P.S. I think that it's important that anybody who has an opinion about that part of the performance watch the whole thing. A sound bite really won't give you a feeling for how his lines build up George W. as (to paraphrase Dashiell Hammett on Alan Ladd) a small boy's idea of a war-time President.
What I saw in the "I wish you'd submitted that as a written question beforehand" section was expert playing to wavering Republicans, letting them believe that George W. Bush can actually take an unprepared question, reflect on it, and be "humble" but "confident." Democrat scum are obviously all wrong about the man, this is the Real George W. Bush.
What Democratic voters think isn't important when W's poll numbers go below 50%.
I'm sorry that you like Jerry Pournelle and that the rejection of him as an authority on this issue bothers you.
A quick review of the comments you link to suggest that he's deeply ignorant of the history of the Internet: just listing Stallman as a "hero of the Internet" is enough of a blunder that I'd hit "n" if I were reading posting of his on this subject on USENET. Having Bob Frankston (of Visicalc fame) and Charles Frankston (of Multics) on his list only convinces me all the more that Pournelle is blowing smoke up the world's collective ass on this matter.
Stefan, it's not too late: CSPAN has the press conference available for RealMedia players at
"rtsp://cspanrm.fplive.net/cspan/archive/iraq/iraq041304_bush.rm?mode=compact".
Questions start about half an hour into it. This particular question is at about the 50 minute 50 second mark. My impression is that he was actually prepared for this question, that it HAD been submitted and cleared ahead of time: he's talking much too easily and clearly for me to easily believe that his response was actually impromptu.
The Talking Dog's Dick Morris link is prefaced with a nielsenhayden.com string. The actual Talking Dick page is at "http://thetalkingdog.com/archives/000475.html".
Yonmei, the big difference for Scott Ritter was that he wasn't just smeared on IndyMedia, the story that he was a paedophile was carried by major news, um, outlets like CNN, MSNBC, and the New York Daily News. There's a reasonable summary of the smear campaign at "http://www.johnjemerson.com/zizka.ritter2.htm".
The factual circumstances of the incident he's being smeared with are only recorded in sealed court documents: interestingly, the page referenced above claims that the judge under whose order the documents were sealed was a member of the "goon squad" which interfered with vote counting in Miami, Florida during the US presidential election in 2000.
Ritter was not convicted, no evidence was (or should have been) available to support the smear stories, but nonetheless this tactic was successful in silencing an important and well-informed opponent of the current war on Iraq.
To Dan Heller I can only say that I equally deplore smears against "Charles," but at the same time it seems on the face of the matter that he and his associates are reaping what their side of the discourse have sown.
Ick, ooo, yikes! Best wishes for a quick return to health: those prairie dogs are not good guests.
J.Scott, I was trying to avoid getting entangled in this, but you are misrepresenting the article you link to quite badly.
The article's only comment on the origin of the Uranium yellowcake found in a shipment of scrap metal in Rotterdam is that it's considered to be, and being tested to confirm that it is, from a Uranium mine in Iraq.
If what the article posits as likely is confirmed by the IAEA as fact, this yellowcake has nothing to do with "the african yellowcake thing that everyone makes a big deal over."
The article you cite certainly does nothing to support the notion that Iraq imported or tried to import yellowcake from Africa in support of a program of development of weapons of mass destruction.
Way to boost your credibility!
Yehudit, I took you at your word and went and looked in that other comments thread. Unfortunately, I didn't find a lot of relevant facts.
In your paragraph beginning, "This is turning out to be the Bush administration's version of Whitewater: millions of taxpayer dollars spent for an investigation into nothing, just another attempt to harass the sitting administration. There is nothing Bush has said about Saddam's WMD capability that is not believed to be true by..." I found that a majority of the links didn't lead to current facts.
Instead I found opinion pieces, statements from people with the offices indicated in the paragraph, statements several years old (which were not used as justification for an invasion and occupation of Iraq), or only agreed with minor claims of the W. administration which did not seem to qualify as real causes for a deadly and expensive invasion. Several of the opinion pieces were from folks with clear pro-Bush agendas and I can only think that you included them for sheer weight of citations rather than any expectation that they would be accepted as fact by the skeptical.
Furthermore, calling the war on Iraq the equivalent of the Whitewater investigation is ludicrous on its face. Whitewater was an attempt to throw mud on the basis of imputed past indiscretions by a US president who made the right decisions for his country's economic prosperity. The equivalent would be detailed investigation of Bush's imputed past of shady business dealings. An investigation into the possibility that George W. Bush lied to Congress and to the people of the United States to promote a program which worsened the country's economic state as well as wasting its political capital in international affairs and putting members of its citizenry fatally in harm's way is far more serious.
