Roger Simon recently linked to this essay by Dr. Robert Harman, which attempts to analyze terrorists and our reaction to them, and in particular the symbiotic psychological connection between terrorists and their Western apologists.
Dr Harman is an orgonomist. Huh, you say? What’s an orgonomist? “Orgonomist,” as in Reich’s “orgone box,” one of those branches of psychoanalysis that seems to have made a sharp turn and plunged into extreme eccentricity quite some time ago.
But orgonomy is apparently alive and well and living in Princeton, New Jersey. I can’t quite figure out what orgonomists really do at this point, or whether they’ve jettisoned the orgone box (as far as I can decipher from the website, they have, thankfully). I’d never even heard of the American College of Orgonomy before, but its members appear to be bona fide psychiatrists who attempt to integrate some aspects of body dynamics into their practice of psychotherapy. For some reason, part of orgonomic theory seems to be to delve rather deeply into the political, which is extremely unusual for a psychotherapeutic discipline. (See, for example, this article analyzing the phenomenon of liberalism, written almost half a century ago by a leading orgonomist.)
In light of this history of a political focus on the part of orgonomists, it’s not so strange after all that Dr. Harman was able to write his article only a month and a half after the events of 9/11. Apparently he’d already been thinking about these sorts of questions for quite a while.
Harman doesn’t really pick up steam until the second half of the essay, the part that is subtitled “Who Are They?” and the sections that follow it. He sees the relationship between terrorists and their liberal apologists as an almost-perfect sadomasochistic symbiosis. The following excerpt contains the heart of his message on the subject:
…when his nation is attacked, the normally decent, true liberal is at risk for having the following masochistic reaction, particularly under the influence of vocal pseudo-liberals who occupy opinion-making positions (academia, the clergy, the media, etc.):
He will criticize and may even blame his own nation.
He will develop a guilt-ridden or anxious desire to “solve” the problem by being nicer to those who might hate or dislike his country.
He will elaborate various disaster scenarios which he fears will occur if force is used aggressively. Usually the imagined disaster is a variation of “it will only make them hate us even more” or a feared dramatic escalation of violence which we will not have the will or the strength (so the liberal believes) to handle.
He fears that his nation and its leaders (especially if they are not liberals) are stupid and clumsy, and he may insist on replacing a directly aggressive defense with half-hearted responses which actually would be clumsy and ineffective.
This type of masochistic reaction only increases the sadism of the terrorist, leading to new attacks which further increase the masochistic response, and so on in a vicious cycle. The September 11th attacks were the culmination of a decade of such a cycle of sadomasochistic interaction.
I think the most remarkable thing about this passage (other than the fact that it was written by an orgonomist), is that it was delivered at a conference on Oct. 21, 2001. At that relatively early date, Harman seems to have understood exactly what would be the ensuing liberal/leftist reaction, although it really hadn’t developed yet.
Another fascinating observation by Harman is his discussion of the linkage between fanatics on the far left and those on the far right (what he refers to as “red” and “black” fascists, respectively):
…there is often a synergistic relationship between black and red fascism…The red fascist is incapable of expressing his aggression in a gut level way and of communicating a high, sustained emotional charge, thus he admires the black fascist’s ability to do these things…the black fascist expresses himself emotionally, sometimes in a nearly incoherent way. This can be seen in some of Osama Bin Ladin’s speeches and in Hitler’s diplomatic communiqués, which are emotionally charged, but don’t hold together logically. Thus the black fascist benefits from the red fascist’s ability to use logical arguments to persuade liberals into immobilizing any nation’s effort to forcefully oppose the black fascist’s aggression. Eventually the red fascist and the black fascist will turn on each other and one or the other will prevail, but they are temporarily united as one in their hatred of life. This is seen today in the synergistic action of the covert hatred of America on the part of the pseudo-liberal and the overt hatred of America on the part of the Islamic fanatic…
Since this was written in October of 2001, I would say that Harman ought to get some sort award for prescience, although of course his prescience is based on the study of history. This cooperation between far right and far left is precisely what has come to pass; the two work as a sort of tag team. The Islamofascists provide the emotionally aggressive “juice” and the leftist apologists supply the “logical” arguments designed to lead Western nations to appeasement, attempting to cause effective action against the Islamofascists to be blocked and immobilized.
The fact that Islamofascists stand for everything the far left is ostensibly against–persecution of women and gays, just to take two obvious examples–has been a puzzlement in endeavoring to understand why it is that leftists seem nevertheless to ally with them. But Harman doesn’t look at this alliance in political terms, so he sees no contradiction in it. Instead, he sees the politics as a sort of nearly-irrelevant screen, an excuse for the deeper emotional interactions that drive the whole engine. The sadist and the masochist are pulled together by ties stronger than logic or politics, and the wimpy intellectual worships the angry thug who acts as his/her bold and rageful surrogate.
To find a good example, one can see this dynamic working most clearly and nakedly in the writings of British leftist journalist Robert Fisk. In his famous Afghan beating article, (dating from December, 2001, months after Harman’s observations) Fisk writes:
They started by shaking hands. We said “Salaam aleikum” – peace be upon you – then the first pebbles flew past my face. A small boy tried to grab my bag. Then another. Then someone punched me in the back. Then young men broke my glasses, began smashing stones into my face and head. I couldn’t see for the blood pouring down my forehead and swamping my eyes. And even then, I understood. I couldn’t blame them for what they were doing. In fact, if I were the Afghan refugees of Kila Abdullah, close to the Afghan-Pakistan border, I would have done just the same to Robert Fisk. Or any other Westerner I could find.
As a psychiatrist, Harman thinks in terms of individual psychology. As a family therapist, I don’t ordinarily think that way, although I do understand such terms and believe his analysis to be a good one. But if I had to come up with a simple explanation for the behavior of so many liberals or leftists who make excuses for terrorists, I would describe it differently.
I think there is a similarity to the attitude of many abused children who blame themselves for the abusive actions of their parents. Children believe in an ordered and just world. It may seem paradoxical, but for most abused children it is less threatening and terrifying to see themselves as the guilty ones, and to believe that their abusive parents are punishing them for a good reason, than to know that the world is a place in which parents can be irrationally abusive towards their own innocent children. Part of the work of therapy with such children (even after they’ve grown up) is to convince them that they themselves were/are not evil and deserving of the abuse.
I think that, in a similar way, most liberals and even some leftists like to believe that the world is a just and sane place, and that people are rational actors–particularly people in third-world countries (the actions of the “evil” US and Israel are often excluded from this benign formulation). If such people are out to get us, it’s merely because we have done something to them that has made us deserve it. The reasoning is similar to that of the aforementioned abused child.
There is a tremendous power inherent in such a formulation, although it is a hidden sort of power. For the child, it means that he/she is in some sort of control, rather than at the mercy of a powerful, irrational, and cruel person–his abusing parent. After all, if the child’s behavior is the reason for the abuse, than the child can stop the abuse, if only he/she can identify that key behavior and change it. It resets the locus of control and puts it back in the child–although only theoretically (in fact, it is an impossible dream of the child, and cannot be accomplished).
A similar dynamic is true of many of the liberals and leftists who blame our actions for the behavior of terrorists. Terrorists are frightening, cruel, violent, unpredictable. Anyone could be a target at any time. But if we say that they are only reacting to things that we ourselves are doing, things we could easily change if we wanted to, then the locus of control goes back to us, and the world is a far less scary and far more ordered place.
(ADDENDUM 8/8/05, 9:15 PM: Welcome, Instapundit and Roger Simon readers! If you’re a glutton for punishment and interested in reading a few more of my long-winded tomes, go to the heart of this blog–its raison d’etre, as it were. Scroll down on the right sidebar to find the links under the title, “A mind is a difficult thing to change.” It’s a series about the formation of a political identity, and the process of changing one’s mind politically.)
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
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RickJ
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
online relationship 101 Ways to Build Happy, Lasting Relationships.
Multilingual : English - Chinese Simplified - Chinese Traditional - Dutch - French - German - Greek - Italian - Japanese - Korean - Portuguese - Russian - Spanish
Start Over : When couples first get together, everything is new and exciting.
Lighten Up : Often when couples have gone through or are going through some bumpy spots in their relationship, things tend to get serious.
Night of Passion : Intimacy and passion in relationships is not only important but also healthy.
Cuddle Time : When couples first start dating, cuddling is usually a part of their everyday existence.
Make the Women Feel Good : Just like men, woman love feeling good about themselves.
Showing Love : Although hearing the words, I love you is special and important.
Realistic Expectations : No matter how wonderful and flawless your mate seems, no one is perfect.
Go on a Date : Especially for married couples, but even for some dating couples, start dating.
Control Your Anger : Every relationship has difficulties, and sometimes, there can be some intense arguments.
I Forgive You : If something has happened in your relationship causing the trust to waiver, you will have many things to work through.
Day at the Movies : Have a movie marathon some rainy or cold Saturday.
Dinner by the Fire : Order in some of your favorite food, open a bottle of fine wine, light some candles.
A Day at the Spa : Show your appreciation for the hard work that takes.
Keep in Touch : It is important that you keep in touch with each other often.
Motivate Each Other : Find a mutual incentive that will motivate both of you.
Adore your Mate : Appreciate and love them for the person they are.
Make Eye Contact : Think back to the first time you saw your now mate.
Respect Privacy : When two people come together in a relationship, each person has their own set of history.
Be Flexible : There will be times when your mate is right and times when you are right.
Encourage Friendships : Men, unlike women, have a more difficult time in developing close friendships with other men.
online relationship
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Wonderfully insightful stuff. I enjoyed your “mind changing series” immensely. Read also anything by Victor Davis Hanson, Military historian and alltime vouice of reason. What happened to you as a result of the “mugging” is a classic example of how “it’s an ill wind that blows no good”
Feb 06
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Excellent blog! Congrats on crossing to the good side.
