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. 

Thursday, April 29, 2004

Kristof Breaks His Silence On Iraq

Nicholas Kristof breaks his silence on the war in Iraq; simply put, it is a must read, for you, but most importantly for the man who unfortunately got us into this mess without a plan save the as yet secret words his personal savior, Jesus "The-Promised-Land-Will-Be-Yours-If-You-And-Sharon-Can-Kill-Enough-Evil-Doers-To-Hold-It" Christ, whispered into his goofy ears:
A U.S. security report earlier this year about Iraq declared: "Recently, hostile forces have attempted to lure coalition forces into ambushes by feigning injuries. . . . An Iraqi posing as a taxicab driver feigned a breakdown and detonated his vehicle when four soldiers approached, killing them all. . . .

"It is not recommended you stop your convoy to offer assistance to `wounded/injured' Iraqis."

That's a parable for our challenge in Iraq. We know we need to win over hearts and minds, but who wants to be blown up helping Iraqis who seem to be injured in car crashes?

I've been quiet on Iraq lately because it's so tempting — but rather unhelpful — to rant one more time about President Bush's folly in launching this war. It's far harder to figure out what to do now that he's gotten us chest-deep in the mire.

I'm not certain that we can make a success out of Iraq, and the question John Kerry posed in 1971 is still a fair one: "How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?" One senses an impatient rustling as people look for the exits from Iraq.

Yet rushing out would be a mistake. If we give up on Iraq, it will collapse into civil war, leaving Iraqis worse off than they were under Saddam and turning the country with the world's second-largest oil reserves into a failed state that spawns terrorists. There are a few steps we can take that offer some hope of a turnaround for our occupation:

• Deploy 25,000 additional troops in Iraq for at least a few months to try to achieve a secure transition.

• Stick to the June 30 transition and give the Iraqis full sovereignty. The administration's plan to convey only what it calls "limited sovereignty" is a mistake, for it risks inflaming Iraqi nationalism. The only hope of getting Iraqis to behave responsibly is to give them responsibility.

• Count to one googolplex before rushing into Falluja and Najaf to wipe out the resistance. Most Iraqis know that Moktada al-Sadr is a hotheaded blowhard. But nationalism leads Iraqis to rally around anyone we go after. We have already made Mr. Sadr a hero by closing his newspaper, and our best hope for destroying him is to leave him alone, let Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani discredit him and let the shadowy Thulfiqar Army carve up his Mahdi militia.

• Dump Ahmad Chalabi and other carpetbaggers. They are American stooges who undermine the legitimacy of any government they are in. The Dawa and Sciri religious parties may agree with us less, but they have genuine support and can be the building blocks of a transitional Iraqi government. If we give them real authority, there will be a convergence of interest: Dawa and Sciri want a stable Iraq even more than we do.

• Disentangle ourselves from Ariel Sharon, that bloodstained figure embraced by President Bush as "a man of peace." By assassinating Hamas leaders and threatening to do the same to Yasir Arafat, Mr. Sharon is undermining our efforts in Iraq. Mr. Bush squandered our legitimacy in Iraq when he and Mr. Sharon chummily gave away Palestinian rights this month.

• Bring back the most professional and least political Baathist generals. Iraq's most desperate need now is for security, and we need them.

Mr. Bush is starting to move on a few of these issues, but he needs to act more decisively on each. Only then would we have some hope of stanching the sacrifice of young soldiers — those whom Wilfred Owen, the great World War I poet, unforgettably described thus: "The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;/Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,/And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds."
The New York Times
  

2:38 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  



Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Dubya Sends A Shrill Woman Out To Fight Kerry Over The Terrible Truths Of War...

The "Wimp Factor" is back front and center in another Bush reelection campaign. Knowing he cannot go even one round in the battle with John F. Kerry over who is best equipped to be a bona fide Commander-in-Chief, the AWOL Kid sends the shrew of the "Florida Coup d'etat," the ball-busting Karen "Low Blow" Hughes instead. It isn't a fair fight, of course, and it has nothing to do with her being a woman; it has everything to do with her being an ignorant human being:
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- One of President Bush's closest confidants challenged Sen. John Kerry on Sunday to further explain comments he made in 1971 that he participated in "atrocities" in Vietnam.

"I wish we knew a little bit more about that," Karen Hughes, the former White House communications director, said on CNN's "Late Edition."

"Did he think he did commit them or not? And who else did? And what was he really saying? Was he totally exaggerating? Was he making it up? I think the press ought to follow some line of inquiry about that." ...

Bush campaign officials -- who have had to handle persistent questions about the president's National Guard service during the war -- have largely steered clear of the topic, preferring to focus on Kerry's Senate votes on national security issues.

But Hughes, who remains a close political adviser to Bush even though she is no longer on the White House staff, waded into the dispute.

"I remember watching Senator Kerry, back when he was against the war, when he came home, and I was very troubled by the kind of allegations that he hurled against his fellow veterans, saying that they were guilty of all kinds of atrocities," said Hughes, the daughter of a retired Army officer who served in three wars, including Vietnam.

"As someone whose father was over there fighting, I don't appreciate that. I resent that. I know my father was not guilty of any atrocities, and I really find that that's an irresponsible kind of charge to make."
CNN.com

Anyone who claims that "atrocities" are never committed by even the good-guys during war, most particularly in civil-wars based upon ideology when the enemy is indigenous, utilizing guerilla and insurgency tactics, is exceedingly ignorant of military history, recent and past.

There is no question that American soldiers committed atrocities in Vietnam, as did their opponents; it is well-documented fact. I don't know about you, but almost all of my close friends who served in combat in Vietnam, and returned alive, spoke to me of the terrible things that that war forced them to do almost routinely. One of my closest boyhood friends told me a story. During his first week in country, an adolescent Vietnamese girl came running up to a convoy of personnel carriers with other children to get the candy he and his buddies were handing out as they passed through a village. Suddenly she tossed a satchel charge into the truck just ahead of his, killing and maiming many of his comrades in arms. He said from that moment on during his year in Vietnam--which included being decorated for bravery during the siege of Khe Sanh, one of the very few pitched-battles our troops fought in Vietnam--he shot everything, man, woman, child and beast that even moved whenever he was "in the field," which in that war was just about every place that wasn't a base camp or Saigon.

On the same night he told me that story, he also told me proudly of a competition he and his fellow Marines would sometimes "play" when in a "free-fire zone." It went like this: How much living flesh can you destroy with one burst of an M-60 machine gun? This young man, one of the sweetest, friendliest, kindest teenagers small-town America ever produced, and perhaps the best pure running back I ever played with, chugged a beer, smiled, and told me that his best effort had been "one mama-san, three kids, two chickens, a dog and a water buffalo."

Was he exaggerating? Perhaps, but I will never know. Later that night, with far too many beers in him, which he drank in my family's restaurant as we celebrated his and his twin brother's homecoming--together, they had just returned from combat in Vietnam only the day before--were killed in a head-on collision on Highway 90 in Biloxi, Mississippi. I remember and cry every time I visit their graves, which is often; as fate would have it, Mike and Joe are buried only a few feet away from my father.

War itself, almost by definition, is an atrocity. What the sights, sounds, smells and fears of combat do to the human conscience of very young men is surely an "atrocity." Because, for years or months at a time, they become almost immune to the horrors that steel, lead, napalm and TNT inflicts upon human flesh.
 

9:11 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




A Must Watch: "The Jesus Factor" Get A Small Look Below...

