Liberal-oriented columns, commentary and archived articles on national and international news, politics, and the communication arts--with emphasis on China--by Joseph Bosco, author, journalist, director and actor; Professor of Drama and Communications at Beijing Foreign Studies University. 

Sunday, February 29, 2004

Dowd Skewers The Other George

Sorry, Right Number is what Maureen Dowd titles her latest piece of columnist wizardry. Frankly, for pure wit and wordsmanship--if not passion and the burning sense of social mission of Mr. Kristof and a few others--Ms. Dowd has no peer in the elite world of big-time columnists. Only one man's opinion, of course. Read on and enjoy:
Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday, George Tenet was asked why the C.I.A. never picked up the trail of Marwan al-Shehhi, the pilot who crashed Flight 175 into the south tower on 9/11.

Thirty months earlier, German intelligence had passed on a hot tip to the C.I.A. — the Al Qaeda terrorist's first name and phone number.

"The Germans gave us a name, Marwan — that's it — and a phone number," the director of central intelligence replied, adding: "They didn't give us a first and a last name until after 9/11, with then additional data."

For crying out loud. As one guy I know put it: "I've tracked down women across the country with a lot less information than that."

Mr. Tenet is not in any trouble for that sorry answer, of course, just as he hasn't had to pay any penalty for building up the phantom arsenal that Saddam only dreamed he had.

The catchphrase du jour is Donald Trump's snappy, "You're fired." But no one has lost a job over the intelligence failures that led to 9/11 or the war that was trumped up and velcroed to 9/11. In fact, the only people the president and vice president are trying to put out of business are the members of the commission charged with figuring out how 9/11 happened and how to prevent another one.

The White House seems more worried about the public's finding out how much it knew and how little it did before 9/11 than it does about identifying and fixing security weaknesses.

After trying to kill the commission and then trying to put Dr. Strangelove-Kissinger in charge, President Bush and Dick Cheney have done their best to hamper the panel that's the best hope of the 9/11 widows, widowers and orphans to get justice.

"This is not no-fault government," said Lorie Van Auken, a 9/11 widow. "You don't just let people go on doing what they're doing wrong."

It is a triumph of chutzpah for Mr. Bush to thwart the investigation into 9/11 at the same time he seeks re-election by promoting his handling of 9/11 and scaring us with the specter of more terrorism. He's even using 9/11 memorials as the backdrop for his convention in New York.

Last week, the president played it sly, acting as though he was willing to extend the commission's deadline to finish the work that was taking longer because the administration was stonewalling. But the House speaker, J. Dennis Hastert, was clearly helping out the White House, answering the "who will rid me of this meddlesome panel?" call.

Senators John McCain and Joseph Lieberman, who helped create the commission, played hardball, threatening highway funds and federal jobs if the commission didn't get two extra months. Mr. Hastert caved.

Mr. McCain said he's expecting the same administration "obfuscation and delay" when he sits on Mr. Bush's hand-picked intelligence review board. "That's why I made sure I got subpoena power," he said. "No bureaucracy will willingly give you information that may be embarrassing to them."

Especially not such a secretive, paranoid and high-handed administration. Bush officials act as though they own 9/11, even while refusing to own up to any 9/11 mistakes.

Because of 9/11, they think they can suspend the Constitution, blow off investigators, attack nations pre-emptively, and keep Americans afraid by waging a war against terrorism that can never be won.

As Bob Kerrey, a frustrated member of the 9/11 commission, told Chris Matthews, the U.S. should have declared war on Osama as soon as it became apparent that he had an army with a "tremendous, sophisticated capability" and an ideology that dictated killing Americans.

"To declare war on terrorism, it seems to me to have the target wrong," he said. "It would be like after the 7th of December, 1941, declaring war on Japanese planes. We declared war on Japan. We didn't declare war on their tactic. . . . Terrorism is a tactic."

A Bush 41 official agreed: "You can't fight terrorism conventionally like a war. Any 16-year-old kid can strap on dynamite and take down any building. It must be fought clandestinely, dealing with the underlying causes and taking security measures in our own country."

Here's a hot tip: If you think the White House should be more cooperative with the 9/11 commission, call George at (202) 456-1111.

I'm sure everyone outside the C.I.A. can take it from there.
The New York Times
 

11:38 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Diplomatic Baggage...

While it is certainly not always the case in the delicate world of diplomacy, sometimes actions speak louder than even silence. Chief American delegate James Kelly's performance during the last 36 hours of the six-party talks in Beijing is perhaps a case in point. Having spent the last hours of the public hoopla over the conclusion of the six-party talks at the Chinese broadcast news nerve-center, CCTV, as a guest commentator, I became privy to a piece of news--and reported it to an audience of hundreds of millions across Asia--that will probably not be reported in the American press, but should be.

It was well-reported that Mr. Kelly kept his silence publicly throughout the talks; unlike the other parties, he made no comments to any of the some 600 journalists from around the world covering the event. There is certainly nothing wrong with that; in many respects, it is commendable, since most comments by diplomats during a period of negotiations are pure pablum and not having to listen to it, much less report it, is a relief to most journalists. What was not reported was that allegedly Mr. Kelly had his bags packed and sent to the airport well before that day's talks began. According to Chinese sources this reporter trusts, Kelly did not do this quietly, as a simple matter of efficiency for a busy man. He did it in such a fashion that it was an unspoken diplomatic statement to his fellow negotiators--but not so that it would fly into the radar of the press corps--something on the order of: This is crap, I'm outa here. [I must make this caveat very clear: This reporter has no first-hand knowledge of this happening--i.e., I did not witness any of it personally. I do trust my sources, however, and am reporting it as such.]

America is already woefully short on friendly diplomatic capital in much of the world due to the Bush administration's profoundly undiplomatic words, gestures and actions dating from the very beginning of his presidency. In that light, if true, the behavior of Mr. Kelly was misguided at least, and deliberately insulting at worst. Let us hope there were circumstances unknown to me and the news brain-trust at CCTV which would explain why this departure gambit was necessary. It could have a completely innocent explanation. If so, however, it was lost on the other parties--certainly the Chinese hosts--involved in attempting to resolve one of the most dangerous flashpoints in our world, nuclear proliferation in northeast Asia.

Below you will find two pretty good journalistic wrap-ups of the six-party talks, first by Reuters, and below that, Joseph Kahn's reportage of the talks in The New York Times; nowhere will you find any mention of Mr. Kelly's "baggage," that which he came with, and that which he left with:
BEIJING (Reuters) - Six-party talks on the North Korean nuclear crisis ended on Saturday without a breakthrough but a senior U.S. official said the meetings had advanced Washington's agenda of disarming Pyongyang.

Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing closed the four-day session saying all sides had agreed to set up a working group and hold the next set of talks in Beijing before the end of June.

"Differences, even serious differences, still exist," Li said at the closing ceremony, without specifying what gaps remained

China's chief negotiator, Wang Yi, cited an "extreme lack of trust" between the U.S. and North Koreans and said further discussions were needed on the scope of both the North's proposal to freeze its nuclear programs and the U.S. demand for dismantling all atomic arms schemes.

But a senior U.S. official declared the talks, which also involved South Korea, Japan and Russia "very successful," saying all but Pyongyang had agreed to the goal of a nuclear-free North.

"The event has exceeded my expectations in a very important respect. It's been very successful in moving the agenda toward our goal of complete, verifiable and irreversible dismantling (CVID) of DPRK nuclear programs," the U.S. official said. "CVID is now more on the table than ever."

In Washington, State Department spokesman Richard Boucher was also upbeat despite acknowledging that "key differences remain." He said in a statement the United States welcomed the results of "very serious discussions" and cited as progress the agreements to make the talks more regular.

After the first inconclusive round in August, it took six months of intense shuttle diplomacy to organize new talks, something the United States wanted to avoid repeating. It had proposed a formal schedule for fresh negotiations and establishing groups that would meet in between the rounds.

Russia's chief delegate, Alexander Losyukov, said the talks achieved "modest" results. But he called the working groups "a reasonable base for the continuation of discussions of those problems arising from the different positions."

Analysts said, however, that Washington and Pyongyang could both dig in their heels in this U.S. presidential election year.

"North Korea does not have to strike any agreement now, ahead of the November election in the United States," said Yu Suk-ryul of Seoul's Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security. "The United States has a need to avoid collapse of the talks before the election."
There is much more to this wrap-up and analysis at Reuters.com

And there is this report and analysis from Joseph Kahn in The New York Times:
BEIJING, Feb. 28 — The United States and North Korea said Saturday that they were committed to deepening negotiations over the North's nuclear weapons program, ending four days of inconclusive discussions with an unusual show of conciliation.

Senior Bush administration officials and Kim Kye Kwan, North Korea's top negotiator at the six-nation talks here, said that while their main differences remained unresolved, the talks had proved useful. They pledged to meet in smaller working groups soon and hold another formal session before the end of June.

"We had substantive discussions about the nuclear issue with the goal being the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula," Mr. Kim said, in a rare news conference at the North Korean Embassy here. "My delegation has adopted a businesslike attitude with the intention of resolving the issue peacefully through dialogue and negotiations."

He accused the United States of maintaining a "hostile policy" and blamed it for the lack of a breakthrough. Still, his criticism was not as sharp as the message North Korea sent after sessions in April and August, when its negotiators said they planned to abandon talks and expand the nuclear program.
There is much more of Joseph Kahn's article in The New York Times...
  

6:10 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




From Dubya's Mouth...

It is time for some more Bushisms, as collected by Jacob Weisberg:
"Do you have Blacks, too?" --To Brazilian president Fernando Cardoso; Washington, D.C.; November 8, 2001

"I'm sure you can imagine it's an unimaginable honor to live here." --In a White House Address to agriculture leaders; June 18, 2001

"One year ago today, the time for excuse-making has come to an end." --Washington, D.C.; January 8, 2003

"You saw the president yesterday. I thought he was very forward-leaning, as they say in diplomatic nuanced circles." --Referring to his meeting with Russian president Vladimir Putin; Rome; July 23, 2001

"Whatever it took to help Taiwan defend theirself." --On how far we'd be willing to go to defend Taiwan; Good Morning America; April 25, 2001
  

4:55 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




The Truth About John Kerry, Finally

If you are a Democrat, an Independent, or even a moderate Republican who isn't keen on four more years of Bush, but you are wary of supporting Senator Kerry because of much that has been written or said about his antiwar activities upon his return from Vietnam, you MUST read The New York Times article below. Please.
On April 22, 1971, John Kerry, a decorated 27-year-old Navy veteran of two tours in Vietnam, electrified the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with his passionate testimony against the war, and with tales from fellow veterans about 'the absolute horror of what this country, in a sense, made them do' in Southeast Asia.

As both a veteran and anguished opponent of the Vietnam War, Mr. Kerry has spent years working to square the circle of a conflict that divided his generation, and the nation. Now, his old words have come back to haunt his presidential campaign, as conservative backers of President Bush question whether Mr. Kerry is "a proud war hero or angry antiwar protester," as National Review Online recently asked.

The full picture is complex. In 1970 and 1971, Mr. Kerry was among the most prominent spokesmen for Vietnam Veterans Against the War, whose major patrons included the actress Jane Fonda, and which later staged takeovers of public buildings and walkouts from Veterans Administration hospitals. But when Mr. Kerry was involved, contemporaries recount, he often took steps to moderate the group's actions, believing it was better — for it, and him — to work within the political system that he ultimately sought to join. When he organized the mass march on Washington that resulted in his Senate testimony, Ms. Fonda was nowhere to be seen.

"I think Kerry made a big effort not to have me invited to participate in that," Ms. Fonda said in a telephone interview this week. "Because I think he wanted the organization to distance itself from me, that I was too radical or something." She added: "I went to North Vietnam in July of 1972, so it was not even `Hanoi Jane' yet, but I was still considered a lightning rod and radical. He knew that they had to get the attention of Congress, and he didn't want any unnecessary baggage to come with them."
Please read the rest of this article in The New York Times...
  

2:10 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




This Is A National Shame...

It is arguably better to be an unemployed man looking for work in China, than a black man seeking work in New York City--by far. The figures released below are a national shame and embarrassment:
It is well known that the unemployment rate in New York City rose sharply during the recent recession. It is also understood that the increase was worse for men than for women, and especially bad for black men. But a new study examining trends in joblessness in the city since 2000 suggests that by 2003, nearly one of every two black men between 16 and 64 was not working.

The study, by the Community Service Society, a nonprofit group that serves the poor, is based on data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics and focuses on the so-called employment-population ratio - the fraction of the working-age population with a paid job - in addition to the more familiar unemployment rate, the percentage of the labor force actively looking for work.

Mark Levitan, the report's author, found that just 51.8 percent of black men ages 16 to 64 held jobs in New York City in 2003. The rate for white men was 75.7 percent; for Hispanic men, 65.7; and for black women, 57.1. The employment-population ratio for black men was the lowest for the period Mr. Levitan has studied, which goes back to 1979.

"We're left with a very big question,'' Mr. Levitan, a senior policy analyst with the society, said in an interview. "As the economy recovers, will we see a rise in employment among black men in tandem with the rise in employment of city residents generally? In other words, is this fundamentally a cyclical problem or is it more deeply structural? I fear that it is more deeply structural."
The New York Times...
  

1:37 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




The FBI: A Conspiracy Theorist's Best Friend

And you thought conspiracy theorists were all members of the tin-foil hat set.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation ordered an internal review on Friday of its files to determine whether documents that might have been related to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing were improperly withheld from investigators or defense lawyers in the case, a government official said.

The move came in response to an Associated Press article this week that raised fresh questions about whether Timothy J. McVeigh, who was executed in 2001 for the bombing, may have had more than one accomplice.

The article said documents never introduced at Mr. McVeigh's trial showed that F.B.I. agents had destroyed evidence and had failed to share other information that raised the possibility that a gang of white supremacist bank robbers may have helped Mr. McVeigh.

The evidence indicated that the robbers, a group called the Aryan Republican Army, possessed explosive blasting caps similar to those Mr. McVeigh stole and a driver's license with the name of an Arkansas gun dealer who may have been robbed as part of the Oklahoma City plot.

While the Oklahoma City bombing has been a source of widespread conspiracy theories, law enforcement officials say they have seen no solid evidence that anyone other than Mr. McVeigh and Terry L. Nichols, who will stand trial on state charges in Oklahoma next week, was involved in an attack, which killed more than 160 people.
There is more, in The New York Times...
  

1:16 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Saturday, February 28, 2004

Calpundit: "If I've Lost Aaron, I've Lost Middle America"

CalPundit has a great post on Aaron Brown's Pique at the GOPers, in particular, Dennis Hastert:
"IF I'VE LOST AARON, I'VE LOST MIDDLE AMERICA"....Even mild-mannered Aaron Brown is disgusted at the partisan hackery so obvious in Dennis Hastert's decision to prevent the 9/11 commission from doing its job:
Calpundit
  

3:08 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Friday, February 27, 2004

Consumer Complaints Online In China...?

China mind-boggle number two: Consumer complaints online. With nary a comment, this from ChinaTechNews.com:
March 15 is China's Consumers' Rights Day, but the country got an early gift this past week when portal Sohu.com helped open an online forum for Chinese consumers and enterprises to discuss and settle quality problems of products. China Consumers' Association (CCA) helped setup the website located at http://www.online315.com.

Consumers' complaints about shoddy products and bad service get much press in China, helped by vigilante consumer advocates like Wang Hai. And it's not uncommon for Chinese courts to hear cases about products worth less than five yuan (US$0.60), and to rule in favor of the consumer.

"Through the Internet, Chinese consumers have a more convenient and efficient way to complain and solve quality problems," said Teng Jiacai, secretary-general of the CCA.

Founded in 1984, the CCA is the most important organization for Chinese consumers to complain and defend their rights and interests. By the end of 2003, the CCA had accepted almost 8 million cases and recovered about 5 billion yuan (US$602.4 million) for consumers.

"The CCA and Sohu.com will make a scientific analysis of information on consumer complaints and the reconciliation between consumers and enterprises, and will regularly publicize the analysis result," said Wu Gaohan, deputy secretary-general of the CCA.
ChinaTechNews.com
  

8:55 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Another Refrain of: "Roll Over Vladimir, Tell Mao Zedong The News"

Every day things change a little bit more in China. When you consider the raindrop in the river of time that is 28 years in China, and what kind of life, society and government was the norm here when Mao died in 1976, the news that Chinese citizens in Shanghai will now be able to pay their bills online boggles the mind. Of course, this is only a viscerally stunning factoid if one is from my generation; which in my particular case means that the only China I read about, or saw on TV in America, for 28 years of life was...well, unpleasant, to say the very least. To fully appreciate this sentiment it must also be understood that when one is in their mid-fifties, 28 years seems like only yesterday. This then is most interesting news from ChinaTechNews.Com:
From next month, Shanghai citizens will only need to log on to http://www.962233.com or http://www.shfft.com, and they will then be one mouse-click away from paying all their bills such as gas, water, phone, etc.

Some people living in certain commercial buildings will be even more fortunate--they will be able to go through the process merely by scanning their bills into automatic paying terminals installed near their homes.

This "Payment Network" is one of the practical benefits that the Shanghai Municipal government has been promising to its citizens for 2004. Currently, the system has been completed and is ready to begin operation.
ChinaTechNews.com
  

8:33 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Thursday, February 26, 2004

This is beyond the pale...

When is this going to stop? Is rape a part of the "fabric" of American "life and values" we want to export to all of the "lesser" nations we preach to and the others we threaten to remake in our image by force? This is not street crime, which is all but impossible to prevent; apprehension of perpetrators is about the most we can expect of our criminal justice system in civilian society. But in our highly regimented and monitored armed forces prevention should be doctrinal if not doctrinaire by definition, particularly in a combat theatre of operation where watching one another's back is the code, not aping the beast with two backs by force. Sexual assaults in these numbers are symptomatic of something very wrong that goes very deep.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 25 -- The United States military is facing the gravest accusations of sexual misconduct in years, with dozens of servicewomen in the Persian Gulf area and elsewhere saying they were sexually assaulted or raped by fellow troops, lawmakers and victims advocates said on Wednesday.

There have been 112 reports of sexual misconduct over roughly the past 18 months in the Central Command area of operations, which includes Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan, military officials said on Wednesday.

The Army has reported 86 incidents, the Navy 12, the Air Force 8 and the Marine Corps 6.

Military officials said that the bulk of the charges were being investigated and that some had already resulted in disciplinary actions, but they could not provide specifics. They said a small number of the reports had turned out to be unfounded.

In addition, about two dozen women at Sheppard Air Force Base, a large training facility in Texas, have reported to a local rape-crisis center that they were assaulted in 2002. The Air Force Academy in Colorado is still reeling from the disclosure last year of more than 50 reported assaults or rapes over the last decade. ...

The issue came to a boil at a contentious hearing on Capitol Hill on Wednesday, where Senate Democrats and Republicans sharply questioned the Pentagon's top personnel official and four four-star officers for what the lawmakers said were lapses in the military's ability to protect servicewomen from sexual assaults, to provide medical care and counseling to victims of attacks and to punish violators.

Lawmakers said they were particularly appalled by reports that women serving in roles from military police to helicopter pilots had been assaulted by male colleagues in remote combat zones like Iraq and Afghanistan, where immediate medical treatment and a sense of justice seemed to be lacking.

"No war comes without cost, but the cost should be born out of conflict with the enemy, and not because of egregious violations by some of our own troops," said Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican on the Armed Services personnel subcommittee.
There is more to this story in The New York Times
  

8:41 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




The Old Grey Lady Smiles Upon Kerry

Surely to no one's surprise, The New York Times today endorsed John Kerry for next week's New York primary. Still the best newspaper in the world by far, The Times echoes and in some points only alludes to the real strengths of Senator Kerry that I have seen for almost three decades; points that I will bring forth more fully in a piece that I am still working on. In the interim, read this editorial carefully, and try to hold back the knee-jerk responses that "sound bite" journalism has instilled in so many minds about one of the most intellectually complex, exquisitely nuanced and emotionally courageous leaders of the last three decades in America.