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
160,148.
Perhaps I should have been less naive; as I extend my blogging experience, I expect to keep on learning. The 160,148 that I thought was the number of visits to this site — and I was astonished by the lack of feedback — is in reality the number of hits on neo-neocon’s home site, from which sprout a number of tentacles, of which this is one. The fact is that there’s no way — unless I’m making yet another newbie mistake — of tracking the visits to this particular blog — of how many visits are coming here, rather than to ne–neocon in general in all her multitudinous forms, but it’s a safe assumption that not many of them are being directed here.
All right, so it’s not a dialogue but an online diary; I can live with that. It’s been fun.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Hey, why are all those wingnuts objecting to Miers?
It’s unpatriotic! Back the President! Rush, are you calling Dick a liar? Your disrespect for the President is disgusting. If you don’t like it, move to Russia. You’re giving comfort to our enemies by opposing the President. You and all your faggot Al Qaeda-loving buddies deserve a taste of life in Gitmo. You’re being taken in by those lying extremist left-wing weirdo media outlets like Fox. Next thing we know you’ll be taking away our guns and forcing us to have abortions. Why do you hate America so much? Can’t you see you’re just a bunch of bitter losers? Bush was vindicated in 2004 — get over it, you crybabies! Stop bitching and do something positive — support the President! You probably cheered when the Twin Towers fell, you anti-Bush scum. You’d support anything to drag the President down! If you’re not with us, you’re against us! You’re not anti-Bush — you’re anti-American!
Peace and love,
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Is Colin Powell a coward?
I’ve just recently read a scathing report on Powell’s career by Robert Parry from commercialnews.com. Parry claims that throughout his career and his involvement with the My Lay coverup, with the Iran/Contra scandal as chief aide to Caspar Weinberger, and on to the present day, Powell always carefully tries to be all things to all people, deliberately avoiding taking strong stands on controversial positions, as a leader sometimes must.
An interesting read. I knew nothing about Powell’s military career, but I always thought his performance as Secretary of State was cowardly. It became obvious early on in his term that he couldn’t stomach the Neo-Con idealogues in the Pentagon and the White House, and the correct thing to do, ethically and morally, was to resign, something it seems to me was more common years ago. It seems pretty rare nowadays for people to resign on principle.
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
156,710.
Well, Retired Army Lt. General William Odom, now a scholar at the Hudson Institute, agrees with me. He said yesterday: “The invasion of Iraq was the “greatest strategic disaster in United States history,” He said the invasion of Iraq alienated America’s Middle East allies, making it harder to prosecute a war against terrorists.
I said it was the worst military decision made by anyone since the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
The U.S. should withdraw from Iraq, he said, and reposition its military forces along the Afghan-Pakistani border to capture Osama bin Laden and crush al Qaeda cells.
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
More material I promised about Pat Tillman, an American hero. Following are selections taken from an article published at sfgate.com by Robert Collier:
“A new inquiry launched in August by the Pentagon’s inspector general finally will answer the family’s questions:
“Were witnesses allowed to change their testimony on key details, as alleged by one investigator? Why did internal documents on the case, such as the initial casualty report, include false information? When did top Pentagon officials know that Tillman’s death was caused by friendly fire, and why did they delay for five weeks before informing his family?
“There have been so many discrepancies so far that it’s hard to know what to believe,” Mary Tillman said. “There are too many murky details.” The files the family received from the Army in March are heavily censored, with nearly every page containing blacked-out sections; most names have been deleted. At least one volume was withheld altogether from the family, and even an Army press release given to the media has deletions.
“The documents contain testimony of the first investigating officer alleging that Army officials allowed witnesses to change key details in their sworn statements so his finding that certain soldiers committed “gross negligence” could be softened.
“A fiercely independent thinker who enlisted, fought and died in service to his country yet was critical of President Bush and opposed the war in Iraq, where he served a tour of duty.
“Tillman’s parents have avoided association with the anti-war movement. Their main public allies are Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and Rep. Mike Honda, D-San Jose, who have lobbied on their behalf.
“Drafted by the Arizona Cardinals, Tillman earned a bachelor’s degree in marketing from Arizona State and graduated summa cum laude in 3 1/2 years with a 3.84 grade point average. He worked on a master’s degree in history while playing professional football.
“His 224 tackles in a single season (2000) are a team record, and because of team loyalty he rejected a five year, $9 million offer from the St. Louis Rams for a one-year, $512,000 contract to stay with Arizona the next year.
“Moved in part by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Tillman decided to give up his career, saying he wanted to fight al Qaeda and help find Osama bin Laden. He spurned the Cardinals’ offer of a three year, $3.6 million contract extension and joined the Army in June 2002 along with his brother Kevin.
“A personal letter from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, thanking him for serving his country, now resides in a storage box, put away by Pat’s widow, Marie.
“Instead of going to Afghanistan, as the brothers expected, their Ranger battalion was sent to participate in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The Tillmans saw combat several times on their way to Baghdad. In early 2004, they finally were assigned to Afghanistan.
“Although the Rangers are an elite combat group, the investigative documents reveal that the conduct of the Tillmans’ detachment appeared to be anything but expert.
“Tillman’s death came at a sensitive time for the Bush administration — just a week before the Army’s abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib in Iraq became public and sparked a huge scandal. The Pentagon immediately announced that Tillman had died heroically in combat with the enemy, and President Bush hailed him as “an inspiration on and off the football field, as with all who made the ultimate sacrifice in the war on terror.”
“Not until five weeks later, as Tillman’s battalion was returning home, did officials inform the public and the Tillman family that he had been killed by his fellow soldiers.
“On April 22, the family was told that Tillman was hit with enemy fire getting out of a vehicle and died an hour later at a field hospital.
“Although there was ample testimony that Tillman died immediately, an Army report — dated April 22, 2004, from the field hospital in Salerno, Afghanistan, where his body was taken — suggested otherwise. While it stated that he had no blood pressure or pulse “on arrival,” it stated that cardio pulmonary resuscitation had been conducted and that he was transferred to the intensive care unit for further CPR.
“On April 23, all top Ranger commanders were told of the suspected fratricide.
“On April 29, four days before Tillman’s memorial, Gen. John Abizaid, chief of U.S. Central Command, and other top commanders were told of the fratricide. It is not known if Abizaid reported the news to Washington. Mary Tillman believes that with her son’s high profile, and the fact that Rumsfeld sent him a personal letter, the word quickly reached the defense secretary. “If Pat was on Rumsfeld’s radar, it’s pretty likely that he would have been informed right away after he was killed,” she said. White House, Pentagon and Army spokesmen all said they had no information on when Bush or Rumsfeld were informed.
“On April 30, the Army awarded Tillman a Silver Star medal for bravery, saying that “through the firing Tillman’s voice was heard issuing fire commands to take the fight to the enemy on the dominating high ground.”
“On May 2, the acting Army Secretary Les Brownlee was told of the fratricide.
“On May 7, the Army’s official casualty report stated incorrectly that Tillman was killed by “enemy forces” and “died in a medical treatment facility.”
“On May 28, the Army finally admitted to Tillman’s family that he had been killed by friendly fire.
“The administration clearly was using this case for its own political reasons,” said the father, Patrick Tillman. “This cover-up started within minutes of Pat’s death, and it started at high levels. This is not something that (lower-ranking) people in the field do,” he said.
“The files show that many of the soldiers questioned in the inquiry said it was common knowledge that the incident involved friendly fire.
“After they received the friendly-fire notification May 28, the Tillmans began a public campaign seeking more information. But it was only when the Tillmans began angrily accusing the Pentagon of a coverup, in June 2005, that the Army apologized for the delay, issuing a statement blaming “procedural misjudgments and mistakes.”
“The Tillmans demand that all avenues of inquiry remain open.
“I want to know what kind of criminal intent there was,” Mary Tillman said. “There’s so much in the reports that is deleted that it’s hard to tell what we’re not seeing.”
“Patrick Tillman drily called the new Army probe “the latest, greatest investigation.” He added, “In Washington, I don’t think any of them want it investigated. They (politicians and Army officials) just don’t want to see it ended with them, landing on their desk so they get blamed for the cover-up.” The January 2005 investigation concluded that there was no coverup.
“Throughout the controversy, the Tillman family has been reluctant to cause a media stir. Mary noted that Pat shunned publicity, refusing all public comment when he enlisted and asking the Army to reject all media requests for interviews while he was in service.
“Mary Tillman said a friend of Pat’s even arranged a private meeting with Noam Chomsky, the antiwar author, to take place after his return from Afghanistan — a meeting prevented by his death. She said that although he supported the Afghan war, believing it justified by the Sept. 11 attacks, “Pat was very critical of the whole Iraq war.”
“Baer, who served with Tillman for more than a year in Iraq and Afghanistan, told one anecdote that took place during the March 2003 invasion as the Rangers moved up through southern Iraq.
“I can see it like a movie screen,” Baer said. “We were outside of (a city in southern Iraq) watching as bombs were dropping on the town. We were at an old air base, me, Kevin and Pat, we weren’t in the fight right then. We were talking. And Pat said, ‘You know, this war is so f— illegal.’ And we all said, ‘Yeah.’ That’s who he was. He totally was against Bush.”
“Another soldier in the platoon, who asked not to be identified, said Pat urged him to vote for Bush’s Democratic opponent in the 2004 election, Sen. John Kerry.
“Senior Chief Petty Officer Stephen White — a Navy SEAL who served with Pat and Kevin for four months in Iraq and was the only military member to speak at Tillman’s memorial — said Pat “wasn’t very fired up about being in Iraq” and instead wanted to go fight al Qaeda in Afghanistan. He said both Pat and Kevin (who has a degree in philosophy) “were amazingly well-read individuals … very firm in some of their beliefs, their political and religious or not so religious beliefs.”
