My posts will probably become even more slapdash and infrequent for the remainder of the year, but please do continue to stop by.

There might be something new here to read. In fact I'm sure of it.

And as always, thanks for visiting.

- rob 5:32 PM - [PermaLink] -

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They just wanted a war

A devastating attack on Mr Blair's justification for military action by Carne Ross, Britain's key negotiator at the UN, has been kept under wraps until now because he was threatened with being charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act.

In the testimony revealed today Mr Ross, 40, who helped negotiate several UN security resolutions on Iraq, makes it clear that Mr Blair must have known Saddam Hussein possessed no weapons of mass destruction. He said that during his posting to the UN, "at no time did HMG [Her Majesty's Government] assess that Iraq's WMD (or any other capability) posed a threat to the UK or its interests."

Mr Ross revealed it was a commonly held view among British officials dealing with Iraq that any threat by Saddam Hussein had been "effectively contained".

This is similar to what Colin Powell (before receiving his marching orders) said in early 2001: Iraq was not a threat, and the sanctions were keeping it that way.

Thousands and thousands of lives are lost, because Bush wanted a war. This wasn't about securing America or the United Kingdom, it was believing in a pipe dream that Iraq would become a democratic Eden (which is located there after all), and that this would cause all of the middle east to become peaceful and democratic and give free oil to all Hummer driving Americans. It was a "plan" that was more fantasy than Lord of the Rings, but with real people dying, higher budget, and no plot.

- rob 5:30 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Laura Bush Slams Media For Ignoring Good News In Iraq

Indeed. And the same could be said for the local news.

Why in New York the press is constantly talking about the police firing 50 times at the unarmed groom and killing him the day before his wedding. But there are many many more stories about police that are good news. Why not talk about Sgt. MacGuire who helped an old lady cross a street?

And why do traffic reports only mention the traffic jams. There are many streets that are flowing quite well. The press is giving us the negative view that traffic at rush hour is bad, despite the fact that in some places its not so bad.

And they also report school shootings, but not on the nice flower Jimmy gave Sally, or other good stories about schools.

And why all this reporting about ecoli when they could be reporting about all the other fast food joints that give you delicious poison-free edibles at a quick pace?

- rob 12:48 PM - [PermaLink] -

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And you may ask yourself-well...how did I get here?

President Bush, just now at the Pentagon (emphasis added): "I thank these men who wear our uniform for a very candid and fruitful discussion about how to secure this country and how to win a war that we now find ourselves in."

from: Talking Points Memo

And you may ask yourself
Am I right? ...am I wrong?
And you may tell yourself
My god!...what have I done?
- Talking Heads (Once In a Life Time)

- rob 12:20 PM - [PermaLink] -

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A Terrorist tries to get a hold of chemical weapons!
Already is in possession of explosives!!!

Big news! This terrorist means business unlike the Florida schmucks.

Oh, what's that? He's a farmhand in Tennessee

Nevermind.

McKenzie man gets 30 years for bomb plotting
McKenzie man told undercover agents he wanted to detonate bomb
Man gets 30 years for bomb plotting

Demetrius "Van" Crocker of McKenzie, convicted in April of attempting to obtain a chemical weapon and possession of stolen explosives, was sentenced to 30 years in prison Tuesday by U.S. District Judge James Todd in Jackson.
...
The 40-year-old farmhand and father of two was convicted of accepting what he thought were ingredients to make Sarin nerve gas and a block of C-4 explosive from undercover agents in October 2004.
...
During the trial, prosecutors introduced video- and audio-taped conversations that Crocker had with undercover agents, laced with profanity, racial slurs and Crocker's open hatred of all things to do with the government.

Can we just say all terrorists are bad. And that hyping up Islamic terrorism only, and hyping it up so much proves two things to would be Islamic terrorism - their terrorism works in that it gets our attention, and that we don't like Islamic folks. I believe both those conclusions are wrong, but it ain't hard to see how they'd come up with that conclusion.

- rob 6:22 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Dear Washington Post,

It seems, for whatever reason you have taken it upon yourself to promote the politics of the right by acting as an apologist to a dictator. That is not only stupid; it mars the philosophy of the right. It's like the idiots that try to promote the left by saying Stalin wasn't all that bad.