"We need common sense judges who understand that our rights were derived from God" -- George W. Bush. For all of you who can watch American television, I proudly, and fervently, ask you to watch an important FRONTLINE documentary film, "The Jesus Factor," on PBS, Thursday, April, 29, 9 PM (Eastern Standard Time). I say "proudly" because my wife's son, Marin Sander-Holzman, a promising young film maker, served as assistant editor on this project--many, many months in the making--that examines the extraordinary, and really quite frightening, influence that the far-right Christian fundamentalist movement has on the man who is the president of the United States of America, the most ethnically, culturally, religiously diverse nation on Earth.

"The Jesus Factor" does this more thoroughly than any mainstream television program has yet done. Below is the Title and Credits page, which in one glance should scare the bejesus out of you if you believe it is imperative that the separation of church and state remain one of the primary pillars of our beloved republic, as did the Founding Fathers, who enshrined its importance by making it the first words of the first clause of the first sentence that is the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights.
  

6:39 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  



Tuesday, April 27, 2004

U.S. Congressmen Tell Beijing To Release Yang Jianli

The Chinese central government's public relations woes continue. However, when it comes to incarcerating "foreign agents" without due process, the United States Congress is on decidedly shaky ground. While the protests and demands are undoubtedly out of legitimate concern and have a sound legal basis, the Congressmen's moral authority can be too easily dismissed by China with the old saw: Put your own house in order before preaching its virtues to others.
US lawmakers demand China release democracy activist

A group of senior American Congressmen has demanded the release of imprisoned democracy activist, Yang Jianli.

Mr Yang, a US resident, has been in prison in China for two years, on charges of illegal entry and spying for Taiwan.

He was tried in August last year but, as yet, no verdict has been issued.

By Chinese law, a Beijing court should have handed down a verdict or set him free within two and a half months of the closed-door, one-day trial.

In a letter to Chinese President, Hu Jintao, 67 Republican and Democrat congressmen say the imprisonment of the 40-year-old scholar is "an extraordinarily inhumane act unworthy of a great nation."

They have warned that US-Chinese relations will be harmed by Mr Yang's continued imprisonment and "brutal treatment".
ABC RADIO AUSTRALIA
  

1:06 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  



Monday, April 26, 2004

Pat Tillman Is A Hero: A Crystal Clear Shout From the Proud LEFT

I'm just about as "left" as it gets. Many folks over the years have labeled me as a "radical leftist," and just as many times I have not disagreed. I have been called a "Socialist" even more often; and just as often I have agreed, but always with the caveat, or slight correction: "Make that a Democratic Socialist, if you please." In the long ago olden days, I was sometimes called a "Communist"; depending upon the speaker of that accusation, I had different responses. If it was a rabid John Bircher type for whom I had no intellectual respect and wanted to enjoy watching his eyes and neck veins pop out, my response was, "You're damn right!" If it was from a centrist democrat for whom I had a fair degree of intellectual respect, my most frequent response would be the apocryphal quote: "Hell, every man worth his salt was a Communist in the 30's." Sometimes, with a few scotches in me, and I was in the mood to shock my mother's prayer-meeting friends, I myself would announce that I was a "godless Communist." But, in truth, I am not a Communist; never have been and never will be--but I damn sure am a proud leftist.

Of course, there was another epithet far too often hurled my way; a hateful, horribly ugly term, so hated still that I cannot spell it in its full ugliness: "You n****r lover!" That one always brought a response, and swiftly: my right and left fists aimed at the head--or heads--of the bigot(s) who was dumb enough to hail me so. Unfortunately, being a civil rights activist in Mississippi in the mid-60's, that name and the violence it begat was so frequent and terrible that I try now to forget as much of it as I can.

Why this overlong litany of my varying degrees of labeling in the political and metaphysical realms? Because I am also a Jock, a damn proud Jock--alright, in truth, I am a prematurely old and broken-down ex-jock. While I was a 4-sport letterman at Ocean Springs High School (Mississippi) in the early-to-mid-60's--when they still had such phrases--my sports of choice were football (American) and baseball. I was fairly good at both: I went to college originally on a football scholarship; and in baseball I made it all the way to the big leagues as a scout, and to college ball as a coach.

Oh, by the way, from high school on, I was also successful as a poet, a painter (and not houses), an actor, an author, a playwright, a screenwriter, and a professor--yep, a dyed in the wool egg-headed intellectual I was and am still.

I know it goes against the stereotype, but I have always lived and worked firmly established in both the world of the jock and the world of the artsy-fartsy intellectual, always hating the commonly spoken myth that the two worlds are mutually exclusive. The dumb jock vs. the effete intellectual. This nonsense also exists in the political realm: Jocks were supposed to be arch conservative Bible-thumping flag-wavers, and members of the intelligentsia were limp-wristed, yellow-bellied traitors. Let me say this, while the label "Hippie" was certainly an accurate description of me for a spell, peacenik never was, and never will be.

So, where am I going with all this personal history? Very recently, two of my favorite bloggers, Richard at The Peking Duck, and Conrad at The Gweilo Diaries, posted on a blasphemy--Mocking Pat Tillman, or Why so many people hate The Left and R.I.P. Pat Tillman, respectively--that is almost beyond imagination except that it is too goddamned true and out there for all to see. This ugliness, this inhumanity is directed against the NFL football player and U.S. Army Ranger, Pat Tillman, who just a few days ago was killed in action in Afghanistan, and this is what it is:
Dumb Jock Killed in Afghanistan
And this is the press entity responsible for such hateful ignorance:
Portland Independent Media Center
Go ahead, click, and see who they are, and what they did, and what people are saying about it. Then come back here for a few paragraphs and a link to the original story the Indymedia sourced for their shameful use of their undeniable right of free speech.
Pat Tillman, the Arizona Cardinals safety who forfeited a multimillion dollar contract and the celebrity of the National Football League to become a U.S. Army Ranger, was killed in Afghanistan during a firefight near the Pakistan border on Thursday, U.S. officials said yesterday.

Tillman, 27, was killed when the combat patrol unit he was serving in was ambushed by militia forces near the village of Spera, about 90 miles south of Kabul, the Afghan capital. Tillman was hit when his unit returned fire, according to officials at the Pentagon. He was medically evacuated from the scene and pronounced dead by U.S. officials at approximately 11:45 a.m. Thursday. Two other U.S. soldiers were injured and one Afghan soldier fighting alongside the U.S. troops was killed.

The death of Tillman, the first prominent U.S. athlete to be killed in combat since Vietnam, cast a spotlight on a war that has receded in the American public consciousness. As Iraq has come into the foreground with daily casualty updates, the military campaign in Afghanistan has not garnered the same attention, though there are still more than 10,000 U.S. troops in the country and fighting continues against remnants of the Taliban and al Qaeda.

Tillman was the 70th U.S. soldier to die within Afghanistan's borders since U.S. forces invaded the country in October 2001. According to the Department of Defense, 117 U.S. soldiers have died worldwide in Operation Enduring Freedom. Tillman was assigned to Company A of the 2nd battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, based at Fort Lewis, Wash., an elite Army light-infantry unit often used for difficult assault missions around the world.

Tillman stunned his family, coaches and teammates in 2002 when he walked away from a three-year contract worth $3.6 million. At the time, the move was viewed as a strong example of post-9/11 patriotism. After four seasons with the Cardinals, the aggressive safety -- whose 224 tackles in a single season was a team record -- simply told the organization that he was joining the Army with his brother, Kevin, a former minor league prospect in the Cleveland Indians system. By May 2002, they had both enlisted.

Part of the decision was timing. The Rangers do not accept recruits over the age of 28. Tillman was 25 at the time.

