Liberal-oriented columns, commentary and archived articles on national and international news, politics, and the communication arts--with emphasis on China--by Joseph Bosco, author, journalist, director and actor; Professor of Drama and Communications at Beijing Foreign Studies University. 

Friday, October 31, 2003

If His Lips Are Moving, He's Lying

If His Lips Are Moving, He's Lying. Will this man ever stand by something he says without fishtailing and buck-passing? A real man isn't afraid to say, 'I got it wrong, folks, I'm human.' Bushes have never operated that way though, ever. Even some of the diehard Bush haters would have to take notice and give credit if the man pulled a Truman and said that the Buck Stops Here! The truth is, Bush does not trust the American public he alleges to want to lead, otherwise he wouldn't believe he had to lie to them to get them to do the right thing. Worse yet, he doesn't trust himself. Not only is Bush perhaps the lightest-weight intellect to occupy the oval office in our lifetime, he also owns its most dangerous inferiority complex--which is why he blusters and why he drank and why he needed to give his life (and ours?) over to his higher power (no, not Cheney the Great, but the AA born-again one) in order to function well enough to hold down a real job for the first time in his benighted life.
Yesterday, McClellan acknowledged that White House staffers routinely exercise tight control over the environment of a presidential appearance, especially when it will be televised. "Of course, our advance people work closely with people at event sites when the president is participating in an event," he said.

Indeed, the Bush White House has been particularly careful about attending to the details of a televised presidential appearance, said Martha Joynt Kumar, a political scientist at Maryland's Towson University who specializes in presidential communication strategy. "All of them [presidential staffs] have worked on it, but these people have been especially rigorous about controlling all parts of the event, including the resulting pictures," she said.

But McClellan said Bush had not meant to imply a complete absence of White House involvement in the banner, only that the idea had come from the crew. And he denied that the use of the banner was intended to convey an impression that the overall U.S. mission in Iraq had been accomplished. As for Bush's words, McClellan said he had proclaimed an end to "major combat operations" but had also warned that "there are difficulties that remain and dangers that continue to exist."

An examination of the text of Bush's carrier speech shows that his cautionary comments were largely limited to two sentences: "We have difficult work to do in Iraq. We're bringing order to parts of that country that remain dangerous." The rest of the lengthy address was a celebration of U.S. military success, with the tone set at the start: "Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed."

As the Iraqi security situation has worsened and U.S. casualties have mounted, critics have ridiculed Bush's carrier appearance. The criticism continued yesterday as Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) called Bush's comments at the news conference his "latest fabrication" about the event.

"I'm sure they would love to extricate themselves from this whole affair," Daschle said. "It's got to be one of the most significant embarrassments of the entire Iraqi experience so far. We've lost more lives since he's declared victory than we lost prior to the time he declared victory."
If His Lips Are Moving, He's Lying.
  

11:52 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Forget the WMDs, Find this Son of a Bitch!

Forget The WMDs, Find This Son of a Bitch! Something doesn't add up here. It's not like Saddam is a suspect in a whodunnit. He was THE MAN there for almost 30 years. Everything needed for a successful manhunt is known about this murdering thug. From what he eats to what brand of pliars he uses to torture his friends with. Homicide detectives find their man when there is zero evidence in a random killing on the 405 Freeway in LA--in other words, when their suspect pool is about 26 million people and they don't even have a half-ass description of who they are looking for! A detective leading a squad of 4 gets demoted or hauled over the coals if he can't solve that kind of a nut-cracker case in 60 days. The several thousand Saddam hunters in Iraq get only praise from Dubya, pats on the back from Rummy and photo ops on CNN!
WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 — Saddam Hussein may be playing a significant role in coordinating and directing attacks by his loyalists against American forces in Iraq, senior American officials said Thursday.

The officials cited recent intelligence reports indicating that Mr. Hussein is acting as a catalyst or even a leader in the armed opposition, probably from a base of operations near Tikrit, his hometown and stronghold. A leadership role by Mr. Hussein would go far beyond anything previously acknowledged by the Bush administration, which has sought in its public remarks to portray the former Iraqi leader as being on the run and irrelevant.

Officials acknowledged that the reports of a significant role by Mr. Hussein could not be corroborated, and one senior official cautioned that recent intelligence reports contained conflicting assessments.

Nonetheless, three senior officials described reports of a larger role by Mr. Hussein as credible, and a Defense Department official said the information had given a fresh sense of urgency to the American-led manhunt for the former Iraqi leader.

"There are some accounts that say he is somehow instigating or fomenting some of the resistance," a second American official said of the intelligence reports. ...

Mr. Hussein is believed to have met with Izzat Ibrahim, an Iraqi general who was officially the second highest ranking member of the Iraqi government at the time of the invasion, and who is described by American officials as playing a significant role in the insurgency.

General Ibrahim, who is No. 6 on the American most-wanted list, has been described by some Defense Department officials as having recently been in contact with members of Ansar al-Islam, a militant group that had been based in northern Iraq before the American-led invasion and which is linked to Al Qaeda.
Here comes the kicker--I ask you, has any one you know ever said as many stupid things that came back to bite them in the ass as Dubya? I didn't think so. Here come some real goodies...
On July 2, Mr. Bush declared that Mr. Hussein was "no longer a threat to the United States, because we removed him." In more recent remarks, including those at a fund-raising event on Oct. 8, Mr. Bush has been proclaiming that Mr. Hussein is "no more," because he is no longer in power.

In Baghdad on Oct. 8, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the top American commander in Iraq, said of Mr. Hussein "that he's hiding and running away constantly from the relentless hunt that we are on to find him, capture him, kill him." But in comments little-noticed at the time, General Sanchez went on to say: "Could he be a part of the attacks? He could."
Find this Son of a Bitch already!
  

10:59 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Are We Supposed to be Shocked When We Aren't Even Surprised?

Are We Supposed to be Shocked When We Aren't the Least Bit Surprised? Just business as usual in the good ol' USA. I mean, if you can't get by without a little help for your friends, you might just as well be a goshdarn socialist-commie-do goodin'-LIBERAL-pinko-fink-O.J is innocent-stooge!
WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 — Executives, employees and political action committees of the 70 companies that received government contracts for work in either Iraq or Afghanistan contributed slightly more than $500,000 to President Bush's 2000 election campaign, according to a comprehensive study of the contracts released on Tuesday.

The overwhelming majority of government contracts for billions of dollars of reconstruction work in Iraq and Afghanistan went to companies run by executives who were heavy political contributors to both political parties.

Though the employees contributed to both parties, their giving favored Republicans by a two-to-one margin. And they gave more money to Mr. Bush than any other politician in the last 12 years.

Among the biggest contributions to Mr. Bush's election and re-election efforts were those from executives and employees of Dell Computer at $113,000; of Bearing Point, a business consulting firm, at $119,000; of General Electric at $72,000 and of Halliburton Inc. at $28,000, according to the report.

Nine of the 10 biggest contractors — the biggest of which were Bechtel Corporation and Halliburton, either employed former senior government officials or had close ties to government agencies and to Congress.

Prepared by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit research group, the report said the contractors' executives and employees had contributed $49 million to political candidates and parties since 1990.

The new report is the first comprehensive independent study of companies involved in Iraqi reconstruction, and it provides evidence that the process for handing out big contracts has often been secretive, chaotic and favorable to companies with good political contacts. ...

One consultant, given a four-month contract to advise Iraqi government agencies, was the husband of Carol Haave, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for security and information operations. A Pentagon spokesman said that Ms. Haave did not see this as a conflict of interest, according to Bloomberg News.

The State Department spokesman, Richard A. Boucher, told reporters on Thursday that "the reason that these companies get the contracts has nothing to do with who may have worked there before."

He added: "The decisions are made by career procurement officials. There's a separation, a wall, between them and political-level questions when they're doing the contracts."

One of the report's most basic conclusions is that neither the Pentagon nor the State Department or the Agency for International Development were eager to provide comprehensive or accurate information about contracts that total about $8 billion over the past two years.
If your blood pressure can handle it, read more about in The New York Times...
  

10:12 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Ms. Dowd Nails Dubya Again...

Ms. Dowd Taking on Dubya Isn't a Fair Fight...when last checked he displayed the brain wave activity of a cypress stump.
WASHINGTON — In the thick of the war with Iraq, President Bush used to pop out of meetings to catch the Iraqi information minister slipcovering grim reality with willful, idiotic optimism.

"He's my man," Mr. Bush laughingly told Tom Brokaw about the entertaining contortions of Muhammad Said al-Sahhaf, a k a "Comical Ali" and "Baghdad Bob," who assured reporters, even as American tanks rumbled in, "There are no American infidels in Baghdad. Never!" and, "We are winning this war, and we will win the war. . . . This is for sure."

Now Crawford George has morphed into Baghdad Bob.

Speaking to reporters this week, Mr. Bush made the bizarre argument that the worse things get in Iraq, the better news it is. "The more successful we are on the ground, the more these killers will react," he said.

In the Panglossian Potomac, calamities happen for the best. One could almost hear the doubletalk echo of that American officer in Vietnam who said: "It was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it."
I really shouln't defame a cypress stump...
  

1:01 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Thursday, October 30, 2003

It’s Not Vietnam, But it is Thomas L. Friedman

It’s Absolutely Not Vietnam, But it is Positively Thomas L. Friedman and Everyone Who Cares About This Mess We're In Needs to Read it.
Since 9/11, we've seen so much depraved violence we don't notice anymore when we hit a new low. Monday's attacks in Baghdad were a new low. Just stop for one second and contemplate what happened: A suicide bomber, driving an ambulance loaded with explosives, crashed into the Red Cross office and blew himself up on the first day of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. This suicide bomber was not restrained by either the sanctity of the Muslim holy day or the sanctity of the Red Cross. All civilizational norms were tossed aside. This is very unnerving. Because the message from these terrorists is: "There are no limits. We have created our own moral universe, where anything we do against Americans or Iraqis who cooperate with them is O.K."

What to do? The first thing is to understand who these people are. There is this notion being peddled by Europeans, the Arab press and the antiwar left that "Iraq" is just Arabic for Vietnam, and we should expect these kinds of attacks from Iraqis wanting to 'liberate' their country from "U.S. occupation." These attackers are the Iraqi Vietcong.

Hogwash. The people who mounted the attacks on the Red Cross are not the Iraqi Vietcong. They are the Iraqi Khmer Rouge — a murderous band of Saddam loyalists and Al Qaeda nihilists, who are not killing us so Iraqis can rule themselves. They are killing us so they can rule Iraqis.

Have you noticed that these bombers never say what their political agenda is or whom they represent? They don't want Iraqis to know who they really are. A vast majority of Iraqis would reject them, because these bombers either want to restore Baathism or install bin Ladenism.

Let's get real. What the people who blew up the Red Cross and the Iraqi police fear is not that we're going to permanently occupy Iraq. They fear that we're going to permanently change Iraq. The great irony is that the Baathists and Arab dictators are opposing the U.S. in Iraq because — unlike many leftists — they understand exactly what this war is about. They understand that U.S. power is not being used in Iraq for oil, or imperialism, or to shore up a corrupt status quo, as it was in Vietnam and elsewhere in the Arab world during the cold war. They understand that this is the most radical-liberal revolutionary war the U.S. has ever launched — a war of choice to install some democracy in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world.
Read the rest of it, please, in The New York Times...
  

9:51 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Good News From Beijing!

Very Good News From Beijing! Saw it on television here at the Foreign Affairs University in Beijing--didn't understand a lot, my Chinese is still embryonic after 15 months!
BEIJING (AP) -- China and North Korea agreed "in principle" Thursday to reconvene six-nation talks on Pyongyang's nuclear program, Chinese state television said, reporting on an unusual meeting between a top Chinese official and the North's reclusive leader.

China Central Television said the Beijing leadership expressed to Kim Jong Il that the concerns of both sides in the nuclear standoff -- the United States and North Korea -- should be resolved simultaneously.

State television showed Wu Bangguo, the second-highest Chinese Communist Party leader and head of his country's legislature, meeting with a smiling Kim in Pyongyang. Wu is on a three-day "goodwill" visit to the North at a pivotal time when China is trying to make sure the six-nation summit reconvenes.

"Both sides agreed in principle that the six-way talks should continue," the CCTV anchorwoman said over footage of the two.

"Both China and North Korea support the idea of a peaceful resolution to the North Korean issue through dialogue," the anchorwoman said.

The United States demands that North Korea dismantle its nuclear program immediately. Pyongyang says it will do that only if Washington agrees in writing not to attack the North and resumes the humanitarian aid needed for North Korea's starving population.

A spokesman who answered the phone at the press section of China's Foreign Ministry said he had nothing to add to the CCTV report.
From the A.P.
  

9:27 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Wednesday, October 29, 2003

Memory of Holiday Offenses in Wars Past

The Last Few Days in Baghdad Remind You of Anything in Recent History? If you are old enough, surely.
AIMED AT THE Muslim holiday of Ramadan, the series of suicide bombings and other attacks by enemies of the U.S.-led coalition in Iraq this week probably is intended to have the same effect as the 1968 Tet offensive in Vietnam: to convince Americans that their troops are committed to a losing cause and must withdraw -- even if, in military terms, that is not the case. Saddam Hussein, after all, is known to have studied recent U.S. history for examples of how to defeat the superpower, as have the Islamic terrorist groups also believed to be operating in Iraq. The attacks so far carried out in Baghdad and Fallujah, like those of Tet, pose no strategic threat to the U.S. military presence in the country; they also pale beside those of 1968, which cost the lives of more than 3,800 U.S. servicemen and 14,000 Vietnamese civilians. Still, the bombings have shocked Iraqis, intimidated some would-be allies and strengthened doubts in Congress and the public about the Iraq mission.

Yet it would be wrong for the United States to conclude, as its enemies no doubt hope it will, that the time has come to embrace an exit strategy. There is no basis to believe that the U.S. goals of stabilizing Iraq under a representative government cannot be achieved. In much of the country there is little violence and coalition authorities have the support of most of the population. Even in Baghdad, there has been measurable progress in recent months: More power is on, the curfew is lifted, streets and shops are usually full. Most important, the coalition authority and most Iraqis share the same goal: to transfer authority to a sovereign government and replace U.S. forces with Iraqis as quickly as can be done safely. The enemy offers not an attractive alternative but an agenda of viciousness embodied in the attacks on the humanitarian workers of the United Nations and International Red Cross. This is the brutal trademark of al Qaeda or Saddam Hussein, whose return on the heels of departing U.S. troops is the future Iraqis fear most.
This Editorial in the Washington Post is Required reading...
 

11:19 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Losses in the Forgotten War

Losses in the Forgotten War are somebody's sons, brothers, husbands, courageous citizens doing a lonely, dangerous job that must be done.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 — Two Central Intelligence Agency operatives were killed in an ambush in Afghanistan over the weekend, the agency said Tuesday, bringing to four the number of C.I.A. operatives acknowledged to have been killed in the line of duty since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The two men were described by the agency as veterans of military Special Operations units who were killed while tracking terrorists in the region of Shkin, a village in southeastern Afghanistan. A statement released by the agency said they were working as contractors for the agency's Directorate of Operations, which conducts clandestine intelligence gathering and other covert activities.
Read about these heroes in The New York Times...
  

11:15 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Dubya Playing Catch-up?

Is Dubya Playing Catch-up? Of course he is; the question is can he do it? He'd best hope most Americans were not watching his press conference--his obvious disdain for the press corps before him, the by now patented twisted mouth scowl, and cork-screw head tilt, spoke loudly about how much he believes in the public's right to know about what is NOT in that unthinking brain of his. Has there ever been a president that displays as much undisguised arrogance? The man is a public relations disaster for anyone trying to portray the "American way" to a very doubting world.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 28 — Early on Tuesday morning, as many Americans were scanning newspaper headlines about the latest wave of deadly bombings in Iraq, President Bush met with his press secretary and his communications director in the Oval Office. He told them, aides said, that he wanted to hold a full-scale news conference a few hours later.

The idea had been under consideration for several weeks, but it was only after the attacks in Baghdad on Monday that Mr. Bush decided to take his message directly to the voters and the world.

For weeks, while opinion polls showed diminished support for his postwar leadership, he had accused the press of filtering out good news from Iraq and overplaying the bad.

The decision reflects how urgent it is for the White House to keep public opinion about Iraq from deteriorating to the point that it could limit the president's policy choices and threaten his chances for re-election.
Read it in The New York Times...
  

10:53 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Said a Little Late and Without Conviction

Dubya's disavowing his Christian Warrior comes a little late and without much conviction.
President Bush said Tuesday that controversial remarks by Lt. Gen. William G. 'Jerry' Boykin about Muslims and Islam do not 'reflect my point of view, or the view of this administration' — sharp language from an administration that tends to circle the wagons when a member is under attack.

Bush's move to distance himself from the outspoken general was the strongest administration response to date to disclosures of Boykin's frequent appearances before religious groups at which he characterized the war on terrorism as a battle between Judeo-Christian tradition and 'Satan.' His remarks have put the president in a difficult spot.

With hundreds of supportive calls coming into the Pentagon and Bush facing a reelection campaign in which he'll seek the help of Christian conservatives, it might be out of the question for the administration to fire Boykin.

"Gen. Boykin is kind of the living embodiment of a key Republican electoral constituency. So forcing him out would not be a very bright move with elections approaching," said military analyst Loren Thompson of the Lexington Institute, an Arlington, Va.-based public policy group.

But his continued presence as deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence is causing such trouble in the Muslim community, Congress and elsewhere that some senior defense officials and others have suggested privately that a less visible, strictly military post should be found for the oft-decorated soldier.

Bush's remarks Tuesday might make that a foregone conclusion. Said Thompson: "He may simply decide that he's become too much of an issue and seek another assignment."
Read the rest in the Los Angeles Times...
  

10:34 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Tuesday, October 28, 2003

A Willful Ignorance

Mr. Krugman is being too kind--it's Arrogant Ignorance. The kind that the Bush family has projected and perfected for more than six decades now. This particular Bush, Dubya, has the worst case of it. To the baggage he received genetically and environmentally growing up in that most dangerously Blue Blood of American families (came over on the Mayflower, and related to over a dozen American presidents), is added the truly boorish arrogance of ignorance that is peculiar to born-again Christian, AA certified, alcoholics who by indoctrination learn to listen to no counsel other than their sacrosanct "Higher Authority" and fellow travelers along the 12 Step path.

Do us all a favor and read Paul Krugman.
According to The New York Times, President Bush was genuinely surprised to learn from moderate Islamic leaders that they had become deeply distrustful of American intentions. The report on the 'perception gap' suggests that the leader of the war on terror has no idea how badly that war — which must, ultimately, be a war for hearts and minds — is going.

Mr. Bush's ignorance may reflect his lack of curiosity: 'The best way to get the news,' he says, 'is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have are people on my staff.' Two words: emperor, clothes.

But there's something broader going on: a sort of willful ignorance, supposedly driven by moral concerns but actually reflecting domestic politics. Surely it's important to understand how others see us, but a new, post 9/11 version of political correctness has made it difficult even to discuss their points of view. Any American who tries to go beyond 'America good, terrorists evil,' who tries to understand — not condone — the growing world backlash against the United States, faces furious attacks delivered in a tone of high moral indignation. The attackers claim to be standing up for moral clarity, and some of them may even believe it. But they are really being used in a domestic political struggle.

Last week I found myself caught up in that struggle. I wrote about why Mahathir Mohamad, Malaysia's prime minister — a clever if loathsome man who adjusts the volume of his anti-Semitism depending on circumstances — chose to include an anti-Jewish diatribe in his speech to an Islamic conference. Sure enough, I was accused in various places not just of "tolerance for anti-Semitism" (yes, I'm Jewish) but of being in Mr. Mahathir's pay. Smear tactics aside, the thrust of the attacks was that because anti-Semitism is evil, anyone who tries to understand why politicians foment anti-Semitism — and looks for ways other than military force to combat the disease — is an apologist for anti-Semitism and is complicit in evil.

Yet that moral punctiliousness is curiously selective. Last year the Bush administration, in return for a military base in Uzbekistan, gave $500 million to a government that, according to the State Department, uses torture "as a routine investigation technique," and whose president has killed opponents with boiling water. The moral clarity police were notably quiet.
Read it all, in The New York Times...
  

9:43 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Give It Up Now, Or Lose It All Later

What is Bush Hiding? "Executive Privilege" didn't work for Nixon, probably won't work for Dubya. Even if he wins 5-4 at the Supreme Court, the public outcry will send him home to Texas for an early start on his Presidential comic book library. If he doesn't want to go that way, he'd best bite the bullet and take his chances with the heat that whatever he's hiding about overlooked warnings he might have received prior to 9-11 will generate. Not even right-wing Republicans like to be stonewalled by autocratic, obviously self-serving maneuvering.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 — President Bush declined today to commit the White House to turning over highly classified intelligence reports to the independent federal commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, despite public threats of a subpoena from the bipartisan panel.

The president said in a brief meeting with reporters that the documents were "very sensitive" and that the White House was still discussing the issue with the panel's chairman, Thomas H. Kean, the former Republican governor of New Jersey.

Mr. Bush's remarks and subsequent comments today from his press secretary suggested that the White House may ultimately refuse the commission's demand for access to the documents, setting up a possible showdown between the White House and the independent investigators.

Last week, Mr. Kean said for the first time that he was prepared to issue a subpoena and risk a courtroom battle with the White House if the documents were not turned over within weeks.

Commission officials say the documents include copies of the so-called Presidential Daily Briefing — the summary prepared each morning by the Central Intelligence Agency for the Oval Office — that President Bush received in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks. The White House refused to provide the briefing reports to House and Senate investigators last year for their investigation of the attacks, citing executive privilege.

As a result of Mr. Kean's comments on Friday, a number of prominent lawmakers, both Republicans and Democrats, have joined in urging the White House to make the documents available to the panel, known formally as the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, which was created by Congress last year over the initial objections of the White House.
What is Bush Hiding? Read about in The New York Times...
  

8:48 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




"Decades of Good Deeds Provide No Armor"

No Good Deed Goes Unpunished in a Fabled Land of Blood, Sand and the Beginnings of Western Civilization. Why? Where is the answer? To whom do we even ask the question?
BAGHDAD, Oct. 27 -- They used unarmed guards and eschewed elaborate security because in Iraq, as elsewhere in the world, they felt protected by their instantly recognizable symbol of benevolent assistance: a red cross.

Then a car bomb exploded near their central Baghdad headquarters on Monday morning, killing 12 people and injuring at least 10 others.

"So many people are dead, why?" said Moutasser Jalal Taher, 23, a security guard who spoke angrily, through clenched teeth, about the attack on the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross, or ICRC. "They are innocent people and it's a humanitarian organization."

The question reverberated unanswered throughout the day, beginning when employees arrived for work and found pandemonium. The building's beige facade was a chalky, blackened mess of rubble. Water gushed onto the street from a pipe cracked by the blast. Cars were singed and burned. And a crater six feet deep remained where a vehicle resembling a Red Cross ambulance and packed with explosives blew up during rush hour.

For the humanitarian agency, the blast shattered the belief that 23 years of good deeds in Iraq could be worn like protective armor against violence. "We were always confident that people knew us and that our work here would protect us," said Nada Doumani, spokeswoman for the Red Cross in Baghdad. "How do we understand this?" ...

Since the group's inception in 1863, the red cross emblem -- a red crescent in Muslim countries -- has been a symbol of neutral humanitarian assistance in war-ravaged countries. The Red Cross has served as a mediator between combatants and a monitor of the rules of war, the Geneva Conventions.

Red Cross workers outside Iraq said Monday's suicide bombing was unprecedented even by the worsening standards of recent conflicts -- because a Red Cross compound was specifically targeted by a bomb and because the attacker used what looked like a Red Cross/Red Crescent ambulance to deliver the device.

"I can remember thefts and I can remember blockages -- when they didn't let us out of our compound, like in Somalia," said Nina Winquist, a Finn who worked for the Red Cross for 15 years in such trouble spots as Somalia, Rwanda and Bosnia. But "I can't think of any incident where there was a car bomb at a delegation."

"This is very serious, because this is a violation of the Geneva Conventions, and Iraq is a signatory to the Geneva Conventions," said Marc Gentilini, a physician and president of the French Red Cross.
Read it in the Washington Post...
  

1:12 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Baghdad Update In Blood

Hell Described...
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 27 — The morning that opened with the quiet air of a religious holiday was broken suddenly by the sound of a bomb.

And then another bomb, and another, and another still.

Of all the chaos and cacophony that gripped the scenes of the suicide attacks here on Monday, the eeriest sounds of all were the explosions in the distance.

One after another the suicide bombers struck, and only minutes apart. First, there were two nearly simultaneous blasts at Iraqi police stations in the Baghdad neighborhoods of Dora and Baya. Only five minutes later, a man drove an ambulance packed with explosives to the headquarters of the Red Cross and set them off.

Then, only minutes after that, there were two more, each of the explosions audible from the center of town.

"There's been two more bombs," an Iraqi police officer quietly said to his colleagues, and they knew from the sounds that he was right.

Car bombs had come before to Baghdad, big bombs that killed dozens, but never so many, and never like this. ...

Others were not as lucky as Mr. Hassan, who escaped unharmed. The bomber himself seemed to have vaporized; all that remained was a crater where his car had exploded and a scattering of metal shards. Behind the crater sat two cars, each blackened and burned. Inside each sat a charred body, frozen at the moment of death.

American investigators working the scene said they had counted 15 bodies, most belonging to people who lived in houses neighboring the Red Cross headquarters.

Two of the dead lay on the side of road, tangled in a pile of bricks and metal, their clothes burned from their bodies. Hunks of human flesh lay in piles here and there, the blood draining pink into the gutter. Part of a body sat stuck to a second-story wall of a building across the street.

In the horror of the moment, emotions tumbled forth. Hamid Khalaf, a 39-year-old security guard, said he suspected the bombs were set off by the supporters of Saddam Hussein, no friends of his. But there was someone else he thought to blame.

