May 31, 2004
I wasn't kidding about the draft
Even in my day (mid '80s) they were taking away financial aid from any (poor) student who wouldn't register for the (don't worry there is no) draft (yet, anyway).
Legislation just sitting there? Why haven't I been reading this on the front page of the Times, or Salon even:
He's right. There is pending legislation in the American House of Representatives and Senate in the form of twin bills - S89 and HR163. These measures (currently approved and sitting in the committee for armed services) project legislation for spring 2005, with the draft to become operational as early as June 15.
There already exists a Selective Service System (SSS). All young Americans are obliged to "register for the draft". It has been a mere formality since conscription was abolished three decades ago, after Vietnam, together with the loathed (and much burned) draft card. SSS will be reactivated imminently. A $28m implementation fund has been added to the SSS budget. The Pentagon is discreetly recruiting for 10,350 draft board officers and 11,070 appeals board members nationwide.
Draft-dodging will be harder than in the 1960s. In December 2001, Canada and the US signed a "smart border declaration", which, among other things, will prevent conscientious objectors (and cowards) from finding sanctuary across the northern border. There will be no deferment on higher-education grounds. Mexico does not appeal.
Air Fair
My buddy Sean Hannity loves to talk about John Kerry's private plane and multiple SUVs as a way of blowing smoke over any sort of talk about environmental or oil issues. In fact, his smoke screens alone have probably added significantly to global warning, but I digress...
In today's Chronicle, there is an article I've been waiting for, about the President's use of Air Force One for political campaigning. I was interested in this before it was ever related to campaigns. Every time I hear that he flies to Crawford for a weekend getaway, I think about the cost in fuel, security and other matters, and I wonder how much it cost me. John Kerry's private plane costs me nothing. I just learned that Air Force One costs taxpayers an estimated $56,800 per hour to run.
George, could you please spend less of my money running away from Washington, and a little more of it running Washington responsibly?
May 30, 2004
McCain: A win-win for Democats?
I've been open to the Kerry McCain ticket, but it struck me this week that McCain may actually be (even) more useful to the Kerry campaign right where he is -- a Republican, and at least nominally part of the Bush campaign -- someone who can't be completely dismissed by the Right, much less independents -- ready and willing to come to Kerry's defense when the Administration's attacks on Kerry cross the line.
McCain is Kerry's Powell
Political Wire: McCain Speculation Continues
No, Kerry won't nominate McCain (note: I am notoriously always wrong when I make predictions about McCain)... but the speculation lends him gravitas, what the folks in the early 19th century called "bottom." Let the speculation continue.
Make the convention suspenseful by keeping the veep nominee secret till the nominating speech, eh?
May 29, 2004
Dolchstoss 2, Electric Boogaloo
There's being right and there's winning the argument and they are two different things.
Those of us who feared the worst of the (unpreventable, post 2000 election, I'm afraid) adventure in Iraq were right in 2002 but we weren't winning the argument.
The blame-Cassandra tack that the administration-policy apologist dead-enders are taking now, I'm afraid, even if it were right, wouldn't change the dynamic of who's winning the argument.
When Cheney denounced Kerry on a split screen showing the Palestine Hotel collapsing in Baghdad....
With the unceasing the drumbeat of stories driven by power corrupting and near absolute power corrupting nearly absolutely....
When rumors of a renewed draft move from the lunatic fringe to bloggers linking to the Congressional record...
When a de-facto draft ("stop loss order") locks volunteers and reserves into catch-22's of endless duty...
When the age-old male simian pecking-order masquerade of psychosexual domination and humiliation, familiar from prisons, military organizations, religious orders, and sailing ships for centuries, inevitably occurs dressed in the trappings of digital technology, radical new relationships (historically speaking) among the sexes, body modesty, hedonism, and the cruel streak that lies at the core of many an American soul (my own included, the one that subtly tries to remind all not from the "new world" that they are not really full citizens), shocking and scandalizing the strangers whose country we have intervened in, whom we've never bothered to get to know very well, despite their geographical proximity, if nothing else, to the very cradle of our own civilization...*
When even the survivors of Iraq - the only heroes of this sorry war - come home most with scars of one kind or another or with a greater attunement to violence and the nature of chaos...
