HAPPY BIRTHDAY,
CECIL MARIE!!!
I love ya, girly.
xoxoxox
And then... the car honked its own horn!
Greg over at The Talent Show pointed out an article in the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly written by Stephen King. I haven't read the article, (it's the print edition) so I don't know how much of it is about the Michael Jackson trial, and how much of it is discussing the media's reaction to the trial, but here's a bit:
The media first turned the trial into a freak-show by emphasizing Jackson's peculiarities rather than his humanity, and stoked the ratings with constant, trivializing coverage while other, far more important stories went under-reported or completely ignored in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, North Korea, and Washington, D.C.
The press might respond by saying, "We gave the people what they wanted."
My response would be, "My job is to give them what they want. When he steps into a recording studio, it's Michael Jackson's job to give them what they want. Your job is to give the people what they need."
Indeed. To which Greg says:
Is it just me or does it seem that the worse things get with news organizations, the more we see entertainers like John Stewart, Al Franken, and now Stephen King feel like they're forced to pick up the slack?
Yeah, I think they do, and thank goodness for that. I know if I had a national media outlet, even if I was an "entertainer," I'd be babbling until I was blue in the face.
What gets me about this whole thing is that phrase: "We gave the people what they wanted." Like King says, that is not the job of the press. It's also one of the main reasons I hate Fox news.
"The Fox Effect" has done nothing but destroy the quality of news and informative media in this country. Turning news into "entertainment" has been great for (their) business, but it has had no other effect than keeping the American public stupid, complacent, and uninformed. And other news outlets, in their scramble to be "competitive," have helped destroy what is left of the information network that exists to help us make informed decisions.
Whenever someone complains about the state of the media in this country, I blame Fox.
I realize that information media was going downhill long before Fox gained its stranglehold on television news. (By the way, did you know Bagdikian has written The New Media Monopoly?) However, Fox has created and fostered the "news as entertainment" philosophy. Well, it's more of a disease, really, and it's infected every other news outlet in this country.
I knew television news had completely died when they started doing those "gotcha" segments. You know the types of consumer revenge things they did: someone gets burned buying a new car and contacts the station, the "investigative news team" goes out and catches the merchant on a hidden camera, they reveal who they are and begin demanding answers on film, they usually wind up chasing the bewildered merchant across the parking lot, barking questions (I'm amazed ANY reporter would agree to do this... wouldn't they be completely humiliated?), and sometimes they get the poor ripped-off "victim" his money back. And they actually expected us to buy this as "investigative journalism."
I'm really, really glad that little trend died out.
News is not entertainment. I don't watch the news for that reason... no one does. The only reason people feel that news "has to be" entertaining is because Fox says it does. Bullshit. Show me a guy that watches the news to be entertained, and I'll show you The Grand Poobah of Fantasyland. Let Fox continue with their mickeymouse "news" programming, and start a hard-hitting, investigative news program that covers important stories and doesn't insult the viewer's intelligence, and I guarantee ratings.
I don't know if the internet or the blogosphere is necessarily the "answer" to the corruption of the news media (although The Big Brass Alliance, After Downing Street, and other internet movements forcing the MSM to sit up and pay attention to the DSMs is a good start), but something needs to be done. We need to demand that our news outlets start reporting actual news. The Michael Jackson trial belongs on Extra, not on my news program. Quit following Fox's example like lemmings, and quit kowtowing to your advertisers.
Now more than ever, we need to be informed.
Now more than ever, we need the media fighting for US.
Please let Stephen King get back to writing trashy horror books. That's why we love him. He shouldn't be doing your job.
(Image from Complacent.org, which you really should check out.)
(If I said you had a beautiful cross-post, would you hold it against me?)
Doing! Kablooey!
That sound was my eyeballs popping out of my skull and then my brain exploding. Luckily, I took some aspirin and now I’m fine.
The culprit: George Bush.
President George W. Bush defended the war in Iraq, telling Americans the United States was forced into war because of the September 11 terror strikes…Seriously? I mean, seriously? I can’t even construct a thoughtful commentary on this. Is the dude on crack or what?
"We went to war because we were attacked…" Bush said Saturday in his weekly radio address.
Downing Street Update
Well, it looks like the media may finally be catching on. They’re even excerpting the memos in papers here in red, red, red Indiana. And check this out:
WMD claims were 'totally implausible'
British bombing raids were illegal, says Foreign Office
What the 'Downing Street' memos show
'Downing Street memo': The second draft of history
The Downing Street Memo and the Court of Appeal in News Judgment
Kerry cautious on probing `Downing Street Memo' (What a shocker, eh?)
