Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities
– Voltaire
MWO posts John Breaux’s use of the RNC talking points on Lou Dobbs:
BREAUX: Well, Lou, I respect the right of Democrats to filibuster a nominee, but I differ on this particular nominee. I think that at a time in this country when we’re under orange alert and we have advice on stockpiling water and buying duct tape and who in the heck knows what’s going to happen in North Korea and Iraq, that this is not a time that we should be filibustering a nominee who has been called well qualified, the highest recommendation the American Bar Association can give a nominee…
Doesn’t it occur to anyone that maybe it’s Bush who should table this nominee while he’s trying to rally the country around his cause? Why on earth is the President pushing controversial judicial nominees during a time of national crisis and causing unneeded partisanship? I thought he was going to change the tone.
Can’t we just pretend to dress up the naked Boy Emperor and his Boyz in some fancy uniforms like Idi Amin and throw a big parade and bow down to their huge swinging machismo and just skip all the actual killing? I’d do it gladly if it would cure these frustrated eunuchs of their need to prove their manhood. Clearly, they didn’t get the yellow ribbon treatment after fighting the Battle of Bureaucracy to “win” the cold war, so they desperately need some affirmation that they are the true heroes of their time. Fine.
But what with everything else about this administration being such total bullshit, I’m sure nobody would even notice if we just skipped the war and went directly to the ceremonies and parades. How about we just put on a pageant?
MOSS
What do we have that they want?
BREAN
“Freedom.”
MOSS
Why would they want that?
HAKAN
They’re Oppressed.
MOSS
No, no, no. Fuck Freedom. No. Fuck Freedom.
They…. They Want… They Want To Destroy the Godless
Satan of the United … They want to destroy our Way of
Life. Okay, okay, okay, could we … okay: the
President is in China. He is dealing with a Dispatch
of the B-2 Bomber to Albania. Why?
(HE SHRUGS, HOLDS UP HIS HANDS, TO SAY,
“YOU TELL ME…”)
AMES
Alright, well, alright: geopolitically…
MOSS GESTURES FOR SILENCE.
MOSS
We’ve just found out They Have the Bomb. We’ve Just
Found Out They Have The Bomb, aaaand… No, No wait a
second, no, no, wait a second, No. The Bomb’s not…
it’s not there — because they’d have to have a
rocket and that shit n’they’re a buncha wogs– it’s …
it’s a suitcase Bomb. Ooookay. It’s a suitcase bomb,
and it’s …. in Canada! Eh? Albanian Terrorists have
placed a suitcase Bomb in Canada, in an attempt to
infiltrate the bomb into the USA.
AMES
You know what? This is good. This is terrific, and
I’ll tell you why: it’s cost effective. This is….
MOSS
(SHRUGS)
It’s producing.
Unfortunately, we’re going to inflict “Shock and Awe” instead.
BREAN
We remember the slogans, we can’t even remember the
fucking wars. Y’know why. Cause it’s show business.
That’s why I’m here. Naked girl, covered in Napalm.
Five marines Raising the Flag, Mount Suribachi.
Churchill, V for Victory, Y’remember the Picture, fifty
years from now, they’ll have forgotten the war. Gulf
War? Smart Bomb, falling through the roof. 2500
missions a day, 100 days, One Shot of One Bomb. The
American people bought that war. M’I getting through
to you? War in the Balkans, don’t mean nothing, till
some G.I. flyer, went down, Eating Snakes for Ten days.
As best as I can understand it, the case for war against Iraq rests primarily on what Aristotle—these old Greeks, they understood things—called the argument of future fact, or the possibility that a thing might occur in the future based on events that have happened in the past.
So we are preparing to decimate Iraq based on the possibility that the Iraqi government might in the future provide Al Qaeda or other terrorists with weapons of mass destruction. Iraq has been a bad actor in the past, this argument goes, and it is likely they will continue to be a bad actor in the future. Indeed, they will likely try to kill all of us, hence we should get them first. That is basically the administration’s argument: The U.S. should invade Iraq on the basis of what they might do to us—and to Israel—in the future. The events in the past on which we base these future possibilities are fuzzy and riddled with contradictions, but never mind. The very possibility that Iraq might do something bad is proof enough.