"The people who knew Pat, the less surprised you were," Pete Kendall, his Cardinals teammate, said yesterday during a news conference at the team's practice facility in Arizona. "For someone to walk away from several million dollars and a life of relative ease to put his neck on the line literally for $18,000 to $20,000 with no guarantee for tomorrow, you had to be surprised by that. Pat is the only one I know in our modern day of athletics who did it. This was sort of out of the blue and totally unexpected nationally. But the more you knew Pat, the more you understand why."

On Sept. 11, 2001, Tillman walked into the media room at the Cardinals' training facility and sat with reporters watching the coverage of the terror attacks, transfixed by the events of the day. In his last on-camera interview, the next day, Tillman alluded to his deep patriotism and seemed to be setting the stage for his enlistment.

"My great grandfather was at Pearl Harbor and a lot of my family has gone and fought in wars and I really haven't done a damn thing as far as laying myself on the line like that," he said. "And so I have a great deal of respect for those that have and what the flag stands for."
Washington Post
  

9:46 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Democracy Down For The Count In Hong Kong...

Renege is a renege is a renege is a renege...and while not a scholar on the basic agreement in force since Great Britain returned Hong Kong to China, it does appear to me that a renege is exactly what was announced by Beijing today while calling it everything but that. Damn shame, credibility, or one's good name or one's good word, is the single most important element of trust between people and nation-states. This is not the signal that one would think the central government would like to send to Taiwan by way of proxy. Bad law not only makes for bad policy, it makes for long misunderstandings...

Below is a straightforward announcement from Reuters; below that is a whopper of an explanation by the "journalists" at China Daily.
HONG KONG (Reuters) - China's top parliamentarians voted on Monday to rule out full direct elections for choosing Hong Kong's leader and all its legislators in 2007 and 2008, one of its lawmakers said.

"There will be no universal suffrage for electing (Hong Kong's) third Chief Executive," Tsang Hin-chi, a Hong Kong member of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, or China's parliament, told reporters in Beijing.

"There will be no universal suffrage for all legislators (for elections in 2008)," he added. Tsang's comments were carried live by Hong Kong's Cable Television.
Reuters.com

A renege by any other name would smell as foul: Below is indecipherable--by me, anyway--doublespeak from China Daily attempting to explain the rationale behind the NPC Standing Committee's ruling. If you can understand what it means you are far smarter than this reporter.

The half by half ratio for members of the Council from functional groups and from constituency election shall remain unchanged, the Decision said, adding that the procedures for voting on bills and motions in the Legislative Council shall remain unchanged.

However, the Decision said that specific methods for selecting the Chief Executive in 2007 and forming the Legislative Council in 2008 could be "appropriately modified" in the principle of gradual and orderly progress and in accordance with the Basic Law, the Decision said.

The NPC Standing Committee explained in the decision that Hong Kong's history for democratic election is not long, and it has been for no more than seven years that Hong Kong residents have exercised the democratic rights of participating in selecting the HKSAR Chief Executive.

Since Hong Kong's return to the motherland, the number of directly-elected members in the Legislative Council has been increased remarkably. After half of the members are directly elected in constituency and half are elected by functional groups, the influence of the directly-elected members upon Hong Kong society's general operation, especially the influence upon the executive-led mechanism is yet to be tested by practice, it said.

Moreover, various social circles in Hong Kong currently still have considerable differences about methods for selecting the Chief Executive and for forming the Legislative Council after 2007, and no broad consensus has been reached yet, it noted.

Under such circumstances, conditions do not satisfy the general election of the Chief Executive and the general election of all Legislative Council members, the Decision said.
Uh...say what?

China Daily
  

5:56 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  



Sunday, April 25, 2004

Go Figure: U.S. Treasury Wants China To Play Larger Role In G-7

Roll over Vladimir, tell Mao Zedong the news: The Big Leagues of Capitalism want to call China up to the Show. It certainly makes sense; it's just a whip-lash to actually see in print, in Bloomberg.com, no less. Also, can anyone answer a puzzlement I'm afflicted with: does the United States have a "China Policy" that isn't as unpredictable as a squall in the Gulf of Mexico? Is it any wonder that Beijing is more than a little skeptical at just about everything that comes out of Washington?
April 24 (Bloomberg) -- China's emerging presence in the world economy means it should be allowed to play a bigger role in meetings of the Group of Seven industrial nations, a U.S. Treasury official said.

The official, speaking to reporters on condition of anonymity after G-7 finance ministers and central bankers met in Washington, said the G-7 should embrace Chinese leaders more and find ways of strengthening the dialogue between them.

"China is clearly playing a larger role in the global economy,'' Treasury Secretary John Snow said in a separate briefing. "Its continued progress is important to us and to others in the G-7.''

The U.S., the world's largest industrial economy, wants to broaden ties with China, the largest developing nation, as the Chinese economy outperforms Japan's. The U.S. official declined to say whether China should be added to the G-7, saying that was an invite one country couldn't extend alone.
More mixed signals...Bloomberg.com
  

7:33 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Beware The allure Of The Cult Of Perpetual Victimhood...

In a very recent post, Richard, the author and proprietor of The Peking Duck, brought our attention to a truly insightful essay by David Brooks ostensibly on the teenage "Columbine Killers," Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, which blows away the popular myth of these underage murderers as victims of abuse by the popular in-crowd. Every high school has one and probably always will. As Mr. Brooks documents, Harris and Klebold weren't victims of bullies, they were flat-out perps, Harris particularly was an "icy cold" supreme egoist mass-murderer on the same metaphysical plane as other more infamous devotees of the self as "superman." The victims, in his eyes, were all of us, the masses of "subhumans" with whom he wished not to share his life and world.

As powerful and accurate as Mr. Brooks is in his defrocking of these mythologized American high school murderers, in this post I wish to memorialize in these pages--and present for your edification--the last four graphs of the "Columbine Killers" column. Here, Mr. Brooks' insight digs deeper and reaches into the demonic pit of the suicidal mass-murderers who prey upon much greater masses than Harris and Klebold in the end did, the Islamic supreme egoists who are popularly believed to be acting out of a semi-legitimate cult of victimhood. Perhaps you might have had such thoughts. It is not something to be ashamed of. We in the west often like to read virtue into all victims of alleged "oppression," and often we are right to do so. However, in the cases at hand, read the words below and think again.
Now, in 2004, we have more experience with suicidal murderers. Yet it is striking how resilient this perpetrator-as-victim narrative remains. We still sometimes assume that the people who flew planes into buildings -- and those who blew up synagogues in Turkey, trains in Spain, discos in Tel Aviv and schoolchildren this week in Basra -- are driven by feelings of weakness, resentment and inferiority. We cling to the egotistical notion that it is our economic and political dominance that drives terrorists insane.

But it could be that whatever causes they support or ideologies they subscribe to, the one thing that the killers have in common is a feeling of immense superiority. It could be that they want to exterminate us because they regard us as spiritually deformed and unfit to live, at least in their world. After all, it is hard to pull up to a curb, look a group of people in the eye and know that in a few seconds you will shred them to pieces unless you regard other people's deaths as trivialities.

If today's suicide bombers are victims of oppression, then the solution is to lessen our dominance, and so assuage their resentments. But if they are vicious people driven by an insatiable urge to dominate, then our only option is to fight them to the death.

We had better figure out who these bombers really are. After Columbine, we got it wrong.
The New York Times
  

5:49 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Life As A Rat Is The REAL Dork...

Some dude with a dorky name--Daniel Duprie--and an even dorkier face--see photo below--is the DORK. I know, I know, Phil, dear editor of Living In China and my friend, we are not supposed to flame one another in this wonderful community of bloggers, but I am breaking that rule because a member of this community has publicly attacked a friend and colleague of mine at CCTV International, Channel 9--Mark Rowswell, otherwise known as Da Shan, and has attacked him ad hominem.