Why George Went To War
Why the Memo Matters
Bush's war worries
Memos show British concern over Iraq plans
In other news, About.com had the following to report:
Downing Street MemoSuperb!
If you want to see an example of Internet word of mouth in action, read the following from BTC News:
"BTC News White House correspondent Eric Brewer, the first correspondent to introduce the Downing Street Memo at a White House briefing, has been following the number of results returned by a Google search for the phrase, “Downing Street Memo.” On May 1, the number was near zero. On June 18, the number had reached 1,320,000 in a search for the exact phrase and 1,510,000 for the three words."
I tested this phrase in Google and came back with over one million results myself. What is the Downing Street Memo? Here's a copy online. The point of this post, however, is not to bring up the issues raised in the memo itself (which are pretty juicy-read it!), but to point out the incredible power of the Web community. This is what I'm talking about: that a phrase with barely any hits zoomed to the top of the search charts in this short of a time. Why did this happen? Increasing awareness, media spotlight, etc., but I'd bet a raspberry-filled donut that it was mostly from word of mouth: blogs, RSS, social bookmarks, etc.
Can you resist…
…a post called Incompetence So Spicy It Makes You Fart Fire? Of course you can’t. Go read.
Hardball
Jack at CommonSenseDesk reports:
The indefatigable Chris Mathews will examine the Downing Street Memos in a special report this evening at 7pm on MSNBC.
Let's hope he really does play hardball this time.
You said it, Jack. Because I really don’t give a rat’s patoot what Peggy Noonan or Zell Miller think about the Downing Street Memos.
(On a rather random site note, has anyone seen Will Forte as Zell Miller on Saturday Night Live? It’s absolutely hilarious—he just starts caterwauling in a very Zell-like manner and keeps on until the veins are popping out of his forehead and his entire face is bright crimson. Mr. Shakes and I were ending ourselves the first time we saw it.)
What’s the Matter with America?
So seems to ask the Bradenton Herald in an opinion piece that ran yesterday:
Why is the American public so apathetic about the Downing Street Memo?Damn. You know, I say that kind of shit all the time, but it’s been a helluva long while since I’ve seen it in a newspaper.
A nation that just a few years ago was obsessed with fudging over sexual trysts by one president seems unconcerned about evidence of lying by another to justify a war that has cost the lives of more than 1,700 American service members, killed tens of thousands of Iraqis and cost American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.
Like a 2,000-pound elephant in the room that everyone tries to ignore, the Downing Street Memo will stay until it is acknowledged and dealt with. It will not go away without a thorough congressional investigation.
[Bush and Blair] must be made to provide answers. This is not some political maneuver that can be swept under the rug. Indeed, Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal pales in comparison to massive deception to launch a war.It seems as though there are people who so thoroughly bought into the shockingly disingenuous, but immensely popular, line that only Bush supporters were patriots, that they have no idea what to do, now that Bush is being proved a liar and his policies abject disasters. They are the foolish nationalists who regard the nation-state in the same way they view race—not as an arbitrary destiny, but as a birthright, conferring upon them a superiority which they have done nothing to earn or deserve. They are Americans first; humans second.
In the '90s we spent more than $60 million for a special prosecutor to spend years trying to dig up evidence of wrongdoing by President Clinton - wrongdoing about sexual trysts with women and a penny-ante land deal in Arkansas. Conservatives were outraged at Clinton's semantical acrobatics and his ultimate lie about whether he had sex "with that woman."
Here we have a war in which thousands are dying and being maimed, and a top-secret document that says evidence was "fixed" to justify it. It's not quite as definitive as a tape recording with the president's own voice, which Watergate produced, but it is definitely a smoking gun loaded with fingerprints.
Why is there so little interest in it being investigated?
A blundered priority, that. We are all humans first—and that sameness must supersede the identities and borders of kingdom or republic which divide us. When your flag is more important than your flesh and your blood, irrespective of circumstance, you have crossed a threshold that will inevitably lead to ruin.
Soldiers, those who lay their lives on the line for the good of their country, are sent to do a job when the citizens of that country are imperiled. This job, the job of war, should be a last resort, when diplomacy fails and the only other option is leaving your people to death and destruction at the hands of another nation. It is, despite such tendencies otherwise, nothing to celebrate. A soldier marching to war is a grim sight; he must kill or be killed, and if it is the latter, he must be not be hidden from public view, lest he temper our thrill of war, but instead held out as a reminder of what we have lost, what was given on our collective behalf.