News flash - these people were bad, their "politics" don't really matter.

Let's think of politics as a circle:


I hope this diagram is helpful

Left and Right start at the top (anarchy). And as you go all the way down to the left and all the way down to the right you end up exactly at the same point: the other end of the circle (whoa - dude my head hurts).

This is where Dictators live. They can be fascists, they can be communists, they can be old fashioned military strong men. They are all exactly the same thing. The politics they supposedly support - the ideology - is just window dressing.

A Dictator's Double Standard
Augusto Pinochet tortured and murdered. His legacy is Latin America's most successful country.

AUGUSTO PINOCHET, who died Sunday at the age of 91, has been vilified for three decades in and outside of Chile, the South American country he ruled for 17 years. For some he was the epitome of an evil dictator. That was partly because he helped to overthrow, with U.S. support, an elected president considered saintly by the international left: socialist Salvador Allende, whose responsibility for creating the conditions for the 1973 coup is usually overlooked. Mr. Pinochet was brutal: More than 3,000 people were killed by his government and tens of thousands tortured, mostly in his first three years. Thousands of others spent years in exile.

See he was a bad man. He did bad things.

So some in the left remember with Allende with rose colored glasses. Its called playing What if. You can make people do wonderful things "if only they lived."

It's hard not to notice, however, that the evil dictator leaves behind the most successful country in Latin America. In the past 15 years, Chile's economy has grown at twice the regional average, and its poverty rate has been halved. It's leaving behind the developing world, where all of its neighbors remain mired. It also has a vibrant democracy.

Wow, Pinochet's dictatorship brought about Chile's vibrant democracy, good to know WaPo.

But, even if some of Pinochet's ideas helped the economy of Chile - that doesn't mean right wing dictators are good at economics either. Look at what Peron did to Argentina's economy.

By way of contrast, Fidel Castro -- Mr. Pinochet's nemesis and a hero to many in Latin America and beyond -- will leave behind an economically ruined and freedomless country with his approaching death. Mr. Castro also killed and exiled thousands.
...
The contrast between Cuba and Chile more than 30 years after Mr. Pinochet's coup is a reminder of a famous essay written by Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, the provocative and energetic scholar and U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who died Thursday. In "Dictatorships and Double Standards," a work that caught the eye of President Ronald Reagan, Ms. Kirkpatrick argued that right-wing dictators such as Mr. Pinochet were ultimately less malign than communist rulers, in part because their regimes were more likely to pave the way for liberal democracies. She, too, was vilified by the left. Yet by now it should be obvious: She was right.

She was incredibly wrong. Dictators are bad - some may leave economies strong - some may not - it actually has nothing to do with right of left, but rather the individual Dictator.

Kirkpatrick is not only wrong in her conclusion, the very act of arguing it is a blanket apology to right wing dictators. They are all bad.

In the long term the best economies are from democracies. And besides, we're dealing with people who kill here - so lets not just argue about who leaves the best economy behind.

Mussolini got the trains running on time after all (Septa/Amtrak/etc should look to hire him).

Now let me tag various 20th century dictators with "right" or "left." Unfair really in that they personally do not represent a political philosophy any more, and represent only power lust in its final state.

Mussolini - right
Stalin - left
Hitler - right
Pol Pot - left
Pinochet - right
Castro - left

Now which, left or right, is less malign?

Which method of getting killed is less fatal?

- rob 6:01 PM - [PermaLink] -

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I won't go as far as this:

Daily Kos: Expert: Anthrax attacks covered up by FBI

But I will say it is suspicious that not only have they made zero progress but they recently complete contradicted everything they said at the beginning of the investigation. Over and over it was said at the beginning that the anthrax was weapon grade. Then just recently they said it was anthrax that could have been made by your average anthrax making joe - that it wasn't sophisticated at all.

So there really are two ways to look at this.

• The FBI lying in 2001 so as to make people think this was another act of terrorism? Did they want to highten the fear at the time the Bush administration was trying to heighten their powers (and thus help him get more with less opposition)?
• The FBI is lying now so they don't look incompetent in their ability to find a person who had access to weapon grade anthrax (gee, that most be... dozens)?