When Bush's shakiness on TV no longer makes him look like a man of the people and instead makes him seem like someone who still hasn't gotten the hang of his job after three years of on-the-job training from the best team corporate money can buy...
Against that backdrop, it's clear to me now that Cecil was right^ when he said that Bush lost the election last week. Bush has jumped the shark. And I think that Cecil even nailed exactly the moment, in the same sense that Dean's unidirectional "scream" turned out to be the nail in the coffin (called 18% in Iowa) that many predicted.
So now, watching Republicans and their supporters stuck defending one or another of the shards of their policy~ and it's like watching Gore in 2000 or say Begala anytime and saying "yes, you may be right but that's a terrible way to frame it - have you no idea how most Americans think?"
The winds of popularity puffed up the empty materialist anti-democratic neo-Troskyism of the PNAC crowd but no amount of hot air is going to move those sails against this tide.
Shit, I'll never write as good as Max:
MaxSpeak, You Listen!: DER DOLCHSTOSS, CONT'D
* I mean, what is this, like in those science fiction novels where the colonies on the outer planets eventually go to war against Earth because they've become so alientated from it? Have we returned to Mesopotamia another Ozymandias?
^ note to self: insert link to Cecil's recent post, add sort-by-author-feature, remove this note self
~ and hearing them complain about how hard it is to govern when you control all the reins of power - all those tricks where you blame the compromises for the failures of the ideology don't work anymore, do they? Don't get me started! I always thought it was the left that was more comfortable in opposition and ill-prepared to govern. I think I finally get it: Clinton was a conservative of the liberal school. Today's Republican ascendancy is so far radically to the right that it essentially took on the trappings of an extreme left-wing insurgency in regaining power over the last two-thirds of the last century. The roles really did reverse on that plane, hence my old "liberal conservatives and conservative liberals" post. I think nowadays Republicans envy the centrism of Clinton-Kerry liberals, so much like their own predecessors Willkie and Eisenhower. It's nice to seem reasonable and to coopt the middle. Similarly, I think the left envies the conservative movement it's discipline and zealotry.
-30-
Arab conspiracies theories about CIA given huge shot in the arm
It looks like our [new] man in Iraq is publicly tied to the CIA, the US intelligence agency that many Arabs "on the street" reportedly believe secretly engineers all of their humiliations.
May 28, 2004
May 27, 2004
Go easy on Trent's Mom.
From AARP Bulletin.
... Trent Lott of Mississippi, announced he would stop voting against allowing Americans to buy lower-cost prescription drugs from abroad.
"I cannot explain to my mother any longer," he said, "why she should pay twice or two-thirds more than what is paid in Canada or Mexico."
Hmm... .twice or two-thirds more? She probably gets confused by numbers.
Evading Geneva
Orcinus: Ted Olson and Abu Ghraib, a must-read:
[Al Gore's recent speech: "...] These policies were designed and insisted upon by the Bush White House. Indeed, the president's own legal counsel advised him specifically on the subject. [..."]Many others have zeroed in on this legal advice given to the president as being the real nexus of the problem, the turning point at which the administration descended into the abyss. Most notable has been Eric Muller at Is That Legal?, who hascalled for an investigation into how the Department of Justice's legal team came to give Bush this advice, and the possibility that Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement may have misled the Supreme Court when arguing the matter earlier this year.
May 26, 2004
The 3-step exit plan
George Saunders has a piece at Slate right now that is devastating in its brutal comedic factuality. This country is so far off track that just stating things plainly reads like near-dada absurdist poetic theatre.
I recommend that you read the whole article, Exit Strategy, to get the full impact, but I will quote the steps, just to give you an idea of the plain speaking I refer to:
- Kill all the ones who are trying to kill us, in such a way that none of those who presently do not want to kill us suddenly start wanting to kill us.
- At the moment of the death of the last person who wanted to kill us, race quickly out of the country before some additional person suddenly decides he/she wants to kill us, thus necessitating our continued presence in Iraq, in order to kill him/her.
- Having left Iraq quickly, do not look back, so as not to witness individuals claiming they would have liked to kill us, which would then necessitate a return to Iraq, in order to etc., etc. (See No. 2, above.)
(via MichaelZ)
Abu Whaa???