I did not support this war, but I can understand those who did. I would not hold against anyone the decision to support the Iraq War—many people were caught up in the fervor, or were scared, or were resigned to its inevitability. Many people more believed quite genuinely that the war was a necessity. And why wouldn’t they? Their president told them it was. So did their vice president, the cabinet, and the entirety of Congress, including the opposition party. Their media gave scant notice to those who voiced dissent.
But now there is evidence that our country was led to war on lies—an intricately spun web of deceit that extended even beyond our shores, our borders. Many of those who once supported the war now see its folly; their have put their humanness before an unquestioning patriotism, demanding answers and accountability. Where, though, are the rest? Where are the rest of the nearly 80% of Americans who supported this war?
Still busily defending its architects.
Those who see themselves as Americans first and foremost value nothing more dearly than their imaginary construct of America’s infallibility. Nothing America does is wrong, nor those who wrap themselves in her flag, even as they perpetrate the most dastardly of deeds, the most bitter of betrayals. They ignore America’s (and Americans’) missteps, and claim to support the troops simply by celebrating their deployment—disregarding completely the value of questioning whether they should have been put in harm’s way in the first place.
Many of them know the information revealed in the Downing Street Documents is correct. They simply don’t care. An investigation would mean that they might have to acknowledge their über-patriot president had done something wrong, that America had perhaps done something wrong, and that they themselves had been wrong.
And they care more to be right than to be just.
DSM Pops up in Sunday's Chicago Sun-Times, Untainted!
Color me shocked. I wish this wasn't buried in Sunday's paper, but at least it was there.
"British Memos: Iraq war sounds like mere 'grudge.'"
Here's the thing that impressed me- they were able to discuss the DSMs without using "so-called," or putting the title in quotes, as if they were easily dismissed foolishness... the Chicago Tribune is getting very good at that.
Of course, that little word "London" at the top might have something to do with it...
(Got cross-post fever... it's driving me crazy..)
Questions
Stars and Stripes has now covered the Downing Street Documents.
The site it’s on is called “European and Pacific Stars and Stripes.” Does that mean that there are different versions of the paper sent to troops in different areas? (Paging The Fixer and Gordon, or someone else with a military background…)
Also, has anyone spoken to anyone serving in Iraq recently? Are the soldiers aware of what’s going on with the Documents? If so, what do they think about it?
Everything We Thought We Knew About the War Was Wrong
[Update: I'm moving this back to the top for a bit, because it's important stuff.]
Since 9/11, President Bush has positioned himself as the best, if not only person, with the wherewithal to protect America from terrorists. He has used the nebulous “War on Terror” to justify everything from the encroachment on Americans’ civil liberties (under the guise of the Patriot Act) to the invasion of Iraq. And yet, in a recent Salon article by Juan Cole, which references the public account of Sir Christopher Meyer as well as his interview with Vanity Fair, it becomes obvious that the President had little interest in pursuing the actual perpetrators of 9/11:
Astonishingly, the Bush administration almost took the United States to war against Iraq in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11. We know about this episode from the public account of Sir Christopher Meyer, then the U.K. ambassador in Washington. Meyer reported that in the two weeks after Sept. 11, the Bush national security team argued back and forth over whether to attack Iraq or Afghanistan. It appears from his account that Bush was leaning toward the Iraq option.So what would it mean if this national security president had never wanted to invade Afghanistan, had never wanted to pursue al-Qaida and its leader Osama bin Laden (who remains on the loose to this day)? What would it mean if Iraq, which contrary to administration claims had no weapons of mass destruction with which to harm America or America’s allies, had been the only target all along? And what would it mean if the case for that war had been conceived out of thin air?
Meyer spoke again about the matter to Vanity Fair for its May 2004 report, "The Path to War." Soon after Sept. 11, Meyer went to a dinner at the White House, "attended also by Colin Powell, [and] Condi Rice," where "Bush made clear that he was determined to topple Saddam. 'Rumors were already flying that Bush would use 9/11 as a pretext to attack Iraq,' Meyer remembers." When British Prime Minister Tony Blair arrived in Washington on Sept. 20, 2001, he was alarmed. If Blair had consulted MI6 about the relative merits of the Afghanistan and Iraq options, we can only imagine what well-informed British intelligence officers in Pakistan were cabling London about the dangers of leaving bin Laden and al-Qaida in place while plunging into a potential quagmire in Iraq. Fears that London was a major al-Qaida target would have underlined the risks to the United Kingdom of an "Iraq first" policy in Washington.
