Tristero

Thursday, December 04, 2003

Week Off  

No blogging for the next 6 or 7 days. Rather busy right now...
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 7:40 AM

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

America Is Not A Christian Nation  

Detailed rebuttal of those who believe it is, with lots of great quotes.

"History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes." ~ Thomas Jefferson to Alexander von Humboldt, 1813. ME 14:21

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 5:18 PM

Bergen Eviscerates Mylroie  

After reading this terrific article by Peter Bergen, which rebuts the wacky theories of neocon Laurie Mylroie, you will be left with little doubt that the "intellectual" qualifications of the men and women who advocated the Bush/Iraq war are bogus.

Mylroie declined to be interviewed for this article "with regret," so the only chance I have had to talk with her came this past February, when we both appeared on Canadian television to discuss the impending war in Iraq and Saddam's putative connections to terrorism. As soon as the interview started, Mylroie began lecturing in a hectoring tone: "Listen, we're going to war because President Bush believes Saddam Hussein was involved in 9/11. Al Qaeda is a front for Iraqi intelligence…[the U.S.] bureaucracy made a tremendous blunder that refused to acknowledge these links … the people responsible for gathering this information, say in the C.I.A., are also the same people who contributed to the blunder on 9/11 and the deaths of 3,000 Americans, and so whenever this information emerges they move to discredit it." I tried to make the point that Mylroie's theories defied common sense, as they implied a conspiracy by literally thousands of American officials to suppress the truth of the links between Iraq and 9/11, to little avail.

At the end of the interview, Mylroie, who exudes a slightly frazzled, batty air, started getting visibly agitated, her finger jabbing at the camera and her voice rising to a yell as she outlined the following apocalyptic scenario: "Now I'm going to tell you something, OK, and I want all Canada to understand, I want you to understand the consequences of the cynicism of people like Peter. There is a very acute chance as we go to war that Saddam will use biological agents as revenge against Americans, that there will be anthrax in the United States and there will be smallpox in the United States. Are you in Canada prepared for Americans who have smallpox and do not know it crossing the border and bringing that into Canada?"

This kind of hysterical hyperbole is emblematic of Mylroie's method, which is to never let the facts get in the way of her monomaniacal certainties. In the case of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, she has said that Terry Nichols, one of the plotters, was in league with Ramzi Yousef. Richard Matsch, the veteran federal judge who presided over the Oklahoma City bombing case, ruled any version of this theory to be inadmissible at trial. Mylroie implicates Iraq in the 1996 bombing of a U.S. military facility in Saudi Arabia which killed 19 U.S. servicemen. In 2001, a grand jury returned indictments in that case against members of Saudi Hezbollah, a group with ties not to Iraq, but Iran. Mylroie suggests that the attacks on two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998 might have been "the work of both bin Laden and Iraq." An overseas investigation unprecedented in scope did not uncover any such connection. Mylroie has written that the crash of TWA flight 800 into Long Island Sound in 1996 likely was an Iraqi plot. A two-year investigation by the National Tran-sportation Safety Board ruled it was an accident. According to Mylroie, Iraq supplied the bomb-making expertise for the attack which killed 17 U.S. sailors on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000. No American law enforcement official has made that claim. Mylroie blames Iraq for the post-9/11 anthrax attacks around the United States. Marilyn Thompson, The Washington Post's investigations editor, who has written an authoritative book on those attacks, says, "The F.B.I. has essentially dismissed this theory and says there is no evidence to support it." A U.S. counter-terrorism official remarked: "Mylroie probably thinks the Washington sniper was an Iraqi."

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 9:34 AM

seraphiel's Daily Cartoon Roundup  

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posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 8:57 AM

Quotation Of The day  

The Times:

"You can be a social conservative in the U.S. without being a wacko. Not in Canada."

Chris Ragan, a McGill University economist.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 8:05 AM

Monday, December 01, 2003

Krugman On Diebold  

Maybe the press will start to take this seriously now:

The attitude seems to be that questions about the integrity of vote counts are divisive at best, paranoid at worst. Even reform advocates like Mr. Holt [Democratic congressman from NJ, sponsor of voting machine integrity bill] make a point of dissociating themselves from "conspiracy theories." Instead, they focus on legislation to prevent future abuses.

But there's nothing paranoid about suggesting that political operatives, given the opportunity, might engage in dirty tricks. Indeed, given the intensity of partisanship these days, one suspects that small dirty tricks are common. For example, Orrin Hatch, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, recently announced that one of his aides had improperly accessed sensitive Democratic computer files that were leaked to the press.