Or you can decide that they are indeed hiding who did it.

Whatever, it just gives me an excuse to show this graphic again:

- rob 4:12 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Eerie thing - when an American government is incompetent, lies, and is corrupt, Americans then begin to think the government is incompetent, lies, and is corrupt.

Even when that isn't the Fox News script.

It is the GOP's governemnt - and this is their faliure - the long hard clean up begins as soon as the new Congress is in session. And what the really tough part is as they try to clean up, Bush will still be pissing away all of America's good will, military strenght, and economic might.

Tony Snow: There Is A ‘Sense Of Crisis Of Confidence In Government’

Whatever the discontent may be with the president, the level of confidence in Congress is even lower. And what you have is the sense of crisis of confidence in government.

Why does the Bush administration only defend itself by pointing out that their are others worse than they?

Sure we torture, but Saddam and Hitler tortured more.

Sure we have extraditions, but Argentina had more.

Good God. Ability, value, and worth do not come from comparing yourself to the worse of the worst.

Have some self esteem man.

I do not enjoy a bad movie simply because it is better than Ishtar.

- rob 12:10 PM - [PermaLink] -

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Pathetic Rich Boy gets pulled over by police for doing drugs: It's not my fault, its society's fault.

Frist Ducks Responsibility For Unfinished Spending Bills, Blames ‘Systemic Flaws In America’s Processes’

The USA Today blasted the 109th Congress in an editorial today, accusing lawmakers of “lowering the achievement bar.” The paper complained, “Congress even punted its most basic job: approving all 11 annual spending bills that keep the government’s lights on.”

Outgoing Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-TN) responded by blaming the Senate’s inaction on the appropriations process:

Some problems Congress faces stem from systemic flaws in America’s processes. No matter who has been in charge, all appropriations bills have passed on time on only three occasions in the past 30 years. Improving things will require a strong mutual commitment on the part of the White House and the leadership in both houses of Congress to reform the spending process, fix entitlements, tackle earmarks and eliminate the deficit.

So if there are systematic flaws in America's processes, then maybe the folks who have controlled every single branch of the government might have worked to fix them? But no, the truth is there were unfortunate brain dead people they were diagnosing via video tapes.

And besides, how if the systematic flaws make it impossible to do their job, how come the Democrats were able to do it in the session when they lost power?

“In 1994, when Republicans swept back to power in the House after four decades,” GovExec.com reported, “there was no spending mess to clean up - all appropriations bills had been enacted by the Democrats before the end of the fiscal year.”

- rob 11:12 AM - [PermaLink] -

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At over 3 and a half years into a war - traditionalists generally think it is time to have a plan for the war.

20th Century thinking I say. Bush - being at the cutting edge still needs a bit more time to decide what he should be doing in Iraq. No need to think of that before the war, or even in the first three and a half years. Like wine - no plan until its time.

Press Briefing by Tony Snow

The President has, as you know, been engaged in a series of conversations and consultations with people on Iraq policy. He is moving toward a decision on how to move forward and, in the process, has been pushing a lot of people on the diplomatic side, and also military, security, and economic side, to come back with answers to some very specific and practical questions. I know a lot of you have been curious about when he would be announcing or talking about the way forward. That is not going to happen until the new year. We do not know when, so I can't give you a date, I can't give you a time, I can't give you a place, I can't give you a way in which it will happen. So all those questions are yet to be answered.
...
Q Did the military leaders encourage him to just take a little bit more time?

MR. SNOW: No, no, no. The President is the Commander-in-Chief; he issues orders. He decided, frankly, that it's not ready yet.

Ever get the feeling their stringing us along like were their desparate mistress.

Tony and or Bush: "Look I promise I'll divorce my wife, soon, you know I will, it is you who I love, really. But I'm not ready yet, you know, the holidays, the kids. The timing has to be right, so I can't tell you when I'll do that. Maybe next year.

But in the meantime let's continue having sex with no obligations."

- rob 10:42 AM - [PermaLink] -

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