Meyer told Vanity Fair, "Blair came with a very strong message -- don't get distracted; the priorities were al-Qaida, Afghanistan, the Taliban." He must have been terrified that the Bush administration would abandon London to al-Qaida while pursuing the great white whale of Iraq. But he managed to help persuade Bush. Meyer reports, "Bush said, 'I agree with you, Tony. We must deal with this first. But when we have dealt with Afghanistan, we must come back to Iraq.'" Meyer also said, in spring 2004, that it was clear "that when we did come back to Iraq it wouldn't be to discuss smarter sanctions." In short, Meyer strongly implies that Blair persuaded Bush to make war on al-Qaida in Afghanistan first by promising him British support for a later Iraq campaign.
It would mean that we all had all been hoodwinked, including our soldiers who had been sent to die by a president who cared not for bringing to justice those responsible for an attack on American soil, and had cared not for the truth. It would mean a national disgrace.
In fact, the now seven total Downing Street Documents provide increasing evidence that that is exactly what happened.
The first document released, known as the Downing Street Memo, and dated July 23, 2002, notes:
Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime’s record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.Such an assertion is in direct contrast to the claims of the administration, who continued to assert that they viewed military action as a last resort—and to this day refuse to acknowledge that the intelligence used to justify the war was fixed, instead crediting the lack of WMDs to a “massive intelligence failure.”
The document known as the Iraq Options Paper, dated March 8, 2002, includes the following:
The greater investment of Western forces, the greater our control over Iraq's future, but the greater the cost and the longer we would need to stay. The only certain means to remove Saddam and his elite is to invade and impose a new government, but this could involve nation building over many years. Even a representative government could seek to acquire WMD and build-up its conventional forces, so long as Iran and Israel retain their WMD and conventional armouries and there was no acceptable solution to the Palestinian grievances.The Bush administration went to great lengths to quash any suggestion that the Iraq invasion would necessitate nation building, in spite of the British government’s view to the contrary. In addition, the following comes from the same document:
The aim would be to launch a full-scale ground offensive... A pro-Western regime would be installed... The optimal times to start action are early spring.Again, this runs contrary to the mantra of “spreading freedom and democracy” repeated incessantly by the Bush administration. The goal of installing a “pro-Western regime” is in direct opposition to the free and fair elections that both Iraqis and American were promised would take place.
The document known as Iraq: Legal Background, also dated March 8, 2002, notes:
The US... maintain that the assessment of breach [of UN resolutions] is for individual member States. We are not aware of any other State which supports this view.Bush was misconstruing international law to fit his war plans, and doing so in such an egregious manner as to leave the United States the only nation on earth willing to interpret the laws thusly.
The memo from Blair’s Foreign Policy Advisor, David Manning, to Blair, summarizing his (Manning’s) dinner with Condoleezza Rice, dated March 14, 2002, includes the following:
I said you would not budge in your support for regime change but you had to manage a press, a Parliament and a public opinion... Condi's enthusiasm for regime change is undimmed.... Bush has yet to find the answers to the big questions:... what happens on the morning after?This, too, is illustrative of both Bush’s disregard for any option other than regime change and the comprehensive lack of post-war planning.
The memo from the UK’s ambassador to the US, the aforementioned Christopher Meyer, to David Manning, summarizing his (Meyer’s) lunch with Paul Wolfowitz, dated March 18, 2002, includes the following:
On Iraq I opened by sticking very closely to the script that you used with Condi Rice last week. We backed regime change, but the plan had to be clever and failure was not an option. It would be a tough sell for us domestically, and probably tougher elsewhere in Europe. The US could go it alone if it wanted to. But if it wanted to act with partners, there had to be a strategy for building support for military action against Saddam. I then went through the need to wrongfoot Saddam on the inspectors and the UN SCRs and the critical importance of the MEPP as an integral part of the anti-Saddam strategy. If all this could be accomplished skillfully, we were fairly confident that a number of countries would come on board.This indicates that the process of going to the UN was a sham for Blair’s sake and that disarmament was not an option; regime change had already been chosen as the singular goal.
The memo from the UK’s political director, Peter Ricketts, to UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, dated March 22, 2002, includes the following:
For Iraq, "regime change" does not stack up. It sounds like a grudge between Bush and Saddam. Much better, as you have suggested, to make the objective ending the threat to the international community from Iraqi WMD...Clearly, regime change is acknowledged as the objective, but the WMD issue was better for public relations. Additionally, even the British government believed the Bush adminsitrationa’s claims of a link between Iraq and al-Qaida to be false.
US scrambling to establish a link between Iraq and Al [Q]aida is so far frankly unconvincing.
