Enthusiastically Ambiverted Hopepunk
Politically, I’m very liberal — about as far left as one can go without sliding into Libertarianism.
About the same number of people who think it’s an advantage to be a woman in America would eat a rat on live TV. Clearly, we’ve got some work to do on the whole gender-equality thing.
— Bob Harris, in this TMW post about recent poll results that, among other things, show that a third of Americans believe that WMDs were found in Iraq, and that 22% actually believe that Iraq used WMDs during the war.
I think that what drives me to keep going is the knowledge that if this country fails, then a beacon for the world is lost. And this country is headed for failure under this president.
— Howard Dean, in this BBC interview.
(via Josh)
It’s probably still unlikely to happen, but as more and more information surfaces about just how much ‘misinformation’ was presented as fact by Bush et al in order to justify our attack of Iraq, more and more people are talking seriously about the possibility of impeachment.
This is explosive stuff. And considering that the war’s number one cheerleader — Bill Kristol — is now admitting Bush made “misstatements”, it looks as though the whole WMD issue could very well be an albatross hung around Bush’s 2004 re-election effort.
It seems to me that impeachment isn’t unrealistic to at least consider, at this point. As has been quoted here before: Bush lied. People died.
In a very interesting “mea culpa” article, ABC News’ political column The Note lists a huge amount of stories that should get more recognition, but for one reason or another, don’t get major coverage.
With all those reporters covering politics and government in Washington and around the country, you would think that the press would be watching the powerful on behalf of the people pretty persistently.
But you would be wrong.
On any given day, owing to tight budgets, the evasiveness of those we cover, and the generally (sorry ? ) lazy nature of some reporters, way too much of what gets covered in politics and government are the spoon-fed public events that the communications staffs want covered.
Even “enterprise” and investigative stories tend these days to come not from innovative shoe-leather work, but rather are generated (and often thoroughly researched by) interest groups, political actors, and other non-journalists who want to see a story come out.
…for every newsworthy evasive action we learn about (because the press gets tipped off or stumbles into something or finds something through hard work), there are literally thousands that never come to light.
With the president headed off to sell Medicare reform in Chicago (and, we bet, suck up to Mayor Daley big time), and the Senate poised to announce today a plan for dealing with what Democrats still see as a ticking time bomb for the president — the intelligence questions surrounding the missing weapons of mass destruction — the questions of hide-and-seek and American political journalism are front and center for us today.
So, we offer you several outstandingly illustrative examples.
~~The article doesn’t have a permalink yet — it will next week, but there’s no telling if I’ll remember to come back and re-link it.~~
[Update:]{.underline} Here’s the permalink. For future reference, though, the title is “W’s WMDs Aren’t the Only Things Missing”, published on June 11, 2003.
(via Lambert)
(Shamelessly snagging this post from Bob Harris at This Modern World, as nothing more needs to be said.)
Our Attorney General wants to make terrorist attacks against military bases or nuclear plants a capital offense.
Obviously. Nothing deters a suicide bomber quite like the death penalty.
The full article is even scarier, though. Ashcroft is calling for a widening of the Patriot Act.
I’m the commander. See, I don’t need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being the president. Maybe somebody needs to explain to me why they say something, but I don’t feel like I owe anybody an explanation.
— Pres. George W. Bush, to Bob Woodward, in Bush at War
(via Tresy)
All of this blather coming from Bush trying to justify the invasion of Iraq with the (two? three?) trailers that have been found is driving me up the wall. I keep seeing various news reports trumpeting that we found these two trailers that “could be used to produce chemical weapons.”
Oh, really?
Look — give me a few gallons of bleach and a few gallons of ammonia, and my bathtub could be used to produce chemical weapons (depending on the mix, Chlorine Gas, Nitrogen Trichloride, or Hydrazine can be produced, none of which are particularly friendly). You’re faltering, Bush, and the world knows it.
Slate’s Peter Maass offers some more details on Iraqi blogger Salam Pax, after realizing that he knew Salam personally:
Baghdad was hectic when two blogging friends e-mailed me to suggest that I track down “Salam Pax.” I had no idea who or what they were talking about. I could have handed over the job of sorting out this Salam Pax thing to my interpreter — he was a clever and funny Iraqi who never failed to provide what I needed, whether it was interviews or pizza — but I let it pass. I thought I had better things to do.
The day after I returned to New York, reunited with my cable modem, I checked out a friend’s blog that linked to an Austrian interview with Salam Pax. I clicked to it. Salam Pax mentioned an NGO he had worked for, CIVIC, and this caught my attention. I knew the woman who was in charge of CIVIC; she stayed at my Baghdad hotel, the Hamra. Salam Pax mentioned that he had done some work for foreign journalists. We traveled in the same circles, apparently. He also mentioned that he had studied in Vienna. This really caught my attention, because I knew an Iraqi who had worked for CIVIC, hung out with foreign journalists, and studied in Vienna. I clicked over to his blog.
His latest post mentioned an afternoon he spent at the Hamra Hotel pool, reading a borrowed copy of The New Yorker. I laughed out loud. He then mentioned an escapade in which he helped deliver 24 pizzas to American soldiers. I howled. Salam Pax, the most famous and most mysterious blogger in the world, was my interpreter. The New Yorker he had been reading — mine. Poolside at the Hamra — with me. The 24 pizzas — we had taken them to a unit of 82nd Airborne soldiers I was writing about.
Such an amazingly small world at times, isn’t it?
17 year old Erin Carter has deleted all but a single post on her weblog after being questioned by police officers who appeared to be the FBI regarding something she wrote. The details are in “The FBI has been reading my diary.”
Note to the FBI: Feel free to browse through my politics category archives, just be sure to knock before entering my apartment. ;)
(via mathowie and Jeffrey Zeldman)
More and more information is coming to light exposing the extremely ugly truth that even while madly beating the drums of war, Bush and Blair administration members knew they were lying:
Jack Straw and his US counterpart, Colin Powell, privately expressed serious doubts about the quality of intelligence on Iraq’s banned weapons programme at the very time they were publicly trumpeting it to get UN support for a war on Iraq, the Guardian has learned.
The foreign secretary reportedly expressed concern that claims being made by Mr Blair and President Bush could not be proved. The problem, explained Mr Straw, was the lack of corroborative evidence to back up the claims.
Mr Powell shared the concern about intelligence assessments, especially those being presented by the Pentagon’s office of special plans set up by the US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz.
Mr Powell told the foreign secretary he hoped the facts, when they came out, would not “explode in their faces”.
Sorry to dash your hopes, Mr. Powell, but I do believe that that is exactly what’s happening — as well it should.
(via Daily Kos and Tom Tomorrow)