“Baer said Tillman was popular among his fellow soldiers and had no enemies. “The guys who killed Pat were his biggest fans,” he said. “They were really wrecked afterward.” He called Tillman “this amazing positive force who really brought our whole platoon together.
He had this great energy. Everybody loved him.”
“Mary Tillman says that’s how Pat would have wanted to be remembered, as an individual, not as a stock figure or political prop. But she also believes “Pat was a real hero, not what they used him as.”
*************
I’d highly recommend reading the whole article. It goes into considerable detail about the fatal firefight, the failures and mistakes of the leadership, and the coverup.
One part I could scarcely believe was that on Tillman’s death, Anne Coulter called him “an American original — virtuous, pure and masculine like only an American male can be.”
Shades of Josef Goebbels and the Aryan superman, circa 1933-1945! I said earlier Coulter is a lunatic, but fascinating to watch, like a rattlesnake; that remark is somewhat less than fascinating.
Good luck to the Tillman family with the inquiry. I hope everything can finally come out.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
156,628.
The Washington Post reports “The Heritage Foundation, usually respectful of Republican Party officeholders, recently noted that the party’s ascendancy has coincided with an extraordinarily expensive Medicare prescription drug bill, the most costly farm bill in modern history, a 51 percent increase in spending on veterans and an increase in the annual number of pork projects from 6,000 in 2001 to 14,000 this year.
“Who should be held responsible for runaway government spending? Mr. DeLay is certainly a good place to start. His governing principle was not to stand on principle but rather to rain taxpayers’ money on every lobby that could return the favor with campaign contributions. But the biggest responsibility lies … with Mr. Bush.”
On Bush’s reluctance to veto:
“…. Bush has been too cowardly to do that. He is the first president since John Quincy Adams to have served a full term without once exercising his veto, and his second term has so far been no different. This summer Mr. Bush promised to veto the transportation bill if it cost more than $256 billion. His threat brought the bill’s size down quite a bit, but in the end he caved and signed a package that cost $295 billion …. Mr. Bush’s father had the courage to veto 44 bills in four years, and President Ronald Reagan once vetoed a transportation bill because it contained about 150 pork projects. But the bill that Mr. Bush just signed contained at least 6,000 pork projects.
“The president’s defenders plead that it’s hard to veto bills when his own party controls Congress …. President Franklin D. Roosevelt held office at a time of huge Democratic Party majorities in Congress, but that didn’t stop him from vetoing a record 635 bills. Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter also coexisted with large Democratic majorities, yet Kennedy vetoed 21 bills during his short presidency, Johnson vetoed 30 and Carter vetoed 31.”
Well, that’s all bad enough, but how about this. Bush won’t veto barrels of pork, but “… the administration threatened Friday to veto a defense bill if …. it contained language outlawing cruel and inhuman treatment of foreign detainees.”
So he’ll let slide billions in pork, but balks at outlawing torture of prisoners. Lovely man. Lovely administration.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
According to Helen Thomas, Karen Hughes, talking to a group of Turkish women, said President Bush did all he could to avoid a war in Iraq.
Is there anyone who believes that to be true? It’s an out-and-out lie.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Well, I guess nobody’s counting but me and Neo-Neocon — where’s she, by the way?
154,899.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
It’s sinking in with Americans that the Bush administration has misled the country into an unneccessary and disastrous war.
“Among Americans, support for the war continues to dwindle, while growing numbers conclude that troops should be withdrawn partially or completely. Only 32 percent of people surveyed for a CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll released last week approved of Bush’s handling of Iraq, compared with 40 percent last month and 50 percent earlier this year.
“The survey also showed that 59 percent now consider it a mistake to have sent U.S. forces to Iraq, up from less than half earlier this summer. And 63 percent believe troops should be withdrawn partially or completely, up 10 points from August. Just 21 percent of those surveyed believed U.S. forces would win the war, while 34 percent said they consider the war unwinnable”.
It’s a tragedy that we’re there. History will condemn Bush for putting us there in the first place. The “War on Terror” — an idea supported by civilized people everywhere — was supplanted by Bush’s misguided invasion of Iraq.
It seems a little hard to forgive him his trespasses when you consider the magnitude of the results of his trespasses compared to that of yours and mine. Are there any biblical scholars out there who can justify all the death and destruction our esteemed Commander in Chief has made the decision and chosen to wreak on the innocent Iraqis? I mean civilians, not rebels or insurgents. The civilian death toll — how many died in that pyrotechnical display we saw on TV that was shock and awe? — by the most conservative count is upwards of 20,000, and counting — although nobody’s really counting; they’re just Iraqis, after all.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
God almighty. That moral rock of conservatism, William Bennet, has said on his weekly radio show:
“If you wanted to reduce crime, you could, if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down.”
Just to put that in context:
‘He went on to qualify his comments, which were made in response to a hypothesis that linked the falling crime rate to a rising abortion rate. Aborting black babies, he continued, would be “an impossible, ridiculous and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down”.’
This is the self-righteous pillar of rectitude (a guy with a multi-million-dollar gambling habit, but let’s not cast personal aspersions) who wrote “The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals”; and “Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism”, and of course his seminal work, “‘The Book of Virtues’, a compendium of parables snatched up by millions of parents and teachers across the political spectrum.”
Thank you for that, Bill. You’re a moral inspiration for us all.
May I put my hands around your throat?
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
I wonder if Bush-burnisher Karen Hughes, having left her Crawford/Austin/Washington cocoon, had a life-changing experience when she learned how Bush is regarded overseas.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Jeez, the mistakes keep coming. A couple of messages back I referred to Iraq being supposedly capable of attacking Britain in 45 seconds; should have been 45 minutes.
Hey, that’s still pretty quick on the draw; Sundance Saddam. It’s something that most countries — though not the U.S., of course — would be proud of. When it comes to a massive WMD attack, what’s a factor of 60 between friends?
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Sorry, just a slight amendment to my last post. I referred to Tenet’s CIA “minions”, a vaguely derogatory term. By chance, the next article I read on the Internet pointed out that Tenet’s underlings — which I intend as a neutral term — were browbeaten and bullied by the Administration to come up with the desired results. So I regret referring to them in that way.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
154,688.
Bush lied: True or False?
Well, I guess that depends on what the meaning of “is” is — whoops, sorry; I was thinking about the Master Prevaricator there. I guess it depends on what the meaning of “lied” is.
If you’re presented with a whole bunch of conflicting information, some of which supports your ideological position and some of which doesn’t, and you cherry-pick that information and ignore the opposing view, and then you publicly and forcefully present your side as though it’s definite and uncontroverted — and by doing so, persuade the American public to support a “pre-emptive” military invasion; we’re not talking about some harmless and insignificant exaggeration here — is that lying?
A whole lot of people were convinced by the admittedly very convincing performance of Colin Powell at the UN. Some people who were extremely suspicious of the Administration believed implicitly in Powell.
“It’s a blot,” Powell said. “I’m the one who presented it on behalf of the United States to the world, and [it] will always be a part of my record. It was painful. It’s painful now.”
Powell claims that he believed at the time what Tenet told him, and that he believes now that Tenet believed what his minions told him.
Did Powell lie? Well, not exactly; it depends on what the meaning of the word “lie” is. Did Bush lie? As our friend Rush might say: Ditto. Did Cheney lie? Without a shadow of a doubt, IMHO.
It’s a good thing the insurgency in Iraq is in its last throes.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Good morning, America!
Isn’t it a great day, and hasn’t it been a great week? DeLay’s indicted; Frist is being investigated; Judith Miller is out of jail and testifying, with possible serious repercussions for Turdblossom or Scooter, or both; and unknown numbers of slimy Republicans are quivering in their Guccis about what Abramoff might spill to the Feds if he pleads. (Just the slimy ones, mind you).
Things are definitely looking up.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
151,464.
I’m leaving the subject of Pat Tillman, though I’ll be back to it, because there’s lots to say. I hope the inquiry gets lots of media coverage. Pat Tillman was a great man, and I don’t blame the Administration for trumpeting his recruitment in the Rangers. Their shameless manipulation of the circumstances of his death is contemptible, but by now, who’s surprised when this Administration does contemptible things?
It brightened my day to see that Tom DeLay was indicted. Now let’s go after the Big Guy — impeach Bush for war crimes.
One of the conclusions of the Nuremberg War Trials was that the principal war crime, within which all other war crimes are contained, is the waging of aggressive war.
The Administration was at great pains to characterize the invasion of Iraq — entirely different from the UN-sanctioned invasion of Afghanistan, now; as always, let’s keep that difference prominent — as not an aggressive but a “pre-emptive” war. The premise was that Iraq was bristling with weapons of mass destruction, and according to British Intelligence, was capable of mounting a WMD attack on Britain within 45 seconds. (Looking back,it seems impossible that naive people were taken in by such transparent lies). Of course, the Administration are soft-pedalling the WMD premise now. When Iraq turned out to have about as many WMDs as Sri Lanka or Costa Rica, they tried to bolster their lies with tales of Saddam’s ties to terrorists and by linking him to 9/11. By now they’re pretty much stuck with the premise that the “regime change” was in order to free Iraq and bring democracy to the Middle East.
Now, tell me, if that indeed was the reason for the invasion (it’s not, of course; we all know that, but the Administration have backed themselves into the corner where that has become the horse they’re backing), then how about some war-crime trials for the waging of aggressive war?
I hope you end up in the Crowbar Hotel, Tom, and I hope you get lots of company from your yet-to-be-indicted contemporary politicians. I’m an equal-opportunity, non-partisan jailer, by the way; there’s lots of room for Democrats back there too.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
149,300.
