From the Indy Star:
NEW YORK -- The "Nightline" roll call tribute to U.S. troops killed in Iraq will not be seen tonight in several cities because station owner Sinclair Broadcast Group called the broadcast "motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq."Sinclair, which owns eight ABC stations, including those in St. Louis and Columbus, Ohio, and pursues what some critics have called a conservative agenda in its newscasts, said its stations wouldn't air the program.
"While (Sinclair) honors the memory of the brave members of the military who have sacrificed their lives in the service of our country, we do not believe such political statements should be disguised as news content," the Maryland company said in a statement. It owns or operates 62 stations reaching nearly one-fourth of all U.S. TV viewers.
ABC responded in a statement that "we respectfully disagree" with the decision, calling the listing not a political statement but "an expression of respect, which simply seeks to honor those who have laid down their lives for this country."
Political feuding over the broadcast started almost immediately after ABC on Tuesday announced plans to read the names and show the pictures of the more than 500 U.S. service members killed in Iraq hostilities. The program was expanded to 40 minutes so that host Ted Koppel can include more than 200 troops who died in noncombat situations.
Veterans on Thursday expressed mixed views.
"It's a shame that this is America, and we can't watch what we want to on American airways," said Ray Stallings, a Vietnam War veteran in Tallahassee, Fla., after it was reported, erroneously, that the ABC station there would not telecast "Nightline."
But Miles Epling, another Vietnam veteran and state adjutant for the American Legion in Charleston, W.Va., said: "I don't think it says anything against the country to do a show like that, but I don't really understand the purpose of why they're doing it. . . . I feel sorry for their families. They already went through the process of a funeral. They don't need to see this again."
Ok, this is kind of weird - I could have sworn that they just aired the repeat of the ER episode in which an elderly woman's breasts were shown last Thursday, but apparently it's actually scheduled to be repeated tonight - but with the shot of the elderly woman's breasts edited out. I'm sorry for any confusion about that.
The network said Wednesday it had "unfortunately concluded that the atmosphere created by this week's events has made it too difficult for many of our affiliates to air this shot."When I first watched the episode, I wasn't sure why they had felt it necessary to include the shot of the patient's breasts. In the scene, the woman is receiving emergency medical care and her granddaughter become quite agitated when the woman's clothing is removed, exposing her naked chest to the doctors and nurses. The little girl tells the doctors to stop what they're doing, saying her grandmother is DNR and then saying her grandmother wouldn't want to be seen naked.
NBC's decision was criticized by John Wells, the executive producer of the popular and long-running medical drama, who said such "affiliate overreactions" have a "chilling effect" on dramatic integrity.In a statement, Wells called the Jackson incident at last Sunday's Super Bowl "inappropriate and deplorable on a broadcast intended for viewers of all ages."
But "the incidental exposure of an elderly woman's breast in the context of a medical trauma is not comparable," he said.
Viewers advised of a show's adult content are capable of "making the distinction and adjusting their viewing habits accordingly," he said."This type of network behaviour is one of the primary reasons that so many of today's producers and viewers are increasingly turning to HBO and other cable outlets that do not censor responsible storytelling," Wells said.
In its statement, NBC agreed that the scene, in which an 80-year-old woman receives emergency treatment, is "appropriate and in context" and noted it would have aired late in the evening, after 10:30 p.m. EST.
But the network said it couldn't ignore the furor that followed a musical number in which Justin Timberlake pulled off part of Jackson's costume, exposing her breast to 89 million viewers.
While I suppose the nudity helps make it clear that the girl knows her grandmother would be horrified at being seen naked, it wasn't at all necessary to make the point. The scene could have easily been shot from a different angle, or one of the actors could even have been instructed to reach their arm across the patient (like to hand a doctor or nurse an instrument they'll need or something) at the moment that the clothing is removed to cover the actual view of her breasts but still making it clear that she was exposed. These kinds of techniques have been used many, many times and don't really have any effect on how the scene is perceived. The first time I saw this episode, I was so surprised by the nudity that I ended up having to rewind the show a bit so I could catch the dialog from that scene again.
At any rate, it's now been cut. There's something oddly amusing about the idea that it was ok to show it before Janet did her little striptease, and would still be considered ok to show it later in the evening, but right now it has to go. I seriously doubt NBC would have removed it if the re-airing weren't in such close proximity to the Superbowl dust-up. Had it not been scheduled to be repeated until a month or two from now, I'm have a feeling it would have been left in, given our nation's ADD when it comes to scandals.
UPDATE - 3:18 am 2/6/2002: Ok. Well. It looks like I was wrong about being wrong. The episode tonight is a brand-new episode, and was supposed to include a shot of an elderly woman's naked breasts, but the scene was cut. This means that there are at least TWO episodes this season - one that has already aired twice, and the episode tonight - which were filmed to include nudity. No wonder I was a bit confused. It's intersting, though - is using naked, elderly breasts a new "thing" for ER? Seems kinda weird, if you ask me.
Ray Richmond at the Hollywood Reporter has a great editorial on the implications of the exposure of Janet Jackson. Below is an exceprt, but take a minute to read the whole thing.
Let's not waste a lot of time overanalyzing whether this little improvisational diversion may have done emotional harm to any kids who were watching. It was there and gone in a mere few fleeting seconds.If anything is going to damage the moral fiber of America's youth, it's the indignation and fallout in the moment's wake, the high-voltage, far-out-of-proportion reaction of grown men and women.
This naturally isn't about the children. It never is. It's about re-election-minded public officials who won't rest until they work the indecency-outrage angle as much as possible to show that they're not really in bed with Big Media.
Of course, the FCC is already in obscenity crackdown mode. This simply gives the censorheads more fodder. Meanwhile, it's apparently just fine during the game for Bud Light to run a spot that appears to endorse a monkey's being intimate with a woman and another ad (plugging Budweiser) that shows a woman ranting and raving shrewlike at her husband.
The message would seem to be this: It's permissible to demean women, and even to look at them as sexual playthings. God knows football telecasts are chock-full of phallic imagery. But just let one female make the sexuality itself overt and there's hell to pay. Because that's different, you see. That's pornography.
The world is all a titter about the exposure of Janet Jackson's breast during the Superbowl halftime show yesterday. In fact, the FCC is starting an investigation immediately (it took how long to get investigations started into the 9/11 attacks and the validity of the intelligence used as a basis for the Iraqi war?) into not just the breast exposure, but the entire halftime show as a whole.
Powell said his unhappiness with the halftime show went beyond Jackson's exposure. It "wasn't even the most offensive part," the FCC chief said in an interview. "It was the finale of something that was offensive. The whole performance was onstage copulation." He added, "This really crossed a heinous line."Earlier this year, I had written about a scene on ER in which an elderly patient's breasts were fully exposed.The FCC has defined broadcast indecency as "language or material that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community broadcast standards for the broadcast medium, sexual or excretory organs or activities."
Something threw me for a bit of a loop, though - namely, a pair of naked, on-camera, human, female breasts. Last I heard, those were a no-no on broadcast TV - unless, of course, the show is a nature documentary on PBS. Now, I've never quite understood why, exactly, it was ok to show the naked breasts of women in tribal Africa but not the breasts of white women in America, but it was one of those things I just sort of accepted as being the one exception to the rule.Of course, we now know that attractive black breasts are also offensive. Glad that got cleared up. In what has to be a bit of unplanned irony, the ER episode in question was repeated this past Thursday - the breasts were still in plain view, having not caused any kind of a stir following the original broadcast.This week's ER, however, apparently decided that there's a second exception to the rule. If the breasts are over a certain age, it seems, they're safe to show. The woman who's topless shot was included in the show is probably around 75 or so. Interestingly, she, like the African women, is black - and, in both cases, the breasts in question are saggy and what most people would consider unattractive.
Personally, I still think that if people are going to be concerned about the potential negative effects of something shown on broadcast TV, it'd do more good in the long run to focus on the effects of violence rather than nudity (not that I'm in favour of having the government step in and censor either - I'd prefer that viewers make it less profitable for broadcasters to exploit sex and violence to get ratings rather than producing high-quality programming, but that's a whole different rant) - but I find this double standard about women's breasts to be both bizarre and somewhat disturbing. As I wrote in my previous entry on this topic, I can't imagine that it would be considered any less scandalous to show a 75-year-old man's penis than it would be to show a 25-year-old man's penis, yet here we see a clear distinction in how the public reacts to a 75-year-old woman's breasts as opposed to a 37-year-old woman's breast. I still don't get it.
One more thing that kind of hacked me off more than just a little bit.... this is a recent press release from MoveOn.org about Fox News' involvement in the all-night GOP Senate slumber party:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Friday, November 21, 2003
Contact: Simon Aronoff, Jenny Park, 415-901-0111"Fair and Balanced?": Fox News Was PR Brains Behind GOP's "All Nighter" Protest Over Blocked Judicial Nominees
MoveOn.org Launches Online Fox Watch Group to Track Fox News's Partisan Bias
WASHINGTON, DC -- The wall between objective journalism and partisan politicking at Fox News fell last week when it became clear that Fox News staff contributed to the orchestration of the Republican-led 39-hour Senate talk-a-thon intended to counter the Democrat filibuster against four of President Bush's most radically conservative judicial nominees.