[…]
But here’s the thing. The argument of “future fact” is one you make when the outcome of a path is not certain, and when you are not sure how things will turn out. In such cases, you argue on the basis of the probable, on what’s most likely to happen, given the situation. You strive for the correct and prudent course, even when the outcomes are unclear.
But if we go this way, commit to war, then some things become inevitablly and inescapably certain: Appalling numbers of people will die, and a great many of these dead will be children.
First there was the plagiarized British “intelligence” dossier, and now this:
“ABC News reports that a key piece of the information leading to recent terror alerts was fabricated, according to law enforcement officials.
The officials said that a claim made by a captured al Qaeda member that Washington, New York or Florida would be hit by a ‘dirty bomb’ sometime this week had proven to be a product of his imagination.
The informant described a detailed plan that an al Qaeda cell operating in either Virginia or Detroit had developed a way to slip past airport scanners with dirty bombs encased in shoes, suitcases, or laptops, sources told ABCNEWS. The informant reportedly cited specific targets of government buildings and Christian or clerical centers.
But upon subjecting the informant to a polygraph, he flunked. “
Apparently, the interrogations are being run by the cops who interrogated the central park “wilding” gang.
The bad news: North Korea has a nuclear weapons program which may have created one or two nuclear bombs, and it has ballistic missiles capable of hitting the West Coast — Washington, Oregon, maybe even California. The good news, Mr. President: none of those states voted for you.
AND
Here’s something interesting: the first suspect anywhere in the world to actually go through a trial for participating in the 9-11-01 events, Moroccan national Mounir el Motassadeq, is undergoing the completion of his trial in Hamburg, Germany. His lawyers argued that the case against him (which includes handling the financial affairs of 6 of the 9-11 hijackers) was circumstantial and based on supposition. We’ll see: what is amazing is the complete dearth of publicity this trial has received in the United States (this is the first I’m seeing of this, and, by American standards, I’m EXTREMELY well informed).
Of course, any mention that Germany was cooperating in the War on Terror might somehow alter American public opinion, which is supposed to resent Germany for its resistance to American positions in the War to Avenge Papa Bush
And check out his ongoing Alphabetized Blog Critique and dog matching series. (I’m a border collie.)
“The evil of the world is made possible by nothing but the sanction you give it.”
Unlike La Noonan, when Paul Krugman writes an open letter in his column he doesn’t pretend to be a dead beloved icon to make his point. He puts his own name on it and tells it straight.
And he pretty much tells Alan Greenspan that Little Aynnie wouldn’t have ever confused him with that sexy bodice ripping master of the universe, John Galt. That’s gotta hurt.
The BBC writes that the Senate finance committee Enron Report is a blockbuster expose of bribery, greed and “desperation.”
“The report reads like a conspiracy novel, with some of the nation’s finest banks, accounting firms and attorneys working together to prop up the biggest corporate farce of this century,” he said.
The investigation provides the first complete story of Enron’s efforts to manipulate its taxes and accounting.
The findings of the investigation, which have been kept tightly under wraps until now, have been described by senators as “eye-popping”, “disturbing”, and “barn-burning”.
He barely knew him. Seriously. Wouldn’t even recognize him.
Heck, I reckon you wouldn’t even be human beins if you didn’t have some purty strong personal feelings about nukular combat.
Matthew Yglesias and Hesiod address Insty’s rhetorical question today asking whether France ever called Roosevelt a cowboy seeing as he said, “No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.” The article Insty quotes from, in which the phrase is approvingly cited, also notes that Roosevelt wrote the speech himself.
Is it at all possible that the French call Bush a cowboy not because of his (well-written Michael Gerson) speeches but because of the puerile “Bonanza” babble that bursts from his pie-hole whenever they let him speak extemporaneously?
How about some of these greatest hits?
”I can hear you. And the rest of the nation can hear you. And the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”
“I want justice. There’s an old poster out West, as I recall, that said, ‘wanted dead or alive.'”
He’s not in charge of Afghanistan anymore. He’s not the parasite that’s invaded the host. … Now, he’s maybe in control of a cave. He’s on the run. We’re going to get him running and keep him running and bring him to justice.”
“We will find those who did it, we will smoke ’em out of their holes, we will get them running, and we will bring them to justice.”
