Copyright © 2008 Frank Lynch.
Copyright © 2008 Frank Lynch.
Me: Frank Lynch Home These are my mundane daily ramblings.
Email: |
Following in Cheney's footsteps? Weeks before we invaded Iraq (happy belated anniversary, by the way) Cheney appeared on NBC's "Meet The Press" and "misspoke" about Iraq and WMDs, making a charge he'd knowingly leave on the table until well after the invasion was launched. Is Bush up to the same thing with respect to Iran? Over at McClatchy's Washington Bureau, Jonathan Landay noticed that Bush "erroneously" said that Iran announced its desire for nuclear weapons, to use the headline.
Slip of the tongue or planned, this is how a thousand ships get launched. This is the kind of confusion (?) which Bush sowed in the lears leading up to the invasion, by conflating 9/11 with Saddam Hussein. (If you haven't read it yet, Wilton Sekzer had a very painful ride on Bush's roller coaster, believing the pitch, and believing it would avenge his son's death on September 11.) I pray — how I pray — that we are a wiser, humbler country, one that better understands its place in the world. If only our leaders could be trusted with the English language: it's clear enough that George "There Are No Plans To Invade Iraq On My Desk" Bush has turned out to be a constant purveyor of sucker bets.
How doltish can you be? John Hinderaker has given perhaps his second-most-telling example of how partisan he can be by providing, without any comment, a political cartoon showing Pelosi as selling out our National Security like a whore, providing that perceived betrayal for free. The cartoon should evoke disgust in Hinderaker, but apparently doesn't. Let's remember this one for the next time he complains about unseeming behavior from the left. Beyond the cartoon, the lead in shows how tone-deaf he is: he refuses to see any point to the House Democrats refusing to grant telecom immunity when it won't pass in the Senate. One could just as easily ascribe pointlessness to the efforts of the Republicans in both the House and the Senate to insist on it, since it won't pass in the House. This is truly a case where Hinderaker can only see things one way. Sure sign of a fine thinker. (In addition to the really inappropriate suggestion that Pelosi's a whore, and one who'd sell out our national security for free, there are also other lies in the cartoon. One of the bumper stickers has one of those red circles with a bar over the acronym "FISA." Anyone who's read the news would know that the anti-FISA people are those who don't believe that the FISA laws work: that would be the Bush Administration, not Democrats like Pelosi. Pelosi is pro-FISA, not anti.)
Scare your neighbors. You, too, can receive a nice little CD in the mail from the Department of Defense, with a prominent label alerting everyone within three blocks as to the sender. It invites all sorts of opportunities to roll out the old "I could tell you, but then I'd have to kill you" line. You may remember that last week I mentioned that the Pentagon had reviewed over 600,000 documents seized in Iraq following the fall of Saddam Hussein, and concluded that there were no links between Hussein and al Qaeda. Unfortunately, the government decided it shouldn't be available on the Internet: you have to write in to get a copy on a CD. Well, mine arrived, and I've begun to go through it; at the outset, the Executive Summary mentions that Saddam Hussein's regime was linked to terrorists, but al Qaeda was a different story:
Part of what made the journalists at McClatchy skeptical about a partnership between Saddam Hussein and OBL was that their ultimate goals were so different; in effect, Saddam Hussein's regime was just the kind of regime that OBL would have wanted to topple. It just didn't make sense, and they couldn't figure out why so many others in the press were falling for it. You'll remember there was so much enthusiasm — as if they were all competing to be the best stepper to the beat. The sad thing is, Cheney continues, obstinately, to be in denial. He's still offering "yeah, buts," as if he's done anything like the serious review which the Pentagon did. It's reminiscent of that time when he was on "Meet the Press" and continued to cling to the long debunked claim that Mohammed Atta, the 9/11 ringleader in the U.S., had met with an official from Iraqi intelligence in Prague: even though Atta had a footprint in Florida the same day. "Tim, we just don't know," (or words like them) was how he sought to sow uncertainty on what was pretty much a cut and dry case. (I would love it if Cheney would call his credit card company to complain about a fraudulent charge: "Don't you see? I wasn't in Gdansk that day, I was in Annapolis!" "I'm sorry, Mr. Vice President, that doesn't prove that you weren't in Gdansk.") (Should you want a copy of the free CD yourself, the people in the public affairs office at the United States Joint Forces Command enclosed a business card. Their web address is www.jfcom.mil . No questions asked, I just went to their web site, found the "contact" link in the upper right, and filled in the box about wanting a copy of the report, and included my name and address. They were very helpful: I didn't knoe the name of the report, I described it and pasted a url from the McClatchy article where I'd read about it. You can probably refer to it as "IDA Paper P-4287." That's the code that appears on the cover page, and it's in all the file names of the pdf's on the CD.)
Josh asks another good question. It does look a little one-sided, especially when you consider the free pass he recevied for so long over Hagee.
The perfect game. One of John McCain's "selling" points is his hawkish position on Iraq. Who could forget his sanguine characterization following his tour of the market in spring 2007? Who could forget his statement that he's OK with us being there for a hundred years? The problem, of course, is that by allying yourself so strongly with Bush's failed policy, you're essentially having your own "bring 'em on" moment: perceptions of your foreign policy skills hinge on progress, which the terrorists can disrupt. And McCain knows it, voicing wariness about pre-election violence to make him look bad. Sorry about that John: but lucky you, because now you can take the typical fall spike in violence which has happened around Ramadan, and claim that it's evidence that the terrorists are afraid of you. No matter what happens, you can twist it to your benefit: if there's violence, it's because they want the Democrat; if there isn't, it's because you're right.
(Singing like a child) I know where Kristen lives, I know where Kristen lives... In between the office building and one of my regular subway stations I passed a buildling where there must have been a half-dozen local news vans, and an array of tripods, and people with much more expensive cameras than mine. "Kristen" is the working-name of the woman identified in an affidavit as having had a liaison with "Client 9," New York's Soon-No-Longer-To-Be-Governor Governor Spitzer. It didn't take a lot to figure out that this was where she lived, and someone on site confirmed it. The public wants news, and I guess that the news media feels it's more important to trade in the salacious than it is to give serious thought to the question of "Who wants to be the last person to die for a completely wrong decision?" Those questions aren't being asked obviously. The Pentagon wants citizens to write in to get a report on the lack of connection between Saddam and al Qaeda? That is such a yawn. Why, isn't America used to writing off to Pueblo, AZ for all that wonderful information anyway? I was disgusted by a promo blurb this morning on NBC's "Today" show: breaking for the local channel update at 7:25, Matt Lauer hyped an interview with some of "Kristen's" musician friends, saying something very much along the lines of "We'll talk to friends of the woman who brought Governor Spitzer down." As if it were her doing, as if she knew the phones were being tapped, and as if this was a single (alleged) transgression on Spitzer's part... As if Spitzer hadn't (allegedly) brought it on himself, and she weren't more than just the worker at the time. Rather than hanging out on the street of an aprtment building in Chelsea, it would be so much better if these news crews were out, say, by the Holland Tunnel, interviewing customers there over how they would feel if they had to quit their jobs over a similar brouhaha. If society were serious about ending this trade, they'd do more in that direction rather than to sensationalize it. By the way, Netflix just sent us Gigantic: A Tale of Two Johns, a documentary on They Might Be Giants, whose leaders are John Linnell and John Flansburgh. My wife and I jointly manage our queue, and when I announced the title of the arrival, Abigail asked, "Spitzer and who else?"
I'd swear the iPods are listening to us. At work this early evening, just a moment after Stan and I finished talking about Spitzer and Stan had left, the playlist lands on Elvis Presley's "One Night Of Sin." Of course, the difference between the song and the Spitzer story is that Spitzer had apparently engaged in his risky behavior for more than one night, and so had more opportunities to "pay" - - pay, that is, in the sense of the Elvis tune, and certainly in others. Of course I think Spitzer was a schmuck for living on such an edge; whether or not you think prostitution is victimless and whether or not you think it should be legalized, the fact is that it is illegal. And Spitzer had farmed so much antagonism, there's no way that a sane person in a clear state of mind wouldn't recognize that people would be gunning for him (even if they weren't his downfall here) and they would have a sweet feeling of schadenfreude should it ever come out. So yes, to me the amazing story is his complete, utter, unmitigated stupidity. What a schmuck. At least he had the sense to resign 48 hours after the scandal broke. You can't say that for David Vitter. Vitter continues his presence in the House of Representatives... And if hypocrisy is one of the charges being leveled against Spitzer for his involvement in a crime he worked so hard against, well, it sure does seem as if there's a lot of hypocrisy to go around. Beware of those in high dudgeon over this. I wonder, if down the road, whether Spitzer will argue against Fitzgerald's narrator's claim that there are no "second acts" in America. Certainly we have John McCain and Newt Gingrich as examples of rehabilitated politicians... Or maybe it's just that no one ever really talked about how McCain started his relationship with his current wife while married to his prior ($)... Or how Gingrich discussed divorcing his wife while she was in the hospital. Maybe there's a continuum for scandal, and awareness is just part of the issue. Maybe it will also depend on whether attitudes change over time. But I don't think rehabilitating yourself calls on your steamroller skills, not by a long shot.
Slackers! So an exhaustive search of over 600,000 Iraqi documents shows NO link between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. Fools: don't they know that all the evidence got shipped off to Syria before the invasion?
|
|