How do you pronounce "Abu Ghraib"? I've heard a few different variations. I use a long "A," as in the word "brake." Regardless of what is most correct, anyone who has discussed the prison abuses there has by now settled on a way to say it.
So why was the President still trying to figure it out in the middle of his nationally televised speech the other day? This may seem nit-picky, but if you think about it, it's yet another disturbing indication of how frighteningly detatched this president seems to be.
Salon referenced the audio and if I find the URL I'll append it later. But I heard it live, and I was amazed to hear him stumble over it. It was not an inadvertent stumble or spoonerism or using the wrong word, which can happen to anybody. The man was trying to sound it out on the fly!
How can this be the biggest issue of the last few weeks and possibly the biggest embarrassment of his administration to date, helping to drag his approval rating to an all-time low with an election looming, and the guy still hasn't even spoken the words "Abu Ghraib" enough to feel comfortable saying it? We already know he doesn't like to read. But doesn't he even like to speak about the issues? You know, like with his advisors? Or hadn't he heard the phrase hundreds of times before giving his speech? Or didn't he at least run through the speech once and find the offending term and bother to ask someone, 'Hey, what's this here Ay-boo Gr.. Gray-ib thingie here?"
Is the guy really that detatched, or just really lazy, or what? I repeat for emphasis: the President of the United States of America was sounding out "Abu Ghraib" as if for the first time in a live speech to the world after everything that has happened. What reasonable explanation could there possibly be for this?
May 25, 2004
Who says they didn't have a plan?
"Under the earliest prewar plans by the U.S. military, Baghdad's infrastructure was to be rebuilt by last August, with elections to be held last September and the troops leaving by October."
Fabulous George
On McLehrer today Zbigniew Brzezinksy (sp?) reported from the late water's-edge consensus (cold war, new world order, remember?) to remind us all that our government has undermined the crediblity of the words "weapons of mass destruction" and that we should be careful not to debase "sovereignty" as well starting on June 30.
He then referred to the administration's form of language as "Aesopian," saying that it appeals to his core but does not communicate well to the world community.
How interesting, I thought. Zbig is talking about fables, tall tales from this Bizarro world (the one I woke up in on electiion day 2000, the one with a script written by Philip K. Dick in which the star of Philip K. Dick movies becomes the governor of California by using the arts of showbusiness fame to move polls) that the president and his true believers inhabit.
Fables, I thought. He is pointing out that the language is fabulous.
Hey, wait.... Isn't fabulous one of George Bush's favorite words? Let's ask Google.
Name, Rank, and Serial Number
Article 17 of the Third Convention says, in part, that
"No physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war to secure from them information of any kind whatever. Prisoners of war who refuse to answer may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind."
I think that many people, seeing this or getting the gist of it, think "How are we supposed to effectively interrogate within such kid-glove limitations?" Subliminally, we have been encouraged to think of this on the model of law enforcement: interrogating suspects and trying to protect public safety. Our conceptions here are always asymmetric in this way. We don't identify ourselves, or Americans in general, with being on the receiving end of such interrogation.
"How are we supposed to interrogate?" We are not supposed to. This kid-gloves treatment is meant to ensure that we don't.
Because of my age, I remember the formula: "Tell them only Name, Rank, and Serial Number." We grew up identifying with the gutsy subject of an interrogation that was conducted by the Germans or the Japanese.
The clincher consideration that keeps getting raised is "Getting this information can save American lives." POWs routinely possess information about the strength, location, and plans of their units, etc. that could save lives in their captors' army.
Then the double-clincher is: "Getting this information could save civilian American lives." Well, B-29 pilots over Germany routinely had that kind of information too.
We have to learn to see ourselves as just one among the nations. One formulation of the Golden Rule is "Don't treat yourself as an exception."
Sheriff Woody Reaches Out to the Iraqi People
"Iraqis will write their own history and find their own way. As they do, Iraqis can be certain a free Iraq will always have a friend in the United States of America."
- President Bush, May 25, 2004
I'm reminded of Robin Williams years ago describing doing an impersonation of then-President Bush, Sr., saying you just do John Wayne and tighten your ass. Well, here's his offspring, President Woody, singing as he rides off into his make-believe sunset.
