Month: February 2003

War Planners Speak of the Risks

NY Times

WASHINGTON, Feb. 17 — Senior Bush administration officials are for the first time openly discussing a subject they have sidestepped during the buildup of forces around Iraq: what could go wrong, and not only during an attack but also in the aftermath of an invasion.

Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld has a four- to five-page, typewritten catalog of risks that senior aides say he keeps in his desk drawer. He refers to it constantly, updating it with his own ideas and suggestions from senior military commanders, and discussing it with President Bush.

A top advisor to the Secretary of Defense told the NY Times that Mr Rumsfeld’s discussions with the President have been frank but mostly positive. The Secretary is quoted as saying, “Mr. President, we are rapidly approaching a moment of truth both for ourselves as human beings and for the life of our nation. Now, truth is not always a pleasant thing. But it is necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless *distinguishable*, postwar environments: one where you got twenty million people killed, and the other where you got a hundred and fifty million people killed.”

The advisor stressed that despite the hard choices facing the president that Mr Rumsfeld nonetheless was optimistic that US forces could pacify the Iraqi troops and people in a short time, while “keeping a lid” on terrorist recruitment and possible reprisals at home. Still, he was honest in his assessment that the American people would have to accept some vulnerability to terrorist attacks in the coming days. He reportedly told the President, “I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed, but I do say no more than ten to twenty million killed, tops, uh, depending on the breaks.”

Vice-president Dick Cheney, who has taken the lead in preparations for possible biological or chemical attacks in here United States was reported to have insisted upon the smallpox vaccination program for all “first line” emergency workers. According to administration sources, however, his concerns are incresingly focused on possible contamination of the water supply.

At a meeting of The National Academy of Creationist Scientists and Christian Astrologers in January, Cheney was quoted as saying, “It’s incredibly obvious, isn’t it? A foreign substance is introduced into our precious bodily fluids without the knowledge of the individual, and certainly without any choice. That’s the way your hard-core Terrorist works.” The orange alert of last week was said by sources in the Office of Homeland Security to have been put in place by Cheney himself when he lost control of his precious bodily fluids during Shania Twain’s half time appearance at the Super Bowl.

More

Whoopsie Daisy

Connie Chung just mouthed the words “Oh Shit” after mangling the word glucose. Heh.

Speaking of bad language …. My favorite protest signs were:

Stop Mad Cowboy Disease

and

Dick + Bush = We’re Fucked

New Kidz

Welcome to a very good writer, Glen England at A Brooklyn Bridge.

And

Political Parrhesia a political blog with an interesting point of view.

Thanks to The Lefty Directory for including me.

Is It Time For Godwin’s Law To Be Repealed?

The Baltimore Sun reports on Ashcroft and his cadre of Federalist ideologues. As with the foreign policy team, the Justice Department is riddled with a bunch of right wing radicals who would be more at home in Pinochet’s Chile that the world’s oldest democracy.

[…]

“In the Justice Department, one of the great tensions is always between the political appointees at the top and the career lawyers in the middle,” said Mark Graber, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park. “This seems to be an administration where the political appointees are far more determined to set policies on more matters than usual.”

Michael Greenberger, a professor at the University of Maryland law school, agrees: “From what I can gather, there is a tight circle around the attorney general. There is not a lot of vetting of ideas beyond that. A lot of career attorneys who have served the attorney general through a lot of different administrations have been shunted aside.”

[…]

I think what you have within the Justice Department is a small group of very bright, federalist society lawyers who are talking to each other and coming up with ideas that have a superficial attraction — military tribunals, detaining enemy combatants — while anybody practiced in the area will tell you this stuff accomplishes absolutely nothing,” Greenberg said. “It’s sort of like counterterrorism by headline rather than counterterrorism by a scientific analysis of what law enforcement is all about.”

Others are concerned about the damage that Ashcroft-sponsored measures, passed under the guise of fighting terrorism, could do to civil liberties. The first Patriot Act, which saw little opposition in the weeks after Sept. 11, lessened restrictions on wiretaps and allowed long-term detention of material witnesses without charges. The draft of the second measure goes further in these areas.

[…]

According to the ACLU’s Nojeim, the act “would encourage police spying on political and religious activities, allow the government to wiretap without first going to court and allow it to more readily strip Americans of their citizenship, rendering them stateless in their own country.”

Said Warnken: “If you take this to its ultimate conclusion — and I am only being slightly flippant here — as long as we are under threat of terrorism you can literally say that the Bill of Rights is de facto repealed until we catch the last terrorist. And that won’t be until your great-grandchildren grow old.”

You know it’s quite difficult to contain the impulse to break Godwin’s Law when I read things like this. There is an aggressive and radical global ambition, a total assumption of power in the hands of the executive, an overhaul of the legal system that blatently abrogates fundamental principles and an unprecedented cronyism between big business and government. All that is left is the internal “threat” who must be eradicated.

Oh wait. There is one.

“There are spooky parallels between the way Hussein and American liberals campaign and try to get support. Saddam Hussein is obviously a student of American liberal Democrat politics and Stalin at the same time.”

The Mouth That Roared Redux

Atrios links to a story in Ha’aretz in which John Bolton, Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, helpfully (to Osama bin Laden) tells the world that the US will be going in to Syria and Iran next.