"While Howard Dean has claimed the mantle of the 'Democratic wing of the Democratic Party,' Fox News has clearly become the public relations wing of the Republican Party," said Eli Pariser, international campaigns director for MoveOn.org.
The idea for the food-and-cot political spectacle, also known as "Justice for Judges Marathon," had its origins on the editorial pages of the Rupert Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard. Also owned by Murdoch, Fox News took the idea a step further. Fox News anchors Brit Hume and Tony Snow pitched the idea outright to Senator Majority Leader Bill Frist on the October 26th broadcast of Fox News Sunday. Two weeks after Frist appeared on the show, the two-day marathon was announced.
To chart this alarming disintegration of journalistic standards, MoveOn.org recently created an online "Fox Watch" group made up of thousands of Americans who have signed up to monitor Fox News daily and hold it accountable for specific instances of manipulations or distortions of truth and partisan bias.
In recent weeks, the evidence of partisan bias at Fox News and in other Murdoch-owned media outlets has been rolling in from watchdog sources. Here are some additional highlights:
The credibility of Fox's so-called commitment to 'fair and balanced' reporting has been completely shattered," said Eli Pariser, international campaigns director for MoveOn.org. "Brit Hume and others on his staff need to ask themselves if their job is to cover the news or make the news by orchestrating PR coups for Bush Republicans."
- May 19: The Murdoch-owned Weekly Standard publishes an editorial calling for "marathon, stay-up-all-night sessions like those of yesteryear" in response to Senate Democrats' efforts to block Bush's four most radical judicial nominees.
- October 26: Fox News anchors Hume and Snow, in an interview with Senator Frist, challenge the Senator's repeated contention that an all-night protest session would be counterproductive. Snow prods, "Make people stay in all night. Make it the central political event in Washington. Why won't you do it?"
- November 12: According to a leaked email, a producer for Hume's evening news show, Special Report with Brit Hume, worked directly with a staffer for Senator Frist, in an effort to choreograph the launch of the Republican protest as a "live opening shot" for Hume's November 12 newscast. As reported in The Hill, the leaked memo read:
"It is important to double efforts to get your boss to S-230 on time ... Fox News Channel is really excited about this marathon and Brit Hume at 6 would love to open with all our 51 senators walking onto the floor -- the producer wants to know will we walk in exactly at 6:02 when the show starts so they get it live to open Brit Hume's show? Or if not, can we give them an exact time for the walk-in start?"- 9/11 Commission News Blackout: Following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Congress created a 10-person commission over intense White House objections. Thomas Kean, the former New Jersey Republican governor and chair of the commission has called it "the largest investigation of the United States government in U.S. history." Yet Murdoch-owned media including Fox News, New York Post and Weekly Standard have virtually blacked out all commission-related news. In the case of the Standard, there has not been one single mention of the commission in the nearly 50 issues that have come out since the commission was formed.
- November 17 Sun exclusive: President Bush granted a single one-on-one interview to the British press for his visit to England: the Murdoch-owned London tabloid The Sun. No surprise here. This is the same newspaper responsible for a recent story, "Bush Shows Tax Cuts Can Boost Economy."
Documentation available at:
http://www.moveon.org/mediacorps/fairandbalanced_sources.html
Yeah, that headline might sound a bit weird, but that's basically what's happening. Apparently, someone has been trying to shop around some nude photos that are supposed to be of Jessica Lynch.
Rumors of nude photos of Lynch, 20, have been swirling for several months.Well, the pictures have now been purchased - by Larry Flynt, of Hustler fame. What makes the story interesting is that he didn't buy them to use in any of his magazines - he bought them so that they wouldn't be published anywhere.In September, two Army ex-comrades allegedly tried to sell topless pictures of Lynch to Globe, a supermarket tabloid, for $200,000.
That's certainly not the expected behaviour from someone like Flynt, but I have to say I'm quite impressed, and more than a bit grateful. Pvt. Lynch has already been exploited by so many people and for so many purposes that I find it touching that someone - anyone - is trying to look out for her for a change, and not just what she can do for them.
Link via Atrios
I just thought this quote from Eric Alterman's article on CBS's decision to pull the Reagan biopic was worth sharing:
Amazing but true, the far-right media machine has successfully held CBS entertainment to a higher standard of truth regarding the docudrama, "The Reagans" than the news media manages to hold the Bush administration regarding the war in Iraq.
The issue of making corrections hasn't always been a big issue in the blogosphere, but I think it's likely that, as time goes on, if blogs want to become a major legitimate force in public discourse, it's going to become a much more important. Ryan at the Dead Parrot Society has a post today on this issue, looking at the recent story about the White House website and their robots.txt file.
One of the things he points out is that even after the story was published in 2600 Magazine that they had spoken to someone in the White House who had offered an explaination as to why the change was made, many of the sites that had posted about the original story hadn't made note of the correction. In particular, the DNC blog, Kicking Ass, which has been largely responsible for how widely the story was spread, had no indication of the additional information.
Personally, I'm not sure I would categorize the 2600 information as a "correction", since that would indicate that it conclusively shows that the other theory - that they were trying to block the potential caching of pages that they might need to "update" in the future - is wrong - but it certainly its a plausible and reasonably legitimate explanation for the White Houses actions and at the very least offers a viable alternate theory of what happened. As such, even if a full-blown "correction" might not be warranted, I do agree that the information should be brought to the attention of people looking into the story.
That's why when I found out about the 2600 story, I decided to not only post an update to the blog itself, but also added a "Note" to an earlier post I'd written about the White House having edited certain web pages back in August to change headlines and other statements saying that Bush had declared "combat operations" as having ended to showing that he'd declared "major combat operations" had ended. That post had been linked to by the DNC's original story on the robots.txt file, and since I knew it was still getting a lot of traffic, I wanted to make sure that people coming to the site knew there was more information on the story.
Now, I'm not perfect at getting corrections posted (or at anything else for that matter), but if I know I've made a major screw up, I do try to get some kind of an update posted. What worries me, though, is that there are many blogs on both sides that don't ever seem to make note of any new information that might contradict something they've said before, or acknowledge if they're wrong.
The thing is, the only way blogs will have any credibility and be able to live up to their promise as a tool to help with promoting issues and agendas or helping lesser known - but important - stories break into the mainstream, is if authors and editors make a genuine, good faith effort to present valid information and to let their readers know if they've gotten something wrong. Readers need to be able to put reasonable trust in blogs. I'm doubt we'll ever have the credibility of the mainstream press - but we need to be more credible than the tabloids.
After spending most of the last 24-hours in a Rush (the band, not the idiot)-induced haze (::ahhhhhh!:: and good haze it is!) I'm finally returning to the land of the non-Canadian power trios and decided to catch up on all the TV shows I've been putting off, starting with ER.
Something threw me for a bit of a loop, though - namely, a pair of naked, on-camera, human, female breasts. Last I heard, those were a no-no on broadcast TV - unless, of course, the show is a nature documetary on PBS. Now, I've never quite understood why, exactly, it was ok to show the nakes breasts of women in tribal Africa but not the breasts of white women in America, but it was one of those things I just sort of accepted as being the one exception to the rule.
This week's ER, however, apparently decided that there's a second exception to the rule. If the breasts are over a certain age, it seems, they're safe to show. The woman who's topless shot was included in the show is probably around 75 or so. Interestingly, she, like the African women are black - and, in both cases, the breasts in question are saggy and what most people would consider unattractive.
So, what, exactly, is the rule, then? Are just perky, standard-issue "sexy" breasts unviewable, but it's ok to show any that "no one" would find attractive? There's something about that kind of reasoning that just seem off. I can't imagine that it would be considered ok to show a 75-year-old man's penis on a prime-time TV show - probably because there's no real standard of beauty for penises.
Honestly, I'm not sure why this bugs me, but it seems like the standards are anything but standard. It's not "no sex organs can be shown on broadcast TV", but "no sex organs, except unattractive female breasts, can be shown on TV" - on the apparent theory that showing either male or attractive female genitalia would somehow cause a erosion of our morals and values. At the same time, however, they seem to try and get as close as they can to showing attractive breasts (I'm expecting that soon all that will be required as a "shirt" will be a couple strategically placed Band-Aids), and they also like to show as much sexual activity as possible, without exposing any of the forbidden body parts.
There's no rhyme or reason to it.
If anyone understand what the deal is, would you be willing to explain it to me?