By the way, has anybody yet commented on the irony that "stay the course" has become the desperate mantra of both Presidents Bush? I call dibs on it for the title of my book on the tragic legacy of the Bush family dynasty!
This is my show, so shut up!
Former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Richard Holbrook was on Hannity & Colmes Laugh-In last night, and provided for us a classic Hannity moment. I forget exactly what point was being made, but Holbrook was questioning something about Bush's speech and policy and of course, midway through making a salient point, Sean tried to shut him up before he could get any further. Holbrook held fast and insisted on continuing to speak, saying things like, "You invited my on the program so let me finish making my point." Sean answered, "No, I'm not going to let you do that." In an attempt to get Sean to understand why he should be heard, Holbrook started making the point, "You asked me to come on this show. I was an ambassador to the UN...."
Sean: "That's too bad."
Holbrook was visibly taken aback by this rudeness.
Earlier in the day, on the Radio Factor, Bill O'Reilly had just finished going off on the ACLU for not wanting to allow any prisoner abuse, including sleep deprivation. He then introduced a guest to take the other side. The guest made a tactical mistake when he started out by questioning O'Reilly's bias, calling it propaganda. He didn't make it fifteen seconds before O'Reilly gave the order to cut his mic and announce that the man will not be on his show ever again. I forget who the guest was and the audio isn't available on O'Reilly's web site yet. But Bill, showing that tough love, voiced his regret that he was forced to ban this guy who he respected. He didn't want to have to do it, but he stands by his principles. Very admirable, Bill.
These people sure have thin skin these days. I wonder if it has anything to do with the frustration of having to defend an increasingly untenable position. I'm trying to have faith in the American public to think beyond what these bullies are ramming into their minds. I guess the polls show that some people are beginning to get it. Half full, baby, Half full!
May 23, 2004
Classic
The problem isn't what we're seeing. The problem is that we have eyes.
(hat tip to jfern on dailykos for pointing this story out.)
May 21, 2004
Exit strategy theory
Here's an interesting theory about how the Bush folks may be planning to cut and run extract our forces from Iraq. We hand over sovereignty, the new government asks us to leave, we say "You didn't say 'Simon Says'," they say it, and we leave.
May 20, 2004
Hastert lectures McCain on the meaning of sacrifice
File under the Republicans coming apart at the seams or "at long last, have you no decency?":
AP Wire | 05/19/2004 | Hastert Lectures McCain on War, Sacrifice
May 19, 2004
The O'Reilly Sphincter
As my first post to this blog, I must go to the first in no doubt a series of observations about one of my favorite analysts - Bill O'Reilly. The Bill O'Reilly Sphincter is big and scary, and a place from which many comically distorted facts and shameless self-promotions are pulled. I love Bill O'Reilly. He makes me laugh, he makes me pull out my hair. Anyway, I digress...
Fun with quotes
On yesterday's Factor, he pulled some outragous-sounding quotes from lefty publications and pronouncements of the day. One, I believe an editorial making a point about the irony that the US military, which doesn't want gays in the military, is using sodomy and all sorts of nasty sexually humiliating techniques. The second quote made a connection between the human rights movement in context of the war. I'm just pulling this from memory so I forget the details. His point was that the left is so ridiculously extreme that they are equating the human rights movement and gay rights to war and atrocities, thus showing they are so far out there that they completely lack credibility.
Of course, he is completely leaving out the context. Two other major news events of the day were 50th anniversary of the human rights movement, and the MA gay marriage story. So maybe, just maybe a couple people attempted to make clever metaphorical connections between a couple major news stories of the day. We don't even know if these excerpts represent the key points of the article or statement. But that would be too fair and balanced.
Fun with Statistics
People love misrepresenting surveys. On the Factor, Bill gives the results of a poll showing that 19% of Americans call themselves "Liberals." So you see, 19% of the country is responsible for pulling the rest way so far to the left that the American way of life is being threatened by a small minority.
Of course, there is more than one question on the typical survey. I presume this survey at the very least also provided options for "moderate" and "conservative". He somehow didn't provide this information so I have to use my impressive statistics skills here. What if, for example, 19% also called themselves "conservative" on the same scale? I'm no expert but what this would suggest statistically is what's called a bell-shaped standard population distribution. I may be wrong, but I wonder why those other numbers were not relevant. Would he have left out the conservative number if it were, say, 50%? An honest assessment of the survey would have given the other numbers. But that would be too fair and balanced.
