?
What was "critical" about the "moment" chosen for invasion? The invaders said it was because Saddam had "failed to disarm". Who told them that? UNMOVIC? No. Quite to the contrary. In the absence of any "smoking gun" (or any other sort of proof, for that matter) the "critical moment" had nothing to do with the stated justification for the invasion. We can make guesses at what did prompt the specific timing of the invasion, in other words, but it's obvious to those with eyes to see that it was not the sudden appearance of WMD.
Using Straw's logic (maybe it's just too cruel and unusual, when all is said and done, to use the Bush and Blair Administrations' own logic against them -- it's certainly as easy as taking candy from a baby), the Anglo-Americans should have launched the invasion no later than September 24, 2002 -- the date that Tony Blair insisted before the British Parliament "that Iraq has chemical and biological weapons, that Saddam has continued to produce them, that he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be activated within 45 minutes..."
That the Americans and British then spent the next six months dicking off even while they were (for the sake of argument) painfully aware that Saddam was ready and willing to lay an attack upon the United States at any moment should (again, by the Administrations' own logic) be considered an inact of criminal negligence.
Moving along, the assertion that if the "coalition" had not launched its invasion before obtaining Security Council authorisation then, "The authority of the United Nations would have been gravely weakened," is possibly the purest, most textbook example of doublethink ever put on display. But ever!
Finally, the claim that, "The Iraqi people would have suffered grievously because Saddam would have re-established his reign of terror worse ever than before," besides being grammatically and semantically challenged, is contrary to the evidence given in Human Rights Watch's annual country reports for Iraq -- which harshly denounced the Human Rights abuses in Saddam's Iraq, but which, if one cares to read the successive reports from the late-'80s until the time of invasion, clearly demonstrate that Saddam was either incapable of or not willing to "re-establish hs reign of terror worse than ever before".
The magnitude of his crimes steadily declined from their CIA-asset-era peak until Dubya's invasion. A period during which, it should be noted, he was able to remain in power because the Anglo-American sanctions so deprived the populace that it was completely dependent upon the state to survive. That is to say, the sanctions, in addition to killing 5,000 children per month, allowed Saddam to "re-establish his reign of terror", to the extent that he was able to, for well over a decade.
Maybe Straw was merely off his meds. If he wasn't, we can only conclude that he must've been under the influence of some sort of Martian brainwave device.