I do not have a problem with his criticism of Mark's television program, "Communicate in Chinese." Intellectual criticism is fair play in matters of art, literature, entertainment, deng deng; but to attack him for his looks? And I quote:
"...with this massive idiot grin on his face. Besides this, he looks ridiculous in his traditional Chinese dress. I think traditional Chinese dress is colourful and beautiful, but on Mark Rowswell it looks stupid. He just looks so incredibly dorky."
Let me say this about Mark Rowswell, he came here some years ago just as this Duprie guy did, to teach English to Chinese middle schoolers; but, unlike so many others, he worked hard and mastered reading, writing and speaking Mandarin. Through luck and opportunity, he came to the attention of the fine people at CCTV International and over time and with perseverance he worked a part-time gig into a television career that is much larger than the language program Mr. Duprie takes such umbrage with. He is an accomplished man of great warmth and intelligence. He has done what so many others only dream of.

In my media career in the States, I worked with all kinds of talent, from the nasty no-talent but lucky jerks, to the really talented salt-of-the-earth types who made it through hard work. I would place Mark Rowswell in the latter category.

The picture you see below, along with the link to this rat's weblog and a quick look around it, should put the matter of who is the real dork to rest in a heartbeat:
Life of a Rat


This is a Dork!
  

3:15 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Forget The Medals, Kerry Still Carries The Metal, And He Damn Sure Has The Mettle

The case is closed, and somewhat embarrassingly for AWOL Dubya. It turns out that Senator Kerry is still carrying deep in his thigh the shrapnel from the combat wound for which he received his second Purple Heart. Along with the life-altering experience that serving with honor and emotional integrity in America's most controversial, most unpopular and longest war placed upon the psyche of the next President of the United States, Senator Kerry carries within him the physical evidence of the brutality and never-ending consequences of war between nation-states. It is not surprising--and therefore telling--that this man, who by all measurable criteria was born and trained to lead others in times of crisis, has not spoken of this himself.

I'm sure he doesn't like talking about it. I have some small understanding of that phenomenon; for almost 40 years I have carried the lead from a gunshot wound--not from Vietnam, from another kind of war, fought in my home state of Mississippi--behind my left eye which cannot be removed without the likelihood of losing sight in that eye. I do not like talking about it unless I also have in me a goodly amount of Scotch.

So what are the Nervous-Nellie neocons going to say about this news? They who know nothing about the choices and consequences of life-threatening violence other than possibly contracting gangrene from a cut received when their slide-rules fell out of their white shirt-pockets in their rush to acquire a deferment from serving in that searingly divisive war in Southeast Asia. We all knew the type; they were sucking up to teachers and authority figures in every high school class in America. We all know the type now; they are the goody-two-shoe ideologues that to our great peril are governing America at one of the most crucial periods in its modern history.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry still carries a piece of shrapnel in his left thigh from a 1969 Vietnam War wound that led to his second Purple Heart, his doctor said on Friday.

Kerry, the commander of a "swiftboat" in the Mekong Delta in late 1968 and 1969, was hit by the shrapnel in a Feb. 20, 1969, firefight. Dr. Gerald Doyle, Kerry's personal physician, said removal would have required an even wider incision in the leg.

"A decision was made to leave the shrapnel in place," Doyle said in a letter summarizing 35 pages of military medical records taken from Kerry's personal files. "Successful removal would have necessitated an extensive wider exposure."

The Massachusetts senator, who released his military records earlier this week after questions were raised about his first Purple Heart, also made the medical records available for inspection by reporters on Friday.

Doyle briefed reporters on the records in a conference call and released the letter summarizing them. The Navy files released earlier in the week did not include Kerry's medical records.

The records indicated Kerry, who is challenging President Bush for the White House, had shrapnel removed from his upper left arm in December 1968 and from his upper buttock in March 1969 after he was wounded in action.

Kerry won three Purple Hearts, as well as a Silver Star and Bronze Star, while in Vietnam.

The military records were released by the campaign under pressure from Republicans after one of Kerry's former commanders questioned his first Purple Heart and the severity of the shrapnel wound to Kerry's arm.

Regulations governing Purple Hearts, given for injuries caused by enemy action, do not specify a level of severity for the wounds. The Navy records indicate the first wound was treated with an antibiotic dressing after the shrapnel was removed.

The records also provided some other glimpses into Kerry's health, showing he was diagnosed with pneumonia twice while in the Navy, once in 1966 and once in 1967.

He also suffered from "an episode of an upper respiratory infection and bronchitis, as well as a minor nonspecific urinary tract infection, and both responded to tetracycline successfully," Doyle said.
Reuters
  

12:42 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  



Friday, April 23, 2004

From Dubya's Mouth...

Time for some more Bushisms, as collected by Jacob Weisberg:
"The great thing about America is everybody should vote." --Austin, Texas; December 8, 2000

"If I'm the president, we're going to have emergency-room care, we're going to have gag orders." --St. Louis; October 18, 2000

"States should have the right to enact reasonable laws and restrictions particularly to end the inhumane practice of ending a life that otherwise could live." --Cleveland; June 29, 2000

"There's an old saying in Tennesse--I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee--that says, fool me once, shame on--shame on you. Fool me--you can't get fooled again." --Nashville, Tennessee; September 17, 2002

"The United States and Russia are in the midst of a transformationed relationship that will yield peace and progress." --Washington, D.C.; November 13, 2001
  

11:08 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Things Didn't Go As Well In China As Kim Jong Il Would Have Liked

Kim Jong Il doesn't have all of the boss cards he needs in this dangerous game of "Liar's Poker" he is playing--he's missing the one card he must have: China.
"He's losing Chinese political and economic support more and more every day," said Park Joon-young, a political science professor at Ewha Women's University in Seoul. "Everybody is expecting something good out of this (meeting), because Kim Jong Il made a new move and came out of his den."

In the end, it is North Korea that suffers the most if the standoff continues, analysts say. "They know they have to cut a deal," said Ron Huisken, a visiting fellow at the Strategic and Defense Studies Center at Australian National University in Canberra. "They just have to get the best deal that they can. "
There is more at the Associated Press via My Way News
 

11:03 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  



Thursday, April 22, 2004

James Kelly, In Testimony Before Congress, Sounds Strong Warning To Taiwan

Assistant Secretary of State, James Kelly, minces no words on the realities of a U.S. defense of Taiwan in testimony before a congressional hearing of the House international relations committee. Yikes! The right-wing nut-cases will go bonkers over this. I can hear it now: "Bush loses Taiwan to communists." I mean, 55 years ago, their rallying cry was: "Democrats lost China to reds!" And it went on for decades. The label of "(Fill in the Blank) lost China to Commies" was maliciously attached to anyone slightly left of John Foster Dulles, or John Birch himself. As if 750 million folks (back then) and half a continent could be "lost."
The US warned Taiwan on Wednesday that the island's defence could not be ensured if it were to unilaterally move towards independence and insisted that China's threats of military action must be taken seriously.

In testimony before the US House international relations committee James Kelly, assistant secretary of East Asian and Pacific Affairs, said: "We have very real concerns that our efforts at deterring Chinese coercion might fail if Beijing ever becomes convinced Taiwan is embarked on a course towards independence and permanent separation from China.

"While we strongly disagree with the approach, it would be irresponsible of us and Taiwan's leaders to treat these statements as empty threats."

When asked whether the Taiwanese were under the impression that the US was willing to defend them at all costs Mr Kelly replied: "If they heard that they misunderstood."
Financial Times

There is also this in Channel News Asia
"Taiwan must be stopped in these efforts," Kelly said, amid continuing worry over moves by President Chen Shui-bian toward greater independence during campaigning ahead of Taiwan elections last month.

