Friday, October 29, 2004
Kerry and the New York Times are WRONG
Everyone's yelling and screaming about the MISSING EXPLOSIVES in Iraq nowadays... and Kerry's out to blame Bush for botching this job up.
As usual, Kerry is lying... and so is the New York Times.
NBC Nightly News Reported That On April 10, 2003, One Day After Baghdad Fell, U.S. Troops Entered Al-Qaqaa And Did Not Find Explosives. NBC'S JIM MIKLASZEWSKI: "April 10, 2003, only three weeks into the war, NBC News was embedded with troops from the Army's 101st Airborne as they temporarily take over the Al-Qaqaa weapons installation south of Baghdad. But these troops never found the nearly 380 tons of some of the most powerful conventional explosives, called HMX and RDX, which is now missing. The U.S. troops did find large stockpiles of more conventional weapons, but no HMX or RDX, so powerful less than a pound brought down Pan Am 103 in 1988, and can be used to trigger a nuclear weapon. In a letter this month, the Iraqi interim government told the International Atomic Energy Agency the high explosives were lost to theft and looting due to lack of security. Critics claim there were simply not enough U.S. troops to guard hundreds of weapons stockpiles, weapons now being used by insurgents and terrorists to wage a guerrilla war in Iraq." (NBC's "Nightly News," 10/25/04)
No Materials Under IAEA Seals Were Discovered When Coalition Troops Searched Site In April 2003. "Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said U.S.-led forces searched the Qaqaa facility after the invasion. 'Coalition forces were present in the vicinity at various times during and after major combat operations,' he said. 'The forces searched 32 bunkers and 87 other buildings at the facility. While some explosive material was discovered, none of it carried IAEA seals.'" (Colum Lynch and Bradley Graham, "Iraqi Explosives Missing, U.N. Is Told," The Washington Post, 10/26/04)
IAEA Head Told U.N. Security Council Explosives Were Unaccounted For One Month Before Invasion. "IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei told the U.N. Security Council one month before the allied invasion that Iraq had moved some of its highly explosive HMX from the Al Qaqaa site. The United Nations could not verify Iraqi claims that it used the explosives for commercial uses. The missing explosives include HMX as well as RDX, two highly explosive substances used to make C-5 plastic devices that can be used for legitimate commercial purposes, or by terrorists to bring down an airplane." (Rowan Scarborough, "Pentagon Responds To Missing-Explosives Report," The Washington Times, 10/26/04)
So, who do you want in the Oval Office? A flip-flopper whose only consistent tactic is that he lies through his teeth, or George W. Bush?
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Blasts from the Past...
I was looking through old links that I saved on my computer because I thought they'd be interesting to read again in the near future... and the following three articles are worth re-reading right now:
Sometimes, a War Saves People: Jose Ramos-Horta, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1996, defends the war in Iraq as the right thing to do. John F. Kerry, who earned three Purple Hearts for wounds that he didn't even have to be hospitalized for, attacks the war in Iraq as the wrong thing.
Roadside Sarin: This happened a while ago, but don't let it fade from memory: we have found WMD in Iraq. Now, where's the rest of it?
Saddam's Files: Looks like there's evidence of a link between Iraq and al Qaeda after all.
Saturday, July 31, 2004
What a lovely letter...
What a lovely letter... let us fisk it!
The RNC is happening in 33 days,
Wow, you can actually count that far?
and I've talked to a lot of you about going down to NYC,
9/11 happened there, did you forget? You remember the 2000 election quite well, but do you remember 9/11?
joining the protests,
Did you run out and protest Al Qaeda when they slammed planes into our office buildings and vaporized 3000 people?
making or voices heard,
Are you capable of proofreading?
and basically stirring shit up.
Please wash your hands afterwards.
The Bush administration seems
Seems? You're insinuating because you have no solid facts. You've got no choice but to use weasel words like "seems."
to be actively hostile towards democracy,
Yeah, that's why he brought democracy to 50 million people on the other side of the planet -- or do those 50 million people mean nothing to you?
towards our basic freedoms,
Yes, of course, he's trampling over our basic freedoms. That's why we're now living in a police state, right?
and toward what America has meant since it was founded.
Whereas the flip-flopper John F. Kerry and the rich trial lawyer John Edwards perfectly embody the American tradition....
They walked all over our votes in 2000,
Yes, the vast right-wing conspiracy fixed the national elections... go on thinking that.
they disregarded and dismantled 4th amendment protections,
You're referring to PATRIOT, right? Notice how many terrorist attacks we've had on American soil since PATRIOT... that's right: none.
they've failed us on national security,
Yup, that's why we're having terrorist attacks on American soil, day after day...
and now they're talking of possibly postponing our elections?!?!?
No, actually, you're the one who's talking about that.
I'm fucking sick of it,
You took the words right outta my mouth.
and I'm fucking sick of them thinking they can silence America's conscience
The only people who are being silenced are terrorists. If you think America's conscience is the same thing as Al Qaeda, well then I guess you're right.
with bullshit like "free speech" zones and empty terrorist warnings.
Empty terrorist warnings? You've actually got access to our nation's top-secret intelligence reports on a daily basis? No you don't. You're pulling that clever turn of phrase, "empty terrorist warnings," out of your ass.
I want my fucking country back
Dude, where's my country?
before I don't have one,
You could always move to Canada... or France....
and protesting, while not direct action,
So what is direct action? Joining the Taliban?
will let everyone else in America know how we feel,
Did you ever get that feeling that no one cares? That you're nothing more than the whispering winds of irrelevancy?
and make them ask themselves how they feel.
Inflation is low, unemployment is low, the economy is good, the nation and the world is much safer than it was on 9/10/01... I don't know about you, but I feel pretty damn good.
So, if you've gotten this far in my email, you're probably not a Bush supporter.
You know what they say: when you ASSUME, you make an ASS out of U and ME. Except in this case, you're the jackass, I'm the elephant.
You probably want him to hear America stand up against him, and to get him out of office as much as I do.
See: French Revolution, 1789, guillotine, beheadings.
And you probably want to come down to NYC to protest against what he has done in our names as much as I do.
Mmmh hmmm... sure... we're all as psycho as you.
Email me back if you want in.
Sure you're ready to handle the unexpected deluge of emails?
The RNC takes place August 29-September 2.
Same time as the Yale freshmen orientation and the first two days of classes. We've got our priorities straight, haven't we?
You won't be missing classes, but you will be back in New Haven.
Just like those "missing" WMD....
I want to get as many people down to New York as possible,
Swing by Ground Zero while you're in NY and inhale the air there. It contains the vaporized bodies of 3000 people killed due to your failed policies of national security.
and I'm going to try to coordinate events, housing, travel, etc.
Try. We'll be right here, cheering you on.
I'd really appreciate anyone willing to help with this, anyone who has a car, or a place to stay, or any suggestions or ideas.
People like you have ideas besides new ways of bashing Bush? Who'd've thunk it?
Again, let me know if you want in. Hope your summer's going well. For all you out on the campaign trail, keep up the good work.
Cheers!
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
The New McCarthy
Mr. Scott Simon, host of NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday, explains how Michael Moore is "more McCarthy than Murrow."
Michael Moore has won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, and may win an Oscar for the kind of work that got Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair, and Jack Kelly fired.
Trying to track the unproven innuendoes and conspiracies in a Michael Moore film or book is as futile as trying to count the flatulence jokes in one by Adam Sandler. Some journalists and critics have acted as if his wrenching of facts is no more serious than a movie continuity problem, like showing a 1963 Chevy in 1956 Santa Monica.
A documentary film doesn't have to be fair and balanced, to coin a phrase. But it ought to make an attempt to be accurate. It can certainly be pointed and opinionated. But it should not knowingly misrepresent the truth. Much of Michael Moore's films and books, however entertaining to his fans and enraging to his critics, seems to regard facts as mere nuisances to the story he wants to tell.
Back in 1991 that sharpest of film critics, the New Yorker's Pauline Kael, blunted some of the raves for Mr. Moore's "Roger and Me" by pointing out how the film misrepresented many facts about plant closings in Flint, Mich., and caricatured people it purported to feel for. "The film I saw was shallow and facetious," said Kael, "a piece of gonzo demagoguery that made me feel cheap for laughing."
His methods remain unrefined in "Fahrenheit 9/11." Mr. Moore ignores or misrepresents the truth, prefers innuendo to fact, edits with poetic license rather than accuracy, and strips existing news footage of its context to make events and real people say what he wants, even if they don't. As Kael observed back then, Mr. Moore's method is no more high-minded than "the work of a slick ad exec."
The main premise of Mr. Moore's recent work is that both Presidents Bush have been what amounts to Manchurian Candidates of the Saudi royal family. Mr. Moore suggests (he depends so much on innuendo that a simple, declarative verb like "says" is usually impossible) the Saudi government, having soured on their pawns for unstated reasons, launched the attacks of Sept. 11.
"What if these weren't wacko terrorists, but military pilots who signed onto a suicide mission?" Moore asks in the best-selling "Dude, Where's My Country?" "What if they were doing this at the behest of either the Saudi government or certain disgruntled members of the Saudi royal family?" Central to Mr. Moore's indictment of the current President Bush is his charge that the U.S. government secretly assisted the evacuation of bin Laden family members from the U.S. in the hours following the Sept. 11 attacks, when all other flights nationwide were grounded. He supports this with grainy images of indecipherable documents.
But on our show on Saturday, Richard Clarke, the government's former counter-terrorism adviser and no apologist for the Bush administration, told us that he had authorized those flights, but only after air travel had been restored and all the Saudis had been questioned. "I think Moore's making a mountain of a molehill," he said. Moreover, said Mr. Clarke, "He never interviewed me." Instead, Mr. Moore had simply lifted a clip from an ABC interview. Perhaps Mr. Moore just didn't want to get an answer that he didn't want to hear. (See how useful innuendoes can be?)
In what is perhaps the most wrenching scene in the film, an Iraqi woman is shown wailing amid the rubble caused by a bomb that killed members of her family. I do not doubt her account, or her sorrow. I have interviewed Iraqis about U.S. bombs that killed civilians. People who agree to wars should see the human damage bombs can do.
But reporters who were taken around to see the sites of civilian deaths during the bombing of Baghdad also observed that some of those errant bombs were fired by Iraqi anti-aircraft crews. Mr. Moore doesn't let the audience know when and where this bomb was dropped, or otherwise try to identify the culprit of the tragedy.
Mr. Moore tries hard to identify himself with U.S. troops and their concerns. But he spends an awful lot of effort depicting them as dupes and brutes. At one point in "Fahrenheit 9/11," someone off-camera prods a U.S. soldier into singing a favorite hip-hop song with profane lyrics. Mr. Moore then runs the soldier's voice over combat footage, to make it seem as if the soldier were insensitively singing along with the destruction.
In another scene, U.S. soldiers make savage jokes about the awkward effects of rigor mortis on one part of the corpse of an Iraqi soldier. I do not doubt the authenticity of those pictures. But I also have no particular reason to trust it. A few basic details, like where and when the video was shot, are considered traditional reporting techniques (especially after the front-page photos of British soldiers brutalizing Iraqi prisoners turned out to be frauds). A few other basic facts might have informed the audience. Was the Iraqi killed in battle? By a suicide bomb? Moore says the U.S. soldiers are good boys turned coarse in an immoral war. But I have also heard those kind of ugly and anxious jokes about corpses from overstressed emergency room physicians.
In the New York Times, Paul Krugman wrote that, "Viewers may come away from Moore's movie believing some things that probably aren't true," and that he "uses association and innuendo to create false impressions." Try to imagine those phrases on a marquee. But that is his rave review! He lauds "Fahrenheit 9/11" for its "appeal to working-class Americans." Do we really want to believe that only innuendo, untruths, and conspiracy theories can reach working-class Americans?
Governments of both parties have assuaged Saudi interests for more than 50 years. (I wonder if Mr. Moore grasps how much the jobs of auto workers in Flint depended on cheap oil.) Sound questions about the course, costs, and grounds for the war in Iraq have been raised by voices across the political spectrum.
But when 9/11 Commission Chairman Kean has to take a minute at a press conference, as he did last Thursday, to knock down a proven falsehood like the secret flights of the bin Laden family, you wonder if those who urge people to see Moore's film are informing or contaminating the debate. I see more McCarthy than Murrow in the work of Michael Moore. No matter how hot a blowtorch burns, it doesn't shed much light.
Friday, July 23, 2004
The Democrats are dead -- long live the Republicans!
Mahmoud, the Weasel requested that I post the following on his behalf, as he's away for a couple of days:
On the eve of the Democratic convention, Matt Bai delivers a Sunday New York Times Magazine must-read on the demise of the Democratic party and those wealthy individuals looking far beyond November investing in the future of the party.
Bai explores the electoral trends for the Democrats in recent decades and declares the party all but dead.
Here's a sneak preview of what will be tucked inside your Sunday New York Times: "As the old union bosses and factional leaders who dominated the Democratic Party in the 20th century file into the FleetCenter this week, waving signs and hooting for their heroes, be sure to take a long, last look. The Democratic Party of the machine age, so long dominant in American politics, could be holding its own Irish wake near Boston's North End. The power is already shifting -- not just within the party, but away from it altogether."
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
New links!
While wandering through the blogosphere, I happened upon the fourth rail, from where I decided to shamelessly steal a small selection of links to include in our links menu:
Blogroll
- Democrats for Bush
- Election Projection
- the fourth rail
- InstaPundit
- little green footballs
- Rantburg
- USS Clueless
- Winds of Change
Think Tanks
PDWatch: Day 6
As I've been extremely busy the past few days, I totally forgot about PDWatch. But this damning editorial reminded me of the issue...
Today is the sixth day of the PDWatch, set up to remind ProgressiveDecision that they must apologize for being part of the crowd that lied to us about the Yellowcake Con.