When I posted the previous entry about the NPR Ombudsman Jeffrey Dvorkin's response to questions raised about part of a story being cut, I also sent an e-mail to him asking the same question - and he responsded:
Dear Kriselda Jarnsaxa,While some may think that's a bit of a "lame" excuse for cutting an important part of a story, I still remember how much fun it could be trying to figure out how to fit all the news I wanted to include into the amount of time available when I was at my old church's station. I found I either had to cut a lot of information I wanted to include or read the news really fast - and reading news really fast isn't usually the best choice if you want to be understood.It was edited for time. The first edition was done live and ran over the
allotted length.Rgds.
Jeffrey Dvorkin, the ombudsman at National Public Radio offers an explaination for why the written transcript of a report was different from the story as broadcast by NPR. He ends up providing at least part of an answer, but seems to have missed what the question was really about.
A number of Web sites such as the Traprock Peace Center and Eschaton urged their readers to complain to NPR about an apparent discrepancy in a news story between the audio and its transcript.It's not a bad answer, as far as it goes - but it doesn't go nearly far enough. The main reason the question was being raised is that, as Dvorkin noted, the allegation about the Justice department being asked for and granting a delay in notifying the White House staff is an important part of the story, and the reason for it's removal should be offered.The story aired during Morning Edition on October 2. The report by legal affairs correspondent Nina Totenberg concerned the naming of a CIA operative who is the wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson. [...]
Totenberg, in discussion of this story with host Bob Edwards, mentioned that the White House asked that the Justice Department delay the announcement of the investigation for several hours.
[...] Although Totenberg mentioned this in her report, the transcript showed no such allegation.
[...] Here's what was said on the air but is still missing from the transcript:
TOTENBERG: "The White House asked for and got permission earlier this week to wait a day before issuing a directive to preserve all documents and logs which led one seasoned federal prosecutor to wonder why they wanted to wait a day, and who at the justice department told them they could do that, and why?"An important part of the story, no doubt.The explanation from NPR is straightforward:
Morning Edition and All Things Considered are updated and re-fed to accommodate listeners in each time zone. Because it is cost prohibitive and repetitive for NPR to provide text and audio of every feed, it is our practice to use, for archival purposes, the last and most up-to-date, feed of each program as the final text. However, you can find the original audio of this piece on our Web site, www.npr.org.It's an explanation that makes the best sense, but perhaps not in an environment where listeners can assume the worst.In future, NPR Online might better serve its readers (especially in these politically charged times) by noting where a story has been edited for time between its first and last editions.
Dear Kriselda Jarnsaxa,While some may think that's a bit of a "lame" excuse for cutting an important part of a story, I still remember how much fun it could be trying to figure out how to fit all the news I wanted to include into the amount of time available when I was at my old church's station. I found I either had to cut a lot of information I wanted to include or read the news really fast - and reading news really fast isn't usually the best choice if you want to be understood.It was edited for time. The first edition was done live and ran over the
allotted length.Rgds.
Looks like it's not just Fox News encouraging people to call someone at home. Apprently, the hone phone number of US District Judge Lee R. West has been posted on websites, and many talk show hosts, columnists, bloggers and others have been exhorting people to call him there and make their displeasure with his decision to stop the FTC's "Do Not Call" list from going into effect.
Egged on by talk show hosts and angry Web sites, people have flooded West's office and home with calls and faxes, apparently trying to show him why they wanted to ban unsolicited sales calls.It's really no more acceptable to encourage people to call this Judge at home than it was for Fox to give out his Tucker's number. While I know that calling the judge at his office to register displeasure ends up making more work for everyone there, if calls have to be made, that would be the more appropriate place."They are just calling to tie up our lines," said Rick Wade, operations manager at the district clerk's office. "They just keep calling to harass us, like the telemarketers harass them, I guess."
The phones at the federal courthouse were jammed Thursday morning and voicemail boxes were stuffed with messages blasting West's ruling that the Federal Trade Commission lacked authority to create and operate the registry.
West's home and office telephone numbers were posted on the Internet, and consumers angry with the ruling were encouraged to call. Calls by The Associated Press to West's home seeking comment were blocked by busy signals.
During a discussion on Thursday's Crossfire (CNN) regarding telemarketing, a viewer e-mailed co-host Tucker Carlson, telling him he wanted to "direct market" some "junk" he had in his garage him. Tucker, who had been defending telemarketers, said he'd give the writer his home number.
Carlson praised the writer for his good idea, and co-host Paul Begala, egging him on, dared Carlson to give out his number.Notice those ellipses after "Carlson said"? Well, yes, I left out a bit there - and it's a good one. Carlson gave out a phone number, but it wasn't the one to his home. No, he gave out the number to the FOX News Channel's Washington bureau - who promptly got quite a number of calls."Get out your pen," Carlson said...
"You can reach me there anytime," Carlson said. "That's fine. I have defended telemarketers. Feel free to call me, someone is always there."
Now, what Carlson did is juvinille at best. Giving out your rivals phone number so that they get a bunch of prank calls is something most people grow out of by the time they reach high school - or, at worst, college. But here we have someone who's supposed to be considered a national-level journalist pulling a childish prank on his competition. It gives me so much faith in our media to see stuff like that.
FOX, however, couldn't let it go. And while I can understand their desire for retribution, I can't say that I necessarily think that their response is a whole lot more mature. What did they do? Just what you might expect - they published Tucker Carlson's real home phone number on their website so that people can call him directly.
And I'm supposed to take these people seriously as sources of important information?
Editor and Publisher has a great article on how little attention Bush's admission that there is no link between Saddam and 9/11 is getting in the mainstream media. Unfortuantely, they made one small but consequential error in the article. This is essentially the text of a letter I sent to the reporter and the "Letters to the Editor" section, with the hopes that maybe they'll at least be abe to get some notice made of the fact that, even as he was trying to convince us that Saddam was involved in 9/11, he knew that there wasn't sufficient evidence to make that claim.
The article states that this is the first time that Bush has made such an acknowledgement. Back on January 31, 2003, however, President Bush and Prime Minister Blair held a joint press conference, the transcript of which is available at the official White House website.
Q One question for you both. Do you believe that there is a link between Saddam Hussein, a direct link, and the men who attacked on September the 11th?This was months before we actually started the war, and it was also prior to his sending notification to Congress that he intended to invade Iraq. Yet, even when writing that notification, he still went to pains to attempt to link Saddam and the 9/11 attacks - after publicly admitting that he could not claim such a link existed.THE PRESIDENT: I can't make that claim.
THE PRIME MINISTER: That answers your question. The one thing I would say, however, is I've absolutely no doubt at all that unless we deal with both of these threats, they will come together in a deadly form. Because, you know, what do we know after September the 11th? We know that these terrorists networks would use any means they can to cause maximum death and destruction. And we know also that they will do whatever they can to acquire the most deadly weaponry they can. And that's why it's important to deal with these issues together.
I have also determined that the use of armed force against Iraq is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.The text in this notification does not specifically state that Iraq is one of the that falls under the "including those nations, organization or person who.... September 11, 2001", but there is no other purpose for that line to even have been included as part of his official justification for the war except to try and mislead people into think that a connection does exist - and making this impression is important as it is one of the conditions Congress placed upon the President for justifying the use of military force. It echoes the language used in Public Law 107-243 ("Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution 2002") which gave the President authorization to attack Iraq on the conditions quoted below, but its purpose is still to mislead people into thinking that a link does exist.
(a) AUTHORIZATION.—The President is authorized to use the Armed Forces of the United States as he determines to be necessary and appropriate in order to—There were three conditions placed on the President in justifying the use of military force. Force had to be considered the only way to defend against the "continuing threat" posed by Iraq *and* to enforce the UN resolutions, and the President had to determine that attacking Iraq would be "consistent" with taking necessary actions against terrorists, including those who were involved in 9/11. At the time he submitted his determination to Congress, however, its becoming clear that Bush already knew that there was no evidence supporting the idea that Iraq was a threat (and that there was no reason to believe that continued inspections would not be of use) and Bush had already admitted that he knew knew there was no link between Saddam and 9/11 (or terrorists in general, to the best of my knowledge)(1) defend the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq; and(b) PRESIDENTIAL DETERMINATION.—In connection with the exercise of the authority granted in subsection (a) to use force the President shall, prior to such exercise or as soon thereafter as may be feasible, but no later than 48 hours after exercising such authority, make available to the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate his determination that—
(2) enforce all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq.(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic or other peaceful means alone either (A) will not adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq or (B) is not likely to lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq; and(2) acting pursuant to this joint resolution is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorist and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.
I initially blogged about this on March 24, 2003 and have been trying since then to get people to recognize that first admission for what it truly is - evidence that Bush knowingly took us into the Iraq war at least in part on false pretenses, and that he had no problem misleading the American people into believing something he, himself, knew wasn't true.
It's horrible that his admission from last week hasn't been more widely acknowledged, but it is quite frankly shameful that the media in general never picked up on his earlier, pre-war admission, or questions how he could have provided the notification he did to Congress when he knew that at least part of what it clearly implies was false. I think that, in and of itself, should be considered a very serious issue, and one that deserved more investigation that it's likely to ever get.