The memo from UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw to Blair, dated March 25, 2002, includes the following:
We have also to answer the big question—what will this action achieve?... [no US assessment] has satisfactorily answered how that regime change is to be secured, and how there can be any certainty that the replacement regime will be better.Even members of the British government at its highest levels did not believe that Bush administration had any plan to ensure a new Iraqi government would be an improvement on Hussein’s dictatorship, nor to ensure that the new government would not develop WMD.
These memos collectively draw a very different picture of prewar planning than was painted for the American people. The intelligence and facts were fixed around the policy—a single-minded policy of regime change, with war the inevitable result, even if Iraq’s dictator had to be taunted with bombs and ultimatums. And prior to the invasion, the Bush administration had no definitive plan to promote true democracy—and no strategy to ensure that the new Iraqi government would not be just as bad as the last one.
And now, via The Independent, we find out that the American government used incendiary weaponry, the MK-77—napalm canister munitions, evolved from the napalm bombs which we associate with the Korean and Vietnam wars—during the Iraq War and subsequently lied about their use to the British government:
Despite persistent rumours of injuries among Iraqis consistent with the use of incendiary weapons such as napalm, Adam Ingram, the Defence minister, assured Labour MPs in January that US forces had not used a new generation of incendiary weapons, codenamed MK77, in Iraq.(For more on this, please see The Heretik and Freiheit und Wissen.)
But Mr Ingram admitted to the Labour MP Harry Cohen in a private letter obtained by The Independent that he had inadvertently misled Parliament because he had been misinformed by the US. "The US confirmed to my officials that they had not used MK77s in Iraq at any time and this was the basis of my response to you," he told Mr Cohen. "I regret to say that I have since discovered that this is not the case and must now correct the position."
Mr Ingram said 30 MK77 firebombs were used by the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in the invasion of Iraq between 31 March and 2 April 2003.
A tragic irony indeed. This war was sold on the premise that America must protect itself from weapons of mass destruction, and in the end, the only weapons of mass destruction in Iraq were the ones we dropped there.
The Bush administration lied to the American people about this war, and continue to evade questions about the truth about what is happening in Iraq. The American people deserve to know the truth. They deserve to know that everything they thought they knew about the war was wrong.
Razor Burned
One of my cats, Big Jim, is having issues.
Ten years ago, I got my first apartment, which I was sharing with Mr. Furious. Mr. Furious did not want a cat, but I did. The law was laid down: I could not get a cat unless I named it Pussy Po-Po. I admit, it was a pretty stiff requirement. I didn’t particularly want a cat named Pussy Po-Po.
One weekend while visiting my parents, I went down to the local animal shelter. There was a huge cage full of kittens right inside the front door, one more adorable than the next. One was all white except for a black tail. One was all black except for a little white moustache. Fourteen of them—thirteen of which mewed and pawed out through the bars of the cage for my attention, purring and doing their best to look cute. The other one, ugly as sin, all ears and completely pathetic, sat in the food dish, looking miserable. “I’ll take him,” I said. The animal shelter volunteer looked at me like I was nuts. “The one in the food dish?” I nodded. “Yep.” She gave me a look that tells me they probably still tell the tale of the girl who adopted the antisocial food dish cat a decade later. My rationale was that all the others were so cute, they’d be adopted in no time. But who would take the ugly little sod who made no attempt at affection? He was definitely the one.
I took him to the vet for his first check-up and was asked to give his name. “Jimmy Pussy Po-Po,” I wrote on the form. Surely, a middle name had to count. Mr. Furious kindly let it slide.
Within two years, Jim had been diagnosed with epilepsy. He twitches. Not a lot; never has he had a full-blown seizure, but he occasionally has twitchy spells. A good belly-rubbing seems to relax them.
Then, two years ago, Jim was diagnosed with diabetes. We have to shoot him up twice a day with 2 ccs of insulin, such a little amount that the tiny jar lasts forever, but I show up fairly regularly at the local drugstore asking for needles, feeling guilty at their suspicious looks and wanting to declare, “If I were a heroin addict, I wouldn’t have such a fat ass!” The needles have calloused his scruff, so we need to use a new one every time.
So Jim, while only 10, is prematurely aging a bit, and he now suffers from a touch of arthritis. It makes it difficult for him to clean himself properly, and being part Maine Coon, he has a thick, oily coat, prone to matting. Recently, he’s developed mats so severe, I can’t get them out with a brush. I tried scissors, but he didn’t really like that, and so I tried Mr. Shakes’ electric razor. Jim, ever the sport, who takes his shots twice a day without a complaint, has done okay with the razor. In two sessions, I’ve managed to rid him of approximately three tons of hair.