"The Americans are the reason," Mr. Khalaf said, standing in the rubble. "The Americans thought they could liberate us, but we will not accept them. We are an Islamic people."
Hell Described in The New York Times...
  

11:55 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Monday, October 27, 2003

Hell Continues

The bombings came hours after clashes in the Baghdad area killed three U.S. soldiers overnight, and a day after insurgents devastated a hotel full of U.S. occupation officials with a rocket barrage, killing a U.S. colonel and wounding 18 other people.

It was two days of violence unprecedented in this city of 5 million people since the end of the U.S.-Iraq war last April, attacks aimed at the American-led occupation and those perceived as working with it.

''We feel helpless when see this,'' a distraught Iraqi doctor said at the devastated Red Cross offices. ...

At the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross in central Baghdad, witnesses said a suicide bomber drove an explosives-packed vehicle, apparently an ambulance, right up to security barriers outside the building at about 8:30 a.m. and detonated it, blowing down the Red Cross's front wall, devastating the interior and blowing shrapnel and debris over a wide area.

Through the morning, four other vehicles exploded at police stations in the Baghdad area. Ambulances, sirens wailing, crisscrossed the city all morning.
[But] Iraqi police reported some 27 people killed at police stations, including 15 Iraqis at the ad-Doura station in southern Baghdad. One U.S. soldier was among them, said Lt. Sarmad al-Hakim, an ad-Doura officer. ...

At a fifth police station in central Baghdad, officers stopped a suicide bomber before he could detonate his Land Cruiser. ''He was shouting, `Death to the Iraqi police! You're collaborators!''' said police Sgt. Ahmed Abdel Sattar.
Hell Continues...
  

11:40 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Hell Gets Worse

The Sons of Bitches Know What They're Doing; they believe we will cut and run.
European Union officials expressed outrage over Monday's string of bombings in Baghdad, particularly a strike against the international Red Cross. But they insisted officials in Iraq had security under control.

It was the bloodiest day in Baghdad since Saddam Hussein's regime fell in April, with at least 39 people, mostly Iraqis, killed in bombings at several police stations and the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

"The situation is not very good but I don't think it is going to get out of control at all," the EU's foreign policy representative, Javier Solana, said before a meeting of foreign ministers in Brussels.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw reacted with "shock and outrage at the latest terrorist incident."

"I will just make this clear: We will not be deterred by this kind of outrage," Straw said.

He called the security situation in Baghdad "unsatisfactory" but said "overall the situation across Iraq is getting better."

"The fact that terrorists have yet again targeted not U.S. or U.K. troops but an international organization ... shows the depth of depravity to which they stoop," he said.

France condemned the attacks and said a key to combatting such violence was to restore sovereignty to the country.

"In the face of such acts of violence, it is more urgent than ever to embark on a political process, based on the restoration of Iraqi sovereignty, mobilizing all energy toward the country's reconstruction," said Foreign Ministry spokesman Herve Ladsous.
All togerther now: FUCK THE FRENCH AND THE ESCARGOT THEY SLIMED IN ON!
  

10:53 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




War is Hell.

It hurts. And we mourn. But we cannot quit.
BAGHDAD, Oct 27 - A mortar attack killed one U.S. soldier and injured two others at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison on the western outskirts of the Iraqi capital, a U.S. military spokeswoman said on Monday.

She said one military policeman died in the attack at about 10:30 pm on Sunday night. The soldier was the 110th killed in action in Iraq since Washington declared an end to major conflict on May 1.
In the Washington Post...
  

7:42 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




We Cannot Quit

We Cannot Quit. Dubya & Company took us into a war without sufficiently diverse support in a part of the world where Anglo-American unilateralism is in itself cause enough for fanatical insurgents to fight until a bitter end. The administration also took us into a war with almost no plan for winning the "peace." However, we can deal with that in voting booths, but geo-politically we can realistically only deal with the "war" we are in by seeing it through until there is a complete military victory. Anything less would be as bad as leaving Saddam Hussein in despotic power.
BAGHDAD, Oct 27 Bombers struck at least three times in Baghdad at rush hour on Monday morning, killing at least 18 people near a Red Cross building and two police stations.

A blast near an International Committee of the Red Cross building killed 10 people and wounded at least 15, an ICRC official said. One witness said the bomb appeared to have been packed into an ambulance.

In the northeast of the Iraqi capital, a U.S. military policeman said eight people had been killed in a blast near a police station.
There will be updates to this morning's events in Baghdad throughout this day. In the Washington Post...
  

7:26 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Read it and Explain, Dubya: No WMDs

The President of the United States is either a reckless liar, or recklessly incompetent. There are no other choices: Iraq was simply not a nuclear threat at the time of the invasion, and had not been for some years prior. What should be done with lying, incompetent elected officials? Defeat them at the ballot box when they come up for reelection. Impeachment should not be used as recklessly as Republicans did when confronted with a president who lied about sex, even when this president's lie is so much more consequential.
According to records made available to The Washington Post and interviews with arms investigators from the United States, Britain and Australia, it did not require a comprehensive survey to find the central assertions of the Bush administration's prewar nuclear case to be insubstantial or untrue. Although Hussein did not relinquish his nuclear ambitions or technical records, investigators said, it is now clear he had no active program to build a weapon, produce its key materials or obtain the technology he needed for either.

Among the closely held internal judgments of the Iraq Survey Group, overseen by David Kay as special representative of CIA Director George J. Tenet, are that Iraq's nuclear weapons scientists did no significant arms-related work after 1991, that facilities with suspicious new construction proved benign, and that equipment of potential use to a nuclear program remained under seal or in civilian industrial use.

Most notably, investigators have judged the aluminum tubes to be "innocuous," according to Australian Brig. Gen. Stephen D. Meekin, who commands the Joint Captured Enemy Materiel Exploitation Center, the largest of a half-dozen units that report to Kay. That finding is pivotal, because the Bush administration built its case on the proposition that Iraq aimed to use those tubes as centrifuge rotors to enrich uranium for the core of a nuclear warhead.
Read the troubling facts in the Washington Post...
  

7:08 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Want Liberty, Will Travel

If you really want unfettered liberty and are willing to relocate, this just might be your cup of freedom--but it gets cold, very cold.
KEENE, N.H. — A few things stand out about this unprepossessing city. It just broke its own Guinness Book world record for the most lighted jack-o'-lanterns with 28,952. It claims to have the world's widest Main Street.

And recently, Keene became the home of Justin Somma, a 26-year-old freelance copywriter from Suffern, N.Y., and a foot soldier in an upstart political movement. That movement, the Free State Project, aims to make all of New Hampshire a laboratory for libertarian politics by recruiting libertarian-leaning people from across the country to move to New Hampshire and throw their collective weight around. Leaders of the project figure 20,000 people would do the trick, and so far 4,960 have pledged to make the move.

The idea is to concentrate enough fellow travelers in a single state to jump-start political change. Members, most of whom have met only over the Internet, chose New Hampshire over nine other states in a heated contest that lasted months.

(The other contenders were Alaska, Delaware, Idaho, Maine, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont and Wyoming. One frequently asked question on the project's Web site was "Can't you make a warmer state an option?")

Once here, they plan to field candidates in elections and become active in schools and community groups, doing all they can to sow the libertarian ideals of curbing taxes, minimizing regulation of guns and drugs, privatizing schools and reducing government programs.

"We want to make New Hampshire our home, and we want to make it a better place for everybody," said Elizabeth McKinstry, a project spokeswoman. "Many times government gets in the way." ...

New Hampshire's constitution guarantees the "right of revolution" if "the ends of government are perverted and public liberty manifestly endangered."

But that is not their intention, Ms. McKinstry said, pointing to their mascot, a porcupine — "a friendly little forest creature who doesn't harm anyone else, minds his own business, but is not really someone that you want to mess with or you might get stuck and a little ouchy."
Don't laugh, these folks are serious and they have a plan. Read more about it in The New York Times...
  

5:35 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Update

U.S. Military Officer Dies in Rocket Barrage at Baghdad Hotel.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 26 — A senior American military officer was killed and more than a dozen other individuals were wounded early this morning when a barrage of air-to-ground missiles slammed into a hotel inside one of the most secure compounds in Baghdad, where most of the personnel who are part of the American-led occupation here live and eat. Balconies were blasted off of two rooms, and windows were blown out in the Rashid Hotel.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, the intellectual architect of the war against Iraq, who arrived here Friday for a quick look, had spent the night in the hotel, and was one floor above where one of the rockets hit, officials said. He was not injured.

Five other American soldiers were injured, as were seven American civilians working in various Iraqi ministries as part of the American-led effort to rebuild Iraq, officials said. Four non-American civilians were also injured.

The attack, which officials suggested had probably been carried out by men loyal to Saddam Hussein, had been carefully planned, perhaps over two months, and had involved some surveillance and rehearsal, American military officials said.
Read it in The New York Times...
  

6:21 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Sunday, October 26, 2003

The One True God Lobby Rules

Evangelicals have more than just Bush's ear, they hold his political future and, unless he is a complete liar, his heart, mind and soul. Is he then the President of all Americans? Judeo-Christian beliefs and values no doubt lie at the foundation of the Republic, but does blind faith in a supernatural being who did or did not live and then did or did not re-live two millenniums ago belong as the fundamental criterion upon which to base decisions that effect all nations and belief-systems in the 21st Century? The question is only rhetorical at the moment because the fact is that it is a fait accompli.

A century and more after the Bible has been irrefutably proven by the discovery of beasts and humans that lived millions of years ago to be a lively, literary collection of religious musings, parables, philosophical allegories, ethical teachings and creation myths not unlike religions now considered to be paganish, ours and the world's future is in the hands of people who believe in ghosts and spirits and places such as a literal Heaven and Hell. You may be comfortable with that, I am more than just troubled by it, I fear for humankind's very survival because of it. In whose names are we still fighting wars with casualties counted in the hundreds of thousands? Jesus Christ. Allah. Jehovah. Yahweh.

If our leaders believed a bit more in the value of human life on this Earth which is a certainty, as opposed to the value of a life after death with spirits which is more than just a little speculative, might we not kill less of us in anger or for territorial and ideological hegemony? Unfortunately, my concerns are shared by a very silent majority terrified to go up against the fervor of people with faith but not humanity. And who can blame this silent majority when the superstitious minority is so very, very lethal?
Administration officials and members of Congress say the religious coalition has had an unusual influence on one of the most religious White Houses in American history. The groups have driven aspects of foreign policy and won major appointments, and they were instrumental in making sure that the president included extensive remarks on sex trafficking in his speech to the United Nations General Assembly in September.

No one disputes that Mr. Bush already cares deeply about those issues and has a personal faith that his advisers say brings a moral dimension to a foreign policy better known for war. "To put it simply, it's a fairly radical belief that a child in an African village whose parents are dying of AIDS has the same importance before God as the president of the United States," said Michael Gerson, Mr. Bush's chief speechwriter and an important White House policy adviser who is a born-again Christian.

But it is also true, religious leaders and administration officials note, that white evangelicals accounted for about 40 percent of the votes that Mr. Bush received in the 2000 presidential election. In 2004, political analysts say, he is unlikely to be re-elected without the strong support of this constituency, which is predominately but not wholly Republican, and which in other years has thrown significant support to southern Democrats like Bill Clinton. Mr. Rove is now tending to the constituency with great care.

"You're not going to run into too many people who are smarter than Karl," said Dr. Richard D. Land, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, who is in regular contact with Mr. Rove. "Karl understands the importance of this segment of his coalition, and I think the president understands it. The president feels that one of the contributory factors to his father's loss is that he didn't get as many evangelical votes as Reagan did."

The human rights issues offer a politically safe way for the president to appeal to his base of white evangelicals, who leading scholars and pollsters define by their membership in historically white evangelical denominations, like the Southern Baptists and the Assemblies of God. Evangelical churches believe that the Bible is truth, that members have an imperative to proselytize and convert and that Jesus Christ is the only way to salvation. ...

Other religious leaders say that this White House far surpasses the administrations of Ronald Reagan and Mr. Bush's father in its attentiveness.

"Under previous Republican administrations, they would take our calls and often return them," Dr. Land said. "In this administration, they call us. They say, you know, `What do you think about this?' " ...

Mr. [Charles W. Colson, the born-again Christian who spent seven months in jail for his role in Watergate], who has enormous influence among evangelicals because of his books, lectures and radio program, said President Bush personally told religious leaders that he was supporting them on the A.B.C. campaign in a meeting at the White House this spring.

After the meeting, Mr. Colson said he went up to Mr. Bush and said emphatically that faith-based policy worked. "He said, `You don't have to tell me,' " Mr. Colson said the president replied. "He said, `I'd still be drinking if it weren't for what Christ did in my life. I know faith-based works.' "
If that doesn't frighten most of you, then I am terrified for all of us.

Read the whole story in The New York Times...
  

8:36 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Update on Rashid Hotel Attack

U.S. Soldier is Killed in Attack on Baghdad Hotel. While Mr. Wolfowitz was unharmed, an American G.I. was not so fortunate.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sunday, Oct. 26 — A rocket attack on a Baghdad hotel where U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was staying killed an American soldier and wounded 15 people on Sunday, the U.S. military said.

"Six to eight rockets struck the Rashid hotel, fired by terrorist elements," a spokeswoman said. "As a result, one U.S. soldier assigned to the CPA (Coalition Provisional Authority) was killed and 15 (people) were wounded." Wolfowitz was not hurt.
It's in The New York Times...
 

6:39 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Does This Fit the Definition of "Slog"?

Is This What Rummy Meant by "Slog"? Surely Mr. Wolfowitz will consider this an indication that the security issues concerning a liberated Iraq are not being too greatly exaggerated. Unless it was just an amazing coincidence, the timing and location of the attack might suggest that the insurgents' intelligence is not indicative of the absence of a command and control structure as has so aften been asserted by coalition officials. Let us hope that Ms. Ann Coulter will not now add a chapter to her latest book-length revisionist rant and accuse liberal members of the coaltion of treason.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sunday, Oct. 26 — The hotel where Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz stayed overnight during a visit to Iraq was hit by what American soldiers said were rockets early Sunday morning, wounding a number of people. Mr. Wolfowitz was not hurt.

Shortly after 6 a.m., three or four explosions were heard outside the Rashid Hotel, where Mr. Wolfowitz and his delegation are staying. The hotel is also a center for American contract workers in Baghdad.

Shortly after 6 a.m., three or four explosions were heard outside the Rashid Hotel, where Mr. Wolfowitz and his delegation are staying. The hotel is also a center for American contract workers in Baghdad.

Although details remained sketchy shortly after the attack, it appeared that rockets hit on the 3rd, 8th and 11th floors. There were an unknown number of people wounded. At least three were seen being carried though the lobby on stretchers. Mr. Wolfowitz appeared to be unhurt, and he was rushed by security guards out a side door of the lobby. He appeared unfazed, and even exchanged greetings with correspondents who had rushed to the lobby. Smoke filled some of the upper floors, but there were no signs of a fire immediately after the attack.

The attack on the well-known Rashid, especially during the visit of a high-ranking American dignitary, will only serve to underscore security concerns for the American-led stabilization effort and questions about how best to rout loyalists of the Saddam Hussein government.

The rockets fired at the hotel came from beyond a tall security wall that marks the perimeter. One left a line of fireworks-style sparks as it came toward the building, and the 11th floor, where correspondents traveling with Mr. Wolfowitz were staying, shuddered.

One soldier outside the compound said 12 rockets had been left nearby on a generator. Six or seven remained, all set to go off. "It looks professional," the soldier said. "Whoever set this up knew what they were doing."
It should be noted that there was much good news to report about the Deputy Defense Secretary's visit to Iraq, especially in the northern city of Kirkuk.

Read about it in The New York Times...
  

6:23 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




What Is Happening Here?

What could the White House be hiding about 9-11? How can this administration be fearful of any truth concerning 9-11? This does not make sense. No responsible citizen has accused the Bush administration of anything nefarious concerning the worst attack on American civilians in the nation's history. A serious breakdown in communications between intelligence agencies is the worst accusation that even partisan politics has generated. What could Bush possibly want to hide?
MADISON, N.J., Oct. 25 — The chairman of the federal commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks says that the White House is continuing to withhold several highly classified intelligence documents from the panel and that he is prepared to subpoena the documents if they are not turned over within weeks.

"Any document that has to do with this investigation cannot be beyond our reach," Mr. Kean said on Friday in his first explicit public warning to the White House that it risked a subpoena and a politically damaging courtroom showdown with the commission over access to the documents, including Oval Office intelligence reports that reached President Bush's desk in the weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks.

"I will not stand for it," Mr. Kean said in the interview in his offices here at Drew University, where he has been president since 1990.

"That means that we will use every tool at our command to get hold of every document." ...

"Anything that has to do with 9/11, we have to see it — anything. There are a lot of theories about 9/11, and as long as there is any document out there that bears on any of those theories, we're going to leave questions unanswered. And we cannot leave questions unanswered."

While Mr. Kean said he was barred by an agreement with the White House from describing the Oval Office documents at issue in any detail — he said the White House was "quite nervous" about any public hint at their contents — other commission officials said they included the detailed daily intelligence reports that were provided to Mr. Bush in the weeks leading up to Sept. 11. The reports are known within the White House as the Presidential Daily Briefing. ...

Last year, the White House confirmed news reports that President Bush received a written intelligence report in August 2001, the month before the attacks, that Al Qaeda might try to hijack American passenger planes. ...

After months of stating that it believed subpoenas to the executive branch would not be necessary, the commission voted unanimously this month to issue its first subpoena to the Federal Aviation Administration after determining that the F.A.A. had withheld dozens of boxes of documents involving the Sept. 11 attacks.

The subpoena appeared to be a turning point for the commission and for Mr. Kean, a moderate Republican known for his independence. In a statement on Oct. 15, the commission said it was re-examining "its general policy of relying on document requests rather than subpoenas" as a result of the issues with the F.A.A.

The commission, which has a membership that is equally divided among Republicans and Democrats, was created by Congress last year over the initial opposition of the White House. The law creating the panel requires that it complete its work by next May, a deadline that commission members say may be impossible to meet because of the Bush administration's delays in turning over many documents.

Mr. Kean's comments on Friday came as another member of the commission, Max Cleland, the former Democratic senator from Georgia, became the first panel member to say publicly that the commission could not complete its work by its May 2004 deadline and the first to accuse the White House of withholding classified information from the panel for purely political reasons.

"It's obvious that the White House wants to run out the clock here," he said in an interview in Washington. "It's Halloween, and we're still in negotiations with some assistant White House counsel about getting these documents — it's disgusting."

He said that the White House and President Bush's re-election campaign had reason to fear what the commission was uncovering in its investigation of intelligence and law enforcement failures before Sept. 11. "As each day goes by, we learn that this government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists before Sept. 11 than it has ever admitted."

Interviews with several other members of the commission show that Mr. Kean's concerns are widely shared on the panel, and that the concern is bipartisan.
Read it in The New York Times and ask yourself why? Silence or the lack of a defense in the face of accusations are proscribed by law and tradition from being inculpatory of wrongdoing, but the inference of such has always been powerful ammunition for public suspicion and doubt. Whatever it is, coming out with it now would be politically expedient as opposed to later considering the imminent re-election campaign.
  

5:25 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Saturday, October 25, 2003

Kristof is Crystal

Gay at Birth? It will be very interesting to see the response to Nicholas Kristof's eloquent, reasoned, compassionate column in today's The New York Times. At the very least, we will see if Andrew Sullivan, who seldom agrees with Kristof's alleged "liberal media bias," will acknowlege it. But, more importantly, how will the Gay/Lesbian community respond? We already know how self-righteous Christians and ignorant homophobes will respond and we don't care unless they act-out their boorish self-loathing upon others.

For what it's worth, it makes so much sense to me--a nonscientific type--that sexual persuasion would be a part of our genetic package upon arrival into this world. It also makes sense that this is not the case all of the time and that environmental factors and choices that we make play a role in which gender we choose to sleep with regularly.

What makes no sense to me is that we are not yet a live and let live society. I don't have to like what you do to believe in your right to do it. As long as what you do does not infringe upon my rights or others, please feel free and happy to do whatever you wish and by all means marry and cherish and live with whomever you choose. Not that you, or anyone else, need my approval, of course. It would be appropriate and welcomed for state and federal laws to approve, however.
"There is now very strong evidence from almost two decades of `biobehavioral' research that human sexual orientation is predominantly biologically determined," said Qazi Rahman, the University of London researcher who led the blinking study. Many others don't go that far, but accept that there is probably some biological component.

Gays themselves are divided. Some welcome these studies because they confirm their own feeling that sexual orientation is more than a whim. Others fret that the implication is that homosexuals are abnormal or defective — and that future genetic screening will eliminate people like them.

For me the implication, if these studies are to believed, is different: It is that something is defective not in gays, but in discrimination against them.

A basic principle of our social covenant is that we do not discriminate against people on the basis of circumstances that they cannot choose, like race, sex and disability. If sexual orientation belongs on that list (with the caveat that the evidence is still murky), then should we still prohibit gay marriage and bar gays from serving openly in the armed forces?

Can we countenance discrimination against people for something so basic as how they blink — or whom they love?
Gay at Birth?
  

10:24 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Results Are In From the Donor Drive

It Isn't Much, But Every 10 Billion Counts, my papa always said; didn't yours? Times are tough, he would say, you'll have to make do with a used bike, and be damned glad you have one. And I was, weren't you? We were all in the crunch together, right?
MADRID, Oct. 24 — The United States, completing an extraordinary campaign for economic aid to Iraq, won commitments on Friday of at least $13 billion over five years for reconstruction of water, power, health care and other systems devastated by the American invasion six months ago.

The total surpassed what many had expected, although roughly two-thirds of the aid appeared to be in the form of loans rather than grants, which might complicate efforts by the Bush administration to beat back a drive in Congress to make more American aid in the form of loans.

Administration officials have said repeatedly that Iraq needs grants and cannot afford to add to its debt. ...

Exactly how much of the figure mentioned Friday was in the form of grants was not immediately clear. But it appeared that total grants between now and the end of 2004 would come to between $3 billion and $4 billion.
Whoa! Hang on a minute--the war/peace is costing us about $4 Billion a month, right? So, these friends of ours, these countries that respect--or at least are intimidated by our strength and our reach--are ponying up about a month's worth of dough? Some respect. There's not much fear factor apparent in their ardor to remain on the good side of the world's only "superpower," either.
Some donors apparently pledged sums that they had already announced and transmitted earlier. Others included import credits, relief assistance — including $500,000 worth of rice from Vietnam — or other items not on the list of reconstruction and security needs for which the Madrid conference was called. Nor is it clear how much money will be available how soon.

Arab nations did not come through with the large number of grants that the administration had sought, in part because of antipathy toward the war in Iraq and, more recently, the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations. The United Arab Emirates offered $200 million to $250 million. Saudi Arabia offered $1 billion in low-cost loans and an additional $500 million to finance Saudi export credits. Kuwait came up with $500 million.
Jeezumtally! The Saudis spend that much on their mistresses' shopping sprees on Rodeo Drive! They spend many times that financing the Islamic fundamentalism that started all this mess! And these are loans. Surely I am missing something here.
The senior administration official said that while much of the money would be received as loans, interest rates and repayment schedules would be highly favorable to Iraq. Loans, he added, will supply quick infusions of cash to get construction projects going quickly.

Asked why loans were acceptable from the international agencies and other donors but not from Congress, American officials said that they had to recognize the reality of donor finances and that this did not diminish the need for Congress to provide grants.

"Sure, we prefer grants," Treasury Secretary John Snow said. "But what we really are counting on here is financial support, lines of credit, money in the bank that can be drawn on to finance the rebuilding of Iraq."

As delegates left Madrid on Friday evening, many questions remained about the sums pledged. Many development officials cautioned, for example, that the nations pledging them might not live up to their promises. That is what has happened, at least in part, with the $5 billion raised for Afghanistan last year.
Okay, I get it, it's like a public television pledge drive. You get your name mentioned during the telethon, then stiff 'em with "the check's in the mail" routine afterwards. Amazing how Americanized the third world is becoming; they learn fast: Do as we do, not as we say.
Accompanying the pledges were heated demands and warnings from donor nations and from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other international institutions that the United States and Iraq must do a better job in disclosing how money is spent.

"So far there hasn't been a good accounting of how the money was used," said Mark Malloch Brown, head of the United Nations Development Program, referring to the several billion dollars already spent in Iraq from oil revenues and seized Iraqi assets.

American officials bridled at those accusations, saying there had been a full accounting even though it had not yet been made public. L. Paul Bremer III, administrator of the American-led Iraqi occupation, said the accounting would be on a Web site soon.
Yes indeed they learn fast--they want to know how we are going to spend their money. Imagine that? They want an accounting. Why don't we give the job to those guys who kept the books for Enron or WorldCom. That would at least continue to line Cheney the Great's pockets and he's going to be Emperor of something someday and maybe he will give us some of it back as foreign aid.

Read all about it in The New York Times...
  

8:55 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Hu Isn't Who? Any Longer

Hu Isn't Who? Any Longer. Don't look back, Dubya, something is gaining on you--a very BIG something. To the great relief of America--if not the White House and all neo-cons--this giant is not a menace. The China I live, write and teach in wants to be and should be America's best friend and equal partner in stabilizing a chaotic world that lies between these two great nations on opposite sides from each other on this spinning rock called Earth. Just as the United States can be said to have defined the 20th Century, China will define the 21st Century--for good or for bad--it's a fact, and we have to get used to it. If we want not to diminish our defining influence--co-definers, if you will--then we need to ensure that the Chinese government and the Chinese people believe we want to be their friend and not their enemy--or in Bush-speak, "strategic competitor," which they interpret as an "unfriendly" term at the very best, and as an "enemy aggressor" term at far less than worst in their cultural perspective on such things. Apparently Australia, one of our most traditional and faithful allies though muck and shine have an accurate view of China's role in their future.
CANBERRA, Australia, Oct. 25 — The Chinese president, Hu Jintao, addressed Australia's Parliament on Friday, a privilege accorded to him just one day after President Bush, and a juxtaposition almost inconceivable even a year ago in a nation long fearful of China.

