(Thanks for the link to the Smedley Butler quote. I liked that.)
I'm writing from the front lines of the Democratic primary, right next to Manchester, New Hampshire, where I've been listening to a lot of candidate interviews on the local radio. I have signed up as a volunteer for the Dean campaign. This is the first time I've ever actively suppoorted a candidate in this way, but I like Dean enough to feel that I want to work for him and talk to total strangers about him.
I have listened to interviews with Clark, and he is very impressive. Based on what I know now, I'd rank Clark and (probably) Kerry as the two Democrats I'd most like to see as nominees if Dean doesn't win the primary race.
The most important part of all is to get the Shrub out of the White House.
Interesting sidebar note--last Sunday we were working at the Manchester office. A number of people have been coming up from New York and points less local to spend weekends as Dean volunteer. We were talking to one woman who "ran away from her husband for the weekend" by driving from near Atlantic City to Manchester. We talked more because my grandparents lived near her home. Turns out that she's a Republican who is actively supporting Dean.
It looks as though he's getting his word out.
Oops. That really WAS supposed to be "swells with pride."
Patrick,
thank you for reminding me why it is that my heart sells with pride whenever the (made in Taiwan) American flag comes into view.
Bush is going to London? Even though his handlers may not be able to guarantee him the standing ovations he requires? Golly, what a brave and self-sacrificing thing for him to do. Puts his Vietnam War sacrifices right in the shadows, it does.
AIEEE!
It's okay, Patrick. I'm home safely. With luck the only damage to the car was the blown tire, so keep those fingers crossed.
Thank you, Patrick. I've not been reading Breslin's columns, though I've heard about them. I need to start.
Too bad no one in this administration is paying heed.
Just heard from my brother in France. Apparently the banning of news coverage of casualties of war returning to the US has made the news in Europe. Just one more thing that they find very disturbing about this (mis)administration.
I've never gotten involved in a political campaign before, but I've now got a sign out front and have started making calls in support of the Dean campaign. The period through January 27 (NH Primary) should be interesting.
The described actions are wrongheaded, contrary to internal policy and international law, and evil. Of course, this "administration" hasn't been right-headed yet, and they've flouted internal policy and law and are in the process of trying to make the U.S. (or at least themselves) immune from international law. Guess they're going for a lock on evil. Or should that have the lovely Southern fundamentalist ministerial pronunciation, in which "evil" can be a seven-syllable word?
I regret to say that I've never read the Moore League. Also missed the movie, though cable will bring it to me in time.
Still, for those of you who missed it, here's a real superhero for all our everyday lives:
http://www.fatalexception.org/action_item.html
Back in the seventies and eighties there was a good educational system in Iraq, and they acted as though they wanted to make the country bilingual, with English as a second language. (I don't remember the year, but there was a rather interesting National Geographic article on Iraq in the late eighties.)
Signage in English is possible.
There's been evidence that there were radioactive materials in storage. People who emptied containers and began using them for storing water and food have been showing up with indications of radiation poisoining.
Has anyone seen any stories about an effort being made to clean up radioactive contamination at the site? There may be such news out there, but I haven't noticed it. If there is a cleanup going on, thank goodness. If not, then there damned well ought to be, and more shame to Bremer and the Bush league for not getting crews in ABC suits on the scene at once. (Let's not even go into the reasons why a nuclear research facility wasn't singled out for heavy security as soon as U.S. forces were anywhere withing fifty miles.)
As commented above, between waste material from al-Tuwaitha, and material from hospitals, smoke detectors, contracting sites, and other legitimate locations, there's certain to be material in Iraq that is radioactive. The presence of that material is not evidence of WMD in and of itself.
Finding such material that has been combined with conventional explosives to make contaminating bombs is, unfortunately, at least as likely to represent opportunistic action as it is to show evidence of Iraqi government programs.
Again, as commented above, if processed radioactive materials, capable of supporting any form of fission reaction, are actually found on the market, it proves either that international and U.S. teams were incompetent in their failure to locate and secure the material in Iraqi facilities (and I would be very dubious of claims that anyone was told to take twenty kilos of fissionable material to bury in a rose garden), or that they need to have their origins established.
Conspiracy theorists have already spent lots of bandwidth positing spooks placing WMDs where they can be "discovered" and I don't need to open that topic. But there has been plenty of instability in various parts of the former Soviet Union, and materials could have been removed for resale. There's been documentation of serious problems in the locations established under Stalin for disposal of radioactive waste, and the desparate or the ignorant could have removed "hot" material. God knows why anyone would smuggle it INTO Iraq to try to sell it, but it could happen.