Fun with self
Another fun thing to do with the O'Reilly Factor is to count the references to himself. They happen in every show. In fact, one of the best segments is the "Most Ridiculous Item of the Day," segment. It took some exposure to the show for me to realize that what is so ridiculous about the item is that it very frequently is about himself in some way - and I mean directly. I didn't see last night's, but here's an oldie but a goodie: The most ridiculous item one day was that he was about to be interviewed on CNN. That's it! Ridiculous news item, or ridiculous self-promotion. As they say on Fox: You decide.
May 17, 2004
Classic Fox News Slant
ABC, CNN, MSNBC news sites all lead with the assassination of the head of the Iraqi Governing Council. Their headlines read....
abnews.com: "Shocking Loss."
msnbc.com: "Major Iraq Setback."
cnn.com: "Iraqi Governing Council Chief Sworn in After Killing."
Meanwhile over on foxnews.com the headline trumpets:
"Chemical Agents Found in Iraq."
In the immortal words of Stan "the man" Lee: 'nuff said.
May 16, 2004
Clench, The Steady--Lemming King
"A strong populace needs a strong leader. When I make a decision, I stick to it!"
-Clench, The Steady--Lemming King, rallying his followers in the race to the cliff-edge.
May 13, 2004
Implausible deniability
--"The No. 2 general at the Pentagon indicated that interrogation techniques used in Iraq violated the Geneva Conventions and said he did not know who had approved them.
"Marine Gen. Peter Pace, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he was unaware of any U.S. military guidelines for interrogating prisoners that would have allowed them to be put in stressful positions,... "
(Article Emphasis added)
This zeroes right in on Rumsfeld, as criminally liable.
--"Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Wednesday had defended the military interrogation techniques used in Iraq, rejecting complaints that they violate international rules. Rumsfeld said Pentagon lawyers had approved the methods and said they required that prisoners be treated humanely at all times."
If this is indeed what was promulgated, it is far worse than if they had not mentioned "humane treatment" at all, because it reassures subordinates that the items on the list are "humane."
--So another consideration in replacing Rumsfeld is they need someone willing to sit on all of this culpable material we know about and no doubt much worse that has not come out--which, among other things, would make them some kind of "accessory after the fact."
May 10, 2004
Zogby attempts to steal thunder from Vortex -- calls election for Kerry 24 hours later
Here's an odd coincidence -- so Saturday, I post "This was the week Bush lost the election" and even at the time I'm thinking, OK, sure, this is how it feels, but really, this post is a touch overboard. I mean, 6 months out? Clinton was losing to Bush senior like 3 months out. Dukakis was beating Bush like 3 months out. What does anything mean 6 months from November, in elections against the Bush family? Not much, right? But what the heck. These are unusual times. So I'm gonna go out on this limb all by myself, face the cold ridicule of the mass media, and call the race for Kerry. OK. Great.
Then just 24 hours later, big-time pollster John Zogby releases a press release calling the election as Kerry's to lose, 6 months out. Writes Zogby: "here is my jump for 2004: John Kerry will win the election."
(Actually, my favorite part of the press release is when Zogby writes "as of today, this race is John Kerry's to lose" and I'm like, no dude, as of yesterday and he's like, "seriously. get over yourself dude" and I'm like, "back off, Z-man.")
I don't know if that's, strictly speaking, an unprecedented move by a major pollster, but it's no small or standard-sized thing. (And my general impression, in particular over the last 3 years, is that Zogby has an unusually solid track record, so this can't be welcome news over at BushCo.)
I guess that's just how it is sometimes in the wild and wooly world of internet punditizing. Saturday I was all alone (so...alone...), out on my shaky limb. By Sunday my nut job position had been co-opted by "the man" and I was now full-on mainstream. And yes, the party invitations have started rolling in. And no, I'm not ready to buy my own tux.
Sure, I could be a little bitter toward Zogby, coming in, stealing my thunder. But I have the big picture in mind. When Vortex calls the election in May, BushCo says, ah, Vortex. He's just talking mish-mash.
But when John Zogby calls the election in May...
...well, let's just say, a bad Monday for Karl Rove is a good Monday 'round these parts.