I know that many will guffaw at my words here; I ask you please to truly think about what leadership is and what it is not. Here, I will briefly tell you only some of what it isn't: It isn't a legislative record of bills with one's name on them; legislators and legislation are about compromise and deals struck. That is why so few Senators were elected president during the 20th Century. Leadership is also not about consistent ideology--or ideology of any kind, but most certainly not consistent ideology. Here let me paraphrase the great Supreme Court Justice and thinker, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr: I reserve the right to change my mind; or here to quote him exactly: "To have doubted one's own first principles is the mark of a civilized man."

I will have much more to say about why I believe that John F. Kerry is exactly the man America needs at this most pivotal moment in time: a time when the next wrong, rash, faith-based move could send us hurtling down not a slippery slope but a self-righteously greased crevasse without end. Indeed you should now know that John Kerry is the "leader" who was the model for my essay: Give Me That Old Time Liberalism.
The search for a Democratic presidential nominee has been defined by an Anyone-but-Bush sentiment, an obsession with choosing the man who will run the best campaign. But in the end, the party needs to pick the person who is most qualified to be president. That's why this page endorses Senator John Kerry in Tuesday's primary.

Senator John Edwards, Mr. Kerry's only serious competitor, has been terrific on the campaign trail. He has a great speech and enormous discipline, and he makes a direct and genuinely emotional connection with people of all backgrounds. It's easy to envision him as the nominee four or eight years down the line, or on the ticket for vice president this fall. But Mr. Edwards has spent only a few years in public life. When he departs from his stump speech and discusses domestic issues or -- particularly -- foreign affairs, his lack of experience shows.

It's true that Mr. Edwards has as much or more experience than George Bush did when he entered the White House in 2001. But that was a different era. Now Americans understand better that they live in perilous times, and they aren't likely to feel comfortable switching leaders this fall if the challenger seems to require a lot of on-the-job training. Mr. Bush himself was not well served by the thinness of his resume when Sept. 11 occurred.

Mr. Kerry, one of the Senate's experts in foreign affairs, exudes maturity and depth. He can discuss virtually any issue of security or international affairs with authority. What his critics see as an inability to take strong, clear positions seems to us to reflect his appreciation that life is not simple. He understands the nuances and shades of gray in both foreign and domestic policy. While he still has trouble turning out snappy sound bites, we don't detect any difficulty in laying down a clear bottom line. His campaigning skills are perhaps not as strong as his intellectual ones, but they are pretty good and getting better. Early in the race he alienated some audiences with brittle, patronizing lectures. But he has improved tremendously over the last few months. His answers are focused and to the point, and his speeches far more compelling.

If Mr. Kerry wins the nomination, the Bush administration will undoubtedly attempt to paint Mr. Kerry as a typical Massachusetts liberal, but his thinking defies such easy categorization. His positions come from mainstream American thought, centrism of the old school. He has always worried over budget deficits. His record on the environment is extremely strong. He is a gun owner and hunter who supports effective gun control laws, a combat veteran who, having seen a great deal of death, opposes capital punishment. A sense of balance comes through when he is talking. Unfortunately, so far in this campaign Mr. Kerry has shown little interest in being daring, expressing a thought that is unexpected or quirky on even minor issues. We wish we could see a little of the political courage of the Vietnam hero who came back to lead the fight against the war.

While Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards have both demonstrated the physical and mental endurance that now seems a requisite for presidential candidates, Mr. Kerry has been the real comeback star this year. His early campaign was disastrous, and his slip from favorite to also-ran was so dramatic as to be embarrassing. But he pulled his organization together and handily won the early primaries. This was not the first time in his political career -- or his life -- that he has shown the toughness to keep going when things turn sour. That's a quality critical to a presidential nominee -- and to a president.

The primary contest has now come down to two competing arguments. Mr. Kerry's supporters say Mr. Edwards suffers from a gravitas gap. Mr. Edwards's partisans say Mr. Kerry is on the wrong end of a charm chasm. The senator from Massachusetts seems to us to have warmed up a good deal since the campaign began. He can take the edge off his patrician aura, at least in part, by retelling the story of his Vietnam exploits and bringing back loyal blue-collar friends from the service to attest to his virtues as a leader.

Almost everyone who has been watching the Democratic campaign would love to merge Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards into one composite super-candidate, with Mr. Kerry's depth and Mr. Edwards's personal touch with the voters. In the television era, likability is extremely important. But this is a serious business, and Mr. Kerry, the more experienced and knowledgeable candidate, gets our endorsement.
The New York Times
  

6:39 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Two Crucifixions For The Price Of One

Only Ms. Dowd can crucify Gibson and Dubya at the same time in 700 words and also render a masterpiece of the columnist's craft. Golly Jeeze Damn, but the lady can turn a phrase; in this instance every sentence is a well-turned phrase, not unlike Dylan's genius in "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall," where each line could be a song title itself. She titles hers: Stations of the Crass
Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

Mel Gibson and George W. Bush are courting bigotry in the name of sanctity.

The moviemaker wants to promote "The Passion of the Christ" and the president wants to prevent the passion of the gays.

Opening on two screens: W.'s stigmatizing as political strategy and Mel's stigmata as marketing strategy.

Mr. Gibson, who told Diane Sawyer that he was inspired to make the movie after suffering through addictions, found the ultimate 12-step program: the Stations of the Cross.

I went to the first show of "The Passion" at the Loews on 84th Street and Broadway; it was about a quarter filled. This is not, as you may have read, a popcorn movie. In Latin and Aramaic with English subtitles, it's two gory hours of Jesus getting flayed by brutish Romans at the behest of heartless Jews.

Perhaps fittingly for a production that licensed a jeweler to sell $12.99 nail necklaces (what's next? crown-of-thorns prom tiaras?), "The Passion" has the cartoonish violence of a Sergio Leone Western. You might even call it a spaghetti crucifixion, "A Fistful of Nails."

Writing in The New Republic, Leon Wieseltier, the literary editor, scorns it as "a repulsive, masochistic fantasy, a sacred snuff film" that uses "classically anti-Semitic images."

I went with a Jewish pal, who tried to stay sanguine. "The Jews may have killed Jesus," he said. "But they also gave us `Easter Parade.' "

The movie's message, as Jesus says, is that you must love not only those who love you, but more importantly those who hate you.

So presumably you should come out of the theater suffused with charity toward your fellow man.

But this is a Mel Gibson film, so you come out wanting to kick somebody's teeth in.

In "Braveheart" and "The Patriot," his other emotionally manipulative historical epics, you came out wanting to swing an ax into the skull of the nearest Englishman. Here, you want to kick in some Jewish and Roman teeth. And since the Romans have melted into history . . .

Like Mr. Gibson, Mr. Bush is whipping up intolerance but calling it a sacred cause.

At first, the preacher-in-chief resisted conservative calls for a constitutional ban on gay marriage. He felt, as Jesus put it in the Gibson script (otherwise known as the Gospels), "If it is possible, let this chalice pass from me."

But under pressure from the Christian right, he grabbed the chalice with both hands and swigged — seeking to set a precedent in codifying discrimination in the Constitution, a document that in the past has been amended to correct discrimination by giving fuller citizenship rights to blacks, women and young people.

If the president is truly concerned about preserving the sanctity of marriage, as one of my readers suggested, why not make divorce illegal and stone adulterers?

Our soldiers are being killed in Iraq; Osama's still on the loose; jobs are being exported all over the world; the deficit has reached biblical proportions.

And our president is worrying about Mars and marriage?

When reporters tried to pin down White House spokesman Scott McClellan yesterday on why gay marriage is threatening, he spouted a bunch of gobbledygook about "the fabric of society" and civilization.

The pols keep arguing that institutions can't be changed when, in fact, they change all the time. Haven't they ever heard of the institution of slavery?

The government should not be trying to legislate what's sacred.

When Bushes get in trouble, they look around for a politically advantageous bogeyman. Lee Atwater tried to make Americans shudder over the prospect of Willie Horton arriving on their doorstep; and now Karl Rove wants Americans to shudder at the prospect of a lesbian — Dick Cheney's daughter Mary, say — setting up housekeeping next door with her "wife."

When it comes to the Bushes' willingness to stir up base instincts of the base, it is as it was.

As the Max von Sydow character said in Woody Allen's "Hannah and Her Sisters," while watching a TV evangelist appealing for money: "If Jesus came back and saw what's going on in his name, he'd never stop throwing up."
The New York Times
  

4:47 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Enshrining Bigotry By The Great unifier & Compassionate Conservative

As eloquently passionate as is Andrew Sullivan's response to Bush's astonishingly mean-spirited political pandering, today's editorial in The New York Times will perhaps be more effective and it also is important reading. I reproduce it in full below:
With his re-election campaign barely started and his conservative base already demanding tribute, President Bush proposes to radically rewrite the Constitution. The amendment he announced support for yesterday could not only keep gay couples from marrying, as he maintains, but could also threaten the basic legal protections gay Americans have won in recent years. It would inject meanspiritedness and exclusion into the document embodying our highest principles and aspirations.

If Mr. Bush had been acting as a president yesterday, rather than a presidential candidate, he would have tried to guide the nation on the divisive question of what rights gay Americans have. Across the nation, elected officials and others have been weighing in on whether they believe gays should be allowed to marry, have civil unions, adopt, visit their partners in hospitals and be free from employment discrimination. Except for a throwaway line about proceeding with "kindness and good will and decency," the president's speech was a call for taking rights away from gay Americans.

President Bush's studied unwillingness to talk about the rights gay people do have is particularly significant given the wording of the Federal Marriage Amendment now pending in Congress. It calls for denying same-sex couples not only marriage, but also its "legal incidents." It could well be used to deny gay couples even economic benefits, which are now widely recognized by cities, states and corporations. Such an amendment could radically roll back the rights of millions of Americans.

In his remarks yesterday, President Bush tried to create a sense of crisis. He talked of the highest Massachusetts court's recognition of gay marriage, San Francisco officials' decision to grant marriage licenses to gay couples and a New Mexico county's doing the same thing. He did not say the New Mexico attorney general found that gay marriages violate state law, the California attorney general is asking the California Supreme Court to review San Francisco's actions, and Massachusetts is considering amending its State Constitution to prohibit gay marriage. The president, who believes so strongly in states' rights in other contexts, should let the states do their jobs and work out their marriage laws before resorting to a constitutional amendment.

The Constitution has been amended over the years to bring women, blacks and young people into fuller citizenship. President Bush's amendment would be the first adopted to stigmatize and exclude a group of Americans. Polls show that while a majority of Americans oppose gay marriage, many would prefer to allow the states to resolve the issue rather than adopting a constitutional amendment. They understand what President Bush does not: the Constitution is too important to be folded, spindled or mutilated for political gain.
The New York Times
  

1:32 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Wednesday, February 25, 2004

The Passion...?

"The Passion," IS going to stir unprecedented passion in those who see it. Judging by a lengthy series of scenes from the film just aired by CNN (Asian Edition), it can be said that the film crosses cinematic lines like none other. The graphic, ripping, primal violence inflicted upon flesh, whether believed to be divine flesh or only sublimely human flesh, surpasses anything this author--and WGA (screenwriter's Guild of America) member--has seen in a commercially released motion picture to date. The historian and writer in me applauds the authenticity of the true barbarity of crucifixion Mr. Gibson has painstakingly rendered in his film.

However, if the scenes, dialogue and commentary aired by CNN are an accurate portrayal of the film's story, then the same historian and writer parts of me are appalled at the film's dangerously erroneous assertion that Pilate was blameless and that it was a Jewish mob alone that cried out for the torture and murder of Jesus. That is not only a gross historical inaccuracy, it is shameful anti-semitism. Should such a film or idea be banned or censored? Absolutely not. Should it and its allegedly hateful message be argued against? If true, yes, loudly and passionately.

That argument has been joined well and strongly in The New York Times. I was going to blog its review of the movie in these pages. But again, Richard at The Peking Duck, has beaten me to it:
The New York Times reviews The Passion

And it's not pretty:
The Peking Duck
  

6:56 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Daily Dish Disses Dubya...

The Daily Dish Disses Dubya. A couple of hours ago, I watched Aaron Brown interview Andrew Sullivan on CNN, during which he made it clear he could no longer endorse nor vote for Bush based in large part upon the president's announcement that he will seek a Constitutional Amendment that would essentially ban gay "marriage" in the United States of America. I seldom agree with Mr. Sullivan--particularly in the area of foreign policy--but it will be no surprise to you that on this matter I do, and I do so mostly on a Constitutional basis: Such laws or statutes should be handled at the state level, individually. It is clearly a States Rights issue. While Mr. Sullivan of course has deeper personal views on the subject, he is clearly basing his opinion in the larger public policy debate on the "Federalist" position concerning the division of rights between the states and the national government as set forth in the United States Constitution.

My position on this is a bit thorny for me politically and philosophically since I am a strange hybrid whose views are a combination of those most famously framed in the arguments between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton--with a significant dash of Jacksonian sentiments thrown in. However, we can--and I do--frame this issue as also being about equal freedoms for one and all--individual human rights trumping those of the society as a whole. I was just about to blog the "NewsNight" interview and Sullivan's written eloquence and passion from The Daily Dish when I saw that Richard, the proprietor and author of The Peking Duck had already done so--Richard has always been on top of breaking events, but with his arm now out of a splint, he is doubly tough to beat to the click.

Consequently, I will defer and point you to The Peking Duck:
Andrew Sullivan: "War is declared"

In an emotional post that has already generated thousands of emails, Andrew Sullivan takes off the kid gloves and says President Bush's support of a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage will make gays see the Republican party 'as their enemy for generations."
The Peking Duck
  

4:05 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Tuesday, February 24, 2004

CalPundit Whacks Lt. Bush Again...

CalPundit has whacked Lt. Bush again. And he has scanned the documentary evidence and placed it on his blog for all to see. If you think that honesty is a virtue in a president--I'm not totally convinced that it always is, but I am a relativist--You MUST click on Kevin Drum's post below:
VOLUNTEERING FOR VIETNAM.... I've gotten a couple of emails claiming that RNC chairman Marc Racicot was on NPR this morning and said (paraphrasing), "President Bush volunteered for duty in Vietnam, but wasn't chosen."
And while you are there, be sure and follow his link to Josh Marshall who confirms it, plus adds much more.

These folks who are working for Bush must be taking money on the side to take a dive...

CalPundit
 

11:26 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




C.I.A. Asleep On Their Watch?

The C.I.A. Asleep On Their Watch? Apparently, yes. However, is it really fair to look back that far when we play the "Hindsight is 20-20 Game"? I'm inclined to look at this to see what we can do better in the future instead of playing our Capital's favorite game: "The Blame Game." Read this story from The New York Times and see what you think.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 23 — American investigators were given the first name and telephone number of one of the Sept. 11 hijackers two and a half years before the attacks on New York and Washington, but the United States appears to have failed to pursue the lead aggressively, American and German officials say. ...

In March 1999, German intelligence officials gave the Central Intelligence Agency the first name and telephone number of Marwan al-Shehhi, and asked the Americans to track him.

The name and phone number in the United Arab Emirates had been obtained by the Germans by monitoring the telephone of Mohamed Heidar Zammar, an Islamic militant in Hamburg who was closely linked to the important Qaeda plotters who ultimately mastermined the Sept. 11 attacks, German officials said.

After the Germans passed the information on to the C.I.A., they did not hear from the Americans about the matter until after Sept. 11, a senior German intelligence official said.

"There was no response" at the time, the official said. After receiving the tip, the C.I.A. decided that "Marwan" was probably an associate of Osama bin Laden, but never tracked him down, American officials say.

The Germans considered the information on Mr. Shehhi particularly valuable, and the commission is keenly interested in why it apparently did not lead to greater scrutiny of him.

The information concerning Mr. Shehhi, the man who took over the controls of United Airlines Flight 175, which flew into the south tower of the World Trade Center, came months earlier than well-documented tips about other hijackers, including two who were discovered to have attended a meeting of militants in Malaysia in January 2000.
There is a lot more to this story in The New York Times...
  

8:23 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




China Gets Punk'd

China Gets Punk'd. So often we read complaints from westerners who come to China and find that things aren't exactly as promised and they scream bloody murder about the cunning, inscrutable Chinese who exploited them in revenge for something that happened a Century-and-a-half ago, say, the first Opium War. Well, here's an amusing example of the opposite.
Mathew Richardson is in trouble on two continents. The 23-year-old fourth-year engineering student at St. Peters College, Oxford, was invited to fly to Beijing to teach a few classes. He claims that he thought that he would be teaching a group of high school students. The fact that it might be a bit unusual for a fourth-year to be paid UK 1,000 and set up in a luxury Beijing hotel didn't seem to throw up any flags for Richardson.

However, when he showed up at Beijing University, he was informed that not only would he be lecturing scholars from all over China, but the lecture series was going to be on economics, a subject that Richardson knew nothing about. So, what did Richardson do? He gave it the proverbial college try and faked his way through the lectures.

Using materials he copped from an A-Level econ textbook, Richardson began his lectures. He was two days into the series when he realized that he was fast running out of material from the text and his interpreter may have been onto him. Feeling that his luck was about to run out, Richardson flew the coop during a coffee break and returned to Britain, where what he describes as a "media storm" on his blog broke around him.

The beginning of the saga can probably be attributed to mistaken identity -- officials in China had tried to arrange for Matthew Richardson, associate professor of finance at New York University, who has quite a resume in international financial markets. Unfortunately, they missed that Matthew Richardson by an ocean.

So the British Matthew Richardson is back home, and Beijing University and the Chinese government are officially pissed at him. Bad enough? No. He has been referred to the dean at Oxford for discipline by the master at St. Peters. Among the possible punishments is expulsion -- according to the master, "undergraduates are not allowed to be absent in term time without prior permission."
Wouldn't you know it had to be a blogger with that much...chutzpah. Or is it a larcenous heart?

Plastic
  

6:26 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Monday, February 23, 2004

More Down Time...

Sorry for the lack of new posts; tech problems still prevail. Not for much longer, though--I think. Today we had to scrape the template clean, rebuild it, and replace it. But, a big part of the problem is at least known and being dealt with: the RSS Feed and Reader app I was using (BlogMatrix) wasn't just down, it was gone. Literally. The dude quit! He closed up his shop without telling any of his clients. Nice fellow, huh? Whaddaya expect when it's free...

I will shortly have TWO feeds up: The new "Atom" version of XML, and then a regular XML, accomplished through the good folks at BlogStreet and BlogLines. Here I am talking as if I know what I am TALKING about. Whatever. It's supposed to work is what I am being told.

Thank you for your patience. Again. And again!
  

11:16 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Full of Himself at Any Age

Ralph "Glory Hound" Nader has destroyed any legacy he might have had by his megalomania. The man does not believe in democracy; the man believes in seeing his name in print. "Unsafe At Any Speed," a book about auto safety, made him his name and his first taste of money. But, yet again, what he has proven is that the only taste he really likes is fame. After what he cost this nation in 2000, and what he is doing now, all he will die with is infamy.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- Consumer advocate Ralph Nader announced Sunday he will run again for the presidency, declaring that Washington has become "corporate occupied territory'' and arguing there is too little difference between the Democratic and Republican parties.

Nader, who will turn 70 this week, said he contemplated retirement but decided against that. "I've decided to run as an independent candidate for president,'' he announced on NBC's "Meet The Press.''

"This country has more problems and injustices than it deserves,'' Nader said, bemoaning a "democracy gap.'' He said he needed to get into the race to "challenge this two-party duopoly.''

"There's too much power and wealth in too few hands,'' he said. "They have taken over Washington.'' ...

Asked if he would withdraw if he concluded his candidacy would merely ensure President Bush's re-election, Nader told interviewer Tim Russert, ``When and if that eventuality occurs, you can invite me back on the program and I'll give you the answer.''

Nader decided against running under the banner of the Green Party. His candidacy four years ago has been blamed by many Democrats for costing Al Gore the election against George W. Bush.

Last week, Democratic National Committee chairman Terry McAuliffe revealed that he had met with Nader several times urging him not to run. ...