This admission — contradicting an earlier declaration by Senator Hatch that his staff had been cleared of culpability — came on the same day that the Senate police announced that they were hiring a counterespionage expert to investigate the theft. Republican members of the committee have demanded that the expert investigate only how those specific documents were leaked, not whether any other breaches took place. I wonder why.

The point is that you don't have to believe in a central conspiracy to worry that partisans will take advantage of an insecure, unverifiable voting system to manipulate election results. Why expose them to temptation?

I'll discuss what to do in a future column. But let's be clear: the credibility of U.S. democracy may be at stake.  

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 11:27 PM

The Internet  

Oh, this is a great site. The image above is of the Internet, generated on November 22, 2003. Go and download a larger version of this picture: it's worth it. Soon, they promise to have software that will be able to pinpoint your location in this map.

After all these years of daily use, sometimes this stuff simply makes my jaw drop.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 7:58 PM

7 Year-Old Humiliated Because Of Gay Mom  

Tolerance in the Age of Bush:

A 7-year-old boy was scolded and forced to write "I will never use the word `gay' in school again" after he told a classmate about his lesbian mother, the American Civil Liberties Union alleged Monday.


Second-grader Marcus McLaurin was waiting for recess Nov. 11 at Ernest Gaullet Elementary School when a classmate asked about Marcus' mother and father, the ACLU said in a complaint.

Marcus responded he had two mothers because his mother is gay. When the other child asked for explanation, Marcus told him: "Gay is when a girl likes another girl," according to the complaint.

A teacher who heard the remark scolded Marcus, telling him "gay" was a "bad word" and sending him to the principal's office. The following week, Marcus had to come to school early and repeatedly write: "I will never use the word `gay' in school again."

Looks like the ACLU is on the case. If you're not yet a card-carrying member, join now.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 7:34 PM

Eeeuw  

Stop now unless you have a strong stomach:

When Tanya Andrews returned from a recent family holiday in Costa Rica, she had no idea she had brought back a gruesome souvenir.

A month later she developed an extremely painful lump on her head.

At first, she thought she had an abscess, but then it wriggled.

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 3:05 PM

Sailing, Sailing  

G.O.P. To Stay Off Of Manhattan On A Luxury Liner?

The House majority leader, Tom DeLay, would like the ship to serve as a floating entertainment center for Republican members of Congress, and their guests, when the convention comes to New York City next Aug. 30 to Sept. 2.

"Our floating hotel will provide members an opportunity to stay in one place, in a secure fashion," said a spokesman for Mr. DeLay, Jonathan Grella. He did not elaborate.

Well, it has two advantages, doesn't it?

1. Republican prigs won't be tempted by the corruptions of New York.

2. No one will embarass the rest of the GOP by taking pictures of all the hookers on board.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 11:13 AM

Iraq Awareness Erodes Support For Bush  

That's why Bush wants to cut and run by June:

[I]t seems clear that the higher the voter salience of the Iraq situation, the better the Democrats are likely to do in November, 2004.

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 8:54 AM

Sunday, November 30, 2003

Many Gitmo Prisoners Were Innocent, Framed For The Reward  

This is truly outrageous:

According to Time, activities leading toward release of the 140 prisoners have accelerated since the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case. It said U.S. officials had concluded some detainees were kidnapped for reward money offered for al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. (our emphasis)

As Atrios remarks as well, I am ashamed of this country over this. We all should be. This is unconscionable and reparations are due the victims and their families.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 8:59 PM

Chomsky Says Bush Is No Hitler  

I've discussed the mistake, both factually and tactically, in trying to draw a parallel between Bush and Hitler. On occasion, I've received email from people who believe that the parallels are obvious and that some people, not me, are afraid of saying so for one cowardly reason or another.

In an online interview with the Washington Post, Noam Chomsky, who is not known for tailoring his opinions for any reasons at all, had this to say:

What's happening in Guantanomy [sic] is an utter disgrace. In my recent book "Hegemony or Survival," I quote Winston Churchill's thoughts about the methods now being adopted the administration: that they are "odious" and the foundation of every totalitarian government, whether Nazi or Communist (I'm not using quotes only because that's from memory, but it's virtually exact). Nevertheless, one should not exaggerate. What's happening here now is bad enough, but it is nothing like what has happened in the past, even the quite recent past (most strikingly, the COINTELPRO operations that went on for 15 years before they were banned by the Courts),or certainly Wilson's Red Scare. And they are not remotely like what happens in much of the rest of the world. Ther is a very strong commitment on the part of the public to preserve the legacy of freedom that was won with hard struggle over centuries -- it wasn't a gift from above. And though events of the kind you mention [Patriot Act abuses and other actions], and much worse ones, do take place, and should be stopped by an aroused public, the fact is that for those who have even a limited share of privilege -- which is a very large majority in a rich country -- there are freedoms that are unusual, by world standards. Nothing to be complacent about, but worth keeping in mind.