A further problem with the economic approach is that (as noted) cracked and abused third party systems are currently the spammer's best friend. Sure, the hapless individuals whose desktop systems are being used to pump spam into the network would have an incentive to change operating systems, but they'd have even more incentive to protest and roll back the per-piece e-mail charges.
An economic approach to spam is sort of like an economic approach to SUV fuel consumption: both the producers and consumers whose behaviour we need to change will fight like hell to the benefit of third parties (i.e. gasoline suppliers and spam senders) who are untouched by primary effects of the approach.
You really need sound effects to get the full impact of the joke: Jon Stewart opens the box (FX: Prolonged, terrified screaming.)
Blogs also remember people's personal information, which is a good thing.
Robert, I'm still an outsider with respect to US party politics, but at least in the instance you've brought up my thinking is along the lines Niall mentions.
What can individuals do towards keeping Lieberman from becoming a candidate on the Democratic ticket?
Whether or not folks who felt it best to vote Green in 2000 still feel that the Democratic Party has lost its way, I hope that they vote for Democratic candidates in 2004. The Executive is clearly in the hands of a group with an agenda for closed government, increased police power, and making war in the world; this group may not even truly represent the Republican Party, and they certainly don't represent you.
While you may feel that the Democratic Party doesn't represent you well either, and even that some Democrats are heaping undeserve opprobrium on you, getting the current gang out of power needs to be a priority if there is to be anything left to be Green about. If you feel that things have to get worse before they get better: they've already gotten worse, and they will get worse still by 2004. Cast your vote, and give your time, to working on the "getting better" part of the process in 2004.
While that post didn't achieve what you intended and there is no certainty that the good that comes from it will outweigh the hurt, some of what's being slung about in the comments section clearly needed to come out. As, I think, did the expression of your frustration as one of those who stood up and said, "No, Bush and Gore are NOT interchangeable." I believe that you've been proven right in the main area of your comments at the time, judicial appointments.
Nobody predicted a successful terrorist attack on the USA back then, and nobody can say what a Gore administration would have done if it had been in power on 11 September, 2001, but the actions taken by the Bush administration run along the same lines as the predictable developments which you mentioned concerned you at the time: closed, opaque government, lying, increased conservatism, a change in the courts not away from "judges making law" but just to "judges making law" in directions preferred by conservatives.
The Dodgson piece is very interesting, I haven't read The Head Heeb's entry yet, but feel I should comment that excellent weblog entries can be written without doing extra homework. I don't think it takes much homework to realize that the post-9/11 Iraq policy of the US government would be different with an administration not loaded with PNAC members.
I see Steve den B. has gotten around to noting the existence of this text. Just as a counterweight to any claims that we aren't reading about it in the US papers so it must be true, Steve's response was that since the writing was, "...the original version of the letter used British spellings for several words (e.g. emphasise) which made it pretty clear it was probably a forgery."
As to the Observer's footnote about restoring the original text: it's obviously a lie and they wrote it wrong in the first place and only rewrote it when somebody pointed out the UK idioms. `Yeah, right. A likely story. "Reverted", my ass.'
I don't recall, did the original version of the memo include the expression, "Thick as two short planks?"
I also wonder whether his heated response indicates that Steve thinks the US wouldn't eavesdrop, or wouldn't use the results of eavesdropping to pressure foreign delegations, a manner of thinking reminiscent of Ari Fleischer's remark that speculating that the US tried to buy the votes of foreign heads of state was clearly wrong as it required that one believe that foreign heads of state could be bought.
For what it's worth, the text the Observer claims is a memo has been changed and now has the following appended:
7 Footnote: This email was originally transcribed with English spellings standardised for a British audience. Following enquiries about this, we have reverted to the original US-spelling as in the document leaked to The Observer.
I mostly agree with Vicki, with the one reservation that even if people hate us for multiculturalism and tolerance it's worth our while to try to find ways for them to not hate those aspects of our culture.
On the other hand, Timothy Burke's comments have been useful to me in posting remarks elsewhere opposing regime-change war in Iraq: I am now more careful to state that I oppose the Saddam Hussein regime and its apparatus and support the disarmament of Iraq by means short of invasion and military occupation. No results on this yet, but if an intelligent person like Mr Burke says it's a problem then I believe that it is reasonable to accommodate my writing to the reality of what surely is a widespread perception issue.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 10 |
| 2003 | 92 |
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