“As long as there is al-Qaeda influence anywhere, we will help the host countries rout ’em out and bring ’em to justice,”
You just have to wonder where in the hell those damned cheese eaters get their ridiculous ideas…
If It Weren’t For Woodrow Wilson, We’d Be Colonizing Uranus by Now
David Neiwert points us Lucky Duckies to the predictable news that the Bush team is floating the idea of a national sales tax to replace the income tax. The Armies of Compassion seem to be adherants of the “burn the village in order to save it” school of strategery.
Neiwert mentions one of the sponsors of a bill introducing the measure was John Linder, a brilliant thinker and economic sage. He says:
“If Congress had planned a tax code in 1912 that was destructive of capital formation, punitive against work and savings, and incomprehensible to the very government employees charged with the responsibility of enforcing it, they could not have done a better job than what we ultimately achieved. They also would have been laughed out of town. The code must go!”
Wednesday, August 15, 2001
Rep. John Linder (R-GA)
Boy, has he got that right. Why, if we’d only had the right tax system, who knows how far this country could have gone? We could have even wound up being the richest country on the planet someday! I’ll bet we might have even become the world’s only superpower. Imagine that.
If only they hadn’t saddled us with that destructive, punitive incomprehensible tax system back in 1912 this nation might have accomplished something.
Perhaps it’s not too late for us. Pray for a VAT.
Update:
Patrick Nielson Hayden points out in the comments that Democrat Wilson wasn’t in the White House in 1912. This is true, but John Linder had the date wrong. Wilson passed the graduated income tax in 1913 as part of the Underwood Tariff act that lowered tariffs on items that could be produced more cheaply in the United States than abroad. They “attached” the income tax to the act in order to make up for the loss in revenues.
(‘Course, Republican Teddy Roosevelt introduced a federal income tax in 1906, but it died in the congress…)
Of course it’s about missile defense… and Florida…and hubris…and one supremely unqualified President.
These guys screw up so often and with such potentially catastrophic results that I’m beginning to think that nobody can be this stupid. They must be doing it on purpose. The Bush Doctrine ( aka PNAC’s Rebuilding Americas Defenses aka Cheney Defense Dept review 1992) is for real and the radical neocons are getting what they’ve always wanted. William Kristol was seen recently ordering a martini, shaken not stirred, and it wasn’t pretty.
But, in the interest of whatever history may be gleaned from the post-nuclear rubble, let’s be clear about this long range missile threat before Colin and Condi turn it into yet another chuckleheaded link with Al Qaeda and the Cannes Film Festival.
Clinton said when he left office that he thought he’d pitched Bush a diplomatic home run at the very beginning of his term with Kim Jong Il. But, as with everything else, Junior and the Retreads adopted their sophisticated and nuanced policy doctrine known as “I totally like hate Clinton like sooo much.”
The episode remains vitally relevant because the North Korean missile threat has been the driving force behind the debate in Washington over missile defenses, and because President Bush has yet to declare whether he plans to carry through or modify the Clinton strategy.
The Bush team has been generally skeptical about North Korea, and it is not clear how much they will use diplomacy to try to head off missile threats, instead of relying primarily on their plans for missile defense.
The South Korean president, Kim Dae Jung, who will meet with Mr. Bush on Wednesday, is expected to press the new administration to engage with Pyongyang. And while the negotiations are still shrouded in secrecy, they apparently made more progress than generally thought.
According to current and former government experts, Kim Jong Il promised in confidential talks not to produce, test or deploy missiles with a range of more than 300 miles. That offer would prevent North Korea from fielding missiles that could strike the United States.
North Korea, the experts said, also offered to halt the sale of missiles, missile components, technology and training. The pledge would ban systems that North Korea had already contracted to provide to aspiring third world powers.
The Clinton Administration had doggedly pursued an accord that would have ended North Korea’s long range missile threat. As you might imagine, this was not a very popular policy with the PNAC and CSP missile defense spin hustlers.
The moment of truth unfortunately occurred during that marvelous exercise in GOP media mastery and incestuous string pulling known as the Florida recount.
[…]
As the weeks dragged on, Dr. Albright and Ms. Sherman kept an anxious eye on Florida. At one point, they were monitoring the Florida events from Mauritius, wondering if the Korea operation would proceed.