Kelly made his remarks at a hearing heralding 25 years of strengthening diplomatic and trade relations with Taiwan -- a delicate balancing act that has often required assuaging Beijing, even while providing military assistance to the island.

Lawmakers held the hearing to mark the silver anniversary of the 1979 legislation, which members of praised as a success -- albeit a somewhat precarious one.

"The current situation is a delicate balance which is in the interest of all to maintain," said Representative Henry Hyde, Republican chairman of the committee.

The panel's top Democrat, Representative Tom Lantos, hailed the legislation, which affirms the "one China" policy and commits Washington to coming to Taiwan's defense if attacked by Beijing, as "flexible and durable."

Lawmakers also stressed US commitment to strict adherence to the policy, which defines the island as a part of China.
Channel News Asia
  

6:27 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Why They Hate Us, Really

Everybody needs to read the essay below; all of this killing must stop. It is time to listen to anyone who has an idea other than what everybody everywhere is doing now. Because, folks, this mess, all of it, is insanity masquerading as pragmatism at best and ideology at worst. No More Body Parts! No More Body Parts! No More Body Parts!
For the last five weeks I have been traveling through the Middle East, meeting diplomats, officials, policy experts, military leaders, students and ordinary citizens. I learned something very important: the greatest single cause of anti-Americanism in the Middle East today is not the war in Iraq; more surprisingly, it is not even American support for Israel, per se. Rather, it is a widespread belief that the United States simply does not care about the rights or needs of the Palestinian people.

"The Palestinian issue is really what discredits the United States throughout the region," a senior Western diplomat with years of experience in the Middle East told me. Or, as one student after another put it after the university lectures I conducted across the region: "Why do Americans have to be so biased?"

In Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and other countries, the large majority of people I spoke with are ready to tolerate the Jewish state — most even understand that the final boundaries of Israel will include some of the heavily settled areas beyond the pre-1967 borders. They also understand that few if any Palestinians will return to the homes they lost after the war that erupted when Israel declared its independence in 1948. And they are prepared to accept, though not to relish, America's close relations with Israel. Beyond that, they want increased American support for their domestic political reforms and for initiatives to enhance regional cooperation for economic growth and fighting terrorism.

But one thing sticks in their craw: Why doesn't America care more about the Palestinians' future?

They have a point. America's Middle East policy is unnecessarily zero-sum. We can be more pro-Palestinian without being less pro-Israeli. Indeed, to the degree that American policies help create support for compromise among Palestinians, pro-Palestinian initiatives can help Israel too.

Take compensation. United Nations resolutions call for financial compensation for Palestinians who cannot return to their family homes in Israel. Israel's position that it cannot accept millions of refugees and their descendants is reasonable enough, and the Bush administration's support of it is nothing new. But we should be equally clear about compensation.

Many questions need answering: where can Palestinians go to have their claims for lost property adjudicated and certified? What tribunal will hear these claims? What principles will guide its deliberations? Where will the money come from to pay the claims when peace is finally made?

The United States can and should take the lead in building an international consensus on the compensation issue and, working with allies in Europe and elsewhere, help raise money to ensure that it is more than a pious wish.

There is more we can do. Millions of Palestinians are now stateless. (Jordan has integrated the refugees within its borders; other countries have not.) When peace comes, all Palestinians should be citizens of some state with full economic and social rights. The new Palestinian state will need financial help to absorb many of these refugees; and neighboring states who agree to integrate Palestinians should also receive international aid.

In addition, while many Palestinians are well educated, many others are poor and lack skills. They depend on the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for basic services and support. Who takes the agency's place when peace comes and the Palestinians aren't refugees anymore?

Taking the lead on these and other issues vital to the Palestinians would not bring quick progress toward peace in the region, nor would it undo overnight the consequences of decades of suspicion and resentment. But it would help to reduce anti-Americanism in the Muslim world and beyond, as well as to advance the cause of peace.

Walter Russell Mead is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of "Power, Terror, Peace and War: America's Grand Strategy in a World at Risk.
The New York Times
  

2:19 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




I Know Where The Buck Stops...

If you want to know exactly where the buck stops, all you have to do is go click, and enjoy the movie:



Click Right HERE


MotherJones
  

2:01 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Is Lying About $700 Million A Tempest In A Diamond-Studded Platinum Teapot?

When you say it really fast, $700 Million doesn't sound like much more than military pocket-change, right? Certainly not enough to bother Congress over. Of course, not. Almost three-quarters of a billion dollars? Said that way, it sounds like even less--I mean, fractions are small, aren't they?
The $700 Million Question

Desperate to tamp down outrage from Congress, the White House and its allies yesterday spun out various responses to Bob Woodward's allegation that the administration secretly took $700 million from the hunt for al Qaeda in Afghanistan and diverted it into Iraq war planning in 2002. Yet no one provided any proof that Woodward's charges were inaccurate. As a new American Progress backgrounder shows, if Woodward's charges are true, the administration's actions not only raise constitutional questions, they also raise statutory questions; federal law required the president to notify Congress before moving any money. While the administration sent two documents to Congress outlining some spending, both the 8/9/02 and 10/17/02 White House notifications in question said nothing about Iraq, instead only mentioning deliberately vague things like "increased situational awareness" and "increased worldwide posture."

NO PROOF FROM MCCLELLAN: White House press secretary Scott McClellan did not deny the president secretly diverted money, but claimed, "Congress was kept fully informed of all expenditures." He provided no proof. He also had no answer as to why top congressional appropriators such as Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) and Rep. John Murtha (D-PA) said they had never been informed.

WOLFOWITZ DENIAL PROMPTS CALL FOR HEARINGS: Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz also did not deny Woodward's fundamental assertion, instead trying to absolve the White House by claiming, "No funds were made available that had Iraq as the only objective." Wolfowitz also implied there was no need to notify Congress because Congress supposedly authorized the spending in its October 2002 war resolution. But that resolution included no authorization to spend money without notifying Congress. White House ally Sen. John Warner (R-VA) tried to shut further questioning down, saying, "At this point I think the matter has been fully responded to." But at least one conservative lawmaker indicated that Wolfowitz's answers were unsatisfactory: Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) "said there would be hearings into possible fund diversions and 'the mechanics of moving money around.'"

HOUSE CHAIRMAN CHANGES THE SUBJECT: House Appropriations Chairman Bill Young (R-FL), the man charged with overseeing federal spending, also refused to deny Woodward's charges. He instead tried to deflect the issue with a non-sequitur, "saying the $700 million was small compared with $159 billion in additional money Congress has provided to fight terrorism since the 2001 attacks." He implied that because over a half billion dollars was not a lot of money, and because of a supposed "lack of specificity" by Woodward, "it is impossible to determine what specific funds" were spent without congressional approval.

WHITE HOUSE CHANGES THE STORY: The LA Times reports White House Deputy Press Secretary Trent Duffy also did not deny Woodward's charges, instead acknowledging that money was used for a "significant buildup" of troops in the Persian Gulf – but only "to aid weapons inspectors." Of course, the United Nations' weapons inspectors never requested hundreds of thousands of troops to mass on the Iraqi border.