Be sure to read Dana Milbank's beautiful column today on potential legal violations by President Bush - flag desecration (for signing a flag, in violation of Federal statutes forbidding the "marking" of a flag) and misappropriation of the official White House website for political purposes (or, worse, a possible violation of anti-bribery statutes, if the White House tries to claim that speeches given at fundraisers are "official" activities and not political ones).
Speaking of Bush and websites, Milbank points out the changing of the headlines on articles at the official White House website about Bush's declaration on the USS Abraham Lincoln in May, and notes that on the "compassion" photo gallery of the Bush/Cheney '04 campaign site, Bush is photographed mainly with minorities, yet in some of the other galleries on the site, he's photographed mainly with whites. Bush may not be totally colourblind, but I'd have to say he's rather tone-deaf.
Milbank also discusses how Bush is trying to get over the minor flap he caused by calling his wife "the lump in bed next to me", though I suppose it's good to know that Laura Bush has found the key to making a marriage stronger.
In an interview for the October Ladies' Home Journal, the two described their marriage as stronger than before their ascent to the White House. "All the things that might've irritated me, like not hanging up his towels, I don't have to worry about anymore," Laura Bush said. "Someone in the White House hangs up the towels."Milbank has written some of the best articles that call Bush's actions and policies into question, and it's fun to see so many bits of true Presidential crap in one place, but, Dana? Think you can get anything more on the really big stuff, too? We need someone who's willing to look past the image Bush and most of the rest of the media have tried to cultivate, and I think you might just be the right person for the job!
CNN.com - Fox drops lawsuit over Franken book - Aug. 25, 2003
Monday, the cable news network withdrew the underlying lawsuit in a one-page court filing.It's only logical that Fox would drop the suit after the drubbing they took in court the other day, but it sure feels good to get to post about it :)"It's time to return Al Franken to the obscurity he's normally accustomed to," a Fox spokeswoman later told CNN.
Floyd Abrams, the lead attorney for Franken and his publisher, Penguin Group, told CNN, "Fox's decision to abandon its efforts at interfering with the sale of Al Franken's new book is welcome, if overdue. The case never should have been brought."
As for the effects of the suit? Penguin, Franken's publisher, now has 510,000 copies of the book printed - up 210,000 from the initial 300,000 it had shipped for the speeded-up release.
I've removed the image and my comments on it, as I've been informed that the image was, in fact, valid. The buildings that looked like the WTC are an office complex under construction. Visitor Bob (in comments) pointed out that the WTC would have been much taller against the skyline.
I sincerely regret the error.
Fox lost it's bid today to obtain a preliminary injunction against the release of Al Franken's new book, "Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right." Part of Fox's contention had been that, since there was a picture of Bill O'Reilly on the cover and the subtitle was one of Fox's trademarked slogans, consumers might be confused and think that the book was somehow affiliated with Fox News or endorsed by them.
[US District Judge Denny] Chin appeared skeptical of her argument, interrupting her to say, "The president and vice president are also on the cover, are they not? Is someone going to think they're also affiliated with Fox?"Chin also noted that he found the case to be "wholly without merit, both factually and legally."
So, Franken's book can go ahead and be sold. Apparently, because of the additional publicity the suit generated, Franken's publisher has ordered an extra 50,000 copies for the first run and moved the release date up by several weeks.
From the Monster Limo Web Log we learn that movie executives have figured out why movies this years have bombed so badly. Eschewing any notion that bad plots, poor acting, over-dependence on sizzle rather than actual story "steak", lack of originality or other such practical matters, they've settled for blaming it on kids and their damnable text-messaging.
"In the old days, there used to be a term, 'buying your gross,' " Rick Sands, chief operating officer at Miramax, told the Los Angeles Times. "You could buy your gross for the weekend and overcome bad word of mouth, because it took time to filter out into the general audience."Right. Because those hand-held voice-message devices (more commonly called "telephones") weren't fast enough.But those days are over, because the technology of hand-held text-message devices has drastically cut down the time it takes for movie-goers to tell their friends that a heavily promoted summer action movie is a waste of time and money.
Drug Abuse Can Happen To Your Teen.
I know, I know... they're trying to counter the mentality that "Drug Abuse can't happen to my child", but by phrasing it this way, they're reallly sounding kind of silly. I mean, how does Drug Abuse happen? Does it sneak up on an innocent child, and jump them like a mugger? Is it like a virus that gets passed from one kid to the next? I suppose in a metaphorical sense, both of those could be considered valid examples, but sending a message to parents that "Drug Abuse Can Happen To Your Teen" sure makes it sound like they're implying that the teen has no part in whether it happens or not.
From Morat at Skeptical Notion I found this editorial by the editors at the Washington Post, who seem to be a bit callous to the problems Europeans are having with the extreme (for them) heat they're experiencing. I usually don't copy an editorial or other piece whole like this, but this one is short, and I think it should be read in full to make sure the context is clear.
To listen to the fuss Europeans are making about their weather, anyone would think that it was actually hot over there. In Paris, shops have experienced a run on electric fans. In Sweden, a male bus driver showed up for work in a skirt after his company informed him that he was not allowed to wear shorts. In Amsterdam, zookeepers are giving iced fruit to their chimpanzees to cool them off.I am a notoriously bad driver (don't worry - I've been homebound for about 5 years now, so no one's at any risk from me). I mention this because when I lived in Seattle, my friends all knew just how bad of a driver I am, but they also knew I came from Kansas. They also knew that in Kansas we have snow. Whether the streets were bone dry or if it had been raining, my friends would not let me anywhere NEAR the wheel of the car. It was strictly off limits to me. Put even the lightest dusting of frost on the ground, however, and they were BEGGING me to drive, because "You know how to drive in snow!"Okay, so maybe it's a bit warmer than usual. Temperatures across the continent have shot up into the 90s and once or twice have topped 100 degrees in London and Paris. But is this really hot -- hot enough to close businesses, hot enough to cancel trains (the tracks might buckle), hot enough to wax nostalgic for the summer rain to which some Europeans, notably residents of the British Isles, are more accustomed?
Last time we checked, the weather here in Washington was in the upper 80s, which is average to low for this time of year. Temperatures in Houston and Dallas in the past couple of days have topped 100, as they usually do in summer. Yet somehow, no one's talking about extraordinary measures being taken by Texans or Washingtonians. On the contrary, President Bush, who qualifies as both, by some measures, is currently mocking the press corps by pretending to enjoy jogging in the Texas heat. Not all Europeans may want to go this far -- but maybe they will now at least stop turning up their noses at those American summer inventions they've long loved to mock: The office window that doesn't open, the air conditioner that produces sub-arctic temperatures and the tall glass of water, served in a restaurant, filled to the brim with ice.
Of course, what they failed to comprehend is that there's another difference between Kansas and Seattle - Seattle has hills. Hills, snow and bad driving tend not to mix very well.
Even after I pointed this out to them, however, they STILL wanted me to drive.
I find it repugnant that we've got major newspapers making fun of countries who are having trouble dealing with high temperatures they aren't accustomed to. Just as my Seattle friends were so unused to driving in show that they'd let me drive instead, people in Europe just haven't had to deal with temperatures like this and have to go to extremes to cope. That people are dying from it makes their callousness even worse.
A Fair and Balanced list of other Fair and Balanced blogs participating in the Fair and Balanced Friday project can be found at the extremely Fair and Balanced Blah3 blog. Be sure to give them a few minutes of your time!
In case you've been asleep for most of the week (and since I've had a few weeks like that myself, I know it's quite possible *g*) and don't know what the Fair and Balanced hoopla about being Fair and Balanced is, well, it turns out that Fox News, having trademarked "Fair and Balanced" as one of their slogans, have decided that it's unfair and imbalanced for someone to try and use it as part of a work of satire making fun of them (despite the laws that generally allows such usage, even of trademarked terms). And, since Al Franken had the Fair and Balanced balls to title his new book "Lies and the Lying Liars who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right", Fox News sued him.
Well, we (me and all the others participating in this protest) feel that Fox's reaction is, well, fairly unbalanced. Franken is a satirist. His job is to make fun of people, organizations and others who do stupid things while making a sharp point at the same time. How well he does that is open to interpretation. Personally, I'm not a big fan of Franken or his work. But I am a fan of satire and our right to engage in it. When Fox - one of the most blatantly biased news organizations there is, started calling themselves "Fair and Balanced", it became an immediate joke - because they're anything but. Franken's title takes legitimate aim at the target Fox presents.
When the news of Fox's suit again Franken broke, several blogs, including different strings, added the "Fair and Balanced" slogan to our blog in some way as a sign of solidarity with Franken in his position that his use of the phrase was legitimate satire. Currently there are approximately 250-300 blogs who have joined the protest which started with Atrios at Eschaton.
