On Saddam, And Other Iraqi Miscreants

This is probably worth a read if you have ever wondered "How bad was Iraq in, say, 2001?" In other words, how pressing was the humanitarian crisis? Human Rights Watch wants you to know. I want you to know.

Political Movie I've seen a lot of movies, some of them have political scenes or themes. The WInd and the Lion(1975, Columbia/MGM) The main plot is about a Moroccan anti-European brigand and his proper American captive. There's a lot of gemeric Arab overacting? President Teddy Roosevelt is the "protagonist." in that he's going to order the Marine expedition to rescue the lady. During one scene, of barely acknowledged irony, Roosevelt is on the back of a caboose, staged like a modern G. Walker Bush, flanked by two smiling "Indians," Roosevelt is yelling something like "I will not stand by and let innocent women and children be killed." And, of course, no native Americans were ever slaughtered. The movies main plot device is to compare the lives of the two "leaders," Roosevelt and el-Raisuli Ah, the movie also shows a bit of war pig salivation over the idea of a World War!

Heritage of Hipness

I have been cool, and I have been not. I do not think Mr. Doug Feith, under-something for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, was ever that cool. Case in point, a speech by Mr. Feith at the Heritage Foundation, a bunch of stuck-up rich punks who buy academics, where he actually says that the NeoCon movement isn't, well, let him actually utter the words...[from para 4]

The realignment of US politics that joined William Buckley with Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz that bound together supporters of Barry Goldwater with supporters of Scoop Jackson and Hubert Humphrey has helped change our country and the world. At home, it made the conservative slice of the political spectrum a lively place, intellectually scintillating, creative, ambitious to transform government, attractive to young people, and decidedly non-stodgy.

You were young and foolish then, Doug. You are old and foolish now. And you also express some of the worst of what Reagan did to conservatism. The fight was never between Capitalism & Salesmanship vs Communism & State planning. The fight was always be between Republicanism(a la Montesquieu/Madison) and Tyranny. But to say that Republicans are always right, and Tyrants always wrong, well, that is foolish, also, for it blinds us to our mistakes, which prevents us from pulling our tail from the fire!

Mr. Feith then tries to tie in numerous quotes of Presidents Reagan and one from G. Bush

Reagan on elections
damning Republics, not anti-capitalists
Reagan on "infrastructure of democracy"
nice, but I think I remember the Reagan era, and that's empty rhetoric
G. Bush (at NED of all places!) on what middle easterners deserve
There are so many millions of ways to go about getting people what wonderful thinks you think they might deserve without bombing them.

Prostelyzing Freedom is Fundamental (not reading) Then the article gets REALLY bad. omg. basically, we exist TO push the idea that freedom is good. that the war on terrorism STARTS with disrupting foreign groups, and THEN gets to the idea of protecting america (followed by a "war of ideas," whose arsenal i bet they are planning to stock soon) It's amazing. There isn't a paragraph that doesn't contain some loony premise (or not speak to the topic at hand) but sometimes every sentence in a paragraph is a hopeless sham before the intellectuals of the future. PLEASE STOP LISTENING TO DOUG FEITH NOW! WE ARE NOT ALONE!

Unhappy Memories

Why is there a day for this?

BRIBERY! (but that's how we do things around here!)

From a column by Bob Novak, published by the Chicago Sun-Times, quoted by Daily Kos

On the House floor, Nick Smith was told business interests would give his son $100,000 in return for his father's vote.

Yet Another Cool Retired Government voice

Person, 40+ years of public service, some as ambassador to South Korea, received top CIA award.

When (George W.) Bush came into office, he had a five-man hate list ... These were men he wanted nothing to do with, men he would rather blow out of the water than negotiate with.... [Included on the list were ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, Cuban leader Fidel Castro and Kim Jong Il, among others.] Bush and his advisers were more interested in preempting against these men and their countries than negotiating with them[.]

Thanks to Daily War News for the link.