But enough nonsense. Back to the real world, and a name I’m sure the Administration and the military are sick of by now: Pat Tillman.
After the murk and lies and coverup in earlier investigations into Tillman’s death, there was a new inquiry launched in August by the Pentagon’s Inspector General, and there’s a great article about the subject at sfgate.com.
Really all I knew about Tillman was that he had given up a pro football career to volunteer for the military out of a deep belief in the rightness of the “War on Terror” — heroic by any standards. I didn’t realize he was such an exceptional person (or that he opposed Bush and the war on Iraq).
More on this later — much more.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
And of course, our brave hillbillies and hilljillies are mostly sons and daughters of lawyers, doctors, Senators, and Congressmen. It’s not that they’re mostly poor, and the military is their only opportunity to learn a trade or get an education — they’re mostly well-to-do, the whole world is open to them, with good jobs at Bechtel or Halliburton, or with Bill Frist or Tom DeLay, and they have a deep belief in the rightness of the War on Hurricanes.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
But having declared a War on Hurricanes, what is his strategy to win it? How many foot soldiers (hillbillies and hilljillies; I love that term) have to die on the way? Are they going to be deployed on the Gulf beaches (that’s the Gulf of Mexico) to fire their weapons at the enemy hurricane? If — God forbid — the War on Hurricanes seems not to be going well, is there an exit strategy? Bomb the hurricanes!
Never mind that; if you are opposed to the War on Hurricanes, if you think it’s a tragic mistake on the part of the President and the Administration, you’re an anti-American piece of filth. Support the President and our troops! And let’s not dishonor the memory of the brave soldiers who were sent by the Administration to die on the beaches and who were drowned by the storm surge! We can’t quit now, or it will be a victory for the hurricanes!
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Our Fearless Leader should wage a War on Hurricanes.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
145,680 and counting.
Readers may be surprised to learn that I hardly ever read leftist blogs, but I visit the Drudge Report pretty well daily.
Full disclosure: My bookmarks include MichaelMoore.com and Aljazeera — try it! You’ll be surprised — but that’s the extent of my lefty reading, and the fact is that I hardly ever visit those sites. (Aljazeera is particularly good when the U.S. media is focusing completely on some piece of crap like Michael Jackson, and if there was an all-Iraq 24-hour channel, I’d subscribe.)
On Drudge, however, I read Tony Blankley, David Broder, David Brooks, Tina Brown, Pat Buchanan, Bill Buckley, Ann Coulter, Christopher Hitchens, Molly Ivins, Michael Kinsley, Joe Klein, Krauthammer, Paul Krugman, David Limbaugh, Rush Limbaugh, Peggy Noonan, Bob Novak, Bill O’Reilly, Wes Pruden, Andrew Sullivan, Helen Thomas, and George Will. On the “World Front Pages” — which I don’t get to at all lots of times, because I don’t even have time to read the columnists — I read Fox News, Weekly Standard, and WorldNetDaily. If I’m pushed for time, I first read Ann Coulter, Christopher Hitchens, Molly Ivins (my absolute favorite — can’t do without her), and Paul Krugman. (Two left, two right, of the last four). I just this very day read that Phyllis Schafly is a “well-known conservative commentator” — I confess my ignorance; I’ve never heard of her; how do you pronounce that, anyway? — so I’ll check her column out as soon as I’m finished here.
Anyone have any recommendations for
“must read” conservative sites?
Some left, lots and lots of right — I want to know what you guys are talking about. I have my political predispositions, but I really do try to keep an open mind. Ann Coulter, the Limbaugh twins, and Wes Pruden are lunatics, but I find them fascinating, like rattlesnakes. (I’ve read David Corn’s column twice, and he’s the left-wing lunatic equivalent; I won’t go there again.)
Following a link from the leftist pinko faggot Washington Post — oh, I should say that have electronic subscriptions to the WP and the NYT — I came across an article in that bastion of free speech, the National Enquirer, that said that the pressure has got to Bush and he’s drinking again.
If he’s drunk, at least he’s got an excuse for his incompetence. Maybe Boris Yeltsin can visit him at Crawford?
Jose Cuervo, you are a friend of mine …
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
145,488.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
145,436. Check the time between messages.
(And that includes previewing the message.)
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
It seems a long time ago now when I took a week off from this “discussion”, as it was at the time, on the advice of one of the participants (some Greek name; sorry, and no disrespect), and I noticed that the meter count on this site was about 132,000. As I made a post earlier today, I noticed the count: 143,409. That’s 11,000 hits without a reply. I checked back a few minutes later, and the count was 143,425. I stayed on the site and hit “Refresh” a few times, and I found that someone was visiting the site about once a minute.
All these hits without a comment. Interesting, but puzzling; no?
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
“Irony” (Oxford):
“A state of affairs that appears perversely contrary to what one expects”.
Exquisite. A new book, “The West’s Last Chance”, by Tony Blankley (I won’t offer any sarcastic comments; we all know Tony’s political views; right?) is reviewed in glowing terms by Pat Buchanan (I won’t offer any sarcastic comments; we all know Pat’s political views; right?).
In closing, to encapsulate the wisdom of the views expressed in Tony’s book, Pat says the following:
“If government does not act, he warns, vigilantes will, but that will not save Western Civilization. An unabashed Atlanticist, he concludes on a Churchillian note:
“‘If the United States and Europe act together as the West, in defense of our common values, we can undo the nightmare scenario of the Islamists and defeat this new threat of global tyranny that is every bit as dangerous as the Nazi threat that the Greatest Generation met and extinguished more than 50 years ago.’”
Tony! Pat! Mes amis! Comrades! Companions in arms! I agree entirely and without reservation! We’re on the same team, guys!
Just one thing: If the U.S. had stayed on course in the war on terror and Islamofascism as a followup to the attack on Afganistan — when “the United States and Europe acted together as the West, in defense of our common values” — instead of veering off into Iraq for Bush’s personal, political, and idelogical reasons, the West would have remained united, and Blankley’s hopes would have been realized.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Jeez, “similes”? I meant “synonyms”. Too much tequila?
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
The “lying”, of course, needs no qualification.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
If anyone objects to my use of the term “bastards”, I have plenty of similes you can substitute if you prefer; I’ll supply a list on request.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
What’s happening with the nuclear situation in Iran? To be frank, I have no idea. But I know one thing — I’ll depend on the U.N. and the IAEA for my information, not on those lying bastards in the Administration.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Neo-Neocon: How’s it going in your transformation from butterfly to slug? How do you like these neofascist swine you find yourself supporting and associating with? Is it a source of pride to you? Elaborate, please. We’re waiting with bated breath.
tequilmockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Neo-Neocon:
The basis for my takeover of your site on the premise that “the energies of the U.S. government should be directed unstintingly toward the masterminds and organizers behind 9/11″ … is far too narrow. As someone once said, back when others participated in this site, the threat is more than just Al Qeada, the organization that allegedly perpetrated the actions of 9/11; the enemy is Islamofascism.
That’s a very much thornier problem, complicated enormously by the fact that although they weren’t in Iraq when W and the boys waged their immoral, illegal, distastrous invision, believe me, baby, they’re there now.
Where do we go from here, N-N? I don’t give a damn if W et al succeed in Iraq — in fact, I hope that thehy fail so badly that W is impeached, prosecuted for war crimes and hauled off to jail, and the whole disgusting bunch of them are discredited for a generation — but I hope that some kind of an Iraqi-agreed consensus can be achieved and the Sunnis, Kurds and Shia can work this out for themselves rather than at the end of a democratic American rifle.
More later.
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
I don’t want anyone to think that my fairly extensive criticisms of that embarrassment known as the President of the United States was comprehensive. It’s just what happened to occur to me. A glaring omission in my remarks is his dodging of the draft by leapfrogging hundreds of more qualified applicants — his fitness rating was abysmal — to sit out the Vietnam War in — what did they call it, the Champagne Regiment? — in the Texas Air National Guard.
There’s an aspect to National Guard service that may not be known to younger readers of this blog. Is everyone aware that during the Vietnam War, service in the National Guard was a gold-plated insurance policy against having to serve in combat? That’s not the case now, as the hillbillies and hilljillies (sorry; I just like the expression too much to pass it up) in Abu Ghraib have ably demonstrated. In the Vietnam years, the National Guard did not get sent overseas into combat. No way in the world would Bush have seen combat in Vietnam. He was keeping an eagle eye, so to speak, on any possible offensive from Mexico — or maybe Oklahoma.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
WHOAH! Sorry. I made a serious mistake in an earlier post that I need to correct. I wrote as follows:
“I’ve lived in Europe for the past six years (and, by the way, in Europe we get media reports that I consider more ‘fair and balanced’ than the fearful, obsequious, flag-waving, drum-beating reports that flooded U.S. media after 9/11 — e.g., the pro-Administration reports by Judith Miller in that hotbed of liberal pinko faggots, the NY Times).
Huge mistake. I did not mean “after 9/11″, when my sympathies lay entirely with the traumatized U.S. general public and the media response was just fine, in my view; my reference to “fearful, obsequious, flag-waving, drum-beating reports that flooded U.S. media” referred to their shameful performance beating the drums in late 2002 for an Administration hell-bent on invading Iraq.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
And he hasn’t even been indicted yet.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Come on, there’s got to be somebody who agrees with good ol’ Tom! He’s a Republican, after all.
No?
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Hands up — how many agree with Tom Delay that there’s no more fat left to be cut out of the federal budget?
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Hey, Neo-Neocon:
Now that I’m the only participant in this blog, although I see from the counter that thousands of people have visited the site, and the site has become a monlogue rather than a discussion, I’d like you to rename the site and turn it over to me, the de facto owner.