So happy Monday!
May 9, 2004
Fact of the day: 3 times more spent on Iraq war than on homeland security
Fact of the day, worth mulling and sharing: according to this article in the Chron, we've spent 3 dollars on Iraq to every dollar spent on homeland security.
Not might spend.
Or will spend.
Or could spend.
Spent. Done did.
Insane.
Some folks are getting frustrated that Kerry's not doing much of late. I'm one of them what thinks that when the sad mess that is the war and the sad mess that is the economy become the same issue, Kerry's best plan of action is to just stay very quiet and avoid doing anything that will take the media heat off BushCo.
For more, take the DailyKos poll here.
Must-read column from Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria
Over the last couple of years, Fareed Zakaria's analysis has been unrelentingly sharp, honest, and more often than not, borne out by the events that follow. I still can't believe he writes for Newsweek. Anyways, The Price of Arrogance sums up the moment better than just about anything else I've seen this week. Highly recommended.
May 8, 2004
This was the week Bush lost the election
At first, we went to Iraq to get the WMD. Then there were no WMD.
Then we retroactively went to Iraq to free the Iraqis and be the liberators. It was a just war.
This is the week the war officially became something to be sad and ashamed about for a much larger pool of Americans. This is the week it became Vietnam in people's hearts.
Who can look at those pictures without having their heart break?
For the Iraqi prisoners? For their families? For the terrified Iraqi citizens seeing those pictures, fearing those pictures?
For the insane American soldiers in those pictures? For the Americans still on the ground in the middle of this mess? For their families? For our country?
And what happens to the sole remaining superpower when the rest of the world decides said superpower can't control itself? We should all shudder to think.
For the Bush Administration, the jig is up. The polls will continue to show something like 45/46, 43/47, 48/49 for some time. But it says here (possibly delusional, I know -- most likely forgetting once again how new stories come along and everything fades up till the last, I realize -- but still, reporting from inside my own little vortex on how this whole sad mess looks and sounds and feels), it says here:
The race is done.
And this was the week.
May 7, 2004
Who Goes Free?
I would guess that for the prison officials, the risks authorizing a prisoner's release were considerable, while the potential rewards were scant. If someone you released turned up later attacking US forces, it might, in effect, end your career.
But even bureaucratically, if the records are missing, or they are vague about the reason for detention, that doesn't all of a sudden change. There is no new evidence, you don't know what you are dealing with, and the safest thing is to just keep them on hold, for the same reason they were arrested in the first place..
So maybe in Iraq, all of this was fatally intensified by the way these people became prisoners. The prisons were overcrowded. But why?
Following victory in Baghdad, US forces were embarrassed by their public ineffectuality. They stood by while the country was looted and wrecked before their eyes. Then they started suffering losses to invisible, untraceable guerilla adversaries, which again left them flat-footed.
They had to take some kind of action, and it came in the form of a succession of very large-scale "sweeps." Since we didn"t exactly have a geographical enemy (which Falluja later became, when we "attacked" it for a bloody week), it was not "search and destroy," it was "search and detain." At the end of each sweep, the headline result, the measure of success was what could be called the "detainee-count."
Thank God, this was not the sanguinary "body-count" of Vietnam, but the psycho-political dynamic was in many ways the same. Human beings were commoditized for political consumption. They were prisoners basically because they were imprisoned.
It sounds like in many/most cases there was nothing we wanted them to answer for, and nothing we wanted to get out of them, hence nothing they could do to earn release. And anyone who was released, especially in short order, could count as an admission of injustice.
So I am thinking that a possible substrate to the dehumanization was the original pointlessness of the incarceration: the prisoners as an indistinguishable, undifferentiated mass that it was natural to pile up in heaps for your amusement.
May 6, 2004
Rumsfeld is toast
The other day we watched Rumsfeld struggle through a press conference, pointing to some weak press release (no doubt on a Friday evening amidst 100 other unrelated press releases, but still how come no one picked it up in January? or is he lying? who's checking this?), floundering without successfully wielding hardly any of his trademark fighting techniques.
(Speaking of fighting techniques, anything new from the My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable guy lately?)