After the election was decided in mid-December, Ms. Sherman and the White House Asia expert, Jack Pritchard, briefed Colin L. Powell and Condoleezza Rice. The Bush team made it clear that it would not undercut Mr. Clinton, but not would it endorse a deal, former Clinton aides said. That attitude was one factor that led the Clinton team not to send Ms. Sherman, according to a former ranking Clinton official. The concern was that the new administration would not support or even complete a deal hammered out then.
Finally, the Clinton administration announced on Dec. 29 that there was no longer enough time for its talks.
The case study begins March 6, the day before South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung, honored with last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, met with President Bush, hoping to influence the new administration’s views on the region before any policy had been set in stone.
That day, Secretary of State Colin Powell, during an appearance with European Union President and Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh and others, seemed moderate in tone and tenor when he mentioned that he and Lindh had discussed, among other matters, “how to encourage North Korea to comply with its nonproliferation obligations.”
“As I said previously, and especially in my confirmation hearings, we do plan to engage with North Korea to pick up where President Clinton and his administration left off,” Powell said. “Some promising elements were left on the table, and we’ll be examining those elements.”
This enraged GOP hawks, who view Clinton’s policy toward North Korea as dishonest and disingenuous, and as coddling North Korean leader Kim Jong Il as he builds up an arsenal. Clinton administration foreign policy experts praised Kim for his steps toward peace. And though Powell called Kim a “dictator” during his January confirmation hearings before the Senate, his remarks about “picking up” where Clinton left off surely raised continued fears that Powell is too moderate.
The next day, the Bush administration’s position seemed completely turned around.
[…]
At the joint briefing minutes later, this newer, more hard-line stance against North Korea — the one advanced in the administration by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld — reared its head in comments made by President Kim. Bush had been “very frank and honest in sharing with me his perceptions about the nature of North Korea and the North Korean leader,” Kim said, “and this is very important for me to take back home and to consider.”
Bush then elaborated on his concerns. “Part of the problem in dealing with North Korea,” he said, “there’s not very much transparency. We’re not certain as to whether or not they’re keeping all terms of all agreements.” This was not his most carefully enunciated statement of the day. As it turns out, the U.S. has only one agreement with North Korea — the 1994 plutonium agreement that Wit supervised. So which “agreements” were the president referring to? White House spokesmen told reporters that Bush was speaking about possible future agreements.
“That’s how the president speaks,” one told the New York Times
Just six months ago, American and North Korean diplomats appeared to be closing in on a deal to ban the development, production and sale of North Korean missiles. But now, reacting to the changed signals from Washington, North Korea has also publicly staked out a tough stance.
The two sides have yet to set a date for high-level talks. And Bush administration aides have told the South Koreans that the chances of Pyongyang’s agreeing to all of its demands are low.
Some senior Bush administration officials hope that economic pressures will lead North Korea to seek a far-reaching accommodation with the West. But some experts worry that unless both sides indicate a willingness to compromise, the result may be deadlock while North Korea exports medium-range or even long- range missiles. In the face of a prolonged stalemate, they say, North Korea might also threaten to resume testing long-range missiles, thereby developing the means to strike the United States.
The basic position of the Bush administration, worked out after an intensive review, is that an accord that focuses on missiles is no longer sufficient. Only a comprehensive program to limit North Korea’s military potential, administration officials say, can serve as a foundation for improved relations with the West. So North Korea must make simultaneous concessions on nuclear issues and conventional arms, and any missile agreement must be subject to extensive verification.
“We need to see some progress in all areas,” a senior administration official said. “We are prepared to wait. We don’t feel any urgency to provide goodies to them in response to their rhetoric or threats.”
That’s exactly the kind of attitude isolated, paranoid Asian dictators respond to. One certainly sees why our dealings with the North Koreans have been so successful. And, it’s just great that our insistence on dealing with them “comprehensively” has led them to “comprehensively” resume their long range missile program AND re-open their nuclear power plant. And they said Clinton was slick…
George W. Bush and his gang of paunchy, wild-eyed Imperialists seem intent upon starting WWIII, one way or another. Since it doesn’t look like we can beat them, I think I’ll join up for the French campaign. I just love that brie and cheese.