The new name of the site will be “The Sensible Liberal”. The premise will be that the energies of the U.S. government should be directed unstintingly toward the masterminds and organizers behind 9/11 — remember them? Where are they now? When is the last time you heard of any search for them? They’re long forgotten in the shambles that is Iraq.
“Neo-Neocon”? How long will it take for you to acknowledge that this gang in the Administration is a disaster for the U.S. and the world? They were and are wrong. But they are malovelent. You’re a naive dupe.
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Oh, and I like to read an Elmore Leonard now and then; no criticism there.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Who would have believed that Bush would do something right?
Wow! What a difference a couple of days can make! Is Turdblossom working his magic again after his bout with kidney stones? (Any of us who have had them can tell you that there’s not much you can do except whimper in pain). For some reason, against all the odds, Bush has done a couple of things right. What’s going on? Two remarkable things have happened.
First, although Bush was two weeks too late in making the speech he did Thursday night in Jackson Square, and five years too late in finally taking responsibility for one of his numerous mistakes and failures, nevertheless, I thought the speech was excellent. If his actions match his words, Bush can turn this around. (It’s going to cost a hell of a lot, though, and some legislators are already balking at the price tag; it can also get sidelined by corrupt and greedy Administration friends — Allbaugh, this means you — who will undoubtedly grow rich on the fat reconstruction contracts, wallowing around in the trough).
Now, let’s not get carried away with adulation for W on the strength of one good speech. I don’t think the speech was Bush’s heartfelt reaction because he’s a good and compassionate person (if that was the case, it would have come two weeks earlier); I think he initially didn’t care because he didn’t realize what a political shitstorm Katrina was going to become, and now he’s into damage control big time. That’s why I suspect that it might be Turdblossom’s work. Nevertheless, it was a good speech.
Even more important was Bush’s performance at the U.N. He was the opposite of the arrogant, blustering bully he was in 2002, when he scornfully addressed the U.N. in his thinly disguised charade of seeking their support for his planned invasion of Iraq. Bolton’s attempt to derail the whole show — why is it not obvious to everybody that the man is a walking catastrophe? — was thwarted by wiser heads, and Bush, in his humble and modest presentation, said three things that amazed me: “We are committed to the Millennium Development Goals”; “I call on all the world’s nations to implement the Monterrey Consensus”; and “The United States is ready to eliminate all tariffs, subsidies and other barriers to free flow of goods and services as other nations do the same. This is key to overcoming poverty in the world’s poorest nations”.
Remarkable! Outstanding!
I can honestly say that in his entire term, I don’t think Bush accomplished anything of value other than — at least for a while — eliminating the Taliban, and we’ll see on Sunday and subsequently if that was truly an accomplishment. (Eliminating Saddam is a benefit, but nowhere near worth the price).
I mean that literally. I believe he’s accomplished nothing. He’s damaged the U.N., Nato, and the E.U.; he’s been a disaster on environmental issues; he’s brought in tax cuts that benefit his wealthy corporate backers and fund-raisers enormously but hurt low-income Americans; he’s turned Clinton’s record surplus into a record deficit and turned the U.S. economy into a basket case; he’s appointed large numbers — not just Brownie and Allbaugh, but dozens — of unqualified supporters to well-paid influential positions; he’s damaged relations with friends and allies so badly that there is no international reservoir of goodwill for Bush’s America; and above all, he’s chosen — chosen — to plunge the U.S. and the world into the disastrous hellscape that is Iraq.
He’s totally unqualified to be president. As I’ve said in an earlier post, if he had a job that suited his ability, he’d be pumping gas in Crawford, Texas. He has no previous lifetime accomplishments — other than sobering up, which is not to be derided. He used family connections to start a couple of oil companies that he ran into the ground, made a bunch of money on inside trading that was borderline then and would definitely be illegal today, was given a baseball team to play with, and used family and political connections to smear his opponent and wind up as governor of Texas, where the legislature sits — what is it, 40 days every two years? His accomplishments as governor of Texas include signing more execution warrants than any governor in history and granting clemency to Henry Lee Lucas. His lack of intellectual curiosity is astounding; he reads Mad Magazine and Sports Illustrated and watches ESPN. I wonder if he’ll do any book reports on that “reading list” he supposedly accomplished on his vacation. He said he was reading an Elmore Leonard novel — my guess is that that’s about as intellectually challenging as his reading gets. His holiday briefing in August 2001, which included an item titled something like “Bin Laden Intends to Strike Inside U.S.”, was six double-spaced pages, because he doesn’t like to read anything longer. (I’d be willing to bet that an equivalent briefing for Clinton would be 40 or 50 pages, single-spaced). I’ll grant you that Kerry is no prize pig, though I think he’d be better than Bush, but Al Gore, the man deprived of the presidency by Bush Sr.’s Supreme Court, is far superior to W — as a politician and as a man.
That speech in New Orleans — if backed up by action — and that expression of support for the Millennium Development Goals, the Monterrey Consensus, and the Doha Round — if backed up by action — are, in my opinion, the only good things he’s done.
Well done, W! You’ve been a terrible president for five years, but you did a couple of things right this week.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Let’s talk about “hatred” of George Bush.
“Hatred” is not a word that I would use to describe my feelings about W, but “disgust” and “contempt” come to mind.
Here’s a little anecdote for you. As I’ve said in earlier posts, I’m a Canadian who has been, generally speaking, pro-American all my life. I’ve lived in Europe for the past six years (and, by the way, in Europe we get media reports that I consider more “fair and balanced” than the fearful, obsequious, flag-waving, drum-beating reports that flooded U.S. media after 9/11 — e.g., the pro-Administration reports by Judith Miller in that hotbed of liberal pinko faggots, the NY Times).
A Canadian friend called at my house one Saturday morning; we were going to go downtown in our little town in the Netherlands. I came downstairs wearing a Hard Rock Cafe sweatshirt from Washington, DC. (This is the summer of 2000, pre-Bush). He said to me, “Aren’t you worried that people will think you’re American?”
Now, as soon as I open my mouth, at least half the Europeans who hear me think I’m American, probably because American tourists in Europe outnumber Canadians about ten to one. Though I speak pretty close to news-announcer American (Peter Jennings was Canadian, of course), most Americans and almost all Canadians can tell the difference. But the anti-American spirit that underlay my friend’s comment came as a complete surprise to me; after a year and a half of living in Europe, I had honestly never considered the idea that I might be the victim of anti-Americanism.
I replied, “I don’t care if I am mistaken for an American. If I’m badly treated by small-minded Dutchmen because they think I’m American, to hell with them.” (Or words to that effect).
(Incidentally, Canadian troops played a very large role in liberating the Netherlands from the Nazis, so Canadians are especially well regarded there.)
You often hear that “9/11 changed everything.” Well, Bush changed everything. In December 2002, before the Iraq invasion, I sent to Canada for a quantity of Canadian flag emblems and lapel pins that I could wear, with the object of differentiating myself from that contemptible gang in the White House.
The whole world stood with the U.S. after 9/11. Some might ask how Bush et al could have lost the goodwill of the world so quickly, but it isn’t right to think that they lost it, as if they turned around and it was misplaced somewhere: Bush took the goodwill of the world and threw it out the window with both hands.
I wear a Canadian flag lapel pin on my suit at work, not always or even frequently, but sometimes. I was recently asked: “Do you wear that pin so that people will know you’re not a Yank?” I considered my reply and said — diplomatically, I thought — “As soon as I open my mouth, a lot of people think I’m American, and I’d just as soon they didn’t make that mistake.”
I’ve never been, and I’m still not, anti-American. I’m anti-Bush.
More to follow.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
“I don’t think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees.”
“You’re doing a heck of a job, Brownie”.
Words of wisdom from our esteemed Commander in Chief.
Anyone heard what’s going on in Iraq these days? I haven’t. All sweetness and light, I trust.
Remember when Florida (where I lived for three years) weathered four major hurricanes last year: Charlie, Jeanne, Frances, and Ivan? As I recall, FEMA, Bush, and the federal government were commended by virtually everyone, on a bipartisan basis, for their excellent response.
Of course, that was brother Jeb’s state, in a federal election year. Could it be that W and Turdblossom were playing partisan politics? Naah — just the Democrats do that.
What’s happening in the Turdblossom/Plame story, by the way? Katrina casts a long shadow, obscuring many things.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
When you’re paying $2 billion a month on an unneccessary war, other priorities are lowered:
“FORMER CLINTON ADVISOR
“No One Can Say they Didn’t See it Coming”
By Sidney Blumenthal
In 2001, FEMA warned that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S. But the Bush administration cut New Orleans flood control funding by 44 percent to pay for the Iraq war.
Biblical in its uncontrolled rage and scope, Hurricane Katrina has left millions of Americans to scavenge for food and shelter and hundreds to thousands reportedly dead. With its main levee broken, the evacuated city of New Orleans has become part of the Gulf of Mexico. But the damage wrought by the hurricane may not entirely be the result of an act of nature.
A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans’ levees, but it was too late.
The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater, reported online: “No one can say they didn’t see it coming … Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation.”
The Bush administration’s policy of turning over wetlands to developers almost certainly also contributed to the heightened level of the storm surge. In 1990, a federal task force began restoring lost wetlands surrounding New Orleans. Every two miles of wetland between the Crescent City and the Gulf reduces a surge by half a foot. Bush had promised “no net loss” of wetlands, a policy launched by his father’s administration and bolstered by President Clinton. But he reversed his approach in 2003, unleashing the developers. The Army Corps of Engineers and the Environmental Protection Agency then announced they could no longer protect wetlands unless they were somehow related to interstate commerce.