Anyway, I asked B, do you think Rummy will resign? She scoffed at the idea, but this morning's times has George Bush leaking his displeasure on Don and tonight's McLehrer has him adamantly denying that Rumsfeld should be mad eto resign, while others from McCain on left say it's too soon to say.
They don't want to soldier on without their best spokesmodel, but they have to stanch the bleeding. In an administration in which the buck never seems to stop, this is going to a tough one to pin on Powell. Delay heightens the risk of a second fishing expedition to supplement the Plame one (what's going on with that), the 9/11 commission, hell even Anthrax guy.
One thing I'm not looking forward to is a panicky cornered-ferret Bush administration in its death throes.
My Apologies
The posting I made under the heading "Three Strikes?" cited this report from a Reuters dispatch:
"An official said a soldier was convicted in the U.S. military justice system of killing a prisoner by hitting him with a rock, and was reduced in rank to private and thrown out of the service but did not serve any jail time."
(Article)
This turned out to be just about backwards, based on later reports like this one, picked up from the LA Times:
"One soldier at a forward operating camp was convicted of using excessive force in September by shooting an Iraqi detainee who was throwing rocks at him. That soldier, who was not named, was downgraded in rank from specialist to private and discharged from the Army but not jailed."
(Article)
My apologies.
May 4, 2004
Three Strikes?
An official said a soldier was convicted in the U.S. military justice system of killing a prisoner by hitting him with a rock, and was reduced in rank to private and thrown out of the service but did not serve any jail time.
(Article)
Perhaps President Bush could embrace this within the US too, as a tough, but humane alternative to the death penalty. If you kill someone with a rock, you lose your job AND get a negative job-reference.
Of course, that would only be for the first offense.
May 3, 2004
Your Monkey Man one-liner of the day
Here's a quick one-liner from my good pal, the Monkey Man:
"George Bush isn't a big picture guy -- (oooh oooh! aaaah aaaah!) --
he's more of a big picture book guy."
And there it is: Your Monkey Man one-liner of the day.
Guantanamo for the Guantanamanins!
The Bush administration has told the Supreme Court that the court's authority does not extend to Guantanamo, because it is not US territory and is not subject to US law. I am willing to guess that the government would also not accept proceedings in Cuban courts as authoritative there.
Clearly, the administration is quietly making a case for self-determination! Our activities in the too-long-ignored, plucky little Caribbean enclave are really an extension of the President's world-spanning commitment to nation-building and democracy
Unlike Afghanistan or Iraq, Guantanimo has the advantage of a clean slate. There is no dead weight of authoritarian tradition to be overcome. And our unstinting investment in an up-to-the-minute Correctional System can assure the kind of stability that is so necessary to nurturing self-government anywhere.
I believe that, with these fledgling first steps taken, it is now time to proudly invite the United Nations to take it from here, to bring Guantanamo along to the constitutional framework, the census and voter rolls, the free press and public discourse that will take self-government to the next level. A nascent democracy of which all Americans can be proud!
As President Bush, the Johnny Appleseed of global liberation, might say: Guantanamo for the Guantanamanins!
May 1, 2004
Whose Truce?
The two teams are part of the 100 Marine sharpshooters deployed by three battalions around the city. One sniper secreted away in another corner of Fallujah has "26 confirmed kills," military officers here report. ...The snipers were deployed in early April, as guerrilla ambushes claimed more than 50 Marine lives....
...the sharpshooters are an offensive force - at a time when most Marines are under orders to fire only when attacked.
[Article]
Both sides use snipers. But, does...
"at a time when most Marines are under orders to fire only when attacked,"
mean:
"at a time when most Marines are adhering to the truce."
"Fire only when attacked" has been the rule during the truce. Has the very same rule been in effect outside of the truce? We certainly go after houses from which no current attack is being waged.
This is inherently confusing verbiage, and this "admission" could honestly be just a mix-up by the reporter--or by me. Hopefully, it is.
Otherwise it could easily be misinterpreted (perhaps by one of those "inflammatory" Iraqi newspapers that we might have missed)
as command-sanctioned truce-violations--of the kind we find so craven and inexplicable coming from the other side.
"OUR" Skin!
Bush made the comment during a Rose Garden news conference, while discussing his goal of more freedom in the Middle East.
"There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern," Bush said.
"OURS"!! What an idiot!!