Mr. Hu officially laid out in his speech what has become obvious: Australia's natural resources, particularly oil and gas, are playing a critical role in fueling China's fast-growing economy.

But in his parliamentary appearance, Mr. Hu went beyond economics by painting China as an all-around global player that was reaching out for broad diplomatic and cultural relations, including an increase in the already tens of thousands of Chinese students attending Australian universities.

In contrast, Mr. Bush in his address on Thursday, dwelled on a narrow agenda of the campaign against terrorism, and his gratitude to Australia for sending troops to Iraq.

The biggest difference was in style, with an almost complete role reversal of what might be expected. The Chinese leader was gregarious; the American president, aloof.

Mr. Bush left after 21 hours in Australia, stuck to this sleepy capital, and was whisked around in motorcades on routes swept clear of ordinary people. He declined to hold a news conference, and was criticized in the usually pro-American press here for offering little beyond a pledge to complete the outline of a free trade agreement with Australia soon.

Mr. Hu is lingering for three days. He took the traditional outing for visiting dignitaries — a cruise on Sydney's splendid harbor. He met with Australian business executives at a working lunch, and, in an unusual move for a Chinese leader, held a news conference, albeit a fairly scripted affair.

"Bush came, Hu conquered," headlined the Financial Review, the conservative business newspaper.

To reinforce the Chinese leader's theme, the two sides signed a letter of intent for a $21 billion deal calling for the China National Offshore Oil Corporation to take an equity stake in an Australian natural gas field, and to buy the gas over a 25-year period. ...

In choosing to give Mr. Bush and Mr. Hu what amounted to symbolic parity, Mr. Howard was making a keen departure for Australian foreign policy, analysts here said.

Mr. Howard's mentor in politics, Prime Minister Robert Menzies, regularly won re-election in the 1950's and 1960's with campaigns based on the threat of Communist China and with campaign literature illustrated with bold red arrows descending on Australia from China in the north.

During a Labor government, Australia opened diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1973 but for years afterward, many Australians regarded China as Red China.
Read the rest in The New York Times...
 

7:26 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Friday, October 24, 2003

See Rummy Run?

See Rummy Run? Running away from a political fight has never been Mr. Rumsfeld's style. It appears that he is in fact running into one. Soon I think we will find out who really has the courage of their convictions--wrongheaded as those convictions might be--or is in this thing purely for the politics of it and not the good of the Republic and the world. Of course, even as Dubya blinks first--surely the coward in him will come out reflexively--he has the bluster down pat and he's a Bush, they win even when they lose. It's a family trait which for some reason my colleagues in the press have chosen always to ignore--for almost 60 years.
[Still] White House officials have also made clear that they are increasingly frustrated and impatient with Mr. Rumsfeld, particularly after he publicly criticized the president's closest foreign policy adviser, Condoleezza Rice, earlier this month in an internal power struggle that the defense secretary made public.

A Republican who is close to the White House said the view there had been that Mr. Rumsfeld 'went off the deep end' in his reaction earlier this month to Mr. Bush's decision to designate Ms. Rice as the overall coordinator of Iraq policy. 'The worst thing that can happen in Washington is if you're a cabinet member, you think you're bigger than the president,' the Republican said.
The memo by Mr. Rumsfeld that came to light this week warned of a 'long, hard slog ahead' in rebuilding and pacifying Iraq, a description very different from his repeated public statements that the situation there was improving every day. Some lawmakers said on Thursday that the memo had confirmed to them that the defense secretary and his aides had until now given them too optimistic a picture.

The memo by Mr. Rumsfeld that came to light this week warned of a "long, hard slog ahead" in rebuilding and pacifying Iraq, a description very different from his repeated public statements that the situation there was improving every day. Some lawmakers said on Thursday that the memo had confirmed to them that the defense secretary and his aides had until now given them too optimistic a picture.
See Rummy Run in The New York Times...
  

10:02 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Mrs. Generalissimo Ends an Era, Finally

Mrs. Generalissimo ends an era, finally; and it's good riddance to pretentiously vicious rubbish. The last of Charlie Soong's daughters, surely the worst female War Criminal of the 20th Century, is dead at the age of 105, adding emphasis to the cliche that the good die young. While The New York Times sends her off with a very long, front page obit, the following excerpt sums up the murderous, thieving "Mei Ling" well enough for those who know what she did to the China she supposedly loved so much.
Madame Chiang helped craft American policy toward China during the war years, running the Nationalist Government's propaganda operation and emerging as its most important diplomat. Yet she was also deeply involved in the endless maneuverings of her husband, Chiang Kai-shek, who was uneasily at the helm of several shifting alliances with Chinese warlords vying for control of what was then a badly fractured nation.

A devout Christian, Madame Chiang spoke fluent English tinted with the Southern accent she acquired as a school girl in Georgia, and presented a civilized and humane image of a courageous China battling a Japanese invasion and Communist subversion. Yet historians have documented the murderous path that Chiang Kai-shek led in his efforts to win, then keep, and ultimately lose power. It also became clear in later years that the Chiang family had pocketed hundreds of millions of dollars of American aid intended for the war.

Madame Chiang had a notoriously tempestuous relationship with her husband, and then with his son by a previous marriage, Chiang Ching-kuo, who became Taiwan's leader after Chiang Kai-shek's death. Madame Chiang had no children.

Her skill as a politician, alternately charming and vicious, made her a formidable presence. She made a play for Taiwan's leadership after Chiang Ching-kuo died in 1988, even though she was 90 and living in New York at the time.

Although she suffered numerous ailments, including breast cancer, Madame Chiang eventually outlived all her contemporary rivals. She was said to credit her religious faith - she told friends she rose at dawn for an hour of prayer each day - for her good health.

Gen. Joseph W. Stilwell, who worked closely with her when he commanded American forces in China during the war, described Madame Chiang in his diary as a "clever, brainy woman." "Direct, forceful, energetic. Loves power, eats up publicity and flattery, pretty weak on her history. Can turn on charm at will and knows it."
The rest is in The New York Times...
  

7:03 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




From the People's Daily

Roll Over Vladimir Tell Mao Zedong the News: neither Lenin nor the "Great Helmsman" would recognize the face of Communism today, which is China, the only nation of any substance still under at least the label of a "People's Dictatorship." The one place old Joe Stalin did not believe a worker's party could succeed. Go figure.
Nearly three decades ago, no single Western economist could have predicted that China's economy would grow at the fastest rate in the world over the following 25 years.

At that time the preconditions set as necessary in standard Western economic textbooks - a well-established market, private property rights and effective rule of law - were not present.

But overall progress has been made along the years, even in the first half of 2003 when the country was hit by the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS).

A group of economists, politics experts and law experts gathered late October in China's flagship business municipality of Shanghai to seek an answer to what Westerners have hailed the "China miracle".

Mainstream economics in the West categorizes the Chinese economy as a "changing socialist economy." This definition was called into question by Chinese scholars. Shi Zhengfu, an economic professor with the Shanghai-based prestigious Fudan University, said what has been produced in China is probably not a change from one social and economic system to another, nor "transitional' to capitalism in Westerners" view, but an "evolution to an unknown world."

Mainstream economics in the West categorizes the Chinese economy as a "changing socialist economy." This definition was called into question by Chinese scholars. Shi Zhengfu, an economic professor with the Shanghai-based prestigious Fudan University, said what has been produced in China is probably not a change from one social and economic system to another, nor "transitional" to capitalism in Westerners' view, but an "evolution to an unknown world."

"This situation provides an epoch-making opportunity for the creation of China's own economics," said Shi, who is director of the New Political and Economic Center of the Fudan University.

His view was echoed by a string of senior Chinese economic experts attending the seminar on "Marching to New Politics and Economics" held in Fudan.
Go ahead, it won't bite; read the rest of the story in the People's Daily...
  

5:44 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Rummy Like a Fox

Rummy Like a Fox: Leaks Like an Old Barge. So what do the ninny-sayers and tin-pot neo-con pundits--led by the InstaPundit himself, Professor Reynolds--who have been screeching for subpoenas to be delivered to USA Today have to say about this manipulation of the "liberal" media by an old-con? Put Rummy on the stand and swear him in, Professor InstaPundit?
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is a master of relentlessly upbeat progress reports on the Pentagon's military gains against terrorism. So it was startling to see his real assessment in a memo circulated last week to top military officials, and then publicly released this week. Mr. Rumsfeld questioned whether America was 'winning or losing the global war on terror' and asked whether an institution as big as the Pentagon was capable of changing itself fast enough to win. The results so far in shutting down Al Qaeda, he concluded, have only been 'mixed.' Progress in hunting down top Taliban leaders, he noted, has also been relatively slow. ...

Mr. Rumsfeld is a canny player who knows exactly what he is doing when he drafts internal memos and makes them public. Recently, he has been getting much of the public blame for things that have gone wrong in Iraq, from prewar intelligence to postwar administration. He came out on the losing end of a turf battle with the White House national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice. For months he has waged a low-intensity war with the director of central intelligence, George Tenet. So it is not surprising to see him trying to reshape the larger debate.

Mr. Rumsfeld's big problem is that he seems to want to run almost every aspect of the war on terror but prefers to share the blame when things do not work out. Now he muses about forming a new institution that "seamlessly focuses the capabilities of several departments and agencies" on the problem of terrorism. He helpfully suggested that this new institution might be located within the Defense Department — or maybe elsewhere.

Talking about such a change seems logical. But Mr. Rumsfeld is astute enough to realize that an administration that has just created the Department of Homeland Security is not likely to start all over again any time soon. Perhaps he is really making a case for another huge increase in the Pentagon's already swollen budget.
Rummy is nailed by The New York Times...
  

1:50 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Thursday, October 23, 2003

Elephant Talk

There's no way the Republicans will take Mr. Friedman's advice--it's too good.
Republicans seem to think they don't have to think when it comes to Iraq. They only have to applaud the president and whack the press for not reporting more good news from Baghdad — and everything will be fine. Well, think again.

I've often pointed out the good we have done in Iraq and unabashedly hoped for more. No regrets. But some recent trends leave me worried. Unfortunately, there are few Democrats to press my worries on the administration. Most Democrats either opposed the war (a perfectly legitimate position) or supported it and are now trying to disown it. That means the only serious opposition can come from Republicans, so they'd better get focused — because there is nothing about the Bush team's performance in Iraq up to now that justifies a free pass. If Republicans don't get serious on Iraq, they will wake up a year from now and find all their candidates facing the same question: How did your party lose Iraq?"

If I were a Republican senator, here's what I'd tell the Bush team: [...]

• Attacks on our forces are getting more deadly, not less. Besides those killed, we've had 900 wounded or maimed. We need to take this much more seriously. We're not facing some ragtag insurrection. We're facing an enemy with a command and control center who is cleverly picking off our troops and those Iraqi leaders and foreigners cooperating with us. Either we put in the troops needed to finish the war, and project our authority, or we get the Iraqi Army to do the job — but pretending that we're just "mopping up" is a dangerous illusion.
This was just a sample, hoping you will go to the source for the rest: Thomas L. Friedman of The New York Times
  

11:47 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Shouldn't the Attacks be Going Down Not Up?

Shouldn't the attacks be decreasing, not increasing? Isn't something wrong with this picture? Or is there a nonconventional military axiom at work here that we civilians do not understand about this "new" kind of war? Rummy's memo does not offer much reason for even cautious optimism.
BAGHDAD, Oct. 22 -- Attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq have increased sharply over the past two weeks, reaching a high of 35 a day, the commanding American general here said on Wednesday.

Over much of the summer, military officials had said there were between 10 and 15 attacks on U.S. soldiers most days. Since early October, however, the number of daily attacks has fluctuated between 20 and 35, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez said at a news conference.
Read it in the Washington Post...
  

9:24 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Wednesday, October 22, 2003

Kristof and Homer

Kristof waxes classical and does it brilliantly. Let's hope somebody reads his column in today's The New York Times to Dubya & Company--I know, I know, it's asking the impossible, but we must at least try.
In case "The Iliad" isn't lying around the Oval Office, let me recap for our warriors in Washington. Achilles is both the mightiest warrior and a petulant, self-righteous, arrogant figure. A unilateralist, he refuses to consult with allies; he dismisses intelligence about his own vulnerability; he never reads the newspapers.

So the Greeks are nearly defeated, and while Achilles sulks in his tent, his dearest friend, Patroclus, is killed. Then the impulsive Achilles careers into action and overdoes it in the other direction, desecrating Hector's body, but in the end he returns to his tent, calms down and shows a new sense of his own limits, a new compassion, a new moderation and a new wisdom.

That is a constant theme in the classics: ancient heroes like Achilles and Odysseus do not avoid mistakes, but they learn from them. Through their errors, they come to understand moral nuance as well as moral clarity, and to appreciate moderation. Indeed, the subtitle for "The Iliad" could be "Achilles Grows Up."

That is a constant theme in the classics: ancient heroes like Achilles and Odysseus do not avoid mistakes, but they learn from them. Through their errors, they come to understand moral nuance as well as moral clarity, and to appreciate moderation. Indeed, the subtitle for "The Iliad" could be "Achilles Grows Up."

Unfortunately, until recently this administration hasn't shown much signs of growing. Yet over the last few weeks, there have been a few hints of a rosy-fingered dawn, signs that President Bush may be learning from his mistakes and moderating his impulsiveness. I'm hoping that's the case, and it's reassuring to remember what happened in the last electoral cycle: Mr. Bush turned his campaign upside-down after his loss to John McCain in New Hampshire in 2000.

It helps that Mr. Bush has made plenty of mistakes to learn from. Just look around the globe:

Afghanistan was a brilliantly executed war, but the peace was flubbed because of a failure to provide security outside Kabul. Iraq was a well-planned war and an unplanned peace. A refusal to negotiate with North Korea led it to ramp up its nuclear production lines. And haughtiness (the same problem Achilles had) has nurtured more anti-Americanism than Al Qaeda ever did.

The clearest sign of a new willingness to learn from error is Mr. Bush's pirouette on North Korea. Mr. Bush has now abandoned his position that we will not negotiate with North Korea until it gives up its nuclear programs. While it may be too late to reach a deal, he is taking the first steps toward constructive diplomacy by discussing a security guarantee for North Korea.

Then we have the White House's seizing control over Iraq policy from the Pentagon ideologues. That's potentially a very important shift because it empowers pragmatists like Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, who, unlike the civilian leaders at the Pentagon, don't filter all information through ideological sieves.

To pursue the classical parallel, Don Rumsfeld can be compared to Ajax, the Greek warrior who had great force projection — but was so deluded that he laid waste to what he perceived to be his enemies and turned out to be a herd of cattle. (But a prominent classics scholar called the comparison daft, noting that Ajax "has such nobility of spirit.")

Homer's most powerful lessons include the need to restrain hubris, to cooperate with allies, to engage the real world rather than black-and-white caricatures. If Achilles and Odysseus can learn those lessons, maybe there's hope for Mr. Rumsfeld or even the mighty Mr. Bush.
Kristof...
  

8:13 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




The New York Times Speaks

The General Who Roared needs to leave the public payroll and tend his flock elsewhere.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced yesterday that the Pentagon was investigating speeches in churches by a high-ranking Defense Department official who called the war on terrorism a Christian battle against Satan and disparaged a Muslim adversary as an idol worshiper. The inquiry seems like a waste of time. Mr. Rumsfeld should remove the officer, Lt. Gen. William Boykin, as deputy under secretary of defense for intelligence, where he leads the effort to capture the people on a most-wanted list headed by Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

General Boykin has made a practice of speaking about his job from the pulpit while wearing his uniform. The Los Angeles Times reported last week that he had told a congregation in Oregon that he was leading a 'spiritual battle' against Satan. The only way for the United States, 'a Christian nation,' to defeat terrorists is to 'come against them in the name of Jesus,' he said.

This is not a debate about General Boykin's religious views, as his conservative defenders say, or about free speech. The question of what military rule he may have violated — which is what the Pentagon inquiry may seize on — is a distraction.

General Boykin was not exercising the free speech rights of a private citizen. Speaking as he did in uniform the day after he was appointed deputy under secretary was indefensible. Not only did a high-ranking government official make remarks that espoused a single religious view and denigrated others, but he damaged the national security policy of the United States.

President Bush and all other top officials have said often, and rightly, that the United States is not engaged in a religious war. General Boykin, who is said to have asked for the inquiry, should not be undermining that policy, subjecting his country to international embarrassment and providing ammunition for those who portray the war against terror as a war against Islam. Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad of Malaysia, who was criticized by Mr. Bush on Monday for making anti-Semitic remarks, tossed the Boykin case back at Mr. Bush yesterday, telling an interviewer that the general has a "biased view of Muslims."

There was more than a whiff of hypocrisy in Mr. Rumsfeld's comments yesterday. The secretary professed to have formed no view on the Boykin matter because he had not heard the general's remarks. But Mr. Rumsfeld did not need a personal hearing earlier this year to chastise the Army chief of staff for differing with him on the war in Iraq, and to question the patriotism of retired generals who critiqued his war strategy on television. Unlike General Boykin, they did not have the backing of conservative Christians, a key constituency for Mr. Bush's re-election.
"The General Who Roared," courtesy of the editorial staff of The New York Times.
  

4:50 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Is Somebody Getting the Message?

Sure Boykin asked to be investigated--why not, he's got Jesus on his side.
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said today that he had agreed to a request by one of his top Pentagon officials for a review of remarks the official made comparing the war against Islamic militants to a battle of a Christian nation against Satan.

At a Pentagon briefing this afternoon, Mr. Rumsfeld again insisted that he has yet to see a transcript or tapes that fully portray remarks attributed to the official, Lieut. Gen. William Boykin, the deputy under secretary of defense for intelligence. The remarks have been widely criticized as anti-Islamic, and some have called for President Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld to reprimand Gen. Boykin, or to ask for the general's resignation.

The defense secretary said General Boykin had asked for the review in order to determine whether he had violated any Pentagon rules or procedures.

"General Boykin has requested that an inspector general review this matter," Mr. Rumsfeld said. "And I have indicated that if that's his request, I think it's appropriate."

Several hours later, Senator John Warner, the Virginia Republican who heads the armed services committee, spoke on the senate floor and asked that the general be reassigned to another job while the Defense Department's Inspector General looks into whether the remarks were inappropriate. He revealed that he and Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, had sent a letter to Mr. Rumsfeld on Friday asking for an investigation.

In the letter, the senators said they respected people's freedom of speech, but said there should be limits to this for service members.

"Public statements by a senior military official of an inflammatory, offensive nature that would denigrate another religion, and which could be construed as bigotry may easily be exploited by enemies of the United States," the statement read in part.

The senators went on to say in the letter that such statements could increase the risk "for members of the U.S. armed forces serving in Muslim nations."
Gawd works in mysterious ways, read about in the Washington Post...
  

11:12 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Krugman Being Krugman, and We Learn A Thing or Two

Read Krugman Being Krugman, and Learn A Thing or Two, as Always.
So what's with the anti-Semitism? Almost surely it's part of Mr. Mahathir's domestic balancing act, something I learned about the last time he talked like this, during the Asian financial crisis of 1997-98.

At that time, rather than accept the austerity programs recommended by the U.S. government and the I.M.F., he loudly blamed machinations by Western speculators, and imposed temporary controls on the outflow of capital — a step denounced by all but a handful of Western economists. As it turned out, his economic strategy was right: Malaysia suffered a shallower slump and achieved a quicker recovery than its neighbors.

What became clear watching Mr. Mahathir back then was that his strident rhetoric was actually part of a delicate balancing act aimed at domestic politics. Malaysia has a Muslim, ethnically Malay, majority, but its business drive comes mainly from an ethnic Chinese minority. To keep the economy growing, Mr. Mahathir must allow the Chinese minority to prosper, but to ward off ethnic tensions he must throw favors, real and rhetorical, to the Malays.

Part of that balancing act involves reserving good jobs for Malay workers and giving special business opportunities to Malay entrepreneurs. One reason Mr. Mahathir was so adamantly against I.M.F. austerity plans was that he feared that they would disrupt the carefully managed cronyism that holds his system together. When times are tough, Mr. Mahathir also throws the Muslim majority rhetorical red meat.

And that's what he was doing last week. Not long ago Washington was talking about Malaysia as an important partner in the war on terror. Now Mr. Mahathir thinks that to cover his domestic flank, he must insert hateful words into a speech mainly about Muslim reform. That tells you, more accurately than any poll, just how strong the rising tide of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism among Muslims in Southeast Asia has become. Thanks to its war in Iraq and its unconditional support for Ariel Sharon, Washington has squandered post-9/11 sympathy and brought relations with the Muslim world to a new low.

And bear in mind that Mr. Mahathir's remarks were written before the world learned about the views of Lt. Gen. William "My God Is Bigger Than Yours" Boykin. By making it clear that he sees nothing wrong with giving an important post in the war on terror to someone who believes, and says openly, that Allah is a false idol — General Boykin denies that's what he meant, but his denial was implausible even by current standards — Donald Rumsfeld has gone a long way toward confirming the Muslim world's worst fears.

Somewhere in Pakistan Osama bin Laden must be enjoying this. The war on terror didn't have to be perceived as a war on Islam, but we seem to be doing our best to make it look that way.
Read Krugman...
  

12:49 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




A Fool's Fool Plus One

A Racist and a Liar...
BANGKOK (Reuters) - An unrepentant Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad has repeated his belief that Jews rule the world, denying U.S. President George W. Bush had rebuked him for it and hitting out at Australian leader John Howard. ...

But Mahathir said reports Bush had rebuked him were wrong.

"Certainly, he did not rebuke me," Mahathir told a news conference after the two-day summit ended. "All he said was that 'I regret today to have to use strong words against you'," Mahathir said.

"After that we were walking practically hand-in-hand."
Perhaps he isn't lying; perhaps it is Jr. who is lying--or talking out of both sides of his smirking mouth.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard, speaking after the interview was published, promised frosty politeness when he met Mahathir on the final day of the summit.

"I will maintain cordiality and no more with Dr Mahathir," he said.

Mahathir, who has always had a prickly relationship with his counterparts from Canberra whom he accuses of trying to be the U.S. 'deputy sheriff' in Asia, said Howard was merely performing to type.

"There's a fondness among leaders in Australia, prime ministers of Australia, to make nasty comments like calling me recalcitrant, et cetera," he said.

"John Howard did the same thing, repeatedly, even casting aspersions on our judicial system, as if we do not understand law, we don't understand fair deal and justice."

"In fact, we do. We had a very good history of treating our aborigines, for example. We didn't shoot them dead. We didn't commit genocide. So when making criticism of other people, please look at your own background and temper it with some humility."

In the Bangkok Post interview, Mahathir complained that reports of his remarks on Jews last week to an Islamic summit in Malaysia, which the United States, the European Union, Australia and others denounced as anti-Semitic, "just picked up one sentence in my speech".

News accounts had ignored his condemnation of all violence, including suicide bombings, and his call on Muslims to heed the teachings of the Koran and talk peace with Israel, he said.

Asked why he thought this was the case, Mahathir replied: "Well, many newspapers are owned by Jews. They only see that angle and they have a powerful influence over the thinking of many people. Only their side of the picture is given now."
Reuters
  

12:23 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Tuesday, October 21, 2003

Wrong and Divisive and Worse

Wrong and Divisive Indeed. We have already produced a number of posts on both of these matters. And when you add in the Gregg Easterbrook exercise in journalistic bigotry it makes one wonder if we as a civilization are not marching backward in time at double speed. Today's editorial in the Washington Post raises the strong suggestion that the people entrusted with safeguarding the underpinning ideals upon which this nation, the grandest experiment in liberty and justice ever attempted on this earth, are perhaps those who are doing the most to destroy them. We cannot let this stand. It is of such eloquent importance that we will reproduce the editorial here in its entirety.
PRESIDENT BUSH rightly took issue yesterday with the anti-Semitic comments of Malaysia's prime minister. Mr. Bush took Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad aside during the economic summit in Bangkok 'and told him that what he said was 'wrong and divisive,' according to White House press secretary Scott McClellan. "It stands squarely against what I believe in," Mr. McClellan quoted the president as saying. Mr. Mahathir had told an Islamic conference last week that "the Jews rule the world by proxy" and urged Islamic nations to unite against being "defeated by a few million Jews." He received a standing ovation from his colleagues -- making Mr. Bush's expression of disapproval all the more necessary.

Would that Mr. Bush's sense of outrage at religiously inflammatory remarks was so finely tuned when it comes to members of his own administration. Thus far he has found nothing to criticize in remarks disparaging of Islam by Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin, his deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence. In videotapes of appearances before church groups -- obtained by military analyst William N. Arkin and first described on NBC and in the Los Angeles Times -- Gen. Boykin, in Army uniform, describes the United States as a "Christian nation" and says he knew he would capture a Somali warlord because "I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol." Gen. Boykin casts the war against terrorism as a "spiritual battle," saying that "Satan wants to destroy this nation, he wants to destroy us as a nation, and he wants to destroy us as a Christian army."

Gen. Boykin now argues that his "idol" reference was to the worship of money and power, not Allah. But a review of the full text of his remarks cannot support this reading. In fact, the full text only adds to the questions about his suitability. At the Good Shepherd Community Church in Sandy, Ore., last June, just after he received his third star and was named to his Pentagon post, Gen. Boykin said, "Don't you worry about what these courts say. Our God reigns supreme."

Some of his comments also raise questions about Gen. Boykin's fitness to oversee military intelligence, questions of religious bigotry aside. He describes taking photographs during a helicopter tour before leaving Mogadishu, Somalia, and then finding an unexplained black mark on the developed pictures, which he explains as a manifestation of evil. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is your enemy," he tells the Good Shepherd audience. "It is not Osama bin Laden, it is the principalities of darkness. It is a spiritual enemy that will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus and pray for this nation and for our leaders." He also offers this take on Sept. 11: "Whether you realize it or not, I believe there were at least two more airplanes that were headed for major installations in this country. I believe that there was one headed for the White House, and there was one headed for the Capitol, but they were thwarted by the hand of God."