In response to this potential crisis, four leading environmental groups conducted a joint expert study, concluding in 2004 that without wetlands protection New Orleans could be devastated by an ordinary, much less a Category 4 or 5, hurricane. “There’s no way to describe how mindless a policy that is when it comes to wetlands protection,” said one of the report’s authors. The chairman of the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality dismissed the study as “highly questionable,” and boasted, “Everybody loves what we’re doing.”
Well, maybe not anymore.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Well, things seem to be improving:
“The Harris Poll is out today, showing President Bush’s approval rating down sharply over the past two months to 40 percent. Just two days ago, the American Research Group also found it down sharply, to 36 percent.
“In both cases, those are all-time lows for Bush that put him in dangerously unpopular territory. And the results lead inescapably to the conclusion that the American people are deeply unhappy with the war in Iraq and blame the president.
“The Wall Street Journal reports: “President Bush’s job approval ratings are at their lowest point of his presidency as only 40% of U.S. adults have a favorable opinion of his job performance and 58% have a negative opinion, according to a Harris Interactive poll.
“This is a decline from just two months ago in June when the president’s ratings were 45% positive and 55% negative. Much of this decline can be tied to the public’s opinion on important issues. The war in Iraq has climbed to the top of the most important issues list and the economy is now viewed as the second most important issue, according to the poll.”
“This chart shows how the war in Iraq has grown in importance over time.
“Harris Interactive adds: “Americans are also less satisfied with the way things are going in the country now as compared to in June. A majority (59%) of adults say things in the country have gotten pretty seriously off on the wrong track and 37 percent believe things are moving in the right direction. In June, those numbers were 38 percent who said things were moving in the right direction and 55 percent who said things had headed off on the wrong track.”
“An American Research Group poll released Monday found Bush’s overall approval rating down to 36 percent in August, from 42 percent in July.”
I wonder how many million Republicans those figures include.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
I’ve reread the message beginning this thread, and since I’m not a “western apologist” for terrorists, I guess I’ll look for another discussion, such as “terrorists and Westerners who would like to hunt them down and exterminate them rather than run off down blind alleys for political and ideological reasons”.
That essay by Dr. Harman simply does not apply to me — or to anyone I know, for that matter, though I don’t hang out in liberal or “pseudo-liberal” circles.
I supported Gulf War I 100%, as did a number of Arab states. I stayed on the fence with regard to the invasion of Afghanistan, never having heard of Al Quaeda or Osama bin Laden, until I soon became convinced it was an appropriate response to 9/11, and have supported and defended it ever since.
Appease the perpretrators of 9/11? Au contraire, mon frere: Hunt them to the ends of the earth and exterminate the scum.
One place we knew they weren’t, though: Iraq.
I believe the Iraq invasion to be completely unrelated to the “War on Terror”, or whatever you want to call it. I believe it to have been the worst military decision since the Japanes bombed Pearl Harbor.
“Make the U.S. safer?” Yeah, right, while thousands of jihadis are learning their trade under battle conditions so they can use their newfound skills against the West worldwide. Lovely. Thanks for keeping us so safe, Mr. President.
Once this crew in the White House is discredited for a generation, perhaps we can make some progress.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
We’re not getting much information on how the Iraqui constitutional negotiations are going. Here’s a report:
____________________________
Consensus elusive on Iraq charter
Sunday 21 August 2005, 12:18 Makka Time, 9:18 GMT
Kurds offered to compromise on self-determination
Iraqi leaders are battling to wrap up a constitution within 48 hours, but consensus on thorny issues remains elusive, with Washington pressuring the Kurds to drop their demands over control of vital oil resources.
Sharp differences remain on federalism, the role of Islam and sharing of oil wealth, some of the key planks of the first post-Saddam Hussein charter which is due to be put to parliament on Monday after a 15 August deadline was missed.
“We have a problem here… there is one group who wants a 21st century constitution and there is another group who wants a seventh century constitution,” said one source closely involved in the negotiations.
“Unfortunately, America is looking at both the groups with the same eye. They just want the draft to be ready on time.”
The Kurds, who want their de facto autonomous northern region to include the oil centre of Kirkuk, have been demanding first rights to the oil produced there.
Last week, negotiators proposed one formula for distributing Iraq’s vast oil wealth whereby each oil-producing region would take a small percentage for itself, with the rest transferred to Baghdad for national distribution.
An exact arrangement is still to be worked out, and the Kurds are pushing for maximum gains.
Referendum
Iraqis will vote on the constitution
in October ahead of new elections
Iraq’s constitution is seen as key to the country’s political transition and possible early withdrawal of US-led troops.
It is due to go to a referendum in October ahead of new elections in December.
Sources close to the negotiations said US ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who attended meetings until late on Saturday, has asked the Kurds to soften their stand on oil as well as their demand for self-determination.
“The US is pressuring the Kurds to give up these two demands,” said one source.
Federalism compromise
Kurdish leaders on Saturday offered to compromise on self-determination.
Zalmay Khalilzad has asked Kurds
to soften their stand, say sources
They had been keen for language to be included in the charter giving them the right to self-determination, which would effectively allow them to secede from Iraq at some point in the future.
The United States on Saturday dropped its opposition to enshrining Islam as “the” main source of legislation and not just “a” main source - a move aimed at pleasing the majority Shias.
Washington is determined to see the date met after the first deadline was missed last Monday, fearing that any delay in the political process will benefit Sunni Arab fighters opposed to the government.
Islam’s role
The Kurds have rejected moves to make Islam as “the” main source of law, saying it would harm women’s rights and Iraq’s secular tradition.
“We have a problem here… there is one group who wants a 21st century constitution and there is another group who wants a seventh century constitution”
Source involved in the negotiations
“We will oppose this as much as we can,” Kurdish constitution committee member Mahmud Otham said.
The role of Islam has proved a heavily divisive issue, with leaders of the Shia majority insisting religion be considered the main legal foundation, and that clerics be given political roles.
One Western official said “no one is looking to establish an Islamic state. The intent is to ensure that Islam is respected in addition to other established rights.”
‘Sidelined’
Observers speculate that the Shias and Kurds, who enjoy a majority in parliament, may forge a compromise over the heads of Sunni negotiators.
An al-Qaida-linked group has
warned Iraqis to boycott poll
“We have been sidelined… we have met the leaders only twice since the new deadline,” said Saleh al-Mutlaq, a constitution committee member from the former Sunni Arab elite which largely boycotted January’s landmark elections.
“They (Shia and Kurds) will prepare a draft and ask us to sign. If we do it, we will be blamed by our people and if we do not the leaders will blame us for obstructing the political process. This is unfair.”
Mutlaq had warned that the Sunnis would defeat the constitution at the during the mid-October referendum if they are ignored.
Under Iraq’s interim law, the charter will fail if two-thirds of voters in any three provinces reject it in the referendum.
Sunni Arabs form a majority in al-Anbar, Ninevah and Salaheddin provinces.
Boycott warning
Ansar al-Sunna, a group linked to al-Qaida, warned Sunnis to boycott the referendum.
“A constitution is for illegitimate states,” it said in an internet statement on Sunday.
“Anyone who obeys a law other than God’s law is a miscreant.”
With August one of the deadliest months for American troops since the March 2003 invasion, US President George Bush defended the Iraq war again in his weekly radio address on Saturday.
“We must finish the task that our troops have given their lives for and honour their sacrifice by completing their mission,” said Bush, whose approval ratings have slipped to some of the lowest levels of his presidency.
____________________________
Are the U.S. supporting a proposal that Islam be “the” main source of legislation, and that the Kurds drop their demands for oil revenue and self-determination, just so that an agreement, however flawed, can be reached by the deadline?
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Here’s an article you may not have seen.
_______________________________________
Al-Qaida: The wrong answers
By Soumayya Ghannoushi
Monday 08 August 2005, 20:36 Makka Time, 17:36 GMT
Once again I watched the nauseous devastation and massacre, this time in the heart of my city, near the universities and libraries where I have spent much of my adult life.
Madrid and Bali, Casablanca and Riyadh, I have come to predict al-Qaida’s responsibility for a given criminal act through the following test. If I find myself at a loss for an answer to the questions: “Why the innocent?” and “For what purpose?”, then, in all likelihood, the crime is of al-Qaida’s doing.
The absurd, random mass carnage of young and old, male and female is its trademark. Residential buildings, tourist resorts, rush hour trains and crowded buses turn into grand spectacles of mass murder where no heed is paid to the victim’s identity and the extent of his/her responsibility for the policies of a country defined as the enemy. The boundaries between the world of politics and that of organised crime are blurred, as political demands get wedded to criminal methods.
Al-Qaida, it must be said, is no pioneer in this field. For although it founds its ideology on religious references and speaks a language overwhelmed by religious symbols, al-Qaida falls largely within the modern tradition of revolutionary anarchists - from the Jacobins and the Bolsheviks down to latter-day Marxist guerrillas like the Baadr-Meinhoff Gang.
Destruction as a passion
Like these modern revolutionary nihilists, al-Qaida warriors subscribe to an instrumentalist logic that recognises no distinction between the legitimate and illegitimate, thereby sanctioning acts of terror for the attainment of their ends. Like them, they are more interested in the act of destruction than its effects. As the father of Russian anarchism Mikhail Bakunin put it, ‘the passion for destruction is also a creative passion’.
“It is necessary to realise that every action instigates reaction.”
Luis V, Mexico
More comments…
Al-Qaida is also a revival of the radical currents that surfaced in Islamic history from time to time only to be defeated by moderate mainstream Islam led by the Ulama (scholars). In particular, they appear to be a continuation of Kharijite thought with its dualistic puritanical conception of the world and the community of Muslims and of Gnostic underground organisations like the Assassins and Qaramita, who sought to disrupt the stability of Muslim societies through acts of terrorism.