Immediacy in Media

First there was Accuracy in Media, A.I.M., striking out to counter liberal bias in the 1950s media, then there was Fairness and Accureacy in Reporting, F.A.I.R., to counter conservative bias in the 1990s-present media. Now there are other issues to consider. Truth, or lies, barring any Aussie OG Handtalk (see blue text), or need link to Mughal(?) Khyber-Capital Nighttime Communications system(like 1-if-by-land,2-if-by-sea, but from tower-to-tower, for 1,000 miles), could only spread in mid-late 18th century America at a certain rate, and the truth could get behind anything before it went to far (if the populace was/is awake). The immediacy of current media, with a huge chunk of the world constantly available for LIVE exclusive coverage, is a different sort of threat, and it should be considered as such until such time as a reasonable solution is drafted.

On the Hill

This reminds me so much of the NFL/Britney/Coors/AOL/Pepsi puke-a-thon... the first commercial explotation of women wearing pants LESS THAN THREE INCHES HIGH? Why, the guy who is going to bring "honor and dignity" back to the White House. (picture will get here eventually). Now they stretch time like they are the masters of time itself. Link thanks to Matthew Yglesias.

Worth reading, if you are behind on your Middle Eastern history

This story by Robert Fisk (@ Hi! Pakistan) covers a lot of ground. Please read it if you are at all rusty on your Middle Eastern history of the last 100 years. To ignore the trillions of dollars of oil money in the development of the politics of the Middle East is the Conservative blindness. To recognize that 99.99% of the people involved in the current regimes are locals, is a Liberal one. Carter, or the media in interpreting him, could not convey the relevance of the OPEC oil-price fights.

More Happenings in The Iraq

This is just wrong. How would you feel if your 9 and 10 year old little girls were being frisked at your local schools by machine-gun toting members of the armed forces? You wouldn't approve. (Thanks to April Follies and someone from Atrios's comments section). Josh M. Marshall is right to point this (@ Fox) out. One of the Muslim Chaplains of the US Army originally accused of spying for Al-Qaeda(!!) is now charged with having some pornography on his computer and having an adulterous affair with a woman in Florida and (another?) in Cuba. In other words, the original spying claims look to be either 1) dropped, or 2) bogus in the first place.

Happenings in Iraq

Democracy: Leaning off table Peace: On table Looks like eventually we might just be guarding the pipeline. Ladies and Gentleman, enjoy your pall. So, the NE region, around the eastern Kurdish area city Kirkuk (the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), less likely to cause trouble with Turkey, more links to Iran(?)) we are withdrawing from police stations to a single central location. Makes sense to me. Cheers to the PUK. (Although it is just happening because Talabani of the PUK is the current (month-long) Iraqi Governing Council President? need non-fascist link Chalabi is becoming a more important part of the current scam in The Iraq. Now he is assuring Iraqis the US soldiers will only stay if the Iraqi government invites them. Doesn't it scare any of you that this wretch is an oil company puppet and now a handmaiden to GOP corporate interests? He hasn't even been in the country for 45 years. Whatever tips Iraq this way or that, it might be soon, it might be in a long, long time.

EconoDolt

The Econopundit, in the first article I ever read by him, offers up this inane nugget

Yet I think it's important to remember the whole "porkiness" of pork vanishes after first-round spending. By objective standards everyone would agree that, say, a quarter million dollars homeland security spent upgrading some local Hooter's restaurant is corrupt. But all the profits, rents, and salaries generated by this spending are spent and taxed exactly like all other dollars in the economy. You ignore this principle at your own peril.[emphasis in original]

in his peice @ Econopundit. EconoPundit is pretending the only difference between the market and the criminal markets is the first payment. Pimps and junkies spend their money (and pay their taxes) excactly like Bill Gates and I, uh huh. I'd be surprised if we weren't all in the same market for dinner tonight (ugh!) Although I suppose, at the tail end of the article, it is more of an afterthought... let me pull out something earlier, ah, here we are

So what would have been the economic outcome? First, we'd have seen a slightly milder recession but a dramatically slower recovery.[emphasis in original]

Hear that? If we'd delayed a regressive tax cut the longest recession recovery in post-WWII history would have been longer! Wooh! Welcome to wacky land.

