Politics

Politically, I’m very liberal — about as far left as one can go without sliding into Libertarianism.

Slipping through the cracks

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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)

That'll stop them!

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(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.

That explains it

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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)

Could be?

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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.

More on Salam Pax

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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?

Write a blog, say hello to the FBI

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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)

Bush lied. People died.

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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)

Salam Pax found

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The UK paper The Guardian has found Salam Pax, of the Where is Raed? weblog — and while they’re still keeping his identity secret, he will be writing for the Guardian starting next week.

No one in Baghdad knew who he was or the risks he was taking. Apart from a select group of trusted friends, they still don’t. The telephones and the internet haven’t worked here since the collapse of the regime, so the Iraqis never had a chance to read the diaries of the Baghdad Blogger. Outside the country, many didn’t even believe that the man who wrote only under the sobriquet Salam Pax truly existed. It was the great irony of the war. While the world’s leading newspapers and television networks poured millions of pounds into their coverage of the war in Iraq, it was the internet musings of a witty young Iraqi living in a two-storey house in a Baghdad suburb that scooped them all to deliver the most compelling description of life during the war.

(via MeFi)

Hoisted by their own petard

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I linked to this yesterday, but seeing as how permission has been granted to reprint and republish, I thought this was well worth making a full post of its own.

What a tangled web we weave…

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.

— Dick Cheney, August 26, 2002: Speech to VFW National Convention

Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons.

— George W. Bush, September 12, 2002: Speech to UN General Assembly

If he declares he has none, then we will know that Saddam Hussein is once again misleading the world.

— Ari Fleischer, December 2, 2002: Press Briefing

We know for a fact that there are weapons there.

— Ari Fleischer, January 9, 2003: Press Briefing

Our intelligence officials estimate that Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent.

— George W. Bush, January 28, 2003: State of the Union Address

We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more.

— Colin Powell, February 5, 2003: Remarks to UN Security Council

We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons — the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.

— George W. Bush, February 8, 2003: Radio Address

So has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad? … I think our judgment has to be clearly not.

— Colin Powell, March 7, 2003: Remarks to UN Security Council

Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.

— George W. Bush, March 17, 2003: Address to the Nation

Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly…all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes.

— Ari Fleisher, March 21, 2003: Press Briefing

There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. And…as this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them.

— Gen. Tommy Franks, March 22, 2003: Press Conference

I have no doubt we’re going to find big stores of weapons of mass destruction.

— Defense Policy Board member Kenneth Adelman, March 23, 2003: Washington Post, p. A27

One of our top objectives is to find and destroy the WMD. There are a number of sites.

— Pentagon Spokeswoman Victoria Clark, March 22, 2003: Press Briefing

We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.

— Donald Rumsfeld, March 30, 2003: ABC Interview

Obviously the administration intends to publicize all the weapons of mass destruction U.S. forces find — and there will be plenty.

— Neocon scholar Robert Kagan, April 9, 2003: Washington Post op-ed

I think you have always heard, and you continue to hear from officials, a measure of high confidence that, indeed, the weapons of mass destruction will be found.

— Ari Fleischer, April 10, 2003: Press Briefing

We are learning more as we interrogate or have discussions with Iraqi scientists and people within the Iraqi structure, that perhaps he destroyed some, perhaps he dispersed some. And so we will find them.

— George W. Bush, April 24, 2003: NBC Interview

There are people who in large measure have information that we need…so that we can track down the weapons of mass destruction in that country.

— Donald Rumsfeld, April 25, 2003: Press Briefing

We’ll find them. It’ll be a matter of time to do so.

— George W. Bush, May 3, 2003: Remarks to Reporters

I’m absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We’re just getting it just now.

— Colin Powell, May 4, 2003: Remarks to Reporters

We never believed that we’d just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country.

— Donald Rumsfeld, May 4, 2003: Fox News Interview

I’m not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein — because he had a weapons program.

— George W. Bush, May 6, 2003: Remarks to Reporters

U.S. officials never expected that “we were going to open garages and find” weapons of mass destruction.

— Condoleeza Rice, May 12, 2003: Reuters Interview

I just don’t know whether it was all destroyed years ago — I mean, there’s no question that there were chemical weapons years ago — whether they were destroyed right before the war, (or) whether they’re still hidden.

— Maj. Gen. David Petraeus, Commander 101st Airborne, May 13, 2003: Press Briefing

Before the war, there’s no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical. I expected them to be found. I still expect them to be found.

— Gen. Michael Hagee, Commandant of the Marine Corps, May 21, 2003: Interview with Reporters

Given time, given the number of prisoners now that we’re interrogating, I’m confident that we’re going to find weapons of mass destruction.

— Gen. Richard Myers, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, May 26, 2003: NBC Today Show interview

They may have had time to destroy them, and I don’t know the answer.

— Donald Rumsfeld, May 27, 2003: Remarks to Council on Foreign Relations

For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.

— Paul Wolfowitz, May 28, 2003: Vanity Fair interview

Originally compiled by billmon.

US Secret Biological Experimentation

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Feeling all safe and secure because you live in the U.S., instead of nasty places like Iraq where the country’s own citizens aren’t safe from their leaders lobbing nasty chemicals at them? Nice, isn’t it?

You probably shouldn’t read this, then.

1932 The Tuskegee Syphilis Study begins. 200 black men diagnosed with syphilis are never told of their illness, are denied treatment, and instead are used as human guinea pigs in order to follow the progression and symptoms of the disease. They all subsequently die from syphilis, their families never told that they could have been treated.

1946 Patients in VA hospitals are used as guinea pigs for medical experiments. In order to allay suspicions, the order is given to change the word “experiments” to “investigations” or “observations” whenever reporting a medical study performed in one of the nation’s veteran’s hospitals.

1953 Joint Army-Navy-CIA experiments are conducted in which tens of thousands of people in New York and San Francisco are exposed to the airborne germs Serratia marcescens and Bacillus glogigii.

1966 U.S. Army dispenses Bacillus subtilis variant niger throughout the New York City subway system. More than a million civilians are exposed when army scientists drop lightbulbs filled with the bacteria onto ventilation grates.

1970 United States intensifies its development of “ethnic weapons” (Military Review, Nov., 1970), designed to selectively target and eliminate specific ethnic groups who are susceptible due to genetic differences and variations in DNA.

1986 A report to Congress reveals that the U.S. Government’s current generation of biological agents includes: modified viruses, naturally occurring toxins, and agents that are altered through genetic engineering to change immunological character and prevent treatment by all existing vaccines.

1994 Senator John D. Rockefeller issues a report revealing that for at least 50 years the Department of Defense has used hundreds of thousands of military personnel in human experiments and for intentional exposure to dangerous substances. Materials included mustard and nerve gas, ionizing radiation, psychochemicals, hallucinogens, and drugs used during the Gulf War.

And that’s just grabbing one entry for each decade.

(via Morbus Iff)