Al-Qaida would be best seen as a mixture of these political and ideological strands. Apart from the ideological justifications it takes recourse to, one would, indeed, be hard put to find much that distinguishes it from Latin American anarchist groups. Their acts share the same destructive ferocity, the same absurdity. The difference is that where one finds its ideological legitimacy in Marxism, the other seeks it in the Islamic religion.
Islam misinterpreted
How can the murder of the innocent be perpetuated in the name of a religion that likens the loss of one human life to the loss of humanity at large? How can Islam be said to sanction such acts of aggression when it openly forbids revenge and declares in no less than five Quranic chapters that: “No bearer of a burden bears the burden of another”?
How can the killing of ordinary men and women going about their business be permissible when even the battlefield has been regulated by the strictest moral code: “Destroy not fruit trees, nor fertile land in your paths. Be just, and spare the feelings of the vanquished. Respect all religious persons who live in hermitages or convents and spare their edifices”?
Perhaps the one thing al-Qaida militants have proven good at, apart from the shedding of innocent blood, is fanning the flames of hostility to Islam and Muslims. From the darkness of their caves and hiding places, these self-appointed spokesmen for about one and a half billion Muslims worldwide have excelled in stirring latent negative images of Islam within the Western psyche. Through their senseless crimes, Islam, in the minds of most, has become a euphemism for mass slaughter and destruction. Thanks to them, racism, bigotry and Islamophobia could rear its ugly head unashamedly in broad day light.
The terrible irony is that Muslims currently find themselves helplessly trapped between two fundamentalisms, between Bush’s hammer and Bin Laden’s anvil, hostages to an extreme right wing American administration, aggressively seeking to impose its expansionist and hegemonic will over the region at gunpoint, and to a cluster of violent, wild fringe groups, lacking in political experience or sound religious understanding.
‘Us’ and ‘them’
Although the two claim to be combating each other, the reality is that they are working in unison, one providing the justifications the other desperately needs for its fanaticism, ferocity and savagery.
No wonder it didn’t take the neo-conservative world supremacists long to spot the immense opportunities 11 September handed them. Their puritanical missionary belief in being God’s instruments on earth and grand imperial ambitions could now be realised through shameless emotional blackmail and bogus moral claims.
The two share a shallow, myopic, dualistic conception of the world populated by ‘us’ and ‘them’ in Bush’s language, ‘believers’ and ‘non-believers’ in Bin Laden’s. Al-Zarqawi and his fellows then brandish the sword of excommunication (takfir) against the Muslim body itself in an endless orgy of maiming and mutilation.
Some are to be expelled, because they are Shia, others because they are Sufis, or Mu’tazilites (rationalists), and so on in a perpetual elimination process that spares no one but a handful of puritan elects from its deadly reach.
The vast stock of common denominators is ignored; that which tears and divides is sought. These would rather see the world turn into an ever-raging battlefield, Muslim societies into blazing scenes of sectarian schism and civil war in a region rich in ethnic, religious, sectarian and linguistic diversity.
I daily use London’s trains and buses and could have been one of Thursday bombings’ victims. I hardly think that killing or maiming me would have aided the causes the bombers claim to defend. The truth is that these narrow-minded fanatics are a scourge to the causes they purport to champion.
Ask any Iraqi or Palestinian if the bombing of the innocent in Bali, Casablanca, or London has helped alleviate their suffering. If anything, they have handed their oppressors an open permit to butcher and destroy, safe in the knowledge that blame has been shifted from them to their victims.
Just causes, unjust means
So, Sharon demolishes the homes of Palestinians, expropriates their lands and sends his helicopters to massacre them in their hundreds in the name of combating terrorism. Arab regimes stifle dissenting voices, imprison and assassinate in the name of resisting terrorism. American tanks and gunships invade, occupy, kill and rampage, all in the name of fighting terrorism.
Al-Qaida’s mindless acts have turned the aggressor, who colonises, massacres and pillages, into a victim. For all their material vulnerability, victims have a very powerful asset: their moral case as innocent victims. Perhaps this is the cruellest dimension to these senseless crimes: That the powerless has been stripped even of his victimhood. Even this has been appropriated by the powerful.
The causes al-Qaida extremists speak for are certainly just causes. The sanctioning of genocide and occupation in Palestine, slaughter of hundreds of thousands in Iraq, through exposure to depleted uranium and years of barbaric sanctions first, then through bombing and shelling without bothering to count the dead, brutal invasion of the country, destruction of its infrastructure and humiliation of its people undoubtedly rank among modern history’s bloodiest crimes and darkest tragedies.
But the mindless killing of the innocent in Madrid, or New York is the wrong answer to these real grievances. These are illegitimate responses to legitimate causes. Just as occupation is morally and politically deplorable, so, too, is this blind aggression masquerading as Jihad.
Soumayya Ghannoushi is a researcher in the history of ideas at the School of Oriental & African Studies, University of London.
____________________________________
Any comments?
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Nikolaides:
Well, it’s been more than a week now. A little slow, wouldn’t you say?
Thanks for your message. I appreciate the advice. Your post is well written. Clear writing reflects clear thought.
You’re right; I shouldn’t be taunting people for not responding fast enough for my liking — or for any other reason, for that matter.
Frankly, I didn’t understand people criticizing me for “changing the goalposts”. No one ever elaborated on or explained what they meant by that. I think every message I wrote, except the first and last, were directly addressed to specific people; I thought I addressed, seriatim, each of the points they raised. I then usually went on to elaborate or expand, and admittedly sometimes got sidetracked. Perhaps I wouldn’t have been vilified for “changing the subject” or “moving the goalposts” if I had made my elaboration or expansion the subject of another post.
That’s about the extent to which I can agree with you, however.
My reiteration of “I can’t accept” something? I used that phrase exactly once, saying that I could not accept that Saddam was cooperating with the Al Q terrorists and getting out from under sanctions (no “evidence” was proffered to contradict me, of course; it’s for me to provide “proof”, not the other way around). The next post in reply accused me of constantly reiterating that I “didn’t accept” things that were inconvenient, an assertion which you dwelt on at length with your Easter Bunny analogy and which is simply untrue. It was asserted by someone else after that lone usage, and after that it was assumed and asserted by one and all that I “didn’t accept” everything under the sun.
My correspondent at the time was trumpeting the Duelfer report. It’s 1500 pages long. I haven’t read it and I don’t intend to read it. But here’s the Fox News take on the Duelfer report:
____________________________________
“Report: No Iraq WMDs Made After ‘91 Thursday, October 07, 2004
WASHINGTON — The chief U.S. arms inspector in Iraq has found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction (search) production by Saddam Hussein’s (search) regime after 1991.
But the final report by Charles Duelfer (search) concluded that, although the weapons stockpiles were destroyed, Saddam’s government was looking to begin a WMD program again.
The Bush administration invaded Iraq in March 2003 on the grounds that its WMD programs posed a threat to American national security.
In his report, Duelfer concluded that Saddam’s Iraq had no stockpiles of the banned weapons, but he said he found signs of idle programs that Saddam could have revived once international attention waned.
“It appears that he did not vigorously pursue those programs after the inspectors left,” a U.S. official said on condition of anonymity, ahead of the report’s Wednesday afternoon release by the CIA.
U.S. officials also said the report shows Saddam was much farther away from a nuclear weapons program in 2003 than he was between 1991 and 1993; there is no evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda exchanged weapons; and there is no evidence that Al Qaeda and Iraq shared information, technology or personnel in developing weapons.
The White House continued to maintain that the findings support the view that Saddam was a threat.
“We knew the dictator had a history of using weapons of mass destruction, a long record of aggression and hatred for America,” President Bush (search) said in a speech Wednesday in Wilkes-Barre, Pa. “There was a risk, a real risk, that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks. In the world after Sept. 11, that was a risk we could not afford to take.”
Duelfer was presenting his findings Wednesday to the Senate Armed Services Committee (search). His team compiled a 1,500-page report after his predecessor, David Kay, who quit last December, also found no evidence of weapons stockpiles.
The CIA officially released the Duelfer report about 3 p.m. EDT Wednesday on its Web site, though some of its conclusions were leaked to the media in advance.
Partisans on both sides of the aisle didn’t waste time reacting to Duelfer’s conclusions.
“The Duelfer report is yet another example that there really are two Americas,” said Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif. “There’s the one that exists in the Bush fantasy world, and then there’s the real America. In the Bush fantasy world, they still claim that Iraq was an imminent threat with weapons of mass destruction.”
But Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the report didn’t really offer any new insights.
“I really don’t think (the report) changes anything,” Roberts said. “Everybody made the wrong assumption (about the WMD threat).”
Duelfer concluded that Saddam’s regime hoped to convince the world it had complied with the United Nations resolutions implemented after the first Gulf War and wanted the U.N. to lift the strict sanctions against the country.
Duelfer, a special consultant to the director of Central Intelligence on Iraqi WMD affairs, found Saddam wasn’t squirreling away equipment and weapons and hiding them in various parts of the country, as some originally thought when the U.S.-led war in Iraq began, officials said.
Instead, the report finds that Saddam was trying to achieve his goal by retaining “intellectual capital” — in other words, keeping weapons inspectors employed and happy and preserving some documentation, according to U.S. officials.
Duelfer and the multi-national Iraq Survey Group (ISG) (search), which also worked on the report, say it’s still not known whether Iraq moved weapons caches to Syria or other countries.
The ISG is still poring over thousands of official Baathist documents that have yet to be translated. Currently, some 900 linguists have been hired and are working in Qatar to get the job done.
About 35 to 50 “old, decayed” chemical and biological shells have been found in Iraq so far, all of which are said to have been produced in the 1980s.
Saddam was importing banned materials, working on unmanned aerial vehicles in violation of U.N. agreements and maintaining industrial capability that could be converted to produce weapons, officials have said. Duelfer also describes Saddam’s Iraq as having had limited research efforts into chemical and biological weapons.