RICE NEEDS A GEOGRAPHY LESSON: National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice told CBS's Face the Nation that, while she had no details about the $700 million, circumventing Congress was acceptable because Afghanistan and Iraq are "within the entire region." Her answer ignored the fact that Asia and the Mideast are separate geographic regions - more than 1400 miles separate Kabul and Baghdad. By Rice's logic, this would mean Austin, Texas is in the same region as Nicaragua. In fact, the U.S. State Department has two separate bureaus and two separate Assistant Secretaries of State to deal with Iraq and Afghanistan. Her answer also ignores the fact that fighting Al Qaeda in Afghanistan (as approved by Congress) had nothing to do with invading Iraq.
The Center for American Progress
  

1:43 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  



Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Now This Is A Political Dirty Trick

A curse takes political dirty tricks to a whole new level. My question: is Mr. Howard even a little bit worried? Can one totally dismiss such an idea? Even subconsciously? Would it work on a "resolute" prayerful politician such as Bush?
COLAC, Australia (AP) -- An Aboriginal woman clad in animal skins has put a traditional curse on Prime Minister John Howard, apparently in retaliation for government plans to abolish Australia's top indigenous elected body.

Howard encountered the woman on a visit to Colac, an outback town with 500 people in the southern state of Victoria.

Supporters turned up to greet the prime minister along with angry Aboriginal protesters and the woman, known only as Moopor.

Painted in traditional tribal makeup and wearing possum skins, Moopor stood silently and cast the curse by pointing a small bone at Howard as he climbed into a waiting car. Howard smiled and waved at Moopor before leaving.

Moopor refused to speak with reporters, citing unspecified Aboriginal cultural reasons.

It was not clear what effect the curse was intended to have on the prime minister.
CNN
  

11:37 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




The Pottery Barn Rule...

Bob Woodward is a journalist's journalist. While as a stylist he seldom dazzles his readers with narrative legerdermain, he is an old-fashioned stickler for accuracy and backing up what a source tells him with two or three other sources. Not unlike one of the most quoted lines in his book so far, if it's in the book "you can take it to the bank" as being true. Without having the privilege yet of reading the book, from the excerpts that have been published, and his interviews on "Larry King Live" and "60 Minutes," I must say that the theme and quotes below are my favorite:

WASHINGTON, April 16 — Two months before the invasion of Iraq, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell warned President Bush about the potential negative consequences of a war, citing what Mr. Powell privately called the "you break it, you own it" rule of military action, according to a new book. ...

"You're sure?" Mr. Powell is quoted as asking Mr. Bush in the Oval Office on Jan. 13, 2003, as the president told him he had made the decision to go forward. "You understand the consequences," he is said to have stated in a half-question. "You know you're going to be owning this place?"

It has been well known that Mr. Powell was the most skeptical among Mr. Bush's senior advisers about the wisdom of invading Iraq. But the new details described in the book, at a time when the American occupation has met with new perils, add considerably to a portrait of a secretary of state who expressed private reservations about the administration's policy but never issued a public protest about the administration's course. ...

In Mr. Woodward's account of the meeting between Mr. Bush and Mr. Powell in January 2003, the president is described as having simply informed the secretary of state of his decision to go to war in Iraq, as part of a 12-minute meeting in which Mr. Bush made a conscious decision not to ask Mr. Powell for advice.

But, according to the book, Mr. Bush did ask Mr. Powell "Are you with me on this?" and told him, "I want you with me." Mr. Powell is quoted as having replied: "I'll do the best I can. Yes sir, I will support you. I'm with you, Mr. President." ...

Over a period that began in early 2002, Mr. Powell is depicted as having cautioned Mr. Bush and other advisers repeatedly about the potential drawbacks of military action in Iraq. The "you break it, you own it" principle he cited in delivering those warnings was privately known to Mr. Powell and his deputy, Richard L. Armitage, as "the Pottery Barn rule," the book says.

"You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people," Mr. Powell is said to have told Mr. Bush in the summer of 2002. "You will own all their hopes, aspirations and problems. You'll own it all."
Of all the predictions and assertions about invading Iraq before the fact, perhaps Colin Powell's Pottery Barn Rule warnings were the most accurate.The New York Times
 

12:26 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  



Tuesday, April 20, 2004

Right Wingers Snapping At Dubya

Don't you just love it when the right-wingers start eating their own? I give you just that, from the Editorial Page of The Wall Street Journal
Bush's Brahimi Gamble

America shows weakness in Iraq by passing the buck to the U.N.

One mystery of the last year in Iraq is that a U.S. occupation that is supposed to midwife democracy has put so little trust in Iraqis. The Bush Administration may be compounding that error now by abdicating decisions about the June 30 transition to Iraqi rule to U.N. envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. ...

Perhaps the President knows something about Mr. Brahimi's intentions that the rest of us don't. The U.N. envoy was helpful in brokering Afghanistan's postwar government, though in that case the U.S. clearly had a favorite for president in Hamid Karzai. In Iraq Mr. Brahimi is being assigned the role of de facto Douglas MacArthur.

This includes assailing U.S. military commanders for their tactics in the middle of a battle zone. As Marines fought house-to-house in Fallujah last week, Mr. Brahimi took to the Arab airwaves to declare that "Collective punishments are not acceptable--cannot be acceptable, and to cordon off and besiege a city is not acceptable."

Whose side is Mr. Brahimi on? Fallujah is the base of the Baathist insurgents and foreign fighters who are killing Americans. Only this weekend, insurgents who had fanned out from Ramadi and Fallujah ambushed and killed 10 Marines near the Syria border. Unless Fallujah is cleared out as a terror sanctuary, many more Americans will be ambushed and no Iraqi government will be safe.

The one-sided "cease-fire" in that city, along with Mr. Brahimi's comments, have already sent a signal of weakness that will only embolden our enemies. The fastest way for Mr. Bush to lose support at home would be if Americans see their soldiers restrained from doing what it takes to win by U.N. statements or political control. That's when his own base begins to walk.

We also doubt the political benefits of this U.N. intervention. The point seems to be to distance any transition government from the taint of U.S. occupation--never mind that any government will still depend on 135,000 American troops for security. And never mind that Mr. Brahimi, a Sunni who ran the Arab League when it was cozy with Saddam Hussein, may not have any more credibility with Iraq's Shiite majority than L. Paul Bremer.
The Wall Street Journal
  

11:35 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Ms. Dowd Says It's Time For Powell To Go

Colin Powell made a big mistake when he chose to throw his lot in with the Republican Party after retiring from service as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. There is every likelihood that he would have been the first African-American Vice President on the Gore ticket. He was universally respected as a man of integrity with rare leadership skills. Many democrats, myself included, admired him greatly, even after he spurned the party, and even after he accepted the Secretary of State position in the Bush administration. I for one, admire him still, even though I know him now to be flawed, particularly in his judgment of where loyalty to country trumps loyalty to "the team." As a lifetime military man, team loyalty was an ingrained trait. Unfortunately, it has not served him or the nation well.

The revelations in Bob Woodward's book, the candor with which Secretary Powell spoke concerning his true feelings about Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice--but, notably, not Bush, himself--has pretty much assured what many people have been saying privately for some time, namely that Secretary Powell will not be in the cabinet if Bush is reelected. Or, and this would have to be classified as a very long shot indeed, Cheney and Rumsfeld would take their leave instead. I am of the strong opinion that Secretary Powell shouldn't wait to be "dropped" and should resign now, taking whatever highground is left to him in a sharply written farewell speech. He would be leaving while he still has more than a little credibility abroad, and while he is still quite popular with the American public.

Ms. Dowd is less kind than I am in this matter, but her writing sparkles nonetheless and her targets are all hit with uncanny accuracy, to wit:
When Colin Powell decided that Dick Cheney's crazy "fever," as he called the vice president's obsession with linking 9/11 and Saddam, was leading the country into a war it did not need to fight, he should have bared his heart to the president and made his case using the Powell doctrine -- with overwhelming force.

Mr. Bush probably wouldn't have listened. He was in Mr. Cheney's gloomy sway, and Rummy's bellicose sway. And W. felt competitive with his more popular top diplomat.