The past couple days, I’ve noticed he’s been more mobile again. He’s put up with so much, and he hates all the fuss, but he always seems a bit grateful, too. When we’re done with a shaving session, I take him to the bathroom and fill his personal mug with fresh tap water, and we hang out for a bit—this ugly little kitten, who has grown into quite the handsome and wonderful beast, and I.
He currently has what can only be described as a mohawk. Straight down the middle of his back is a thick shock of black hair, and on either side, from his tail to his shoulder, baldness. I’ve taken to calling him Mr. T, and I pity the fool who dares to tell him he’s anything but gorgeous.
Sunday Night Morrissey Blogging
Say farewell to your fairweather friends
And not a second too soon.
To leave a life among ruins,
Well there was nothing left but to
Cut ourselves loose.
These fascists and philistines
Of violence and fashion,
These modern day philistines,
They stand on your hands
They stand on my hands.
Any day now we'll perish;
These are nervous times.
No one can hold a candle to you
When it comes down to virtue and truth.
No one can hold a candle to you,
And I dim next to you.
No one can hold a candle to you
When it comes down to old-fashioned virtue.
Kingdom mine,
Open your eyes;
Make up your mind:
Am I Einstein,
Or am I Frankenstein?
You said blow them away
To kingdom come,
But will the kingdom be won?
No one can hold a candle to you
When it comes down to virtue and truth.
No one, no one can hold a candle to you,
And I dim next to you.
Last Straw Officially Grabbed
The All Spin Zone reports that the rightwingers next attempt at discrediting the information in the Downing Street Documents is to declare the entire lot fakes. An interesting midstream change in direction, considering that thus far their line has been that the memos contain “no new information.” Why someone would go to the trouble of creating documents out of thin air to report old news is beyond me. In any case, I’ll turn it over to Kevin Drum, who handily dismisses the charges:
DOWNING STREET DELUSIONS....The wingnuts are getting desperate. Captain's Quarters, in a nostalgic attempt to recreate the glories of Rathergate, suggests that the Downing Street Memos aren't real. Why? Because Michael Smith, the reporter who got hold of them, had them retyped to protect his source and then returned the originals. Jonah Goldberg feverishly calls CQ's revelations a "must read."I think that about sums it up.
Now, unlike the Killian memos that were at the center of Rathergate, there are quite a few principals in this case who either wrote or received these memos and therefore have absolute knowledge of whether or not they're genuine. The first memo, for example, was written by Matthew Rycroft and distributed at the time to David Manning, Geoff Hoon, Jack Straw, Peter Goldsmith, Richard Wilson, John Scarlett, Francis Richards, Richard Dearlove, Jonathan Powell, Sally Morgan, and Alastair Campbell. So far, not a single one of these people has claimed they're fake.
In fact, just the opposite. Here's Tony Blair himself on May 1, the day the first memo was published:
In a Sunday morning television interview, Mr. Blair did not deny that the meeting took place in July 2002, but he recalled that "subsequent to that meeting, we went the United Nations route," seeking a resolution in November 2002, calling on the Iraqi government to disarm.
Here's Knight Ridder on May 5:
A former senior U.S. official called it "an absolutely accurate description of what transpired" during the senior British intelligence officer's visit to Washington. He spoke on condition of anonymity.
Here's the Washington Post on June 12:
Excerpts were made available to The Washington Post, and the material was confirmed as authentic by British sources who sought anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the matter.
Give it up, guys. They're real.
(And, as previously noted, MSNBC mentions verifying the memos here.)
Happy Father's Day, Pop!
I don't think my dad has ever looked at my blog, but I figured I'd give him equal time to Momuschka, who got a Mother's Day greeting, nonetheless. :-)
For a cool story about my dad, see here.
Have You Heard of Tamika Huston?
Neither had I.
But I bet you’ve heard of Laci Peterson. And Lori Hacking. And Elizabeth Smart. And "runaway bride" Jennifer Wilbanks. And probably even Natalee Holloway, who’s disappearance is currently being investigated in Aruba.
The only difference is that Tamika Huston is black.
Cable news executives say they don't pick stories based on the race of the victims. "The stories that 'go national' all have a twist or an emotional aspect to them that make them interesting," said Bill Shine, senior vice president of programming at Fox News.Apparently, black parents don’t really care if their kids go missing.
"When the Aruba story broke, I didn't know if she (Holloway) was white," said Mark Effron, vice president of news/daytime programming at MSNBC.
He said he saw a story about "a parent's worst nightmare."
(Hat tip Oliver Willis.)