Gen. Boykin's comments have already become political fodder -- for those who push the belief that the United States is waging war on Islam, not on terrorism, and for those who would excuse other forms of religious intolerance. Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher, praising Mr. Mahathir's speech, said, "We hope that those who condemned Mahathir's speech lend more attention to the words of the American general . . . who demonstrated hostility toward Islam and Muslims."

But from the Bush administration, there has not been a syllable of criticism. Air Force Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that it didn't seem Gen. Boykin had violated any rules. "We're a free people," said Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. On ABC's "This Week" Sunday, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice ducked the question -- twice. The president ought to be forthright about comments that are wrong and divisive -- whether they're uttered by a foreign leader or by one of his own generals.
To the editorial staff of the Washington Post we say thank you and well done.
  

11:59 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




It's in The New Yorker--I Sure Miss My Mags; They're Lost Somewhere In a Chinese Post Office or Two!

Seymour's Got the Goods Again...
By early March, 2002, a former White House official told me, it was understood by many in the White House that the President had decided, in his own mind, to go to war. The undeclared decision had a devastating impact on the continuing struggle against terrorism. The Bush Administration took many intelligence operations that had been aimed at Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups around the world and redirected them to the Persian Gulf. Linguists and special operatives were abruptly reassigned, and several ongoing anti-terrorism intelligence programs were curtailed.
Damn! I don't mind reading all of my newspapers online--but not my NEW YORKERS This screwup with my move from Xiamen to Beijing pains me almost as much as the mess our nation and world is in under Dubya's unwatchful watch!
  

9:36 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




"Will the Chinese Own Space By 2050?"

Will the Chinese Own Space By 2050? My students here at the exclusive college for Chinese diplomats and leaders of the future--China Foreign Affairs University--while being typically Chinese about it (never ever boastful) are energized unlike anything I've seen in young people since the heyday of our Apollo ventures. It is impossible to over emphasize what last week's manned space flight meant to the self-esteem of the Chinese people. China's greatest resource is its astronomical work force--where we throw money at problems or challenges, they throw labor, lots, and lots of it; and it is high quality labor; it is selfless labor. I am convinced there is nothing this nation cannot do when it is mobilized and motivated to do it.
As Space Daily reports, the idea is not so far-fetched. Although China's recent success in putting a man into orbit is a feat accomplished by the Americans and Russions four decades ago, it's the future that counts. "By 2050, you could see a Chinese base on the moon, or even on Mars," said Brian Harvey, the Dublin-based author of a book on China's space program. "The challenges are much less technical than they are political and having the money and the will to do it."

For China, money has not been a problem thus far, since its entire manned space program has cost only 2.3 billion dollars--what the US space shuttle costs every six months. And political will also seems to exist in abundance, given the immense boost to the country's prestige after the successful flight of the Shenzhou V.

"It took just eight years from when the United States planned to send a man to the moon until it happened,' said Harvey. And much more is now known about space and living in it than was known back then."

China's next goal is likely to be an attempted space walk as well as experiments with space rendezvous. They will then likely aim for a space station and an unmanned mission to the Moon in 2008. Beyond that is conjecture, but China's research programs may indicate a rough direction. China has plans for a new generation of rockets named Long March 5, which will carry significantly heavier payloads. The Shenzhou capsule should, with minor modifications, be able to send a Chinese astronaut around the Moon and back.

China has made no announcements on whether it hopes to place a man on the Moon. But Chinese space exhibitions have had scale models of what a base on Mars might look like...
SCiSCOOP...
  

8:13 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Making Sense on Taiwan

Beijing is on a roll, first the successful space leap, and now THIS:
NEW YORK - The front-runner in Taiwan's presidential race accused his government Monday of trying to provoke China by demanding a decision on independence.

Lien Chan, leader of the Nationalist Party, said unification with China should come "one day, but ... first of all we insist on the maintenance of status quo."

Taiwan should not create a new crisis in Asia when the United States already has "its hands full" with problems in Iraq (news - web sites), North Korea (news - web sites) and the war on terrorism, he said. The best way to do this is "do not try to needle or to provoke unnecessarily the other side."

Chinese leaders insist that Taiwan belongs to China, though the self-governed, democratic island has never been ruled by Beijing's Communist Party government. A civil war separated the two sides in 1949, and China has threatened to use its massive military to force Taiwan to unify.

Lien, who leads President Chen Shui-bian in opinion polls, spoke to a small group of United Nations (news - web sites)-based reporters over the weekend before heading to Washington for a series of meetings and speeches, including one at the National Press Club on Tuesday.

According to Lien, Chen wants the election to be a vote on independence "once and for all."

In the last three months, Chen has proposed changing the name of the Republic of China to the Republic of Taiwan, holding a plebiscite to give this legitimacy, and adopting a new constitution, Lien said.

"All this kind of thing is provocative — very provocative," he said. "It's unfair to the Taiwanese people to twist their arms and ask them to make a decision in the next election" on independence. ...

In recent polls, he and popular vice-presidential running mate James Soong have a substantial lead. Polls also consistently show that between 55 percent and 60 percent of Taiwan's 23 million people support the status quo advocated by Lien.
More, from the A.P.
  

7:20 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




From Gawd's Mouth to Allah's Ear(full)

Born Again Rebukes Still Crazy After All These Years.
BANGKOK, Thailand - Despite criticism by President Bush and other world leaders, an unrepentant Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad repeated his charge that Jews control the world.

In an interview published Tuesday with the Bangkok Post, Mahathir stood by his earlier statements on Jews and said the global reaction "shows that (Jews) do control the world."

"Israel is a small country. There are not many Jews in the world. But they are so arrogant that they defy the whole world. Even if the United Nations say no, they go ahead. Why? Because they have the backing of all these people," Mahathir was quoted as saying.

[Mahathir] triggered an uproar last week at a summit of Islamic countries by stating that "Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them."

That led Bush to pull him aside at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting to say the remarks were "wrong and divisive," a White House spokesman said.

A senior Malaysian official said Bush's personal rebuke of Mahathir, considered a senior statesman in Asia, was disrespectful.

"I consider Bush's action rude, as though he wants to determine what and how a person should speak and say something," Rais Yatim, Malaysia's de facto law minister was quoted as saying in Kuala Lumpur by the Malaysian news agency, Bernama. ...

Shortly before Bush and Mahathir sat down together in the same room with 19 other APEC leaders Monday, U.S. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said the American president "thinks those remarks were reprehensible. I do not think they are emblematic of the Muslim world."

Later White House press secretary Scott McClellan quoted Bush as telling the Malaysian leader face to face that , "It stands squarely against what I believe in."
What Century have we warped back into?
  

7:00 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




God's Holy Warrior Plays With Only Half a Deck

Obviously, General Boykin has spent too much time in strange places--like maybe wandering 40 days and 40 nights in the Wilderness. I kid you not. Read some of his "revelations":
In June of 2002, Jerry Boykin stepped to the pulpit at the First Baptist Church of Broken Arrow, Okla., and described a set of photographs he had taken of Mogadishu, Somalia, from an Army helicopter in 1993.

The photographs were taken shortly after the disastrous "Blackhawk Down" mission had resulted in the death of 18 Americans. When Boykin came home and had them developed, he said, he noticed a strange dark mark over the city. He had an imagery interpreter trained by the military look at the mark. "This is not a blemish on your photograph," the interpreter told him, "This is real."

"Ladies and gentleman, this is your enemy," Boykin said to the congregation as he flashed his pictures on a screen. "It is the principalities of darkness. . . . It is a demonic presence in that city that God revealed to me as the enemy."

That's an unusual message for a high-ranking U.S. military official to deliver. But Boykin does it frequently.

This June, for instance, at the pulpit of the Good Shepherd Community Church in Sandy, Ore., he displayed slides of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and North Korea's Kim Jung Il. "Why do they hate us?" Boykin asked. "The answer to that is because we're a Christian nation. . . . We are hated because we are a nation of believers."

Our "spiritual enemy," Boykin continued, "will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus."
You must read the rest, Atlanta Journal-Constitution
 

6:17 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




The Jesus Lobby Speaks

The Jesus Lobby girds for battle. And so they begin, again, in the first decade of the 21st Century, the wars of god. The exclusive, ferocious, visored soldiers of superstitious Inquisition march against the troops of reason, rationality and inclusion: Shame on us all.
Religious conservatives in Congress are defending a Pentagon general who referred to the war on terror as a Christian fight against Satan.

In remarks many consider demeaning to Islam, Army Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin has told church audiences his mission is 'a battle with Satan.' The struggle, Boykin said, is "because we're a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian ... and the enemy is a guy named Satan."

Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan., drafted a letter Monday asking Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld not to discipline Boykin, saying that elected officials and military leaders have talked about God and spiritual matters throughout U.S. history.

"As elected officials serving in the United States Congress, we recognize the vital importance our personal faiths play in helping us make decisions," Tiahrt wrote. "We ask that any actions taken in response to Lt. Gen. Boykin's remarks not, in any way, intimidate the free religious exercise of his faith."

Boykin, a three-star general, is deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence. He's also told audiences that President Bush is in the White House "because God put him there for a time such as this," and he once said after a 1993 battle with a Muslim warlord in Somalia, "I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol." ...

The Kansas congressman circulated the letter among colleagues, including Missouri Republican Rep. Todd Akin, who signed it. Tiahrt serves on the defense spending subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee, while Akin serves on the House Armed Services Committee.

"The general is an outstanding leader and is widely respected in the military," said Akin spokesman Steve Taylor. "He has expressed he needs to be more guarded in his statements, and the congressman believes that is sufficient. And he agrees with Secretary Rumsfeld that he is an exemplary public servant."
The Jesus Lobby Speaks at ABC...
  

11:52 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Monday, October 20, 2003

Darn! Ya Mean I Really Gotta Read Those Reports?

The "Yale For Dummies" poster boy is at it again, double time. Dubya made two misspeaks during his short stop-over in Indonesia.
President Bush misspoke when he said last week that the United States was ready to "go forward with" a new package of military training programs with Indonesia, according to a White House official questioned about the president's remarks.

Bush said on Indonesian television that new military programs could be launched because Indonesia had cooperated in an investigation into the killing of two U.S. citizens last year in the eastern Indonesia province of Papua.

The comments caught U.S. officials by surprise. Asked to explain Bush's remarks, a senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: "We want to move ahead with increased military-to-military cooperation with Indonesia, which is in both of our interests.

"Progress in building a broader military-to-military relationship with Indonesia," he said, however, "will be pinned on continued cooperation from Indonesia on the investigation into the murders of two Americans" near the town of Timika, in Papua. "The investigation is moving forward due to the improved cooperation by the Indonesia government."

No new programs are currently planned or have been approved, other administration officials said, contrary to what Bush's statement implied.

During the same interview, Bush also mischaracterized Congress's continued opposition to such military training. Bush said that "for a while the Congress put restrictions on [military training], but now the Congress has changed their attitude."

In fact, opposition in Congress to military training programs with Indonesia grew stronger this year after the possibility of Indonesian military involvement in the Papua attack was raised in a closed-door hearing in May. The hearing also included testimony from a CIA analyst who discussed intelligence indicating that military personnel were seeking to withhold evidence from FBI agents.
This is of course the guy in the White House who brags about not reading. So, okay, we don't need a genius as president, that is what staffers are for. But maybe if he shut up and listened a little more it would be a safer world. Read more about it in the Washington Post...
  

11:34 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




As Long as I'm the Marshal, I Don't Care

You can take the bullshit out of Texas, but you can't take the Texan out of his Bullshit.
BANGKOK, Oct. 19 -- President Bush won't land in Australia until Wednesday, but already he has riled politicians throughout the region by suggesting that he sees Prime Minister John Howard as his "sheriff" in the war on terrorism in Southeast Asia.

Bush's Texas talk previously got him a rebuke from first lady Laura Bush when he said he wanted Osama bin Laden "dead or alive," a challenge the president has regretted. At another point, a close aide suggested that he stop referring to terrorists as "folks."

This time, Bush took the bait during a round-table discussion with Asian reporters before he left the White House for his six-country Pacific swing. He was asked if the United States views Australia "as its deputy sheriff in Southeast Asia."

"No," Bush replied. "We don't see it as a deputy sheriff, we see it as a sheriff. There's a difference."

Bush then mentioned Howard's visit to Texas in May. "I see, you're playing off the Crawford visit to the ranch, the sheriff thing," Bush said. "Anyway, no, equal partners and friends and allies. There's nothing deputy about this relationship."
The problem here seems to be that Mr. Howard left the Crawford Ranch in possession of some of its prime bullshit.
Howard has inflamed regional sensitivities in the past by suggesting Australia might practice its own preemption doctrine. Indonesia and the Philippines, both stops on Bush's trip, were among the countries that objected to Howard's stance.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar, whose country was left off Bush's itinerary, offered sarcastic congratulations to Australia.

"That is the beauty of a unipolar world: You can promote anybody," the foreign minister said. "I don't know how many more will be promoted. Are there many more vacancies?"
It should be noted that Texas doesn't have a monopoly on bullshit talk: this is the same Indonesian Foreign Minister who has tried to defend Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad telling a summit of Islamic leaders on Thursday that "the Jews rule the world by proxy."

In the Washington Post...
  

11:17 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Legacy of the Crusades, Past and Present?

Progress in the Arab world is being hindered by the Bush administration's post-Sept. 11, 2001, tightening of visa restrictions and the U.S. government's treatment of terrorism suspects, a team of Arab intellectuals contends in a new report to be released today in Jordan.

Thirty percent fewer Arabs studied in the United States in 2002 than three years earlier, according to the Arab Human Development Report. Some Arab governments also defended draconian measures against opponents by pointing to the stern security measures imposed by the United States and other developed democracies.

"It's 30 percent. Many reformers saw these people as the future hope," Rima Khalaf Hunaidi, director of the United Nations-sponsored report, said in an interview. "They were the ones who advocated reform. They were the ones who had a different vision."
This article needs to be read in full, in The Washington Post
 

11:12 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Powell Wins Another one

Colin Powell is apparently trumping Cheney, Rumsfeld & Conpany. Let's see if it lasts, and if the security situation stabilizes to the point that the would-be donors can gather up the cojones to put their money and engineer boots on the ground in Iraq.
BANGKOK, Oct. 19 — Under pressure from potential donors, the Bush administration will allow a new agency to determine how to spend billions of dollars in reconstruction assistance for Iraq, administration and international aid officials say.

The new agency, to be independent of the American occupation, will be run by the World Bank and the United Nations. They are to announce the change at a donor conference in Madrid later this week.

The change effectively establishes some of the international control over Iraq that the United States opposed in the drafting of the United Nations Security Council resolution that passed on Thursday. That resolution referred to two previously established agencies devised to ensure that all aid would be monitored and audited.

But diplomats say other countries were unwilling to make donations because they saw the United States as an occupying power controlling Iraq's reconstruction and self-rule.

The change, supported by L. Paul Bremer III, the chief occupation administrator in Baghdad, is meant to assure them as his team labors to reconstruct Iraq.
Read it all, in The New York Times...
  

11:03 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Safire Living and Writing Unitil He's 150?

William Safire writes so damn well, the fact that I almost always disagree with his politics has not prevented me from reading him ardently for years. This is a very good thing, otherwise I would have missed this piece of elegant, but forceful writing that I also mostly agree with. It is: Of Mice and Men, an excerpt of which is below:
We want to be strong, but is it right to rely on steroids? We want to be cheerful all the time, but is it right to live without the experience of melancholy? We want a pill that helps us to better remember everything we want and to forget pain and embarrassment, but what does a selective memory do to our character? We all want our children to be smart and attractive and skillful, but is it right to bestow these qualities on them genetically and chemically — or to let them gain the satisfaction of coping with shortcomings and earning the good life?

Whoa — is it right to slant the questions in the preceding paragraph to elicit conservative answers? No. I should report that Jim Watson, the iconoclastic co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, is one Nobelist not disquieted by the march of progress. He speaks for many scientists in arguing that it is entirely ethical to use biotech's amazing advances to improve the body and perfect the mind.

Today's longheaded thoughts are occasioned by the release of a rarity: a profound and readable report produced by a government committee. "Beyond Therapy: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Happiness," by the President's Council on Bioethics, is at www.bioethics.gov. It poses the big questions fairly and lays out the data for futuristic debate. Because it runs over 300 pages, you might want to download the 24-page introduction by Dr. Leon Kass, the council chairman, and wait for some alert publisher to rush the report out in paperback.

In The Times's special issue at the turn of the millennium, I facetiously headlined an optimistic column about increased life expectancy "Why Die?" The council reports evidence suggesting that "a unified process of senescence does indeed exist" and that it may well be possible for biotechnology to achieve "age retardation," redoubling the past century's doubling of life span — but with lively old minds and healthy old bodies.

Great prospect, no? Go for it, Science. But consider the ethical fallout: all those old managers and artists refusing to make way for the young; all those codger couples under no pressure to procreate and care for children; much of the impetus to accomplish gone without life's deadline.
It's Safire at his best, read the rest...
  

10:35 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




What's Not to Hate?

Hating Dubya is not a difficult task for many, with reason aplenty one can argue; many are just doing just that and quite openly. Indeed, the media reporter, Howard Kurtz, has finally gotten around to investigating the I-Hate-Bush confessional phenomenon currently bouncing around amongst political journalists that first burst into the public sector with Jonathan Chait's cover story in The New Republic issue of 9/29 (see earlier post ). Since we have covered this matter on more than one occasion, we will only excerpt a bit for flavor, and then send you on to the full exploration of this syndrome by Mr. Kurtz, who interviews a number of pundits on both sides of the cause.
The words tumble out, the hands gesture urgently, as Jonathan Chait explains why he hates George W. Bush.

It's Bush's radical policies, says the 31-year-old New Republic writer, and his unfair tax cuts, and his cowboy phoniness, and his favors for corporate cronies, and his heist in Florida, and his dishonesty about his silver-spoon upbringing, and, oh yes, the way he walks and talks.

For some of his friends, Chait says at a corner table in a downtown Starbucks, "just seeing his face or hearing his voice causes a physical reaction -- they have to get away from the TV. My sister-in-law describes Bush's existence as an oppressive force, a constant weight on her shoulder, just knowing that George Bush is president."

Has this unassuming man in a rumpled sports shirt lifted the lid on a boiling caldron of anti-Bush fury in liberal precincts across America? Or is he just an overcaffeinated, irrational liberal, venting to a minority of like-minded readers?

Ramesh Ponnuru, a soft-spoken conservative at National Review, pays Chait a backhanded compliment, writing that "not everyone would be brave enough to recount their harrowing descent into madness so vividly."

Ponnuru calls him "smart, funny and completely misguided." Since the president is so likable, he says, the outbreak of Bush hatred "just makes you scratch your head."
Read all of it, just for the fun of it...
  

10:29 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




The Elephant is Offered a Special Seat in the Living Room

Apparently, Dubya isn't listening to the Hawks this week. It seems he is about to offer the Elephant in the living room--North Korea with nuclear weapons--a place to sit with the other "big boys" (nations with a known nuclear arsenal).
BANGKOK, Oct. 19 -- President Bush said Sunday that he is willing to commit to a written guarantee not to attack North Korea in exchange for steps by the country toward abandoning its nuclear weapons programs.

Bush's aides said he wants to have a proposal ready for North Korea to consider by year's end, when administration officials hope to restart the six-nation nuclear talks with North Korea that began haltingly in August.

The new approach constitutes a change for a White House that had resisted offering security guarantees that North Korea might consider a concession. North Korea has openly pursued nuclear weapons despite agreeing to freeze its programs in 1994 in a deal with the Clinton administration. Some U.S. officials contend the country already possesses one or two nuclear weapons.
Read the full story...
  

2:40 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Several Shame-on-You's to Pass Around

The Easterbrook Story is getting a lot of play, and it is getting stranger, with several Shame-on-You's to pass around beside Easterbrook. See: Roger L. Simon: GREGG EASTERBROOK AND ME.
But Easterbrook also informed me of something else that is highly disturbing. He has been fired from his job at ESPN. Gregg takes full responsibility for this (he wrote the original words that he regrets), but I, as one of his harshest critics, believe that ESPN has vastly overreacted. I urge them to reconsider their decision. I don’t think anybody who attacked Easterbrook wanted to see him fired. I certainly didn’t. To the degree that I am even remotely responsible for this I humbly apologize. I can only say this is another example of what we all know—words have consequences.
Yes, they do; but why is that a lesson we have to constantly relearn, and I mean we professional writers? Much more on this later; meanwhile, follow the story here, Roger L. Simon and at InstaPundit.

UPDATE: There are a lot of bloggers doing their finger-walking on this story: Rishawn Biddle; Jonah Goldberg; Jeff Jarvis; Andrew Sullivan; Kevin Drum at Calpundit... All have relatively similar thoughts--if different levels of passion--against what Easterbrook wrote but also against ESPN for firing him. All of their pieces should be read.

As I see it, Easterbrook made a serious mistake of judgement, which I cannot accept as being just because he was Blogging fast--journalists write under deadline pressures that most bloggers can't imagine, and have been doing so since the days of manual Underwoods. I also found his apology weak and whiny. But, I must admit that I wasn't a fan of his writing or his mind--what's his hard-on with Hollywood about anyway? Maybe he had some screenplays rejected? By Disney? If he doesn't like "Kill Bill" or any of Quentin Tarantino's films, fine; he can write stinko reviews about each one. I know Quentin a little bit and I'm sure he wouldn't punch Mr. Easterbrook if they chanced to meet. So why does Easterbrook want to take off so personally on everyone involved in financing, producing, directing/writing and distributing the movie? Punch--they are Jews. Call them greedy capitalists, fine. Call them merchants of gore, no problem. Call them insensitive to the issue of violence and impressionable youth, go for it. Call them repetitive Hollywood hacks, have at it.

BUT DON'T CALL THEM JEWS. Their ethnicity had absolutely nothing to do with the making of that film. Period. Gregg Easterbrook, for whatever his internal or subconscious motivation, took a gratuitous shot at Jews, and not just in passing. Read his story carefully--it is racist at its core. That story about Hollwood glorifying violence and his belief that it is evil could have been written even more effectively if he had never typed J-e-w.

Folks, this is not the only major case of Jew-baiting currently in the press: I give you the Prime Minister of Malaysia: Mahathir Mohamad. I Ask You, Is it Open Season on Jews? You know this story...
Malaysia says reaction on Jews remarks misplaced

SYDNEY, Oct. 19 — Malaysia said on Sunday widespread anger over comments about Jews by the country's prime minister was terrible, and insisted Mahathir Mohamad's remarks were only an accurate reflection of the undeniable power of Jews worldwide.

Mahathir provoked an outcry when he said that Jews controlled Western powers by proxy. The United States, Israel, Australia and the European Union accused Mahathir of anti-Semitism.

''It's most unfortunate, the reaction that has come out is terrible,'' Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said in an interview on Australian television.

''They (the Jews) are very, very influential and strong in many countries. You cannot deny the fact that the Jewish economic power is tremendous. Their lobby is tremendous. So what's wrong in saying that. You are not saying 'Kill all the Jews'. You say, 'Take the example of the Jews', he said on Channel Nine's ''Sunday'' programme.

''Arabs are also Semites. Whenever a Jew says that Semites only refer to Jews, then it becomes an accepted thing. So that's how powerful the Jewish lobby is -- the control of the media, by the Jewish community. But that should not create anti-feeling against them,'' Syed Hamid said.

He said Mahathir, who made his remarks on Thursday in a speech to a summit of Islamic leaders in Malaysia, had intended to remind Muslims that if they wanted to be successful they must think, plan and not use aggression.
The Jews had ''real power'' because they had worked hard and successfully achieved knowledge and influence, he said.

''They have got a lot of special privileges. And yet we tend to ignore this,'' he said.
There are a few things that cannot be tolerated in civilized society, only some of them are: slavery; cannibalism; sexual predators; torture; and Jew-baiting. Before you take off on my using such distasteful examples in a story about the bad judgement of a blogger, let me remind you that this is not just a slippery-slope, this is a pell-mell descent into hell that has lasted for 2000 years. Why are Jews to be singled out for such vigilant protection? Because they are truly a minority among minorities: They have been so persecuted and murdered for so many years that there are only several million of them left in a world of almost 6 billion! End of that story.

Now, was ESPN right in firing Easterbrook? Since he did not write that piece for them, I would say no. But am I surprised? Being a screenwriter, a member of the WGA, let me assure you that most of what has been written in all this blogging about Mr. Eisner at Disney is indeed widely believed in the industry. He has fired people for far less than attacking not only the boss, him, but the boss' ethnicity. I have not sold a script to Disney, so I cannot speak of first-hand knowledge. I did appear on Larry King Live with Mr. Eisner once and found him polite but aloof. When you attack a nice boss that personally and with that level of vitriol, you're asking for the axe. A ruthless one? Come on!

Perhaps Mr. Easterbrook should try freelancing if he wants to write such passionate criticism of the Power Elite. In fact, that is the fun of being a freelance writer. The pay isn't as steady, but we seldom get fired.

So, I say: Shame on Mr. Easterbrook, shame on ESPN, and shame on Mr. Eisner. Oh, do we know whether TNR is going to fire him?
  

2:32 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




So it is a Holy War Now

Clash With Shiites and Bomb Attack Leave 4 G.I.'s Dead
KARBALA, Iraq, Oct. 17 — On a gritty street at the edge of town, a joint United States-Iraqi military patrol fell into a firefight with two dozen heavily armed guards of an ambitious and militant Shiite cleric near midnight on Thursday, leaving at least 10 people dead, including 3 American servicemen and 2 Iraqi security officers. Seven more Americans were reported wounded in the gun battle.
Is this when we roll out our Holy warrior? The Bible thumping General Boykin?
 