But Mr. Powell should have tried. And if the president didn't listen, the secretary should have quit -- not let himself be used by the vice president and his "Gestapo office" of Pentagon neocons, as Mr. Powell referred to them, to put a diplomatic fig leaf on a predetermined war plan and to present bogus intelligence to the U.N.

He knew his word held enormous weight around the world. And he knew he was the only one, out of all the officials in on the clandestine rush to war, who had fought in a war. He should have spoken up for all those soldiers who would fight and die and be maimed for Dick Cheney's nutty utopian dream of bombing the world into freedom, and W.'s dream of being so forceful with Saddam, the slime bag who survived his father's war, that he would forever banish his family's bete noire -- the wimp factor.

It would have been much more honorable than playing Achilles sulking in his Foggy Bottom tent, privately pouting to Bob Woodward that he had warned the president about the Pottery Barn effect ? break Iraq and "you know you're going to be owning this place" -- and tattling that his colleagues were engaged in "lunacy."

"At times, with his closest friends, Powell was semidespondent," his pal Mr. Woodward writes in "Plan of Attack." "His president and his country were headed for a war that he thought might just be avoided, though he himself would not walk away."

Mr. Woodward, who is clearly channeling Mr. Powell, as he has done to present Mr. Powell's side of the story in past books, recreates his innermost thoughts: "He saw in Cheney a sad transformation. The cool operator from the first gulf war just would not let go. Cheney now had an unhealthy fixation. Nearly every conversation or reference came back to Al Qaeda and trying to nail the connection with Iraq. He would often have an obscure piece of intelligence. Powell thought that Cheney took intelligence and converted uncertainty and ambiguity into fact. It was about the worst charge that Powell could make about the vice president. But there it was."

Everyone in Washington has been puzzling over how Mr. Cheney, a reasonable, cautious, popular man in the first Bush administration, turned into Pluto, king of the underworld and proponent of worst-case scenarios and pre-emption.

But Mr. Powell shared his dread, Cassandra-like, with Mr. Woodward: "The more Powell dug, the more he realized that the human sources were few and far between on Iraq's W.M.D. It was not a pretty picture."

George Tenet comes across in the book as another profile in cravenness. On Dec. 21, 2002, the C.I.A. chief went to the Oval Office with an aide to present "The Case" on W.M.D. Even Mr. Bush, already deeply enmeshed in war plans, was taken aback at the paucity of it. "Nice try," Mr. Bush said. "I don't think this is quite -- it's not something that Joe Public would understand or would gain a lot of confidence from." Turning to Mr. Tenet, he added: "I've been told all this intelligence about having W.M.D. and this is the best we've got?"

When the president asked how confident he was, Mr. Tenet, premier apple polisher, gave Mr. Bush the answer he wanted to hear: "Don't worry, it's a slam dunk!"

Just as the Democratic president ducked behind the parsed line, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman," so the Republican president ducked behind the parsed line, "I have no war plans on my desk."

The plans for invading "The House of Broken Toys," as the C.I.A. referred to Iraq, may not have been sitting on his desk, but he secretly started planning with Rummy for war with Iraq in November 2001, and with Tommy Franks starting the next month. Once they were thick into the planning, the president couldn't turn back, of course. That would make him like the loathed Bill Clinton -- a lot of bold talk and not much action -- not like "The Man," as Mr. Cheney called his warrior president.
The New York Times
  

11:36 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  



Monday, April 19, 2004

Is It Just My Paranoia?

Perhaps my reading of the "Tiananmen Papers" is cause for me to read too much in the article below announcing new security measures regarding all public activities in Tiananmen Square to take effect on Tuesday. I haven't seen any news on the health of Zhao Ziyang of late. Is this a less than subtle hint that bad news is approaching regarding his stay upon this earth and that a repeat of 15 years ago will not be allowed a chance to get a start, period?
BEIJING, April 19 (Xinhuanet) -- A new regulation on administration of the area in and around Tian'anmen Square in central Beijing urges the institution of an emergency mechanism for sound, stable social order in the area.

The regulation, passed by the municipal people's government and to take effect officially Tuesday, requires the rigid control in the area so as to prepare for any emergency.

It also asks for obeisance of strict control measures during solemn occasions including national flag hoisting and lowering, festival celebrations and national conventions of great importance.

Any activities affecting social order, public security and the environment in the Tian'anmen area will be banned and penalized, according to the regulation.

The regulation explicitly calls on local administration departments to launch emergency drills in accordance with the mechanism. Meanwhile, it requires local public security and other law enforcement departments to make their own specific preparations for any possible emergencies in compliance with the mechanism. Staff training and drills are also urged.

The magnificent Tian'anmen Square, situated at the center of the national capital, is the largest city square in the world, which has witnessed the founding of new China in 1949 and numerousother grand political events in the country.
Xinhuanet
  

5:04 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Some Really Scary Bushisms From Woodward's Book

Remember, please, the immortal words of Bob Dylan: "If God is on our side, he'll stop the next war."
"I believe we have a duty to free people," Bush told Woodward. "I would hope we wouldn't have to do it militarily, but we have a duty."

The president described praying as he walked outside the Oval Office after giving the order to begin combat operations against Iraq, and the powerful role his religious belief played throughout that time.

"Going into this period, I was praying for strength to do the Lord's will. . . . I'm surely not going to justify war based upon God. Understand that. Nevertheless, in my case I pray that I be as good a messenger of His will as possible. And then, of course, I pray for personal strength and for forgiveness."
This next line is so Bush, it almost proves that this ghost worship business has some validity, with the holy ghost making so many stupid humans in his own image.
Asked by Woodward how history would judge the war, Bush replied: "History. We don't know. We'll all be dead."
But the scariest words from Bush's mouth to Woodward are the following:
Bush said he did not remember asking the question [to go to war or not] of his father, former president George H.W. Bush, who fought Iraq in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. But, he added that the two had discussed developments in Iraq.

"You know he is the wrong father to appeal to in terms of strength. There is a higher father that I appeal to," Bush said.
Yeah, and we didn't elect him, either!

Isn't it yet clear to everyone with at least a high school education that the greatest evil in this world is the result of the three dominant western monotheistic religions of this world--Jew, Christian and Muslim, ghost worshippers all--killing other ghost worshippers because their ghost is the one true ghost?

Goddamn all ghost worshippers except those like Jimmy Carter, because he actually practices what the great teacher Jesus Christ tried to teach--long before that fool Paul came along and mucked it up for all time.

Washington Post
  

2:43 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




"House of Bush, House of Saud" You Must Read The Truth About The Bush Family



I have been studying the history of the "House of Bush" for many years. It hasn't been as easy as one might think, researching the history of such a famous family. Eventually, one comes to understand why: It is by their design. This important trait of keeping secrets was learned from the robber barons who were their models and benefactors--even though the last three generations of Bush men chose political life over the banking/munitions-oil/intelligence sphere which was the basis of their wealth and international influence. Although that also was very much by design .

I suppose secrecy is paramount if such a family is grooming sons for national office. This is surely true when the family "interests" range from selling arms and munitions to all sides in the revolutions and conflicts that afflicted Europe, Asia and the Americas in the early 20th Century, to actively supporting, organizing and financing the eugenics movement that was popular in America during the years directly after World War One. Publicly popular that is until Adolph Hitler started giving the eugenics movement a public relations problem--stamping out the "bad genes" of retardation, homosexuality and criminality was then politically acceptable goals, whole races was a different matter to many. Not the House of Bush, however; Prescott Bush, Dubya's grandfather, and Prescott's in-laws, the Walkers, and their close friends, the Harriman and Dulles families, quietly went about providing the rising Hitler with the munitions and financing that ensured the ascendancy of the Third Reich. Prescott Bush would continue being Hitler's American banker a year into World War Two, until Congress censured him and stripped him of his Nazi-supporting companies under the Trading With the Enemies Act.