Duelfer’s report will come on a week that the White House has been defending a number of issues involving its Iraq policy and the war there.
Remarks this week by L. Paul Bremer (search), former U.S. administrator in occupied Iraq, suggested he’d argued for more troops in the immediate aftermath of the invasion, when looting was rampant.
A spokesman for Bush’s re-election campaign said Bremer indeed differed with military commanders.
Bush’s election rival, Democrat John Kerry (search), pounced on Bremer’s statements that the United States “paid a big price” for having insufficient troop levels.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said the Duelfer report “will continue to show that he [Saddam] was a gathering threat that needed to be taken seriously, that it was a matter of time before he was going to begin pursuing those weapons of mass destruction.”
But Vice President Dick Cheney (search) said in an Aug. 26, 2002 speech, 6 1/2 months before the invasion, that “simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us.”
On Wednesday, the White House also continued to assert that there were clear ties between Saddam before the invasion and the Al Qaeda-linked terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi (search).
But a CIA report recently given to the White House found no conclusive evidence that Saddam had given al-Zarqawi support and shelter before the war, according to ABC News and Knight-Ridder.
The CIA report did not make final conclusions about a Saddam-Zarqawi tie, but does raise questions about the Bush administration’s assertions that al-Zarqawi found a safe harbor in Baghdad before the invasion — and raises questions about whether Saddam even knew al-Zarqawi was there.
During Tuesday night’s debate, Cheney said “there is still debate over this question.” But he added: “At one point, some of Zarqawi’s people were arrested. Saddam personally intervened to have them released.”
In a speech on Oct. 7, 2002, Bush laid out what he described then as Iraq’s threat:
—”It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons.”
—”We’ve also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas.”
—”Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles — far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey and other nations — in a region where more than 135,000 American civilians and service members live and work. “
What U.S. forces found:
—A single artillery shell filled with two chemicals that, when mixed while the shell was in flight, would have created sarin. U.S. forces learned of it only when insurgents, apparently believing it was filled with conventional explosives, tried to detonate it as a roadside bomb in May in Baghdad. Two U.S. soldiers suffered from symptoms of low-level exposure to the nerve agent. The shell was from Saddam’s pre-1991 stockpile.
—Another old artillery shell, also rigged as a bomb and found in May, showed signs it once contained mustard agent.
—Two small rocket warheads, turned over to Polish troops by an informer, that showed signs they once were filled with sarin.
—Centrifuge parts buried in a former nuclear scientist’s garden in Baghdad. These were part of Saddam’s pre-1991 nuclear program, which was dismantled after the 1991 Persian Gulf War. The scientist also had centrifuge design documents.
—A vial of live botulinum toxin, which can be used as a biological weapon, in another scientist’s refrigerator. The scientist said it had been there since 1993.
—Evidence of advanced design work on a liquid-propellant missile with ranges of up to 620 miles. Since the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq had been prohibited from having missiles with ranges longer than 93 miles.
FOX News’ Ian McCaleb, Bret Baier, Catherine Donaldson-Evans and The Associated Press contributed to this report.”
____________________________________
Admittedly a bit of a mixed bag, but it’s obvious that very little of significance was found, but that same “very little” was puffed up by the Administration into a supposed threat, one not supported by the evidence. How any reasonable person can interpret that report as helping to justify war mystifies me.
Another post I ignored was the Scott Ritter smear — totally unsupported, of course. Again, I guess it’s just for me to provide “proof”, not the people arguing with me.
I’ve been accused several times of lying, which is nonsense and doesn’t deserve a reply.
You say “This blog tends to have quite a few commenters with an extensive command of the facts and ability to research their views.” Well, I don’t know where they’re hiding. Most of the responses I’ve received are from people who have trouble stringing together three consecutive sentences that are properly punctuated (clear writing reflects clear thought; the reverse is also true).
Thanks again for your advice.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
tequila, you said you were a blog newbie, and unfortunately it really, really shows. If I were you, I’d stop posting comments for a little while, spend some time just reading the comments of others, and see if you can pick up a bit more of the prevailing etiquette than you have so far.
For one thing, taunting people for not responding as often and as fast as you would like them to won’t get you more responses. It’ll just get you pegged as a troll. There are other blogs where the comment sections are little more than rapid-fire insult sessions, but this isn’t one of them, thank goodness.
The same is true for all those comments you posted in which you changed the subject, moved the goal posts, supported your opinions with “speculation” rather than facts, and avoided uncomfortable information that contradicted your views by insisting, without data, that you “don’t accept” it. (If I “don’t accept” that there is no Easter Bunny, do you believe this will cause him to show up at my house with chocolate eggs?) This blog tends to have quite a few commenters with an extensive command of the facts and ability to research their views. You certainly don’t have to agree with their political opinions, but if you’re going to try to argue effectively with people who reason on this level, you’re going to have to sharpen up your own critical thinking skills quite a bit. As things stand, you don’t even seem to realize how feeble your arguments look in comparison to the competition, or how much harm you do to your “side” by looking so misinformed and irrational.
I’m just sayin’.
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Tequila. How’s “Bored”?
You began by pretending to be discussing in good faith.
Then you started to lie.
Move goalposts.
Not accept what is certain, but inconvenient.
Change subjects.
A lie can be told in four words. Refuting it can take paragraphs plus digging out an old cite.
It’s easier to lie and lie and lie than to refute each lie, by a good deal.
When it becomes clear it is not a matter of you being uninformed, but in fact, lying, the charm dies.
For some reason I don’t understand, liberals have two illusions–among many–that interest me.
One is that convincing a hundred people that the liberal lies like a not very convincing rug is worth it if one escapee from a group home can be convinced. I don’t follow the math.
The other is that boring others half to death is the same as convincing anybody.
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Hey, guys, I’ve only been on this site for 48 hours, and I’m rapidly losing interest. Richard Aubrey and Homer have retired from the fray — no doubt because of my irrefutable logic and debating skill — just kidding, Richard and Homer, who I’m sure are lurking. Just kidding!
I’m a nightowl — nightmockingbird? — and it’s 2:45 a.m. here on GMT. That’s time for even people on the Left Coast to have got home from their work oppressing the downtrodden and have lit a Monte Cristo and got the little woman to mix them a martini. Time to relax on the computer with their good friend tequilamockingbird.
Where are you guys? I’ll check in tomorrow. If nobody can come up with a coherent message between now and then, adios, amigos. I know Richard and Homer et al will hate to see me go, but that’s life!
Manana.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Here we go again: Refresh or no refresh, my message was lost in cyberspace (although I know enough about computers to say that I’m sure I screwed up somehow).
You said “bowser”. We all make mistakes. I thought I was wrong once, but it turned out I was mistaken.
(It’s an old joke, but a favorite. Indulge me.)
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Oh, and thanks for the “Refresh” tip. Like I said, I’m a newbie.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
The unknown blogger:
I’ll never get anyone around here to admit — interesting word, implying that you did it but you’ll never admit it — to any element of the Iraq invasion? Thanks for your refreshing honesty.
Panty-waisted sissy, terrorist symphatiser/enabler, Communist? Do you understand the Latin term “ad hominem”?
Nice to hear from you. Thanks for your contribution.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Hey, Homer! Good to hear from you. Bye now.
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Forget it TequilaBird, you’ll never get anyone around here to admit to any debatable element of the Iraq invasion: it just is, was, and always will be the right thing to do. (On the other hand, if it doesn’t work out, believe me, it will be all your fault.)
Anyone who thinks otherwise is just a panty-waisted sissy, a terrorist sympathizer/enabler (where did that Christian NY mom come from? A welcome breath of fresh air around here), or that good old American standby, a Communist.
(By the way, if you don’t see your comment show up at first, I suspect it may help to hit the “refresh” button on your bowser…)
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
tequilamockingbird,
I formally surrender this discussion to you. I cannot compete with your wild accusations that are based on opinion with no factual basis, nor can I compete with your ever-moving goalpost. In your world Bush is the face of evil and is intent on destroying all that is good in America. You hold this belief with a religious fervor that makes a die-hard jihadii look like a slacker. I suspect I would have a more rational discussion with a crazed suicide bomber.
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Homer:
Some additional thoughts.
I’m pretty much with Ralph Nader: I don’t think the Democrats are much better than the Republicans. I think Al Gore is a better man than W; I think — sorry; is it okay if I say “I think”? Others have objected to it — I think Al Gore was far better qualified to be president than W. I think — there it is again — that John Kerry was a pretty lame candidate, but again, better than W. I think I’d be better than W. I think most of the people I know would be better than W. He’s a zero. If his name wasn’t Bush he’d be doing what he should be doing — pumping gas in Crawford, Texas.
Sorry for the anti-Bush tirade; I got sidetracked again. I’ve been pro-American all my life, and in Canada, that isn’t always easy. My mother — I come from a politically-involved family; one of my sisters was a Cabinet member, elected three times, and she is an honest and good person, an exception to the anti-politician rant that I was on earlier — once said that I was a better American than most Americans.
I don’t think the Democrats are a whole lot better than the Republicans. The Republicans and W are terrible, for sure. But it’s pretty much Tweedledum and Tweedledee. As Paul Simon said, “Any way you look at, you lose. Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you — woo woo woo.”
Ah, such eloquence: “Woo woo woo.” Were truer words ever spoken? (Hey, Homer, I’m kidding).
tequilamockingbird
October 2nd, 2005 at 8:23 am
Homer:
Sorry, I got a bit carried away there and didn’t address your last point.
“Our guys” lie and cheat? Well, let’s face it: Politicians are politicians. They all lie or cheat to some (usually minor) degree. They have to if they’re going to get elected. If the idealists do manage to tell