Hrm

For some reason, the economy is doing well. Don't be fooled. ;) It doesn't really matter if you are rich if your life is centered around wondering if you will be blown up or not.

My First(?) Pro-Bush Post

The Bush said the media was being put through a "filter." Something is happening that is preventing the "good news" from getting out of The Iraq. The media never reports school board, community level events, and, generally, even city-wide events are rarely reported in distant places. "School Gets Paint Job" doesn't make it into the national news. If there are no WMD, and there is no Al-Qaeda link, then the violent deaths of American soldiers are signicificantly tragic, rather than just "to be expected." :|

The Leaked Feith Memo Memo

Doug Feith was psyched for a war in Iraq. The neo-Straussians, the Likudniks, the defense contractors, the oil barons, and the President himself, who nearly lost his father, were pulling for him. The 107th Congress had recently been voted-back-in, the electorate spent hours watching commercials and fear-mongering. Who was telling them no? The armed forces want a ribbon, the networks want their ratings, the politicians want to be re-elected, and the people want some peace of mind (never mind if their usual source for that, the churches of the world, were almost universally against the idea), and everyone was looking to our man, Doug Feith. If only he could only connect the Tyrant and the Terrorist, the war would be a cinch. Bush Team plays "connect-the-dots" in a pentagon-shaped building. If Saddam Hussein had had an out of body experience, and floated most-of-the-way-around-the-world to the Office of Special Plans(OSP), do you think he would have felt a palpable menacing feeling? What do you think, maybe, ought to be done with Ahmed Chalabi, Khidre Hamza, and Adnan Al-Hadeiri, if so many powerful things they told the American government were lies? Possibilities, Facts, and Reverberations Sometime this spring or summer, something one of Saddam's captured henchmen said reverberated with one of the fifty-plus pieces of possible links between Ousama and Saddam, assembled by the OSP before the war. Doug Feith, in all likelihood, tacked this on the front of the (releasable sections of) the pre-war list and had it leaked. The DoD denial is a repudiation not only of the link, but of the implication that DIA research in Iraq has resulted in a confirmation of OSP pre-war "intelligence." Who do you think has first dibs on all the Iraqis who are captured over there? The Army, specifically, Army Intelligence. More broadly, the DIA. There are, undoubtedly, certain exceptions, maybe even some interviews done outside the range of DIA eyes, but that's not going to be most of it, or even 10%. I can even imagine Gen. Hugh Shelton grabbing a piece of paper out of Mr. Feith's hands and stating "and that's why DoD handles intelligence releasings." Example from the Feith Memo:

Prague-Atta, or, Pragatta
We can now read about four meetings between Mohammed Atta, a 9/11 hijacker, and a Mr. Al-Ani from Iraqi Intelligence Services(IIS). Trawling our memories might unearth that we had heard of one, maybe two such meetings before. Two or three more must be good for the case, right?

In fact, quite the opposite. These two "new" claims had been part of the raw intelligence that was generally discredited before the war by the CIA. This new "intelligence" is what our CIA thought was worse than the intelligence we heard before.

Gentle reader, the folks over at the Weekly Standard have been used. Whether this was something Kristol had to do as part of a deal, whether someone had smoke gently blown up their heinie, or whether or not Doug Feith can make a 600 million ton, partially radioactive pile of magma-hot war look tasty. I can't say. I almost feel bad for the ones who will, one day, perhaps with an intelligent person's help, figure this all out for themselves. Jim Lobe has all the right angles covered on this story, but I had already written mine. Does anyone have a fact-check problem with Lobe? I know he hangs on the Israel connection too much, but to deny that there is any relation, or to suggest that using the word "neocon" disparagingly is really code for anti-semitism, well, that part is over the line, too.