"It's his personal vanity because he has no movement. Nobody's backing him,'' New Mexico Democratic Gov. Bill Richardson said Sunday in advance of Nader's announcement.

"The Greens aren't backing him. His friends urge him not to do it. It's all about himself,'' Richardson told `"Fox News Sunday.''

"Now, Ralph's made some great contributions to consumer issues over the years, but clearly it's not going to help us,'' he said. "I don't think he'll have a sizable impact, but it's terrible if he goes ahead because it's about him. It's about his ego. It's about his vanity and not about a movement that supposedly he headed for many years very effectively.''
The New York Times
  

12:20 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Sunday, February 22, 2004

"Soldier for the Truth"

Has America been the victim of a coup d'etat and we've been too blind or scared to notice? That is a strong question for this journalist to ask in print. But ask it I must; I believe many of you will also ask it when you read the article and interview below. Bits and pieces of this story have been wafting around for months, but in a profile and Q & A of Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, U.S. Air Force, by a journalist I know, Marc Cooper, in the LA Weekly, a publication I also know well, it all comes together and chills me to the quick.

I am going to reproduce it here in full--and, yes, it is long--because, if nothing else, I want a record of it here in these pages. I beseech you to read it, please. Then I want you to think about it. Then I want you to research it some, if you will, and then I want you to do something about it: pass it on to anyone who will listen.
Soldier for the Truth

Exposing Bush's talking-points war

by Marc Cooper

After two decades in the U.S. Air Force, Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, now 43, knew her career as a regional analyst was coming to an end when -- in the months leading up to the war in Iraq -- she felt she was being -- propagandized -- by her own bosses.

With master's degrees from Harvard in government and zoology and two books on Saharan Africa to her credit, she found herself transferred in the spring of 2002 to a post as a political/military desk officer at the Defense Department?s office for Near East South Asia (NESA), a policy arm of the Pentagon.

Kwiatkowski got there just as war fever was spreading, or being spread as she would later argue, through the halls of Washington. Indeed, shortly after her arrival, a piece of NESA was broken off, expanded and re-dubbed with the Orwellian name of the Office of Special Plans. The OSP's task was, ostensibly, to help the Pentagon develop policy around the Iraq crisis.

She would soon conclude that the OSP -- a pet project of Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld -- was more akin to a nerve center for what she now calls a "neoconservative coup, a hijacking of the Pentagon."

Though a lifelong conservative, Kwiatkowski found herself appalled as the radical wing of the Bush administration, including her superiors in the Pentagon planning department, bulldozed internal dissent, overlooked its own intelligence and relentlessly pushed for confrontation with Iraq.

Deeply frustrated and alarmed, Kwiatkowski, still on active duty, took the unusual step of penning an anonymous column of internal Pentagon dissent that was posted on the Internet by former Colonel David Hackworth, America's most decorated veteran.

As war inevitably approached, and as she neared her 20-year mark in the Air Force, Kwiatkowski concluded the only way she could viably resist what she now terms the "expansionist, imperialist" policies of the neoconservatives who dominated Iraq policy was by retiring and taking up a public fight against them.

She left the military last March, the same week that troops invaded Iraq. Kwiatkowski started putting her real name on her Web reports and began accepting speaking invitations. "I'm now a soldier for the truth," she said in a speech last week at Cal Poly Pomona. Afterward, I spoke with her.

L.A. WEEKLY: What was the relationship between NESA and the now-notorious Office of Special Plans, the group set up by Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and Vice President Cheney? Was the OSP, in reality, an intelligence operation to act as counter to the CIA?

KAREN KWIATKOWSKI: The NESA office includes the Iraq desk, as well as the desks of the rest of the region. It is under Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Bill Luti. When I joined them, in May 2002, the Iraq desk was there. We shared the same space, and we were all part of the same general group. At that time it was expanding. Contractors and employees were coming though it wasn't clear what they were doing.

In August of 2002, the expanded Iraq desk found new spaces and moved into them. It was told to us that this was now to be known as the Office of Special Plans. The Office of Special Plans would take issue with those who say they were doing intelligence. They would say they were developing policy for the Office of the Secretary of Defense for the invasion of Iraq.

But developing policy is not the same as developing propaganda and pushing a particular agenda. And actually, that's more what they really did. They pushed an agenda on Iraq, and they developed pretty sophisticated propaganda lines which were fed throughout government, to the Congress, and even internally to the Pentagon -- to try and make this case of immediacy. This case of severe threat to the United States.

You retired when the war broke out and have been speaking out publicly. But you were already publishing critical reports anonymously while still in uniform and while still on active service. Why did you take that rather unusual step?
Due to my frustration over what I was seeing around me as soon as I joined Bill Luti's organization, what I was seeing in terms of neoconservative agendas and the way they were being pursued to formulate a foreign policy and a military policy -- an invasion of a sovereign country, an occupation, a poorly planned occupation. I was concerned about it; I was in opposition to that, and I was not alone.

So I started writing what I considered to be funny, short essays for my own sanity. Eventually, I e-mailed them to former Colonel David Hackworth, who runs the Web page Soldiers for the Truth, and he published them under the title "Insider Notes From the Pentagon." I wrote 28 of those columns from August 2002 until I retired.

There you were, a career military officer, a Pentagon analyst, a conservative who had given two decades to this work. What provoked you to become first a covert and later a public dissident?

Like most people, I've always thought there should be honesty in government. Working 20 years in the military, I'm sure I saw some things that were less than honest or accountable. But nothing to the degree that I saw when I joined Near East South Asia.

This was creatively produced propaganda spread not only through the Pentagon, but across a network of policymakers -- the State Department, with John Bolton; the Vice President's Office, the very close relationship the OSP had with that office. That is not normal, that is a bypassing of normal processes. Then there was the National Security Council, with certain people who had neoconservative views; Scooter Libby, the vice president's chief of staff; a network of think tanks who advocated neoconservative views -- the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Security Policy with Frank Gaffney, the columnist Charles Krauthammer -- was very reliable. So there was just not a process inside the Pentagon that should have developed good honest policy, but it was instead pushing a particular agenda; this group worked in a coordinated manner, across media and parts of the government, with their neoconservative compadres.

How did you experience this in your day-to-day work?

There was a sort of groupthink, an adopted storyline: We are going to invade Iraq and we are going to eliminate Saddam Hussein and we are going to have bases in Iraq. This was all a given even by the time I joined them, in May of 2002.

You heard this in staff meetings?

The discussions were ones of this sort of inevitability. The concerns were only that some policymakers still had to get onboard with this agenda. Not that this agenda was right or wrong -- but that we needed to convince the remaining holdovers. Colin Powell, for example. There was a lot of frustration with Powell; they said a lot of bad things about him in the office. They got very angry with him when he convinced Bush to go back to the U.N. and forced a four-month delay in their invasion plans.

General Tony Zinni is another one. Zinni, the combatant commander of Central Command, Tommy Franks' predecessor -- a very well-qualified guy who knows the Middle East inside out, knows the military inside out, a Marine, a great guy. He spoke out publicly as President Bush's Middle East envoy about some of the things he saw. Before he was removed by Bush, I heard Zinni called a traitor in a staff meeting. They were very anti-anybody who might provide information that affected their paradigm. They were the spin enforcers.

How did this atmosphere affect your work? To be direct, were you told by your superiors what you could say and not say? What could and could not be discussed? Or were opinions they didn't like just ignored?

I can give you one clear example where we were told to follow the party line, where I was told directly. I worked North Africa, which included Libya. I remember in one case, I had to rewrite something a number of times before it went through. It was a background paper on Libya, and Libya has been working for years to try and regain the respect of the international community. I had intelligence that told me this, and I quoted from the intelligence, but they made me go back and change it and change it. They'd make me delete the quotes from intelligence so they could present their case on Libya in a way that said it was still a threat to its neighbors and that Libya was still a belligerent, antagonistic force. They edited my reports in that way. In fact, the last report I made, they said, "Just send me the file." And I don't know what the report ended up looking like, because I imagine more changes were made.

On Libya, really a small player, the facts did not fit their paradigm that we have all these enemies.

One person you've written about is Abe Shulsky. You describe him as a personable, affable fellow but one who played a key role in the official spin that led to war.

Abe was the director of the Office of Special Plans. He was in our shared offices when I joined, in May 2002. He comes from an academic background; he's definitely a neoconservative. He is a student of Leo Strauss from the University of Chicago ? so he has that Straussian academic perspective. He was the final proving authority on all the talking points that were generated from the Office of Special Plans and that were distributed throughout the Pentagon, certainly to staff officers. And it appears to me they were also distributed to the Vice President's Office and to the presidential speechwriters. Much of the phraseology that was in our talking points consists of the same things I heard the president say.

So Shulsky was the sort of controller, the disciplinarian, the overseeing monitor of the propaganda flow. From where you sat, did you see him manipulate the information?

We had a whole staff to help him do that, and he was the approving authority. I can give you one example of how the talking points were altered. We were instructed by Bill Luti, on behalf of the Office of Special Plans, on behalf of Abe Shulsky, that we would not write anything about Iraq, WMD or terrorism in any papers that we prepared for our superiors except as instructed by the Office of Special Plans. And it would provide to us an electronic document of talking points on these issues. So I got to see how they evolved.

It was very clear to me that they did not evolve as a result of new intelligence, of improved intelligence, or any type of seeking of the truth. The way they evolved is that certain bullets were dropped or altered based on what was being reported on the front pages of the Washington Post or The New York Times.

Can you be specific?

One item that was dropped was in November [2002]. It was the issue of the meeting in Prague prior to 9/11 between Mohammed Atta and a member of Saddam Hussein's intelligence force. We had had this in our talking points from September through mid-November. And then it dropped out totally. No explanation. Just gone. That was because the media reported that the FBI had stepped away from that, that the CIA said it didn't happen.

Let's clarify this. Talking points are generally used to deal with media. But you were a desk officer, not a politician who had to go and deal with the press. So are you saying the Office of Special Plans provided you a schematic, an outline of the way major points should be addressed in any report or analysis that you developed regarding Iraq, WMD or terrorism?

That's right. And these did not follow the intent, the content or the accuracy of intelligence . . .

They were political . . .

They were political, politically manipulated. They did have obviously bits of intelligence in them, but they were created to propagandize. So we inside the Pentagon, staff officers and senior administration officials who might not work Iraq directly, were being propagandized by this same Office of Special Plans.

In the 10 months you worked in that office in the run-up to the war, was there ever any open debate? The public, at least, was being told at the time that there was a serious assessment going on regarding the level of threat from Iraq, the presence or absence of WMD, et cetera. Was this debated inside your office at the Pentagon?

No. Those things were not debated. To them, Saddam Hussein needed to go.

You believe that decision was made by the time you got there, almost a year before the war?

That decision was made by the time I got there. So there was no debate over WMD, the possible relations Saddam Hussein may have had with terrorist groups and so on. They spent their energy gathering pieces of information and creating a propaganda storyline, which is the same storyline we heard the president and Vice President Cheney tell the American people in the fall of 2002.

The very phrases they used are coming back to haunt them because they are blatantly false and not based on any intelligence. The OSP and the Vice President's Office were critical in this propaganda effort -- to convince Americans that there was some just requirement for pre-emptive war.

What do you believe the real reasons were for the war?

The neoconservatives needed to do more than just topple Saddam Hussein. They wanted to put in a government friendly to the U.S., and they wanted permanent basing in Iraq. There are several reasons why they wanted to do that. None of those reasons, of course, were presented to the American people or to Congress.

So you don't think there was a genuine interest as to whether or not there really were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?

It's not about interest. We knew. We knew from many years of both high-level surveillance and other types of shared intelligence, not to mention the information from the U.N., we knew, we knew what was left [from the Gulf War] and the viability of any of that. Bush said he didn't know.

The truth is, we know [Saddam] didn't have these things. Almost a billion dollars has been spent -- a billion dollars! -- by David Kay's group to search for these WMD, a total whitewash effort. They didn't find anything, they didn't expect to find anything.

So if, as you argue, they knew there weren't any of these WMD, then what exactly drove the neoconservatives to war?

The neoconservatives pride themselves on having a global vision, a long-term strategic perspective. And there were three reasons why they felt the U.S. needed to topple Saddam, put in a friendly government and occupy Iraq.

One of those reasons is that sanctions and containment were working and everybody pretty much knew it. Many companies around the world were preparing to do business with Iraq in anticipation of a lifting of sanctions. But the U.S. and the U.K. had been bombing northern and southern Iraq since 1991. So it was very unlikely that we would be in any kind of position to gain significant contracts in any post-sanctions Iraq. And those sanctions were going to be lifted soon, Saddam would still be in place, and we would get no financial benefit.

The second reason has to do with our military-basing posture in the region. We had been very dissatisfied with our relations with Saudi Arabia, particularly the restrictions on our basing. And also there was dissatisfaction from the people of Saudi Arabia. So we were looking for alternate strategic locations beyond Kuwait, beyond Qatar, to secure something we had been searching for since the days of Carter -- to secure the energy lines of communication in the region. Bases in Iraq, then, were very important -- that is, if you hold that is America's role in the world. Saddam Hussein was not about to invite us in.

The last reason is the conversion, the switch Saddam Hussein made in the Food for Oil program, from the dollar to the euro. He did this, by the way, long before 9/11, in November 2000 -- selling his oil for euros. The oil sales permitted in that program aren't very much. But when the sanctions would be lifted, the sales from the country with the second largest oil reserves on the planet would have been moving to the euro.

The U.S. dollar is in a sensitive period because we are a debtor nation now. Our currency is still popular, but it's not backed up like it used to be. If oil, a very solid commodity, is traded on the euro, that could cause massive, almost glacial, shifts in confidence in trading on the dollar. So one of the first executive orders that Bush signed in May [2003] switched trading on Iraq?s oil back to the dollar.

At the time you left the military, a year ago, just how great was the influence of this neoconservative faction on Pentagon policy?

When it comes to Middle East policy, they were in complete control, at least in the Pentagon. There was some debate at the State Department.

Indeed, when you were still in uniform and writing a Web column anonymously, you expressed your bitter disappointment when Secretary of State Powell -- in your words -- eventually "capitulated."

He did. When he made his now-famous power-point slide presentation at the U.N., he totally capitulated. It meant he was totally onboard. Whether he believed it or not.

You gave your life to the military, you voted Republican for many years, you say you served in the Pentagon right up to the outbreak of war. What does it feel like to be out now, publicly denouncing your old bosses?

Know what it feels like? It feels like duty. That's what it feels like. I've thought about it many times. You know, I spent 20 years working for something that -- at least under this administration -- turned out to be something I wasn't working for. I mean, these people have total disrespect for the Constitution. We swear an oath, military officers and NCOs alike swear an oath to uphold the Constitution. These people have no respect for the Constitution. The Congress was misled, it was lied to. At a very minimum that is a subversion of the Constitution. A pre-emptive war based on what we knew was not a pressing need is not what this country stands for.

What I feel now is that I'm not retired. I still have a responsibility to do my part as a citizen to try and correct the problem.
LA Weekly
  

10:15 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Skilling & Lay of Enron Shame Should Read This Story

They Shoot White-Collar Crooks and Governmental Thieves in China. In fact, they shot one yesterday. I ask you, would that have deterred Enron and WorldCom executives back in the States?
A top county official was executed Friday in this capital of southwest China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region for bribery and abuse of power.

Wan Ruizhong, former Communist Party secretary of the region's Nandan County, was convicted of taking bribes and abusing his power, and executed following approval by the Supreme People's Court.

Wan was also convicted of plotting to cover up a mine accident that killed 81 miners in July 2001, according to the Nanning City Intermediate People's Court.

The deaths occurred when the county's Lajiapo mine, which was under Wan's direct jurisdiction, flooded July 17, 2001.

Investigation of the accident led to the exposure of Wan and other corrupt officials in the county.

Wan was also sentenced to the confiscation of his personal property of 500,000 yuan (about 60,000 US dollars), and his illegal income of 2.68 million yuan (323,000 US dollars) has been turned over to the national treasury.

His appeal was rejected by the Guangxi Regional Higher People's Court Aug. 26, 2002.

Only a day before Wan's execution, Yan Zhihua, another prefectural official, was sentenced to one year in prison with a two-year reprieve for his role in the cover-up.

Other officials responsible for mine accidents in the area have been sentenced to death, 10 years and 13 years in prison, respectively, for their roles in similar cover-ups.
Yikes!

People's Daily
  

2:55 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




It's Official, Wang Qishan Is Mayor of Beijing

I'll Never Forget the Press Conference When I and at Least One Billion Chinese Got To See and Hear Wang Qishan For the First Time. It was last April and the mayor of Beijing had just been fired over the SARS debacle, and Wang Qishan, who had hastily been called up from Hainan Dao, China's Hawaii, to become the acting Mayor in the midst of a maelstrom both national and international, fielded hard questions from real journalists for almost two hours and he didn't shirk a single question. It was an amazing display of public policy on-the-fly that was thought to be extinct in China: my students were stunned, never in their young lives had they seen such a thing, a no-holds-barred live press conference with real answers. Well, almost a year later, he gets the job for real:
Wang Qishan was elected on Saturday morning as mayor of Beijing at the second session of the 12th Beijing Municipal People's Congress that opened on Monday.

Wang was made acting mayor of Beijing on April 22 last year in accordance with a decision made by the Standing Committee of the 12th Beijing Municipal People's Congress.

According to Chinese laws, the standing committee of the people's congress at the local level is authorized to appoint local officials up to the position of deputy heads. Only the annual plenary session of the people's congress is entitled to elect head of the local government.

Wang, born in July 1948, was a native of Tianzhen in Shanxi Province, north China. He joined the Communist Party of China (CPC)in 1983.

In 1969, Wang was sent to the countryside to work as a farmer in neighboring Shaanxi Province. He served the Shaanxi Provincial Museum in 1971-1973, graduated from the History Department of Northwest China University in 1976, and began to work in the Institute of Modern Chinese History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1979.

Wang worked in the rural policy and development research centers of the Secretariat of CPC Central Committee and the State Council between 1982 and 1986.

Wang served as general manager and Party secretary of the China Rural Trust and Investment Company in 1988. He was appointed as vice president of the Construction Bank of China in 1989, and became vice governor of the People's Bank of China in 1993 and president of the Construction Bank of China in 1994. He was elected president of the Chinese Investment Society in 1995.

In 1997, Wang became a member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Guangdong Provincial Committee, and was elected vice governor of Guangdong Province in 1998.

Wang was appointed director of the Economic Restructuring Office of the State Council in 2000, and secretary of the CPC Hainan Provincial Committee in 2002-2003. He was elected chairman of the Standing Committee of the Hainan Provincial People's Congress in January 2003.

Wang was made acting mayor of Beijing and deputy secretary of the CPC Beijing Municipal Committee in April 2003.

Wang is chairman of the organizing committee for the Beijing Olympic Games slated for 2008.

He is an alternate member of 15th CPC Central Committee and member of 16th CPC Central Committee.
The People's Daily
  

2:34 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




"Limited War With China" Say Again!?

"Limited War With China?"? Isn't that kind of like being a little bit pregnant? Are these folks across the straits smoking their socks? Or are they just following the political play-book of Dubya? Taiwan Pres Candidate Supports "Limited War" With China is the headline on Dow Jones Newswires:
TAIPEI (AP)--Taiwan's opposition presidential candidate said Saturday that his defense strategy with China would involve winning the first round of a "limited war" before negotiating with the communist neighbor.

Lien Chan, vice president in the former Nationalist government, raised the issue during a debate with President Chen Shui-bian ahead of the March 20 election.

Lien argued that Chen was fueling an arms race by advocating a provocative policy that was too offensive in nature. He said the president's plan was to paralyze China's coastal defenses and keep the decisive battle off Taiwan's shores.

"Our Nationalist Party supports a limited war. We'll use the Taiwan Strait to win the first round and that will give us time to hold talks" with China, Lien said.

Taiwan and China split in 1949 when the Communists took over the mainland. Beijing has repeatedly threatened to use force to make Taiwan unify.