So, that's a brief (well, brief for me, anyway) history of this Fair and Balanced project. Like I said, take some time to visit the other Fair and Balanced sites - and I hope you have a very Fair and Balanced day. Me? It's time for my Fair and Balanced nap.
Here's some of how Fox News describes Al Franken in their lawsuit against him.
Fox said in the suit that Franken flew into a rage near a table of Fox News personalities at a press correspondents' dinner in April and acted "either intoxicated or deranged."My understanding is that lawsuits should be based on legal issus. To the best of my knowledge, there is nothing in copyright or trademark laws - both of which allow the use of copyrighted or trademarked material for the purpose of satire - that actually requires the satire to be funny, or the presenter of the satire to be well-respected, un-shrill, stable or, for that mater, even sober. These comments bring nothing to the case other than a chance for Fox News to smear Franken and make themselves look even smaller and pettier than usual.It said Franken has become "increasingly unfunny."
"Franken is neither a journalist nor a television news personality. He is not a well-respected voice in American politics; rather, he appears to be shrill and unstable," the suit said.
While I don't think their suit has any merit (not that I'm a legal expert or anything), if they were going to sue, it would have been far better for them to stick to the actual legal issues involved, rather than trying to slime Franken with the ectoplasmic residue of their inhumanly thin skins.
Last night, the local PBS affiliate in my area showed the new PBS special Watergate Plus 30: The Shadow of History. If it comes on in your area, you really should take a chance to watch it. The only really "new" bit in the story is Jeb Magruder's revelation that he witnessed the phone conversation in which President Nixon gave the authorization for the Watergate burglery and attempted bugging of the DNC headquarters to be done - the first time anyone's claimed that they knew Nixon was personally involved and aware of the operation. This comes in the very last few minutes of the program, and, while an interesting bit of news, it's not, by far, the heart of the program (something I'd been a bit concerned about when I read news stories announcing the claim in the days before the show debuted).
The program itself is very well done. They provide a good bit of background information on the atmosphere in America at the time, and looked beyond just the Watergate incident itself to things such as the attempt to break into Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office in hopes of stealing information from the psychiatrist's files that could be used to discredit Ellsbert, who had angered Nixon greatly by leaking the Pentagon Papers to the press.
There are interviews with several of the key players who are still alive, and quite a bit of footage from the Congressional hearings on the entire incident.
One aspect of the show that was almost creepily eerie was how similar Bush II and Nixon are in the way they regard people who oppose them or disagree with their plans, policies or actions. They both tend to see opponents as "unpatriotic" and dissent as "unAmerican". They're both highly secretive and ego-driven, and they both seem to think that anything is justifiable in the furtherance of their agendas.
All in all, it was a very impressive show, and I highly recommend it to anyone who needs a reminder of just how bad it can get when a president considers himself to be beyond the law.
This may be one of the only times you see me link to the New York Post, but this story is just too, er, punny.
In case you weren't aware, the obituary for Bob Hope that was published in the New York Times was written by Vincent Canby.
Canby died in 2000.
We all want to give our colleagues - and fellow working stiffs - their due, but isn't the practice a little unusual?There's more. Go. Laugh. You've earned it. :)Usually when an editor sends someone to the morgue, he means the area where long-ago clippings are stored.
Paul Krugman responds to Frank Gaffney's assertions that criticism of Bush's decisions-making process and handling of the Iraqi war bring aide and comfort to Saddam Hussen with a very sharp point (unlike the bludgeoning with a blunt instrument I peformed below):
Well, if we're going to talk about aiding the enemy: By cooking intelligence to promote a war that wasn't urgent, the administration has squandered our military strength. This provides a lot of aid and comfort to Osama bin Laden - who really did attack America - and Kim Jong Il - who really is building nukes.Yeah. That too.
Frank Gaffney has a lot of gall.
In an article in Canada's National Post, he claims that by criticizing President Bush's decision-making process and handling of the war in Iraq, we're only serving to - get this - make Saddam happy, and thus stronger. I know I usually try to avoid foul language in the blog - not so much because I have any personal objection to it, but because I consider it to be somewhat inappropriate to the kinds of things I'm writing about, but fuck it. This is complete and total bullshit. Absolute crap, and infuriating as well.
Here's the infamous opening to his article (which I'd seen parts of, but after having read a longer exceprt, I finally became angry enough to go read the whole damn thing. My blood is rushing through my ears right now, and I can feel the veins pulsing on my forehead. It's that bad):
Somewhere, probably in Iraq, Saddam Hussein is gloating. He can only be gratified by the feeding frenzy of recriminations, second-guessing and political power-plays that are currently assailing his nemeses: U.S. President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.If anything is giving Saddam encouragement, it's not that people are pointing out how badly Bush screwed the pooch on this whole mess - it's the fucking mess itself! Saddam doesn't need to hear a word from anyone on this side of the world to know that the Iraqi people are pissed as all getout at the Americans occupying their country and want us the hell gone. If he is still in Iraq, all he has to do is have those who are still loyal to him look around and find those who are beginning to think life was better when he was in charge, or at least no worse.The hysteria surrounding charges that faulty British intelligence about one aspect of Saddam's nuclear weapons program -- and a Bush 2003 State of the Union allusion thereto -- may even be emboldening Saddam to believe the unimaginable: He might yet survive (physically and perhaps politically) the current pair of U.S. and British leaders, just as he did their predecessors in the wake of Operation Desert Storm.
It was pointed out a few weeks back - and I'm sorry, but I forget exactly where - that some areas where our troops are being attacked are Shi'ite controlled area. Now remember that Saddam and his Ba'athists are Sunni, and the Sunni's and the Shi'ites don't like each other at all. If, as the government alleges, the attacks on our forces are mainly by Ba'athists, it means that the Shi'ites are either letting them make attacks in Shi'ite territory or are just refusing to do anything to stop them (subtle difference, but I suppose some would find it important). If that's the case - and it appears to be - it says something about how little the Shi'ites like us.
Gaffney then goes on to say:
Unfortunately, such is the extent of the animus towards this President (especially among Democrats running to succeed him and their party's left-wing base for which they are competing) that a concerted effort is being mounted to savage his reputation. The focus of this partisan attack, not surprisingly, is Mr. Bush's stewardship of the one portfolio that has thus far seriously impeded efforts to unseat him -- namely, his outstanding performance as wartime Commander-in-Chief.
Outstanding performance? WHAT OUTSTANDING PERFORMANCE????? I haven't see any outfuckingstanding performance here, have you? Who the hell does he think he's fooling?
Ok, so Gaffney thinks criticism of Bush's "outstanding" performance is unwarrented and just a partisan attempt to score points? How, exactly, can criticism over the decision-making and handling of the war make our problems in Iraq any worse? Hell if I know, except maybe waking more people up to how badly this has been done, and create more pressure on the government to start doing a better job.
Maybe, just maybe, if the Bush administration starts to worry that it's days are numbered as the tide of public opinion turns against the job they're doing, they'll realize they need to do things differently. Maybe they'll realize they need to acknowledge that we actually do need help from the rest of the world, and that if it means we need to hand over control of the situation to the UN, so be it.
I don't give a flying fuck what the jackasses at the PNAC wanted to get out of the Iraq war. Obviously, their plan isn't going too well, is it? What we need now is just to GET OUT of Iraq - once we've managed to help get things to a point where they can have a functional nation. We aren't going to manage to do that by ourselves. I think we've demonstrated that pretty well. We need to welcome the assistance of the rest of the world, even if it means Bush and his cronies need to swallow their pride, give up their imperial dreams and admit that maybe, just maybe, they underestimated the reaction and resolve of the Iraqi people.
And excuse me, Mr. Gaffney, if I happen to think it's rather important to know if the government based its decision to go to war on something other than the evidence they presented to us and to the rest of the world, and which they maniuplated, exaggerated and "fudged" to try and convince others to go along with it. It's pretty clear that the reasons they've given us aren't all there is to it - and, considering that the PNAC have been wanting to overthrow Saddam since even before Bush took office, you'll excuse me if I don't think that the information they presented to us has little, if anything, to do with why they actually wanted this war. Since its my tax dollars paying for this fiasco, and since my fellow citizens are now risking, and far too often losing, their lives fighting it, I think I'm entitled to some answers.
So, as far as I'm concerned, all those who think we should just close our eyes, shut our mouths and pretend eveything is hunky dory can go fuck themselves - and each other for all I care. They can't go fucking any dogs, though, because I like dogs too much for that. You're "Bush said it, I believe it, that does it" approach to their faith-based intelligence and faith-based foreign policy hasn't done a damn thing. IF Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and we don't know where they are, odds are good someone we don't want to have them has got them. Instead of making the world safer, this war may well have made it more dangerous. You can't deny that there are enough angry Iraqis to give al Qaeda a whole new generation of recruits with a particular beef to pick with us. You can't deny that, aside from it not taking long to topple Saddam himself, none of the war-lover's predictions have worked out the way they said. You can't deny that, in spite of Fighter Jock GI President's simplistic "Mission Accomplished" photo-op that the mission is anything but accomplished. And you can't deny that more and more of our citizens are dying every day because of the complete mishandling of this entire situation.
When it comes down to it, when a President takes our country into war - regardless of any other factors, he is the only one who can decide if we should go, and it is incumbent upon him to make sure he truly knows what the situation is, what is likely to happen and why the war is being waged. Ignorance of the truth is no excuse for making a bad decision. Lying to justify you want a war that has little to no justificaion is no excuse for killing anyone. General incompetence is simply inexcusable.
When all is said and done, the President got us into this war. He needs to get us out, and do so quickly and efficiently, but without abandoning the Iraqis to the mercy of whomever is willing to try and fill the void left by our actions. If it goes well, the President gets the praise. If it doesn't, he gets the blame.
Whether he or anyone else wants to hear it.
Well, since writing my last post, I've learned that the BBC has confirmed that David Kelly was the source of Andrew Gilligan's report that Alastair Campbell ordered the "dodgy dossier" be "sexed up". Given that Kelly denied having said that to Gilligan when he was questioned by the Foreign Affairs Special Committee, the BBC is going to have quite a few questions to answer of its own. In addition to having to explain Dr. Kelly's denial that he said anything about Campbell or the "45 minutes" claim, they also have to explain why the report referred to their source as a senior intelligence officer who had worked on the dossier's preparation.
It should be noted, however, that in the BBC's report, they did state that the 45 minute claim in the dossier had only one source, a statement which has been confirmed by the British government. What is in contention at this point if it was added at Campbell's insistance or not.
UPDATE: (8:45 pm) The Guardian is reporting that Andrew Gilligan has denied misquoting Kelly.
Last night Andrew Gilligan, the journalist at the centre of the controversy, claimed that he had not misquoted Dr Kelly, a clear implication that the 59-year-old weapons specialist had not given the full story about their conversations to the foreign affairs select committee.[...] The New York Times reported that Dr Kelly had told of "many dark actors playing games", in an email to one of its writers hours before his suicide. It said he appeared to be referring to defence and intelligence officials with whom he had sparred over interpretations of weapons reports.
But there was renewed speculation at Westminster that he may not have been wholly frank with the foreign affairs committee about his dealings with Gilligan, and that this triggered anxiety in a morally scrupulous man.
In an overview of the players in the Dr. David Kelly saga, The Observer quotes Geoff Hoon, the Britis Defence Secretary as asking why the BBC won't rule out Dr. Kelly as their source.
'If Dr Kelly is not the source, why does the BBC not say so now? Their silence is suspicious. Their appeal to the principle of source protection is clearly bogus because, in this case, Dr Kelly came forward voluntarily.'To a certain extent his question makes sense, except for one thing. Were the BBC to say that Dr. Kelly is definately not their source for the story, it, by default, narrows the pool of people would could be the source, making it somewhat easier to guess who else it might be. There aren't that many people would could possibly be in posession of knowledge of that nature, and by refusing to confirm or deny anyone, the BBC is doing the only thing it can do to ensure that their source stays anonymous.
One reason for this is that if the government realizes that they can name someone as a possible source and squeeze the BBC to deny that the person is the source, then if the BBC were to hesitate to clear someone, or if they got the pool of names down to only one, they'd be able to presume that they'd found their man. Only by refusing to comment at all, either way, can the BBC prevent the government from being able to 'guess' who the source is.
The next question, of course, is if their refusal to clear him is what pushed Dr. Kelly to his suicide. I don't know if it was or not. If, in fact, he did commit suicide (and I do believe that to be a credible and likely probability, absent additional information to the contrary), it wasn't just the BBC's refusal to clear his name that pushed him that far. It may have been a contributing factor, but remember that even Dr. Kelly couldn't - or wouldn't - say definitively if he was the source or not.
He told the Foreign Affairs Special Committee that he did not believe that he was their main source, but couldn't say that he absolutely was not. As noted in one of my posts on this yesterday, however, Tom Mangold, a family friend, author of books (including one on biological warfare), and journalist who is considered an expert on the CIA, was quoted saying that, privately, Dr. Kelly had told him that he thought it was possible that he might be the BBC's source.
"He was keen to explain that he felt the JIC [Joint Intelligence Committee] assessment was a little bit hyperbolic for his taste and that it wasn't quite as simple as the assessment appeared to show," Mr Mangold said.If true, it would help confirm the government's contention that Andrew Gilligan had exaggerated his own evidence on the government's exaggeration of theirs. (How's that for a bit of brain twisting irony?)"At the same time he certainly told me he never mentioned 45 minutes and he knew nothing about that."
Asked why Dr Kelly had told the committee that he was not the main source, Mr Mangold said: "I think his famous ... precision let him down there, because what he said to me was that there were parts of the Gilligan transmission that he did not recognise, but that did not mean that he wasn't the main source."
I find it odd, however, that someone who was concerned enough that he might be the source of the story that he would voluntarily go to his management and tell them that he had spoken to the journalist, a violation of Civil Service rules, would then turn around and tell Parliament that he did not believe he was the source if, as Mangold says, he thought he might be.
As to what Mangold would have to gain by claiming Dr. Kelly thought he was the source if he actually hadn't, beyond publicity or a possible story, I have no idea, though from what I've seen from looking up information on Mangold, he seems to be well-respected. So the idea that Mangold would be making that story up is rather 'iffy' itself. To me, though, it makes more sense to think that Mangold is perhaps confused than it does to think that Dr. Kelly, after voluntarily 'outing' himself for having spoken to the journalist, would then lie to the Foreign Affairs Special Committee.
That's what's going to make this story a hard one to figure out. The BBC is accusing the government of lying, and the government returns the same accusation against the BBC. A family friend raises the question of whether Dr. Kelly told Parliament what he actually thought. The BBC is holding silent on who their source actually was - which they pretty much have to do if they want to continue having sources trust them at all, and Dr. Kelly isn't here to answer any more questions. This is exactly the stuff conspiracy theories are born of. One can speculate that the government had Kelly killed to keep him from revealing any more secrets, or that the real source killed him to make him perhaps look more guilty or at least deflect suspicion from himself. Or the CIA could have done it to keep the British Parliament from digging too deep and perhaps revealing information that would damage Bush and his reliance on British intelligence for some of his own claims. You could even speculate that someone opposed to the war killed him to keep him from debunking the war critics' claims that the government exaggerated their evidence. Believe me, it's not hard to come up with ideas like this. Just because it's easy, though, doesn't mean any of them are right.
I've seen a number of references lately to the "string" of mysterious deaths among scientists - microbiologists in particular. And yes, it does look a bit suspicious when examined in isolation. That's also the problem - looking at it in isolation. To see if the number of "odd" deaths among scientists is really all that "odd", you'd have to first determine if that many deaths under suspicious circumstances in a given time period itself is unusual for scientists (by comparing it to other time periods - preferrably ones in which there was also a certain amount of political focus on scientific research and/or warfare), and then by comparing scientists as a category to other such job-related categories during the same time period, and factor it on a per-capita basis. It may be that the "mysterious death" rate of other occupations is just as high, but has gone unnoticed because, for conspiracy theorists, noticing a pattern among microbiologists is useful. Noticing a similar pattern among, say, milkmen, wouldn't be.
I'm posting this in it's entirity because it's great news, and I can't write it up much better than they did. Thanks to everyone who helped send the Senate the message that the FCC ruling allowing greater media consolidation was a mistake and needed to be rolled back - looks like we one this round!
Dear MoveOn member,This isn't an email asking you to sign a petition or give money.
It's simply a celebration of a victory.
75 television executives from network affiliates descended on Capitol Hill yesterday to prevent the House appropriations committee from voting for a partial rollback of the FCC rule changes.
Because of you and thousands of others, Congress did something unprecedented yesterday. Republican committee member Frank Wolf urged his colleagues to vote their conscience, and stand up to the lobbyists. And they did just that, delivering a 40-25 vote against big media.
Conservative columnist William Safire wrote in today’s New York Times:
"Here is what made this happen: Take the force of right-wingers upholding community standards who are determined to defend local
control of the public airwaves; combine that with the force of lefties eager to maintain diversity of opinion in local media; add in the independent voters' mistrust of media manipulation; then let all these people have access to their representatives by e-mail and fax, and voilà! Congress awakens to slap down the power grab." (URL below)The rollback still has a long way to go, but this is another big step in our march to reverse the FCC and create a more diverse, independent and skeptical media.
Your active participation is working. Congress is listening. There will be more work in the weeks and months ahead. Stay tuned and stay involved. For more information on media reform efforts, go to http://www.mediareform.net or http://www.commoncause.org.
Sincerely,
--Eli Pariser
MoveOn.org
July 17th, 2003P.S. Check out William Safire's editorial and another article from today's New York Times on this win:
HOUSE PANEL ADDS VOICE TO OPPONENTS OF MEDIA RULE
By Jacques Steinberg, New York Times
July 17th, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/17/business/media/17FCC.html"The recent decision by federal regulators to loosen media ownership rules, already under fire in the Senate, took another blow in Congress yesterday. This setback was dealt by the House Appropriations Committee, which approved a budget amendment that would make it harder for big broadcasting companies to acquire more television stations.LOCALISM'S LAST STANDThe vote represented a defeat for Michael K. Powell, the Federal Communications Commission chairman, who has led the effort to change the rules. It was also a rebuke to the Republican House leadership and the Bush administration, strong supporters of the commission's efforts."
By William Safire, New York Times
July 17th, 2003
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/17/opinion/17SAFI.html?tntemail0
(See excerpt above)
As I noted in an earlier post, CBS had changed the headline of their article originally titles "Bush Knew Iraq Info Was False. They've now changed the article itself drastically. The new headline is "Bush: CIA OK'd Iraq Speech" and can be found at the same URL as the original article.
Interestingly, though, a link from the Google News search engine still goes to the slightly intermediate retitled version of the article - "Bush Knew Iraq Info Was Dubious". I'm going to make a screenshot of that full article so that I'll have a record of it as well. The text of that version of the article should be what is transcribed below, though after reading several versions of the same article, I have to say I am getting a big fuzzy, so you're welcome to compare them for yourself, if you wish.
The difference in the URL's is minor - in the one that had the original article and the new, totally revised version, the word "iraq" is one of the folder names, where as with the version that is simply retitled, that particular folder is named "eveningnews".
The screenshots of the page with the "Dubious" headline can be seen here, here and here.
Just so that the original article isn't lost, here is a copy of the complete text as it was originally posted.
Bush Knew Iraq Info Was FalseThe new version of the story includes Condoleeza Rice's comments from today where - despite saying she's not trying to blame anyone - she puts the blame for the problem squarely on George Tennet's head.Published on Thursday, July 10, 2003 by CBS News
by David Martin
Senior administration officials tell CBS News the President's mistaken claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa was included in his State of the Union address -- despite objections from the CIA.Before the speech was delivered, the portions dealing with Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were checked with the CIA for accuracy, reports CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin.
CIA officials warned members of the President's National Security Council staff the intelligence was not good enough to make the flat statement Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa.
The White House officials responded that a paper issued by the British government contained the unequivocal assertion: "Iraq has ... sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." As long as the statement was attributed to British Intelligence, the White House officials argued, it would be factually accurate. The CIA officials dropped their objections and that's how it was delivered.
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," Mr. Bush said.
The statement was technically correct, since it accurately reflected the British paper. But the bottom line is the White House knowingly included in a presidential address information its own CIA had explicitly warned might not be true.Today at a press conference during the President’s trip to Africa, Secretary of State Colin Powell portrayed it as an honest mistake.
“There was no effort or attempt on the part of the president or anyone else in the administration to mislead or to deceive the American people,” said Powell.
But eight days after the State of the Union, when Powell addressed the U.N., he deliberately left out any reference to Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from Africa.
“I didn’t use the uranium at that point because I didn’t think that was sufficiently strong as evidence to present before the world,” Powell said.
That is exactly what CIA officials told the White House before the State of the Union. The top CIA official, Director George Tenet, was not involved in those discussions and apparently never warned the President he was on thin ice.
Secretary Powell said today he read the State of the Union speech before it was delivered and understood it had been seen and cleared by the intelligence community. But intelligence officials say the director of the CIA never saw the final draft.
©MMIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc
Earlier I quoted a CBS story headlined "Bush Knew Iraq Info Was False". I went back recently to double check something on the article and discovered that the headline had been changed - to "Bush Knew Iraq Info Was Dubious". It's always interesting to see the media backpedal on something like that.
I got a couple screencaps just for reference - the first is the Google News Search Page showing the original title still in it's records, with the link URL listed in the status bar at the bottom of the page. The second is the revised CBS news page.
This isn't one of the more serious revisions, but it's still something to note.
In other news, the Washington Post is reporting that in early September, 2002, the CIA had asked the British to drop the claim about Saddam trying to buy uranium from Africa.
“WE CONSULTED about the paper and recommended against using that material,” a senior administration official familiar with the intelligence program said. The British government rejected the U.S. suggestion, saying it had separate intelligence unavailable to the United States.Tony Blair is still holding onto his claim that they have intelligence from an unidentified third country that Saddam tried to buy uranium from countries in Africa, and that they have not shared that information with us. Personally, if I were in the CIA right now, or if I were President Bush, I'd be on the phone trying to see that intelligence for myself.
At that time, the CIA was completing its own classified national intelligence estimate on Iraq’s chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. Although the CIA paper mentioned alleged Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from three African countries, it warned that State Department analysts were questioning its accuracy when it came to Niger and that CIA personnel considered reports on other African countries to be “sketchy,” the official said.The CIA paper’s summary conclusions about whether Iraq was restarting its nuclear weapons program did not include references to Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa.
Its kind of interesting that the administration is claiming that they included the information in the State of the Union speech because it was included in a British report, but the CIA tried to get the British to remove the information from their reports - and the British are trying to say they have solid information on it, but they just haven't shared it with us. Someone needs to get all this information together and figure out what's going on.
Update on the FCC's recent action to allow companies to own a larger concentration of stations.
From Bloomberg.com: U.S.
The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee approved a bill to roll back new Federal Communications Commission rules that loosen restrictions on ownership of newspapers and local television stations.We can hope that Tauzin won't be successful in killing this legislation. The FCC rule was wrong, and needs to be revoked.The bill, which now goes to the full Senate, would restore a 35 percent cap on the national audience that can be reached by a company's TV stations. The FCC, in a 3-2 vote along party lines, agreed June 2 to raise the cap to 45 percent on companies such as CBS owner Viacom Inc. The Senate panel also voted to restore a ban on newspaper publishers owning TV stations in the same market.
Analysts said the Senate committee's bill is likely to pass the full Senate, though House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin said today he will kill it. The FCC rules have been criticized by groups as divergent as the National Rifle Association and Consumers Union.
Jost Marshall at Talking Points Memo has also been looking at the Wolfowitz quotes (in particular the ones in the Vanity Fair article) that have been called into question. In a couple different places yesterday and today, he's raised the possiblity that the DOD transcript of the telephone interview he gave to Sam Tanenhaus may not be complete. So far, he's not offering any details, but you might want to take a peek over there tomorrow to see if he's got anything of substance yet.
I've posted a lot over the last couple days about the questionable nature of some supposed quotes attributed to Paul Wolfowitz, the biggest one being the story published in the Guardian yesterday alleging Wolfowitz had confirmed that the war was fought because of oil.
It turns out, however, that the Wolfowitz story isn't the only one the Guardian had to issue a correction on this week. On May 31st, they had published a story that claimed Colin Powell and Jack Straw had expressed serious doubts about the WMD intelligence the US and UK were relying on to make their case for invading Iraq. The article said that these doubts had been expressed in a meeting between the two men at the Waldorf Hotel in New York, and that transcripts of the meeting were currently being circulated among NATO diplomats.
It is not being revealed how the transcripts came to be made; however, they appear to have been leaked by diplomats who supported the war against Iraq even when the evidence about Saddam Hussein's programme of weapons of mass destruction was fuzzy, and who now believe they were lied to.A comment in the article, noting that the meeting had been described to them by "a diplomatic source who has read a transcript of the conversation", makes it appear that the Guardian printed this story without having actually seen copies of the transcripts themselves.
Well, today, this apology and correction was added to the page where the article is posted:
In our front page lead on May 31 headlined "Straw, Powell had serious doubts over their Iraqi weapons claims," we said that the foreign secretary Jack Straw and his US counterpart Colin Powell had met at the Waldorf Hotel in New York shortly before Mr Powell addressed the United Nations on February 5. Mr Straw has now made it clear that no such meeting took place. The Guardian accepts that and apologises for suggesting it did.The apology and clarification leave a bit to be desired when it comes to explaining what, if anything, actually did happen. It says that, according to Straw, "no such meeting" occured, but it leaves open a number of questions.
The Straw/Powell article indicated that two of the most important diplomats in the UK and US had serious doubts about the information they were being asked to promote in their efforts to justify the war - which would go a long way to giving credibility to those who believe that the pre-war evidence that Saddam Hussein had WMD was either exaggerated significantly or an outright lie. The Wolfowitz story, on the other hand, supported the belief many hold that the US wanted this war to get its hands on Iraq's oil, and also gives legitimacy to the idea that Blair and Bush needed to exaggerate or fabricate the WMD evidence to ensure that the war would be able to go forward. Both stories also appeared just as the questions about the WMD evidence are picking up steam, in particular in the UK, where the Guardian is published.