To the question above--not finding WMDs means no WMDs have been found, and that lack makes the intelligence the White House acted on look pretty weak. Finding materials of unknown quality for sale in the town market doesn't represent finding WMDs, but rather the discovery of either a petty con artist, or of a need for some further investigation. And, if a hidden bunker full of chemical-armed rockets targeted for all the major cities within a thousand miles of Baghdad is found, it would provide a powerful boost to Bush and Blair. Of course, since the U.S. search for hidden WMDs has been cut back, that last seems like a very remote possibility. This isn't blind Bush-bashing. It's just what the evidence shows at this time.
Actually, I was trying to make the point that the "bring it on" speech made Bush and, by extension, the rest of us, sound like jerks, and at the same time it sounded as though he wanted to extend that schoolyard character of argument to anyone who attacked the US in Iraq.
The people fighting back against our soldiers are not kids on the basketball court. Some are vicious thugs, raised to follow in the traditions of Saddam Hussein (who was a vicious thug at least since adolescence, and whose character was already evident based on news reports that I read twenty years ago, at the time when Rumsfeld was over there, shaking his hand and offering US support for his good, anti-Communist, anti-Iranian regime). Some are good people, who have been indoctrinated through much of their lives to believe that they lived in a nation that had rights under international law, and that these rights have been trampled. Some are agents of religous or national extremists utterly repugnant to any rational mind. Some may have the same moral beliefs as our own founding fathers did. Some are desparate individuals with rationales you and I can't understand without meeting them. To lump them all into a single category, as schoolyard-bully wannabes, is a disservice to them and to us.
No, I don't think his remarks are making any more attacks happen. I do think that they trivialize the attacks. And that is why Private Herrgott's aunt was so upset. She felt as though Bush had announced to the world that her nephew's death wasn't really important. It was just something that happened while the bully was strutting his stuff.
I'm not going to try to address any of the other material you raised. It's not relevant to the real point of this particular topic. The real point is a family that has lost a member, and feels that the person ultimately responsible for that loss doesn't really care.
The worst aspect of his letter is, of course, the threat that his exalted position will let him destroy her and all her dreams and aspirations. (He didn't go quite so far as to say "And your little dog, too!" but you can imagine that lurking in the background.)
We will always have childish weasels among us. Let's hope we will also have responsible adults around to give them a boot where it's most needed. It was nice to see that this repugnant child was booted from his internship. Let us all hope and pray that no one actually took him into a new position in which he will be allowed to develop such delusions of godhood again.
I think what upset the aunt was not so much the misunderstood statement about how major the combat was that had been declared over, as it was the "Bring it on" speech.
That particular line sounded to many in this country like a schoolyard bully asking for someone to make trouble so that we could demonstrate our strength. Given that we are now, by the way we entered Iraq, the only force (with the British) present, any reponse triggered by our presence or by Bush's remarks is going to come in a fashion like that which killed Private Herrgott.
And it doesn't matter whether the attack was carried out by a Ba'athist thug, a black marketeer trying to clear a path for free trade, or by an Iraqi patriot fired by the highest aspirations of pride in a nation under a foreign boot. The dead of all sides are still dead, and the pain of their survivors is great.
What we should aspire to is to find a way to engage all parties in Iraq to the ends of rebuilding that nation.
Schoolyard taunts aren't the way to do this.
These descriptions are of a situation that was forseeable. It's a big part of why the military asked to have more troops in Iraq. A good chunk of those added forces would have been troops who might have actually had training for "peace-keeping" duties. Rumsfeld and the White House staff wanted to keep the Iraq war tight, so we have too few soldiers there, and they aren't trained for MP duties. Battlefield training is certainly essential, but even in the Army they know that other skills are needed for what you do when the battle's over.
As for the comparison of our prison-making to that of the last guy, isn't this a little like saying that it's better to be brutalized by Charles Manson than by Jeffrey Dahmer, because at least Charlie won't eat you?
I'm just happy to see signs that there are people on Capitol Hill who are still awake.
My grandfather wrote a book that was banned in Boston. He was quite pleased that they did so.
He was a history professor at Syracuse, Ralph Volney Harlow, and he wrote a biography of Sam Adams that wasn't appreciated by the Brahmins. Not the take on history they felt was appropriate for refined readers, as far as I know.
FWIW, we've been on cable modem from the first day it was available in our location in the boonies. DSL was never an option, and still isn't available wherre we live, and a T1 line could have been hooked into a source line a quarter mile from our house, but would have cost about a hundred grand to establish, followed by huge monthly fees.
After five or six years we've been suffering from acquisition creep, and it's now a Comcast-owned service, but it's worked almost all the time. Our largest cause of outages has been loss of the local power grid (which is why we're getting a real generator, as insurance that will keep the power on for our area nonstop for the next ten years). There was one time when a construction crew cut the cable by mistake, a couple of miles "upstream" from us. Overall, we're very happy with the service.
I hope your experience will continue ang"tive on your cable. And fie on Speakeasy!
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2003 | 18 |
Total: 18 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by Elric:
Show all comments by Elric.