1:03 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Sunday, October 19, 2003

Courage and Faith

In the areas of politics, social justice or foreign policy, I can't imagine there ever being much agreement between myself and Andrew Sullivan--but I wish to applaud and recommend for reading his op-ed piece in Sunday's The New York Times. I left the Christian faith many years ago for different reasons, but I remember well the pain, recrimination and turmoil my choice brought into my life and upon my family. It takes courage, and another kind of faith to see such a decision through. He obviously has much of both.
There are moments in a spiritual life when the heart simply breaks. Some time in the last year, mine did. I can only pray that in some distant future, some other gay people not yet born will be able to come back to the church, to sing in the choir, and know that the only true scandal in the world is the scandal of God's love for his creation, all of it, all of us, in a church that may one day, finally, become home to us all.
Read it in its full richness: Losing a Church, Keeping the Faith
  

11:27 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Courageous Arab Thinkers Apparently is Not an Oxymoron

Mr. Friedman has another enlightening column in today's The New York Times.
I should have known something was up when a Saudi diplomat recently asked me, 'Do you know what kind of woman is most sought after as a wife by Saudi men today?' No, I said, what kind? "A woman with a job."

I thought of that when I read last week's announcement that within a year Saudi Arabia would conduct its first real elections — for municipal councils. Most people thought it would snow in Saudi Arabia before there would be elections. So what's up?

What's up are three big shocks hammering the Arab system. First, with oil revenues flat, there isn't enough money anymore to buy off, or provide jobs to, the exploding Arab populations. Hence the growing need for wives with work. The second is the Iraq war shock. Even with all the problems in Baghdad now, virtually every autocratic Arab regime is starting to prepare for the uncomfortable possibility that by 2005 Iraq will hold a free election, which will shame all those who never have. As Lawrence Summers, Harvard's president, likes to say, "One good example is worth a thousand theories." Iraq — maybe —could be that example.

But there is another tremor shaking the Arab world. This one is being set off by a group of courageous Arab social scientists, who decided, with the help of the United Nations, to begin fighting the war of ideas for the Arab future by detailing just how far the Arab world has fallen behind and by laying out a progressive pathway forward. Their first publication, the Arab Human Development Report 2002, explained how the deficits of freedom, education and women's empowerment in the Arab world have left the region so behind that the combined G.D.P. of the 22 Arab states was less than that of a single country — Spain. Even with limited Internet access in the Arab world, one million copies of this report were downloaded, sparking internal debates.

Tomorrow, in Amman, Jordan, these Arab thinkers will unveil their second Arab Human Development Report, which focuses on the need to rebuild Arab "knowledge societies." The report is embargoed until then, but from talking with the authors I sense it will be another bombshell.

Those who worked on this report do not believe in the Iraq-war model of political change. They prefer evolution from within. But they believe there must be serious change. They are convinced that Islam has a long history of absorbing knowledge. But in the modern era an unholy alliance between repressive Arab regimes and certain conservative Muslim scholars has led to the domination of certain interpretations of Islam that serve the governments but are hostile to human development — particularly freedom of thought, women's empowerment and the accountability of governments to their people.
This is important reading...
 

5:52 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Saturday, October 18, 2003

Gawd Help Us

God Bless Us One and All--Except Those Idolators, of Course! Yes, it has finally come to this. But didn't we see it coming? What with a born-again AA Prez and his divinely uninspired coterie of turn-back-the-clock High Priests of Paulinism? This is truly frightening...
A senior Pentagon intelligence officer, under fire for his comments about Islam, said on Friday he was 'neither a zealot nor an extremist' and apologized to those offended by his statements but did not take back any of his remarks.

Army Lt. Gen. William Boykin, whose comments at churches and prayer breakfasts cast the U.S. war on terrorism in starkly religious terms, sought to explain comments including one that Muslims worship an "idol" and said he was not "anti-Islam."

Democratic lawmakers, including presidential candidates Sens. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, criticized Boykin's remarks and chastised President Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for failing to criticize the general. And a Saudi diplomat called Boykin's remarks "outrageous."

A statement released late on Friday by the Pentagon public affairs office represented Boykin's first attempt to publicly explain himself since his remarks came to light this week.

He did not address his future, but defense officials said he had no plans to quit. The officials also said he planned to "tone down" his remarks. One official said, "I would not expect him to engage in those sorts of speaking engagements in the future."

"I am neither a zealot nor an extremist. Only a soldier who has an abiding faith," said Boykin, deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence and war-fighting support.
God Bless Us One and All--Except Those Idolators, of Course!
  

3:19 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Whoa! Did He Really Say That?

Yes, this fool actually said this and more.
Malaysia's outspoken leader accused Western countries of using a double standard for criticizing Jews and Muslims, and refused to apologize Friday for a speech in which he said Jews ruled the world.

"Lots of people make nasty statements about us, about Muslims,'' Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said. "People call Muslims terrorists, they even say ... Muhammed the prophet was a terrorist.''

"People make such statements, and they seem to get away with it. But if you say anything at all against the Jews, you are accused of being anti-Semitic,'' Mahathir told a news conference after the close of a summit of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, the world's largest Muslim grouping.

Mahathir was reacting to a wave of international condemnation over his speech to the summit Thursday, in which he said "Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them.''
More from Salon...
  

11:33 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Grandpa Knows Best?

Ah, the wisdom that comes with age? Very little else needs to be said as an enticement to read further...
WASHINGTON, Oct. 18 — President Bush's support among older voters has dropped substantially in recent months, eroding recent Republican gains and highlighting the importance of this critical electoral bloc in 2004, political strategists and analysts say.

The trend underscores the stakes for Mr. Bush in the current Congressional negotiations aimed at creating a long-promised prescription drug benefit in Medicare, which covers 40 million elderly and disabled Americans. Negotiators passed a self-imposed deadline on Friday for reaching agreement, but vowed to complete their work before Congress adjourns, which is expected to be sometime next month.
Read more, in The New York Times...
  

4:31 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Friday, October 17, 2003

God versus God?

Our God is better than your God. So that's the new strategy to winning the "War on Terrorism"? Sink to their dark age level of thinking. Fight a holy war with holy Generals. Our godawfully ignorant fundamentalist against their godawfully ignorant fundamentalists. This buffoon is as dangerous to this age as they are. If only there was a god to deliver us from an administration that would trot this incendiary anachronism out as our champion against the 'philistines.'
Remarks by a three-star U.S. Army general casting the war on terrorism in religious terms drew rebukes yesterday from politicians and military specialists and calls from religious groups for the officer to be reassigned or reprimanded.

But the Pentagon's top military commander defended the officer, Lt. Gen. William G. "Jerry" Boykin, saying he did not think any military rules had been broken.

The controversy followed reports Wednesday on "NBC Nightly News" and yesterday in the Los Angeles Times citing Boykin, who is an evangelical Christian, speaking in uniform to church audiences over the past two years. He spoke of Islamic extremists hating the United States because "we're a Christian nation" and added that our "spiritual enemy will only be defeated if we come against them in the name of Jesus." He said that President Bush "is in the White House because God put him there," and that "we in the army of God . . . have been raised for such a time as this."
Hard to believe such a thing can happen in a nation where separation of Church and State is one of the underpinning laws of its creation and continued existence.

But it's true, read it here...
  

10:48 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




A Walk-off Homer!!

A walk-off homer! Aaron Boone! On the first pitch in the bottom of the 11th inning, and it couldn't have happened to a sweeter kid and greater baseball family!
As the biggest hit of Aaron Boone's life sailed into the seats down the left-field line, Mariano Rivera raced for the mound and knelt down on it. Boone danced magically around the bases, raising his arms, beaming, grinning wildly. And there was Rivera: overcome with joy, the kind of mystical October euphoria that has so often seemed out of reach of these Yankees, celebrating in his own way.

Rivera had pitched heroic three innings, proving again that for all of the Yankees' problems, he is the biggest reason they are headed back to the World Series. With a home run in the 11th inning on the first pitch from the Boston Red Sox' Tim Wakefield, Boone had accomplished the unthinkable: a sudden strike to win the pennant, an instant spot in the pantheon of Yankee legends.
I was a Yankees fan -- from birth, actually -- long before my professional association with the Chicago Cubs--so, one out of two ain't bad! Also there is great joy in me for the Boone family: one of the most enduring and endearing of baseball families. Plus, I saw it live in Beijing, P.R. China, courtesy of Japanese TV. Which came coutesy of Japanese slugger Matsui; which means I will get to see the World Series live now! It is truly an ever smaller world we live in.

New York! New York!
  

2:13 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Calpundit Has a Post on Another Republican Fool

Goddamnit! It hurts everytime and it's been going on for me for over 50 years. Mr. Drum, an esteemed blogger, has the goods on a racist running for governor in my home state of Mississippi. I'm on the other side of the world now -- China -- yet still the taint stinks and stings. I've been fighting the likes of Barbour all of my life. See my feature story: Mississippi Sorrows--but first skip over to Calpundit, there's even picture proof of this neo-Klansman.
PANDERING TO RACISTS....In case you're wondering what the Haley Barbour flap is about, I figure a picture is worth a thousand words. So here's the picture.

The smiling guy in the middle is Haley Barbour, chairman of the Republican party from 1993-1997 and currently a candidate for governor of Mississippi. And where was Barbour when this picture was taken? Why, at the Black Hawk Barbecue and Political Rally, held on July 19 to raise money for — wink wink, nudge nudge — "private academy" school buses.
Calpundit
 

1:05 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Here's the Idiot

The fool really exists: The member of Congress who thinks that dead GI's are less of a story than the success of reconstruction in Iraq.
Rep. George Nethercutt said yesterday that Iraq's reconstruction is going better than is portrayed by the news media, citing his recent four-day trip to the country.

"The story of what we've done in the postwar period is remarkable," Nethercutt, R-Wash., told an audience of 65 at a noon meeting at the University of Washington's Daniel J. Evans School of Public Affairs.

"It is a better and more important story than losing a couple of soldiers every day."
This man has the brainwave activity of a cypress stump; I hate to be so mean-spirited here, but he had even more to say:
He said he has no doubt that weapons of mass destruction are in Iraq, have been in Iraq or that there was a program there to produce them. Many potential weapons sites are awaiting inspection from Americans, he said.

"That's not an excuse, just a reason. It's not surprising that we haven't found huge supplies of weapons," Nethercutt said, adding that what inspectors are looking for could fit in a space the size of a two-car garage.
I kid you not; read the story, it is in an article written by a reporter who was there.
  

12:49 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Thursday, October 16, 2003

Is This Liberal Bad-News-Media Central?

Many pundits of the right, and center-right (most notably, Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit) have been beating up on journalists (to him, and others, a dirty word) for writing only doom and gloom stories about what is going on in Iraq. Well, they are going to have a problem spinning what Stars and Stripes found out directly from the troops.
A broad survey of U.S. troops in Iraq by a Pentagon-funded newspaper found that half of those questioned described their unit's morale as low and their training as insufficient, and said they do not plan to reenlist.

The survey, conducted by the Stars and Stripes newspaper, also recorded about a third of the respondents complaining that their mission lacks clear definition and characterizing the war in Iraq as of little or no value. Fully 40 percent said the jobs they were doing had little or nothing to do with their training.

The findings, drawn from 1,935 questionnaires presented to U.S. service members throughout Iraq, conflict with statements by military commanders and Bush administration officials that portray the deployed troops as high-spirited and generally well-prepared. Though not obtained through scientific methods, the survey results suggest that a combination of difficult conditions, complex missions and prolonged tours in Iraq is wearing down a significant portion of the U.S. force and threatening to provoke a sizable exodus from military service.
It must be noted, however, no matter what home-sick GI's tell a reporter, or the peace movement, we cannot bail out of Iraq. As big of a mistake as Dubya made going in without more world-wide support--and in over-selling the dangers Saddam Hussein posed to other nations instead of what he was actively, routinely doing to his citizens--it would be an even larger mistake to fold-up and bug-out.

Read more about it...
  

8:44 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




The Scariest News of the Day: Fox Lies and People Believe Them

As scary as this news is, we shouldn't be surprised. If it's the squeaky wheel that gets the grease the quickest, then it isn't much of a stretch to understand that the ideas which are spoken the loudest, the simplest, and most often, are going to get believed more often. Loud, simple, staccato-like, isn't that the style of most of those who make an ignominious living panderering to the baser instincts in the human animal? Walter Winchell perfected it, yellow-journalism; to this day most Americans over 45 will swear there was a real Tokyo Rose during World War II--there wasn't, and those under 45 wouldn't understand the question if asked--one of only many base canards the infamous Winchell foisted off on a gullible public. Unfortunately, these bombastic prevaricators cause true grief--and worse--upon the whole of society, not just their easily duped fanatics--er, fans.
Ever worry that millions of your fellow Americans are walking around knowing things that you don't? That your prospects for advancement may depend on your mastery of such arcana as who won the Iraqi war or where exactly Europe is?

Then don't watch Fox News. The more you watch, the more you'll get things wrong.

Researchers from the Program on International Policy Attitudes (a joint project of several academic centers, some of them based at the University of Maryland) and Knowledge Networks, a California-based polling firm, have spent the better part of the year tracking the public's misperceptions of major news events and polling people to find out just where they go to get things so balled up. This month they released their findings, which go a long way toward explaining why there's so little common ground in American politics today: People are proceeding from radically different sets of facts, some so different that they're altogether fiction.

In a series of polls from May through September, the researchers discovered that large minorities of Americans entertained some highly fanciful beliefs about the facts of the Iraqi war. Fully 48 percent of Americans believed that the United States had uncovered evidence demonstrating a close working relationship between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Another 22 percent thought that we had found the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And 25 percent said that most people in other countries had backed the U.S. war against Saddam Hussein. Sixty percent of all respondents entertained at least one of these bits of dubious knowledge; 8 percent believed all three.

The researchers then asked where the respondents most commonly went to get their news. The fair and balanced folks at Fox, the survey concludes, were "the news source whose viewers had the most misperceptions." Eighty percent of Fox viewers believed at least one of these un-facts; 45 percent believed all three. Over at CBS, 71 percent of viewers fell for one of these mistakes, but just 15 percent bought into the full trifecta. And in the daintier precincts of PBS viewers and NPR listeners, just 23 percent adhered to one of these misperceptions, while a scant 4 percent entertained all three.
Please read the rest of Harold Meyerson's column in the Washington Post.
 

7:48 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




'Twas a Fine Morning to Be in China!

The space flight went smooth as Chinese silk! It was a happy morning here in the capitol of the Middle Kingdom. I spent the morning giving an interview to CCTV Channel 4 about the significance of China joining the very exclusive manned space flight club; then it was off to the Ministry of Finance for a fun morning of Chinese festivity: live entertainment of many genres and great eats! Just another day in China (admittedly, we "Foreign Experts" -- no brag, that's what our visas and residence permits say -- are treated royally everyday. )

Anyway: Congrats to CHINA!
BEIJING, Thursday, Oct. 16 — With parachutes braking its swift fall to Earth, the Shenzhou 5 spacecraft made a safe, early morning landing on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia on Thursday, official news organizations reported, completing an apparently successful mission that established China as only the third nation to send a person into space.
Read all about it...
  

5:00 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




One Learns Very Little With Mouth Open

Thomas L. Friedman gives an elegant scolding to Cheney the Great in his column today in The New York Times. The only problem is that, as Mr. Friedman points out so richly, Cheney and his henchmen don't listen to anyone other than themselves or their chosen flock -- Novak and almost everyone at Fox and other Murdoch endeavors dedicated to closed speech, and the other peculiarly usual suspects
There was a headline that grabbed me in The Times on Saturday. It said, "Cheney Lashes Out at Critics of Policy on Iraq."

"Wow," I thought, "that must have been an interesting encounter." Then I read the fine print. Mr. Cheney was speaking to 200 invited guests at the conservative Heritage Foundation — and even they were not allowed to ask any questions. Great. Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein issue messages from their caves through Al Jazeera, and Mr. Cheney issues messages from his bunker through Fox. America is pushing democracy in Iraq, but our own leaders won't hold a real town hall meeting or a regular press conference.

Out of fairness, my newspaper feels obligated to run such stories. But I wish we had said to the V.P.: If you're going to give a major speech on Iraq to an audience limited to your own supporters and not allow any questions, that's not news — that's an advertisement, and you should buy an ad on the Op-Ed page.

Such an approach would serve both journalism and the nation, because it might actually force this administration to listen to someone other than itself. And learning to listen may be the only way the Bush team is going to muster and sustain the support it needs to succeed in Iraq.
This is must reading...
  

3:56 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




More From the Irrepessible Ms. Dowd

Sorry, I just couldn't help myself; in case you weren't able to click onto her column, I have posted more of her most recent biting truth below:
It would be a lot easier to heed good news as well as bad if Bush officials hadn't assured us before we invaded Iraq that there would be no bad.

First they sold the war to trusting Americans with spin, and now they are trying to sell the occupation to skeptical Americans with more spin.

Greg Thielmann, the retired State Department official who was a top analyst for Colin Powell on Iraq's W.M.D., told '60 Minutes II' last night that Iraq had been so far from being an imminent threat that Mr. Powell's speech making that case at the U.N. was "probably one of the low points in his long, distinguished service to the nation."

The Bush team prepared the ground for American doubt; they told us to expect a fairy tale and now resent the fact that we refuse to treat it like one.

The fundamental problem for the Bush administration is that it is endlessly propounding a contradiction: Wanting us to worry that we are battling for our lives against the terrorists, and wanting us to stop worrying about the state of the battle.

Everything is wrong, and nothing is wrong. We are trapped in the Bush illogic. Call it our curse.
More:
 

3:11 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Has it Come to This?

What! Did a member of the United States House of Representatives actually say this?
On Monday, Representative George Nethercutt Jr., a Republican from Washington State who visited Iraq, chimed in to help the White House: "The story of what we've done in the postwar period is remarkable. It is a better and more important story than losing a couple of soldiers every day." The congressman puts the casual back in casualty.
Is it possible that the mothers, wives, husbands or children of a soldier killed in action believe that the opening of another school is a more important story than their ultimate sacifice? Does the State of Washington have a recall statute?

Read Maureen Dowd's column in The New York Times and see if you have the same visceral reaction I did? I am no peacenik dove who believes that lives lost in defense of home or principle are by definition too high a price to pay for either.
  

2:49 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Wednesday, October 15, 2003

Kristof is Making Sense Yet Again

Nicholas Kristof consistently gives me reason to be proud that I am a journalist. Teaching a course called "Media and Foreign Policy" to future ambassadors at the China Foreign Affairs University, there is always a reminder of the serious shortcomings of our Free Press--particularly when viewed from the perspective of the other side of the world geographically and culturally. I don't have to enumerate the media scandals of recent vintage in the west, they are too numerous and too fresh (some ongoing) to be out of mind. But I have to deal with them everyday here with students and colleagues. Invariably, on days when it gets tough to remain proud of a profession I chose and love, Mr. Kristof will snap me out of it with his writing and his insight. Such as his column in today's The New York Times...
I haven't written about Iraq lately because, frankly, it felt like shooting fish in a barrel.

It was sporting to write columns opposing the war back in January, when the White House was conjuring enough Iraqi anthrax 'to kill several million people,' as well as hordes of cheering Iraqis casting flowers on our soldiers. These days, with that anthrax as elusive as Saddam himself, with the people we've liberated busy killing us, with the bill for Iraq coming in at $90,000 a minute — well, criticizing the war just seems too easy, like aiming a bomb at Bambi.

So I won't do it.

In any case, the real question that confronts us now is not whether invading Iraq was the height of hubris, but this: Given that we are there, how do we make the best of it? ...

So my fear is that we will now compound our mistake of invading Iraq by refusing to pay for our occupation and then pulling out our troops prematurely. If Iraq continues to go badly, if Democrats continue to hammer Mr. Bush for his folly, if Karl Rove has nightmares of an election campaign fought against a backdrop of suicide bombings in Baghdad, then I'm afraid the White House may just declare victory and retreat.

In that case, Iraq would last about 10 minutes before disintegrating into a coup d'etat or a civil war.

Couldn't happen, you say? We let Afghanistan fall apart after the victory over the Soviet-backed government in 1992. We let Somalia disintegrate after our pullout in 1993-94. And right now, incredibly, the administration is letting Afghanistan fall apart all over again.

If that happens in Iraq, American credibility will be devastated, Al Qaeda will have a new base for operations, and Iraqis will be even worse off than they were in the days of Saddam Hussein.

Hmm. Who knows? In that event, Saddam might return as the warlord of Tikrit.
Please read it in its entirety...
  

8:31 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Hip Hip Hooray!

Three cheers for Shenzhou 5! Have no doubt about it--and joke all you may about it coming 40 years late--this is a great moment for China and the Chinese people. This is perhaps the only major technological breakthrough of the past two millenniums that China did not achieve well before Europeans, and actually that plays some part in why it is important that they have become only the third nation to accomplish manned space flight now--there are many others. Today is not a day to debate it, but to enjoy their enjoyment of the accomplishment...
BEIJING, Wednesday, Oct. 15 — The Chinese spacecraft Shenzhou 5 blasted off from the Gobi Desert on Wednesday carrying a single astronaut. The launching left government leaders jubilant yet also anxiously awaiting his safe return so China can stake its claim as one of the world's elite space-faring nations.

The launching took place about 9 a.m., according to the state-run television network, CCTV. At about 9:30, the network showed a videotape of the rocket soaring to the heavens.

The Shenzhou 5, or Divine Vessel, is expected to orbit Earth 14 times before returning after a voyage of roughly 21 hours.

If successful, the mission would make China the third nation to send a man into space, coming more than four decades after the Soviet Union and the United States accomplished the feat at the height of the cold war.

The mission also carries broad political significance for the Chinese government, which hopes to win good will and inspire nationalism in its citizens, many of whom regard the Communist Party as an increasingly irrelevant political dinosaur.

Top officials also want to display China's growing technological savvy and stake a claim to being a world power considered equal to the United States.
Read it in The Times...!
  

8:25 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Tuesday, October 14, 2003

InstaPundit Approves of Chinese In Space

Actually it is one of the InstaPundit's other personas that bestows his blessings upon China's venture into manned space flight: Writing as Glenn Harlan Reynolds at Tech Central Station, where he is a contributing editor. While he is a bit snide about early--and late--Chinese history, for a political conservative, his piece gets several things right--if not the tone--and is generally supportive of what is indeed a very big deal here in the heart of the Middle Kingdom (Beijing). Since I will be a guest at the Foreign Ministry tomorrow morning--Wednesday night where Professor Reynolds is--I will pass on his best regards.
China has announced that it plans a manned space launch this week, and it's already revving up the propaganda machine to take advantage of the event. The theme - and particularly the subtext -- is that China is now a superpower, too. Superpowers have manned space programs, and now China will have one, so....

I don't mean to make fun of this, because it's actually a good thing. American astronauts, Russian cosmonauts, and now Chinese "taikonauts," all represent something better than run-of-the-mill superpower competition. If China thinks that putting a human being in orbit does more for its international prestige than, say, invading Taiwan and perhaps setting off another World War, that's to everyone's advantage.

Taking a longer-term perspective, it also represents a major shift in Chinese philosophy, which may or may not be such a good thing. Since the Ming Dynasty, China has looked inward. Regarding Chinese life, government, and culture as the quintessence of perfection, the Chinese regarded foreigners, and their doings, as largely beneath their notice. This attitude became so pronounced that a huge program of maritime exploration, one that took Chinese ships to the coast of Africa, and might have gotten them to the Americas before Columbus, was cancelled. As author Ben Bova writes:

But while the Ming fleets were achieving such stunning feats, the mandarins who ran the Chinese court were unhappy with the costs of building and operating the ships. Moreover, Grand Admiral Zheng He and most of the other commanders in the fleet were eunuchs, slaves since early childhood, and were thus distrusted and despised by the Confucian mandarins.

The mandarins were the bureaucrats who actually ran the government. In 1423 or thereabouts, as the emperor Zhu Di lay dying, the bureaucrats set about to destroy the Ming fleets.

The bureaucrats issued edicts banning further voyages beyond China's coastal waters. They prohibited all foreign trade, proclaiming that everything worth having or worth knowing already existed within China's borders. They justified their decisions by saying that the fleets were too expensive. They cut costs.

They burned the ships.
The bureaucrats feared dilution of their power within China more than they desired knowledge of -- or even power over -- the outside world. As Bova notes, this began a five-hundred year period of Chinese humiliation at the hands of outsiders. The launch of "Shenzhou 5," whose name, we're told, means "Divine Vessel," may represent quite a turning point in China's history -- a time when China has begun to look outward, not inward, for the first time since, well, Western civilization became a power in the world.
There has been a great deal more scholarship done on Admiral Zheng He (whose lifesize, remarkably life-like statue I recently marveled at in the maritime museum at Quanzhou, the fabled seaport on China's Southeast coast that Marco Polo was so impressed by) which details just how advanced the Chinese mariners were over the Europeans at that time.

I strongly recommend that Professor Reynolds read Gavin Menzies' book "1421" which came out last year and has forever changed the history of maritime exploration: Instapundit, the Chinese did in fact make it to the Americas and BACK!

I would also suggest he take a look at my post on this momentous occasion, just below a bit.

Tech Central Station...
  

9:48 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Here Are the WMDs

We know where the outlawed weapons of mass destruction are. The problem is they're not in Iraq. They are in North Korea. And that is a very big problem. Just how big is the problem? Well, where does the elephant in the living room sit? First, read these excerpts--and hopefully the full story--from an article in today's The New York Times, then we will answer the elephant question.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 13 — New intelligence estimates that North Korea may have produced one or two nuclear weapons in recent months — or perhaps more — have immersed the administration in another internal debate about the quality of intelligence about illegal weapons.

With President Bush just days from embarking on his longest foray in Asia, some of his advisers say it is possible that North Korea is telling the truth about having turned 8,000 nuclear fuel rods into enough weapons-grade plutonium for several warheads. ...

The International Atomic Energy Agency, in a series of confidential briefings, has taken a middle view: It has told Asian governments that North Korea has probably produced enough plutonium to make two new nuclear weapons, according to officials who took notes on the briefings.