He is exactly right.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 4:24 PM

"Martial Law" In New York Next Summer?  

LA Times thinks so:

[D]rama aplenty will start to swell in late August as GOP delegates arrive in Manhattan — accompanied, perhaps, by thousands from the FBI and military intelligence, as well as conceivably more Army Rangers and National Guard soldiers taking up stations to protect the president...


One can easily imagine that the FBI and the military will feel they must take extraordinary precautions for the GOP convention. New York City has 130 mosques and dozens of Arab neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Lower Manhattan. The Imam Al-Khoei Islamic Center in Queens houses North America's largest Shiite Muslim congregation. In the face of the inevitable crackdown, it's quite conceivable the GOP convention could serve as a magnet for terrorists itching to prove the U.S. president's ineffectiveness...

Even if no attempts are made on Manhattan, the probability of extreme security measures and possibly something approaching martial law in sections of the island could cast a long shadow over the convention.

And the article doesn't even bother to mention the all but inevitable large scale protests that will be staged by the American people of all backgrounds outside the convention.


posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 3:22 PM

Were Liberal Hawks Right To Trust Bush, At First? A Response To Kevin Drum  

In a post today, Kevin Drum asks four sensible questions about Bush and Iraq:

1. Was it reasonable back in January for a liberal to believe that George Bush was serious about building a moderately stable, tolerant, and democratic Iraq?

2. If you accept his policy goals as worthy, how good has Bush been at achieving them?

3. Why did Bush allow the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Feith gang to work out a plan that was so obviously divorced from real world considerations?

4. Why did the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Feith gang believe this stuff in the first place?

I will now try to answer them in as serious manner as they were asked.

Was it reasonable back in January for a liberal to believe that George Bush was serious about building a moderately stable, tolerant, and democratic Iraq?

No, it was not reasonable. There are two basic classes of reasons, the empirical and the philosophical. The empirical first:

By January, Afghanistan, Bush's first attempt at nation building, was already being reported as sliding into disaster. In addition, bin Laden, al Zawahiri, and Omar had not been found, more demonstration that Bush could not complete what he began before losing interest (behavior consistent with one of numerous character flaws obvious to anyone in the country from the moment he began to run for president).

Furthermore, beginning in the spring of '02 if not earlier, Bush had made it clear in numerous statements that the plans to invade and "remake" Iraq were not subject to debate (only much later did his infamous "Fuck Saddam, we're taking him out" remark come to light, but he had the much the same thing publicaly many times.) In addition, Bush claimed that he had the legal right to invade Iraq without the explicit approval of Congress or the United Nations. If nothing else, this arrogant assumption of being above any law on Bush's part should have set off alarms not only with liberals, of course, but nevertheless especially with liberals, who should have recognized that acting in the world's best interests was not foremost in his mind.

During the entire runup to the war, until the State of the Union speech and Powell's early February UN presentation, Bush made public not so much as a shred of evidence that Saddam was the threat to world peace he claimed he was. That should have given liberals familiar with Nixon and Reagan/Bush a clear sign that Bush was hiding something. (That Powell's speech was deliberately padded should have been obvious as well to anyone who listened carefully, long before every major piece of evidence he offered was discredited. The method of presentation as well as the evidence, divorced from Powell's spin, was very weak.)

Also during this time, the Bush administration was questioned repeatedly about its plans for Iraq after the invasion succeeded (its success was admitted by everyone in this country). They refused to answer the question. In December '02, at a high level seminar I attended which included Congressmen, Senators, officials from the Bush administration, military officers, and an unknown presidential candidate named Dean, the only plans profferred by the Administration representatives were that democracy would spontaneously arise and that Iraq's oil revenue afterwards would reimburse the expense. Again, one needn't be a liberal to realize that this meant the administration hadn't thought the post-war situation through with anything resembling care and attention.

Kevin's question also assumes enough knowledge of Iraq and the Middle East on the part of the US government to formulate a plan. By January, 2003, it was clear that intelligence about Iraq was woefully inadequate. Also clear was that the CIA as well as every other American intelligence agency was so unprepared for serious engagement with the area that there were (still!) only a handful of Arab translators and almost none intimately familiar with the dialects in Iraq. Liberals prize the accumulation of knowledge and facts above ideology. The ignorance of this country's government about Arabic cultures was then (and remains) simply breathtaking and should have given liberals serious reasons to question Bush's obvious impatience to invade and "get started."

