Letters to the Editor
Jim White
Published Letters: 1094 Editor's Choice: 15
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Oops
[Read the article: The truth behind the Pollack-O'Hanlon trip to Iraq]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Sorry, WT. My link refers to Digby's longer quote on her post, not the title she uses. You're right that the title phrase doesn't appear in Rudy's remarks, but her quoted paragraph (see below) needs widespread dissemination.
We look upon authority too often and focus over and over again, for 30 or 40 or 50 years, as if there is something wrong with authority. We see only the oppressive side of authority. Maybe it comes out of our history and our background. What we don't see is that freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do.
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Of course Rove will surface in another campaign
[Read the article: Remembering Karl Rove]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Remember, these are the same folks who hustle to hire the CEO's out of smoldering heaps of ashes after they destroy large corporations. All they care about is that Rove got Bush "elected", twice. All the other collateral damage is just that.
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Becoming the enemy
[Read the article: Enforcing the community's foreign policy orthodoxy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In the comments to yesterday's post on the fight against radical Islam, it was very artfully pointed out by The Professor that although the Bushists profess to be fighting the radicals, they have consistently sided with these fundamentalist regimes while taking positions against the secular ones:
The great irony for me is how Bushco is most tightly allied with the most fundamentalist of Islamic regimes - Saudi Arabia and the other oil states (UAE etc.), and has succeeded in creating a new one in Iraq. Bushco has been the avowed enemy of 'secular' Arab states like Syria and over-threw the strongest - Iraq. We've spent decades fighting secular Arab nationalism (Baathism, the PLO) and allied ourselves with and actively supported the most fundamentalist elements in the middle east (including the mujahedeen in Afghanistan, which led directly to the Taliban and Al Qaeda). There has been such a thing as a liberal/progressive muslim community in the Middle East (I know many in it) - but the US right-wing has always shunned it in favor of amoral capitalists like Chalabi or oil-rich Kings.
Similarly, it seems to me that the behavior of the US under this foreign policy establishment is to become precisely the evil force we profess to have the right to attack. We invade countries that pose us no threat, we depose leaders without cause and we take whatever resources we want (at least if those pesky Iraqi politicians ever pass our intelligently designed oil bill). It is indeed fortunate for the US that no other superpower currently exists, because we would be invasion target number one.
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A "serious" point in the planning of the surge
[Read the article: Enforcing the community's foreign policy orthodoxy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]McClatchy has a must-read article this morning describing the situation in Iraq. They make the point that violence is not down by as much as the Administration would have us believe. However, they also discuss the political situation and the complete lack of progress there. A telling indictment of the foreign policy community is buried in the middle of the article:
When President Bush announced plans to increase U.S. troop strength in Iraq to help calm Baghdad, U.S. officials had hoped that any decrease in violence would lead to greater willingness from Shiite and Sunni political leaders to reach an accommodation.
That's right, the glorious surge, by repressing sectarian violence, was expected magically to result in the healing of centuries-old rifts in a matter of a few weeks, based on "hope".
I think Pooter and GoldenToddler are capable of clearer thinking than that...
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From the Wired blog report on the hearing
[Read the article: Enforcing the community's foreign policy orthodoxy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]ondelette,
Thanks for pointing out that this was going on today. Did you read the Wired blog? Here's a juicy bit:
Judge Hawkins (left, file photo) wonders if the document is really that secret?
"Every ampersand, every comma is Top Secret?," Hawkins asks.
"This document is totally non-redactable and non-segregable and cannot even be meaningfully described," Bondy answers.
The government says the purported log of calls between one of the Islamic charity directors and two American lawyers is classified Top Secret and has the SCI level, meaning that it is "secure compartmented information." That designation usually applies to surveillance information.
4:25pm PDT
Judge McKeown: "I feel like I'm in Alice and Wonderland."
Eisenberg: "I feel like I'm in Alice in Wonderland, too."
Link: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/nsa/
The arguments being presented here by the government are absolutely mind-boggling. The other money quote from the government:"It's entirely possible that everything they think they know is entirely false".
I think we can only reply "Right back at 'cha".
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ondelette
[Read the article: The Padilla verdict]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Derbig was quoting from a blog that used a Guardian article as its source. The links are: http://tinyurl.com/2lbf5w and http://tinyurl.com/2syxmy.
The heaviest support for the Taliban appears to have predated Musharraf, but other than that, it looks like a familiar story. Supporting one violent faction against another coming back to haunt the supporter.