The Gay Part
Interesting article in the NY Times about conservative Christians’ battle against gay marriage, “What's Their Real Problem With Gay Marriage? (It's the Gay Part).” One of the things that anti-gay rights politicians will say (including the president), is that it’s not that their against homosexuals, or even homosexuality; it’s just that they’re against gay marriage. It is, though, nothing more than a fine bit of semantics which means nothing to those who support gay rights, and whether the murmurers of such drivel believe it is beside the point, because the people who elect them disagree:
[F]or the anti-gay-marriage activists, homosexuality is something to be fought, not tolerated or respected. I found no one among the people on the ground who are leading the anti-gay-marriage cause who said in essence: ''I have nothing against homosexuality. I just don't believe gays should be allowed to marry.'' Rather, their passion comes from their conviction that homosexuality is a sin, is immoral, harms children and spreads disease. Not only that, but they see homosexuality itself as a kind of disease, one that afflicts not only individuals but also society at large and that shares one of the prominent features of a disease: it seeks to spread itself…To the degree that marriage may contribute to the health of a society, such a contribution isn’t predicated upon those entering the marriage contract being of opposite sexes, and is dependent upon the health of the union—that is, an absence of infidelities, abuse, and other subversive behaviors. To simply say that marriage itself, a concept that is wholly meaningless without the requisite caveats about the strength and functionality of those actively engaged with the concept, is the healthy root of society, is simplistic to the point of absurdity.
At its essence, then, the Christian conservative thinking about gay marriage runs this way. Homosexuality is not an innate, biological condition but a disease in society. Marriage is the healthy root of society. To put the two together is thus willfully to introduce disease to that root. It is society willing self-destruction, which is itself a symptom of a wider societal disease, that of secularism.
The truth is, of course, that when conservative Christians reference “marriage,” what they mean is their vision of marriage, which encompasses all the traditional ideals associated with marriage—childbearing and –rearing, a lifelong union unblemished by divorce, etc. What such a picture fails to address, however, is that parenting, dedicated partnerships, and the other associated ideals are not restricted to those bound by marriage, or to couples of the opposite sex. Nor are those bound by marriage necessarily destined to parent or spend their lives together. And the truth is, one cannot legislate a prohibition against deliberate childlessness, or divorce, or an aversion to marriage altogether. Not without undermining the fundamental precepts of the American democracy.
And so we end up with a situation wherein the LGBT community is being arbitrarily barred from equal rights. They may not fit into the conservative Christian view of marriage, but then again, neither do I, and yet I’m still allowed to marry.
In the words of Gary Bauer, president of American Values -- one of what is now a total of 61 organizations under the Arlington Group banner, with a combined membership of 60 million -- gay marriage is ''the new abortion.'' He meant that, as with abortion, conservatives see gay marriage as a culture-altering change being implemented by judicial fiat.Bauer is correct. Abortion did alter our culture, and in spite of their claims that society is worse for its legalization, the opposite is true:
I recently read an incredibly interesting book called Freakonomics, in which an economist by the name of Steven Levitt examines an array of unconnected topics, often unearthing hidden correlations and causations using economic principles. When he set to figuring out why crime rates had fallen so dramatically in the 1990s, even though the horrific crime wave of the ’80s was almost unanimously predicted by criminologists to worsen, he discovered thatSuch findings are, of course, exactly what conservative Christians don’t want to hear. And while there is certainly a viable argument that the better way to control crime is to improve the cirumstances of both those likely to give birth to children who become criminals, and the children that are born to such women, there’s only so much time in a day, and when there are endless numbers of abortion clinics who need clusters of anti-abortion activists intimidating women with posterboards emblazoned with dead fetuses, how can anyone rightfully expect them to spend what little free time they have left solving the problem of endemic poverty, too?
crime began falling nationwide just 18 years after the Supreme Court effectively legalized abortion. He was struck harder by the fact that in five states crime began falling three years earlier than it did everywhere else. These were exactly the five states that had legalized abortion three years before Roe v. Wade.
[…]
The bottom line? Legalized abortion was the single biggest factor in bringing the crime wave of the 1980s to a screeching halt.
But I digress.
The fact of the matter remains as true today as it did in the days leading up to the historic Roe v. Wade decision. Society will never match anyone’s version of perfection, and failing perfection, the best we can do is ensure that each American has as much right to and opportunity for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The legalization of gay marriage will take none of that away from conservative Christians…and threatening one’s vision of Utopia isn’t a reason to punish an entire segment of the American populace. For which conservative Chrisitians ought to be particularly grateful these days.
(Hat tip to Shaker and Julien’s List contributor Holly.)