"When you add up the evidence, we have every reason to believe they've made two new weapons," a senior Asian official said. That would be in addition to the one or two that the C.I.A. has said the North probably made in the early 1990's.

What it all adds up to is that no one knows for certain how big the North's arsenal is.

President Bush vowed earlier this year that he would never tolerate a nuclear North Korea. But he has left deliberately ambiguous how he defines "tolerate."

Charles Pritchard, who resigned this summer as the State Department special envoy for North Korean nuclear issues, cast Mr. Bush's political and strategic problem this way:

"We've gone, under his watch, from the possibility that North Korea has one or two weapons to a possibility — a distinct possibility — that it now has eight or more," said Mr. Pritchard, who also worked on North Korean issues during the Clinton administration. "And it's happened while we were deposing Saddam Hussein for fear he might get that same capability by the end of the decade." ...

Mr. Bush's spokesman, Scott McClellan, said on Friday that Mr. Bush's strategy had already "achieved important success," because the North has "agreed to multilateral talks, six-country talks" on resolving the nuclear issues.

The administration's strategy relies heavily on pressure from China, which supplies the desperately poor North with most of its oil and much of its food.

Yet as Mr. Bush heads to Asia, administration officials are trying to put down a minor rebellion with a key ally over the strategy.

South Korea's foreign minister, Yoon Young Kwan, held a heated meeting with Secretary of State Colin L. Powell last month in New York, demanding that Mr. Bush respond to North Korea's call for security treaties and a plan for gradual improvement in economic relations in return for dismantling any nuclear facilities. In a twist that angered Mr. Powell, the South Korean said his new president, Roh Moo Hyun, would not consider sending any troops to aid in Iraq unless the United States gave ground on North Korea.

Mr. Powell, according to several officials familiar with the exchange, curtly told told him, "That is not how allies deal with each other." ...

Unlike Iraq, North Korea is not denying its efforts, but rather boasting with an enthusiasm that makes many analysts suspicious. Earlier this month the North Korean government said it had solved "all of the technological matters" for making weapons. ...

Hawks in the administration, from the White House to the vice president's office to the Pentagon, argue that it is entirely possible that all 8,017 spent-fuel rods stored in North Korea since 1994 have been converted into bomb fuel. They note that when the North last turned fuel rods into bombs, in 1991, they went undetected by intelligence agencies for years.

Yet the Iraq experience has bred significant caution among intelligence agencies, now more careful than ever about overinterpreting the evidence. ...

"Our knowledge of North Korea is so limited that you have to sympathize with the poor intelligence analysts who have to make sense of all this," said Joel S. Wit, a former State Department official who visited a site five years ago that the C.I.A. believed was a new reprocessor, only to find a huge hole in the ground. "The ramifications of a screw-up are pretty big: that you've missed a second facility, or that they have reprocessed and we haven't picked it up. Either one of those is a pretty terrifying thought."
A terrifying thought indeed. Because the elephant in the living room sits any damn place he wants to! That is the paralyzing crux of nuclear proliferation: once a nation has a nuclear arsenal, they are effectively war-proof. When real push comes to real shove, you cannot dictate to a state with nuclear weapons. You can only negotiate. War is unthinkable. So far the world has been lucky.

When I asked General Leonid Shebarshin, the last Chairman of the KGB, the long-time chief of the First Main Directorate and one of the most important players in the cold war, if there had ever been a time when the United States and the Soviet Union had actually come strategically close to launching nuclear ICBMs at each other, he said: "No, Joseph, there were no mad men on our side, and there were no mad men on your side."

Can that be said with certainty about North Korea? My Chinese colleagues and students here at the China Foreign Affairs University tell me the answer is no. That is why they question Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld & Company's obssession with Saddam Hussein who was beyond doubt at least several steps away from being able to deliver a nuclear weapon upon an adversary. And was only marginally more destructive of his citizenry than Mr. Kim, the despotic ruler of North Korea.

In The New York Times...
 

6:25 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Monday, October 13, 2003

"Sky Rockets in Flight"

The notion and the legacy of "the white man's burden" will be one of the combustibles that will burn away in the tail-fire of the Shenzou V rocket which will lift Chinese astronauts into orbit later this week--and that is a good thing. Yes, it is money that could well be spent in areas of perhaps greater need. But national pride is not a small matter, either. And that is what this space mission is mostly about. The following passages from an article in today's The New York Times is a good place to start the process of understanding many aspects of the modern Chinese collective psyche.
It might seem anticlimactic to join a space club where the original members, the former Soviet Union and the United States, each sent astronauts into space more than 40 years ago. But if China's late entry speaks to its arrested development, it also underscores the country's determination to be in space and to pursue scientific excellence.

Centuries ago, China invented the rocket as well as gunpowder. But Chinese political analysts and historians note that the country's leaders, many of them engineers or technicians, are strongly influenced by Chinese history from the 19th and early 20th centuries, when the country faced foreign invaders with superior weapons and technology.

"From that time on, China has always been preoccupied with copying and catching up with foreign science and technology," said Lei Yi, a historian of modern China at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "The launching of the Shenzhou V is really a logical extension of this line of thought that goes back a century — saving the nation through science and technology."
Read more about it...
  

6:44 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Generally Speaking

Michael Kinsley has an intersesting point or two on presidential candidates that once wore uniforms with multiple gold stars on their shoulders being instantly attractive to liberal folks short on the conviction of their principles but long on anyone who they think can beat Bush the Dummy. Mr. Kinsley, however, appears to favor the Doctor from Vermont.
The notion that liberals disdain people in uniform was always a bit of a myth. Even during Vietnam, concern for the loss of young American lives was probably the antiwar movement's most powerful motivation.

But the current liberal swooning over (retired) generals is truly something new. A widespread fantasy among liberals who loathe the Bush administration, for example, is that Colin Powell will resign as secretary of state and "say what he really thinks." This will bring down the whole house of cards, these liberals believe. What he really thinks, they think, is more or less what they really think.

There is not much basis for this belief. Powell is skilled at distancing himself from certain policies without seeming disloyal. But if he really were as opposed to the administration he serves as these liberal fantasists imagine, a resignation now would come much too late to have any moral force.

Then there is retired Gen. Wesley Clark. Much of his support comes from people who think they haven't swooned themselves but believe that others will do so. But most of these people are in a swoon whether they realize it or not. They think that Clark has the best chance of defeating George Bush and that nothing else matters. Their assessment is based on what seems to me a simple-minded view that you can place all the candidates on a political spectrum, then pick the one who's as far toward the other side as your side can bear, and call it pragmatism.

How pragmatic is it, though, to snub the one candidate who seems to be able to get people's juices flowing -- that would be Howard Dean -- in favor of one with nothing interesting to say, on the theory that this, plus the uniform stashed in the back of his closet, will make him appealing to people you disagree with? When the odds are against you, as they are for the Democrats in 2004, caution and calculation can be the opposite of pragmatism.
More here...
  

6:36 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Helluva Way to Run a War

Where does the buck stop? In this adminsitration it appears that passing the buck is the modus operandi. This White House even passes it on internationally--blaming the yellowcake-Niger fiasco on British Intelligence and Tony Blair.
A key Republican lawmaker urged President Bush yesterday to take control of his fractious foreign policy team and plans for Iraq's reconstruction, as one Democrat deepened his criticism of the administration's arguments for going to war.

The president has to be president," Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on NBC's "Meet the Press." "That means the president over the vice president, and over these secretaries' of state and defense. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice 'cannot carry that burden alone."

In the first week of the administration's public relations campaign to explain its Iraq policy and highlight its achievements, Lugar noted that Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Rice had given speeches whose tone "was distinctly different" and that senators were rightly concerned about "the strength, the coherence of our policies."
Read more in the Washington Post...
  

6:28 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




A Good Story About an Unseemly But Necessary Story

An Editor With Passion and Courage--In L.A. of All Places--stands up for our profession and does it well and proudly.
The volcanic passions of the recall are largely spent, though we'll no doubt be feeling their effects for many years. Today, on this Sunday of relative calm, I'd like to tell you how the Los Angeles Times decided to publish the stories of 16 women who said they had been sexually mistreated and humiliated by Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I'll also tell you why we published the first of those articles a mere five days before voters went to the polls, a decision that has prompted an outpouring of campaign denunciations, talk-show rants and blistering e-mails.

Critics have accused the newspaper of malice toward Republicans and of collaboration with Gray Davis and the Democrats. It has been suggested that we cynically concealed the completed story for weeks before detonating it as a last-minute bomb. Some used the term "October surprise."

I'll begin this accounting with a bit of background: One of our goals is to do more investigative reporting. At the risk of offending still more readers, I'll say that if you're put off by investigative reporting, this probably won't be the right newspaper for you in the years to come.
This must be read, in the Los Angeles Times...
  

12:57 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Calpundit: The New Model Republican Party

Kevin Drum, AKA CalPundit, consistently one of the best minds and writers in all of Blogdom, has an important, and frightening, post on what the Republican Party actually is in today's America. It should serve as a clarion call to action by all who cherish the exhilarating promise that is and must remain the American way, the greatest experiment in freedom the world has ever known--and it is just that, an experiment, an attempt to make a better life for all, which means forever going forwards, never backwards. Backwards is the direction that all fundamentalists of every stripe, from the Islamic Jihadists, to the Christian right, to the Republican Party of Texas, want to take not just themselves, but all of us. The answer must be, Hell No! Someone, many someones, have to take voice again in this country and say we want a better world, not a meaner one. Will you be one of them?
THE NEW MODEL REPUBLICAN PARTY....Earlier this week I had lunch with my mother. We got to talking about politics and she asked, "What's happened to the Republican party? They used to just be the party of rich people."

That's actually a penetrating question, and I want to try and answer it. In fact, I mainly want to try and answer it for conservatives who wonder why liberals treat them like lepers.

The Republican party, of course, still is the party of rich people, but if that's all it was then liberals like me would simply treat it as an ordinary opposition party to be fought civilly and compromised with when necessary. But it's become much more than that over the past couple of decades. It has become completely unhinged. Try this on for size:

Republicans won't rest until abortion is completely outlawed, Social Security is abolished, the welfare state is completely rolled back, the book of Genesis is taught in science classes, and the federal income tax is abolished.
When I occasionally repeat (milder) versions of this here, my conservative commenters think I'm nuts. "Every party has a few wingnuts," they say. "These guys don't have any real influence."

And the thing is, I think they're telling the truth. With a couple of exceptions, I think the kind of conservatives who visit here don't believe this. It's absurd. It's a caricature.

But the problem is that I'm not sure they realize what their party is becoming. The heart and soul of Republican grass roots activism can be found pretty easily: it's in Texas. The New Model radical right took over the Texas Republican party a decade ago and elected George Bush governor. They have since taken over the entire state and propelled one of their own to the presidency and another to leadership of the House of Representatives. They bring a messianic fervor to their task, and after successfully taking over the second biggest state in the union their sights are now set on the entire country. This is not a fringe group. It is the biggest, most active, most energetic, and most determined segment of the Republican party today.
It's must reading, at Calpundit:
  

12:18 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Sunday, October 12, 2003

Friedman the Wise

Thomas L. Friedman is on target again...
As a precondition for helping us in Iraq, the U.N. is demanding that the U.S. hand over 'early sovereignty' to an interim Iraqi government and then let those Iraqis invite in the U.N. to oversee their transition to constitution-writing and elections. I too would like to see Iraqis given more control faster and the U.N. more involved. But people are tossing around this idea without answering some hard questions first.

Would the U.S. handing power to an interim Iraqi government really stop the attacks on U.S. forces, Iraqi police, the U.N. and Iraq's interim leaders? I doubt it. These attackers don't want Iraqis to rule themselves, these attackers want to rule Iraqis. Why do you think the attackers never identify themselves or their politics? Because they are largely diehard Baathists who want to restore the old order they dominated and will kill anyone in the way. Will the U.N., which has basically left Iraq, not flee again when its officials get attacked again — which will happen even after Iraqis have sovereignty? Could the Iraqi Governing Council agree now on who should lead an interim government? Will the Europeans really pony up troops and billions of dollars for Iraq, if the U.S. hands the keys to an Iraqi interim government? Will the U.S. public want to stay involved then, as is needed?

Until we are sure these questions can be answered, without Iraq spinning out of control, I'd stick with the status quo as the least bad option — in part because genuine sovereignty means running your own affairs and the U.S. has already done more to build that at the grass roots than most people realize.
Read Mr. Friedman in The New York Times...
  

3:10 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Poppy Knows Best?

I don't share Ms. Dowd's benign sentiments on Bush the 1st, but as always I love her wit and her dark vision of Cheney the Great.
WASHINGTON

It's a classic story line in myth, literature and movies: a man coming into his own is torn between two older authority figures with competing world views; a good daddy and a bad daddy; one light and benevolent, one dark and vengeful.

When Bush the Elder put Bush the Younger in the care of Dick Cheney, he assumed that Mr. Cheney, who had been his defense secretary in Desert Storm, would play the wise, selfless counselor. Poppy thought his old friend Dick would make a great vice president, tutoring a young president green on foreign policy and safeguarding the first Bush administration's legacy of internationalism, coalition-building and realpolitik.

Instead, Good Daddy has had to watch in alarm as Bad Daddy usurped his son's presidency, heightened its conservatism and rushed America into war on the mistaken assumption that if we just acted like king of the world, everyone would bow down or run away.
The inimitable Maureen Dowd, courtesy of The Times...
  

2:44 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Cubs Win!

Cubs are one win away from their first world series since 1945! And here I am half a world away in Beijing; I had to leave the country for this to happen. Golly, I didn't know I was the jinx.
When the Cubs offense was struggling in mid-June, manager Dusty Baker offered a spirited defense of his team.

"If you won 67 games and go to the World Series the next year, you will be the team of two centuries," Baker said. "Not one—two! Look it up in the record books. Find me a team that won 67 games and was World Series champs the next year."

The Cubs put themselves one victory away from becoming that "team of two centuries" Saturday night at Pro Player Stadium, trouncing Florida 8-3 to take a 3-1 lead over the Marlins in the best-of-seven National League Championship Series.

Aramis Ramirez's two home runs and an LCS record-tying six RBIs launched the Cubs, while Matt Clement pitched 72/3 innings to post his first postseason victory.

Carlos Zambrano faces Josh Beckett on Sunday in Game 5, and if the Cubs can close out the series they'll fly home to Chicago as National League champions for the first time since 1945.
Cubs Win! In the Trib...
  

1:19 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Ramirez Slam Helps Put Cubs on Verge of the World Series

A Grand Slam Win For Cubbies!
MIAMI, Oct. 11 — Dontrelle Willis began the game against the Chicago Cubs on Saturday night in the familiar position of savior.

Willis, a 21-year-old left-hander, had led the Florida Marlins to their unlikely playoff berth this summer, and now he was trying to save their postseason.

But a wild Willis was no match for the Cubs, the former lovable losers who are a victory from their first World Series since 1945. Aramis Ramirez's grand slam off Willis in the first inning propelled the Cubs to their third straight victory, 8-3, and a 3-1 lead in the National League Championship Series.
Cubs Win! Read it in The Times...
  

12:43 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Saturday, October 11, 2003

This Man is Dangerous!

Cheney The Great wants to turn back modernity at least as much as the Islamic Terrorists; the VP needs a filter between his hummingbird brain and his elephant mouth.
Vice President Cheney capped a White House effort to regain its equilibrium over the Iraq occupation by delivering a blistering rebuttal yesterday to critics of the administration's foreign policy and arguing that a consensus-based foreign policy is obsolete.

After several weeks of domestic and international criticism of President Bush's policy of attacking potential threats, Cheney struck back forcefully by calling the U.N. Security Council's 50-year tradition of giving permanent members a veto a "policy of doing exactly nothing."

The vice president's acerbic speech went well beyond milder versions delivered in the past two days by Bush and national security adviser Condoleezza Rice. The address, to the Heritage Foundation in Washington, was the last of a trio of speeches designed to rebuild public support for the occupation of Iraq, which has been slipping because of ongoing violence, a lack of international support and a failure to find weapons of mass destruction.

But while Bush asked the nation on Thursday to be more optimistic and look beyond the negative headlines from Iraq, Cheney barely mentioned the hardships in Iraq. Instead, he took aim at Democrats and foreign leaders, such as French President Jacques Chirac and U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, who have raised objections to U.S. "unilateralism."

Cheney blasted the criticism "that the United States, when its security is threatened, may not act without unanimous international consent" -- a clear reference to U.N. procedures, under which "the mere objection of even one foreign government would be sufficient to prevent us from acting.

"Though often couched in high-sounding terms of unity and cooperation, it is a prescription for perpetual disunity and obstructionism," Cheney said, adding that this would "confer undue power" on dissenters, "while leaving the rest of us powerless to act in our own defense. Yet we continue to hear this attitude in arguments in our own country -- so often, and so conveniently, it amounts to a policy of doing exactly nothing."

Cheney's speech was an uncompromising argument that far exceeded what other figures in the administration have asserted. Cheney, for example, dismissed a dozen years of inspections, patrolling of no-fly zones and strikes against military targets in Iraq, saying "all of these measures failed." ...

The vice president's speech had harsh words for Bush's critics. He portrayed those who objected to the president's "preemption" policy as opening the United States to attack. Bush "will not permit gathering threats to become certain tragedies," Cheney said, adding that "weakness and drift and vacillation in the face of danger invite attacks." ...

Cheney, predicting that "historians will look back on our time and pay tribute to our 43rd president," told his audience of a videotape that showed Hussein allowing two Doberman pinschers to eat a general alive. "Those who declined to support the liberation of Iraq would not deny the evil of Saddam Hussein's regime," he said. "They must concede, however, that had their own advice been followed, that regime would rule Iraq today."
Effective, graphic ending there, Mr. Halliburton, I mean, Mr. VP--rabble-rousing of the highest order. There is no doubt. We brought down a monster; perhaps we brought down the worst monster of our times. One question, though--why wasn't that the rationale given to the American people as reason aplenty to go to war? Do you believe Americans are so callous that they would not have cared? If this is true, you are the No. 2 leader of the wrong nation.

Read it in the Washington Post: Cheney Gets Defensive Over Iraq
 

6:12 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Now it's the Shiites?

We do not need the Shiites gunning for us, too. But what is the answer? We can't pick up and leave.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 10 — Shiite Muslim anger against Americans spilled into Friday Prayers in Sadr City, the poor Baghdad district where two Iraqis and two American soldiers were killed Thursday night.

The violence and subsequent public outrage raised fears of new dangers to United States troops from the followers of Moktada al-Sadr, a young anti-American Shiite cleric. Up to now, the main threat to American forces has come from loyalists to Saddam Hussein.

A seething throng of perhaps 10,000 people gathered on Friday to pay respects to the two men they believe were killed by American forces the night before.

"No, no, to America!" they chanted as wooden coffins holding the remains of the men were paraded along a main street in this impoverished neighborhood of some two million people, once called Saddam City and now renamed Sadr City in part for Mr. Sadr's father, a popular cleric who was assassinated in 1999 on what many believe were Mr. Hussein's orders.

Sheik Abdel Hadi al-Daraji, an aide to the younger Mr. Sadr, delivered the sermon at Friday Prayers and issued a defiant demand: no American soldiers should be allowed inside Sadr City.

"America, which calls itself the supporter of democracy, is nothing but a big terrorist organization that is leading the world with its terrorism and arrogance," Mr. Daraji said.

For the last six months, the greatest threat to United States soldiers has come from common criminals or loyalists to Mr. Hussein, who belongs to the Sunni branch of Islam, a minority in Iraq. The Shiites, who were repressed under Mr. Hussein, have been more supportive and have rarely been thought responsible for attacks on American soldiers.

But tensions have been growing for several days between American troops and Mr. Sadr's followers, who represent only a fraction of Iraq's majority Shiite population. If the Shiites turned in large numbers against the American occupation, the effect could be explosive. ...

Despite the visibility of Mr. Sadr's followers, there is some debate about the extent of his actual influence among Shiites, many of whom follow more moderate religious leaders. It is not hard to find people, even in Sadr City, who speak openly against Mr. Sadr. ...

Colonel Krivo also cautioned against making too much of either the incident or Mr. Sadr, who is about 30, and his followers, many of whom are poor young men without jobs.

"Let's not paint the whole area, or the whole two million plus people who are living there, with the same brush," he said. "There are specific areas there that are challenging, just as there are specific areas throughout the country that are challenging. So be careful not to generalize too much about this area." ...

"There were some people that came out, met with the forces and said, `Please come in. We need to show you something important,' " he said. It was at that point that people in the crowd attacked, the colonel said. ...

"From our reports, we believe this was a deliberate and planned ambush," Colonel Krivo said. "This was not just a hasty act."

The soldiers faced an arsenal of weapons that included small arms and rocket-propelled grenades, as well as explosives, Colonel Krivo added.

But many people in the neighborhood said the soldiers fired first.

"The Americans started shooting randomly," said Hassan Khadhim, 22, owner of a shop next to where the shootout took place. "Mostly, they were shooting in the air to frighten people. So our people shot back at them."

Some witnesses, however, agreed that it was an ambush.

"Moktada's people were hiding behind the mural waiting for them," said Muhammad Kadhim, 31, a post office employee. "When the Americans came they started shooting at them, and all the Americans were trying to do was just to leave."
Read it in The New York Times.
  

6:09 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Cubs Win On Pinch-hit Triple

Keeping the dream alive and well!
MIAMI, Oct. 10 -- Doug Glanville hasn't seen much playing time in the playoffs, but he made the most of a rare opportunity Friday night. Glanville, who had just one at-bat in the postseason, struck a one-out triple in the 11th inning against the Florida Marlins, driving in Kenny Lofton from first base to give the Chicago Cubs a 5-4 victory and a 2-1 lead in the National League Championship Series.
Cubs Win...
  

6:06 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Confusion in Hell

This is bad news no matter which of the two stories is correct: If Shiites are luring our troops in to ambushes, that's worse than bad news; if our GI's fired first at religious protestors, that is also very bad news. Getting at truth in a combat zone has always been a worse than iffy proposition.
BAGHDAD, Oct. 10 -- Iraqis lured a squad of American soldiers into a fatal ambush here Thursday night with a plaintive cry for help, the U.S. military said Friday. But residents of the sprawling Shiite Muslim slum known as Sadr City, where the attack took place, maintained that U.S. forces antagonized a crowd and opened fire first, killing two Iraqi men.

The clash, in which two soldiers were killed and four were wounded, and disagreement over how it unfolded reflect growing tensions between Americans and the 3 million residents of Sadr City. Shiites make up about 60 percent of Iraq's population and have been less given to violent opposition toward the U.S.-led occupation than Sunni Muslims.

In August, residents of Sadr City demonstrated against U.S. forces after an Iraqi boy was killed during a protest. But weeks had gone by without a serious altercation until this week, when thousands of followers of Moqtada Sadr, a leading Shiite cleric and strident opponent of the U.S. occupation, marched to demand the release of a local cleric.

Once called Saddam City, the neighborhood was renamed for Sadr's father, a revered cleric.
Read it in the Washington Post.
  

6:04 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Limbaugh Addiction

Limbaugh, who has added a whole new meaning to his given name, Rush, has only added a little bit to the taint of hypocrisy which lies heavily upon the bulled necks of his moralizing brethren of the anti-freedom tin-pot warriors of the far right because there has been such a rash of them to crash and burn of late.
Rush Limbaugh, the nation's most popular radio talk-show host with an audience of 20 million people a week, announced yesterday that he was addicted to prescription painkillers and would check into a rehabilitation center. ...

Mr. Limbaugh, who has been in the forefront of conservative talk radio since the mid-1980's and is widely credited with mobilizing support for the Republican sweep of Congress in 1994 and the impeachment of President Bill Clinton in 1999, made the announcement nine days after he resigned as an ESPN sports analyst because of race-related comments he made about Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb. ...

Mr. Limbaugh, who has regularly told his listeners that drug users should be jailed, said he began taking painkillers after spinal surgery in the 1990's.
As I said earlier, pathetic is what he is...and I must admit to enjoying it so.
  

6:01 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Now This is What I call a GOOD-news story

A Noble Nobel Indeed: Peace Prize Is Awarded To Iranian.
PARIS, Oct. 10 -- An Iranian lawyer and human rights activist who has battled her country's Islamic government for years on behalf of women, street children and dissidents won this year's Nobel Peace Prize Friday. The win made Shirin Ebadi the first Muslim woman to receive that honor.

The Norwegian Nobel Committee, which administers the prize, said Ebadi's selection was intended to promote human rights and democracy in Islamic countries and the world as a whole.

Analysts said the committee's decision, announced in the Norwegian capital of Oslo, appeared aimed at showing support for moderate Muslims after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, which many people feel widened the chasm between Islam and Christianity and promoted religious intolerance.
More, from the Washington Post...
  

5:54 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




How the Self-Righteous Whine: Pitifully.

Limbaugh grovels: There is Cosmic Justice in the universe.
Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh announced during his radio program Friday that he is addicted to painkillers and is checking into a rehab center to “break the hold this highly addictive medication has on me.”

“YOU KNOW I have always tried to be honest with you and open about my life,” Limbaugh said during a stunning admission aired nationwide. “So I need to tell you today that part of what you have heard and read is correct. I am addicted to prescription pain medication.”

“Immediately following this broadcast, I am checking myself into a treatment center for the next 30 days to once and for all break the hold this highly addictive medication has on me,” he added.

Law enforcement sources who spoke on condition of anonymity confirmed to The Associated Press that Limbaugh was being investigated by the Palm Beach County, Fla., state attorney’s office.

“At the present time, the authorities are conducting an investigation, and I have been asked to limit my public comments until this investigation is complete,” Limbaugh said Friday.
  