There are so many really shocking "secrets" in the Bush family closet, it is one of the reasons it is difficult to get them known by the public. The truth is so thickly sordid that many journalists, and reviewers of the few serious books that do get published, jump to the conclusion that this much dirt surely signifies a hatchet job done on a family that came to America on the Mayflower. All of this evilness can not possibly come from one of the original American families, one that is related by blood to English kings and queens of famous lore, and an astonishing number of American presidents--which is understandable when you grasp what it means to be from a family that reallydid come over with the first pilgrims. Their blood truly is part of the root blood-stock that is at the bluest heart of anglophile American aristocracy, which also then is related to many of the other royal families of Europe. This frustrating "crystal glass wall" put up by journalists and reviewers of books and "rumor" articles about the Bush family has finally become visible to all, and no longer ipso facto part of the "conspiracy buff" label that has served to discredit others, with the publishing of at least two recent books.

Kevin Phillips' AMERICAN DYNASTY: Aristocracy, Fortune, And The Politics Of Deceit In The House Of Bush, Viking, New York, 2004, is an important book and has sold very well. But even though Mr. Phillips is one of the most established, mainstream authors of political books, a life-long Republican who at times was an activist with the party, the "shocking" truths he writes of almost never make it from the book review pages onto the news pages of the nation's major dailies. The same thing is being done, a bit more viciously though, to a new book by Craig Unger, ''HOUSE OF BUSH, HOUSE OF SAUD: The Secret Relationship Between the World's Two Most Powerful Dynasties,'' Scribners, New York, 2004. While Jonathan D. Tepperman, who reviews the book for The New York Times, obviously has some kind of axe to grind, he does not attack Mr. Unger on his facts, he simply sprinkles the "conspiracy theories" phrase in enough places to discredit the book as much as he can get away with. Even this heavy-handed approach however cannot completely hold sway, and he is forced to write enough truth about the book to assure those of us doing serious work on the only "Dynastic Restoration" in the republic's history that an important resource is coming our way.

There are a couple of facts and the questions they raise that I want to leave you with before sending you on to a few paragraphs from Mr. Tepperman's flawed review of "House of Bush, House of Saud." George W. Bush's partner in his jack-of-all-trades oil services company formed in the late 70's, Arbusto, was and is the brother of Osama bin Laden--that's a 25 year relationship with the brother of the "Great Evil One"! Of course, in the 80's, even Osama himself was a "partner" of sorts with Dubya's father, who was greatly involved with equipping Osama's boys in their Jihad against the Soviet Union in his position within the intelligence community--which was much more extensive than his short public stint as CIA director--and as vice president.

The question is simple, the answer I'm afraid is complex and frightening: It is widely known that the entire bin Laden clan in the United States at the time of the 9/11 attacks, perhaps close to a score of them, was allowed to fly home to Saudi Arabia in a chartered airliner immediately after the attacks when no other non-military air craft were allowed to fly. Nothing new there: but why were they not aggressively interrogated before being given such royal treatment? In the criminal justice business, the family of a murder suspect, no matter how estranged their relations might be with the suspect at the time, is considered as valuable as gold as sources of information that might lead to the suspect. Often they are threatened with being named material witnesses if they are deemed to be less than cooperative. Why? Because family is family, and all good homicide detectives know that almost always someone in a suspect's family keeps in touch with the "bad seed." But even if that proves not to be the case, something they know, perhaps the most innocent detail that only a family member might know, can lead to a hot trail. This is Detective work 101. Why was it totally absent in the worst murder case in American history?
Unger, a former deputy editor of The New York Observer who has written for The New Yorker, Esquire and Vanity Fair, goes to great lengths to outline just how attached the two clans have grown over the years. The Bushes and al-Sauds do indeed share a close (if complicated) relationship; in fact, these connections have already been extensively documented elsewhere. Yet the stakes in the relationship are so high that it is probably worth reading about them one more time. For this reason, Unger's muckraking impulse to explain the awkward United States-Saudi alliance should be applauded.

There's certainly plenty of muck for him to uncover. As he meticulously details, both George Bushes have made fortunes over the years by trading on their famous name to persuade rich backers to invest in their various (usually oil-related) businesses. Sometimes these backers have been Saudi, sometimes even members of the royal family. And a few have come from another Saudi clan: the bin Ladens.

Although Unger relies too heavily on other people's work in sketching the Bush-Saudi links, he does provide a valuable service in highlighting the enormous amounts of money involved. He even puts a price tag on the Saudis' contributions to the Bush family: a staggering $1.476 billion, paid out over 30 years as gifts to Bush-related charities, as generous perks (including a Saudi-sponsored European hunting trip for George H. W. Bush and his 1991 gulf war cabinet just after the November 2000 general election) and as investments in Bush-related businesses like Harken Energy or the Carlyle Group.
The New York Times
 

2:43 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments  




Adlai E. Stevenson III, Seeing Things As Clearly As His Daddy Did

Adlai E. Stevenson, the former Democratic Senator of Illinois, writes a really fine op-ed piece in The New York Times. I know I am aging myself greatly, but I so admired his father, even though I was far too young to vote for him. I remember watching the two Democratic National Conventions that nominated him on a boxy black and white TV set with my father, who did indeed vote for him both times. Golly, things were so stuffy in those days; the fact that he was divorced was big news and the subject of much debate on how it would effect his chances against Ike. Ah, politics were really fun in those days; the national conventions were pure reality TV drama at its best! Read his son's insightful look at the intelligence failures of past and present:

Investigating the Iran intelligence failure in the late 1970's, I learned that the C.I.A. had no analyst who spoke Farsi. The agencies rely on foreign intelligence services, which support the policies of their own governments.

Foreign policy in the Bush administration reflects a lack of experience in the real world away from a Washington overrun with armchair polemicists and think-tank ideologues. Too many inhabitants of this world have no experience in the military, where one learns to expect the unexpected, or in international finance, where America's vulnerability also resides. This White House is well known for its hostility to curiosity and intellectual debate.

After all, terrorism is not a phenomenon of recent origin. Gavrilo Princip, the Serb nationalist who assassinated Archduke Ferdinand in 1914, did not expect his gunshot to bring about the demise of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He expected only a reaction — and the empire's reaction led to World War I and its own downfall. The United States government's reaction to the attacks of 9/11 could end up inflicting great damage on America.

The Bush administration demonstrates the point. One pre-emptive war against the dictator of a desert quasi-state crippled by international sanctions has stretched the American military thin. The United States is widely perceived to be waging war against Islam in the Middle East, a perception reinforced by the president's decision this week to support Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel and his settlement plan.

Meanwhile, the dollar — a barometer of confidence in the American economy and polity — has sunk against other currencies. In Spain, Argentina, Germany, South Korea and Pakistan, candidates win public office by denouncing or distancing themselves from the Bush administration. This record owes nothing to failures of intelligence.

Studies have recommended reforms of the intelligence community. But reform does not change the limited nature and function of intelligence. There is no substitute for the pragmatic intelligence of policy makers acquired from history and experience in the real world — and the courage to act on it.

Before 9/11, neoconservatives like Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, and Vice President Dick Cheney inhabited a world of contending great powers in which force and technology were transcendent. Terrorists armed with box cutters — and now Iraqis resisting the occupation — have exploded their fantasy. The failures of the Bush administration are not those of foreign intelligence but of a cerebral sort of intelligence.
The New York Times
  

12:32 AM / Editor / permalink