Later in the debate, Chen pounced on Lien's strategy.

"Do you really have to let the war begin? Then after you fight, seek peace?" Chen asked. "To be a nation's leader, can you be so superficial, so naive?"

Chen, who often goes by the nickname "Ah-Bian," said that a leader must plan on negotiating before fighting a war, not vice versa.

"This is why Ah-Bian says you must protect your base, effectively block and counter, not let war happen, not let the first round happen," said Chen, who most polls say is running neck and neck with Lien.
Brinkmanship politics at its most nutty, and dangerous. Criminy.

Dow Jones Newswires
 

1:47 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Saturday, February 21, 2004

Calpundit Covers AWOLgate Like a Fine Leather Glove

Calpundit is covering AWOLgate like a fine leather glove. While I am trying to report the story from the media perspective--from the other side of the world, mind you!--I am struggling with computer problems and university-related time constraints (the spring semester begins on Monday and I have a whole new batch of Chinese law students with whom I must begin acquainting the modern uses of media in conjunction with foreign policy).

Consequently, I want to direct you to Kevin Drum's all but exhaustive investigation into the matter of Dubya's Air National Guard service. Below are links that will inform you, or infuriate you (the latter emotion swings both left and right depending upon your political persuasion):
FILE REQUEST....

MORE FROM THE MEMPHIS FLYER....Who would have guessed that the weekly Memphis Flyer would keep breaking new ground in the National Guard story?

NATIONAL GUARD FINALE?....

ADVENTURES IN FORENSIC JOURNALISM....
Have fun, or throw things at the wall...
  

6:28 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Noooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!

Ralph Nader In My Face Again: Yes I wrote "my" because I take politics and effective governance VERY seriously, personally speaking. All of my readers, and everyone who knows me for, say, five minutes, knows my position on this compulsive megalomaniac and his less than Quixotic crusade to screw up presidential elections for the sake only of glory--his, not some noble idea about having a third party in America. So you will understand why I take pleasure in pointing you to other folks who share my passionate indignation, such as Richard at The Peking Duck:
Josh Marshall on Ralph Nader's probable bid for the presidency

He says it all way better than I can:
If you have not clicked on the link to Josh Marshall, shame on you.
  

1:42 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Memphis Flyer Update...

There is an important update to AWOLGate: Remember the story I posted last weekend from the Memphis Flyer about a couple of retired National Guard fighter pilots who were in the Alabama squadron that Dubya allegedly served with in 1972? Well, the paper has a very interesting update:
BOTH MEN KNEW JOHN "BILL" CALHOUN, the Atlanta businessman who was flight safety officer for the 187th in 1972 and who subsequently retired as a lieutenant colonel. Calhoun created something of a sensation late last week when he came forward at the apparent prompting of the administration to claim that he did in fact remember Lt. Bush, that the young officer has met with him during drill weekends, largely spending his time reading safety manuals in the 187th?s safety office.

Even in media venues sympathetic to the president, doubt was cast almost immediately on aspects of Calhoun’s statement – particularly his claim that Lt. Bush was at the 187th during spring and early summer of 1972, periods when the White House itself does not claim the young lieutenant had yet arrived at Dannelly.

Mintz and Bishop are both skeptical, as well.

"Maybe we’re all getting old and senile," Bishop said with obvious sarcasm. "I don’t want to second-guess Mr. Calhoun's memory and I would hate to impugn the integrity of a fellow officer, but I know the rest of us didn't see Lt. Bush." As Bishop (corroborated by Mintz) described the physical environment, the safety office where the meetings between Major Calhoun and Lt. Bush allegedly took place was on the second floor of the unit's hangar, a relatively small structure itself... It was a very close-quarters situation. "It would have been virtually impossible," said Bishop, for an officer to go in and out of the safety office for eight hours a month several months in a row and be unseen by anybody except then Major Calhoun.

As Bishop noted, "Fighter pilots, and that's what we were, have situational awareness. They know everything about their environment – whether it's an enemy plane creeping up or a stranger in their hangar."

In any case, said Bishop, "If what he [Calhoun] says is true, there would be documentation of the fact in point summaries and pay documents."

"I’m not saying it wasn't possible, but I can't imagine Bill not introducing him around," Mintz said. "Unless he [Bush] was an introvert back then, which I don't think he was, he'd have spent some time out in the mainstream, in the dining hall or wherever. He'd have spent some time with us. Unless he was trying to avoid publicity. But he wasn't well known at all then. It all seems a bit unusual."

Bishop was even more explicit. "I'm glad he [Calhoun] remembered being with Lt. Bush and Lt. Bush's eating sandwiches and looking at manuals. It seems a little strange that one man saw an individual, and all the rest of them did not. Because it was such a small organization. Usually, we all had lunch together." ...

Bishop raises yet another issue about Bush's ANG tenure – the cancellation after 1972 of the final year of his six-year obligation – ostensibly to pursue a post-graduate business degree at Yale.

That didn't sit well with the veteran pilot. "When you accept a flying slot with the Air National Guard, you're obligated for six years," Bishop said. "Even if you grant him credit for that missing year in Alabama which none of us remember, he still failed to serve his full commitment. Even graduate school, for which he was supposedly released, is attended during the week usually. It wouldn't have conflicted with drill weekends, whether he was in Connecticut or Massachusetts or wherever. There would have been no need for an early release.

Bishop paused. "Maybe they do things differently in Texas. I don't want to malign the commander-in-chief, but this is an issue of duty, honor country. You must have integrity."
There is more in the Memphis Flyer...
  

2:23 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Friday, February 20, 2004

From Dubya's Mouth...

With All of the Technical Problems of Late, We've Fallen Behind With Our Bushisms. So, while the Magical Word Factory seems operative at the moment--although the syndication feed is still on a hike--let's go to the horse's mouth, so to speak, as collected by Jacob Weisberg:
"The California crunch really is the result of not enough power-generating plants and then not enough power to power the power of generating plants."--Interview with The New York Times; January 14, 2001

"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" --Florence, South Carolina; January 11, 2000

"For every fatal shooting, there were roughly three nonfatal shootings. And, folks, this is unacceptable in America. It's just unacceptable. And we're going to do something about it." --Philadelphia; May 24, 2001

"They misunderestimated me." --Bentonville, Arkansas; November 6, 2000

"They want the federal government controlling Social Security like it's some kind of federal program." --St. Charles, Missouri; November 2, 2000

"There's no cave deep enough for America, or dark enough to hide." --Oklahoma City; August 29, 2002
  

11:26 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Good Legal Advice From A Bloggin' Good Attorney...

Conrad, the Author and Proprietor of The Gweilo Diaries, has a must-read post for any number of reasons, just two of which are: 1) It's sound legal advice; 2) It's hilarious. Go clickity-click and see what I mean: The Gweilo Diaries
Sue the Bastards

The reptilian Sidney Blumenthal offers John Kerry what must be the worst advice to a US presidential candidate since Lyndon Johnson suggested that John Kennedy visit Dallas:
I won't steal Conrad's thunder and reveal a rather long, but really good punch line. It's at The Gweilo Diaries
  

6:09 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Tough Words From a Tough Guy Dissing Dubya

Some Very Tough Words Coming From a Very Tough Guy Dissing Dubya: yet again we are pointed to an important piece of writing by Richard, the author and proprietor of The Peking Duck
Reagan's Navy Secretary James Webb blasts Bush

Quite amazing, that these harsh words come from James Webb, former Secretary of the Navy under Reagan and a Marine platoon and company commander in Vietnam.
Bush arguably has committed the greatest strategic blunder in modern memory. To put it bluntly, he attacked the wrong target. While he boasts of removing Saddam Hussein from power, he did far more than that. He decapitated the government of a country that was not directly threatening the United States and, in so doing, bogged down a huge percentage of our military in a region that never has known peace. Our military is being forced to trade away its maneuverability in the wider war against terrorism while being placed on the defensive in a single country that never will fully accept its presence.

There is no historical precedent for taking such action when our country was not being directly threatened. The reckless course that Bush and his advisers have set will affect the economic and military energy of our nation for decades. It is only the tactical competence of our military that, to this point, has protected him from the harsh judgment that he deserves.

At the same time, those around Bush, many of whom came of age during Vietnam and almost none of whom served, have attempted to assassinate the character and insult the patriotism of anyone who disagrees with them. Some have impugned the culture, history and integrity of entire nations, particularly in Europe, that have been our country's great friends for generations and, in some cases, for centuries.

Bush has yet to fire a single person responsible for this strategy. Nor has he reined in those who have made irresponsible comments while claiming to represent his administration. One only can conclude that he agrees with both their methods and their message.
Because this opinion piece, coming from such a source, is so important, I have broken from my tradition of only pointing you to a post without reproducing the "meat" of the story. In this instance, I believe Richard will not mind.

The Peking Duck
  

1:44 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Crash....!

Please forgive the scarcity of posts today; the whole damn thing imploded twice. I had to scrape and replace the template both times. I am also having RSS feed problems--as in none! I'm scrapping this junky BlogMatrix app and switching over to "Atom" XML, but it might be a day or two before the switcheroo can take effect.

Am I walking under a black cloud that I do not see? I mean, ever since our trip back to the States, it's been one muck up after another. I'm about to let loose a Dean Scream!

Hope to have everything rosy soon...
  

1:24 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Thursday, February 19, 2004

Running The Numbers Dubya, Just Running The Numbers...

Is Dubya a Numerical Dyslexic? Is He Mathematically Challenged? I don't know. But he continues to have a major problem with numbers--or speaking the truth--as evidenced by the Associated Press article below:
WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush distanced himself Wednesday from White House predictions that the economy will add 2.6 million jobs this year, the second embarrassing economic retreat in a week and new fuel for Democratic criticism.

"Now they're already walking backwards on their own predictions," Democratic presidential front-runner John Kerry said in Ohio, where unemployment has risen from 3.9 percent to 6 percent since Bush took office.

The jobs controversy came on the heels of White House economist N. Gregory Mankiw's assertion that "outsourcing" American jobs overseas was good for the U.S. economy in the long run. Bush, House Speaker Dennis Hastert and other Republicans quickly disavowed Mankiw's remarks, and the economist had to apologize for a "lack of clarity."

Jobs are a sensitive political issue for Bush as he fights to keep his own job in a second term. The economy has lost 2.2 million payroll jobs since Bush took office, the worst job-creation record of any president since Herbert Hoover.

The forecast of 2.6 million new jobs was contained in the annual Economic Report of the President, a 412-page volume of charts, graphs and text that predicted a bright economic future. The forecast came under special scrutiny after Treasury Secretary John Snow and Commerce Secretary Don Evans refused to repeat the optimistic prediction as they toured Washington and Oregon to promote the president's economic programs.

Bush himself avoided embracing the 2.6 million number when asked about it Wednesday. "I think the economy is growing," Bush said. "And I think it's going to get stronger." He said he was pleased that 366,000 jobs have been added since August.

"We are interested in reality," presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said. ...

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif, said, "President Bush is rapidly becoming the permanently surprised president. He is surprised that every economic prediction that he and his administration make does not pan out."

Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill, a senior adviser in the Clinton White House, said, "This president faces a credibility gap with his own economic team that's as wide as the employment gap for millions of American workers."

McClellan said the economic forecast was simply the work of "number crunchers." He said Bush - who bills himself as the first president with a Master of Business Administration degree - was not a statistician or predictor.
That last line is a gem. There is more at My Way News...
  

3:27 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Wednesday, February 18, 2004

"That's Some bad pilot"...?

"That's Some bad pilot" are the first words said by George W. Bush upon hearing that the first plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Goddamn!You must read this post from the MoJo Blog: I warn you, it might make your blood pressure rise appreciably.
Some bad pilot

The following paragraph appears in a long, wrenching article by Gail Sheehy in the New York Observer about the hijacking of American Flight 11, the first plane to hit the World Trade Center.
Mr. Bush was notified 14 minutes after the first attack, at 9 a.m., when he arrived at an elementary school in Sarasota, Fla. He went into a private room and spoke by phone with his national security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, and glanced at a TV in the room. Mrs. Homer’s [the wife of first officer on United Flight 93, the second plane to hit the WTC] soft voice curdles when she describes his reaction: "I can’t get over what Bush said when he was called about the first plane hitting the tower: ‘That’s some bad pilot.’ Why did people on the street assume right away it was a terrorist hijacking, but our President didn’t know? Why did it take so long to ground all civilian aircraft? In the time between when my husband’s plane took off [at 8:41 a.m.] and when the second plane hit in New York [9:02 a.m.], they could have turned back to airfield."
That's some bad pilot? That's some bad pilot!?

If the president thought what had happened was an accident (and, contrary to what Mrs. Homer says, a lot of people, even on the ground, initially did), his reaction is merely astonishingly callous. If he thought it was a terrorist attack, then it's astonishingly callous -- squared. Either way, Bush comes off very badly.

Why haven't we heard this quote before? A quick Lexis-Nexis search turns up three matches in addition to Sheehy's current article. Two mentions show up in Australian papers, and the other, the very first, appears in another piece Sheehy did for the New York Observer last August, as in:
According to the official timeline provided by his press secretary, the President arrived at an elementary school in Sarasota, Fla., at 9 a.m. and was told in the hallway of the school that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. This was 14 minutes after the first attack. The President went into a private room and spoke by phone with his National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, and glanced at a TV in the room. "That's some bad pilot," the President said.
It's still not clear, at least to me, where Sheehy got this quote, or why nobody thought to wonder about it in August, but both questions bear looking into.
At the moment, I am wordless...

MoJo Blog
  

3:58 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




What The New York Daily News Has Become is a Shame

What Has Happened To The New York Daily News is a Terrible Shame. In years gone by I worked side-by-side with key national correspondents from the Daily News on at least two very high-profile murder cases, and a number of cases that most folks wouldn't remember, and they were some of the very best crime beat journalists I've ever known. Hard, edgy, blue-collar vernacular writing, to be sure--that was their niche in competition with The Times--but fair, and scrupulously honest: fact-checking everything was their routine.

Unfortunately, those days are gone, and so are the reporters; they couldn't work under the new ideological regime. What the rag is now is evidenced by excerpts from an article that ran under the headline, "Affair's a lie, she says." The italics are mine; I don't believe I need to explain what human nature tends to do with statements ending with such words, I only highlight them to make sure you see them in the rush to read that is common when reading on a computer screen. I should tell you that the headline is on the front page of the paper's website.
Until now, the Daily News had refrained from naming Polier, whose picture has run in British newspapers for days.

Polier released her statement from Nairobi, where she is visiting the parents of her fiance, Yaron Schwartzman, an Israeli raised in Kenya.

"Because these stories were false, I assumed the media would ignore them," she said.

Her parents, Terry and Donna Polier, told the press, "We appreciate the way Senator Kerry has handled the situation and intend on voting for him for President of the United States."

That was in sharp contrast to a British report that claimed her father - while denying an affair - had denounced Kerry. Yesterday, Terry Polier said he'd been misquoted.

It remains unclear how the rumor got started.

Alexandra Polier's only known ties to Kerry are through a top aide, campaign finance director Peter Maroney.

A Columbia University classmate of Polier told The News that Maroney introduced her to Kerry in 2001 at an economic summit in Switzerland. "She met with [Kerry] again when the forum came to New York in 2002," the classmate said.

Maroney could not be reached for comment yesterday.

A Republican political strategist said Kerry has not been hurt by the fallout. "It looks like it's going away," he said.

But a strategist from a rival Democratic campaign warned Kerry was not safe yet if it turns out he lied. "Bill Clinton had the charm to wiggle out of those attacks. Kerry simply doesn't have that going for him," the strategist said.
Remember my post about not being able to un-ring the bell: Here is a perfect example of not only ringing the bell erroneously, but continuing to clang it when their "story" comes up empty. Guess what years of polls and anecdotal evidence have told us about the effect of published stories that were not true? Readers remember only the implications, the linked names, and the accusations; no amount of "corrections" change their memories or their perceptions to any significant degree.

New York Daily News...
 

2:12 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Matt Drudge, the media's weakest link

The Peking Duck says that Matt Drudge is the media's weakest link. You certainly know my sentiments on that issue, but Richard, the author and proprietor of The Peking Duck, has further evidence in the matter. Make a click and give it a look:
Matt Drudge, the media's weakest link

I hope everyone's watching as Matt Drudge tries frantically to keep the Kerry-"intern" non-story alive despite the fact that just about everybody, conservative and liberal alike, has concluded there's nothing to see here.

Yesterday he had no fewer than seven links to stories that touched on the scandalette, not a single one offering evidence that would make it credible. One or two were to his own articles, which bear his usual signature when he is trying to fan the flames of scandal -- breathless accusations punctuated with exclamation points! Unnamed "sources" and absolutely unsupported innuendo! Today he's at it again, though there are only four links to the "intern" nonstory because nobody's falling for Drudge's tricks this time.

Today, Atrios has quite an amazing post on how Larry Flynt is claiming he has proof that President Bush paid for an ex-girlfriend's abortion. He wonders why, with Drudge's and Flynt's respective track records, the Drudge rumor got so much more media attention than the Flynt rumor.
There is a whole lot more at The Peking Duck...
  

12:50 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Right Wing Reactionaries Have No Sense Of Shame

Mark Steyn Is A Stain Upon Society. How can it be that his kind are allowed to roam unfettered amongst living things? Oh, I forgot, he has the absolute right of free speech and while his mean, small-minded rants churn my stomach, I would fight, kill or die for his freedom to write and publish them. However, his diatribe against former Democratic Senator Max Cleland noted below sours more than just my belly:
Likewise, Max Cleland, the former Georgia senator turned cable show hit man for the Kerry campaign on the Bush National Guard ''scandal.'' He's untouchable because, as Terry McAuliffe likes to say, he's a ''triple amputee who left three limbs on the battlefield of Vietnam.''

As Ann Coulter pointed out in a merciless but entirely accurate column, it wasn't on the ''battlefield.'' It wasn't in combat. He was working on a radio relay station. He saw a grenade dropped by one of his colleagues and bent down to pick it up. It's impossible for most of us to imagine what that must be like -- to be flown home, with your body shattered, not because of some firefight, but because you made a stupid mistake. Once upon a time, Cleland loathed the Silver and Bronze Stars he'd been given: He was, in his words, ''no hero'' -- which is true. He was a beneficiary of the medal inflation that tends to accompany unpopular wars. But Cleland learned to stop hating himself to the point where he's happy to be passed off as a hero wounded in battle because that makes him a more valuable mascot to the campaign.
Sad.
Unfortunately, there is more where this comes from, at the Chicago Sun-Times...
 

5:30 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Whither Thou Goest When The Voting Is Done...

Many of you know that I believe this presidential election was fated long ago to be the last, decisive battle in the epochal counter-culture war that, in truth, gripped America from the days of the beat poets, hula-hoops, Ike's farewell address and Goldwater's mushroom-cloud TV commercial, to the days of Watergate, Nixon's resignation, the fall of Saigon and Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Review, in other words, not the 60's, but roughly a two-decade span from the mid-1950's to 1975. A span of time that saw more real sociological, intellectual and political change in America than all but perhaps only one other such era, 1850 to 1875.

Virtually everything we thought, said, listened to, watched on television, saw at the movies, heard in our churches, synagogues, schools and halls of congress, what we wore, laughed at, got indignant over, said and did with our dates and friends, how and with whom we played our sports, changed exponentially over those twenty-something years.

Many, many people believe that America went to hell in a speeding, flower-power festooned handbasket during those years. They believe that we descended into a morass of sloth, gluttony, depravity of every kind imaginable. Many, many other people believe we entered a second "age of enlightenment"; social justice and personal freedoms were in the ascendancy, everything was open to question. The New York Times even posed the question was God dead and the world did not come to an end and many people thought that was good. Many other people thought that was worse than bad.

There was much argument and division in America: people were killed for what they believed, and many cities burned for days because blacks were mad as hell. But the single largest issue that divided us, that gave shape and substance and unity for every side in this great cultural divide was a war in a small Asian country that almost all Americans could not have found on a globe when John F. Kennedy was sworn in on a cold day in the first month of a new decade, a country that also was divided, North and South Vietnam. And through it all, for a decade, that war, the longest in American history, raged on.

In every important way that war never really ended; its wounds never truly healed; the great chasm between protestors of conscience and patriots of cause never meaningfully narrowed. Now, we must try to do it with an election; and we must do it even as we try to explain why it is so necessary to two generations that came after us and do not know why George W. Bush and John F. Kerry would not have stomached one another in 1969 any more than they can in 2004.

But do exactly that we must, on both sides; this battle will be won or lost on how well the two sides from those two decades long past explain themselves and their values to the voters from age 18 to 40.

Why am I writing this now, here, at this moment? I want you to read a column written by a man with whom I seldom agree, but a man with integrity who writes exceedingly well, one of the better champions on the establishment side of this long, long march to finally, hopefully reuniting the "U.S. into us"--to paraphrase the words of the great Civil War Historian, and fellow Mississippian, Shelby Foote.

Please read David Brooks' column in today's The New York Times, I will only reproduce his evocative lead, knowing that you cannot be but moved to click:

Between 1940 and 1968, the American people trusted the Democratic Party in times of war. But Vietnam shattered that trust. So if we're going to talk about Vietnam during this campaign, as I guess we are, let's not talk about how many days George Bush served in the National Guard, or how many rows John Kerry sat from Jane Fonda at a protest rally. Let's talk about the meaning of the Vietnam War, and what lessons each party has drawn from that disaster.
Please read on in The New York Times...
  

1:42 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Tuesday, February 17, 2004

It Can't Happen Fast Enough For Me: Free Market Media In China!

YIPPIE! China Free Market Media Reform Coming Now--well almost. Forgive my excitement, folks. Although I have been involved with meetings preparing for this announcement for months, one never counts one's programming until it's in the can, as one might say in Hollywood, my previous professional locale before coming to China. Today's news in China Daily is not just exciting for this old media specialist, it is great news for all of China: further proof that the genie ain't going back into the bottle.

It will still be some steps forward and then some steps backward for quite awhile, but the kit-and-kaboodle is going in the right direction, and that is what, in the end, counts most. Progress isn't a foot race, it is a process, and we forget that so much of the time because we are only mortal and want things to happen in our lifetime if not today. For me and what I do this is such an important story, I am going to reproduce it in full (including photo).
CCTV Restructuring Proof of Media Reform

By Jia Hepeng, Zhu Baoru (China Business Weekly)

Updated: 2004-02-17 15:39

China's market-oriented media reform is likely to regain momentum this year, which may partially open State-owned media organizations' business management to non-governmental investment.

Some newspaper groups and TV stations have designed their plans and are waiting for the final approval from the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP), an insider close to the media market watchdog has told China Business Weekly.


Sales clerks hawk copies of the recently established Beijing News, published by a joint venture between Beijing-based Guangming Daily and Guangzhou-based Nanfang Daily. Industry insiders suggest reform of China's media, especially involving ownership, has resumed, which may partially open State-owned media organizations' business management to non-governmental investment. The reform was halted last year during the outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome.

The theory is not new: separating media's business departments - advertising, circulation and printing - from editorial, while attracting foreign and private investors.

Media outlets are also likely to reshuffle their personnel system. Many media outlets have worked out plans to try and break journalists' so called "iron-rice-bowl," or life-time employment system, the insider revealed.

Ownership and journalists' employment issues were hot topics last year, but nothing happened.

The newest publicized case relating to reform focuses on China Central Television Station (CCTV).

According to a scheme released last week by Cheng Hong, director of CCTV's editor's office, the State-owned station will spin off its production and non-broadcasting businesses, part of which may later be listed overseas.

CCTV took in a sales revenue of more than 8 billion yuan (US$963 million) last year.

CCTV's sports channel is likely to be the first to undergo reform, due to its popular programmes and relatively simple business configurations, senior Chinese officials said.

A new group based on the current sports channel will be set up, and sell its programmes to its parent, CCTV.

Meanwhile, the station will financially support its new subsidiaries in the first three years, before they are expected to start turning a profit.

Investment bankers said listing part of the CCTV business will attract international investors who are not presently allowed to directly run operations in China's media market.

In addition to the sports channel, CCTV Market Research Co Ltd, affiliated to CCTV, also declared recently that the station was preparing to be listed in Hong Kong.

Zhang Hui, an official with CCTV Market Research, said the move will help attract more strategic investors and strengthen the company's market expansion into Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Bold plan

CCTV's plan is part of the total picture of media reform landscape in China, which was launched last year but did not live up to expectations.

A senior GAPP official told China Business Weekly that the administration had proposed in early 2003 an aggressive reform plan which would impact heavily on all State-owned media outlets.

The requirement that most Party and government publications sever ties with their government agencies was the crux of the plan.

The publications would then be free to operate in the marketplace rather than continuing to serve as cultural units under government departments or social organizations.

The central government plans to end its direct financial support to, and mandatory subscription requirement of, all but three newspapers and two journals.

The government will continue funding People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Party's central committee, and the committee's journal, Qiushi, or Seeking Truth.

It had also been rumoured that China was considering allowing foreign and private investors to hold up to 49 per cent of Party media outlets' advertising and/or circulation departments.

All media outlets were required to report their initial financial reform plans, including their schemes to seek outside investors to their non-editorial departments, to GAPP before September.

While forcing media to swim in the market is not new in China, the nationwide ownership reform of business departments is totally unexplored, said Zhao Xiaobing, president of Global China (Beijing) Media Consulting Co.

But insiders say the sudden attack of severe acute respiratory syndrome, more commonly known as SARS, had halted the plan last year.

While suspending other work on the agenda of the central government for three months, SARS also caused concern among top Chinese policy-makers about social stability, which they feared might be disrupted by massive media reform.

Momentum resumes

According to Zhao, CCTV's plan to spin off some of its non-editorial and sports programmes can be considered a resumption of last year's reform momentum.

Li Changchun, a standing member of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China, its top decision-making body, said on February 6 in Beijing that cultural industries - which commonly include the media sector in China - should liberalize their productivity through restructuring their management system.

Li is the top Chinese leader responsible for the publicity, ideology and cultural sector. It is believed by some experts that Li's speech is fanning the media and culture sector reform.

Another case helping push the resumption of the bold move is the successful and ideologically safe trial cases of media joint ventures (JVs), such as the partnership between China IT World and the US-based International Data Group, said Zhao.

The JV, which was established in the mid-1990s as an exceptional trial case, has developed into a media group of 14 profitable technical newspapers and journals.

More importantly, the old practice of letting media outlets make profits in the market while tightly reining their ownership and management may create huge tension within the industry.

Zhao Yuezhi, an assistant professor of journalism at Vancouver-based Simon Fraser University, pointed out that the contradiction between profit-oriented market reform and media's stagnant personnel system is leading to low efficiency and sometimes, the corruption of journalist.

Ownership diversification of business departments would help attract outside investment in an institutionalized way, Zhao Xiaobing said.

But he added that although reform would come, it could not be carried out overnight.

"The situation is very complicated, and the right (reform) strategy will be on a case-by-case basis," Zhao said.
China Daily
  

10:37 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Missiles For Taiwan

American missiles for Taiwan? Why not...it's not as if there isn't enough tension in the world. Cowboy George rides low in the saddle again--and speaks with forked tongue, or at least a bifurcated one, depending on who he is palavering with or to. We learn this rather matter-of-factly, albeit with some fractured syntax, from the People's Daily:
According to Washington Times the US may supply Taiwan with ship-borne missile defense system. Officials at the Pentagon and US State Department said the United States was considering selling ship-borne missile defense system to Taiwan.

The assistant Defense secretary responsible for Asian affairs said the hearing held on Feb. 6 indicated that Taiwan is faced with the threat of military concentration from the mainland and its defense capability is inadequate.

The United States is developing SM-3 missile interceptor based on SM-2 and SM-3 is to be installed on battleships in the US Navy which are equipped with Aegis combat system. To buy SM-3 Taiwan may also purchase Aegis system.

Taiwan has long planned to acquire battleships equipped with Aegis combat system only to find that until now the US wouldn't approve the sale. Before the receipt of SM-3 Taiwan is expected to purchase ground-based PA C-3. PA C-3 missile interceptor was designed by Lockheed Martin Corporation for use in Patriot Air Defense System made by Raytheon Company.
People's Daily
  

9:17 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




A "Black Hand" of 1989 is Working Again...

Chen Ziming, a so-called "Black Hand" of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, has returned to work in Beijing, reports Reuters:
BEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese academic branded a "black hand" mastermind of the 1989 Tiananmen protests has quietly returned to work at a private think-tank 15 years after many of its researchers were jailed, sources said on Tuesday.

Chen Ziming, 52, who was sentenced to 13 years in jail, resumed work at the Beijing Social Economic Research Institute in late January, a development analysts saw as evidence China's new generation of rulers, led by Communist Party chief Hu Jintao, are more tolerant than their predecessors.

"He may conduct some research, but we still haven't considered whether he will write reports because he is still deprived of his political rights," He Jiadong, head of the think-tank, told Reuters.

"It's an improvement. They're are not interfering. They're more enlightened," said the 81-year-old, a former newspaper editor-in-chief.

The ascent in 2002 of a new generation of leaders headed by Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao -- and the retirement of hard-liners who supported the crackdown such as the unpopular then premier Li Peng -- had sparked faint hopes of a possible reassessment of the protests that were crushed by the Tiananmen Square massacre.

But analysts rule out a government reversal of the official verdict that the protests centered in Tiananmen Square were a "counter-revolutionary" crime, saying the new leadership remains obsessed with stability as it consolidates its power.

"That strikes me as very significant that someone who was tarred so deeply by the authorities is allowed to make a comeback in that way," a Western diplomat said of his return to work.

"But this is something completely different to a reassessment," the envoy said.

Hundreds of civilians were killed when the army ended the protests on June 4, 1989 and many more arrested and sentenced to long jail terms in the nationwide crackdown that followed.

Authorities have shown little sign they are loosening their grip, formally arresting on Tuesday a civil servant who posted essays critical of the government on the Internet.

Chen, reached by telephone, declined to comment because he is still deprived of his political rights and not allowed to talk to foreign reporters. A source close to Chen said police surveillance stopped last year.
There is more, at Reuters...
  

7:21 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




The Lady Says "No."

The Lady Says "No." And--not to put too dull of a point on it--surely our society has learned the absolute necessity of what to do when a lady says "no" in matters sexual. In further repudiation of this "non-story" reported first by a pox upon our open society, and then repeated by Murdochian hacks & hacks, plus fellow travelers and their partisan puppets & puppet-masters in this egregious example of reckless bell-ringing, we also learn that her parents say "No," and add that they plan on voting for Senator Kerry.

Ladies and gentlemen, it has been a long time since I have been this proud of my profession, journalism. Although, in truth, it has also been a long time since the mainstream press has shown such restraint in dealing with an explosive but unsubstantiated rumor. I suppose just the fact that we are praising ourselves for not falling victim to this "affair" is in itself all too revealing about the state of journalism in America: only a few years ago there would not have been even a whiff of this "story" appearing anywhere but in supermarket tabloids.

Stepping down from my overly self-righteous soapbox, I direct you to a fine piece of work by an Associated Press reporter, published here in SFGate.com:
Woman breaks silence to deny rumors of an affair with Sen. Kerry:

MATTHEW ROSENBERG, Associated Press Writer

(02-16) 18:50 PST NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) --

A woman who has been the subject of rumors linking her to Sen. John Kerry denied Monday that she ever had an affair with the Democratic presidential candidate.

Breaking her silence four days after the allegations surfaced on the Internet, Alexandra Polier issued a statement to The Associated Press, saying, "I have never had a relationship with Senator Kerry, and the rumors in the press are completely false."

Kerry already has denied reports that he had an extramarital affair. On Monday, his campaign said he would have no further comment.

Polier's statement was released to the AP in Nairobi, where the 27-year-old freelance journalist is visiting the parents of her fiance, Yaron Schwartzman, an Israeli who was raised in Kenya. She previously worked as an editorial assistant for the AP in New York.

"Whoever is spreading these rumors and allegations does not know me," Polier said, appealing to the media to respect her privacy and the privacy of her fiance and his family.

Polier also took issue with reports that referred to her as a former Kerry intern.

"I never interned or worked for John Kerry," she told AP over the phone.

In a separate statement, Polier's parents, Terry and Donna Polier of Malvern, Pa., dismissed the "completely false and unsubstantiated" allegations about their daughter.

"We love and support her 100 percent and these unfounded rumors are hurtful to our entire family," the statement said. "We appreciate the way Senator Kerry has handled the situation, and intend on voting for him for president of the United States."

The statement did not address purported quotes by Polier's parents in the British tabloid The Sun that were harshly critical of Kerry. But in a later statement e-mailed to the AP in New York, Terry Polier said he was misquoted by the Sun and that his wife never talked to the Sun reporter. Contacted early Tuesday, the Sun had no immediate comment.
There is more at SFGate.com

Update: Under the banner of HAVE THEY NO SHAME, it appears that even some major venom-purveyors--in the U.K.--just will not take "no" for an answer. The Mail On Sunday, The Daily Mail , The Evening Standard, the Metro Media Group and their corporate umbrella Associate New Media, must be in need of some serious grease from the Bush administration.
  

5:39 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Monday, February 16, 2004

Lt. Colonel (Ret.) Bill Burkett's Story On AWOLGate, From CalPundit

CalPundit has a must-read post on AWOLgate that, if true, changes the whole shooting match from mere political mendacity to perhaps felonious destruction of records and a deliberate, orchestrated cover-up by state and federal officials. Those are very strong words for this longtime crime reporter to write, and I do not do so lightly, which is why I preface all of it with the all-important caveat above. Read Kevin Drum's analysis and see what you think about the "evidence." I will say this, Mr. Drum, the author and proprietor of CalPundit, is not one to venture forth recklessly on any matter; his integrity, by all accounts, is beyond reproach, and his particularly keen analytical skills are well-known and long-respected in both his work in the blogosphere, and in his career in Information Technology.
ADVENTURES IN FORENSIC JOURNALISM....Former Lt. Colonel Bill Burkett says that members of George Bush's staff, along with senior officers at Texas National Guard Headquarters, purged Bush's National Guard files of potentially embarrassing material back in 1997. Is his story true?

First, let's review his claims:
Not wishing to borrow upon Mr. Drum's exceedingly thorough work, I will not post more of it. Please go here at CalPundit and see what you make of what could perhaps be one of the biggest stories of the year.
  

10:41 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




More Good Stuff At Mark A. R. Kleiman

More Good Stuff To Be Found At Mark A. R. Kleiman:
Glenn Reynolds endorces Clark for V.P.

I don't think Glenn quite meant it that way, but that's the way it came out:

What Kerry needs is to make a ballsy choice of someone with military experience, someone who may not be a traditional Democrat but who's known as a fighter, who can appeal to swing voters, and who'll give the Democrats instant credibility.

Actually, there are several retired generals who aren't very happy with the military and foreign policies of the current administration, and one of them might be a good pick.
Here is another great nugget--among many, in truth--at Mark A. R. Kleiman. Such as:
Why does Ann Coulter Hate American Soldiers?

Just asking.
There are many more goodies where these came from: Mark A. R. Kleiman.
  

8:16 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Good News For America, Actually For The World

Here Is Some Good News For America, Actually, For The World. As you know, I have not posted anything directly concerning the "intern scandal," awaiting real news from real investigative journalists back in the States (and Africa) -- there was little or nothing this investigative journalist could do all the way over here on the other side of the world. Well, while I was visiting The Peking Duck a moment ago, I found reason to smile. Why? For that, please follow the blue-brick road to:
Is the Kerry "intern" kerfuffle dead in the water?

I was relieved to see that most of the US mass media were ignoring the non-story, as there was zero evidence to back it up. According to a friend of mine in Arizona even the local right-wing talk radio station was dismissing it as un-newsworthy. The only place it seems to be getting lots of play is the UK supermarket tabloids.

Reading Mark Kleiman today, I feel further relieved.
Me too, Richard, very, very relieved. Folks, this is a very important matter. So, please have a look for yourself. It is so important that I am going to depart slightly from the norm and give you both links again. The Peking Duck & Mark A. R. Kleiman (a very fine site, by the way).
  

7:30 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Bushisms As Poetry...

I thought I was having all of the fun with "Bushisms." I must, however, tip my new fur hat to Richard, the author and proprietor of The Peking Duck. He has found a source that has brilliantly woven them into poetry. Mine are from a desk calender given to me as a gift during my recent trip back to the States; each day has one Bushism. It is published by Andrew McMeel and Simon & Schuster and is based on the best-selling books edited by Jacob Weisberg of Slate.com.

Now I want to point you to this really funny--and frightening, actually--post at The Peking Duck.
Our president, the malapropism poet

This poem, lifted from Snopes, is a compilation of actual George W. Bush malapropisms.
I will not borrow Richard's thunder, please go clickity-click and have some fun, at The Peking Duck.
  

6:41 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




The Fat Lady Is Warming Up Her Voice, And The Furry Animals Are Leaving The Ship

Can Dean Still practice Medicine? Because the fat lady is warming up her voice, and the furry animals are leaving the ship. Let's face it, when your campaign chairman gives the following story to The New York Times, it's time to look for otherwise gainful employment:
MILWAUKEE, Feb. 15 — The chairman of Howard Dean's presidential campaign said on Sunday that he would leave and shift his support to Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts if Dr. Dean lost the Wisconsin primary on Tuesday, an outcome he sees as all but inevitable.

"If Howard Dean does not win the Wisconsin primary, I will reach out to John Kerry unless he reaches out to me first," said the chairman, Steven Grossman, who was chairman of Mr. Kerry's 1996 Senate race. "I will make it clear that I will do anything and everything I can to help him become the next president, and I will do anything and everything I can to build bridges with the Dean organization."

The comments by Mr. Grossman, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee who has known Mr. Kerry for 34 years, came as Dr. Dean faced growing pressure from aides and outside backers to abandon his quest. But while many leading supporters and staff members expect him to either quit the campaign altogether or radically scale it back by the end of this week, the candidate remained steadfast Sunday that he would soldier on.

"We're not dropping out after Tuesday, period," Dr. Dean said in a television interview with the Fox affiliate here Sunday.

But in a debate here with the other four Democratic candidates Sunday evening, Dr. Dean skipped several opportunities to directly challenge Mr. Kerry.

Dr. Dean has no events scheduled beyond Tuesday night, when he plans to fly home to Burlington, Vt., to regroup. He has not won in any of the 16 states that have voted. His bank account is dwindling. Many of his aides are planning vacations or seeking jobs with other candidates.

While many in the Dean camp felt Mr. Grossman had spoken out of school, none disputed the essence of what he said: that the campaign would not last the week in its current incarnation.

Roy Neel, Dr. Dean's campaign manager, said "anything is possible" after Wisconsin. "I'm not going to contradict Steve," Mr. Neel said of Mr. Grossman. "Every possibility is still on the table. The governor's not made a decision.

"He believes it's premature to make up his mind because we don't have the results from Tuesday night yet. He's still planning to win the primary."

The most recent polls here show Mr. Kerry 40 points ahead of Dr. Dean, who also trailed Mr. Edwards.

Aides to Dr. Dean and Mr. Kerry have met to discuss Dr. Dean's future plans, a Democratic operative said Sunday night on condition on anonymity.

"None of us are doing a whole lot right now, because there's not a whole lot to do," one top Dean aide said Sunday, on the condition he not be named. "We've put one ad on the air in Wisconsin. We're not polling anymore. We're not going to have the money to run some full-fledged campaign for March 2."

By contrast, Senator John Edwards of North Carolina promised to compete in all 10 states with primaries and caucuses on March 2, though he said he might bypass Hawaii, Idaho and Utah, which vote Feb. 24. ...

Many supporters believe his best option would be to turn his campaign into a political action group devoted to defeating President Bush.

"Right now there is nothing that he is doing that anyone I've spoken to believes is detrimental to the Democratic party," said Andrew L. Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, which plans to reassess its endorsement of Dr. Dean on Wednesday. "Some people may say if they were him they wouldn't do this because it may be detrimental to his reputation. I guess he's in charge of his own reputation."

Mr. Grossman, the campaign chairman, predicted that after a Dean loss here on Tuesday, "you will see a fundamental shift in rhetoric and in tone and perhaps in how the candidate uses his time."
Let us not yet speculate on the absurdity of Howard Dean being in contention for the Vice-Presidential half of the democratic ticket, please. I say this knowing full well that polite, unifying politics demands that his name be at least publicly bandied about. Otherwise, Dr. Dean might come back with a scream that will shake Mao's tomb all the way over here in Beijing!

The New York Times...
  

6:11 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




No, Mr. Nader, Please!

Ralph Nader, the megalomaniac of American fringe politics, is talking dangerously again. Surely there is some other way he can find to keep his name recognition factor--perhaps he can seriously attempt to find Jimmy Hoffa's corpse. That is at least as redeeming to the commonweal of the Republic than his hopeless, but ever so reckless obsession with running for president. Wasn't his ensuring Bush 41's victory in 2000 enough of an impact upon history? I mean, for chrissakes, it gave us America's first and only dynastic restoration! (Note: see NYTimes Bestseller List)

Unfortunately, that is not his way of looking at the situation, according to the Old Gray Lady's first true venture into the blogoshere, Times on the Trail:
WHILE Ralph Nader says that he will decide within the next week or two whether there is enough grass-roots support for him to run for president, so far it is not easy to discern a groundswell.

Mr. Nader tried asking visitors to his Web site, naderexplore04.com, whether he should run, but the poll was halted after a flood of negative votes orchestrated by another Web site, RalphDontRun.net, created by John Pearce, a California Democrat and former Internet executive.

"There's been a grass-roots response from people who respect Ralph Nader but don't want him to tip the balance to George Bush," Mr. Pearce said. "In just two weeks, the traffic on our Web site has grown from 100 visitors a day to nearly 9,000."

Another measure of grass-roots support, or lack thereof, can be found at meetup.com, where candidates' supporters register to arrange meetings in their communities. As of Saturday, there were more than 188,000 registered supporters for Howard Dean, 45,000 for John Kerry, 23,000 for Dennis J. Kucinich, 9,000 for John Edwards and a grand total of 375 for Mr. Nader. He did however come out ahead of the Rev. Al Sharpton, who had 233.

Mr. Nader said his decision would depend mainly on the returns from a fund-raising appeal he recently mailed, and to a lesser extent on whether Dr. Dean remains in the race. Mr. Nader said he was not dissuaded by his standing on meetup.com.

"A third party can push the agenda and increase voting turnout," said Mr. Nader, who did not sound discouraged by his low numbers on meetup.com. "I really don't deal with the Web. There isn't enough time in the day to go into virtual reality."
If he actually declares, would it be too ghastly to plant an alluring intern in his next hotel room pre-equipped with a video camera? I know, I know, terribly unethical, but terrible times often call for terrible measures.

Times on the Trail
  

5:17 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




There is a "Bitter edge to Valentine's Day" Reports China Daily

Chinese Private Eyes Work Over-Time To Catch Cheating Spouses During The Build-up To Valentine's Day Celebration, according to a story in China Daily. Somehow I don't think that is quite the spirit of the day. However, like the holiday itself, perhaps the rampant jealousy--and the number of actual cases of infidelity exposed--is a western tradition that should very well have stayed in the west. What the hell, call it progress. Or maybe it has always been a part of Chinese culture that I am frankly ignorant of, or just too naive to have noticed. The statistics in the story alone are facinating--and sociologically informative of...something? I'm not sure of what, however. Are you?
Valentine's day, originally a sweet time for lovers, has turned into a time for suspicious wives and husbands in China to consider the faithfulness of their partners.

Many hire investigators to find evidence of extramarital affairs.

The Wanma Law Firm based in Hangzhou, capital of East China's Zhejiang Province, did top business again this year in the days leading up to Valentine's Day as married persons asked for help in investigating their partners' fidelity.

Xu Min, Wanma's director in charge of such investigations, said male customers have risen from the previous 30 to 40 per cent of the total, but refused to give the specific number because of the private nature of the business.

Cases accepted by his firm show that husbands under suspicion are usually beyond 35 years old and the target wives were often between 30 to 35 years old.

"The customer group has expanded from wealthy bosses to ordinary people with average incomes, which now take up 70 per cent of the total," Xu said, noting each investigation takes seven to 10 days and costs about 20,000 yuan (US$2,400), five to six times an ordinary person's monthly pay.

Though the newly-emerged business is thriving and highly profitable, private investigators are still reluctant to accept such cases due to the toil of 24-hour catlike tailings and the risk of being beaten up if discovered.

"The results confirm over 80 per cent of the surveyed have extramarital affairs," Xu said.

Love affairs outside marriage have stirred loyalty crises among some Chinese couples. Suspicious spouses find Valentine's Day a good opportunity to catch their other half with their lovers. That, in turn, wins them the upper hand when dividing property in case of a divorce.

Last year, 53,000 couples divorced in Beijing. In Shanghai more than four couples out of every 1,000 divorced, the highest divorce rate in the country and 20 times higher than two decades ago.

Wu Qiantao, an ethics professor with Renmin University of China, considered the loyalty crisis a result of weakening sense of family responsibility.

Doubts over marital fidelity can also be seen in the increasing number of paternity tests recently reported by the Jiangsu Provincial Hospital in East China.

In the week following Spring Festival the paternity test centre of the hospital received nearly 20 families asking for a DNA check.

Since its establishment in May 2001, the centre has handled some 300 such cases and is expected to accept 500 cases this year alone.

Dr Su Enben said more than 90 per cent of applicants were suspicious fathers and the majority of them were wealthy people or migrant rural workers who are usually away from home for long lengths of time to take up urban jobs.

Rich men who have children with their mistresses want to confirm the blood relationship so that they can safely bequeath property to the children, Su said.

Though 85 per cent of the tests have confirmed the legitimacy of the kids, experts still consider it a reflection of unstable family relationships.

Most people who find the children are not theirs, choose divorce.
China Daily
  

4:04 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Update On China and Pakistan Nuke Story....

As of this date and time, not China Daily, the People's Daily, or Xinhuanet.com has any mention of the report of China either selling or giving nuclear technology to Pakistan. We can be sure that they will respond in some manner, at some point. We will wait and see.

What is ironic, however, is that all three of the above online sites have some variation of the following, which is from China Daily and is headlined:
Cautious optimism for solving nuclear issue

Hu Xuan Updated: 2004-02-16 08:51

Expectations are riding on all parties in the upcoming six-way talks on the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue to reach new consensus and push for substantial results.

Chinese Vice-Foreign Minister Wang Yi said in the Republic of Korea (ROK) capital of Seoul yesterday that conditions are in place to launch substantial negotiations in the new round of talks.
If you are interested, there is much more to the story above at China Daily...
  

3:04 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




A Bad Idea Then, In Retrospect Even Worse

Even Though The Evidence Suggests That China Gave Or Sold Nuclear Technology To Pakistan Some 20 Years Ago, there is no way to put a positive spin on this dangerous and embarrassing taboo by a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. It will be more than interesting to see the central government's official response on this most unsettling discovery.

Wanting to note how the international press is reporting the story, below is an article from The Scotsman, under a quite definitive headline, and nary an "alleged" anywhere in the text:
China sold nuclear designs to Libya

NUCLEAR weapons designs found in Libya are of Chinese origin, exposing a new link in the chain of nuclear proliferation, according to government officials and arms experts.

The bomb designs and other papers turned over by Libya have yielded dramatic evidence of China’s long-suspected role in transferring nuclear know-how to Pakistan in the early 1980s, the experts said.

The designs were later resold to Libya by Pakistani scientists through a nuclear trading network that is now the focus of an expanding international probe, added the officials and experts, who are based in the United States and Europe.

The packet of documents, some of them written in Chinese characters, contain detailed, step-by-step instructions for assembling an implosion-type nuclear bomb that could fit atop a large ballistic missile. Also included were technical instructions for manufacturing individual components for the device, the officials and experts said.

"It was just what you’d have on the factory floor. It tells you what torque to use on the bolts and what glue to use on the parts," one weapons expert who has reviewed the blueprints said in an interview. He described the designs as "very, very old" but "very well-engineered".

US intelligence officials concluded years ago that China provided early assistance to Pakistan in building its first nuclear weapon - assistance that appears to have ended in the 1980s.

But weapons experts familiar with the blueprints expressed surprise at what they described as a wholesale transfer of sensitive nuclear technology to another country.
There is more, read it in The Scotsman
  

1:06 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




From Dubya's Mouth...

Time for more Bushisms, as collected by Jacob Weisberg, and published by Andrew McMeel Publishing and Simon & Schuster:
"We spent a lot of time talking about Africa, as we should. Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease." --Gothenburg, Sweden; June 14, 2001

"Our nation must come together to unite." --Tampa, Florida; June 4, 2001

"Brie and cheese." --What he imagines reporters eat; Crawford Texas; August 23, 2001
  

12:15 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




InstaPundit Being...Well, Bigoted, Again?

Are The Chinese Dumber Than Rocks? Must be, I mean would InstaPundit steer you wrong? Yes, Glenn Reynolds has put his hoof in his mouth--or blog--again. Let's go to the source:
This also suggests that the Chinese are, well, dumb as rocks. Arming an unstable nation with whom one shares a border with nuclear weapons just seems awfully stupid to me. (See also Russia and Iran). I suspect that corruption played a role in that decision: probably Saudi money that bribed Chinese officials to give nuclear secrets to Pakistan that wound up in the hands of Libya. And where else?
In all fairness, we must note that he is commenting--actually, speculating--on a Washington Post story. However, nowhere in that story is there any reportage concerning the intellectual capacity of the Chinese people.

Criminy, here I am trying my best to convince future Chinese diplomats and political leaders that America is not defacto their enemy, and an American university law professor who is read by 100,000 people a day goes and types such recklessly bigoted words without a thought that he is insulting 1.3 Billion fellow citizens of this spinning rock we all share called Earth. Thanks a lot, Prof. Reynolds

InstaPundit.Com
  

3:27 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Sunday, February 15, 2004

Ooops, Lt. Bush...?

Bad news for the White House: The former National Guard veterans that the Bush administration wanted us to believe must be out there to prove that he served in Alabama are surfacing. However, they are not saying what he would like them to. The respected weekly, The Memphis Flyer, is reporting a most interesting story under the headline BUSH A NO-SHOW AT ALABAMA BASE, SAYS MEMPHIAN. It is reproduced in part below (with photo):
The Memphis Flyer, MEMPHIS – Two members of the Air National Guard unit that President George W. Bush allegedly served with as a young Guard flyer in 1972 had been told to expect him and were on the lookout for him. He never showed, however; of that both Bob Mintz and Paul Bishop are certain.

The question of Bush’s presence in 1972 at Dannelly Air National Guard base in Montgomery, Alabama – or the lack of it – has become an issue in the 2004 presidential campaign.

Recalls Memphian Mintz, now 62: "I remember that I heard someone was coming to drill with us from Texas. And it was implied that it was somebody with political influence. I was a young bachelor then. I was looking for somebody to prowl around with.” But, says Mintz, that “somebody" -- better known to the world now as the president of the United States -- never showed up at Dannelly in 1972. Nor in 1973, nor at any time that Mintz, a FedEx pilot now and an Eastern Airlines pilot then, when he was a reserve first lieutenant at Dannelly, can remember.

"And I was looking for him," repeated Mintz, who said that he assumed that Bush "changed his mind and went somewhere else" to do his substitute drill. It was not "somewhere else," however, but the 187th Air National Guard Tactical squadron at Dannelly to which the young Texas flyer had requested transfer from his regular Texas unit – the reason being Bush’s wish to work in Alabama on the ultimately unsuccessful U.S. Senate campaign of family friend Winton "Red" Blount.

It is the 187th, Mintz’s unit, which was cited, during the 2000 presidential campaign, as the place where Bush completed his military obligation. And it is the 187th that the White House continues to contend that Bush belonged to – as recently as this week, when presidential spokesman Scott McClellan released payroll records and, later, evidence suggesting that Bush’s dental records might be on file at Dannelly.

"There’s no way we wouldn't have noticed a strange rooster in the henhouse, especially since we were looking for him," insists Mintz, who has pored over documents relating to the matter now making their way around the Internet. One of these is a piece of correspondence addressed to the 187th’s commanding officer, then Lt. Col. William Turnipseed, concerning Bush’s redeployment.

Mintz remembers a good deal of base scuttlebutt at the time about the letter, which clearly identifies Bush as the transferring party. "It couldn’t be anybody else. No one ever did that again, as far as I know." In any case, he is certain that nobody else in that time frame, 1972-73, requested such a transfer into Dannelly.

Mintz, who at one time was a registered Republican and in recent years has cast votes in presidential elections for independent Ross Perot and Democrat Al Gore, confesses to "a negative reaction" to what he sees as out-and-out dissembling on President Bush’s part. "You don’t do that as an officer, you don’t do that as a pilot, you don’t do it as an important person, and you don’t do it as a citizen. This guy’s got a lot of nerve."
There is much more to the story, read it in The Memphis Flyer...
  

7:19 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Dirty, Dirty, Filthy Dirty Politics:

Howl Away My Conservative Friends and Colleagues, but I am again going to acquaint you--in detail--with a political .org that I believe does the very best job of responsibly reporting the liberal perspective on the hot-button issues of the 2004 Presidential Campaign, it is the Center for American Progress. It is a must daily read for me, its The Progress Report is delivered directly into my e-mail box. Every day it divides the issues into categories and posts them to the blog within a blog, Under The Radar. The categories of late are Veterans; Economy; Intelligence; and Iraq. Surely to no one's surprise, below we will give you "Veterans" in full, with all of the valuable links (one of its best features). I must tell you that what they expose here is shocking--to me, and I have been around the block more than most in my "charmed" life and career, both public and private:
Will President Bush Tolerate This?

Facing more questions about the President's National Guard duty, conservative allies of the White House did the only thing they could do: disparage triple amputee Vietnam war hero Max Cleland, a man who only a year and a half ago the White House and its allies likened to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein in television ads. In a column posted on the conservative Heritage Foundation's Web site, Fox News contributor and White House ally Ann Coulter unleashed an attack on Cleland's service to his country, claiming that the triple amputee/decorated war hero displayed "no bravery" in Vietnam. The politically motivated assault came after Cleland appeared at events critical of the Administration, once again showing the conservatives pattern of impugning the patriotism of those who question their policy. It comes just after President Bush himself nominated Cleland to the Export-Import Bank and after Bush called Cleland "a good Democratic senator out of Georgia." The attack highlights a new pattern of behavior from the White House and fellow conservatives: they wrap themselves in the flag, while slashing funding for veterans health care, military families, and soldier pay – all while disparaging the honored service of those who defend America. If you don't like what you are about to read, e-mail the President of the Heritage Foundation to tell him to stop publishing Coulter's work, and e-mail Fox News to tell them to stop putting Ann Coulter on TV.

SAYING AN AMPUTEE VET "DIDN'T GIVE LIMBS FOR HIS COUNTRY": Coulter wrote, "Cleland didn't give his limbs for his country or leave them on the battlefield" because she says he lost his limbs in a "routine, noncombat mission where he was about to drink beer with his friends." But as the 8/1/99 Esquire Magazine notes, Cleland lost two legs and an arm in Vietnam when a grenade accidentally detonated after he and another soldier jumped off a helicopter in a combat zone.

SAYING A SILVER STAR WINNER IS NOT A "WAR HERO": Coulter said people "should stop allowing [Cleland to be] portrayed as a war hero" – despite the fact that, in a separate incident four days before he lost three limbs, Cleland won a Silver Star - one of the highest honors for combat courage the U.S. military gives out. The congressional citation which came with the medal specifically said that during a "heavy enemy rocket and mortar attack Captain Cleland, disregarding his own safety, exposed himself to the rocket barrage as he left his covered position to administer first aid to his wounded comrades. He then assisted in moving the injured personnel to covered positions." The citation concluded, "Cleland's gallant action is in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service, and reflects great credit upon himself, his unit and the United States Army."

SAYING CLELAND WAS "LUCKY" TO HAVE LIMBS BLOWN OFF: Coulter said, "Luckily for Cleland…he happened to [lose his limbs] while in Vietnam" and said that had he been injured "at Fort Dix rather than in Vietnam, he would never have been a U.S. Senator." Of course, Cleland probably would not have been dealing with live grenades and enemy fire in the save haven of Ft. Dix. But, then, many top conservatives might not know this because they do not have firsthand knowledge of a combat zone. President Bush did not go to Vietnam because he was in the Texas National Guard. Vice President Dick Cheney did not serve in the military, saying, "I had other priorities in the '60s than military service." According to the Houston Press in 1999, House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) "tried to blame minorities for his lack of military experience" saying, "so many minority youths had volunteered for the well-paying military positions to escape poverty and the ghetto that there was literally no room for patriotic folks" like him. And Rush Limbaugh avoided service by apparently claiming his "anal cysts" prevented him from defending the nation. See more conservatives who attack veterans while avoiding military service themselves.

NOT THE FIRST TIME BUSH & ALLIES DISPARAGED CLELAND: Just a year and a half ago, President Bush and his allies aired a television ad equating Cleland to Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. The ad was originally sponsored by Rep. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), a man who told Georgia Public Television on 8/16/02 that he was kept out of Vietnam because of a "bum knee" and a handful of student deferments yet, by some incredible miracle, still found a way to play baseball in college and even plays in the Congressional Baseball games today. Newspapers and veterans groups were outraged over the ad. But instead of repudiating it, President Bush actually embraced Chambliss and the ads, repeatedly visiting Georgia to support him.

THIS SOLDIER CAN TAKE THESE ATTACKS: The NYT reports that Cleland is responding to attacks from conservatives in kind. "This is part of an overall slime-and-defend strategy," he said. "They don't want to talk about Vietnam, and they don't want their candidates to talk about veterans' issues because it hurts the president." One Republican running for statewide office in Nevada said he attended a meeting where officials from the Bush re-election campaign urged Republican candidates not to talk about Vietnam. "Basically, they're saying don't bring up veterans' issues and don't bring up Vietnam; our surrogates will take care of it," said the candidate, Ed Gobel.

LA TIMES RESPONDS TO THE ATTACKS: In an editorial, the LA Times chastised the Heritage Foundation and conservatives for their attacks on Cleland: "The Heritage Foundation posts an Ann Coulter column saying...Vietnam vet and former Georgia Sen. Max Cleland, 'did not give his limbs for his country' because the grenade that injured him was not hurled in combat. How absurd and insulting to all veterans." That has not stopped the attack from being republished and trumpeted in conservative journals throughout the country. It now appears on the website of Human Events Magazine – the self-described "national conservative weekly." It also appears on the conservative WorldNet Daily website.
The above is only a quarter of The Progress Report for that day, please have a look at the rest on issues perhaps you have more interest in, the Economy, Iraq or Intelligence.

Center for American Progress

Update e-mailed from The Center For American Progress:
EDITOR’S NOTE: After publishing the Progress Report this morning, Fox News called to protest our description of Ann Coulter as a "Fox News contributor." Fox News said Ann Coulter "is not a contributor to this network" and "has not been a contributor the last couple of years." Though Fox News’ Sean Hannity described Ms. Coulter in December of 2002 as "a Fox News contributor," and despite Coulter appearing 50 times on Fox News since 2002, we regret any confusion this may have caused.
Hmmm....
  

5:51 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Ms. Dowd At Her Very Best: The Thief of Baghdad

The Irrespressible Maureen Dowd Absolutely Skewers the True Boogey-man In the Bush Administration: Cheney the Great. It is no secret that I admire Ms. Dowd and believe her to be one of the sharpest wits and wordsmiths currently writing in the English language. But even with that caveat in mind, I must say that I am virtually wordless in my appreciation for her column in today's The New York Times. It is rare indeed when any journalist, particularly a columnist working with such limited space, nails a humongous issue with such pristine clarity--backed by reportage--as Ms. Dowd does here. It is so exemplary that I am reproducing it in full:
In the Ford White House, Dick Cheney's Secret Service name was Backseat, because he was the model of an unobtrusive staffer, the perfect unflashy deputy chief of staff for that lord of the bureaucratic dance, Donald Rumsfeld.

As James Mann writes in his new book, "The Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush's War Cabinet," Mr. Cheney started out supervising such lowly matters as fixing a stopped-up drain in a White House bathroom sink; getting a headrest for Betty Ford's helicopter seat; and sorting out which salt shakers — the regular ones or, as he put it, the "little dishes of salt with funny little spoons" — would be best for stag dinners in the president's private quarters.

Rummy's alter ego rose quickly, though, because he seemed to have no ego. Good old Dick could be counted on to be the man behind the man, a butler to power. The new President Bush, a tabula rasa in foreign affairs, put himself in Mr. Cheney's hands.

But W. had barely settled into the Oval when Backseat clambered into the front seat. Retracing the rush to war, the names Cheney and Chalabi are entwined in bold relief.

Back when Dick Cheney was fiddling with salt shakers, Ahmad Chalabi, a smooth-talking and wealthy young Iraqi M.I.T. graduate, was founding the Petra Bank in Jordan.

As Mr. Cheney moved up in the capital, Mr. Chalabi was tripped up in Jordan by a small matter of embezzlement from his own bank. Jordanian officials have said that the crime rocked their economy and that they paid $300 million to depositors to cover the bank's losses. By the time Mr. Chalabi was convicted and received a sentence of 22 years of hard labor, he was a fugitive in London.

During the early 90's, when Mr. Cheney was a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Mr. Chalabi was in a full courtship press with Washington's conservative and journalistic elites. He saw them as a springboard for his triumphant return to Iraq.

After 9/11, his passionate desire to take out Saddam coincided with that of conservatives. All they needed for their belli was a casus, so Mr. Chalabi obligingly conned the neocons.

He hoodwinked his pals Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle into believing Iraq would be a flowery cakewalk to democracy.

A wily expert in the politics of the bazaar, he knew he had to sell his scheme on what was good for Americans and their security. He was happy to funnel information to the vice president that painted a picture of Saddam hunkered on a hair-raising stockpile of W.M.D. His group, the Iraqi National Congress, tried to spin our government and media through its "information collection program." Intelligence officials now say that the prewar information provided to Washington by this group was suspect and useless, even disinformation.

But here's the wild thing: the propaganda program was underwritten by U.S. government funds. So Americans paid Ahmad Chalabi to gull them into a war that is costing them a billion a week — and a precious human cost. Cops dealing with their snitches check out the information better than the Bush administration did.

Mr. Chalabi's séances swayed the political set, the intelligence set and the journalistic set. In an effect Senator Bob Graham dubs "incestuous amplification," the bogus stories spewed by Iraqi exiles and defectors ricocheted through an echo chamber of government and media, making it sound as if multiple, reliable sources were corroborating the same story. Rather, one self-interested source was replicating like computer spam.

The C.I.A. was stung to find out its analysts had mistakenly thought that Iraq weapons information had been confirmed by multiple sources, when it came from only a single source; that analysts had relied on a fabricating Iraqi defector and spin material from Iraqi exiles; and that this blather made its way into documents and speeches used by the Bush administration to justify war. George Tenet ordered a major change in procedure last week, removing barricades so that analysts can know more about the identities of clandestine agents' sources, and their possible motives.

But even incestuous amplification could not have drowned out reality if Bush officials had not glommed onto the Chalabi flummery for their own reasons — to feed their fantasies about refashioning America's power, psyche and military, and making over the Middle East in our image.

Swept up in big dreams, the foreign policy dream team became dupes in Ahmad Chalabi's big con.
The New York Times
  

4:00 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Thomas L. Friedman "Meets The Press" With John Kerry

Columnist Thomas L. Friedman, consistently the most articulate liberal hawk on the war in Iraq, yet again displays why I and other like-minded journalists read him religiously and agree with him so often. To wit, his column in today's The New York Times:
The situation in Iraq is fast approaching the tipping point. The terrorists know that if they can wreak enough havoc, kill enough Iraqis waiting in line to join their own police force, they can prevent the U.N. from coming up with a plan for elections and a stable transfer of U.S. authority to an Iraqi government. Once authority is in Iraqi hands, the Baathists and Islamists have a real problem: They can't even pretend to be fighting the U.S. anymore. It will be clear to all Arabs and Muslims that they are fighting against the freedom and independence of Iraq and for their own lunatic ideologies. Which is why they are desperate to prevent us from reaching that tipping point. Their strategy is to sow chaos, defeat President Bush and hope that his Democratic successor will pull out. Which is also why at this moment the most important statement on Iraq that can be made -- one that could even save lives -- is nothing President Bush could say. No, the most important statement on Iraq right now could only come from the likely Democratic presidential nominee, John Kerry.
Please go clickity-click and read a most unusual "dialogue" with message and bite, in The New York Times...
  

3:15 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




From Dubya's Mouth...

Time for another Bushism or three, as collected by Jacob Weisberg:
"I think if you know what you believe, it makes it a lot easier to answer qustions. I can't answer your question." --In response to a question about whether he wished he could take back any of his answers in the first debate; Reynoldsburg, Ohio; October 4, 2000

"Actually, I--this may sound a little West Texan to you, but I like it. When I'm talking about--when I'm talking about myself, and when he's talking about myself, all of us are talking about me." --Hardball; May 31, 2000

"If a person doesn't have the capacity that we all want that person to have, I suppose hope is in the far distant future, if at all." --Remarks to the Hispanic Scholarship Fund Institute; Washington, D.C.; May 22, 2001
  

4:15 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




A Bona Fide War Hero Defends Another One Underfire

Republican Senator John McCain is a stand-up guy and a bona fide hero of the Vietnam War. So, it is not the least bit surprising that he would defend another combat veteran of that war, even though that veteran is Senator John Kerry who is trying very hard to send the standard bearer of Mr. McCain's party into an ignominious early retirement from public office. And he is not mincing words as he does so. To wit, from the New York Times:
WASHINGTON, Feb. 13 - Senator John McCain came to the defense of a fellow Vietnam War veteran, Senator John Kerry, on Friday by attacking the credibility of a North Carolina veteran who has dedicated himself to defeating Mr. Kerry in his campaign for president.

Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, called the man, Ted Sampley, "one of the most despicable people I have ever had the misfortune to encounter."

Mr. Sampley, a businessman from Kinston, N.C., has gained some attention in recent days for operating a Web site devoted to attacking Mr. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat, for his opposition to the war in Vietnam after his military service. The Web site, www.vietnamveteransagainstjohnkerry.com, includes pictures from the 1970's showing Mr. Kerry at antiwar protests. One shows Mr. Kerry at a rally, sitting several rows behind Jane Fonda, who was so outspoken against the war that she was labeled a Communist by her political opponents.

In response to Mr. McCain's remarks about him, Mr. Sampley said in a telephone interview: "It's not the first time he said that. That's his opinion. It's unbecoming of a senator to say things like that, but I'm fair game just like he is."

In 1993, Mr. Sampley was convicted of misdemeanor assault and sentenced to 180 days' probation for attacking a legislative aide to Mr. McCain.

A self-proclaimed champion for veterans' rights, Mr. Sampley has been criticizing Mr. Kerry for much the same reason he made Mr. McCain a target for years: Neither man, Mr. Sampley contends, has done enough to investigate his claim that American servicemen were left behind in Vietnam after the war.

Mr. Sampley once called Mr. McCain, who was held captive for five years in North Vietnam, "the Manchurian Candidate," a reference to a 1962 film in which a Communist-controlled candidate nearly becomes his party's candidate for president.

In a recent statement posted on his Web site, Mr. Sampley made a similar suggestion, saying: "I have personally dealt with John Kerry on the issue of U.S. P.O.W.s left behind in Vietnam. Kerry is not truthful and is not worthy of the support of U.S. veterans. Many Vietnam vets have been duped into thinking Kerry is their friend. He is not. To us, he is `Hanoi John.' "

In defending Mr. Kerry, Mr. McCain — who has campaigned for President Bush this year — said of Mr. Sampley: "I consider him a fraud who preys on the hopes of family members of missing servicemen for his own profit. He is dishonorable, an enemy of the truth, and despite his claims, he does not speak for or represent the views of all but a few veterans."

Mr. Sampley is not the only person actively seeking to discredit Mr. Kerry. In recent days, a picture showing Mr. Kerry at a podium with Ms. Fonda has circulated on the Internet. But the picture is a hoax, according to the photo agency that owns the original, Corbis. In the original photo, Mr. Kerry is alone at the podium.
This is really going to get more and more ugly; the emotions of that era are still that raw, and it matters not that so many under-35 voters don't have a clue as to why, except in the voting booths, of course. Which is why we oldsters have to inform them of the importance of those benighted years that shaped our modern national pysche, including theirs, even though they do not know it.

The New York Times
  

3:59 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Saturday, February 14, 2004

Distasteful Food For Thought...

Richard, the author and proprietor of The Peking Duck, has a post on the Kerry-intern "story" I want to point you to, even though I do not agree with the almost complete cynicism it displays:
VodkaPundit on Kerry:

Thought-provoking post on why everyone in politics is by necessity a scumbag.
The reason I cannot completely agree with the sentiments expressed is that in my long career as a journalist I have known a number of fine men and women citizens who were also politicians. I do agree that the system makes it very difficult for them to get elected and even harder to be reelected--but some of them manage to do both.
  

6:33 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Taking Damage Control By The Teeth...?

Old Dental Records Are More Often Used To Identify Dead Folks, Not To Shore Up A Sputtering Reelection Campaign that actually hasn't even begun yet. But apparently they are the administration's latest primo evidence in AWOLgate, contained within a large stack of old military records the White House released late on a Friday evening. That is adept damage control strategy in itself: Lead reporters and senior editors, not unlike the rest of us, enjoy having weekends a little slower if not completely off-duty--not to mention weekend press run deadlines.

This is another feint and parry maneuver in a running skirmish in an increasingly vituperative war between two very different kinds of men--this journalist isn't going to run with the Drudge-reported "sex scandal" until there are facts from investigative journalists that advance the story beyond the Drudge and Murdoch factor. I am not, however, going to prematurely dismiss it either. Which would be as knee-jerk as those who pounced on the "story" at first whiff. I don't have any facts upon which to base any conclusion, let us wait and see if someone provides a few.

As I have noted earlier, 2004 is going to be a long, politically and emotionally bloody, year with much more at stake for the Republic than other presidential campaign years. Here, we are going to take it one day at a time, checking a lot of sources before ringing bells just to hear the clang. Most politely I suggest you do the same: Read several sources, from different camps, and even then only neatly store away the information gathered and not reach a conclusion until you have to.

Below is a report (and NYT photo) on the state of the evidence as seen through the filter of the old Gray Lady, The New York Times.
WASHINGTON, Feb. 13 - President Bush moved on Friday night to try to stem potentially damaging election-year questions about his military record and whether the White House mishandled intelligence threats before the Sept. 11 attacks.

In dual announcements capping a week of intense political pressure on Mr. Bush, the White House said it had decided to release all documents from the president's National Guard files and, within hours, disclosed that Mr. Bush would appear before a commission investigating the terrorist attacks.

But the hundreds of pages of National Guard files contain no new evidence and are unlikely to change the basic standoff between Mr. Bush and the Democrats, which is where, when and how often the president showed up for duty from May 1972 to May 1973.

The White House maintains that Guard payroll records, a dental exam that Mr. Bush had in Alabama and the undisputed fact that he was living there during the time in question definitively prove that he turned up for duty. Mr. Bush's critics say the documents prove only that he had his teeth checked in Alabama on Jan. 6, 1973. ...

The only document in the two-inch-thick stack that puts Mr. Bush in Alabama in that period is a document that the White House released on Wednesday, a copy of a dental exam performed at Dannelly Air National Guard base in Montgomery on Jan. 6, 1973. ...

The only document in the two-inch-thick stack that puts Mr. Bush in Alabama in that period is a document that the White House released on Wednesday, a copy of a dental exam performed at Dannelly Air National Guard base in Montgomery on Jan. 6, 1973.

The documents also include glowing reports from Mr. Bush's superiors on his performance as a pilot in training.

"Lt. Bush is an exceptional fighter interceptor pilot and officer," Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian wrote in an evaluation dated May 26, 1972, when Mr. Bush was serving in Texas. "He eagerly participates in scheduled unit activities."

Colonel Killian added that Mr. Bush's major strength was "his ability to work with others."

The White House released the documents with little advance notice at 6:30 p.m., after much of the staff had left for a long holiday weekend. It seemed to be as much an effort at public relations as an attempt to quiet Mr. Bush's critics, at least temporarily, by demonstrating the president's willingness to be open about his military service. ...

They moved Friday night to end the dispute by releasing all the documents, which they said had only arrived in Washington on Friday afternoon from a National Guard personnel records center in Denver.

"This is absolutely everything," Mr. Bartlett told reporters.

Many of the previously unreleased documents that the White House made public on Friday were Mr. Bush's National Guard medical examinations from 1968, 1970 and 1971, all of which certified him for flight training in Texas.

The White House also more definitively explained than it has in the past why Mr. Bush skipped a 1972 National Guard medical exam, which has been a source of enormous speculation from Mr. Bush's critics, who have suggested he did so because drug testing was introduced around that time.

The records show that Mr. Bush was suspended from flying beginning Aug. 1, 1972 because he failed to take the exam. His last flight exam was on May 15, 1971.

Mr. Bartlett said Mr. Bush missed the exam because he felt there was no reason to take it. Mr. Bush, he said, had begun his training in 1968 with the Air National Guard in Texas, where he flew a fighter jet, the F-102. When he moved to Alabama in 1972 to work in the Senate campaign of a friend of his father, Mr. Bush transferred to an Alabama unit of the Guard that did not fly the same plane. Because there was no way Mr. Bush could fly planes in Alabama, Mr. Bartlett said, he did not bother to report for the medical exam.

Mr. Bartlett acknowledged that his explanation would probably not stop Mr. Bush's critics. "They're never going to be satisfied," he said. "Their intent was not the truth. Their intent was trolling for trash."
Read the rest of it in The New York Times...
  

5:46 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Liar, Liar, Flight Suit's on Fire...?

Liar, Liar, Flight suit's on Fire: Is AWOLgate a legitimate story? For those who support Bush, of course it's not. But I'll bet the mortgage that the same folks thought Monicagate was an essential moral crusade against a most evil prevaricator: Liar, Liar, saxophone and thong's and un-inhaled joint's on fire? Lying about sex, even to a grand jury, versus lying about exactly how one managed to avoid the opportunity to be killed or maimed in Vietnam—are they comparable? Whether one thinks so or not is interesting, but not really on-point in the current issue of alleged political mendacity—it is only a set-up to put your mind in gear for what this flap is really all about. Which is...?

It has finally happened; I have waited decades for this battle to be waged: the mother of all counter-culture versus establishment battles. We are finally going to settle America’s Cultural Revolution, the 60's, and this time we are going to do it with voting machines. Clinton versus Bush Sr. and Bob Dole were tussles between two quite separate generations: World War II's "greatest generation" and their very own off-spring, we ubiquitous baby boomers. Not this time: this time it is the now middle-aged "heads" and "freaks" and "longhairs" and "Berkeley free-speechers" against the likewise middle-aged "straights" and "crews" and "Frats" and "Billy Bobs." The old yippies, hippies, freedom-riders, anti-war protestors, the formerly youthful banes of Johnson, Nixon, Hoover, LeMay, Westmoreland, etc., etc., versus their peers—in age only—who supported the men that lead or mislead us during arguably the darkest years in the nation's domestic and social history since the third-quarter of the 19th Century, 1850 to 1875.

There is much I want to write about this issue. But not at length in this post. This is only an introduction. As I said, I have been watching the march of time knowing that this had to come, expecting it, preparing for it intellectually; but I did not know the exact presidential election, or the exact opponents, of course, only an approximation on both. However, I could not have hoped for a better match-up: A Yankee blue-blood Vietnam War hero who turned sharply and bit the hand that sent him there—and his former comrades-in-arms—versus a carpet-bagging silver-spoon "frat" who rah-rah-ed the war in privileged safety, whose family was as establishment as it gets, from the Mayflower to the October Surprise. As has already become clear in just the past couple of weeks, in a head-to-head between John F. Kerry and George W. Bush, all of the searing complexities of the Vietnam War era are present, and will be thrashed—and trashed—thoroughly between now and November.

This, folks, is going to be one hell of an important—I believe, epochal—year in our lives. Please, please, let the right side win, and the nation be safe for at least another full generation. Which side is the right side? Let us figure that out together, in the days, weeks, and months to come.

However, in closing, I should note that the wild-card in this mother-of-all elections, the third element in the great cultural divide wrenching America today, the 35-and-under generation, is what will make this battle for the heart and soul of America so fierce and unpredictable. These are the younger folks who don’t remember when America was not so "free," who believe that the freedoms and privileges they take for granted have always been there. Not surprisingly, a great many of them have taken the establishment side in what has become the most rancorous political era since the 60’s. Look at the age of so many of the conservative pundits…but much more on that another time.

The months to come will not be pretty, but they will be momentous.

Just to begin laying out the surface issues, and the players, in this post I will point you to one of the oldest, most venerated, and reviled, political publications in America, The Nation, and David Corn's blog Capital Games:
George W. Bush is lucky that Scott McClellan is not his lawyer and that the White House press briefing room is not a courtroom.

On February 10, the Bush White House tried to rid itself of the allegation that Bush ducked out of his Air National Guard Service from May 1972 to May 1973. Two days earlier on Meet the Press, Bush maintained, "I did report, otherwise I wouldn't have been honorably discharged." But he offered no details. He did not describe what drills he did; he did not mention anyone with whom he served during the time in question. When host Tim Russert asked if he would open up his "entire" file and release "everything to settle this," Bush said, "Yeah. Absolutely."

And two days later, McClellan was in the briefing room holding up new documents that he claimed proved Bush had "fulfilled his duties." The key material, which the White House had managed to obtain PDQ from the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver--were several pages of microfiche payment sheet summaries that apparently showed Bush was paid several times in the months of October and November 1972 and January and April 1973. McClellan also cited two retirement records that showed Bush had amassed attendance points for these days.

This new material did bolster Bush's defense. But it hardly resolved the issue. Nor did it address the most damning elements of the case against Bush. Most notable of these is the May 2, 1973, annual performance review--signed by two superior officers, who were friends of Bush--that noted, "Lt. Bush has not been observed at" his home base unit in Houston for the past year. Bush has said he spent about half of that period reporting to a Guard base in Alabama, while he was temporarily living there. The new records do not explain why the commander of that unit and his administrative officer say they never saw Bush. Nor do they explain why the Bush campaign in 2000 failed to keep its promise to produce the names of people who had served with Bush in Alabama. Nor do these records explain why Bush, who had been trained as fighter pilot, failed to take a flight physical during the year in question and was grounded. Nor do they back up the 2000 Bush campaign's explanation that Bush did not take a flight physical because he was living in Alabama and his personal doctor was in Houston. (Flight physicals are administered by military physicians, and there were flight physicians at the base in Alabama where Bush says he served.)

The records hailed by the White House only demonstrate that Bush received payments and credit for a modest amount of days. They do not show what he did and where he did it. Those sorts of records detailing Bush's service should exist, according to military experts. But that is not what the White House handed out. Is it possible Bush received payment and credit for days of service that did not happen? Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen, who served in the National Guard during the Vietnam War, recently wrote that he was routinely paid for Guard duty he never did. Given the other evidence, these pay records are not end-of-story proof.

But what makes the White House case particularly unconvincing is McClellan's performance at the press briefing. It was a remarkable exhibition of dissimulation that deserves to be studied by students of political spin. He avoided remaining questions. He kept insisting that these records meant there was nothing else to discuss. He denied reality and refused to acknowledge there was documentary evidence contradicting Bush's account. He was an automaton: these records showed that he served, these records showed that he served, these records showed that he served.

The first question was a tough one for McClellan. A reporter asked:

The records that you handed out today, and other records that exist, indicate that the President did not perform any Guard duty during the months of December 1972, February or March of 1973. I'm wondering if you can tell us where he was during that period. And also, how is it that he managed to not make the medical requirements to remain on active flight duty status?

The exchange that followed was not edifying.

A: These records verify that he met the requirements necessary to fulfill his duties. These records --

Q: That wasn't my question, Scott.

A: These payroll records --

Q: Scott, that wasn't my question, and you know it wasn't my question. Where was he in December of '72, February and March of '73? And why did he not fulfill the medical requirements to remain on active flight duty status?

A: These records -- these records I'm holding here clearly document the President fulfilling his duties in the National Guard. The president was proud of his service. The president --

Q: I asked a simple question; how about a simple answer?

A: John, if you'll let me address the question, I'm coming to your answer.
The press conference was facinating to watch--all the way over here in China--but it is also makes facinating reading. I suggest that you go clickity-click for the rest of it. In fact, Mr. Corn has a number of consecutive posts on AWOLgate that Bush detractors will delight in.

To be sure, we will also present the other side in this affair as it plays on...

Capital Games
  

1:52 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Friday, February 13, 2004

InstaPundit Shows His Ass...

InstaPundit Shows His Foolish Ass For All To See and Then Quickly Pulls His Dirty Overalls Up and Thinks Everything Is Okay. Folks, the first, last and middle thing I teach my media students is this: You Cannot Un-Ring The Bell. Which is why a journalist must work so hard and long to get it right the first time when reporting a story, any story, even a quickie blog post. Those are real people with lives and families out there in otherwise anonymous news-land; these private people had better be a real story reported with truth and sensitivity well before a journalist or blogger rat-a-tat-tats his keyboard.

In this instance, yet again, Glenn Reynolds heaps more shame upon professions and categories of people who do not deserve that which already colors them in much of the public's eyes: Lawyers and Law Professors; Journalists, Columnists and Bloggers; and Southerners.

I'm sure you know why I have written the above. In case you do not, however, I point you to a post by Ted Barlow at Crooked Timber.
Anger:

Posted by Ted

(UPDATE: Glenn has taken down the link to the post in question. We all make mistakes. Original post below the fold, edited somewhat.)
I really thought that I could get through the day without commenting on the accusations about John Kerry. But good lord. There’s a blogger who’s pored through pictures of John Kerry’s interns. He’s found one who looks young, cute and blond, and listed her name and her...
I also want to credit Richard, at The Peking Duck, for posting this most recent evidence of the reckless nature of much of what InstaPundit does with his mega-blogging Bully Pulpit: Ringing Bells Best Left Un-Rung Because They Are Innocent Or They Are Not A Story.
  

7:56 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




O Woe is...?

The Best Laid Plans of Bloggers and Men: After our first whirlwind trip back to the States in almost two years, and its requisite crippling jet-lag upon our return, I thought I'd shortly be blogging away...uh huh. Not to be: Internet connection went down; RSS feed took a hike; Ellen, my beautiful wife--author and proprietor of Crackpot Chronicles--mysteriously acquired a quite swollen lymph gland under her jaw that required multiple visits to the hospital (not to worry, mostly better now); business matters Chinese (publishing, good news) suddenly became pressing; and a television project popped up and required immediate attention (also good news).

All of the above is why I have not been posting with any regularity or frequency this past week. You wonderfully faithful folks I care so much about, please forgive me. I should be back up and pounding the old Magical Word Factory very soon, perhaps hours (yeah, yeah, I'll believe it when I see the copy [ed.]).
  

3:22 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Thursday, February 12, 2004

Say What, Dubya...?

More Bushisms, as collected by Jacob Weisberg:

"the public education system in America is one of the most important foundations of our democracy. After all, it is where children from all over America learn to be responsible citizens, and learn to have the skills necessary to take advantage of our fantastic opportunistic society." --Santa Clara, California; May 1, 2002

"It is not Reaganesque to support a tax plan that is Clinton in nature." --Los Angeles; February 23, 2000
  

1:55 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Wednesday, February 11, 2004

The Right Is No Longer Right Behind Their Bubba

The Right Is No Longer Right Behind Their Bubba. A fairly significant number of card-carrying righties are saying some things about their boy that would have been unimaginable only a few months ago. The New York Times presents a summary of some of the more prominent defectors:
For example, Peggy Noonan, the Reagan speechwriter, had this to say on Sunday in opinionjournal.com about Mr. Bush's "Meet the Press" interview: "The president seemed tired, unsure and often bumbling. His answers were repetitive, and when he tried to clarify them he tended to make them worse.

George Will, the conservative columnist, wrote in his syndicated column on Sunday, "It is surreal for a Republican president to submit a budget to a Republican-controlled Congress and have Republican legislators vow to remove the `waste' that he has included and that they have hitherto funded." ...

Columnists like Robert Novak, conservative television hosts like Joe Scarborough of MSNBC and others on local radio and the Internet have raised questions about Mr. Bush.

"It's a critical departure," said J. David Hoeveler, a professor of history at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee, who said last week that he believed that his local conservative radio host, Charlie Sykes, had begun sounding less exuberant about Mr. Bush. "Generally it's been whole-heartedly Republican," Mr. Hoeveler said of the tenor of the conservative media. "It would suggest that those who would call themselves Republicans are quite possibly breaking ranks." ...

Many critiques go beyond politics. For instance, until recently Mr. Scarborough, a former Republican congressman from Florida, was as energetic a booster of Mr. Bush as anyone. He said he began speaking out against the Bush fiscal policy about two months ago, as he grew alarmed by the growing deficit and what he said were needlessly expensive proposals, like a manned Mars expedition and an increase in financing for the National Endowment of the Arts.

"When I first started doing it, I had Republicans calling me up and saying `Hey, why are you knocking a guy who's from your party?' " he said. "Two months later, everybody seems to be saying it. There's been no fiscal restraint and that's hurting the party and it's hurting the conservative cause."

In one column last week, Mr. Novak criticized Mr. Bush for giving "the most ineffective State of the Union address in recent years." And, he wrote, the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the admission that the president's plan to expand Medicare would cost more than initially estimated were "a double blow to his credibility."

Mr. Novak pointed out in an interview that despite his criticism, most Republicans are not likely to vote for the Democratic nominee. But, he said: "The problem is not whether they vote for Kerry. The problem is whether they stay at home."
Republicans staying home come election day just might be the greatest service they will ever perform for their nation.

The New York Times
  

3:12 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Be Careful What You Wish For, Dubya...

Surely Dubya has heard the admonition: Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it. Why do I note this? Bush 43 has been singing the "Al Qaeda's in the Iraqi straw" ditty from day one; and military and civilian intelligence agencies have not been able to back up his act with facts, also from day one--until now, that is. A lengthy correspondence found on a computer hard drive once belonging to a generally recognized agent of Al Qaeda has recently surfaced. In it there is a plan and summons for jihadists everywhere to foment civil war in Iraq, and thereby thwart coalition forces from turning over the keys of self-government to democratic Iraqis.

How best to do this (along with killing U.S. and coalition troops whenever possible)? Set Sunnis against Shiites by blowing random groups of them into itty bitty pieces of seared human flesh. Well, we don't know how effective such a simple but particularly draconian plan will be in the endrun, but we sure can see the effects of the effort in the present, to wit, from The New York Times:
Car Bomb Kills Dozens at Police Station Near Baghdad

SKANDARIYA, Iraq, Feb. 10 ? A car bomb exploded outside a police station in this town south of Baghdad today, killing at least 50 people and wounding about 100, a hospital official said. ...

The dead and wounded apparently were civilians who were standing waiting to apply for police jobs, officials said. No policemen were killed, a local officer said, but nine policemen were believed to have been wounded.

Huge, angry crowds gathered outside the site of the blast and tried to loot the station. They were dispersed by gunfire, throwing stones at a police truck, shattering a window.

A senior officer at the local police station, Col. Abdul Rahim Falih, stood with tears in his eyes and said: "What did they do, these people who were killed? People were hungry, they were hungry. They came here to put food on their table and they have died."

The front wall of the yellow-brick police station was sheared off in the incident, which happened just after 9 this morning local time in this town 25 miles south of Baghdad. Glass was shattered around the area and an overturned white sedan was blackened, indicating that it had been set afire by the blast.

There was a near riot when [head of the Iraqi police force, Brig. Gen. Ahmed] Ibrahim appeared at the scene. Crowds shouting anti-American slogans rushed at the general, American troops pointed their weapons at the crowd, and the police chief was put into a squad car and taken quickly away.
It can be argued that the "civil war plan" made its way from the hard drive into the hands of some very "hard cases." And Shrub & Twigs can finally say--in whispers only to each other, surely--they have Al Qaeda suicide bombers right where they wanted (and needed) them to be (politically speaking, of course; no one I hope believes that the administration actually wants folks killed just to improve its reelection chances).
 

1:48 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




From Dubya's Mouth...

Another Bushism or two, as collected by Jacob Weisberg:

"But I also made it clear to [Vladimir Putin] that it's important to think beyond the old days of when we had the concept that if we blew each other up, the world would be safe." --Washington, D.C.; May 1, 2001

"See, we love--we love freedom. That's what they didn't understand. They hate things; we love things. They act out of hatred; we don't seek revenge, we seek justice out of love." --Oklahoma City; August 29, 2002
  

12:21 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Tuesday, February 10, 2004

I Missed It Live, So...?

When Janet's "exposure" popped out, I was in my brother-in-law's kitchen in downtown Manhattan spooning up a bowl of venison chili; I didn't know a thing about it until a news broadcast long after the game was over. A very good game it was, too; certainly one of the best Super Bowls ever. But, golly-jeeze-damn, I felt as if I'd missed the last boat to Valhalla, or something maybe even worse; I mean, from the way everybody was jawing about it and all. And I do mean everybody. The replay of the boob event was on the tube everywhere you looked--for days! One problem, though--the "thing" that was the reason for all the fuss had been digitally fuzzed into propriety.

Criminy. I must've been the only guy in the States who didn't know what Janet looked like under all the fuzziness! But then I returned to China a week or so later and was able to get back on the computer and sure enough, soon enough, there IT was: the most famous half of womanly bosom presented on live TV since the late great Jack Paar introduced Jane Mansfield's full one--mostly clothed--to his Tonight Show audience back when Victoria's Secret was also Prince Albert's. So, like white on rice and Regal on ice, I right-punched the mouse and clicked on "Save Picture As." It was mine now! Captured almost forever on my hard drive. But what to do with it?

Soon it came to me--well, not so soon, I am still jet-lagged a bit--why not put it in these pages and make a public record for all to again see what I had not seen until all the shouting was almost over? Yepper, just the thing. However, before I could post it, I discovered that here in China there was an even bigger ruckus about an exposure during the Super Bowl. Now, that one I had seen when it aired (for all of about half-a-second) but hadn't thought anything about it was extraordinary considering the circumstances: namely, me lounging around a well-appointed living room in a really fine apartment in the Gramercy Park area of downtown Manhattan, New York, U.S.A., a little bit stoned with a group of even more stoned American guys I really didn't know that well kicking back on the second most important party day of the year in the States.

Of course, the Tiananmen Park Tank Man picture appearing in a PSA promoting the duty of voting in a democracy would be a bit dicey here in the Middle Kingdom. But I had not known the game was being broadcast in China. If I had, I'm sure that flashing pic of poignant nostalgia would have registered differently upon my consciousness, no matter what condition my condition was in at the moment.

So, in effect, except for enjoying a very good ball game, I might as well have been at a bridal shower or something, judging by all of the excitement I missed out on right under my nose.

The gist of all this? In recompense for my having missed out on all of the excitement of the instant moment, I am going to cast it all into the wind and post both pictures right here.



Looking at the pictures in this juxtaposition, I actually believe there is an important message to it all--when I figure out what it is, I will be sure to let you know.

In the meantime, if you see some greater meaning to this strange confluence of partytime, pop and hard-core politics, please let me know.

I know, I know; I've gotta install one of those comment whatchamathingys. I will get around to it. One of these days.
 

4:35 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Strong Words, Speaking an Awful Truth

Al Gore is talking tough, more and more like his father every day (although Gore pere must be turning over in his sainted grave at his son's endorsement of Dean). I was an admirer of Senator Gore Sr. For those of you too young to remember the legendary Senator from Tennessee, he was a courageous man of principle surrounded by small-minded, mean-spirited bigots elected to serve with him from other states of the old Confederacy during the darkest days of the civil rights movement.

I have mostly admired his son Albert Gore Jr., even with all of his stiffness and insufferable busy-body, goody-two-shoes wife, Tipper. He would have made a much better president than his wishy-washy 2000 campaign suggested--he has all of the goods and background to perhaps be even an extraordinary president. Unfortunately, his timid act during the Florida Presidential Civil War prevented us from ever knowing for sure--unless Bush wins reelection and Al wants to take on Hillary in 2008. The story below is a taste of what could have been.

Gore Says Bush Betrayed the U.S. by Using 9/11 as a Reason for War in Iraq


Associated Press


NASHVILLE, Feb. 8 - In a withering critique of the Bush administration, former Vice President Al Gore on Sunday accused the president of betraying the country by using the Sept. 11 attacks as a justification for the invasion of Iraq.

"He betrayed this country!" Mr. Gore shouted into the microphone at a rally of Tennessee Democrats here in a stuffy hotel ballroom. "He played on our fears. He took America on an ill-conceived foreign adventure dangerous to our troops, an adventure preordained and planned before 9/11 ever took place."

The speech had several hundred Democrats roaring their approval for Mr. Gore, the party's 2000 standard-bearer.

Mr. Gore was one of three Tennessee Democrats, along with former Gov. Ned McWherter and former Senator James Sasser, being honored by the state party two days before the state's Democratic primary on Tuesday. ...

While the other honorees and party officials gave a nod to all of the candidates, Mr. Gore, who has endorsed Howard Dean, referred to his candidate in a nonpartisan manner.

He said he appreciated that Dr. Dean "spoke forthrightly" against the war in Iraq, brought new people into the party and inspired the grass roots over the Internet. But Mr. Gore told the crowd that at an earlier reception for Dr. Dean, who was in Maine, he had said that no matter who won Tennessee on Tuesday, "any one of these candidates is far better than George W. Bush."

But his appreciation of Dr. Dean was tucked in passing into a fiery meditation on his own political history, including a recollection of the tactics used by the Republicans against his father, a longtime populist senator from Tennessee, in his last, losing election in 1970.

He recalled that President Richard M. Nixon had used "the politics of fear" to make his father, Albert Gore Sr., out to be unpatriotic and an atheist. And when his father lost, Mr. Gore said, his father said: "The truth shall rise again."

He said he recalled that defeat because "the last three years we've seen the politics of fear rear its ugly head again." Like the Nixon administration, Mr. Gore said, the Bush administration is not committed to principle but is obsessed with its re-election.

"The American people recognize that there's a lot of politics going on," said Claire Buchan, a White House spokeswoman, in reference to Mr. Gore's comments.

Mr. Gore said he was ready to break his silence about his disagreements with the Bush administration before the Sept. 11 attacks, but afterward he threw his speech in the trash.

But then the war in Iraq came, and he felt betrayed. "It is not a minor matter to take the loyalty and deep patriotic feelings of the American people and trifle with them," he declared, adding with a shout: "The truth shall rise again."
The New York Times
 

2:07 AM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Monday, February 09, 2004

From Dubya's Mouth

Another Bushism or two, as collected by Jacob Weisberg:

"One of the common denominators I have found is that expectations rise above that which is expected." --Los Angeles; September 27, 2000

"It is incredibly presumptive for somebody who has not yet earned his party's nomination to start speculating about vice presidents." --Keene, New Hampshire; October 22, 1999; quoted in the New Republic; November 15, 1999
  

11:54 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Roll Over Vladimir, Tell Mao Zedong The News...!

Amidst the spirited, often embittered debate over the question of whether the "New China" is indeed "new" and progressing or just a velvet-upholstered version of the same "old Police State" treading dirty water comes a resounding piece of "evidence" that the relativists who argue the "New China" side can cue-up in their talking points. As is so often the case in this important dialogue, we are apprised of the news by Richard, the author and proprietor of The Peking Duck, who although being firmly planted on the "same ol', same ol'" side of the issue and one of its most prolific proponents is never remiss in passing on "exculpatory" evidence when he discovers it--a mighty display of fairness and intellectual honesty indeed. As one who mostly sits at the "relativist" table in this debate, with thanks and all due respect, I wish to point you to The Peking Duck post below:
A new landmark for China, The Vagina Monologues

A look at why the staging of The Vagina Monologues in Beijing and Shanghai marks the fall of yet another traditional taboo in China. Actually, more than one taboo; the play's debut ('V-day') is perfectly timed with the release of a landmark study on domestic violence against women in China, another topic that is usually not discussed over dinner in China.
Please go clickity-click to The Peking Duck for the full story and comments.
  

1:05 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Sunday, February 08, 2004

A Clarification...

I also have the strength to post an important addendum to my Kerry/Edwards prediction from yesterday: It was made before the Michigan and Washington caucuses. That would not be obvious to readers on U.S.A. time. You see, here in China, we are 13 hours ahead of New York; 14 hours ahead of Detroit; and 16 hours ahead of Seattle.

Indeed, if you are working on States time, and ever want to know what the day ahead of you is going be like, just ask, I've already been through it.
  

11:38 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




From Dubya's Mouth...

Yikes! The worst case of Jet-Lag I've ever experienced continues with a vengeance--the body won't work except for the transmission of pain throughout its old anatomy; the brain, forget about it...

I am up to posting a couple of "Bushisms" as collected by Jacob Weisberg:

"Neither in French nor in English nor in Mexican." --Declining to answer reporters' questions at the Summit of the Americas; Quebec City, Canada; April 21, 2001

"One year ago today, the time for excuse-making has come to an end." --Washington D.C.; January 8, 2003
  

11:26 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



Saturday, February 07, 2004

From Dubya's Mouth...

Another thing or two. Everyday between now and the election, I will post a "Bushism" or two as collected by Jacob Weisberg and published by Andrews McMeel and Simon & Schuster.

Today we have two George W. Bushisms:

"I've coined new words, like, misunderstanding and Hispanically." --Radio-Television Correspondents Association dinner; Washington, D.C.; March 29, 2001

"After all, a week ago, there were--Yasser Arafat was boarded up in his building in Ramallah, a building full of, evidently, German peace protestors and all kinds of people. They're now out. He's now free to show leadership, to lead the world." --Washington D.C.; May 2, 2002
  

10:14 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Kerry and Edwards...

Well, maybe just a word or two before I again collapse: Kerry and Edwards, a winning ticket; you read it here on this date. Okay, so it isn't an original thought; but it is not just a thought, it is a prediction. Flat out. Anybody want to call me on it? Some kind of a wager, perhaps?

Just so there is no willy-nilly about my call: Dubya will lose if the ticket is Kerry and Edwards. Any takers?


 

9:44 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments




Home Sweet China...

Home, Sweet China! I say this even though I feel as if I've gone 12 rounds with a very large gorilla after 23 unrelenting hours of airlines and airports between New York and Beijing. Home, sweet China! I say again, even though there were many moments of great joy and much to marvel over during those 17 days in our beloved country, our first visit to the States in almost two years--some of which I will surely write about in these pages when the brain is functioning at the requisite level. Home, sweet China! I actually said it out loud as we came off the plane--and, frankly, that surprised me, the overwhelming rush of...well...home that coursed through an aching body, ringing ears and a brain-dead head with such clarity of feeling. China? Home? Me? Yes! And there will be much to write about in that...in time.

I was not able to post during our travels through New Orleans, the Mississippi Gulf Coast, and New York. I ask your forgiveness for that; I hope to make amends in the days to come. Right now I want to thank all of you who showed up everyday anyway--and that was truly a shocker to see on the sitemeter thingamajig.
  

9:16 PM / Editor / permalink    0 comments



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