5:51 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Some Things in China aren't Changing Fast Enough

US-based Human Rights Watch said Thursday that a Chinese health official, who reportedly was sentenced to prison for publicizing a report about unsanitary blood-selling in Henan, China, might still be awaiting trial. The group had said Tuesday that the Henan health department official, Ma Shiwen, was convicted of disclosing state secrets, but an HRW spokesperson said it was not clear whether a verdict had been issued. 'There seems to be conflicting information on whether he was convicted,' said Joanne Csete, director of HRW's AIDS program. 'We reported what we knew at the time based on sources that had been reliable in the past.' Nevertheless, she said, 'the fact remains that the man should not be in detention.' An official of the Henan High People's Court, contacted Tuesday by telephone, said she had no information on Ma's case. Ma is the second person reported to have been detained in connection with the report, which was apparently given to AIDS activists. Last year, activist Wan Yanhai was released after being held for nearly a month by state security agents who said he leaked official secrets by distributing the report.
HIV / AIDS Information on the Internet, provided by AEGIS
  

5:43 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Big Time Blogging News

From Cyberjournalist.net: NYTimes.com weighs using Weblogs.
The BloggerCon Weblog conference at Harvard this past weekend included an interesting discussion on Weblogs and journalism, including moderator Scott Rosenberg, the managing editor of Salon.com; James Taranto, who does a daily bloggish column for the WSJ's Opinion Journal; and NYTimes.com editor-in-chief Len Apcar. NYU's Jay Rosen offers a nice summary of the discussion, in which Apcar said he is hoping to launch new Weblogs on the Times' site as part of the organization's coverage of the presidential campaign.

In an interesting audio interview with blogger Chris Lydon (MP3), Apcar said it could be "some kind of running journal that looks at the feel, the texture, the personalities, the tensions and some of the drama of the campaign, the smells and bells of a particular story. In the right hands it could be compelling reading."

Apcar said he wants to explore other ways to use Weblogs in part because of the success of "Kristoff Responds," a Webloggish forum in which Nicholas D. Kristof, Op-Ed columnist for The Times, answers reader e-mail and gives "the story behind the column."
Meanwhile, here's an interesting online discussion on the BloggerCon Web site about what you would do if you were "blogger-in-chief" for The New York Times.

From Cyberjournalist.net: NYTimes.com weighs using Weblogs.

 

5:36 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Secrets of the Scandal

Not surprisingly, Nicholas Kristof nails the essence of the Valerie Plame Wilson scandal.
Like any good spy story, the outing of Valerie Plame Wilson is far more complex than it seems on the surface.

I know Mrs. Wilson, but I knew nothing about her C.I.A. career and hadn't realized she's 'a hell of a shot with an AK-47,' as a classmates at the C.I.A. training 'farm,' Jim Marcinkowski, recalls. I'll be more careful around her, for she also turns out to be skilled in throwing hand grenades and to have lived abroad and run covert operations in some of the world's messier spots. (Mrs. Wilson was not a source for this column or any other that I've written about the intelligence community.)

Those operations remain secret, but there are several crucial facts that can be made public without putting anyone at risk — and together, they leave everybody looking bad. The C.I.A. is now conducting a damage assessment, which will determine what networks and operations it will have to close down. But my sense is that Democrats exaggerate the damage to Mrs. Wilson's career and to her personal security, while Republicans vastly play down the enormity of the security breach and the danger to the assets she worked with.

And now a few pertinent facts:
Please read the rest...
  

3:43 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Great, Just What is Needed, Another Government for Iraq!

I thought Islamic Law forbids intoxicants: This fool is smoking some really righteous weed
Saturday, October 11, 2003 (Baghdad):

Iraq's prominent Shiite leader Moqtada Al Sadr claimed he will form a new government in the country today.

According to the announcement made during yesterday's Friday prayers, the government will be a republic without terrorism and without occupation. It will include a ministry of religious endowment, apart from regular ones like finance and foreign affairs.

'Although this declaration will be dangerous for me, I have established and created a new government, with new ministers. Our new country will be dignified, free and will give people their rights," the leader said.
Read more...
  

3:20 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




This from Calpundit:

Mr. Drum, otherwise known as Calpundit, has a pithy comment indeed on the tit for tat between Messrs. Brooks and Krugman of The New York Times.
Remember that David Brooks column in the New York Times a few weeks ago suggesting that all the Bush haters ought to calm down a bit? Sure, conservatives were kinda rough on Clinton, but haven't we all learned a lesson from that?

At the time, several people suggested that his column was aimed directly at fellow Times columnist and prototypical angry liberal Paul Krugman, but I didn't buy it. It seemed like everyone was reading a little too much into his words.

Well, it looks like I was wrong, because Krugman himself certainly seems to think it was a shot across the bow. He replies today, and you don't have to dig very far below the surface to see that, reduced to words of one syllable, he's telling Brooks to go fuck himself.

The Times sandbox is getting a little testy.
Yes, but it's still the best newspaper going.

From Calpundit
  

1:52 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Friday, October 10, 2003

Bush could find the leakers if he wanted to

Mr. Marshall keeps the pressure on in his column in The Hill
This is a fast-moving story, so two quick points to watch on the Wilson-Plame scandal:

Point 1 — Let’s not get distracted by the avalanche of irrelevancies.

Are leaks always bad? Do some help keep the public informed? Don’t most leak investigations fail to find the culprit? Is Joe Wilson an inveterate partisan? And all the rest of it.

Some of those questions are bogus. Some are not. But all of them are beside the point.

The president and his top advisers have almost certainly known since mid-July that one of their number blew the cover of a clandestine CIA employee out of a mix of retribution and ideological zealotry.

If they didn’t know it in mid-July, they’ve certainly known it since Sept. 27, when the CIA referral story broke.

And what have they done to get to the bottom of it?

In a word, nothing.
Read it all in The Hill
  

11:34 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Oh, now that’s very interesting.

Josh Marshall is not going to let Novak and his handlers off the hook
Let’s go back and do a little more Bob Novak exegesis.

As we’ve noted before, one of the best pieces of evidence that Novak (and thus his sources) knew Valerie Plame was a clandestine employee of the CIA was that he said as much in his original column. There he called her a “CIA operative.”

People who follow the intel world say that phrase is almost always meant to refer to a clandestine agent or someone in the field, rather than an analyst.

Now, since the story blew up a week and a half ago, Novak has been telling people that this reference was just some sort of slip-up, that in this case he meant ‘operative’ only in the generic sense of a ‘hack’ or a ‘fixer.’ On Meet the Press Novak said he uses “the word too much [and] if somebody did a Nexus search of my columns, they'd find an overuse of ‘operative.’”

Well, Novak does seem to use the word operative a lot. But as one of my readers pointed out to me this evening, ‘operative’ can mean all sorts of things in different contexts. The question is how Novak uses it in this particular context. Following up on my reader’s suggestion I did a Nexis search to see all the times Novak used the phrases “CIA operative” or “agency operative.”

This was a quick search. But I came up with six examples. And in each case Novak used the phrase to refer to someone working in a clandestine capacity.

Here they are …
Talking Points Memo
  

11:15 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Jay Rosen and Jeff Jarvis jawing on Blogging at PressThink

For a veteran author and journalist but brand new Blogger such as myself, the discussion that Jarvis and Rosen are gifting us with upon their return from the Blogger.Con confab at Harvard is invaluable and provocative.
PressThink: Well, I would be cautious about proclaiming any revolution. That was the one thing in the Harvard conference I found unwise and unnecessary. The weblog is an exciting form, the Internet holds many marvels, and the more I think about it, the more different the emerging pattern seems — compared to what we’re used to with The Media. But it’s a big leap from, “wow, this is way different” to “the revolution is upon us.”

First, there’s the problem Esther Dyson pointed to: when readers become writers, where do all the new writers get their readers? There may be answers to that (like the break up of huge impersonal audiences into smaller chunks) but it’s not a simple issue. Smart people in the media industry have known for some time that the hard limit on growth is people’s time: video games eat into television watching because there’s only so much time in the day.

Weblogs are a rich resource, but digging into that richness does take time. We’re still a speck on the big information screen; the number of users is tiny, and the number using weblogs in place of Big Media even smaller. Precisely because the tools are so easy to use, we can expect a flood of earnest mediocrity, which only adds to Dyson’s doubts.

But beyond these practical difficulties is another problem. The rhetoric of revolution—plus the excitement of being “in” on the new thing—can warp your expectations. People criticize the weblog world for being self-referential, and of course it is. But that doesn’t bother me. The danger is in expecting revolution on top of revolution. This came to a head at Harvard when Dave Winer, a skilled provocateur, said to the Dean campaign reps, “why are you taking the money raised on the Internet and spending it on TV ads?” Why not keep it where you got it, investing the money in even newer forms of two-way campaigning? This is where Josh Marshall of Talking Points and Scott Rosenberg of Salon started shaking their heads, and I understood why.

Sometimes reform has more radical effects than revolution. If Dean spent the money on TV ads to remain competitive, but used the two-way weblog world to explain, restrain, justify, and correct the ads he was putting out, so that they didn’t look, feel or sound like anyone else’s ads, that would be a significant reform, and it would shift power from consultants to supporters, forcing him to legitimate his propaganda. Pretty radical, no?
It's at PressThink
  

10:07 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Eric Alterman: Altercation

Mr. Alterman is having some fun over at his Blog.
“Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the biggest baby of them all?” Good Enough for Saddam: Good enough for Fox. “The second-in-command at the information ministry, who spent his days reading the reports the minders wrote about visiting foreign journalists, has been employed by Fox News

Studies in Misplaced Confidence:
The Bush Administration on finding Osama Bin Laden in Central Asia: “We’re going to hunt them down one at a time…it doesn’t matter where they hide, as we work with our friends we will find them and bring them to justice.”
— President George W. Bush, 11/22/02
The Bush Administration on finding Saddam Hussein in the Mideast: We are continuing the pursuit and it’s a matter of time before [Saddam] is found and brought to justice.”
— White House spokesman McClellan, 9/17/03
The Bush Administration on finding the leaker in the close confines of the White House: “ I don’t know if we’re going to find out the senior administration official. I don’t have any idea.”
— President George W. Bush, 10/7/03"

I miss Ari This McClellan guy is too nice to have to do this. (…and without Howie Kurtz running interference for him, either.)
Q: Why do you refuse to answer the question whether Karl Rove said that Joseph Wilson’s wife was fair game?
MR. McCLELLAN: I think we’ve been through this for now two days in a row.
Q: You didn’t answer the question —
MR. McCLELLAN: No, I did answer the question.
Q: But did he say it?
MR. McCLELLAN: I did answer the question.
Q: Did he say it?
MR. McCLELLAN: Again, I answered that question, and we’ve been through it for two days now. And so, it’s been addressed.
Q: But what was the answer?
MR. McCLELLAN: I’m not going to go back through it again today, because we’ve been through it for the last couple of days. And I pointed out that there are some that are trying to politicize this investigation for partisan political gain, and that’s unfortunate. There’s an investigation going on and no one wants to get to the bottom of it more than this White House.
Q: But why don’t you just say ...
MR. McCLELLAN: So I’ve already addressed that issue.
Q: ... just say, I don’t want to answer that.
MR. McCLELLAN: Anybody else? Dana, you have one?
Eric Alterman: Altercation
  

5:44 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Arrogance is Always a Hard Sell

What price arrogance?
The United States has tried again and again to get help from the United Nations as a way of legitimizing its tragic misadventure in Iraq. But the U.N., which was founded in 1945 to foster international cooperation as a way of promoting peace, is following the quiet guidance of its secretary general, Kofi Annan, whose response to the latest U.S. entreaty has been a polite but firm no.

At a private lunch last week with members of the Security Council, the secretary general made it clear that there was no chance he would go along with a U.S. proposal to have the U.N. assist in the effort to rebuild and reestablish security in Iraq even as the United States retains full control of the country.

"The U.S. would like to have its cake and eat it," said a diplomat who attended the lunch. "It wants to fly the U.N. flag to demonstrate to Iraqis and others that it is no longer an occupying power. But the U.S. would still be the occupying power because it would still be ruling the country." ...

There is a widespread feeling at the U.N. that the policies of the United States — its invasion and occupation of Iraq, its approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its frequently contemptuous attitude toward the U.N. in particular and international cooperation in general — have made the Middle East and parts of the rest of the world substantially more dangerous, rather than less.

There is an especially emotional quality to discussions with U.N. diplomats about these matters because of the two suicide bomb attacks at the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad in the past two months. The first attack, on Aug. 19, killed 22 people, including Sergio Vieira de Mello, a highly respected and very well-liked official who was close to Mr. Annan and who led the U.N. mission in Iraq.

"We are not here to serve as a fig leaf for aggression," said one of the guests who attended last week's lunch at the U.N. "The U.S. does not want to share power in Iraq. It does not want to share authority. All it wants to share are the casualties and the costs. That is a very brutal, one-sided game, and we should not be playing it."
Read Bob Herbert in The New York Times.
  

3:23 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Hell Continued

The Bastards Kill on...and the "liberated" steal from the dying.
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Friday, Oct. 10 - A white Oldsmobile station wagon packed with explosives blew up inside a police compound in one of Baghdad's poorest slums Thursday morning, killing the car's occupants and at least 8 others and wounding more than 40.

Witnesses said the car had burst into the compound at a high speed, possibly running over two officers. The blast left a four-foot-deep crater, an American military officer at the scene said.

Two American soldiers were killed and four wounded in an ambush just hours after the car bombing in the same Baghdad neighborhood, United States military officials said Friday.

The troops from the First Armored Division were on a routine patrol when the ambush occurred about 8 p.m. on Thursday. No further details were released. ...

At almost the same hour, on the other side of town in Baghdad's richest neighborhood, Josι Antonio Bernal Gσmez, the 34-year-old deputy intelligence officer at the Spanish Embassy, was assassinated at his home when he opened the gate to a man dressed as a Shiite cleric, a Spanish official said. ...

Witnesses to the attack on Thursday said they had seen several policemen, including the two at the gate, lying dead around the site of the explosion. The Associated Press reported that about 50 policemen had gathered in the courtyard of the compound to collect their pay when the vehicle sped through the gate.

Sadr City, about five miles from downtown Baghdad, is a depressed Shiite neighborhood of two million, where most of the residents are followers of a radical, anti-American cleric, Muqtada al-Sadr.

After the blast, American soldiers surrounded Mr. Sadr's office, but withdrew when the cleric's followers, many armed, appeared.

After the bomb went off, many young men poured into the police compound, which was being refurbished. But instead of helping the wounded they began taking weapons from the soldiers and money from the dead and seriously wounded, said Mr. Resem, a wounded policeman.
Apparently these people have another definition of liberation?
  

3:11 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Krugman's Civility

Republicans never have been able to take the heat; historically, they are very good only at turning it on. Give 'em Hell, Mr Krugman.
It's the season of the angry liberal. Books like Al Franken's 'Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them,' Joe Conason's 'Big Lies' and Molly Ivins's 'Bushwhacked' have become best sellers. (Yes, I've got one out there, too.) But conservatives are distressed because those liberals are so angry and rude. O.K., they admit, they themselves were a bit rude during the Clinton years — that seven-year, $70 million investigation of a tiny money-losing land deal, all that fuss about the president's private life — but they're sorry, and now it's time for everyone to be civil.

Indeed, angry liberals can take some lessons in civility from today's right.

Consider, for example, Fox News's genteel response to Christiane Amanpour, the CNN correspondent. Ms. Amanpour recently expressed some regret over CNN's prewar reporting: "Perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News." A Fox spokeswoman replied, "It's better to be viewed as a foot soldier for Bush than as a spokeswoman for Al Qaeda."

And liberal pundits who may be tempted to cast personal aspersions can take lessons in courtesy from conservatives like Charles Krauthammer, who last December reminded TV viewers of his previous career as a psychiatrist, then said of Al Gore, "He could use a little help."

What's really important, of course, is that political figures stick to the issues, like the Bush adviser who told The New York Times that the problem with Senator John Kerry is that "he looks French."

Some say that the right, having engaged in name-calling and smear tactics when Bill Clinton was president, now wants to change the rules so such behavior is no longer allowed. In fact, the right is still calling names and smearing; it wants to prohibit rude behavior only by liberals.

But there's more going on than a simple attempt to impose a double standard. All this fuss about the rudeness of the Bush administration's critics is an attempt to preclude serious discussion of that administration's policies. For there is no way to be both honest and polite about what has happened in these past three years.
This is must reading, especially for right-wingers who want to get their cardiovascular workout on the cheap.
  

12:40 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




The President Who Came In From the Cold

As the biographer, friend and admirer of the last Chairman of the KGB, General Leonid Shebarshin, once Mr. Putin's boss, I found this profile of Russia's President quite interesting. I believe you will...
MOSCOW, Oct. 8 — There is a question that irritates President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, and it is the one about his past as a foreign intelligence operative of the K.G.B.

"They cannot forget about that agency," he replied, seemingly to his aides, when asked a version of it in an expansive interview at his wooded presidential estate outside of Moscow. He chuckled, but not warmly.

Does the president of a newly democratic Russia — or, as some say, an increasingly autocratic one — regret any part of the K.G.B.'s history?

"No, of course not," he said brusquely and, surprisingly, personally. "There was absolutely nothing that I could be ashamed of. "
Putin, Courtesy of The New York Times.

When you're done with that, you might want to read The Bear in Winter.
  

11:40 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Nixon Scoffed at Watergate, Dubya...

This is not going to go away.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 9 — As Democrats accused the White House of trying to improperly influence an inquiry into a leak, officials said on Thursday that the F.B.I. was doubling the number of investigators on the politically charged case.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation plans to use about 12 agents and other personnel, twice the number first planned, to try to find the person who leaked the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer, the officials said.

The White House began this week to turn over to the Justice Department what it considers relevant documents. Prosecutors have told at least three other agencies — the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Department and the State Department — not to destroy records that might be connected to the case.

Because of the volume of records that may have to be reviewed, "it just made sense to increase our numbers," a senior F.B.I. official said. "Six people can't do this alone."

The expansion underscores the gravity of an inquiry that has threatened to become a major headache for the Bush administration. ...

The White House has promised its full cooperation, but Mr. Bush said this week that he had doubts about whether investigators would catch the leaker.

"I don't know," Mr. Bush said, "if we're going to find out the senior administration official" who told Robert Novak, as Mr. Novak wrote in his syndicated column in July, that Valerie Plame, the wife of former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, was a C.I.A. employee. Mr. Wilson was a critic of the administration's Iraq policies.

Administration officials said the president's statement was a frank acknowledgment of the difficulty of conducting such investigations.

Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, Democrat of New Jersey, said in an interview that the comments threatened to undermine the inquiry by lowering expectations.

"If the president says, `I don't know if we're going to find this person,' what kind of a statement is that for the president of the United States to make?" Mr. Lautenberg asked. "Would he say that about a bank-robbery investigation? He should be as indignant as everybody else is over this breach."

Mr. Wilson said Mr. Bush "certainly seems far less certain about finding the leaker than he is about finding Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein."
More on Wilsongate...
  

11:11 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Thursday, October 09, 2003

I Know a Good Idea When I Read One

Thomas L. Friedman is a pretty smart fellow. I hope somebody with some authority reads this...
There is an old proverb that says, "If you're going to sup with the devil, use a long spoon." Does the White House pantry have any long spoons? I ask because if President Bush really wants to achieve his objectives in Iraq, he may have to sup a little with Yasir Arafat, the Iranian leader Ali Khamenei and Syria's president, Bashar al-Assad.

First, let me state my own bias: Iraq is the whole ballgame. If we can produce a reasonably decent, constitutionally grounded Iraqi government, good things will happen all around the Middle East. If Iraq turns into a quagmire, it will be a disaster for U.S. interests all around the world. So, for me, everything should be focused on getting Iraq on the right path.

Which is why we may need to let some of the Axis of Evil out on parole — or at least out on work-release. We can't allow the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to spread into a Israeli-Syrian-Shiite-Hezbollah conflict. It would greatly complicate the ability of Iraqis to work openly with us and would greatly enhance the ability of anti-U.S. forces in Iraq to mobilize militants.
Read the rest of Mr. Friedman's column in The New York Times
  

9:25 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Ahh...the Lady Does Have a Way With Words

Love her or hate her, she's a national treasure that should never be ignored if only for her artistry. Ms. Coulter only dreams she could write this well.

WASHINGTON

It's easy to see why the Bush crowd is getting so tetchy.

The itch to ditch officials who fritter away the public trust is growing, as Arnold and his broom bear down on Sacramento.

And we know now that our first pre-emptive war was launched basically because Iraq had . . . a vial of Botox?

Just about the scariest thing the weapons hunter David Kay could come up with was a vial of live botulinum, hidden in the home of an Iraqi biological weapons scientist.

This has very dire implications for Beverly Hills and the East Side of Manhattan, areas awash in vials of Botox, the botulinum toxin that can either be turned into a deadly biological weapon or a pricey wrinkle smoother.

And it may have dire implications for the Pentagon and White House if Americans come to believe that their trust was betrayed when the president and his team spread the impressions that Saddam was about to blow us up and that he was behind the 9/11 attacks.

It doesn't help to have a former-NATO-commander-turned-presidential-contender running around telling the country that the Bush dream team is a bunch of dunces. Or a former-diplomat-turned-angry-husband-of-an-outed-spy running around telling the country that the Bush dream team is a bunch of backstabbing lawbreakers who are dead wrong on Iraq.

The administration that never let you see it sweat is sweating, as two of its control freaks openly tug over control. The president's foreign policy duenna and his grumpy grampy over at the Pentagon are suddenly mud wrestling.
Ms. Dowd...
  

9:08 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Something to Smile About...Cubs Win!

Thank the gods for Baseball...and Scotch, of course.
CHICAGO, Oct. 8 — The Cubs finally displayed their vaunted pitching Wednesday night, sending Mark Prior to the mound in an attempt to even their National League Championship Series against the Florida Marlins. Prior and Kerry Wood may separate the Cubs from the rest of baseball this month, but Sammy Sosa could make them even more imposing.

After not having hit a postseason home run before this series, Sosa homered for the second straight game, driving a ball to one of the few deep corners of Wrigley Field and more or less putting the game out of reach as well. He helped the Cubs batter the Marlins, 12-3, to even the four-of-seven-game series at one game apiece.

"You know when Sammy gets on one of those streaks, he gets a home run every at-bat," Cubs Manager Dusty Baker said. "And I'm hoping this is on the way. Boy, it's coming right on time."
You betcha! Sammy! Sammy Sammy!
  

8:47 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Hell Continued...

BAGHDAD, Oct 9. - An American soldier was killed in an a rocket-propelled grenade attack on a military convoy northeast of the Iraqi capital early on Thursday, a U.S. military spokeswoman said.

She said the soldier from the 4th Infantry Division was pronounced dead in a U.S. military hospital a few hours after the attack at about 2 a.m. (2300 GMT Wednesday) near the town of Baquba.

The U.S. military says 92 U.S. soldiers have been killed in action in Iraq since major combat was declared over on May 1.
Hell
  

8:26 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




War is Hell

As much as we abhor the relentless carnage, and loathe its perpetrators, we must remember that this is what war is. There is no other real-world definition; if we are to finish what we started--and that is subject to free and open debate, or else we fight and die to defend something other than freedom--we have to accept the losses, the suffering, the pain, the ugliness until it is over someday, not tomorrow, not next week, or next month...someday. We can, and should, however, hold accountable those who mislead us on the way in, or failed us in the planning during and after, if that in the end is what is determined to have happened.
BAGHDAD, Oct. 9 - Twin attacks in Baghdad killed a Spanish diplomat and at least eight Iraqis Thursday, exactly half a year since U.S. troops occupied the city.

A suicide car bomber crashed through the gates of a police station, killing at least three policemen and five civilians and wounding scores in the blast, Iraqi police said.

"It was definitely a suicide bomb,' one policeman said at the scene. 'We found the head of the attacker. It had been blown off his body. He was bearded, and his body was charred."

In another part of town, Jose Antonio Bernal, a Spanish air force sergeant attached to the embassy, was gunned down as he left his home. Spain has around 1,300 troops in Iraq and backed the U.S.-led war.

Occupation forces and diplomats in Baghdad have become targets of what the Americans consider elements loyal to ousted President Saddam Hussein, who is still on the run.
A season in Hell.
  

8:17 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Cracks in the Liberty Cabal?

Secrecy is an addictive and dangerous habit not easily shed; therefore it should be used only in rigidly prescribed moderation and only for the duration of the cause it was meant to serve.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 8 — The White House and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld moved quickly on Wednesday to contain an unusual public breach over Iraq policy, a day after he testily told European reporters that he was not consulted before a reorganization intended to give the White House more control over the occupation of Iraq.

Appearing at a NATO conference in Colorado Springs on Wednesday afternoon, Mr. Rumsfeld tried to dismiss any talk of his diminished role in Iraq policy, suggesting at one point that reporters should concentrate on "something more important," like the World Series prospects of his hometown Chicago Cubs.

That tone contrasted with his harsh language on Tuesday, when he said President Bush and had never discussed with him the creation of the Iraq Stabilization Group, set up by Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser. He said that the first he heard of it was in a memorandum from Ms. Rice last week. In a seeming criticism of the White House he suggested that the National Security Council was finally focusing on doing what it should have been doing all along — coordinating the work of the many government agencies dealing with Iraq.

He told reporters on Tuesday, "It's not quite clear to me why" Ms. Rice sent him a memorandum on the subject. When he was pressed on the question by a German broadcast reporter, he retorted: "I said I don't know. Isn't that clear? You don't understand English?"

On Wednesday, President Bush's spokesman, Scott McClellan, retracted a statement he made on Monday that Mr. Rumsfeld had been fully involved in the decision to create the new group. "Maybe I should not have characterized it that way," Mr. McClellan told reporters. ...

Administration officials said Mr. Rumsfeld appeared angry at the widespread perception that his power was being diminished — a perception Ms. Rice disputed on Sunday.

Several officials said that it also reflected growing tensions between the Pentagon and the White House over poorly executed plans for postwar Iraq and the Pentagon's failure to work smoothly with other agencies — from the Treasury to the State Department — that are increasingly critical to making the reconstruction work.