I've never hidden my own disapproval of the war in Iraq, nor my belief that the threat was never as grave as Bush made it out to be. But stories like these only hurt when it comes to trying to make the case. Not only do they put erronious information into the data stream (which will be almost impossible to get back out - especially the Powell/Straw story, which will be extremely attractive to those who lean more toward the "conspiracy theory" end of the spectrum), but it also makes it more difficult for other, similar, stories to be taken at face value.
Most conservatives will end up remembering that "some" stories that allegedly showed the government was misleading us about reasons for the war and the threat of WMD, but not necessarily which two. It will then be just that much easier for them to dismiss similar ideas or stories, lumping it into the category of "those stories that were discredited". I hope that the editors of the Guardian will recognize how serious unreliability and inaccuracy can be in the media and get their house back in order as soon as possible.
in reading the original Guardian article that had misrepresented what Wolfowitz had said Information Clearinghouse has a copy posted at their site.
Thanks to Kevin Murphy for alerting me to the correction that the Guardian has published on their main web page. Here's the text:
CorrectionI have to wonder, though, if they've noticed (or been alerted) yet to the fact that they had previously published a story with the correct quote? (Sorry, I just find that to be almost comical. Sure, I can understand well how something like that can happen - I'm sure I've probably done similar things myself, and this blog is nowhere near as complicated as a large-scale newspaper, but it still amuses me for some reason. Ah well. Some of us are just more easily amused than others, no?)
Paul Wolfowitz
A report which was posted on our website on June 4 under the heading "Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil" misconstrued remarks made by the US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, making it appear that he had said that oil was the main reason for going to war in Iraq. He did not say that. He said, according to the department of defence website, "The ... difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq." The sense was clearly that the US had no economic options by means of which to achieve its objectives, not that the economic value of the oil motivated the war. The report appeared only on the website and has now been removed.
No URL for this yet, but according to the MSNBC Breaking News e-mail, Howell Raines and Gerald Boyd are resigning from the New York Times. More info when it becomes available.
UPDATE: The Times had posted a story about the resignations.
Over at Calpundit, Kevin Drum pointed out a strange quirk regarding the Guardian story yesterday that claimed Paul Wolfowitz had admitted the war with Iraq was fought because of the oil (which isn't really waht he said at all).
Apparently, on May 31st, the Guardian had run a story with the correct quote in it.
The United States hopes to end the nuclear standoff with North Korea by putting economic pressure on the impoverished nation, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said Saturday.Then, 5 days later, they published the story headlined "Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil", and presented the statement this way:North Korea would respond to economic pressure, unlike Iraq, where military action was necessary because the country's oil money was propping up the regime, Wolfowitz told delegates at the second annual Asia Security Conference in Singapore.
"The country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse,'' Wolfowitz said. "That I believe is a major point of leverage.''
"The primary difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options in Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil,'' he said.
Asked why a nuclear power such as North Korea was being treated differently from Iraq, where hardly any weapons of mass destruction had been found, the deputy defence minister said: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil."On the surface, the two versions of the comment look very similar, but in the 5/31 story, the quote is presented as an explaination of why we're still looking for other solutions in North Korea when we dismissed the idea of other solutions for Iraq. In that context, the role of oil was not something we wanted to get from Iraq, but rather something that limited what options we had. Now, I'm not going to say whether this contention makes sense or not - but it's the contention that Wolfowitz was making.
Interestingly, I tried to go to the 6/4 article at the Guardian's website, because I wanted to check some of how the reporter lead up to the the quote itself in presenting it as though Wolfowitz ws claiming we fought the war to get the oil, and the article is no longer there. The page offers no explaination, nor does it even indicate that a story has been removed. It just presents you with a basic "page not available" message. I've been looking for any kind of a correction or other note explaining the missing article, but haven't found it yet. If I do, I'll make note of it here.
UPDATE (11:21 am CST) I found this note at News 24. It had been added to the story they had published recounting the Guardian's story from yesterday. According to this note, the Guardian will be commenting on the matter tomorrow:
Although The Guardian earlier reported that US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz had said that the Iraq war was all about oil, the newspaper has now removed the article from its web site, and will print a full correction in Friday's edition. According to the Guardian's ombudsman, the quote, "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil," was taken out of context, and misconstrued.
Earlier today, I posted an entry about an article in the Guardian that claimed Paul Wolfowitz was, in essence, saying that the war was about oil, and the potential implications that had, in particular, for Tony Blair. As part of that entry, I'd noted that I'd also run into some questions about another statement of Wolfowitz' that appeared to have been taken out of context. Reuters had published a story stating that Wolfowitz had said that being able to remove our troops from Saudi Arabia was an "unnoticed but huge" reason we attacked Iraq, but a review of the DOD transcript puts the comment in a slighly different light.
I had used the Reuters article as a basis for an even earlier post, which - after discovering the problems with their representation of the statement - I had added a couple of "update" notices to, to try and clarify the situation. In light of the problem with the Guardian's representation of Wolfowitz' statement about Iraq's oil, I've decided to post the information on the other statement here as well, just so it's all in one basic area of the blog.
Here is the original paragraph from the Reuters story:
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.And here is the passage from the 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.Initially, I had read this as Wolfowitz saying that, contrary to the Reuters implication that the removal of troops from Saudi Arabia was part of the justification for the war, Wolfowitz was actually saying that removing the troops was something that had come about as a result of the war. Because I know Spinsanity is a place a lot of people can go to check for problems like this, I sent them a note about what I'd found - or, rather, what I thought I'd found. I received a reply from Brent with Spinsanity shortly after I wrote him, pointing out that, while Reuters appears to have mischaracterized the importance of removing troops from Saudi Arabia as a "huge" part of why we went to war, a bit of the conversation that took place after an interruption shows that Tannenhaus went back to clarify what Wolfowitz was saying, and that it was, in fact, part of the pre-war justification, though how important it was isn't clear. Here's the message I got from Spinsanity in response to my letter.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.
Thanks for passing this on. I've been following this debate and wanted to let you know that Tannenhaus did follow up on this pointand 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:In addition, the quote from the Tannenhaus interview that's generated the most interest also appears to have been presented somewhat out of context. According to the Vanity Fair article, Wolfowitz reportedly said "For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.''Tannenhaus: 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.
The DOD transcript presents it a bit differently:
Q: Was that one of the arguments that was raised early on by you and others that Iraq actually does connect, not to connect the dots too much, but the relationship between Saudi Arabia, our troops being there, and bin Laden's rage about that, which he's built on so many years, also connects the World Trade Center attacks, that there's a logic of motive or something like that? Or does that read too much into --Another interesting tidbit about the Tannenhaus interview was brought up by Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo. He noted that, to him, the most "eye-popping" part of the article was a section whereWolfowitz: No, I think it happens to be correct. The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason, but -- hold on one second --
(Pause)
Kellems: Sam there may be some value in clarity on the point that it may take years to get post-Saddam Iraq right. It can be easily misconstrued, especially when it comes to --
Wolfowitz: -- there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there's a fourth overriding one which is the connection between the first two. Sorry, hold on again.
Tanenhaus discusses the portion of the interview in which he and Wolfowitz discussed the possibility that Saddam may have played a role in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. According to Tanenhaus' article, Wolfowitz is "confident" Saddam played some role in the 1993 incident and has "entertained" the theory that he played a role in the Oklahoma City bombing as well. In the interview, according to Tanenhaus, Wolfowitz declined comment on the 1995 bombing.Marshall then tells of how he went to the DOD transcript of the interview to read what Wolfowitz had actually said - but there were no references to either the 1993 or 1995 bombings anywhere in the transcript. He also notes that the Pentagon claims that the transcript is complete, while Vanity Fair maintains that the discussion did take place during the Tannenhaus interview.
It's certainly an interesting mess, and one I plan to keep watching to see what else comes out of it, if anything.
Here's the question Paul Wolfowitz was asked, and his response, containing his comment about Iraq's oil, as included in the DOD transcript of the Q&A session at the Asian Security Summit in Singapore this past week:
Q: What I meant is that essentially North Korea is being taken more seriously because it has become a nuclear power by its own admission, whether or not that’s true, and that the lesson that people will have is that in the case of Iraq it became imperative to confront Iraq militarily because it had banned weapons systems and posed a danger to the region. In the case of North Korea, which has nuclear weapons as well as other banned weapons of mass destruction, apparently it is imperative not to confront, to persuade and to essentially maintain a regime that is just as appalling as the Iraqi regime in place, for the sake of the stability of the region. To other countries of the world this is a very mixed message to be sending out.Wolfowitz: The concern about implosion is not primarily at all a matter of the weapons that North Korea has, but a fear particularly by South Korea and also to some extent China of what the larger implications are for them of having 20 million people on their borders in a state of potential collapse and anarchy. It’s is also a question of whether, if one wants to persuade the regime to change, whether you have to find -- and I think you do -- some kind of outcome that is acceptable to them. But that outcome has to be acceptable to us, and it has to include meeting our non-proliferation goals.
Look, the primarily difference -- to put it a little too s