If anyone would like to read a little bit more about this fine diplomat and master of subtlety, you can read my post about this putz from last month. This is another one of those wonderful “grown ups” who can’t shut his pie-hole no matter how dangerous, ill-timed or counterproductive — even to his own cause — it is. He is a fucking menace.

His most memorable quote?

“There is no such thing as the UN”

His political mentor?

Jesse Helms.

Need I say more?

I didn’t think so

“I don’t have to have probable cause. The police have to have probable cause.”

Check out Wis[s]e Words on the unbelievable story of the 19 year old kid who got 26 years in jail for selling marijuana.

See, Martin lives in a civilized country, Holland, where things like this make us look like a thundering hoard of Visigoths. It ain’t easy being Murican these days….

Martin also, as I’m sure you know, runs Progressive Gold

Hahahahahahaha

La Noonan:

She was in a well-tailored dove-gray wool suit, collarless and double-breasted, with a knee-length skirt, dark-gray heels and pearl earrings. Her makeup had been applied with some art, her auburn hair was subtly highlighted, and her nails were professionally manicured, with red-orange nail polish. I mention this because sometimes grooming is a statement. Mrs. Bush said: Don’t worry too much, we’ll all be fine; if I didn’t know this I wouldn’t have been able to put on my eyeliner in such a straight line. Good grooming and a cheerful demeanor are sometimes heroic.

TBOGG:

Using this as a barometer, the next time Laura Bush shows up in public with uncombed hair, in a housecoat, with a scotch in one hand and a cigarette hanging off her lip….kiss your ass goodbye.

I hear much of people’s calling out to punish the guilty, but very few are concerned to clear the innocent.

Daniel Dafoe

Whether or not you believe in the death penalty, I think it’s fair to say that nobody believes in executing innocent people. There are those who think our judicial system makes it virtually impossible and, like our President, refuse to acknowledge that if prisoners have been found innocent as close to 48 hours before their execution then it is likely that innocent people have been executed. But even he is unlikely to admit that executing innocent people bears any relationship to justice (unless you are a 3 year old Iraqi, but that’s another post.)

So, there is absolutely no reason that everyone in this country shouldn’t support the Innocence Protection Act. which allows every prisoner the right to DNA testing, if applicable, after conviction. Now that it’s available, the concept of Justice requires that it be used.

Go to The Justice Project to find out what you can do to convince your elected representatives to be reasonable and rational and support this obviously just legislation.

Via Talk Left

Wow

If you don’t have time to slog the blogs, check out the handy dandy me-zine shortcut to the best of the blogs over on Sysiphus Shrugged.

Talent On Loan From The Real Professional Entertainers

Hesiod asks:

Why are a bunch of wealthy liberals going to waste their money on a “liberal” talk radio network? Why? I like Al Franken as much as the next guy. But he belongs on TV. And, I’d prefer it if they spent their money supporting alternative NEWS sources. Not talk radio.

Actually, the reason is pretty simple.

Radio is much less expensive than TV. The estimates to start up a news network like Fox are outrageous, outside of a major media company like NewsCorp that can afford a loss leader for a time. Roger Ailes convinced Rupert that a conservative news network would be successful on the basis of the success of conservative talk radio. And Rupert is naturally, shall we say, sympathetic in the first place.

Viacom, Disney, Time Warner or GE are the only ones who can do it and they aren’t going to unless it’s demonstrated that it can make money. MSNBC’s experiment with Donohue is probably going to be used as an example of why it won’t.

On the other hand, entertaining liberal talk radio, if successful (and not suppressed by the 800 pound chickens like Limbaugh who don’t want any competition) could create a new paradigm for political programming that could work its way into television. (Jon Stewart is already there.) During the impeachment farce, I used to listen to Stephanie Miller while miserably stuck on the 405 at rush hour every night. Her impression of Linda Tripp was so funny that I very nearly rear ended the car in front of me every time I heard it.

Those were dark days but Stephanie was a beacon of laughs at the end of the day. She, of course, was booted for whatever reason (probably refused Limbaugh a Lewinsky) and I stopped listening to talk radio (except for the awesome Michael Jackson) altogether. And I had listened to talk radio for many, many years before it was taken over by the cretinous screamers. I’ll go back if somebody offers me something to listen to. I spend a lot of time in my car.

Liberal Talk Radio stars could be the political cartoonists of this era. Making fun of political windbags is a tried and true method of reducing their influence and puncturing their ridiculous high opinion of themselves. Ridicule works. Conde Nast took down Boss Tweed. I think Al Franken could take down President Chimpy. I agree with Sinton, the programmer who’s putting the thing together,

“This side has failed by going at Rush, and trying to be Rush — you’re not going to beat him at his game,” Mr. Sinton said. “What really makes this work is tapping into Hollywood and New York and having a huge entertainment component, where political sarcasm is every bit as effective as Rush Limbaugh is at bashing you over the head.”

And, anyway, it isn’t a zero sum game. Liberals need to try to counter the GOP political media dominance wherever they can. Radio is one thing. Maybe Hollywood can start to use some of their muscle to persuade a Michael Eisner or a Sumner Redstone to take a flyer on some explicitly liberal news programming, who knows? These are long term projects — the wing nuts began back in the 60’s.

We’ve gotta start someplace.

CORRECTION: Reader Dave points out that it was THOMAS Nast rather than Conde. He rightly notes that had it been Conde Nast, they would have done a fluffy profile of Boss Tweed. I’m sure that whoever was the Marjorie Williams of the day would have protrayed him as a “uniter not a divider.”