"This is about more than just how we handled Iraq," said one administration official who deals with Mr. Rumsfeld often. "It's about getting the Rumsfeld crowd to understand the reality of what's happening, and what's not working." ...

"This is about more than just how we handled Iraq," said one administration official who deals with Mr. Rumsfeld often. "It's about getting the Rumsfeld crowd to understand the reality of what's happening, and what's not working." ...

"The way I read the memorandum is that it is basically what the responsibility of the N.S.C. is and always has been," he said. The agency's role, he added later, "is what it's always been," one of coordination.

Asked whether White House officials had failed to brief him before news of the new group came out, he said, "That's true." ...

"Rumsfeld doesn't like this because he doesn't want to admit anything went wrong," one senior American diplomat involved in the debate said. "So, what else is new? It's Rumsfeld."
With all of the hyper-patriots attacking the messengers (the press) for their percieved disloyalty in being the deliverer of bad-news messages, it is unseemly that they are in fact--and in public--disloyal to one another. What kind of message does that send to the enemy about our resoluteness of purpose?

In The New York Times...
  

7:20 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Valerie Plame the person, not just a leak

The Washington Post introduces us to the wife, mother and loyal public servant that Novak's handlers manipulated him into attempting to destroy...
One evening this summer, former diplomat Joseph Wilson sat amid the African-themed decor of his spacious Washington home, sipping a glass of beer and talking about a trip he took to Niger for the CIA. His wife, Valerie, was in the kitchen, preparing chicken for a cookout and arranging red, white and blue napkins.

Suddenly a giggling boy streaked nude into the living room and jumped into his father's lap. Bath time was nigh. Valerie Wilson rounded up the towheaded 3-year-old and his twin sister, efficiently taming the household whirlwind.

When Valerie E. Wilson -- maiden name Plame -- introduced herself to a reporter in her home on July 3, there was no hint she was anything other than a busy mother with an unflagging smile and classy wardrobe. She talked a bit about the joys and challenges of twins, then faded into the background.

One might have thought her to be a financial manager, maybe a real estate agent -- but never a spy. Few knew her secret: At 22, Plame had joined the Central Intelligence Agency and traveled the world on undercover missions.

A few months after that July evening, her name -- and her occupation -- would be published and broadcast internationally. In the public imagination, she would become "Jane Bond," as her husband later put it. A clandestine operative isn't supposed to be famous, but her identity was leaked to journalists by administration officials for what Joseph Wilson alleged was retaliation for his criticism of the White House's Iraq policies.

The Wilsons -- he's 53; she's 40 -- are at the center of a growing political controversy as the Justice Department investigates her unmasking, which occurred in a July 14 column by conservative pundit Robert Novak, who cited "two senior administration officials" as his sources. The outing has sparked a furor in the intelligence community, with some saying they feel betrayed by their government.
Meet Valerie Plame Wilson...
  

5:43 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Wednesday, October 08, 2003

A Really Good News Story

It is always fun to see young writers get a break; I still remember how good it felt, even after all these years and all the words written...
It's a classic dream-come-true: A young would-be writer from a small town in Alabama comes to New York City, and within months of penning her first words for a hot new publication, she's snatched up by a big-time magazine.

But there's a high-tech twist to this story. The publication that got Elizabeth Spiers her job at New York magazine never saw print. Her witty synthesis of media news and celebrity gossip was showcased on a frequently updated Web log (or 'blog') called Gawker.com, which made its debut late last year and soon became a daily stop for more than 40,000 Web surfers, including much of Manhattan's media elite.

Spiers' spectacular career trajectory -- from financial analyst to media insider in less than a year via the Internet -- may be difficult to duplicate, but it's not impossible. Matthew Yglesias did something like it. The recent Harvard graduate landed a job at The American Prospect, a political magazine based in Washington, largely on the strength of his well-regarded, politically minded blog.

"The fact that he had a well-known blog definitely influenced our decision to hire him," American Prospect senior editor Garance Franke-Ruta says via e-mail. The commentary site created by Yglesias, who now is helping out with the magazine's own blog, helped him "stand out in a very large field" of applicants, Franke-Ruta adds.

"The media is starting to pay attention to blogs," says Jeff Jarvis, a co-founder of Entertainment Weekly who has worked for many other "old media" companies, including TV Guide and the Chicago Tribune. Jarvis, now the guru of new-media strategies for Advance Publications and a blogger himself, thinks it's only a matter of time before more Web site writers show up in mainstream publications.

"They're a new source of talent," says Jarvis.

"It's a fundamentally meritocratic medium," says Gawker Media president Nick Denton, who hired Spiers. "Quality [rises] quickly on the Web."

"When I started out, one of my fears was that I'd be laughed out of town. Here I was, a college junior, and who cares what I think?" Yglesias says. The rise of his blog -- thanks to generous attention from more famous bloggers, such as the "InstaPundit," Glenn Reynolds -- "speaks well of the people involved, rather than just the software involved," he adds.
It's in the Trib...
  

11:58 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




That Didn't Take Long

Golly, it's nice to be right, and so quickly (see post below) but our troops can use the help; on the other hand, it's not entirely discomforting to see William Safire's words come back at him that quickly. We are far apart philosophically.
Iraqi Kurds who had helped U.S. forces topple Saddam Hussein are threatening to turn their guns against their old enemy Turkey if Ankara sends troops to Iraq at Washington's request.

Turkey's efforts to suppress a Kurdish separatist movement within its own borders have inflamed the antagonism of Iraqi Kurds towards their neighbour.

''I don't want Turkish troops coming to Iraq,'' Kurdish taxi driver Saddam Younis, 27, said in Mosul. ''They will be attacked when they pass through the north.''

Facing daily guerrilla attacks and mounting financial costs, Washington is trying to get more countries to commit troops and funds to help stabilise Iraq. Turkey's parliament voted on Tuesday to send soldiers to join the occupation force in Iraq.

Turkish troops are not expected to be based in Kurdish areas. But they will probably have to enter Iraq through Kurdish territory and may need to maintain supply bases in the north.

''We don't want them in the north, south, middle, east or west,'' said Mahdi Herky, spokesman for the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) in Mosul. ''We don't want them to come.'' ...

"Turkey wants to help the Iraqi people preserve security and stability and rebuild Iraq,'' said Songul Chapouk, the Turkmen representative on the Governing Council. ''God willing, the Turkish troops, who are Muslim troops, will be welcomed by the Iraqi people,'' she told Reuters on Monday.

But as the Governing Council and the U.S.-led administration try to resolve their dispute, most Kurds insist that the arrival of Turkish troops would spark ethnic bloodshed.

''What they're after is control in the north,'' said Jasim Mahmoud, 34-year-old Kurd working at a Mosul Internet shop. ''Kurdish parties are preparing their weapons and if the Turks come down through the north I'm sure they will be attacked.''
It's on MSNBC...
  

11:16 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Good News or Bad News?

This is either very good news in the short and long term, or it is fairly good news in the short term and very bad news in the long term--in other words when we are eventually able to march out of Iraq rather than skedaddle.
SYRACUSE, N.Y. Better late than never.

As the foreign minister Abdullah Gul revealed in this space last week, postwar public opinion has changed in Turkey. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants to reassert that secular Muslim nation's historic position as America's stalwart strategic ally. At the moment the coalition most needs a boost, leaders of the powerful Turkish Army are now ready to provide a division of peacekeeping troops.

Yesterday, the Turkish Parliament approved — by a whopping 2-to-1 majority — the government's proposal to take an active part in stabilizing Iraq. Unlike Russia and Pakistan (our allies in name only), and unlike France and Germany (our outright diplomatic adversaries), Turkey's government does not insist on a new U.N. resolution stripping control from the U.S. and Britain before lending a hand. That will affect other countries now hanging back, as well as the U.N. resolution itself.
The good news is obvious, we get help from soldiers who can talk to the Iraqi citizens without an interpreter. The long term bad news is also obvious: Turks and Kurds have been warring against each other for centuries. What has happened to wipe out that animosity beyond the immediate goal of getting G.I. Joe's out of ancient Persia--which is of course more than a mere thorn in their political pride but rather their proud--some would say, overly so--heritage.
Read Mr. Safire's column and give it a thought...
  

10:55 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Are Conservatives too paranoid? Or are Liberals too Trusting and too Few?

This is a fascinating poll by Gallup News Service.
PRINCETON, NJ -- Forty-five percent of Americans believe the news media in this country are too liberal, while only 14% say the news media are too conservative. These perceptions of liberal inclination have not changed over the last three years. A majority of Americans who describe their political views as conservative perceive liberal leanings in the media, while only about a third of self-described liberals perceive conservative leanings.

More generally, the Sept. 8-10 Gallup Poll finds that a little more than half of Americans have a great deal or fair amount of trust in the news media when it comes to reporting the news fully, accurately, and fairly. Trust in the news media has not changed significantly over the last six years. Conservatives have a slightly lower level of trust in the media than either moderates or liberals do.
News Media Too Liberal?

Gallup has asked Americans four times in recent years if they perceive the news media as too liberal, too conservative, or about right...

Americans have been considerably more likely to perceive the news media as too liberal than as too conservative the last four times this question has been posed. One's interpretation of these findings is, to a degree, dependent on one's perspective. It's true that substantially more Americans say that the news media are too liberal than say they are too conservative. At the same time, a majority says that the news media are either too conservative, or just about right.

It's perhaps surprising that there has been such little variation in this sentiment over the last three years -- given the continuing focus on alleged media bias over this time period, including best-selling books such as Bias by Bernard Goldberg and Slander by Ann Coulter, which have alleged systematic liberal bias in the news media. The ratings success of the Fox News channel has been based in part on its attempt to appeal to conservative viewers who feel that the more traditional news media are liberal and biased.

It is clear that the underlying dynamic behind the finding that the news media are too liberal is the widespread belief among conservatives that the news media are too liberal, contrasted with the far less prevalent view among liberals that the news media are too conservative. Additionally, liberals are twice as likely to say that the media are too liberal (18%) as conservatives are to say they are too conservative (9%). Moderates are more "moderate" in their views, but still roughly as many say the news media are too liberal as say they are about right, and relatively few moderates say the news media are too conservative.

Plus, about 4 in 10 Americans today identify themselves as conservatives and about the same number identify as moderates, while less than 20% identify as liberals. Given all of this, the overall conclusion is that Americans, on average, are more likely to see the news media as too liberal than too conservative.
You need to read this, no matter what you label yourself as...
  

9:04 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




This is Truly Scary

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Oct. 7 — The United States military has been unable to locate a large number of shoulder-fired antiaircraft missiles that were part of the arsenal of Saddam Hussein, officials say, compounding the security risks for airports and airlines in Iraq and around the world.

The lack of accounting for the missiles — officials say there could be hundreds — is the primary reason the occupation authorities have not yet reopened the Baghdad International Airport to commercial traffic, officials said. The terminal has been rebuilt and the runways repaired, and Australian soldiers are running the air traffic control system.

But portable missiles were fired at incoming planes several times in recent weeks, one senior official said. Most of those incidents have not been reported to the public. The missiles missed their targets widely, suggesting that the people who fired them had not been extensively trained.

United States military officers do not know exactly how many of the missiles are unaccounted for, because they do not have precise estimates of how many Iraq once possessed.

"We just don't know," said an allied official, turning up his palms for emphasis. ...

In general, the operator of a shoulder-fired missile aims it at a low-flying plane or helicopter, then pulls a trigger, launching the projectile, which locks in on the heat emitted by the aircraft's engine. The United States and other advanced militaries have developed effective defenses like flares; their heat deceives the missile.

United States officials have discovered that Mr. Hussein's overall conventional military arsenal was much larger than American prewar estimates. The C.I.A. has estimated that the weapons dumps found so far in Iraq hold 600,000 tons of all kinds of ammunition and weapons.

The missiles believed to be available on the world black market include highly sophisticated American-made Stingers, nearly one thousand of which were given by the C.I.A. to the Islamic guerrillas who fought the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980's.

In December 2000, two Stingers were found on a North Korean ship smuggling drugs into Japan, according to American officials. The ship was sunk by the Japanese coast guard in a shootout. United States Navy divers secretly took the Stingers off the ship. It was raised, the drugs were displayed and the boat was put in a museum — all without public mention of the Stingers.

American officials said they had not been able to determine where the missiles were being sent.

Afghan-era Stingers are widely believed to be inoperable because of their age. But military experts say that while the Stinger's official military shelf life is seven years, with good maintenance and care they can be fired long after that.

Please see an excerpt of my voluminous interviews with the last Chairman of the KGB on this very subject.
  

4:57 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Going it Alone

No surprise here, folks, only sadness, anger, a dose of bitterness towards those who recklessly, arrogantly, mislead us, but also a grim determination to see it through. One would hope that at least we will relearn something from this experiment in nation building: Talk SOFTLY while carrying our very big stick.
WASHINGTON, Oct. 7 — The Bush administration has run into such stiff opposition at the United Nations Security Council to its plan for the future government of Iraq that it has pulled back from seeking a quick vote endorsing the proposal and may shelve it altogether, administration officials said Tuesday.

Two weeks after President Bush appealed at the United Nations for help in securing and reconstructing Iraq, administration officials said, his top aides will decide soon whether it is worth the effort to get a United Nations endorsement.

"We don't want to play this game for a long, long time," said a senior administration official, reflecting a certain exasperation with the Security Council. "This is as much a choice for the Council as it is for us. They can be multilateral and be part of it, or they can tell us to do it ourselves."
What little momentum there was behind the American proposal was deflated after the United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, disclosed his own reservations last week, much to the surprise of administration officials.

Mr. Annan, according to diplomats who have talked to him, essentially takes the view of the French that the violent attacks on Americans in Iraq would subside once an interim Iraqi government was established, perhaps in a matter of months. ...

"We really are at a pause right now," said an administration official. "A number of countries were leaning in our direction. But after the secretary general's statements, they became leery about supporting something he opposes."

Administration officials sought to avoid saying anything critical of the secretary general. Instead, they variously called his comments "unusual," "unhelpful" and "surprising."

The principal point of contention between the United States and Britain, on the one hand, and Mr. Annan, France and other Council members on the other, is the American intention to retain full control over Iraq during what could be a long period of writing a constitution, holding elections and restoring sovereignty.

Mr. Annan's comments were especially compelling to Council members because he warned that in light of the bombing of the United Nations headquarters in Baghdad in the summer, he could not in good conscience send his personnel into a dangerous environment to play a role subordinate to the American occupation. ...

Other reservations about the American resolution have been voiced by some of the countries that declined to back a resolution clearing the way for the Iraq war last spring, including Chile and Angola.

Ismael Gaspar Martins, the Angolan ambassador, said Monday evening that any resolution needed to send "a clear signal" that the American-led occupation was temporary.

The Chilean ambassador, Heraldo Muρoz, added that the reservations Mr. Annan voiced last week created "a new reality in front of us, one that must be accommodated."
Read more from the New York Times...
  

4:55 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Ocean Front Property For Sale in Arizona

"In all due respect,"anyone buying into this should be smoking something that isn't legal.
President Bush questioned on Tuesday whether investigators would be able to determine who leaked the identity of an undercover CIA officer but said his staff was cooperating. "I want to know the truth," he said.

Bush renewed his pledge to cooperate with the investigation to "come to the bottom of this."

But he said success was not guaranteed, and he turned reporters' questions back on them at the end of a Cabinet meeting.

"You tell me: How many sources have you had that's leaked information, that you've exposed or had been exposed? Probably none," he said.

"This is a large administration and there's a lot of senior officials," Bush told journalists. "I have no idea whether we'll find out who the leaker is, partially because, in all due respect to your profession, you do a very good job of protecting the leakers."

Adding a note of optimism, Bush also said, "But we'll find out." ...

The White House will not send investigators material deemed irrelevant, McClellan said.

"You don't want to overburden the Department of Justice with documents that have no relevance or are not responsive to their request," he said. "They're welcome to look at the other documents that's not an issue that are not responsive to their request."

But a Democratic lawmaker questioned White House intentions.

"I am very troubled by the fact that the White House counsel seems to be a gatekeeper, and I want to know what precautions Justice is taking to ensure that it gets all relevant information from the administration," said Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y. ...

McClellan firmly ruled out any role by three administration officials in the leak: political adviser Karl Rove, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, and National Security Council official Elliott Abrams.

But Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, said Rove should resign.

"In my view, it is shameful and unethical that an administration that promised to govern with 'honor and integrity' and 'change the tone' in Washington has now engaged in an orchestrated campaign to smear and intimidate truth-telling critics, placing them in possible physical harm and impairing the efforts and operations of the CIA," Conyers said.
This is going to be a long tap dance with smoke, mirrors, scrims and bombastic emcees...
  

4:42 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Some China News From Africa

Despite an uncertain banking system and a bloated bureaucracy, global miners will find China an attractive proposition

How much of an opportunity does China constitute for BHP Billiton and the other global mining groups? Or, to put it another way, how much of a risk is China?

Looking purely at the numbers, it might be tempting to think of China as a minor part of global mining company's portfolios. Sales to China constituted merely 7% of BHP Billiton's overall sales in the year to June 2003.

But this proportion has been growing strongly and is projected to grow faster still. Investors in BHP Billiton and the other large, diversified groups sat up and took notice some time ago; now the question is how long can it last. The effect of China on BHP Billiton and the other mining giants such as Rio Tinto and CVRD partly explains the way these companies have managed to outperform the overall market over the past year.

The reason for the outperformance has not been as much the extent of China's current impact, but rather its growth. The 7% of sales achieved by BHP Billiton for its goods sold to China comes to about $1,2bn. This is not a small number and it constitutes an increase of about 120% over the previous year.

The speed of the increase has been a surprise, even for the optimistic commentators. BHP Billiton CEO Chip Goodyear said in an interview yesterday after a recent trip to China that he had been impressed with the obvious enthusiasm of the Chinese and the constructive approach adopted.
From allAfrica.com...
  

4:36 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Absolutely Official: The New York Times Calls It

LOS ANGELES, Oct. 7 — In an emphatic end to an extraordinary campaign, Californians voted overwhelmingly to recall Gov. Gray Davis and chose as his replacement Arnold Schwarzenegger, an Austrian-born body builder and movie actor making his first run for office, according to exit polls.
Polling sites closed at 8 p.m. Pacific time, and official results were not immediately announced. But results of a survey of voters leaving the polls through early evening, conducted for The New York Times and other news organizations, showed that a majority wanted to oust Mr. Davis, and a clear plurality preferred Mr. Schwarzenegger as his replacement. ...

Today's vote concluded 77 days of political mayhem unlike anything this state has seen. The race featured a crazy quilt of 135 candidates, any of whom, under the unusual rules of the recall, could have been elected with a simple plurality. But it ended in a close-in brawl between a seasoned political gut-puncher, Mr. Davis, and a willful newcomer, Mr. Schwarzenegger.

The race generated enormous interest in California and around the world because of the novelty of a recall and Mr. Schwarzenegger's star power. Californians followed the 11-week contest with an intensity usually reserved for freeway car chases and Oscar night. The candidates spent $83 million, more than $40 million of it on an downpour of television advertising in the race's closing weeks. The biggest single source of campaign money — $10.3 million — was Mr. Schwarzenegger's personal bank account. ...

Discontent with Mr. Davis and the direction of the state was palpable at polling places from one end of this sprawling republic of 35 million people to the other.
All in all, I'm glad I left Malibu for China. From here I can watch "California Careening" with a modicum of dispassion.
  

4:29 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Just What We Need, Another 3rd World Critic

NEW DELHI, Oct. 7. — In a veiled sarcasm of the US campaign against terror, Deputy Prime Minister Mr LK Advani today said “big powers” failed to track down any of the persons considered as a “source” of terrorism while India punished perpetrators of major terror strikes in the country.
“Big powers have declared that they would catch alive or kill all persons they consider to be a source of terrorism. But they have been unable to do so,” he said.
More from The Statesman...
  

12:58 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




It Must Be True, It's in Variety

It's Governor Arnold to you, buster...
10/7/03 8:07pm: After an unprecedented campaign, conducted under the close scrutiny of the global media, Californians Tuesday elected Arnold Schwarzenegger governor by a hefty margin
This Makes Maria Shriver the First Lady of California, Right?
  

12:55 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




California Secretary of State, Special Election Results in Real Time

Golly, Ah-nold's gonna lap the field--oops, wrong choice of words. Anyway, watch the vote tally up right here:
  

12:54 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Now the Real Circus Begins

My Initial Thought: Be Careful What You Wish For.
LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- CNN projects that California's electorate will recall Democratic Gov. Gray Davis and choose actor-turned-politician, Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger as the state's next governor, based on statewide exit polls.

Despite recent reports that Schwarzenegger allegedly groped and sexually harassed at least 15 women, CNN exit polls showed that roughly 47 percent of female voters backed the Austrian-born actor. Men voted heavily for Schwarzenegger, according to these exit polls.

A whopping 72 percent of those who voted Tuesday said they disapproved of Davis's job performance, according to the exit polls, with only 27 percent giving the incumbent a positive approval rating.
Silly, silly, silly...
  

11:53 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




More Bluster From North Korea

SEOUL (Kyodo) North Korea declared Tuesday it will not allow Japan to take part in future multilateral talks aimed at resolving the dispute over the North's nuclear weapons program.

In a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency, the North Korean Foreign Ministry accused Japan of trying to use the nuclear issue for its own benefit.

'The Japanese authorities have created obstacles to the settlement of the nuclear issue by being preoccupied with using the nuclear issue for its selfish purposes,' said the statement, according to a KCNA report monitored by South Korea's Yonhap News Agency.

The statement also said the 'prospects for resolving the nuclear issue with the United States are becoming more unclear because of the U.S. hostile policies' toward the North.

Japan took part in the first round of six-nation talks held in Beijing from Aug. 27 to 29, aimed at seeking a negotiated settlement of the nuclear impasse.
The Japan Times
 

11:18 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Tuesday, October 07, 2003

Bush Didn't Trust Americans to be Americans

There were many compelling, even morally imperative reasons to bring down Saddam Hussein last spring; they were the same reasons Bush's father should have finished off the bloody, cowardly tyrant in '91. The problem was that neither Bush believed in the ability of the American people to do the right thing when they are told unvarnished truths--maybe by way of some Texas straight talk or old-timey fireside chats or rhetorically inspired "Ask not what your country can do for you..." inaugural addresses.

Think I'm just preaching? Read E. J. Dionne Jr.'s wonderful column in Tuesday's Washington Post...
President Bush should be searching his soul over how he took a legitimate war against terrorism and systematically undermined the support he needed to wage it.

In the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, Bush's domestic opponents and much of the world joined him in supporting tough action against terror and agreeing on the urgent need to advance the values of democracy, free expression and tolerance.

That sense of shared purpose has evaporated. It was destroyed less because of what our enemies and wayward friends did than by the administration's almost casual disregard for the link between facts and arguments. The president used the tactics of a political campaign to sell the war in Iraq. Now comes the fallout.

It's increasingly obvious that the administration was willing to say whatever was necessary to get the Iraq war done on its schedule. It made the war a partisan electoral issue in 2002 and turned off potential allies abroad. The president lost the high ground that he and the United States occupied when our forces waged war on al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

The administration's primary after-the-fact case for the war against Saddam Hussein is that Iraqis are much better off without him. But it didn't have enough confidence in the humanitarian argument to make it the primary basis for war before the shooting started. And it was not candid in advance about the high costs of the enterprise.
Read it in full...
  

11:35 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Is the Tide Truly Turning?

Maybe because of the deliciously exciting Major League Baseball postseason match-ups immediately before us--people are actually talking outloud about a Chicago Cubs versus Boston Red Sox World Series!--I'm inclined to see the glass of Scotch as half full. Consequently, I enjoyed, and highly recommend, Michael O'Hanlon's op-ed piece in Tuesday's Washngton Post: his look at the mess and/or opportunity in Iraq.
In her Sept. 29 op-ed article, "Iraqis Can Do More," Jessica Mathews makes a number of constructive observations, especially with regard to Iraq's politics and economy, about how the United States and its partners can improve their chances of a successful mission. But as another member of the recent Defense Department-sponsored delegation to Iraq, I would dispute her overall sense of pessimism, especially in regard to security matters. The United States and its partners are indeed still at war -- an expression many commanders use themselves. They also did get off to a very poor start in stabilizing post-Saddam Hussein Iraq. But the war is going reasonably well, by the standards of counterinsurgency, and the tide may finally be starting to turn.
Read more...
 

11:29 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




What Price Freedom? What Price Honor?

3 U.S. Soldiers Killed in Iraq. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld & Company lied about the why of it, and should pay whatever political price is eventually levied upon their shameless heads; but the truth of why we should be there cannot be denied; and that truth must prevail at all costs--the greatest cost of all; the blood of our young, and theirs...
BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) -- Three U.S. soldiers and an Iraqi interpreter were killed and three other service members were wounded in a pair of roadside bombings in central Iraq, the U.S. military said Tuesday. They were the first reported deaths by hostile fire of American soldiers in Iraq since Friday.

In the first attack, one soldier attached to the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment was killed and another wounded in a bombing about 9:50 p.m. Monday just west of the Iraqi capital, the U.S. Central Command said.
About an hour later, another roadside bombing killed two soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division and their Iraqi translator, the military said. Two other soldiers were injured in the bombing, which took place in al-Haswah, about 25 miles south of Baghdad. A.P.
  

10:24 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Constitutional Imperative

It's weird indeed that I find much to agree with in the writings of David Brooks, but it's happened twice in a matter of only weeks. Read what led him to the concluding paragraph below:
There's no way the Iraqis can resolve these issues within six months, the deadline Colin Powell once set. But this process is the ballgame. Washington will continue to get distracted by microscandals about leaks and such, but the Iraqi constitutional process is the most important thing that will be happening in the world in the next year. If it succeeds, Iraq really will be a beacon of freedom in the Middle East. The Americans who have died in Iraq will have given their lives in a truly noble cause.

More...
 

9:50 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments