The last couple of weeks I've been fighting the "Battle of the Hard Drive" - my external drive, on which most of my web creation and graphic software (among other things) were stored, died a few weeks back, so I ordered a new one, and thus began an odessy through the new economy version of customer service and warranty programs.
The first drive I got corrupted all the data I put on it, so I had to return it. The retailer I got it from wouldn't let me return it to them, so I had to work with the manufacturer's return policy, which resulted in a bunch of running around (done by a friend of mine, since I can't do it myself) to get the drive properly packaged. I send it off, wait 2 weeks, and get the replacement. It doesn't work either.
Now, I try to be as patient as I can, but there are times that can be very difficult. This was one of those. I ended up going through 3 customer service reps, a supervisor and a manager trying to get them to understand that all I wanted at this point was a refund, which the manufacturer says they never give under any circumstances. Finally, the manager offered me a much better replacement drive - with almost 3 times the capacity of the one I'd bought. I relented, and asked if they could just get it sent to me as soon as possible. Amazingly, this one only took 2 days to arrive.
So, I spent all last night getting it installed, partitioned and formatted, organized and reinstalled all my files, and somehow, in the process, lost my ability to connect to the Internet.
After exhausting every option I could think of for getting it reset, I found the only soloution was to reinstall Windows XP. That meant activating it. Hoo Boy! That was a treat. Since I couldn't connect to the internet, I had to do it by phone. I must say, they managed to make their computerized customer service rep sound reasonably realistic, but it's still a bit of a chore!
At any rate, I'm finally connecting to the net again(Yippee!), and will be posting more tomorrow. Right now, I need to play some games :)
[UPDATE (6/4/2003): I'm leaving the text of this entry the way it was originally written, as many of the points contained are still valid. I wanted to note, however, that after reviewing the actual transcript of the interview conducted by Sam Tannenhaus, I noted that Wolfowitz did not actually say that removing the troops from Saudi Arabia was one of the reasons for invading, but that it's one of the things that is now different because of the war.
For clarification, here is the paragraph, as published by Reuters, indicating that Wolfowitz had claimed that removing troops from Saudi Arabia was one of the justifications for the war, followed by the actual comment he made to Tannenhaus:
Reuters: Wolfowitz said another reason for the invasion had been "almost unnoticed but huge" -- namely that the ousting of Saddam would allow the United States to remove its troops from Saudi Arabia, where their presence had long been a major al Qaeda grievance.The original post is below.]
DOD transcript of Tannenhaus interview: I think the two most important things next are the two most obvious. One is getting post-Saddam Iraq right. Getting it right may take years, but setting the conditions for getting it right in the next six months. The next six months are going to be very important.The other thing is trying to get some progress on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. I do think we have a better atmosphere for working on it now than we did before in all kinds of ways. Whether that's enough to make a difference is not certain, but I will be happy to go back and dig up the things I said a long time ago which is, while it undoubtedly was true that if we could make progress on the Israeli-Palestinian issue we would provide a better set of circumstances to deal with Saddam Hussein, but that it was equally true the other way around that if we could deal with Saddam Hussein it would provide a better set of circumstances for dealing with the Arab-Israeli issue. That you had to move on both of them as best you could when you could, but --
There are a lot of things that are different now, and one that has gone by almost unnoticed--but it's huge--is that by complete mutual agreement between the U.S. and the Saudi government we can now remove almost all of our forces from Saudi Arabia. Their presence there over the last 12 years has been a source of enormous difficulty for a friendly government. It's been a huge recruiting device for al Qaeda. In fact if you look at bin Laden, one of his principle grievances was the presence of so-called crusader forces on the holy land, Mecca and Medina. I think just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to open the door to other positive things.
I don't want to speak in messianic terms. It's not going to change things overnight, but it's a huge improvement.
[UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: I sent a note about this to Spinsanity, as it is something that appeared to fit the kind of things they usually write about - turns out that, while the Reuters article did not present Wolfowitz' statement as accurately as they could, removing the troops from Saudi Arabia was, in fact, part of the pre-war justifications. Here's a copy of the response I got from Spinsanity: Thanks for passing this on. I've been following this debate and wanted to let you know that Tannenhaus did follow up on this point
and confirm that the situation in Saudi Arabia was part of the strategic equation going into the decision to go to war, rather than just a post facto benefit. See Josh Marshall's post making this point at talkingpointsmemo.com. It's farther down in the conversation due to an interruption. I do think the Reuters quote is
probably unfair, though, in saying Wolfowitz was specifically calling it
an "unnoticed but huge" reason to go to war. Here's the passage in
question:Tanenhaus: So this notion then that the strategic question was really a part of the equation, that you were looking at Saudi Arabia --
Wolfowitz: I was. It's one of the reasons why I took a very different view of what the argument that removing Saddam Hussein would destabilize the Middle East. I said on the record, I don't understand how people can really believe that removing this huge source of instability is going to be a cause of instability in the Middle East.Somedays its more fun than others to try and keep on top of things... Sorry for any confusion!]
In my post yesterday on the quotes available at Billmon's blog, one of the one's I included was from Paul Wolfowitz. He has stated that the reason the administration chose to focus on the Weapons of Mass Destruction as their justification for the war was because it was the only one "everyone" could agree on, so it worked well from a bureaucratic perspective. He has also, however, cited a second, less-noticed justification: that overthrowing Saddam would allow us to remove our troops from Saudi Arabia. And, as I had noted back on May 3rd, we have announced that we would be doing exactly that.
This is important - especially as it is now being cited as one of our reasons for going to war in the first place - because it was the stationing of those troops in Saudi Arabia that was Osama bin Laden's initial justification for going after us. He felt that having our Western troops there with our Western ways was a violation of the Islamic Holy Land, and was willing to do whatever he felt he had to in order to get us to leave.
Of course, by now, he has several other reasons for continuing to go after us, but what this admission means is that one of the main reasons we went to war - even though it wasn't included in the justifications given to the public - was to do exactly what bin Laden has wanted us to do right from the start - get our troops out of Saudi Arabia.
Sadly, in the process we have also done him two other favours as well. Bin Laden hates Saddam Hussein almost as much as we do, and had released tapes encouraging the Iraqi people to rise up against Saddam, calling him an infidel. Thanks to us, bin Laden no longer needs to worry about Saddam Hussein. In addition, we've created enough animosity in Iraq - and other areas of the Mideast - to help ensure a long line of al-Qaeda recruits for the foreseeable future. Our actions have made so many over there angry, they are now far more likely to be willing to take up bin Laden's cause as their own.
At some point - hopefully soon - when I have the energy to do the necessary sourcing searches, I'd love to put together a list of our accomplishments so far in this war. I know many will point out that we've liberated the Iraqi people from Saddam Hussein's tyranny, and that is, without a doubt, a wonderful thing - but beyond that, it's pretty much been a stinking disaster.
We can't find the weapons of mass destruction we said justified an immediate war; we've let nuclear information, materials and possibly the equipment needed to make something of those materials disappear at the hands of unknown looters, winding up who-knows-where; we've agreed to remove our troops from Saudi Arabia - something bin Laden has long wanted - and are now admitting that being able to remove those troops is one of the "quiet" reasons we wanted to topple Saddam in the first place; we've gotten rid of Saddam which is something else bin Laden wanted to see; we've created a climate that is likely to produce many more terrorists over the coming years; we've let looters steal many priceless and historically valuable artifacts from the Iraqi museum; and we've left the Iraqi people in many areas without functional electricity, fresh water or accessible medical care (this last also due, in large part, to the looting we failed to stop) and turned some parts of Iraq into areas so beset by crime that some Iraqis are now afraid to leave their homes.
As I noted before, I don't believe that we should leave our troops in Saudi Arabia just to avoid giving bin Laden what he wants. I just find the whole situation very troubling - especially seeing that, so far, it looks like bin Laden has probably gotten more out of our war in Iraq than either we or the Iraqis have.
Excerpt from an editorial by Mark Bowden, author of Blackhawk Down
[...] Truth in public life has always been a slippery commodity. We expect campaigning politicians or debating journalists to pitch and spin. Facts are marshaled to support arguments and causes; convenient ones are trumpeted and inconvenient ones played down or ignored. This is the political game.But when the President of the United States addresses the nation and the world, I expect the spinning to stop. He represents not just a party or a cause, but the American people. When President Bush argued that Hussein possessed stockpiles of illicit and deadly poisons, he was presumably doing so on the basis of intelligence briefings and evidence that the public could not see. He was asking us to trust him, to trust his office, to trust that he was acting legitimately in our self-defense. That's something very different from engaging in a bold policy of attempting to remake the Middle East, or undertaking a humanitarian mission to end oppression. Neither of these two justifications would have been likely to garner widespread public support. But national defense? That's an argument the President can always win.
[...] It suggests a strain of zealotry in this White House that regards the question of war as just another political debate. It isn't. More than 100 fine Americans were killed in this conflict, dozens of British soldiers, and many thousands of Iraqis. Nobody gets killed or maimed in Capitol Hill maneuvers over spending plans, or battles over federal court appointments. War is a special case. It is the most serious step a nation can take, and it deserves the highest measure of seriousness and integrity.
When a president lies or exaggerates in making an argument for war, when he spins the facts to sell his case, he betrays his public trust, and he diminishes the credibility of his office and our country. We are at war. What we lost in this may yet end up being far more important than what we gained.
I received this today from The Interfaith Alliance:
U.S. Reps. Ernest Istook (R-OK) and Sanford Bishop (D-GA) have introduced a “Pledge and Prayer Amendment” (H.J.Res. 46), seeking to radically alter the First Amendment by sanctioning prayer in public schools; allowing the prominent display of the Ten Commandments and other religious text in public buildings such as courthouses and elementary schools; and codifying the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance.Rep. Istook introduced a similar bill, the “Religious Freedom Amendment” in the 105th Congress that received a majority vote, (224-203/Roll Call No.201), but not the required 2/3 vote for passage, in the House of Representatives. This bill’s introduction attempts to build upon that success under the guise of patriotism to impose one particular set of religious beliefs upon our nation in a time of international unrest.
According to an internal letter sent by Istook to his House colleagues, “Only a constitutional amendment will stop the courts from supporting intolerant attacks on expressions of faith.” The letter went on to say, “Nothing else can resolve this. And we should not need separate amendments to address the Pledge, the Ten Commandments, and school prayer.”
As people of faith and good will, we need to protect our classrooms and our court houses from attempts to undermine religious liberty! Help us fight this systemic campaign by the Religious Right and their allies in Congress to favor one religion over others. Government-sanctioned religious doctrine and state-mandated prayer in public schools have no place in a society that values and affirms freedom of religion.
TIA members and supporters are urged to send a letter to their member of Congress asking them to vote against this dangerous legislation. As members of Congress are getting flooded with calls and letters from the Religious-Right lobby, it is absolutely essential that they hear from moderate and progressive people of faith and good will!
To see the text of H. J. Res. 46, please visit: http://www.interfaithalliance.org/Issues/IssuesList.cfm?c=53
Another submission from the "It should be obvious" department:
CNN.com - Study: Playing video games not so mindless - May. 29, 2003Gee. I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that in action-packed video games, you have lots of information coming at you quickly, and you have to be able to process it fast if you want to keep playing - and get to the higher and more challenging levels?Researchers at the University of Rochester found that young adults who regularly played video games full of high-speed car chases and blazing gun battles showed better visual skills than those who did not. For example, they kept better track of objects appearing simultaneously and processed fast-changing visual information more efficiently.
To rule out the possibility that visually adept people are simply drawn to video games, the researchers conducted a second experiment. They found that people who do not normally play video games but were trained to play them developed enhanced visual perception.
Exactly why video games have this effect is not clear. The researchers said more study is needed.
This needs to be explained:
Yahoo! News - No Bunker where U.S. Bombs Targeted Saddam-CBSSo, lets see. We told Saddam he had 48 hours to decide what to do, but then we cut that time short because we had "good" information he was in an underground bunker, and we decided to try taking him out. Only now we learn there wasn't any underground bunker, and whatever it was that we bombed didn't have Saddam or his sons in it.The Baghdad bunker which the United States said it bombed on the opening night of the Iraq (news - web sites) war in a bid to kill Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) never existed, CBS Evening News reported Wednesday.
The network quoted a U.S. Army colonel in charge of inspecting key sites in Baghdad as saying no trace of a bunker or of bodies had been found at the site on the southern outskirts of the Iraqi capital, known as Dora Farms.
"When we came out here, the primary thing they were looking for was an underground facility, or bodies, forensics, and basically, what they saw was giant holes created. No underground facilities, no bodies," Col. Tim Madere said.
This goes real well with the WMD that we "knew for a fact" he had but still can't find.
Is our intelligence community that incompetent, or does the administration just not pay a bit of attention to what they actually tell them?
Billmon has a beautiful collection of quotes from administration and military officials, starting with
Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.andDick Cheney
August 26, 2002
Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.throughGeorge W. Bush
September 12, 2002
They may have had time to destroy them, and I don't know the answer.andDonald Rumsfeld
May 27, 2003
For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.It's interesting to watch the story evolve over time...Paul Wolfowitz
May 28, 2003
UPDATE: Also, be sure to read the comments for Billmon's post - there are a few additional choice quotes in there as well.
Also, be sure to pass this link on - this needs to get spread as widely as possible, I think, as it carries a lot of weight all on its own. Billmon has indicated that he is going to try and go back in tonight and post the sources for each statement to help makes this list an even more valuable record.
Just to let you know, I am ok - I just needed to get my head out of the news for a bit - sometimes it just gets a bit overwhelming. I'll be writing again soon :)
Today is a day to honour America's Einherjar - the brave men and women who chose the lives of warriors and were called to their ultimate destiny as a result. They are rightly considered heroes.
This should also be a time for reflection - and for making sure that the Einherjar have not had their lives taken by wars that are fought for ill purpose, or are predicated on lies, half-truths, "bad" information or are otherwise decitful. In choosing the life of a warrior, these people are saying they consider the good of the nation to be of higher value than that of their own lives, and they then put their lives into the hands of our government leaders. Those leaders have an obligation to use those lives carefully - not just to "send a message" or prove how tough America is.
Yes, getting rid of Saddam Hussein is a good thing. He was an evil man and he treated his own people horribly. There is no question about this. Yet that isn't why we fought this latest war. As has been noted by many others as well, if getting rid of evil dictators were sufficient justification for war, there are many other who deserve the same treatment, in many countries around the world, yet we aren't going after them. And while we may have succeeded in getting rid of Saddam, as Senator Robert Byrd noted, we have hardly brought the Iraqi's anything resembling "liberation":
What makes me cringe even more is the continued claim that we are "liberators." The facts don't seem to support the label we have so euphemistically attached to ourselves. True, we have unseated a brutal, despicable despot, but "liberation" implies the follow-up of freedom, self-determination and a better life for the common people. In fact, if the situation in Iraq is the result of liberation, we may have set the cause of freedom back 200 years. Despite our high-blown claims of a better life for the Iraqi people, water is scarce and often foul, electricity is a sometime thing, food is in short supply, hospitals are stacked with the wounded and maimed, historic treasures of the region and of the Iraqi people have been looted, and nuclear material may have been disseminated to heaven knows where, while US troops, on orders, looked on and guarded the oil supply. Meanwhile, lucrative contracts to rebuild Iraq's infrastructure and refurbish its oil industry are awarded to Administration cronies, without benefit of competitive bidding, and the United States steadfastly resists offers of UN assistance to participate. Is there any wonder that the real motives of the US government are the subject of worldwide speculation and mistrust?No, the war in Iraq was fought because we were told Saddam was more than just an evil dictator who treated his own people horribly. We were told he was an immediate threat to the US - that he had thousands of gallons of biological and chemical weapons and was pursuing nuclear weapons as well. It was because of these weapons - and the liklihood Saddam would give them to al-Qeada - that was the justification for killing not only hundreds, if not thousands of Iraqi citizens, but which also took the lives of our soldiers - adding them to the ranks of America's Einherjar.
Many in America seem to think that it's no big deal if we never find these weapons or any evidence of their existance. They accuse those who opposed the war - and who still feel the war was wrong - of not being "patriotic" or of not supporting our soldiers. Yet it is their own attitude that dishonours the memory of our Einherjar, by trying to cover up the fact that they died in a war that - when judged by the reasons offered to us prior to the start of the war - has not been shown to have been justified. The weapons that made Saddam such an immediate threat have not yet been found, and unless they are, the lives of those soldiers were sacrified in vain.
What's worse, the Pentagon is now talking about possible "regime change" in Iran, and the same people who told us that there was no question that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction are now telling us "[T]here's no question but that there have been and are today senior al-Qaida leaders in Iran, and they are busy."
The Pentagon has proposed a policy of regime change in Iran, after reports that al-Qaida leaders are coordinating terrorist attacks from Iran.We cannot allow this administration to make more Einherjar without first demanding unquestionable proof that, if al-Qeada are active in Iran, it is with the knowledge and the support of the Iranian government. If our leaders start to make claims about Iran having Saddam's WMD's (which they earlier suggested about Syria), we need to demand evidence that those weapons do exist and that they are, indeed, in Iran - again with the government's knowledge and support. After the debacle in Iraq, we cannot simply take their word for it.But the plan is opposed by the US state department and the British government, officials in Washington said yesterday.
The Pentagon plan would involve overt means, such as anti-government broadcasts transmitted to Iran, and covert means, possibly including support for the Iraq-based armed opposition movement Mojahedin Khalq (MEK), even though it is designated a terrorist group by the state department.
The state department and Britain have objected to the plan, saying that it would backfire, undermining the moderates around President Mohamed Khatami.
On this Memorial Day, let us honour the men and women who are willing to make that great sacrifice for this country by holding our leaders to a higher standard of justification before supporting futher wars (or other military action - regardless of how they choose to term it), and make sure that the war is truly needed, sufficiently warranted, and will not result in a worse life for the people who live in whatever country we target next. We owe them at least that much.
Gay Teen Killer Film Wins Cannes(Cannes, France) Gay filmmaker Gus Van Sant won the coveted Palme D'Or award Sunday at the Cannes Film Festival for Elephant, a movie about two gay students who go on a shooting rampage at their high school.
The film has chilling similarities to the Columbine massacre. The real Columbine killers were rumored to be lovers but neither the police nor the killers themselves have commented on the speculation.
Christopher Key has written a wonderful piece on what we, the citizens of the United States, should be demaning in our next leader. I got a bit teary-eyed reading it, because his vision is so clear and so dead on.
Someone is finally taking notice of - and asking questions about - the difference between the Bush administrations claims of WMD in Iraq prior to the start of the war, and the lack of any evidence of such WMD now that Saddam Hussein is out of power. The House Intelligence Committee has asked CIA director George Tenet "'"to re-evaluate U.S. intelligence' used by the Bush administration before the war to describe Iraq's weapons programs and its links to terrorist organizations such as al-Qaida." In addition, the CIA is also comparing the information they had, and passed along, pre-war, to what is currently being found in Iraq and learned from former Iraqi officials.
The CIA review, coupled with the letter sent to Tenet by the House intelligence panel, follows criticism that the Defense Department, particularly a new Pentagon intelligence office, and other parts of the Bush administration manipulated intelligence to make the case for war in Iraq. Some members of Congress and intelligence officials are questioning the accuracy of the intelligence describing Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction and connections to al-Qaida.One official who has read a draft of the CIA study said, "There is no question there was a lot of pressure on analysts to support preconceived judgments." But, he added, "the analysts' record is not bad when you consider you have strong policymakers pushing analysts for information that supports their specific views."
Neither study is intended to show how accurately the administration portrayed the evidence they got, which makes it sound like the CIA may well be being set up to be the fall guy so that the Bush administration can claim they were working in good faith on bad intelligence, and thus can't be blamed for having misled everyone in trying to justify the war.Still, it's a good thing that there's enough concern, especially among the Republican-dominated House, that they're even considering looking into the matter. Hopefully, this time we'll be allowed to know what some of the answers are, unlike the largely-classified report on the Congressional investigation into 9/11.
Lawmakers in Washington state have decided to ban the sale of some violent video games to minors. Note that it is only some and not all violent video games. Apparently some kinds of violence are ok, while others are not.
Actually, they've decided that only one kind of violence is inappropriate for minors - violence against law enforcement officers. So that's what they've now banned kids under 17 from buying. Video games depecting graphic violence against anyone else are still ok for minors to have.
Now, I'm not a fan of violent video games. In fact, I rather loathe them. My husband, on the other hand, thinks they're just dandy. He also loves really graphic horror movies, so it kind of fits as part of a theme, there, but he's also someone who gets a bit woozy at the sight of real blood, and seems pretty clear on the difference between fantasy violence and real violence, so I'm not terribly worried about him. All the same, though, I'd rather we not support companies that market extremely violent video games, so we've had more than a few intense conversations about the concept. Luckily, he likes to check out games by playing a demo first, and, so far, has found that after a bit, the "worst of the worst" are generally no fun to play, so the probem is averted.
Just because I know my husband can play violent video games without becoming a serial killer, though, doesn't mean I don't think they're not harmful in some cases. For example, there are many who blame the game "Doom" for turning Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold into the Columbine killers. While I don't think it did them any good, and probably did contribute, if only in part, to their actions, I don't believe that, by itself, and in the absence of other serious problems, it would have "made" them killers.
So, what is society to do? In the absence of any scientific proof that video games "make" kids violent, I don't think that there's much that can - or should - be done on a regulatory level. While I may be opposed to the games, I don't think the answer is banning them, or legally banning the sale to minors. This isn't an issue that that state should be involved in. It's a matter for parents, in particular, and for marketplace, in general, to regulate, though deciding what they will or won't purchase for their kids or for themselves.
In the case of Washington state's decision, I find it to be rather hypocritical. Their argument is that for kids to play games showing violence against law enforcement officers is harmful - yet they don't have the same concern about kids playing games that have them being violent against anyone else. I suppose it would be possible to make the argument that playing games showing violence against law enforcement personnel can lead to kids having less respect for them, but that same argument should apply to people in general - and I'm not aware of any rash of kids going after cops suddenly to indicate that there's a new problem developing.
Personally, I feel that games should be handled the same way that movies and music are: informative ratings that help parent judge the content of the game (which is already being done), and voluntary compliance by stores with the ratings system - meaning that stores would choose not to sell games rated "Mature" or "Adults Only" to kids. If stores fail to comply, then the community can work to bring them into compliance through economic pressure - also known as boycotts. They're a perfectly viable tool to use in a capitalistic society, and are the best way for the marketplace to let companies know what they will and won't support.
For the last 8 years, my husband has worked for a subsidiary of a large multi-national conglomerate (whom everyone has heard of). The division he's been in is losing one of their biggest clients - the one he's been working with. Initially, it looked like when that office closed down, it would be pretty easy for him to get a job working with one of their other clients. Today, however, he learned that none of the other divisions has reached anywhere near their growth expectations because of the complete wreck President Bush has made of our economy, so the company won't be adding any new positions to those clients' teams.
The client teams aren't small, either - there will be a fairly good number of people being laid off with this office's closing, and if they want to keep jobs within the company, it'll have to be the result of individual turnover - other current employees in these other departments quitting and needing to be replaced. There will be a lot of competition.
A few years back, the company faced this same problem with the first client he worked with - and a new client came along at the last minute which saved his job. Unfortuantely, because of the lousy economy, that doesn't appear to be a reasonable hope this time around.
So, in two months, my husband will be out of work. He'll get modest severence pay, of course, and my disability checks will keep on coming, but even if he finds a new job right away, it's unlikely it will pay quite as well, and, of course, benefits won't kick in right away. That means we'll either have to do without health insurance until he gets a new job and their benefits kick in - which can be hard to do under the best circumstances, and those aren't what we have here; or we'll have to pay for continuing coverage under his old plan - which we can barely afford to do.
Right now, I'm just feeling rather down in the dumps about the whole thing. The prospect of my husband having to find a new job in this economy is really scary. I hope things will go quickly, but who knows.
Rayne's Build-a-Meme project is really taking off. We now have a new home at http://www.freedom2004.us (though the blog there is still under construction, so there's not much to see yet) and brand-spanking-new, fully-functional FORUMS!
If you haven't yet checked out the Build-a-Meme project, be sure to do so, and stop by the forums if you decide you want to help out.
ABCnews.com is reporting that in 1998, there was a plan to try and capture Osama bin Laden, but due to concerns about the possiblity of civilian casualties, it was never approved.
Jack Cloonan, a former FBI agent who is now an ABCNEWS consultant, said that federal agents seeking bin Laden had developed a plan to have a plane fly in and attack a compound in Kandahar, Afghanistan, where the terror leader was believed to have been holed up back in 1998 - three years before the devastating attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.Conservatives are likely to have a field day with this, pointing out that, because we were too concerned about people on the ground around bin Laden, we ended up allowing 3,000 of our own people to be killed. It should be remembered, though, that this was not the only opportunity we might have had to capture bin Laden, and following the start of the Bush administration, much of the focus on investigating terrorism was reduced and the many warnings of an impending attack were ignored.But when the plan went up the chain of command for approval, it was killed by then-Attorney General Janet Reno.
"They came to the decision that this plan was probably too dangerous, that the loss of life on the ground would have been significant," Cloonan said. There was concern that people around the bin Laden compound would be killed."
In other words, it took both the Clinton administration and the Bush administration's inattention to concerns of terrorism to allow the WTC/Pentagon attacks to happen. Neither one is solely to blame, neither is entirely innocent. We had opportunities during both administrations to take steps to lessen the threat of terrorism, and both administrations had warnings about terrorist attacks that were not well-acted upon.
There has been an explosion in the mail room of the Yale Law School. AP and NBC are reporting that it is a bomb, but that no one has been hurt, though part of the floor may have collapsed. President Bush has been in that area today, giving a commencement address at the Coast Guard school.
These details are likely to change as news becomes clearer, so don't be surprised if they do, but this is what information is available right now.
UPDATE 4:37pm: Now they are reporting that this is a "suspicious act" rather than definately a bomb, and in a first floor classroom, not the mail room (told you the details would change *g*). I'll update as I learn more - I'm just keeping the entry open so I can enter new information as I hear it. Oh, and the former profiler, Clint van Zant, that MSNBC uses, has already begun mentioning that, in the wake of the anthrax letters last year, there "are always concerns" about biological or chemical aspects of an attack. (Nah, no wild speculating there....)
UPDATE 4:43pm: The New Haven NBC station, WVIT, is running a banner saying that police have confirmed that this is a bomb.
UPDATE 4:50pm: CNN reports that, at this point, it is best to assume that Bush's being in the area (New London) on the same day that Yale was bombed is just a coincidence. They also say it's too soon to presume that it is related in any way to the raising of the threat level. On a side note, they are also reporting that tomorrow, the US Embassy in Oslo, Norway will be closed as a result of a threat made on a tape that the al-Jezeera news channel broadcast.
UPDATE 5:05pm: Links! MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, CBC, and the Google News page with links to many more stories. I probably won't post more on this for a while now - we've gotten the intial reports and are now going to be heading into the "mass confusion" phase of the story, where there will be equal parts speculation and actual reporting, so I'm going to wait for more facts to shake out before posting more.
The Texas Department of Public Safety has decided to make any investigation into the search for the Democrat house members who disappeared for a while last week harder by destroying all records created by or involved in the search.
A one-sentence order sent by e-mail on the morning of May 14 was apparently carried out, a DPS spokesman said Tuesday. The revelation comes as federal authorities are investigating how a division of the federal Homeland Security Department was dragged into the hunt for the missing Democrats - at the request of the state police agency.At the moment, it's unclear if the destruction of these records is a crime or not, but either way, it certainly lends credence to the idea that one or more aspects of the search needed to be investigated.Addressed to "Captains," the order said: "Any notes, correspondence, photos, etc. that were obtained pursuant to the absconded House of Representative members shall be destroyed immediately. No copies are to be kept. Any questions please contact me."
It was signed by the commander of the DPS Special Crimes Service, L.C. "Tony" Marshall.
House Speaker Tom Craddick, a Republican, recently said the investigating committee could look at the issue if it wanted to. It was Craddick who originally ordered the DPS to find the Democrats and return them to the state Capitol so that the House could achieve the quorum necessary to bring up a congressional redistricting bill. The boycott successfully killed that bill and others.One aspect of the search that has been a target for an investigation is the involvement, at the request of a DPS officer, of the Homeland Security Department's Air and Marine Interdiction Coordination Center. Typically, the Interdiction center investigates drug planes and planes that may be related to terrorist activities. The call they received from the DPS, however, indicated that they were concerned that a representative's plane may have gone down. The Interdiction Center made calls into the situation, but got no information.DPS spokesman Tom Vinger could not say Tuesday who, if anyone, gave Marshall the order to destroy records, but he said there was nothing inappropriate about it.
Even before the destruction was ordered, it was clear that there would be at least some kind of investigation into the DPS search for the Democrats. There's no way the DPS could not have known that. Their deliberate destruction of the documents in such a hurried fashion indicates that they must have known there would be something for an investigation to find. Given the climate of official secrecy that the Bush administration has created and perpetuates, it's not at all surprising that the DPS would decide it's ok to go ahead and destroy all the documents related to this search.
If this isn't evidence of why we need our own regime change in 2004, I'm not sure what is. The Bush administration wants to be able to research "mini-nukes" - low-yeild nuclear weaopns - and the Senate as agreed to repeal the ban that has been in effect for the last decade.
As to what, exactly would be developed, there appears to be conflicting information. The "mini-nukes" are one of three goals the Bush administration has for the research and development of nuclear weapons.
According to the Voice of America article, the mini-nukes are less than 5 kilotons in power, and would be designed as "robust nuclear earth penetrators", which, according to Donald Rumsfeld, would be used to destroy biological and chemical weapons stored underground. (Just the image of blowing up biological and chemical weapons is a bit of a nightmare to me - throwing in the radiation of a nuclear bomb [even a "mini" one] is just a tad bit terrifying). A less-than-5-kiloton bomb would be roughly 1/3 the size of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
USA Today, however, quotes Rumsfeld as saying that we don't know, yet, what we would use them for.
On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could not identify any specific battlefield use for a low-yield nuclear weapon. "We don't know. That's why we want to study it," Rumsfeld said. "It is a study. It is nothing more and nothing less.This article, however, mentions that the "robust nuclear earth penetrators" are another goal of the Bush administration when it comes to nuclear weapons, and that these would be "bunker buster"-type bombs that would have a yeild of roughly six times the Hiroshima bomb."And it is not pursuing. And it is not developing. It is not building. It is not manufacturing. And it's not deploying. And it is not using."
The Independent notes that at least one group thinks that, to be effective, a nuclear bunker-buster would have to be significantly more powerful than even that:
The current US earth-penetrating weapon is the B61-Mod 11, with an estimated yield of 300 kilotons, which can slice through 10 feet of frozen tundra or hard rock. An enhanced small weapon might achieve a penetration depth of about 33 feet, says the Natural Resources Defence Council (NRDC) arms control group, but would still create lethal quantities of radioactive fallout above ground. To inflict serious damage on targets buried at 1,000 feet, a one megaton bomb would be needed, 70 times the Hiroshima bomb, according to the NRDC.Democrats expressed concern that if we do begin researching such weapons, we will eventually produce such weapons - and that other countries will follow our lead.
Democrats scorned the idea that the administration would put effort into research, with no intention to produce.As for the high-yeild "bunker-buster" bombs, Democrats said that such weapons should be unthinkable:"We are walking down the path of testing and fielding that I think we will all regret," said Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat.
Democrats argued that opening the door to smaller nuclear weapons will spur other countries to develop them. Russia has said it will study the low-yield weapons, Reed said.
"Bunker-busters? These are city destroyers, these are nation-destroyers," said Carl Levin of Michigan, top Senate Armed Services Committee Democrat.The concern that starting to research new nuclear weapons will start a new nuclear arms race is not an idle one. We know from past history that other countries can, and will, follow our lead. The irony, of course, is that we just attacked Iraq in large part on the spectre of the idea that they might have nukes (among other things that we still can't find), and are currently trying to determine how to curb North Korea's production of nuclear weapons, while at the same time, we're saying we want to develop more! There's nothing like a good dose of hypocracy to help smooth foreign relations along. How on earth can we go to the North Koreans and say "you have to give up your nukes" while trying to figure out how to make new and better ones ourselves?
If the US truly wants to see an end to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, we have to be willing to not proliferate any ourselves. It's a pretty simply concept, really. It's bad enough that we want to disarm everyone else while still holding on to our own stash, but to try and disarm everyone else while actively researcing more of our own is just ridiculous - and exactly what I've come to expect from the Bush administration.
[UPDATE: I intended to mention, but forgot, that, while the Senate version of the bill would repeal the ban on researching mini-nukes, Bush would still have to get permission from Congress to actually make any - not that that's terribly hard for him to do, as the Iraqi war resolution showed.]
Be sure to stop by Rayne Today's Build-A-Meme Project, which is working to come up with ideas for Democrats and Democratic candidates to use to help ensure a victory for 2004. It's only been going a few days, but there's already been quite a bit of creativity flying and building excitement about the prospects of the project. Good stuff, Maynard! :)
Just two weeks after Cofer Black (the State Department head of counter-terrorism) made his now-infamous assertion that we've got al-Qaeda "on the run", and that the lack of any al-Qaeda attacks during the Iraq war was proof of how effective the war on terror has been, we're back at orange alert status, due to an increased risk of terror attacks. In addition, the FBI is warning that al-Qaeda is "regenerating" and has been training new operatives in the Republic of Georgia.
The ABCnews.com article also notes notes:
In Riyadh, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, told reporters late Monday that Saudi intelligence had reported a "high level of chatter regionally and in other international spots" about possible attacks in Saudi Arabia or America.The Department of Homeland Security has also issued a bulletin, warning that people should be aware of the following activities:"My gut feeling tells me something big is going to happen here or in America," said Prince Bandar.
MSNBC news is also reporting that the officials are concerned that the attacks last week may have been a diversionary tactic to try and avert attention from a potential attack here in the US:
OFFICIALS SAID the FBI issued an alert last week to state and local law enforcement agencies across the country that Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network, which was blamed for two recent deadly suicide bomb attacks in Saudi Arabia and Morocco, could mount new attacks in the United States.I must admit, I'm glad that no one seems to be trying to hide the current risk in order to avoid embarassment over the confident "we're winning the war on terror" messages that the administration had been promoting recently. Still, I find it disheartening that such pronouncements were being made by one of the country's top counter-terrorism officials, when the threat from al-Qaeda has never truly lessened. That it took more attacks for the administration to figure out that there is still a significant reason for concern tells me that our intelligence on the matter isn't a whole lot better than it was pre-9/11 - and that's something that should be rather worrisome, I'd think.Senior officials told NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell that some intelligence analysts believed the attack May 12 in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, was intended to distract U.S. authorities from paying attention to imminent threats inside the United States. The Saudi bombings killed 25 people, including eight Americans, as well as none of the bombers.
The officials said al-Qaida operatives left Saudi Arabia before the Riyadh attacks and were at large, which they described as a typical al-Qaida method of operation. They said a particularly active cell had been uncovered in Kenya.
Honestly, I'm not sure which part of this story bothers me more - that US troops have apparently vandalized the ancient ruins of the city of Ur or that the Pentagon is building a "potentially permanent" base near there.
They claim that US forces have spray-painted the remains with graffiti and stolen kiln-baked bricks made millennia ago. As a result, the US military has put the archaeological treasure, which dates back 6,000 years, off-limits to its own troops. Any violations will be punishable in military courts.Obviously, we've not consulted with the Iraqi people about how they might feel about a "potentially permanent" base in their country - we're barely consulting with them on what kind of a government they want. It seems to me that setting up a government should be more of a priority than building a base for the Pentagon, and the idea that our own soldiers have been vandalizing - well, honestly, anything - but such an ancient and important site as the city of Ur is completely unacceptable.[...]
Ur is believed by many to be the birthplace of the prophet Abraham. It was the religious seat of the civilisation of Sumer at the dawn of the line of dynasties which ruled Mesopotamia starting about 4000 BC. Long before the rise of the Egyptian, Greek or Roman empires, it was here that the wheel was invented and the first mathematical system developed. Here, the first poetry was written, notably the epic Gilganesh, a classic of ancient literature.
The most prominent monument is the best preserved ziggurat - stepped pyramid - in the Arab world, initially built by the Sumerians around 4000 BC and restored by Nebuchadnezzar II in the sixth century BC.
The Pentagon has elected to build its massive and potentially permanent base right alongside the site, so that the view from the peak of the ziggurat - more or less unchanged for 6,000 years - will be radically altered.
There are many in the "normal" media and the blogosphere who are claiming that it doesn't really matter if we find weapons of mass destruction or not - usually followed by an explaination that the reason it doesn't matter is that even if there aren't any WMDs, we did Iraq - and the world in general - a favour by getting rid of Saddam Hussein. While I agree that getting rid of Saddam Hussein was a very good thing to have happen, I don't think it's an acceptable substitute for knowing whether our government either lied or was working from stunningly inaccurate information.
The case for the war against Iraq was made based on the government's claim that Iraq had WMD. We presented this case to the world, and, by and large, they didn't buy it. We got up in front of the world, making grand pronouncements, acting like a bully and decrying those who wouldn't stand with us, all on the strength of our claim that Iraq had WMD. If none turn up, it's going to matter. Maybe not to the US media, maybe not to the pro-war crowd, maybe not even to Bus himself. But it's going to matter to the rest of the world - to the governments we may need to call on sometime when we face a true crisis, and have to ask for their help. They're going to remember that we lied - or were completely bamboozled by bad intelligence - about WMD in Iraq, and they're going to wonder about any other claims we make whose veracity are in doubt. They're going to wonder if we're telling the truth, or making it up to try and get them to go along with us this time.
As Molly Ivins put it:
Look, if there are no WMDs in Iraq, it means either our government lied us to us in order to get us into an unnecessary war, or the government itself was disastrously misinformed by an incompetent intelligence apparatus. In either case, it's a terribly serious situation.Why do you think people were so angry at Lyndon Johnson over the Gulf of Tonkin? At Richard Nixon over the "secret war" in Cambodia? Even at Bill Clinton over the less-cosmic matter of whether he had sex with "that woman." [...]
Nonexistent WMDs also present us with a huge international credibility problem, particularly since the Bush administration now feels entitled to "punish" those countries that did not join the "coalition of willing," as we so preciously called those who caved in to our threats to cut off foreign aid.
Come on, think about this. The Bush administration apparently feels entitled to take actions punishing close old friends, including Mexico and Canada -- not to mention the Europeans -- for not siding with us in a war we may have lied about? This is not going to sit well with the rest of the world.
There's handly little calculator that can help you figure out how much you'd save under the Republican plan to eliminate taxes on your capital gains. Of course, if you're like me and don't have any capital gains, well, you already know how much your taxes will go down under this plan. Yep, zilch. Ah well, maybe next time we'll be rich enough for the government to think we maybe need a few extra bucks in our pockets too, eh?
Ari Fleischer to ResignPresident Bush's spokesman Ari Fleischer said on Monday he will resign later this summer.
"I informed President Bush last week that after 21 years of doing nothing but government and politics ... that I have decided that my time has come to leave the White House. And I will leave later this summer, most likely in July," Fleischer said.
I'm trying out a bit of a new colour scheme today - but it's hard for me to tell if I like it or not since I'm so used to looking at it the other way. If you have a moment, please let me know what you think about it, and any suggestions you might have.
Once I get the colour settled, I'll be adjusting the logo banner to fit, so I know right now, it's not looking as good as it could, but it will be better :)
Thanks!!
Kriselda
I mentioned that I thought the story about some of the guns found in an al-Qaeda safehouse being tracked back to the Saudi national guard would be down played, but I wasn't quite expecting to see it this soon.
Whenever I open my browser, I've got Google News set as my home page, so I can see if anything new is going on. I just opened my browser after being off line for a few hours, and the story is nowhere on their main page. Granted, stories do get rotated through there, and it may show up again later, but usually, really big stories stay on the front page for a day or two - if not in the very top section, then in one of the lower sections on that first page. It isn't even listed in the "In The News" section that gives 2 or 3 word "headers" with links to stories on those subjects.
Hopefully, this is just a momentary anomoly, but I don't have a lot of confidence in that. This is exactly the kind of story that the Bush administration would want to keep quiet, simply because it could be rather embarassing to him. I mean, we just fought a war and toppled a government that Bush claimed had WMD, which it might give to al-Qaeda, and had other ties to al-Qaeda as well. Of course, so far, nothing reliable has turned up to give credence to either of these claims (and yes, I am aware that there were papers "found" by a reporter, in a building the US had been guarding, indicating a link, but I don't consider that to be "reliable"), yet here we have one of our allies, a country that has produced many terrorists - including most of the terrorists who took part in the 9/11 bombings - that we find out has military officers selling weapons to al-Qaeda - and we're not doing much, if anything, about it.
I can't even begin to imagine what would have happened if, during the lead-up to the war, word had gotten out that officers from Saddam's Republican Guards had sold guns to al-Qaeda. At the very least, it would have been proclaimed as evidence that Iraq was cooperating al-Qaeda and used as further justification for attacking them. I have no doubt that the leaders of Saudi Arabia will claim that they "didn't know" what these officers were doing, yet there's also evidence that, for quite some time, weapon inventories had indicated that weapons were missing, and they hadn't taken steps to find out what was happening or where the weapons were going. Even if the government officials didn't know specifically where the weapons were going, they had to know it was a possiblity that terrorist groups would want to buy them - and probably were.
As I said in my earlier post, I'm not advocating attacking Saudi Arabia or overthrowing their government - that would be an extremely serious over-reaction. I do think, however, that we need to take a very close look at them, and why we consider them allies.
Guns found at an al-Qaeda safehouse have been traced to the Saudi national guard, which apparently has had previous problems with illegal gun sales.
Problems in the Saudi Arabian National Guard are not new, according to the officials, and past audits of its armories have revealed that weapons were missing. But there was no crackdown on the illicit trade largely because of bureaucratic inertia, the officials said.Whether these gun sales are motivated by money or ideology, we still have the armed forces of one of our putative allies providing weapons to a known terrorist organization. Given that the Bush administration seems to be rather focused on not upsetting the Saudis, it will be interesting to see what - if any - response there is to this news. My guess is that it will likely be downplayed, just as the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers in the 9/11 attacks were Saudi has also been played down."This will focus their attention," a U.S. official said.
A small number of officers in the national guard have been involved in illicit gun sales for years, according to the officials, and have sold weapons, including automatic rifles, to anyone willing to pay prices well above their market value. The officials emphasized that the motivation of the officers selling the weapons was money, not ideology, and does not indicate any al Qaeda penetration of a force that is supposed to protect the government.
I'm not suggesting that we should go attack Saudi Arabia - I don't feel that would be warranted at this point. I would, however, like to see us take some kind of steps to pressure the Saudi government into making reforms that can help correct the problems that exist there which lead to so many Saudi citizens deciding to become terrorists, along with prodding the bureaucracy to work on preventing things such as the sale of guns by the national guard to al-Qaeda. I don't think that sanctions, which often end up hurting the civilians while having little effect on the government, are necessarily the way, either, but there should be some method of bringing international pressure to bear on the government in an effort to bring about change.
The recent bombings may have some effect in that direction. Currently, the Saudi government has - at least temproarily - pulled the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (aka the "religous police") off the streets, and are saying that they will be trying to find ways to allow women more freedom, "within the framework of Islamic teaching".
Joel asked a very good question in response to my earlier post, "Playing Political Games":
I would like to see more discussion of actual policy. The conservatives are right: our disgust of George Bush does dominate our political talk these days.This is a partial response - basically a quick list off the top of my head of the kinds of things I'd expect to see if a Democrat were to be elected. I'm working from a "generic" Democrat and not any particular candidate at this point, and this isn't a complete list by any means. But it's a start.And this progressive asks "So, if the Democrats come into power, what's going to change?" No dumb monkey stares. I've been getting enough of that from the conservatives and you folks claim to be better.
I'd also like to hear what other readers think they might see from a Democrat President. Please take a minute and post your own lists - or, as Rayne has done, a link to a post in your own blog on this topic. I think Joel's question is a good one, and am curious what others think as well.
Actual headline at MSNBC: Politicians lie, new study shows
The article says that this study concludes that not only to politicians lie, but that lying is an "important part of democracy" and "[p]oliticians need to be more honest about lying"
Newey said lying by politicians can occasionally be entirely justified, such as when national security is at risk, and the public even has a “right to be lied to” in cases where they do not expect to be told the whole truth, such as during a war.If the government would realize that the voters have a right to know certain things - maybe not the details of their personal lives, but certainly actions that are relevant to the performance of their jobs or may have an impact on their ability to uphold their duties and obligations to the citizens - maybe we wouldn't have to ask so many questions, no?But the main cause of lying is increased probing by the public into areas that the government would rather not discuss candidly. If voters only asked fewer questions, politicians would tell them fewer lies.
I do understand that, in the interest of national security, there are times when the government must not necessarily tell us the absolute truth. However, I believe those times are few and far between, and do not include matters that may be embarassing to the government, but which do not actually threaten our safety or security in any way, or which may show that the government is corrupt - something I think citizens have an absolute right to be able to find out.
Aside from those rare circumstances where being totally forthright could cause serious problems (such as revealing the whereabouts of troops or troop movements, the timing of an attack or other such military information that rely upon surprise or secrecy for the protection of the troops and effective action), I feel that government should be open and relatively transparent. It is supposed to be government "of the people, by the people and for the people" which means the people are a rather important part of the equation and need to know what's going on in order to make wise choices about who we will elect to govern us.
I've been following the comments over at CalPundit's post that I linked to earlier (and will link to again right here). As part of an interesting comment, one of his readers made the following statement:
Lastly, Kevin, everyone should hold Bush's feet to the fire on his promises and be prepared to criticize his most egregious shortcomings. That said, I fail to see how it constitutes a "Bush lie" that we've yet to uncover WMD thus far. Without a doubt, Saddam had a program to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and he continued to fund this program throughout the sanctions period. Bush cannot be called a liar because Iraq failed to produce results.
I posted the following as my reply to him, and decided to post it here as well, since it's a bit long and has a number of references:
Over at Uggabugga, there is a table showing 14 times in October and November, while campaigning to start the war, that Bush said, flat out, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. He did NOT say that Saddam was attempting to acquire WMD, he said "He's got them". For example, on November 3rd, while speaking in Illinois, he said "I see the world the way it is. Saddam Hussein is a threat to America. He's a threat to our friends. He's a man who said he wouldn't have weapons of mass destruction, yet he has them," according to the official White House transcript of his speech there.In addition, during his speech telling Saddam he had 48 hours left, he said "Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
Since the main part of the fighting ended, the administration has said that it's possible Saddam destroyed the weapons prior to the start of the war, yet less than 48 hours before we started dropping bombs (we started the war early, after all, when the military thought they had a tip on where Saddam might be) Bush was saying that there was no doubt that Saddam "continued to possess" WMDs.
So, yeah, I'd say if no WMD turn up, we can call Bush a liar on that point, or should we prepare for a debate on what the meaning of "has" is?
Also, don't forget that administration officials have admitted that they only emphasized the WMD issue as a way of gaining legal justification for the war, but that it wasn't the true reason Bush wanted this war so badly. The real reason, they noted, was that Bush believed that there needed to be a "new start" in the Middle East following the 9/11 attacks, and that we had to show were weren't afraid to fight terrorism in the Middle East. Flexing muscle, as it were. So even administration officials are acknowledging that the WMD claims were more of a ploy than anything - and that counts as a lie in my book as well.
One thing that doesn't help matters much, in my opinion, is that from the way the "search" for WMD following the toppling of Saddam has been handled, it makes it appear that the administration wasn't that worried about getting to or finding the alleged WMD quickly - which I would think they would be, if they had truly believed that the WMD were there and were as much of a danger (especially if they fell into the wrong hands) as they had implied.
Instead, they refused help from the UN Inspectors who have training and experience in finding hidden weapons and who, presumably, would be better able to locate weapons now that neither Saddam nor any of his associates would be there to run interference. They also refued help from the IAEA in handling the known sites where nuclear materials (ostensibly for power generation) were being handled. The military teams that were to perform the weapons searches weren't immediately dispatched to the sites we considered to be the most likely to house WMDs, and there are now questions about whether any materials had actually been there, and if so, where they are now. There are also 7 nuclear sites that we know have been looted, some of which may have had radiation source material, as well as potential documents on how to use the materials to create nuclear or radiological weapons and equipment. These are sites that the IAEA had sealed prior to the start of the war, which are now open and emptied, largely because no one put guards around it or sent inspectors there in a timely manner, both of which they should have been prepared to do if they believed that there was a genuine threat.
These are clearly not the actions of an administration that is concerned about massive amounts of WMD being in the country and doing whatever they must to keep them from winding up in the hands of our enemies. These are the actions of an administration that is either totally incompetent in handling the aftermath of a war they wanted and created (on questionable grounds) or they're the actions of an administration that knows there are no WMD to be had and therefore aren't worried about it.
Maybe it's just that I've been on a bit of a tear about the Bush administration's unfamiliarity with the truth and inability to play things straight, but it seems that several other of the more liberal-oriented bloggers are on the same track this weekend. CalPundit's entry makes an excellent point:
Conservatives wonder why we liberals always seem to let our disgust with George Bush overshadow discussions of actual policy. This is why: because you can't trust a word he says. He's not trying to solve problems in a big and complex country, he's just playing political games.
Yesterday I posted about the problem this administration seems to have with the truth (see "Image, Truth and the Bush administration"). Uggabugga has also been looking at the Bush administration's tendency to be factually challenged, specifically in this case, in regards to the Iraqi situation, and has put together one of their excellent charts, showcasing several of their outright frauds, tendency to peddle dubious information, obfuscation via emphasis and other suspect stories, along with references to further information on the matter - which, in many cases, debunk the initial claims. Since I first spotted the chart yesterday, he's updated it further, so you may want to check it out periodically.
Several of the entries concern information spread about France and other countries that opposed our involvement in the war with Iraq, and their supposed activities in selling the Iraqis military equipment or otherwise helping Saddam's regime. Others deal with Bush's claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction; documents claiming Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger (forgery), British MP George Galloway was taking bribes from Iraq (forgery) and shownig a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda (veracity not known yet, but found under similar circumstances to the Galloway forgeries); the rescue of Pvt. Jessica Lynch; and much of the "proof" offered during Colin Powell's speech to the UN.
Joe Crankshaw has a very good editorial about Afghanistan, Iraq and al-Qaeda, and how the US has been handling those situations.
I am proud to be an American, but I am dismayed surveying a landscape filled with destruction, chaos and strife, when our leaders said they were bringing order, justice and democracy, as well as protecting us. All they seem to have done is attack nations, when our real enemy, al-Qaida and other terrorists, have no nation, no home, and very little for us to attack.
This has been a wild month so far for the War on Terrorism™. It started May 1st with the release of a State Department report saying that new attacks from al-Qaeda were likely, and "there is danger the network of Osama bin Laden and its Taliban backers will re-emerge in Afghanistan", followed 5 days later by the head of the State Department's counter-terrorism office bragging about how "effective" the war on terror had been, saying "This was the big game for them — you put up or shut up and they have failed. It proves that the global war on terrorism has been effective, focused and has got these guys on the run." (Hmmm... do the State Department and their counter-terrorism office talk to each other much?)
Since then there have been two attacks that have all the hallmarks of al-Qaeda operations - one in Saudi Arabia and one in Morocco - that appear to be clearly connected to al-Qaeda killing at least at least 50 between them. Yet in his weekly radio address today, President Bush was back to talking about the US' "success" in the War on Terror™.
"With the liberation of Iraq and Afghanistan, we have removed allies of al-Qaeda, cut off sources of terrorist funding, and made certain that no terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from Saddam Hussein's regime," Bush said.[As an aside, this is the 2nd time Bush has mentioned that we've made sure that terrorists won't get weapons of mass destruction from Saddam. While that particular phrasing may be true - since Saddam is out of power, he can't give anyone anything - it is a perfect example of this administrations aversion to truth, since, if Iraq actually had the WMD Bush claimed it did, we have no clue where they now are, who has them, who is giving them to whom or anything else for that matter. So, sure, Saddam can't give them away, but that doesn't mean that if the Iraqi WMD actually exist, terrorists won't end up with them somehow.]"These two battles were important victories in the larger war on terror. Yet the terrorist attacks this week in Saudi Arabia, which killed innocent civilians from more than half a dozen countries, including our own, provide a stark reminder that the war on terror continues," he said.
Following the attacks in Saudi Arabia, The Star, a South African paper, published a story with the rather telling title 'US cleaning egg from its face after underrating al-Qaeda':
[...] On more or less the same day that Black was telling The Washington Post of his belief that al-Qaeda was on the run, a self-proclaimed spokesperson for the organisation set up by Osama bin Laden was warning the London-based Arabic weekly al-Majalla magazine that, far from being destroyed, it had actually undergone a thorough restructuring and was planning further spectacular attacks against US targets.To the best of our knowledge, part of what allowed 9/11 to happen was a tendency to underestimate what al-Qaeda or other terrorist organizations might be willing or capable of doing. Why else would so much of the intelligence and other warnings the CIA and FBI received have been ignored? Obviously, in the wake of the Iraqi war, we underestimated them again, with officials declaring them to be "on the run" or otherwise weakened and less effective than they had been. Even the Saudis were claiming they were non-existant in their country. Yet twice in the last week, they've shown us otherwise, and their spokesman has announced that they've restructured in a way that they believe will be harder for us to detect (which, granted, could well be propaganda to try and make us doubt the information we're getting now - though, given our seeming inability to know what it means, may not be such a bad thing). And still Bush claims that the War on Terror™ has been successful so far.Thabet bin Qais, who said he was al-Qaeda's new spokesperson, claimed that the intelligence on which Black and others were so confidently relying was old and no longer reliable.
"It will take them a long time to understand the new form of al-Qaeda."
With a now chilling prediction that referred to a possible suicide attack, he added: "A strike against America is definitely coming. Martyrdom operations in the jihad will go on."
Peter Bergen, a CNN al-Qaeda analyst and author of Holy War Inc: Inside the Secret World of Osama bin Laden, said yesterday: "I think this action (in Saudi Arabia) speaks for itself. Prince Nayif, the (Saudi) minister of the interior, just last week said al-Qaeda was weak or perhaps nonexistent in Saudi Arabia. Well, this is their answer.
So why don't I feel any safer?
From Paul Krugman's column today:
Paths of GloryGo read the rest.The central dogma of American politics right now is that George W. Bush, whatever his other failings, has been an effective leader in the fight against terrorism. But the more you know about the state of the world, the less you believe that dogma. The Iraq war, in particular, did nothing to make America safer -- in fact, it did the terrorists a favor.
How is the war on terror going? You know about the Riyadh bombings. But something else happened this week: The International Institute for Strategic Studies, a respected British think tank with no discernible anti-Bush animus, declared that Al Qaeda is "more insidious and just as dangerous" as it was before Sept. 11. So much for claims that we had terrorists on the run.
[...]
I've written before about the Bush administration's amazing refusal to pay for even minimal measures to protect the nation against future attacks — measures that would secure ports, chemical plants, nuclear facilities and so on. (But the Department of Homeland Security isn't completely ineffectual: this week it helped Texas Republicans track down their Democratic colleagues, who had staged a walkout.)
The neglect of homeland security is mirrored by the Bush administration's failure to follow through on overseas efforts once the TV-friendly part of the operation has come to an end. The overthrow of the Taliban was a real victory — arguably our only important victory against terrorism. But as soon as Kabul fell, the administration lost interest. Now most of Afghanistan is under the control of warlords, the Karzai government is barely hanging on, and the Taliban are making a comeback.
[...]
Still, we defeated Saddam. Doesn't that make us safer? Well, no.
Saddam wasn't a threat to America — he had no important links to terrorism, and the main U.S. team searching for weapons of mass destruction has packed up and gone home. Meanwhile, true to form, the Bush team lost focus as soon as the TV coverage slackened off. The first result was an orgy of looting — including looting of nuclear waste dumps that, incredibly, we failed to secure. Dirty bombs, anyone? Now, according to an article in The New Republic, armed Iraqi factions are preparing for civil war.
That leaves us facing exactly the dilemma war skeptics feared. If we leave Iraq quickly it may well turn into a bigger, more dangerous version of Afghanistan. But if we stay for an extended period we risk becoming, as one commentator put it, "an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land" — just the recruiting tool Al Qaeda needs. Who said that? President George H. W. Bush, explaining his decision not to go on to Baghdad back in 1991.
According to Indianapolis' WISH-TV, when President Bush stopped in town to give a speech on just how his tax cuts were going to help the "ordinary" American, VIP's sitting behind him were asked to remove their ties so that they would look more "ordinary".
When it comes to Bush's public appearances, it seems very little is left to chance. The president has been criticized for the effort and expense that it took to create photo opportunities when he flew onto the USS Abraham Lincoln earlier this month. The same sort of image-making was a part of his Indianapolis speech.This site even offers a picture of Representative Brian Bosma in his coat, tie and pocket square prior to Bush's speech, and a second picture of Rep. Bosma when he went to greet President Bush, sans tie and pocket square.George W. Bush came to Indianapolis for the picture. And in that picture, the White House wanted ordinary people.
"These are V.I.P.'s right, ordinary people aren't up on stage behind the president of the United States when he's speaking but the trick is to make V.I.P.'s look like they're ordinary people," said Bill Bloomquist, political scientist.
That's why everyone sitting behind the president wearing a necktie was instructed to take it off.
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Bush fan Ann McDaniel was told not to flash her camera. Her companion, Wilma Hart, had this to say to the White House staffer: “I said, ‘Do we look like we just crawled out from under a rock someplace?’”You know, when President Clinton was still in office, much was made of his obsession with what kind of a legacy he would leave. I have to admit, I found his pre-occupation with that to be a bit amusing myself. But this administration is completely obsessed with the images they present.“When you see somebody who is in coat an tie, then not in coat and tie, then in coat and tie, it sort of reveals that this is about stagecraft rather than statecraft,” said Bloomquist.
The New York Times, today, also has an article on the stage-management behind Bush's appearances.
The White House efforts have been ambitious — and costly. For the prime-time television address that Mr. Bush delivered to the nation on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, the White House rented three barges of giant Musco lights, the kind used to illuminate sports stadiums and rock concerts, sent them across New York Harbor, tethered them in the water around the base of the Statue of Liberty and then blasted them upward to illuminate all 305 feet of America's symbol of freedom. It was the ultimate patriotic backdrop for Mr. Bush, who spoke from Ellis Island.As these articles shohw, every speech is carefully stage-managed, every appearance a photo-op. Even when he ostensibly is going to cheer on the troops, Bush's handlers make sure to get him into a "sexy" flight suit and even release a picture highlighting the Presidental package, reportedly making many women swoon (though for the love of the Gods, I can't figure out why!)For a speech that Mr. Bush delivered last summer at Mount Rushmore, the White House positioned the best platform for television crews off to one side, not head on as other White Houses have done, so that the cameras caught Mr. Bush in profile, his face perfectly aligned with the four presidents carved in stone.
And on Monday, for remarks the president made promoting his tax cut plan near Albuquerque, the White House unfurled a backdrop that proclaimed its message of the day, "Helping Small Business," over and over. The type was too small to be read by most in the audience, but just the right size for television viewers at home.
As has been noted many other times in this blog, this administration seems to have no idea what the "truth" is, or why its important. If the truth is inconvenient, they spin stories intended to mislead people into believing what fits their plans better - for example, their constant implications that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks. There was no proof for this contention, and in fact, President Bush himself admitted in January that no such proof exists, yet it was inconvenient for them to have to have this truth widely believed, so they just kept making vague assertions that Saddam was involved somehow, until people began to believe it.
Their other favourite tactic when truth is inconvenient is to simply hide hit from view. From President Bush's changing of the policy that guides when a President's papers are released, to Dick Cheney's refusal to release information on who he met with as part of his energy task force, to the Congressional Report on the 9/11 attacks, the administration works on the premise that the American people don't have a right to know anything they don't want us to.
In other situations, the truth may just not be prosaic enough. When that happens, we end up with stage-managed speeches, photo-ops and other "image building" events, where what is real and what is perceived have little to no relation to each other. In addition to the examples cited above, we were given a preview of this strategy with the "crowd" of "angry voters" who intimidated the Miami-Dade county election commission into halting their recount of votes during the 200 election. Shortly after the riot succeeded in stopping the recount, we learned that these were not Florida citizens who were staging a grass-roots protest, but rather Republican Congressional Staffers flown in by the Bush campaign to disrupt the recount process.
And, of course, when all else favours, the Bush administration will resort to distortion, prevarication, "hedging", misdirection and outright lies. There are a number of sites that have been keeping chronicles of Bush's lies, including BushLies.net and BushWatch.com - though keep in mind that these sites are highly partisan, and, while I've found them to be generally reliable, it's usually best to check things like this out for yourself. Sadly, there are far too many examples of this to pick out a few representative examples, but suffice it to say that, at this point, I simply don't believe anything the Bush administration says unless I can find other ways to confirm it.
As many columnists and bloggers have noted, it's ironic that, following the extreme outrage and breast-beating that occured every time President Clinton told a lie (and he certainly told his fair share), staged an event or otherwise tried to obfuscate the truth, that there is virtually no outcry at all when Bush does the same. While I would never want the Democrats, liberals, progressives and others who want to see Bush out of office sink to the level of pettiness and vindictiveness that we see so often from Republicans and conservatives, there needs to be a way to wake up the rest of the public and make them see just how shallow the image Bush presents is, and how little truth there is in anything he - or his administration - says or does.
Any suggestions?
From Dallas News.com, here is an exceprt from a statemnt by the Federal Bureau of Immigration and Customers Enforcement about how the Homeland Security department became involved in the search for the Texas Democrats.
It's important to note that the statement neither indicates the name of the officer that contacted the department, nor gives any idea of why he chose to do so or if he were instructed to by someone else. Those are questions that are still in need of answer.
While it is certainly possible that an over-zealous officer might have decided to use any tool he could think of to try and locate the Democrats, I have to think that it is more likely that he made the call after being told to do so by someone higher up in the chain, for the simple reason that calling in the Homeland Security department - which is intended to be used only for the prevention and investigation of terrorist attacks - isn't something that would be high on the list of things for an officer to do.
DallasNews.com | Dallas-Fort Worth | Politics: StateHere, from a statement by the Federal Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, is how its Air and Marine Interdiction Coordination Center got involved in the search for a plane carrying the Texas House Democrats:
The bureau says one of its officers at the center in Riverside, Calif., received "an urgent phone call from a concerned Texas Department of Public Safety officer" on Monday who stated: "We got a problem, and I hope you can help me out. We had a plane that was supposed to be going from Ardmore, Oklahoma, to Georgetown, Texas. It had state representatives in it, and we cannot find this plane."The bureau says the DPS officer "expressed concern that the plane had not arrived at its intended destination." The DPS officer provided the tail number of the aircraft to the center and asked for help. The bureau says "from all indications, this request from the Texas DPS was an urgent plea for assistance from a law enforcement agency."
"Believing the aircraft may have crashed or be lost," the center contacted the FAA and others but was unable to locate the plane.
I have not had a chance to read this yet, but wanted to let you know that the ACLU has released their report on the crackdown on dissent following the 9/11 attacks.
I snagged this from CalPundit - one of his readers sent it to him. It's just beautifully appropriate. :)
Haivng achieved their goal of stopping the Texas House from passing a controversial redistricting plan, the Democrat House members are now preparing to return from their self-imposed exile in Oklahoma.
Aside from issues raised by the design of the redistricting plan (which was pushed by US Representative Tom Delay, and would have served to add 4 more Republican seats from Texas to the US House of Representatives), the Democrats were also protesting the Republicans plan to focus on the redistricting rather than focusing on issues such as school finance and the state budget. They also noted that there was little reason to persue redistricting at this time, since it has last been done only 2 years ago, by a three-judge panel, following the last census - the time redistricting is traditionally done.
Even though the Democrats are returning, there is a new controversy arising out of their decision to leave the state. Apparently, in order to try and track down where the were located, Texas Governor Perry called in the services of the Homeland Security department - the new department created to deal with terrorism - to locate the plane of one of the missing Representatives.
In Washington, Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Texas, led 16 other Texas Democrats in an effort to get answers from Attorney General John Ashcroft, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge, and FBI Director Robert Mueller. They fired off a letter to the officials Wednesday and Doggett renewed the call in a floor speech Thursday.I had thought it was bad enough when Gov. Perry was trying to send Texas Rangers (the legandary law enforcement service, not the baseball players) into Oklahoma and Arkansas to look for and arrest the missing Democrats, but calling in the Homeland Security department? I'm sorry, but I don't think having a group of legislators taking a stand - even if in doing so they take off for another state - is a threat to the security of the US. If we're going to have a department that is dedicated to combating terrorism, then they need to be allowed to focus on terrorism, and not be available to the pet projects of governors or other politicos who decide their services might be convenient."Americans had thought this department was to look for terrorists," he said. "Perhaps those who attacked these courageous citizen-legislators would treat them as terrorists. This is how tyranny begins.
"That's why 16 members of this house request an official administration explanation. America is waiting. Who is hiding now?"
Thanks to reader Anne for letting me know about this, even though the news is sad. Ashleigh Moore, the 12-year old girl in Savannah who disappeared April 18th, was found, dead, by a fisherman on Wednesday, in a wooded area behind a hotel.
Savannah police have confirmed that the body found near the Savannah Marriott Riverfront Wednesday is that of missing 12-year-old Ashleigh Moore.Ashleigh's case has been reported on in several blogs, noting how much less attention the national press had given to her disappearance than they had to other missing girls - with the primary, noticable difference being that Ashleigh came from a lower-income black family, and the cases that tend to get the most attention usually come from middle- or upper-class white families.At a news conference at 1 p.m., Maj. Willie Lovett said Moore's family was informed this morning by two Savannah police investigators and a department chaplain.
"With deep regret, our investigative process did not work out as we expected," Lovett said
Although police will not identify any suspects, Lovett said they do have "a number" of them.
Though the police are not saying yet is the mother's boyfriend, who had previously been convinced of the molestation and statuatory rape of a different 12-year-old girl, is a suspect or not, he was the last person known to have seen her and is the one who reported her missing.
In case you're curious, there's a review up for The Matrix Reloaded at "reviews @ different strings".
This one just keeps getting weirder. First we hear that Microsoft is planning the "iLoo" - a portable toilet featuring an internet connection. Then yesterday, Microsoft said the whole thing was a joke, and they were sorry for any confusion. Now? Well, it seems that it wasn't a joke initially, but after the project became the, uh, butt of so many jokes, Microsoft's USA office cancelled it, and then tried to claim it was a joke. Here's the latest version of this bizarre tale.
Two weeks ago Microsoft's MSN division in the United Kingdom announced plans to equip a portable toilet with a computer, waterproof keyboard, wireless Internet connection, surround-sound speakers and plasma-screen display on the exterior.Anyone want to guess what tomorrow's version will be?The kiosk was to be used at music festivals this summer in England.
In years past the division equipped a park bench and a beach chair with wireless Internet access to encourage people to try MSN services.
Other companies provide digital advertising displays in urinals so the concept wasn't too far-fetched, but it still drew potty jokes such as the one about Microsoft's new Pee-C.
After a few weeks of wisecracks, Microsoft's spokesmen on Monday said the iLoo was a joke.
"I can confirm it was an April Fools' joke," Noury Bernard-Hasan, a director in the public-relations division, told the C-Net news Web site.
Yesterday the company revised its story. Gurry explained to reporters that it was real, and the U.K. group has leeway to do its own projects, but that executives in Redmond decided the iLoo was inappropriate.
"It didn't really map to our global branding objectives," Gurry said.
Tom Delay, whose redistricting plan was the catalyst for the walk-out by the Democratic congressmen in the Texas House of Representatives, has suggested that, if allowable, the FBI should be dispatched to find the congressmen and bring them back to Texas.
The latest trend in high schools seems to be suing over who gets to be valedictorian. In this case, it involves a student who was mathematically able to earn a higher weighted GPA because of differences in her course load required by her disability than any other student could possibly have earned. Her school decided to name two other Seniors who had "near-perfect" grades as co-valedictorians, and were sued for $2.7 million as a result.
Blair L. Hornstine, 18, who aspires to be a lawyer, asked a federal judge to prevent the school from declaring valedictorian anyone other than the student with the highest GPA.Something I find very ironic about this case is that the school claimed that it wanted to name the co-valedictorian because of "unfair advantages" the student had due to her disability. Several of the "advantages" she had, however, such as the elimination of physical ed classes and the ability to take some classes at home, were initially instituted in the nation's schools to help "level the playing field" for the disabled students - to take into account their inability to do some of the things other students did and to help ensure that they received both a proper education and a reasonable opportunity to compete, fairly, for such things as being valedictorian. Now, these very same measures - intended to help compensate for the "advantages" non-disabled students supposedly had, are being called "advantages" for a disabled student.Hornstine has the top GPA at Moorestown, her lawyer said in papers filed yesterday in U.S. District Court.
However, the Moorestown Schools superintendent, Paul Kadri, has concluded that other students should be eligible, too, given Hornstine's status as a disabled student, according to court filings.
Kadri said Hornstine, who suffers from an immune deficiency that has limited her class schedule, received an unfair advantage over students who took a regular load of classes at school. Hornstine, for example, was exempt from physical education class, which is weighted less in GPA calculations than regular classes.
The superintendent said two other seniors with near-perfect grades could not have earned high enough weighted grades to surpass Hornstine because they are "subject to the rigorous in-school grading standards employed by certain advanced placement teachers."
That said, I am disappointed that the courts ruled in her favour and awarded her the title of sole valedictorian. Given that the modifications in her schedule allowed her to earn a weighted grade-point-average that was higher than any other student in the class could possibly have done, I feel that the school's initial decision to share the valedictorian status was fair. I also feel that the girl's decision to sue - and request damages of $2.7 million - shows both a lack of maturity and a lack of judgement on her part.
She was accepted by a number of the top schools in the country and has chosen to accept Harvard and their offer of a scholarship - all made available to her prior to her being named either sole valedictorian or shared the honour with others. Obviously, then, her valedictorian status would have no impact on her college career, and it is doubtful that it would have much impact in the future, since by then, she would also have her college and graduate school achievements to validate her academic abilities. As it stands, I find it hard to see what damages her school's initial decision caused, aside from, perhaps, some wounded pride or self-righteous indignation, neither of which requires the use of our court system, nor the payment of cash, to remedy.
Note: None of the articles I located on this case indicated if the student was given any kind of a cash award, and, if she was, how much she received. The $2.7 amount mentioned is what she had sued for.
If anyone buys for a minute that the proposed sunset provisions on Bush's tax cut (which are being offered as a "compromise") will actually ever go into effect and cancel the cuts, they deserve to face great ridicule and embarassement for their gullibility.
Seriously, much of Bush's first big tax cut was justified (and made "affordable") by putting in sunset provisions that would rescind the taxes after a given number of years. Efforts have already been made and are underway to eliminate those sunset provisions and make the cuts permanent. Sunset provisions were built into the USA PATRIOT act, and efforts have been made (though, thankfully, they've since been withdrawn) to elimiate those sunset provisions as well.
Sunset provisions are, in essense, meaningless, especially if they're offered as a way to get a controversial or unpopular bill through. Those who vote for the bill with the sunset provisions are trying to do what they think will make those in power happy while still being able to tell their constitutants that they're not "really" giving in, and those who propose them do so with the goal that the sunset provisions will eventually be removed and the bill made permanent.
In general, the rule of thumb should be that if you wouldn't vote on it as a permanent thing, don't vote on it as a temporary one, either, since odds are good, someone will try to make it permanent anyway. At least one White House official has acknowledged as much:
In a rare display of GOP discord, Kevin Hassett, an American Enterprise Institute economist with close administration ties, posted a Web site editorial calling the emerging Senate plan “one of the most patently absurd tax policies ever proposed.” The plan would discourage companies from offering dividends over the next two years, he said, and could harm the economy Bush wants to help.Fortunately, it appears that not all are in agreement that this "compromise" proposal is a good idea:But administration officials say the president’s goal of completely eliminating the tax on dividends that are paid out of fully taxed corporate profits — even if for only a year or two — justifies such contortions. The White House has said that its original plan would spur short-term and long-term economic growth.
The financial markets will assume that Congress will not allow the dividend tax cut to be phased out, a White House official said, acknowledging that the dividend plan’s true cost would be far higher than the proposal’s official tally indicates.
“There may sometimes be a distinction between policy and law,” the official said. “We are fighting for the policy. The law will just have to catch up.”
IN ITS dogged pursuit of the dividend tax cut, the White House is pushing a temporary version that even some Republicans openly deride as bizarre and economically suspect. Under the proposal, the elimination of what has been called double taxation of dividends would be phased in — one-half next year, 75 percent in 2005 and 100 percent in 2006-07. Then, the current dividend tax rate would suddenly reappear.Some Democrats, though, are thinking of voting for this thing - in one case, on the condition that some money be made available to state government, which are suffering from extremely tight budgets. While I agree that state government need help, and fast, I can't agree that this is the way to get it. In the long run, the tax cuts will cost considerably more than the financial mechinations being proffered now make it appear, and that money will have to come from somewhere - and usually its in the form of less money for states to carry out federal mandates. This means that while state governments may get some immediate financial relief out of this mess, in the long run, they'll get hit even harder.That timetable technically would hold the plan’s cost at $120 billion over 10 years, far less than the $396 billion that Bush originally proposed. It is designed to fit within the Senate leadership’s self-imposed budget limit and make room for other tax cuts.
One thing I hope someone got on film is that, according to the article, Bush, stumping for his tax cut yesterday in Indianapolis, said he would not raise taxes to balance the budget. We need to get every single example of him saying anything about how he won't raise taxes for whatever reason he may give, as it may just help create a "no new taxes" variation for 2004.
Thanks to the Liquid List for pointing this one out. In my article earlier today "More on the Texas Democrats" I noted that in 1971, Tom Craddick, the current leader of the House Republicans in Texas, had participated in a quorum-breaking walk-out held by the Republicans. In light of that, his comments today are just a little puzzling -- and less than truthful:
I think it should be noted that Democrats had a majority in the Texas House for 130 years before this year, and Republicans never once resorted to such an irresponsible stunt.Now, Craddick will probalby argue that when the Republicans pulled their walk-out, they were doing it to protest a corrupt and criminal House leadership. Given that the main point of contention in this current dispute is the redistricting plan which is already facing legal challenges (on procedural grounds), and which not only tries to unfairly give the Republicans more power, but which may also be in violation of laws against racial redistricting, the Democrats may very well be able to claim the same thing.
Either way, for him to claim that Republicans never pulled such a stunt is clearly dissembling at its finest.
Some excellent opinions on the nomination of President Bush and Prime Minister Blair for a Nobel Peace Prize for (here's the oxymoron for you) starting the war with Iraq.
I think I may just have to ponder the amazing stupidity of that for a bit. If they win a peace prize for starting a war, well, I may just have to find a new planet to live on. This one ain't doing too good.
In his comments on my "Explaination of the dispute" post, Dave Pollard raised some excellent questions, which I thought I'd go ahead and try to answer here on the main page.
OK, let me get this straight. It's not illegal to gerrymander in the most outrageously partisan manner as long as it isn't overtly racial, but it is illegal for a state representative to walk out in protest over gerrymandering. I'm sorry, but you've got one royally *&$%&^'d up poltical system. No wonder your supreme court had to appoint a president. How and why do you put up with this? Isn't somebody agitating to make the electoral process fair?If I understand it right, yes, it's not illegal to gerrymander unless it's overtly racial (and if I'm wrong on that, someone PLEASE correct me!) - though there are court cases being brought to try and change that; and yes, in Texas, at any rate, legislators who try to break a quorum can be arrested and returned to the capitol floor. And, yes, it's totally insane.
As for why we put up with it, well, near as I can tell, gerrymandering is considered something of a time-honoured tradition, and I'm not sure who, exactly, would have the legal standing to challenge it. Seriously, I have no clue why we put up with it. Luckily, the district I'm in, while including a fairly diverse population, doesn't seem to have been created for purely political purposes, and we flip back and forth from electing Republican representatives to Democrats on a semi-regular basis.
I do think that there are some who are agitating to make the electoral process fair, but, sadly, to me, at any rate, it seems like people are less interested in assuring a basic fairness to the electoral system than they are in various other issues - which may be one reason we let the politicians get away with it. In the example of Texas, people who support the conservative Republican agenda aren't going to be concerned that this new redistricting plan would give the Republicans a huge and unfair advantage by wiping out most of the Democrat-leaning districts. They're going to be more in favour of the idea that with more Republican represeantatives, they can get more of the Republican agenda passed, and that's pretty much all they care about.
I wrote yesterday about the problem of a lack of diversity in media ownership and news outlets. IMDb today notes that the FCC has decided make the problem even worse:
FCC Staff Gives Its Deregulation Recommendations
As expected, the FCC staff recommended Monday that ownership regulations be further relaxed to allow broadcasting companies to be able to reach 90 percent of the nation's households through TV stations that they own -- up from the current 35 percent. They will also be able to own both a TV station and a newspaper in all but the smallest markets -- and would be able to own as many as three stations in the largest markets. The proposals have the backing of the Republican majority on the commission. The Democratic minority oppose them, including Commissioner Michael J. Copps, who told today's (Tuesday) New York Times: "It's hard to imagine how the proposals foster the goals of the rules, which are diversity of voices, localism and competition."
I suppose if the concept wasn't suspect enough, at least the name should have been a tip-off. For the last two weeks, stories have been circulating - and jokes have been made - about an announced MicroSoft product called the "iLoo" - a porta-potty with a built-in internet connection. Snopes, however, is reporting that the "iLoo" is - thankfully - a hoax.
The iLoo? A portable toilet complete with wireless keyboard, plasma screen, and URL-imprinted toilet paper? Plus additional "Hotmail stations" so people queueing up for the toilet can "do something useful"? If the announcements touting Microsoft's supposed latest innovation in consumer computing convenience had been issued on April 1 everyone (presumably) would have spotted them for a gag, but since they were issued on April 30 everyone from The Wall Street Journal to the Associated Press fell for the joke hook, line, and sinker. After the gullible were left twisting in the wind for a few weeks, Microsoft finally let them off the hook and announced the iLoo was a hoax perpetrated by one of the company's British divisions:Microsoft Corp. said a company news release that it was developing a portable toilet with Internet access, called an "iLoo," was a hoax perpetrated by its British division."This iLoo release came out of the UK office and was not a Microsoft sanctioned communication and we apologize for any confusion or offense it may have caused," Microsoft spokeswoman Bridgitt Arnold said late Monday.
Unmedia has an excellent explaination of the redistricting dispute among other comments on the Democrats walkout:
The GOP agenda is to ignore the grievous need for a sane state budget (Texas is in the throes of such a severe crisis that the Governor demanded that ALL state agencies - underfunded as they are, cut 7% from their budgets for next year), and push instead of this outrageous redistricting bill that does nothing to establish fair representation of constituents, but rather simply serves to buttress GOP control of the Texas Legislature. The Burnt Orange Report has a detailed summary of the propsed bill and why this was such a brilliant move.Gerrymandering has long been used as a way of changing the makeup of Congressional districts to either reduce or increase the effective power of either a part or a certain demographic group. In this case, it appears the Republican goal is to minimize the impact of minorities and increase the power of Republicans.Imagine that Texas had 50 million Democrats and 1 million Republicans. The principle behind gerrymandering is to draw the boundaries of the congressional districts in such a way that all the Democrats (in this case, blacks and hispanics especially) are concentrated in a select few districts. This could mean that even if the GOP was outnumbered 50-1 they could still have a majority control. This inequality arises because control of the state government is determined at the granular level of districts, not counties (larger) or towns (smaller) as the basic unit. That's an essential feature of the way our government works, but it is open to abuse, as the GOP has demonstrated. It's also why GOP cries of outrage at the Democrats supposed subversion of the "true majority" is so laughably hypocritical. The GOP wants the politicians to choose the voters, instead of the other way around.
Gerrymandering based on race has been found to be illegal by the courts, but in some cases it can be hard to prove that race is the primary factor in the design of the redistricting. Even if it can be done, having a redistricting plan tied up in courts is a contentious business, wasting both the court's time and the state's money, neither of which Texas can easily afford right now.
Some comments from Texas newspapers about the Democrats flight from the state:
HoustonChronicle.com - Fight, flight in Texas House is Washington-drivenThe article (along with most others) notes that the redistricting plan was handed down to Texas Republicans by Tom Delay, which is part of what has angered the Democrats about the plan. It's not something generated by Texas, but rather at the national level, and is clearly designed to benefit only the Republican's interests.The Texas House, with 62 Democrats and 88 Republicans, cannot convene without at least 100 of the 150 members present. House rules allow for the arrest of members who intentionally thwart a quorum. Reports were that most of the missing members had left the state to avoid such arrest.
"We refuse to participate in an inherently unfair process that slams the door of opportunity in the face of Texas voters," they said in an absentia statement read by state Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston.
"It is a disgrace to run and hide," countered Craddick who added that he was not interested in negotiating with the missing members.
And that's the point.
Leave aside for the moment the costs and expected legal challenges to the redistricting proposal. Leave aside the fact that the strangely gerrymandered redistricting map being pushed was not revealed until virtually the last minute. And that the proposed plan appears to violate the constitutional prohibition on racial gerrymandering. And leave aside for now that the proposal would questionably match up Houston neighborhoods with far-flung precincts (i.e. Houston's Fourth Ward with Chambers County).
At the very least, Republicans pushing the redistricting effort bear a large share of the responsibility for this legislative standstill.We and many others have been saying since before the session began that Texas has too many important pieces of business to conduct to get bogged down in a needlessly partisan and divisive political and legal catfight over redistricting.
Most agreed in the early stages that collaboration, bipartisanship and open dialogue would be crucial to the success of the session. When you promise collaboration and then you just pay lip service to it, political deadlock is part of the consequence.
Interestingly, Tom Craddick, the leader of the House Republicans, was previously involved in a similar walk-out by Republicans in 1971, when they opposed the actions of the House Speaker Gus Mutscher, who was accused of being involved in a bribery scandly, for which he was eventually convicted.
The Waco Tribune also notes:
At his Jan. 14 swearing-in ceremony as speaker, Craddick went out of his way to promise that the historic bipartisan tradition in the House would continue "all the way through the session."Craddick not only failed to remember history, his brazen attempt to punish Democrats by forcing through a new congressional redistricting map also failed to keep his promise to uphold the House's bipartisan tradition.
What Craddick has done is put his friendship with U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay over the lessons of history and his own promises to run a bipartisan House.
DeLay asked that the Texas Legislature reopen congressional redistricting, an issue punted to a judicial panel by the 77th Texas Legislature.
Both Gov. Rick Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst expressed no enthusiasm for another bite of the redistricting apple at the beginning of the session. Dewhurst called the idea "almost as attractive as contagious flu."
Confronted with a $10 billion budget shortfall, school finance and insurance reform, it is irresponsible to consider redistricting again without a court order.
When denied a quorum to continue legislative business in the House, Craddick has no one to blame but himself for his failure to learn from history he helped write.
I'll be writing more about this in a few hours when I'm awake enough to actually process it, but this has to be one of the most astounding political moves I can recall.
Democrats in the Texas House of Representatives are so upset with the way the new Republican leadership is handling getting their agenda pushed through - including a redistricting plan that has been described as creating bizzare districts and boundaries - that they have fled the state in order to shut down progress on the Republican bills.
Apparently, they snuck away in the middle of the night, some going to Oklahome and New Mexico, and some possibly even going to across the border to Mexico.
Republican Gov. Rick Perry immediately dispatched police to track down the missing legislators, arrest them and bring them back to do the state's business - even asking neighboring New Mexico if the Texas Rangers were empowered to make arrests there. (New Mexico's attorney general [Patricia Madrid] - a Democrat - said no.)While a few Democratic legislators have stayed (at last count, 4) and reported to work today, by leaving, the rest have prevented the legislature from being able to have a quorum, which has effectively shut the legislature down.[...] “Nonetheless,” she added in a statement, “I have put out an all-points bulletin for law enforcement to be on the lookout for politicians in favor of health care for the needy and against tax cuts for the wealthy.”
The Republican leadership has said that they will likely call a special session over the summer to try and get the disputed billed through, but Democrats have indicated they might just pull another disappearing act if that happens. Given that the governor now has a manhunt going to try and find the Democrats, I have to wonder if he'll try to use law enforcement to keep tabs on them prior to the start of such a special session to prevent them from being able to leave.
All I can really say right now is that it has to be a pretty bad situation for lawmakers to pull this radical of a stunt to try and get their point across.
Well, it looks like someone wised up a bit:
The president's message in Omaha will be on his plan to create jobs. Employees at the Airlite plant had been told they'd need to make up the time if they took off for Bush's visit.But Claire Buchan, a White House spokeswoman, said that Airlite subsequently issued a statement it would pay all its employees whether they worked, attended Bush's speech or took the day off.
The magazine Editor and Publisher has a beautiful, and hilarious, article today positing fourteen "unanswered questions" about the Jayson Blair article in the New York Times on issues large and (very) small. Below, a couple of my favourites, but be sure to check out the rest of the article.
Size matters? As a student journalist and intern "the short and ubiquitous Mr. Blair stood out," according to the Times' report. This begs the question, how "short" does one have to be to stand out?License to thrill. By this time, other Times editors had managed to form their own assessments of Mr. Blair's work. Apparently they considered him "a sloppy writer who was often difficult to track down and at times even elusive about his whereabouts." On a more positive note, "he seemed eager and energetic." Did it occur to anyone that eagerness and energy might be precisely the two qualities you would NOT want in a sloppy writer who no one can ever find?
Below is the text of an article regarding Multnomah County's recent decision to include Klingon on a list of languages that their mental health officials may need a translator for.
Contra Costa Times | 05/11/2003 | County needs a Klingon speakerGiven the lead sentence, it ends up sounding like Multnomah County is going to be adding a Klingon translator to their staff, which, of course, would cost the county money. Reading the original story, as published in the Oregonian, however, shows a slightly different picture.Position available: Interpreter, must be fluent in Klingon.
The language created for the "Star Trek" TV series and movies is one of about 55 needed by the office that treats mental health patients in metropolitan Multnomah County.
"We have to provide information in all the languages our clients speak," said Jerry Jelusich, a procurement specialist for the county Department of Human Services, which serves about 60,000 psychiatric clients.
Although created for works of fiction, Klingon was designed to have a consistent grammar, syntax and vocabulary.
Now, Multnomah County research has found that many people, and not just fans, consider it a complete language.
"There are some cases where we've had mental health patients where this was all they would speak," said the county's purchasing administrator, Franna Hathaway.
County officials said that obligates them to respond with a Klingon-English interpreter, putting the language of starship Enterprise officer Worf and other Klingon characters on a par with common languages such as Russian and Vietnamese, and with less common ones as Dari and Tongan.
The county would pay a Klingon interpreter only in the unlikely case he or she was actually called into service.So, while the county may be looking for a Klingon translator, it's not so that they can keep them on staff, but just so that they can contact them in the event they're ever needed."We said, 'What the heck, let's throw it in,' " Jelusich says. "It doesn't cost us any money."
[...] Jelusich says that in reality, no patient has yet tried to communicate in Klingon. But the possibility that a patient could believe himself or herself to be a Klingon doesn't seem so far-fetched.
"I've got people who think they're Napoleon," he says.
[...] Next up: another mythical language popularized by The "Lord of the Rings" films.
"The kids," Jelusich says, "are learning to speak Elvish."
Either way, it's a funny story, but the way the AP article reads, the situation sounds ridiculous, when it actually isn't that out of line. I mean, think about it - if you have a mental health patient that only speaks in Klingon, and refuses to recognize any other language (and, while probably rather rare, it's not outside the realm of possiblity, especially for a delusional patient), how are you going to reach them or help them at all if you can't communicate with them in any way?
It's certainly not unheard of for news organizations to "punch up" a story a bit to make it sound more interesting, but in this day when we are having more news outlets (newspapers, networks, radio stations, etc.) owned by a small number of companies, and many rely on news wire services for a large portion of their stories, it becomes more likely that a potentially biased, slanted or "punched up" version of a story may end up being the only version out there.
This is one of the benefits of a more diversified media. More unrelated news outlets means that more versions of a story can be put into play, each focusing on the details their particular author or editor feel is most pertinent. The result is more information available through the media marketplace, and a clearer picture emerges of what a situation really is.
Sadly, with the direction the FCC is heading, allowing individuals or corperations to own a large number of news outlets, the problems due to too few sources are only going to be magnified. The cost is that the populace become less informed and more vulnerable to biases in reporting and editing that often conform to what the big businessmen in charge want - and, as we've seen in the last few years, that tends to be a very conservative vision of the world.
Contrary to President Bush's assertion on May 1st that "We've begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons, and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated," the team of specialists who are there to search for illegal weapons of mass destruction are preparing to leave soon without having found any evidence yet of WMDs.
It's not that they've already searched all of the suspected sites. According to Stephen A. Cambone, undersecretary of defense for intelligence "U.S. forces had surveyed only 70 of the roughly 600 potential weapons facilities on the "integrated master site list" prepared by U.S. intelligence agencies before the war."
This doesn't mean that we're abandoning the search entirely, but even those groups that will still be searching for weapons are being cut back.
The hunt will continue under a new Iraq Survey Group, which the Bush administration has said is a larger team. But the organizers are drawing down their weapons staffs for lack of work, and adding expertise for other missions.Between the failure to find any WMDs, the looting of nuclear sites, and now the decision to send the main search group home, it's looking more and more like the Bush administration is unlikely to ever show evidence of Saddam's alleged "tons" of WMDs. As I noted with the nuclear looting, this actually could serve his purposes in the long run, by allowing him to claim that, since the weapons weren't in Iraq, they must be "somewhere", which, of course, can lead to a military fishing expedition through the Middle East.Interviews and documents describing the transition from Task Force 75 to the new group show that site survey teams, the advance scouts of the arms search, will reduce from six to two their complement of experts in missile technology and biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. A little-known nuclear special operations group from the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, called the Direct Support Team, has already sent home a third of its original complement, and plans to cut the remaining team by half.
"We thought we would be much more gainfully employed, or intensively employed, than we were," said Navy Cmdr. David Beckett, who directs special nuclear programs for the team.
Sadly, it's unlikely that Bush's supporters will see this as a sign of the incompetence, shoddy (or "manipulated") intelligence, or lack of veracity that the Bush administration seems to specialize in.
Photos of the Kentucky Derby winning jockey, Jose Santos, who rode 12-to-1 longshot Funny Cide, are raising questions about whether he may have had an "illegal object" (such as an electronic device that can be used to shock a horse making it run faster) in his hand during the race.
This isn't a story that I really have much to say about, but after reading about the controversy, I was curious to see the pictures for myself, and it took me a bit to track them down. I figured I'd go ahead and post the links I eventually found so if anyone else is curious, they can see the pictures, too. The full photo (along with an article on the possiblity of an investigation) is available here. The Miami Herald also has an interesting side-by-side close up of two pictures - the one in question, and one taken by an Associated Press photographer at almost the exact same moment, but from a slightly diffrerent angle.
My Comics Page, a great resource for comic strips and editorial cartoons, has been re-running Berkeley Breathed's classic "Bloom County" strips from the 1980's (Man, talk about making me feel OLD!). Frighteningly, they still seem just about as relevant today as they were when they were first published. Change a few of the names and he could almost be writing them now.
CalPundit raises an excellent point about the question of whether the New York Times' efforts to diversify their workforce racially might have contributed to Jayson Blair's ability to get away with fraud, plagiarism and other deceptive practices for as long as he did.
In just the last few weeks, in addition to the Blair meltdown, the LA Times has fired a photographer for digitally enhancing a photograph, two reporters at the Salt Lake City Tribune have been fired for selling made-up rumors to the National Enquirer, and disgraced liar Stephen Glass released his autobiographical novel about his exploits at the New Republic.When I read the NYT article yesterday, I had noticed that, in a few places, it mentioned that Blair was black and the implications that at least part of why he was hired as an intern intially was because of the Times' efforts to become more diversified. I didn't, however, think that his race had much to do with his being able to keep playing his games without losing his job. More than anything, I saw a willingness on the part of the Times' editors and managers to either overlook his problematic history or to fail to pass warnings on to the appropriate people in an effort to give someone they personally liked a chance to get ahead.Quick, what color were the skins of these reporters?
What's that, you don't know? But hasn't every story about them mentioned it? And run a picture of them? No? That's odd.
Several other places in the article mentioned that Blair was amiable, good at playing office politics and fairly popular among the staff. I know from my own work history that how well someone is liked often does more for their promotablility than their actual skills, and it's just human nature to give someone you're fond of more chances to prove themselves than you'd likely give anyone else.
Sadly, it appears some people who oppose affirmative action and related programs are going to try and use this to help justify why they think the programs are wrong. Personally, I'm not a fan of affirmative action either, but not because I think it allows unworthy or unethical minority people to keep jobs than equally unworty or unethical white people would lose. My beef with it is that in my opinion it tends to lead to a subconscious belief among both whites and minorities that they somehow are entitled to preferences because of their race. This leads to two distinct problems: Whites who feel that minorities are taking jobs and slots in schools that they (whites) should be able to get if they're more qualified - and thus resenting the success of minority workers and students in such positions; and minorities who believe that being entitled to these preferences means they don't need to try as hard or necessarily do their best to succeed. Now, mind you, I am not saying that these attitudes apply to all whites or all minorities - they may not even belong to most, but they belong to enough that tensions continue to build, stereotypes are maintained and situations don't change.
I don't think affirmative action should just be chucked out the window, however. There are legitimate issues that it can address, and I don't think that, as a society, we're ready to do away with it entirely. I do think, though, that we need to start trying to find other ways to deal with the need to balance out the disadvantages that so many minorities face and the advantages that whites seem to be handed - and we need to also find a way to start gradually phasing affirmative action programs out so that both the sense of resentment and the sense of entitlement that so many still have can start to be disbursed. What are these other methods? I don't know yet. Yes, it's something of a lame answer, but it's also honest - and I am trying to think of other methods.
Ironically, I do think that the University of Michigan's affirmative action program, which works by assigning a variety of demographic factors different point values which are then combined with the point values for grades, test scores and other merit based factors, and then admits those who have the highest total scores. Because they use a variety of factors that include more than just race as a modifying consideration, the system ends up serving to balance out for a number of potential disadvantages that different students might face. It also allows the system to be flexible enough that as social needs change, the system can be modified to reflect that. Lastly, from what I understand, the total number of points available in these "balancing" demographic factors is not a large percentage of the total, so it serves more as a "nudge" than something likely to give a clearly undeserving student enough of an edge to take a slot that should have gone to someone else.
In the case of Jayson Blair, though, we can see one of the effects that the resentment issue related to affirmative action can have. In some circles, there's almost a sense of "well, he was hired as part of a "diversity" program, so what do you expect? He obviously wasn't good enough to get the job on his own merits". It's not hard to go from that to the idea that his fraud and plagiarism wasn't entirely his fault since he was put into a job he probably shouldn't have had and felt pressure to "live up" to expectations. Not that the article says anything to bolster either of these theories - but the fact that it mentions his race and the Times' desire to diversify are enough to give rise to this kind of talk.
Personally, I think Blair would have acted the same way, regardless of his race or his reason for being hired. I think he was just an irresponsible and unethical person more interested in the image of being a "New York Times reporter" than the actual work of reporting itself; and I think that far too little attention was paid to his work habits, his expense reports and the problems management and editors knew about.
[NOTE: Article updated at 7:54 am to correct typos and changed "assigning a variety of factors different point values" to "assigning a variety of demographic factors different point values" for clarity. No context or meaning has been changed - I just wrote it semi-sleepily last night and wanted to fix it now that I was more awake.]
When Bush stops off in Nebraska for a speech this week on how his tax plan will benefit working-class families, 300 plant workers will either lose as much as a day's pay or have to work extra hours to make up the difference.
An Airlite spokesman said in a telephone interview last night that most workers would be given four options when the plant is partly closed for one and a half shifts during the speech: They can take an official day off whether or not they attend the speech and make up the work on Saturday to receive full pay. They can use a paid vacation day. They can work their regular shift in part of the plant that will remain open. Or they can take an unpaid day off.Some workers who's jobs are in the part of the plant where Bush's speech will be taking place will be able to collect their full pay for the day, but this only accounts for 15 workers. The rest will have to chose one of the four options outlined in the article.
The company's decision not to pay most of the workers during the Bush visit was first reported on Friday in The Omaha World-Herald. The newspaper said a man who said he was an Airlite employee, but did not give his name, complained to an editor in a voice mail message that some longtime employees would lose more than $130 in pay.But actually it does make sense. It's almost a perfect metaphore, in fact. Bush gets lots of publicity, gets to talk about how he's going to help the families, while actually shafting them in the process."It's not a great thing for us employees," the man was quoted as saying. "We're losing a lot of money because of his visit. His speech is supposed to be about what the family can get from his tax breaks. It doesn't really make sense."
It would seem to me that if the President feels its necessary to take over a businesses place of operations for a day in order to give a speech, then the administration should pay all reasonable expenses - including the wages of workers who won't be allowed to work - to cover the cost of the speech, rather than leaving the little guys hang out to dry.
It is astounding that the Times didn't realize just how serious the problem was sooner. Several of the editors and managers who had worked with Blair earlier knew that he had problems with inaccuracies and considered him to be "sloppy", but some of those warnings weren't passed up the line when he started writing for the National desk.
More amazing to me is that his expense reports weren't reviewed closely enough to notice some basic problems that should have been a tip-off. According to the article, the expense reports were reviewed by an administrative assistant, not an editor, but there were some issues that even someone who wasn't familiar with where he was supposed to have been should have noticed. He would note on the report that he had purchased food or items in one city when the attached receipt would show that they had been purchased in another. He also would attach recipts from restaraunts in New York City, but say that they were located elsewhere. Most audacious, he claimed to have been traveling around the country doing interviews, but did not submit reimbursement for any hotel rooms, rental cars or airfare.
It's possible that the assistant reviewing the report may have thought he was using a company card (he wasn't) and that was why those items were not appearing on his expense reports, but if that was the case, why would he have been sumbitting reports for things like restaurants, Starbucks coffee or other expenses that could also have been charged to the company card? Obviously, I have no idea what the work load is in an office as massive as the New York Times newsroom, but when I worked as an administrative assistant, part of my heavy workload was checking expense reports, and one of the first things I was taught was to make sure the receipts matched the claims on the report. I was also told to find out if the person submitting the report had a company card, and if so, get an explaination as to why the costs being submitted had not been charged to it. Again, NY Times policy may well be different, but it just strikes me as odd.
The other thing I find odd is that so few of the people he claimed to have interviewed "in person" or whose actions he "described" without ever having met the person face to face complained to the paper about his deception. The article mentions a number of falsehoods in an story he wrote about Private Jessica Lynch's family, yet they say they didn't complain because they thought it would be a one-time thing. While I know they had other issues on their mind at the time, I can't imagine letting so many inaccuracies go without calling someone at the paper and at least mentioning it.
The fallout from this is going to be interesting. I've already been skeptical about the news media in general, though that's often all I have to rely on for information - this certainly isn't going to help any. While the problem was clearly the fault of Jayson Blair, who chose to be so deceptive and worked out a variety of ways to hide what he was doing, its clear at this point that there were problems with communications within the Times organization and some fairly basic steps - such as those mentioned with the expense report questions - that could have helped prevent it. It's good to see them admitting what happened and presenting a fairly thorough "warts-and-all" accounting of how it happened that doesn't whitewash the Times' role in the mess, and its also good that they are asking readers to let them know if they are aware of falsehoods, plagairism or other problems with other articles Blair wrote. Hopefully, they will also provide a follow-up article to let readers know what they're doing to prevent something like this from happening again.
The New York Times today has extensive coverage of the resignation of Jayson Blair, one of their national desk reporters, and the seemingly incredible fraud he perpetrated while working there.
Ten days ago, Jayson Blair resigned as a reporter for The New York Times after the discovery that he had plagiarized parts of an article on April 26 about the Texas family of a soldier missing in Iraq. An article on Page 1 today recounts a chain of falsifications and plagiarism that unraveled when The Times began an inquiry into that Texas article. At least 36 more articles written by Mr. Blair since October reflected plagiarism, misstatements, misrepresentation of the reporter's whereabouts or a combination of those.I've not finsihed reading all of it yet, but it's fascinating. Be warned, though, when I say extensive, I mean extensive. The main article itself is 10 pages, and there are another 9 pages of information from witnesses and documents.
The hardest part for the Times, however, is going to be explaining how something like this could happen. They've announced that management will be doing a separate investigation into what allowed someone to commit this level of fraud, and, hopefully, make the necessary changes to prevent it from happening again.
Last week, I posted a link to a story about a Defense Department team's discovery that one of Iraqi's nuclear sites had been looted, and there was no idea what all might be missing. Today we learn that in addition to that site, six others have also been looted and it appears that heavy equipment, radiological sources, documentation on making nuclear weapons, chemicals and other materials and may information have vanished.
It is still not clear what has been lost in the sacking of Iraq's nuclear establishment. But it is well documented that looters roamed unrestrained among stores of chemical elements and scientific files that would speed development, in the wrong hands, of a nuclear or radiological bomb. Many of the files, and some of the containers that held radioactive sources, are missing.The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had earlier pressed the US to allow them to come in and handle the inspections of nuclear facilities, since that is what they are trained for, and under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and certain UN resolutions, they are the sole legal authority responsible to conduct such investigations, but they report that they never received a reply from us about doing so.Previous reports have described damage at two of the facilities, the Tuwaitha Yellowcake Storage Facility and the adjacent Baghdad Nuclear Research Center. Now, the identity of three more damaged sites has been learned: the Ash Shaykhili Nuclear Facility, the Baghdad New Nuclear Design Center and the Tahadi Nuclear Establishment.
The identities of two other sites, also said to have been looted, could not be learned.
Recent reports have indicated that the US believes the looting of the art museums was done by "professionals" who knew what they were looking for and most likely had buyers already lined up for it. I honestly don't know if that is the truth or just some spin we're trying to put on the situation to make us look less incompetent and negligent in our handling of the aftermath of the war, but at the moment, I'm almost hoping it's spin. If its not, then it seems to me that it's also more likely than not that the looting of the nuclear sites would also have been done by professionals, who would also have buyers at the ready. That is a bit more frightening than I like to contemplate. Even if the looters are not professionals, though, if we aren't sure what has been taken or by whom, we will have no way to effectively track down the materials or know if or when any of it has been recovered.
Sadly, this may, in a way, turn out to be a boon for the Bush administration, which seems to thrive on having potential boogeymen who potentially have dangerous weaponry. As long as there can be a case made that we could be attacked at any moment by evil madmen bent on the US's distruction and armed with the ability to cause significant damage, they can continue to insist on silencing dissent to their aggressive foreign policy, justify the reduction in our civil liberties, and threaten or actually wage wars in pursuit of their apparent imperial agenda. The administration feeds on the fear of the citizenry, and seven looted nuclear sites very well may buy them enough fear to stretch the "War on Terror™" all the way through the 2004 election.
LiberalOasis has a piece today on the relatively light coverage that the Democratic Presidential contenders are currently getting, and a recent poll showing that only 27% of those surveyed were "very" or "fairly" interested in hearing more about it.
Now, it’s ridiculous to think there would be copious attention paid to the Dems at this point. Things have barely gotten started.Given how close the news media is with the conservative side of the political spectrum these days, maybe that's precisely the point.Unlike the Peterson case – the outcome of which will not dictate the course of globe – news coverage has been relatively light.
And no one would even show the last debate in prime time.
Without such coverage, how can the public become “very” or “fairly interested”?
Ornicus has a great piece today on George Bush's desertion of his Texas Air National Guard service during the Vietnam War.
Just from what we know now, the question that needs answering is this: Why did Mr. Bush abandon his commitment to his country during wartime? Why did he blow off his valuable training and remove himself from flight status?There's a certain irony to all of this. How often in the last two years have we heard things justified because we're "in a time of war"? We can't criticize the President or question the government. We shouldn't stage protests or object if the police decide to bust into a restaurant and interrogate patrons at gunpoint. Hollywood needs to shut up in general (unless you're a famous Republican) and, of course, tone down the Oscars. As for our civil liberties, well, we should willingly surrender those. Why? Because we're "in a time of war".The question any serviceman should be asking is this: What if I were to treat my commitment to service just as Bush did? What if I trained to be a pilot and then refused to take a physical? And then failed to show up for any subsequent meetings of my unit? Dropped out of sight for seven months?
And then he ought to think about the big grin Bush wore along with that flight suit.
Yet here we have President Bush, the symbol of what we all should be during this time of war, who, while living in another time of war, not only did his darndest to avoid having to go to Vietnam, but then failed to live up to the obligation he willingly took upon himself to serve the state of Texas in their Air National Guard. In a time of war!
Bush may think he can excuse his dereliction of duty by sweeping it under the "youthful indescretion" rug with his possible drug use, known alcohol problems and other such "whoopsies", but he shouldn't be allowed to get away with it. When he chose to skip his physical, rendering himself unable to continue flying, and then never bothered to show up for the rest of his serve, he showed himself to be a man without honour. In a time of war, neither he nor his aides (most of whom also avoided service during the Vietnam war themselves) have any place telling the American public how to be patriotic or how to behave.
There have been reports in the news lately about the Congressional report on the 9/11 attacks, and the way that, like so much else, is largely being kept secret. As Newsweek reported, "only a bare-bones list of “findings” with virtually no details was made public, and now a committee reviewing it has refused to declasify any further information, and has even sought to "reclassify" some information that had already been made public.
This morning, Atrios posted a link to a site called Cooperative Research that features a well-written and well-documented examination of what we know about the timeline of 9/11 and the official response to it. Poking around a bit more, I also found an essay on significant warnings we were given by foreign government about the potential for terrorist attacks that summer.
The Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9-11 is now finished, but the findings that have been released fail to mention any warnings from foreign governments. The US mainstream media also has paid little attention to warnings from foreign governments.Interestingly, the essay notes that some of the warnings were ignored because of "warning fatigue" coming from the sheer number of warnings the intelligence community was receiving. Interesting, because the government has, at times since 9/11, flooded us with so many warnings of its own that there have been serious concerns that Americans will stop paying attention for that very reason. It seems to me that if the government's ability to possibly protect us from the 9/11 attacks was compromised by it's own "warning fatigue" it would then want to take steps to prevent "warning fatigue" among the general population, so that if there is another attack in the offing, we'd actually take precautions rather than just make more jokes about duct tape.Yet there were so many warnings - from both our friends and enemies alike - often specifically suggesting the targets or method of attack. In at least one case, the warnings actually mentioned hijackers by name. This type of communication between intelligence agencies normally occurs in secret, so one can only wonder what additional warnings or details were provided to us that have never been made public.
[...] One single warning should have been enough to take precautions, but with so many warnings coming in, how can inaction be explained as mere incompetence? Yes, it is often difficult to know which terrorist threats are real, and what information to trust. But if the US couldn't take seriously warnings from close allies like Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and so on, then what were they waiting for? What would they have taken seriously? And where is the outrage, the investigation? As can be seen with the recent Congressional inquiry, the typical US government response has been to ignore these foreign government warnings altogether, or to say they were lies.
The Blog Update Notifications thingy seems to be working now, so if you'd like to get a single email each day giving you a bit of each new item posted, please be sure to sign up using the form over there on that sidebar-monster of mine... :)
I knew he was different, in his sexuality
I went to his parties, as a straight minority
It never seemed a threat to my masculinity
He only introduced me to a wider reality
As the years went by, we drifted apart
When I heard that he was gone
I felt a shadow cross my heartBut he's nobody's hero
Saves a drowning child
Cures a wasting disease
Hero --- lands the crippled airplane
Solves great mysteries
Hero --- not the handsome actor
Who plays a hero's role
Hero --- not the glamor girl
Who'd love to sell her soul
If anybody's buying
Nobody's HeroI didn't know the girl, but I knew her family
All their lives were shattered
in a nightmare of brutality
They try to carry on, try to bear the agony
Try to hold some faith
in the goodness of humanity
As the years went by, we drifted apart
When I heard that she was gone
I felt a shadow cross my heartBut she's nobody's hero
Is the voice of reason
Against the howling mob
Hero --- the pride of purpose
In the unrewarding job
Hero --- not the champion player
Who plays the perfect game
Not the glamor boy
Who loves to sell his name
Everybody's buying
Nobody's HeroAs the years went by, we drifted apart
When I heard that you were gone
I felt a shadow cross my heart
Lyrics by Neal Peart, Music by Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson
Fox News is facing an investigation in Britian for providing biased coverage during the war.
The Fox News Channel could be forced off the air in Britain if an investigation currently under way by the watchdog Independent Television Commission determines that it violated ITC's "due impartiality" rules during its coverage of the war in Iraq, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported today (Thursday). [...] In a caustic editorial, the Guardian observed that if Murdoch wants to continue using his Sky News satellite service to advance his political views, he might have to move his base of operations to another country. The editorial concluded, "It would be a delicious irony if Mr Murdoch, a committed anti-European, moved to the continent so he could pollute sober fact with pointed opinion."
As much as I am offended and disturbed by Senator Rick Santorum's belief that there is no right to privacy and that the government should be able to regulate what goes on between consenting adults in private, if the GOP's decision not to rally behind his anti-gay comments leads to a large part of the Christian Right abandoning the Republican party, well, I may just have to send him a letter of thanks. That would simply be one of the best things that could happen to this country.
Leaders of the Christian right are thinking of bolting the Republican Party in 2004. Such a move would deal a severe blow to President Bush's re-election effort.Please, do reconsider!Though Christian voters played a pivotal role in electing Bush in his razor-thin victory over Al Gore, NewsMax has learned that major figures in the evangelical movement are talking about withholding support from the Republican Party.
The issue came recently to the fore because of comments made by Ken Connor, president of the Family Research Council, a Washington-based public advocacy organization founded by Dr. James Dobson and affiliated with Dobson's Focus on the Family.Recently, Connor, as a guest on Dobson's national radio program as well as in a newsletter sent to Christian activists, openly questioned the Republican party's commitment to social issues Christians are concerned about.
"If Republican leaders cannot mount a vigorous defense of marriage, then pro-family voters perhaps should begin to reconsider their loyalty to the party," warned Connor.
While having the Christian Right break away from the mainstream of the Republican party could open the door for them to form a viable third party, by themselves, I don't believe they'd be nearly as powerful as they are combined with the Republicans - and without the Christian Right, the Republicans would be considerably weaker. This would be a very good thing. I'm not sure how likely it is, since someone is bound to realize that, separately, neither the Christian Right nor the Republicans are going to be as strong as they are together, but it's sure a nice fantasy!
Truthout has posted the remarks by Senator Robert Byrd about President Bush's recent campaign stunt and speech aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln. Be sure to take time to read the entire piece - the parts that reached me the most are quoted below:
President Bush's address to the American people announcing combat victory in Iraq deserved to be marked with solemnity, not extravagance; with gratitude to God, not self-congratulatory gestures. American blood has been shed on foreign soil in defense of the President's policies. This is not some made-for-TV backdrop for a campaign commercial. This is real life, and real lives have been lost. To me, it is an affront to the Americans killed or injured in Iraq for the President to exploit the trappings of war for the momentary spectacle of a speech. I do not begrudge his salute to America's warriors aboard the carrier Lincoln, for they have performed bravely and skillfully, as have their countrymen still in Iraq, but I do question the motives of a deskbound President who assumes the garb of a warrior for the purposes of a speech.Earlier I quoted Ari Fleischer talking about how this stunt was intended to "honor" our soldiers. I have to wonder, though, how much of an "honour" it can be to have a man who ducked military service by joining the Air National Guard and then went AWOL show up wearing the uniform he treated with such disrespect?As I watched the President's speech, before the great banner proclaiming "Mission Accomplished," I could not help but be reminded of the tobacco barns of my youth, which served as country road advertising backdrops for the slogans of chewing tobacco purveyors. I am loath to think of an aircraft carrier being used as an advertising backdrop for a presidential political slogan, and yet that is what I saw.
What I heard the President say also disturbed me. It may make for grand theater to describe Saddam Hussein as an ally of al Qaeda or to characterize the fall of Baghdad as a victory in the war on terror, but stirring rhetoric does not necessarily reflect sobering reality. Not one of the 19 September 11th hijackers was an Iraqi. In fact, there is not a shred of evidence to link the September 11 attack on the United States to Iraq. There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was an evil despot who brought great suffering to the Iraqi people, and there is no doubt in my mind that he encouraged and rewarded acts of terrorism against Israel. But his crimes are not those of Osama bin Laden, and bringing Saddam Hussein to justice will not bring justice to the victims of 9-11. The United States has made great progress in its efforts to disrupt and destroy the al Qaeda terror network. We can take solace and satisfaction in that fact. We should not risk tarnishing those very real accomplishments by trumpeting victory in Iraq as a victory over Osama bin Laden.
Ari Fleischer decided to 'clarify' the story about Bush's jet landing last week, now that it's come out that thier "the ship is too far away for us to use a helicopter" story has fallen apart. The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln was only 39 miles off-shore, well within the range of a helicopter. It's also come out that they repositioned the ship so that there would be a sceanic ocean behind President Bush instead of a visible San Diego, and to help minimize the winds across the deck. In addition, it's arrival date was changed to accomodate Bush's schedule.
Nevertheless, Fleischer insists that "This is not about the president. This is about thanking the men and women who won a war." Perhaps, but I'm sure we'll be seeing that footage again.
According to today's Boston Globe, Ari is now claiming that, even though a less-expensive helicopter could have been used, they didn't actually mislead anyone.
As far as I'm concerned, if you're trying not to mislead someone, that means you come clean before someone else manages to expose the problems in your story, rather than waiting until the contradictory truth has already come out.Bush wanted to fly in an ''aircraft that would allow him to see an aircraft landing the same way that the pilots saw an aircraft landing,'' Fleischer said. ''He wanted to see it as realistically as possible. And that's why, once the initial decision was made to fly out on the Viking, even when a helicopter option became doable, the president decided instead he wanted to still take the Viking.''
...be sure to check out Jon Stewart and the Daily Show's exceptional Bush vs. Bush debate, featuring President Bush and Governor Bush discussing the role America should play in how foreign countries are run. Bloody brilliant!
According to Nicholas Kristof, in a NYT editorial today, the Bush administration knew, well before they presented them as "evidence" of Iraq's attempts at rebuilding a nuclear weapons program that the documents indicating that Iraq tried to buy nuclear materials from Niger were forged.
I'm told by a person involved in the Niger caper that more than a year ago the vice president's office asked for an investigation of the uranium deal, so a former U.S. ambassador to Africa was dispatched to Niger. In February 2002, according to someone present at the meetings, that envoy reported to the C.I.A. and State Department that the information was unequivocally wrong and that the documents had been forged.Unsuprisingly, that isn't the only misleading intelligence that the administration knowingly used. Kristof also reports:The envoy reported, for example, that a Niger minister whose signature was on one of the documents had in fact been out of office for more than a decade. In addition, the Niger mining program was structured so that the uranium diversion had been impossible. The envoy's debunking of the forgery was passed around the administration and seemed to be accepted - except that President Bush and the State Department kept citing it anyway.
"It's disingenuous for the State Department people to say they were bamboozled because they knew about this for a year," one insider said.
Patrick Lang, a former head of Middle Eastern affairs in the Defense Intelligence Agency, says that he hears from those still in the intelligence world that when experts wrote reports that were skeptical about Iraq's W.M.D., "they were encouraged to think it over again."Surprised? Neither am I. The level of disdain that this administration shows for the truth has been demonstrated time and again, and I have no doubt that we've not seen the last of it."In this administration, the pressure to get product `right' is coming out of O.S.D. [the Office of the Secretary of Defense]," Mr. Lang said. He added that intelligence experts had cautioned that Iraqis would not necessarily line up to cheer U.S. troops and that the Shiite clergy could be a problem. "The guys who tried to tell them that came to understand that this advice was not welcome," he said.
"The intelligence that our officials was given regarding W.M.D. was either defective or manipulated," Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico noted. Another senator is even more blunt and, sadly, exactly right: "Intelligence was manipulated."
The C.I.A. was terribly damaged when William Casey, its director in the Reagan era, manipulated intelligence to exaggerate the Soviet threat in Central America to whip up support for Ronald Reagan's policies. Now something is again rotten in the state of Spookdom.
UPDATE: Joe Conason also comments on Kristof's column, including this well-made point:
Did Bush know that the Niger story was a fraud? The choices for the White House here aren't very attractive: Either their administration was too incompetent to detect the fake, or the president lied about the gravest issues confronted by the nation. It is hard to imagine a more serious accusation than to say that the president of the United States knowingly used fraudulent evidence to foment a preemptive war.
Seymour Hersch of the New Yorker also has an article that discusses some of the other questions about the intelligence the US relied on for justifying the war, and how it was obtained.
Tristero has a nice overview of all the articles.
There's an interesting picture and commentary at the Memory Hole today. Apparently, the Associated Press had a small problem transcribing an Iraqi banner from a photo into their article.
In the article, AP made the following statement:
Some were threatening "Sooner or later US killers we'll kill you," read an angry banner in English unfurled in the faces of GIs on guard in the central city.The accompanying photo, however, show a sigh that reads "Sooner or later US killers we'll kick you out".
Mistranslations are generally understandable - but in this case it's rather inexplicable. Why? Because the sign in question is in English.
A court today decided that nearly all of Lee Malvo's confession can be used against him in his upcoming trial in the "DC sniper" case.
Malvo's lawyers had argued that police and prosecutors essentially conspired to keep Malvo away from his lawyers on Nov. 7, when federal charges against Malvo were dropped and he was transferred to Virginia custody. He had been in Maryland.The waiver that Malvo "signed" was marked only with an "X".Malvo's federally appointed lawyers on that day testified that they scrambled to find their client and prevent him from talking to police, but were unsuccessful.
But Roush wrote that "there is no evidence that Fairfax police or prosecutors colluded with federal authorities to spirit Malvo away to Virginia without the knowledge of his Maryland attorneys."
Roush also ruled that Malvo had no right to counsel on Nov. 7, because the federal charges against him had been dropped and the Virginia charges were not formalized until Nov. 8, when he made his initial court appearance. She also ruled that, even if he had the right to a lawyer, he knowingly waived it during his questioning with police.
Malvo had asked if he would "get to see his lawyers" prior to the start of the interview and was told that he would, but the court held that this was not a request for his attorney but only Malvo clarifying his Miranda rights.
I don't want to see Malvo get away with the murders he likely committed. Given the evidence against him - aside from his confession - it appears that he is guilty, and if that's the case, then he needs to be convicted and punished as called for in the law.
The problem I have is that the law enforcement officers and lawyers who spoke to him after his arrest appear to have played "fast and loose" with his legal rights, and this judge is letting them get away with it. Even if you feel that criminals have too many rights, and that the judge made the correct ruling, the ruling strikes me (who, admittedly, is not a legal expert) as being shaky at best, and since it is appealable after a trial is concluded, could potentially lead to an overturning of any conviction that is gained.
As far as I am concerned, neither violating a criminals rights to try and get additional information against him nor a legally questionable ruling that could lead to a conviction being overturned are good. Lawyers and cops know what the rules are and should avoid breaking them. That part is very simple. Nearly everyone gets angry when a criminal gets off on a technicality, and in many cases, its something that could easily have been avoided.
Judges should also uphold the rules, because when they don't, they put the case at risk for reversal on appeal. That's no better.
The flip side of that is that convicting someone using illegally obtained evidence, even if it's allowed by a judge, runs the risk of false convictions, something that only gives justification to the understandable concerns about the use of the death penalty. We've seen in cases like that of the Central Park jogger (among others) that false confessions do happen, especially when the interrogations take place under questionable circumstances. While I have to admit that I don't think Malvo's confession is false, the way in which it was obtained, and the fact that he was denied any legal representation, do serve to at least raise the question of just how voluntary it was.
I wrote last week about Ashleigh Moore, a 12-year-old black girl from Georgia who has been missing for going on 3 weeks now, but whose case had received little attention outside the Georgia press.
This past Saturday, America's Most Wanted featured Ashleigh as one of the missing children for the week. While it's still not anything near the publicity for Elizabeth Smart, it's a start, and I'm glad to see that her case is getting at least some attention outside her home state.
There are several other comments in Uggabugga's entry on Matthew's comments. Something I find interesting is how - even though he's gushing like mad over "Jet Pilot Bush" (sounds like a Barbie doll, you know?), most of his comments make it very clear that he knows Bush was doing nothing other than putting on a costume and playing a role for the camera.
Too bad the average American probably won't pick up on that.
Uggabugga has an entry featuring several quotes from one of Chris Matthew's Hardball transcripts, where he is just gushing about Bush playing jet pilot for a day. One of my favourites:
And that’s the president looking very much like a jet, you know, a high-flying jet star. A guy who is a jet pilot. Has been in the past when he was younger, obviously. What does that image mean to the American people, a guy who can actually get into a super sonic plane, and actually fly in an unpressurized cabin, like an actual jet pilot?What does the image mean to Americans? It shouldn't mean anything. It's an image.
Different people have different skills and training. Bush was trained as a pilot. That he can still fly a jet is neither remarkable nor important. How does his ability to fly a jet plane make him a better president? How does it make him a better leader?
Does it...
I couldn't upload cartoons for a couple days because of a hard drive failure, so pardon me while I get a bit caught up. :)
There's been a lot in the news about the tornado outbreak in the midwest. I know some of you know I live in the KC area, where we had several tornados yesterday, so I thought I'd give you a quick update.
Suffice it to say, when you live in tornado alley, it's handy being on good terms with the God of Thunder. The closest any of the tornados got to any of us was about 10 miles from here, and we just were treated to a nice, noisy light show with a bit of rain. While there were tornados in most of the counties around us, we came through just fine.
Only one person in the KC area died (that we know of), which is good news -- it could have been considerably worse. Many are now without homes, though, which isn't good at all. Clean-up has started, and they're working to restore power to those who lost it. Beyond that, there's not a lot else to report at the moment.
Kriselda
There's a really neat site that's opened up, called Faces For Peace. The concept is that of an online peace rally - where you can post a picture of yourself (or another image to represent you) and post a statement in support of peace in general.
Posts are searchable by location, and are reviewed to make sure they're appropriate before being added to the site. It's a really neat idea, and I suggest you check it out!
Iraqi Nuclear Site Is Found Looted (washingtonpost.com)A specially trained Defense Department team, dispatched after a month of official indecision to survey a major Iraqi radioactive waste repository, today found the site heavily looted and said it was impossible to tell whether nuclear materials were missing.
Well, that sidebar of mine was starting to get a bit unweildly.
Ok, so it's been unweildly for quite some time - I just finally got fed up with trying to find stuff on it myself that I decided to make a clickable index for it. Hopefully, it will give you an idea of what it has to offer, and let you find what you might want faster.
Also, I've added a subscription form for Update Notifications. If you want to subscribe, you'll get a single e-mail each day with a list of new entries and a portion of each (the first 150 characters).
I am having a minor technical problem with it at the moment, but should have that fixed shortly. If you decide to subscribe, but don't get anything right away, go ahead and let me know (you can reach me by clicking on the little envelope in the Kriselda section of the sidebar), so I can help make sure it gets to you.
I also just wanted to say thanks to everyone who's visited here since different strings opened up last September. This past week, the blog passed the 20,000 hit mark, and I just wanted you to know that I'm very grateful for that you've chosen to spend a bit of your time here. Thank you!
Kriselda
This is almost (but not quite) unbelievable.
ENRON, the bankrupt energy company, is trying to claim back tens of millions of dollars in taxes from America's Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on the ground that it paid too much during the years when it fraudulently overstated revenues and profits.Yeah, you read that right. Criminal corporations want their tax money back. This, in spite of the fact that they made use of every tax shelter and haven possible to reduce their taxes as much as possible in the first place.The audacious move is also being considered by other companies embroiled in accounting scandals, including WorldCom - now called MCI - Qwest Communications and HealthSouth.
All the companies are believed to have paid appropriate amounts of tax on the revenues and profits they reported, even though these were false.The companies are arguing that the frauds that inflated their revenues were the result of the actions of individuals who worked for them and not the fault of the companies or their shareholders.
The companies are trying to claim that the extra taxes should be repaid as they are an extra burden on the shareholders, bondholders and employees who had invested in the company through their retirement plans. If I thought for a moment that the money would actually go to any of those people - in particular the employees who not only lost their retirement incomes (in the case of Enron, largely because the company kept encouraging them to invest in Enron's plan, even after the corporate officers were selling off their own shares, knowing the end was on the horizon), but also their jobs, and have been hurt the most by the criminal actions of the companies involved.
So, how much money are we talking about?
WorldCom has so far restated about $11 billion (£6.8 billion) of earnings, Enron $586 million and HealthSouth some $2.5 billion. Between them, tax experts told The Times, they could claim back more than $1.5 billion, if the IRS accepted their claims.In other words, a lot.
Personally, I could possibly understand refunding the tax money that was paid on income that didn't actually exist on the condition that no person who knew, should have known (based on their position within the company - you know, like senior officers) or participated in the fraud sees a single penny of it. There may need to be other conditions as well, to make sure it's fairly distributed, but that's my starting point.
In 1990, when we placed troops in Saudi Arabia to help with ousting Saddam from Kuwait, we pissed off Osama bin Laden. That action led to bin Laden's fall-out with the Saudi Royal Family, his leaving Saudi Arabia and the formation of al Qaeda. Initially, one of bin Laden's primary goals was to get American troops out of Saudi Arabia. While the news has been very quite about this, it looks like bin Laden is getting his wish.
"For over seven years now the United States has been occupying the lands of Islam in the holiest of places, the Arabian peninsula, plundering its riches, dictating to its rulers, humiliating its people, terrorising its neighbours and turning its bases in the peninsula into a spearhead through which to fight the neighbouring Muslim peoples."Now, if we don't need to have troops in Saudi Arabia, I'm not going to advocate leaving them there just to spite bin Laden. But whatever our motivations are, bin Laden undoubtedly will take it as a sign of weakness on our part, regardless of our victory in Iraq or our currently belligerant attitude towards the world in general. Sadly, this may make bin Laden bolder - pointing out to any who are interested in joining his cause that they struck at us and we capitulated by removing our troops.By this time, al-Qa'eda had appropriated a host of other grievances in Palestine, Kashmir, Bosnia, Chechnya, the Philippines and beyond.
The US withdrawal from Saudi will not be enough to satisfy bin Laden or his followers. It may, however, make life easier for the Saudi regime, which has been struggling to quell growing dissent within the kingdom over the presence of "infidel" soldiers.
Its just one of those situations where it's hard to say what the "right" move would be.
If Congress doesn't agree to raise the US debt limit, the US Treasury department says that we could end up defaulting on our debts as a nation.
Now, typically, if you or I were to be facing, essentially, bankruptcy, we would have a difficult time getting someone to let us go further into debt in order to pay of the debts we already have. In part, that's because when people borrow from Peter to pay Paul (as the old saying goes), it tends to get them even deeper into debt and makes it that much harder to climb back out.
Last year, our debt ceiling was at $5.95 trillion (with a "t") and Congress boosted it by $450 billion to our current cap of $6.4 trillion. Now they're talking about raising it again, this time to $7.38 trillion.
Think about that for a minute. When Bush took office, we had a budget surplus. In less than 3 years, we are now facing either allowing ourselves to go $7.38 trillion into debt or have to default on the debt we already owe.
And these figures don't take the Presidents much-desired new tax cuts into account yet.
Now, I'm a normal person. I don't really like paying taxes all that much - but I do it because I understand it's necessary so that we can keep the government - and the country - running. The government keeps talking about how we have to make spending cuts so that we can afford to pay for all the new safety measures that are needed because of the "new" risk of terrorism (a risk that actually isn't new, it's just more real now that one attack has happened). And yet somehow, the Bush administration seems to be of the opinion that giving tax cuts is a good idea and will help the economy?
Think they'll ever let us know what planet it is they're really from?
While insisting that we can afford the tax cuts Bush wants to give (which will primarily benefit the rich), the Transportaion Security Administration has announced that it has to lay off 6,000 airport screeners.
So, while the Bush administration brags about it's "successful" War on Terror™, states are struggling to make ends meet, and, due at least in part to of the costs necessitated by the federal government's "terror alert" code, are having to look at cutting back on basic services such as educational funding and even some safety services; and now the TSA is having to cut back on the number of security screeners it employs. In the meantime, the government is cutting back on our civil liberties (and complaining that other countries - such as Canada - "care too much" about the civil liberties for their own citizens) - claiming the loss of these rights is necessary for our own "security".
I would think that if the government is as concerned about security as it likes to say it is, Bush and the Republicans would be more willing to reduce the tax cuts they're proposing, and put that money towards ensuring that the states have the money they need to increase security when the government declares an "orange" or higher alert, and that we can have an adequate number of airport screeners (and other security personnel) on the job.
From Bush's proclaimation last night:
"No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more."The regime may be no more, but as has been noted in quite a few reports lately, we've not done a great job of securing the sites where we thought Iraq might have been hiding WMDs and it's quite possible that if there were any WMDs there (and I'm still not convinced that there were), pretty much anyone who knew where they were could have gotten them and given them to whomever they want.
But who, really, expects Bush to say anything except that which he thinks will justify his position, make himself look good, or cover up the sheer imcompetence of his administration?
One story that's been a staple of popular true crime documentaries (i.e. "American Justice", "The New Detectives" and "MSNBC Investigates, among others) in the last few years has been the case of little Sabrina Aisenberg. She was taken from her home in 1997 and disappeared without a trace. Sadly, the investigation into her disappearance has been muddled at best, and, resulted in the federal government being ordered to pay $2.8 million to cover the legal fees the Aisenbergs incurred while they were being investigated on the theory that they had killed her. In fact, a good deal of the interest in the story hasn't been because it's a "missing child" case, but because of the way the police mishandled the investigation into her parents and whether they were involved in her disapperance or not. One of the key elements in the case against them, which had led to a grand jury indictment against them, were tapes that had been made via listening devices placed in the Aisenberg's home. The tapes were eventually thrown out, however, when it turned out that most of them were inaudible, and that the police had lied when applying for permission to bug the Aisenbergs.
Now, finally, there may be a break in the case, and it's a doozy.
An Illinois family is cooperating willingly with an investigation into whether the child they've been raising is a girl who disappeared from Florida years ago, police said Friday.Apparently, a woman in Texas was being deported and gave the child to a nurse there, who then gave her to her sister in Pontiac, Illinois. The family wanted to adopt the child, but because there were no papers identifying her nor did she have a birth certificate, the court would not allow it. Instead, the court ordered a search for the girl's parents, and, as part of the search, her photo was posted to a "missing children" website. A woman who saw the picture thought she resembled Sabrina, and contacted the Aisenbergs. The next step will be to do DNA tests to see if the girl is their daughter.A DNA sample has been taken from the 6-year-old known as Paloma, and results are expected within two weeks, Pontiac Police Chief Donald Schlosser said.
If the test results match with Steven and Marlene Aisenberg, the Illinois family will surrender the girl, Schlosser said. He declined to identify the family.
With everything the family has been through, I can only hope that the child turns out to be theirs. To have their hopes raised at this point only to find another dead end would be devestating. I also think is great that the Illinois couple is cooperating and have agreed to give up the girl if it turns out she is Sabrina. Too often in cases like this, even if there should be little question about whether the people who have had custody of a child have any actual right to that custody, they will try to fight to retain custody of the child in court, only adding to the trauma of everyone involved.
This may or may not say much about Senator Santorum, but it is a bit amusing (though not without it's maddening points, also).
Senator in Heated Exchange With Parents of Gay ChildrenFour parents of gay children had a fiery private exchange tonight with Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. The meeting did not go well, and Mr. Santorum, who has infuriated gays by likening homosexuality to incest and bigamy, left in a hurry, tripping over a chair, the parents said.
"What we tried to do in this meeting was reach him on a human level, and we found no humanity there," said Melina Waldo, a former constituent of Mr. Santorum who lives in Haddonfield, N.J. She said he was "condescending, belligerent, argumentative and arrogant."
[...]
Mrs. Kirschner said she spent much of last week telephoning Mr. Santorum's office to request a meeting and was told today that the senator would see them for 10 minutes.
The meeting, with a heated exchange, ran 30 minutes, the parents said. The parents, Mrs. Kirschner said, insisted that the comments were hurtful to their children. Mr. Santorum, they said, wanted to talk about legal terms, insisting that he was just arguing against a right to privacy and that his remarks had been taken out of context.
Finally, an aide interrupted the session and told Mr. Santorum that he would have to leave.
"He couldn't get out of there fast enough," Mr. Kirschner said.
If asked where they thought they might feel safest, I suspect most people would answer either in their home or in their church. And while we all want our homes to be safe, it's pretty well known that homes can be - and are - broken in to on a sadly regular basis. In a church, though, most people expect that they won't have to worry about being the victims of crime. Sure, it happens, but we generally think of it as an abberation, and as a result, crimes that happen in churches still have the power to shock.
Last weekend, one of the more shocking of church crimes happened. In a small church - only 50 members - a little over half of them decided to stay after the service, mingle and have coffee - a time honoured church tradition if there ever was one. In addition to the coffee and snacks one usually expects to find at these gatherings, though, at least 16 parishoners were also served arsnic.
State investigators said today that arsenic found in coffee served on Sunday in a church just north of here had been put there deliberately and that they were treating the death of one man who drank the coffee as a homicide.Now, crimes in churches aren't unheard of. It happens. Generally, though, the crimes committed are aimed at someone in specific or for a specific reason. There have been shootings at gay churches because of the criminal's hatred of gays, shooters who have come in during church services to kill someone in particular, and cases of ministers committing murder, most commonly of their spouse, for all the same reasons anyone else has. And, of course, there have also been the church sex-abuse scandals.Fifteen people remained hospitalized, five of them in serious or critical condition, after drinking the same coffee at a church council meeting at the Gustaf Adolph Lutheran Church in New Sweden, a former potato-farming town of 651 people about 20 miles from the Canadian border.
But a crime like this - where there is, so far, no clear intended victim, and a certain randomness to who was affected (only those who drank the coffee) - is fairly rare within a church, and for that reason, more frightening than many others. In time, we may learn that it's not as random as it first appears, but cases like this tend to be difficult to crack unless the killer does something to give the game away.
Bob Harris has been filling in for Tom Tomorrow at his blog recently, and is now posting there as a guest blogger periodically. He's well worth reading - he has a way of putting things that is both entertaining and thought provoking - so stop by over there and check his stuff out.
In the meantime, I'd like to also point you to an interesting post of his about how the media has been using "passive voice" in writing about the Iraqi war and the actions that our soldiers have been taking. As an example, he offers six headlines from the LA times, including one on the recent shooting of protestors in Iraq.
The last, however, is plainly different -- structured passively, turning a simple story into semantic mud:It is a very interesting observation. I know sometimes I tend to use passive voice more than I probably should - not so much to distort what is happening or to shift blame, but, in all honesty, because I spent too long in one of my jobs writing to lawyers and learned that it's sometimes "safer" to write passively than actively. Whether I continue to do this because it's simply habitual for me (which I think is the case) or because of some unwanted timidity (which is always a possiblity) within me, I'm not sure, but it's something I should probably watch more closely than I do.Tense Standoff Between Troops And Iraqis Erupts In BloodshedHmm. Odd, isn't it? It's actually impossible to know what happened, who was responsible, or what it means. Did blood just suddenly start spurting from every orifice, perhaps, like the Monty Python version of a Sam Peckinpaugh-directed lawn party?Not quite. The actual headline, had it been written as plainly as the others, would have been:
U.S. Troops Fire On Iraqis; 13 Reported Dead
I do think, however, that there's a difference between when someone like me - who is, at best, an amatuer, self-published, unsyndicated opinion columnist - uses passive voice and when the professional media uses it. Amateur opinionators aren't journalists in the same sense that someone reporting for the LA Times, CNN or other mainstream sources are. We expect them to be giving us the straight scoop - "Just the facts, ma'am", or, more accurately, the facts along with a context in which to understand them. That requires the use of active voice - a statement of who did what to whom. As Harrs notes:
As a rule, passive tense equals at least some level of manipulation. Any decent writer knows to avoid it, precisely because it's confusing -- but editors often rely on passive tense to keep uncomfortable questions about individual and collective responsibility (including their own) at bay.Also, in presenting opinions, there are times when passive voice can be useful. One problem opinionaters run into is whey we're writing about a group in general, if a reader strongly identifies with the group and direct, active voice accusations are made about the group, the reader may become defensive and essentially block out any point that is being made. Using passive voice, the writer can describe behaviour that may be attributable to the group being discussed, without necessarily being accustaive - and with a better chance of not alienating the reader.
For "hard news", however, I have to agree with Harris. Passive voice can be confusing and misleading, and is inappropriate for use in news reporting. It's sad to see it happening, and seems to fit in well with the way this war has been covered in general - trying to shift attention away from the more questionable acts in which our leaders and military have been involved. Those actions need to be addressed directly, so that those who are doing them can be held accountable.
The Sidney Morning Herald has an interesting article on the latest "excuses" for the difficulty in finding Iraq's Weapons of Mass Distruction.
There are a couple of paragraphs that make for an interesting comparison:
When Hans Blix, the chief UN weapons inspector, suggested Iraq's WMD program could be more fragmented and degraded, he was pilloried as naive or incompetent. When his inspectors talked of a more complex search for WMD, where components or precursors could be in the form of legal, dual-use chemical or biological agents that had to be monitored, they were dismissed as flatfooted and overcautious.and
According to Dr Rice, the weapons programs are "in bits and pieces" rather than assembled weapons. "You may find assembly lines, you may find pieces hidden here and there," she said. Ingredients or precursors, many non-lethal by themselves, could be embedded in dual-use facilities.Hmmmmm.... The article notes that Rice's current description is closer to what Blix had said initially than she would care to admit, but personally, I have a very hard time telling any difference between the two.She had a new explanation too for Iraq's ability to launch these weapons that were not assembled. "Just-in-time assembly" and "just-in-time" inventory, as she put it.
With everything now in shambles, I suspect it will be much harder to prove which dual-use chemicals, plants or componants were possibly being converted into chemical and biological weapons (if, of course, there were any to start with), than it would have been to try and monitor their use and catch Iraq in the act. Not that either option would be exactly easy - mind you - "easier" is a relative term, but with everything shut down and the general chaos that is taking over Iraq, knowing what anything was being used for is going to be rather tricky.
Link via Tom Tomorrow
Last week, I'd written about the Republican plans for their 2004 Presidential convention - including their plans to exploit the 3rd anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks at the Pentagon and World Trade Center. Because they want to be able to use it as a patriotic backdrop to hype Bush's re-election plans, the Bush administration is trying to make sure that information about what they might have known prior to the attacks stays secret.
As part of these efforts, the Bush administration is not only keeping a significant amount of information contained in an 800 page report prepared by a joint congressional inquiry "classified", but they are even trying to re-classify material that was presented in public hearings so that it cannot be re-released.
The tensions over the release of 9-11 related material seems especially relevant -if not ironic - in light of recent reports that the president's political advisers have devised an unusual re-election strategy that essentially uses the story of September 11 as the liftoff for his campaign. The White House is delaying the Republican nominating convention, scheduled for New York City, until the first week in September 2004 - the latest in the party's history. That would allow Bush's acceptance speech, now slated for Sept. 2, to meld seamlessly into 9-11 commemoration events due to take place in the city the next week.If anything, I'm finding that I feel even more cynical about the Republicans plan to use 9/11 to help get Bush re-elected. Odds are good that they'll be able to keep secret a great deal of the information they don't want released - there have been very few occasions (if any) so far where they've wanted to keep info under wraps and weren't able to do so.
Some sources who have read the still-secret congressional report say some sections would not play quite so neatly into White House plans. One portion deals extensively with the stream of U.S. intelligence-agency reports in the summer of 2001 suggesting that Al Qaeda was planning an upcoming attack against the United States - and implicitly raises questions about how Bush and his top aides responded. One such CIA briefing, in July 2001, was particularly chilling and prophetic. It predicted that Osama bin Laden was about to launch a terrorist strike "in the coming weeks," the congressional investigators found. The intelligence briefing went on to say: "The attack will be spectacular and designed to inflict mass casualties against U.S. facilities or interests. Attack preparations have been made. Attack will occur with little or no warning.”[...]
That issue is now being refought in the context over the full report. The report names names, gives dates and provides a body of new information about the handling of many other crucial intelligence briefings—including one in early August 2001 given to national-security adviser Rice that discussed Al Qaeda operations within the United States and the possibility that the group’s members might seek to hijack airplanes. The administration “working group” is still refusing to declassify information about the briefings, sources said, and has even expressed regret that some of the material was ever provided to congressional investigators in the first place.
While Ashleigh Moore may not be getting much in the way of national coverage, her story is making the rounds of the blogs. Hesiod at Counterspin Central asks a very poignant question:
Will Ashleigh's parents have to create an "Ebony Alert?"I hope not.
UPDATE: In a positive development on covering the story, the Washington Times has run a story about Ashleigh's disapperance - the first I've found outside the Georgia media thus far.
Canadian courts in three provinces have held that gay marriage should be legal in Canada.
Governments should change with the times and recognize gay marriage, the B.C. Appeal Court said today when it joined two other provinces in clearing the way for same sex unions.The BC Justices have suggested reformulating the law so that it would define marriage as "the lawful union of two persons to the exclusion of all others" rather than a union between one man and one woman.The province's highest court overturned a B.C. Supreme Court ruling that said marriage should be restricted to heterosexuals.
In its decision the court gave the federal government until July 12, 2004 to change the law preventing gays and lesbians from marrying.
It is possible that the Justice Minister may appeal this ruling, but the article indicates that he hasn't made a decision on that yet, and will need to take into consideration that 2 other provinces have also held that gay marriage should be legal.
Personally, I've never really understood the objection to gay marriage - except for it being another sign of the general bigotry so many have for homosexuals. Various conservative (and, most often, Christian) groups have complained that recognizing gay marriages would some how "damage" the "institution" of marriage, though I fail to see how. Often, these groups claim that gays shouldn't be allowed to marry because they can't have children, but there are many heterosexuals who cannot have children, and many heterosexual couples who choose not to have children, yet the legitimacy of their marriages aren't questioned in the same way.
One anti-gay-marriage group, Focus on the Family, issued a statement about the ruling today.
Michael Martens, a spokesman for Focus on the Family, a group opposed to same-sex marriage, said he was disappointed with the decision and that the issue should be debated in government.Notice, though, that he doesn't specify what these "benefits" are. I've noticed that a lot - vague mentions that heterosexual marriage provides some vague benefit for society that homosexual marriage would destroy or damage - but those benefits aren't usually very well spelled out.He said the judges haven't taken into consideration the benefits for society which marriage provides.
"Marriage is a social institution, institutions are not about rights, they're about serving society, and marriage does a very good job of that," Martens said outside the court.
"No other relationship provides the unique benefits that marriage does for kids, for the parents themselves and for people who aren't married."
I'm glad to see the Canadian courts begining to ensure that gays can have the save ability to marry that heterosexual couples do. There is no compelling reason to deny them that right. I only hope that some day the US Courts will do likewise.
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