Finally, at numerous times during the campaign Bush had disparaged nation building. All his behavior through January, 2003 was consistent with this opinion and a subsequent lack of knowledge and interest in learning what nation building would entail.

Philosophical reasons:

The question accepts the premise that George Bush, as leader of the most powerful nation on earth has the right to interfere with any country's governance as he sees fit. Liberals know, or should know post Vietnam and Mogadishu, that this is a faulty assumption. Of course, there are exceptions and dilemmas, but the very premise of the question is illiberal. Rather it is mixed up with American manifest destiny myths that have been used since the 1840's to justify numerous dubious foreign policy initiatives.

The question also implies that a democratic and tolerant Iraq (it was already stable, horribly so) can be imposed via a preemptive, unilateral military strategy (which was announced long before January, '03). Even liberals, who might believe that the US has a moral obligation to spread democracy around the world, know, or should know, that democracy cannot be imposed via military coercion. If the illogic of doing so is not apparent, there was ample evidence, published by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that would have made this clear.

If you accept his policy goals as worthy, how good has Bush been at achieving them?

This question is not well-framed by Kevin. First of all, with the notable exception of Afghanistan (see below for discussion of whether Kevin is right there), all Kevin's examples are examples of domestic political skill, not international examples of nation building expertise. Yes, Bush - meaning the administration as well as the man - has been remarkably talented at getting what it wants from Congress, the courts, and voters. Note, however, that many of the Bush political victories have been in nation un-building: rolling back taxes, reducing benefits and services, breaking treaties (not mentioned by Kevin) and so on. Hardly evidence of a man serious about constructing a nation from scratch.

Bush's political skill also does not translate into operational skill. The wars between State and Defense are only the tip of the iceberg. There is open animosity between the administration and the FBI/CIA as well. Homeland Security has been more effective at locating Texas Democrats than at securing our ports. And despite a quarter of spectacular growth, no one expects either jobs or the economy to recover to the point that it was prior to Bush taking office.

Another case in point: Afghanistan, which, contra Kevin's opinion, is a disaster. Heroin production is back in a big way after the Taliban curbed it and women are still in danger from religious fanatics. Warlords, the Taliban, and armed gangs control every area of the country except Kabul and somewhere on the Afghan-Pakistan border, bin Laden, al Zawahiri and many of their comrades in arms are hiding, with thousands of people loyally protecting their safety.

In short, Bush is fairly good at ramming his proposals throught the American political system. He is truly awful at follow-through. This should make anyone highly suspicious as to whether Bush would be able to follow through on Iraq even if he was serious.

It is altogether another question as to whether his proposals are well-crafted to meet his own goals, a question that is far too complicated to answer properly here.

Why did Bush allow the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Feith gang to work out a plan that was so obviously divorced from real world considerations?

This is easily answered. Bush believes their analysis of the world is correct. The Cabal (their word, not mine) are the descendants of the far right Cold War warriors like Lemay and the Birchers. In this worldview, Roosevelt was a socialist who began the destruction of the very fabric of American society; McCarthy was right even if a little paranoid; Kennedy should have taken out Cuba when he had the chance in '62; nuclear bombs should have been used in Vietnam which we could have easily won; and liberals, perhaps even more than communists, represent a threat to the moral health, indeed the very viability of the United States as a nation because they sap the nation's will to fight.

Flowing from this view is a sense that the US is always a force for good in the world (provided liberals don't interfere); that American values and its particular practice of democracy are objectively better than any other country's; and that any oppressed country, regardless of its internal politics, would leap at the chance to embrace Americans and the democracy they offer, welcoming us with sweets and flowers.

Why did the Cheney/Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Feith gang believe this stuff in the first place?

Again, this is easily answered. Since before the debacle of Goldwater, the right has been carefully building both intellectual and political structures. The Cabal, immersed deeply at the center of this effort, devised ideas in the hothouse atmosphere of their thinktanks that they (mistakenly) believed were logical extensions of deeply held conservative beliefs. They were hired by Bush I to be the official "crazies," to come to the table with ideas that were not mainstream and shake everyone up. (During the missile crisis, both Lemay and Rusk served the same purpose for Kennedy, albeit on opposite sides).

How could they be so wrong? Simple. First, they are not half as smart as they are glib. Second, they are very fearful men, afraid of violence so much that while their philosophy might seem to require it, their very souls compelled them to avoid the draft. Their fear also manifests itself in a taste for destroying all opponents, preferably with violence. Their fear makes it necessasary for them to control their environment. Hence, their propensity for gated communities, secrecy, lies, and military force.

The combination of their mediocre intelligence and their fearfulness results in the ironic consequence that they create the very world they fear: a world where it is increasingly difficult for any American to feel safe, either at home or abroad.

Their emphasis on extremely large and overly violent solutions to ensure their safety drove them to press, pre-9/11, for Star Wars redux and the breaking of major nuclear treaties, thereby making the spectacular mistake of neglecting the real threat: a committed group of low budget terrorists armed with nothing more than box cutters, donkey carts, and car bombs.

Their response to what happened on 9/11 is in keeping with this threat: destroy as many terrorists as possible, not realizing that, unlike oil, terrorists are a renewable resource and that the best way to get terrorism to spread is to kill and humiliate people.



For all these reasons, and many more, the liberal hawk position prior to the Iraq war was an unreasonable one. In the aftermath, as the supporters of the war have gradually awakened to the monumental stupidity of the undertaking and have begun to (dimly) perceive the enormous future dangers created for this country and the world by the Bush/Iraq war, it really is incumbent upon them to ask these questions of themselves:

Given the patently obvious folly of conquering and invading Iraq when Bush did, an opinion more than borne out by recent events, how could we have been so gulled into, at least for a while, supporting the effort?

How can we prevent ourselves from making the same or similar mistakes in the future?
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 1:23 PM

Iraq: "Ridiculousness" Rules  

As coalition and US casualties mount, Josh Marshall sums up the sheer awful absurdity of what is going on in Iraq:

On the homefront, the president is shaping his political campaign around the notion that we shouldn't show weakness and we can't cut and run. Meanwhile, it's clear to pretty much everyone in Iraq that we're doing both.

And they're acting accordingly.

For you extra credit folks, you might want to read up on Ayatollah Sistani, the major political power in Iraq right now. He is the one who forced the change in the US plans recently. Go here, here, and here. The following excerpt is taken from the last link:

Sunnis may not actively protest or confront communities that do participate, but the refusal of large numbers to engage could undermine the U.S. plan or stall the political transition at the heart of Washington's exit strategy.

At the moment, however, Bremer's more pressing problem is navigating among rival parties willing or able to consider the U.S. plan. They fall into two broad categories: the handpicked Iraqi Governing Council, dominated by former exiles and five parties backed by the United States before the war, and the traditional leaders with far wider popular support among Shiite Muslims, Kurds and several minorities.

U.S. strategy has relied on the council to play the leading role in the transition. But in recent weeks it has become increasingly unclear whether the council "is part of the problem or part of the solution," Anthony H. Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, writes in an analysis from a recent trip to Iraq.

One way or another, key council members are vying either to shape the transition or ensure the council remains intact and a powerful body, as the U.S. plan envisions. Because many of the 24 council members probably would not fare well in open elections, they pressured Bremer to establish an indirect three-step system to select a new national assembly, which in turn would pick a prime minister and cabinet, a process so complex that many Iraqis and U.S. experts doubt it will work.

A former U.S. adviser to Bremer described the plan as "an insane selection system of caucuses, like the Iowa caucus selecting those who will vote in New Hampshire."

The U.S. plan effectively gives the Governing Council a kind of remote control because it will have the deciding vote in local caucuses that will pick a national assembly.

"The Governing Council has a veto, and that's a bad system," said Judith Yaphe, a former CIA analyst at the National Defense University. "It's also such a complicated formula that it seems almost guaranteed to keep power in the hands of the few, and that would not be a good thing for Iraqis to have as the first taste of elections. If they get a bad taste they may not want to do it again."

The controversy was underscored yesterday when Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani rejected the caucuses and insisted on a nationwide election, "so the assembly will emanate from the desire of the Iraqi people and will represent them fairly without its legitimacy being tarnished in any way," he said in a statement to The Washington Post.

posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 11:31 AM

seraphiel's Daily Cartoon Roundup  

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posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 11:15 AM

Letter To The New York Times  

Charles Murray misses the obvious and most egregious answer to the question he poses: what "truly wonderful accomplishment contributed to some truly awful consequences?" (Well, It Seemed Like a Good Idea At the Time, Week In Review, Nov. 30).

None of the authors of the New Testament, nor Jesus himself, could ever imagine that their magnificent life and work would be used to justify the murderous Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the burning of Joan of Arc, the countless pogroms, and all the other dreadful acts of religious intolerance and persecution that misguided followers have perpetrated in their names.
posted by tristero permanent link to this entry 11:11 AM