It’s Official…
…the American Right has collectively lost its mind.
I know what you’re thinking. Shakespeare’s Sister, that was obvious a long time ago. But no—this is the definitive evidence that they have reached a point of madness from which they will not return. FOX News' Chris Wallace on the inmates at Guantanamo Bay:
I mean, what was so horrific in the memo, and I'm not saying, you know, there aren't legitimate questions there, is that someone is chained to a floor and forced to defecate on themselves, and has loud rock music playing. Excuse me? I mean, you know, Auschwitz? Bergen Belsen? The Soviet gulag? I think they would have been very happy to be allowed to defecate on themselves.Not a Freeper. Not a pal of Chicago’s Mag Mile weirdo who strolls the boulevard clad in a sandwich board announcing that Al Gore is a robot. An employee of Fox News.
And while you might be thinking that all those things belong in the same category, the truth is, there was a time when no matter what media outlet Americans were watching, they wouldn’t have put up with shit like that being said.
(Hat tip Green Knight.)
The Useless Press (Part 9,839 in a Series)
Cernig from Newshog emailed me to let me know that I missed one of the AP stories about the Downing Street Documents:
Memos Show British Concern Over Iraq Plans
(Thanks, Cernig!)
I don’t know what that brings their grand total to, but if I had to guess, it wouldn’t be more than 20, and that’s probably being generous. Apropos of Paul’s post about FAIR’s report on the media’s justification of why they haven’t covered the Memos, I went through and counted how many posts I’ve written about them since I first mentioned the then-only leaked memo on May 26. I stopped counting at 60.
Now, I’m admittedly driven to the brink of a meltdown with disseminating information on this subject (and it’s not because I hate Bush; it’s because I don’t want my country behaving this way, irrespective of who’s running it), but it’s probably safe to assume that most members of the alliance haven’t written quite so much on the topic (although I’m sure there are some who have written more than I). So let’s assume that the average Big Brass Alliance member has, in the past month, written 20 posts about the Downing Street Memos. There are now 528 member blogs. That’s 10,560 posts.
And that doesn’t count the bloggers who aren’t members of the alliance, which includes most of the biggest lefty blogs. How many dKos diaries alone have been written about it? The Awaken the Mainstream Media campaign issues at least one post a day, and is affiliated with DowningStreetMemo.com, which has also been pushing the story.
The American media ought to be ashamed of itself.
I have a full-time job already. So do most of the bloggers who are regularly writing about this story. I’m sure we’d all appreciate it if we didn’t have to spend our free time doing your jobs for you, too.
[UPDATE: Democracy Guy reports on today's Sunday Cleveland Plain Dealer doing its job. And the San Francisco Chronicle, which has been one of the few publications that's done right by this story, has a good opinion piece worth checking out, too. Thanks to Oddjob for the pointers.]
“Spikes of Activity”
Here’s the problem with being so sure of your moral rectitude that things like international law can be rendered inapplicable to your decision-making, perhaps even quaint: You’ve no compunction about proudly including descriptions of your warmongering tactics into a book:
A SHARP increase in British and American bombing raids on Iraq in the run-up to war “to put pressure on the regime” was illegal under international law, according to leaked Foreign Office legal advice.The attempt to provoke Saddam through increased “spikes of activity” was earlier revealed in the first-leaked Downing Street Memo, dated July 23, 2002 which notes:
The advice was first provided to senior ministers in March 2002. Two months later RAF and USAF jets began “spikes of activity” designed to goad Saddam Hussein into retaliating and giving the allies a pretext for war.
The Foreign Office advice shows military action to pressurise the regime was “not consistent with” UN law, despite American claims that it was.
[…]
Further intensification of the bombing, known in the Pentagon as the Blue Plan, began at the end of August, 2002, following a meeting of the US National Security Council at the White House that month.
General Tommy Franks, the allied commander, recalled in his autobiography, American Soldier, that during this meeting he rejected a call from Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, to cut the bombing patrols because he wanted to use them to make Iraq’s defences “as weak as possible”.
The allied commander specifically used the term “spikes of activity” in his book. The upgrade to a full air war was also illegal, said Goodhart. “If, as Franks seems to suggest, the purpose was to soften up Iraq for a future invasion or even to intimidate Iraq, the coalition forces were acting without lawful authority,” he said.
Although the legality of the war has been more of an issue in Britain than in America, the revelations indicate Bush may also have acted illegally, since Congress did not authorise military action until October 11 2002.
The air war had already begun six weeks earlier and the spikes of activity had been underway for five months.
The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun “spikes of activity” to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.(Hat tip to Shaker Oddjob.)
