The US economy is about one-fifth the world economy, but funds more than half the world's military spending.

Not only that, this spending is sinking the US further into debt.

So the Anonymous who is against Muddy Thinking should ask

- why this spending? to protect against what?

- can the US afford it? It would seem the US is squandering its competitive advantages by investing in the military.

But simply admitting error is not really what most people here want.

Of course not. Commit a crime, admit your error, go scott free? Rubbish.

You say that following orders does not absolve a soldier of responsibility - good, excellent! I take it that you're calling for investigation and prosecution of all those responsible for waterboarding of detainees in US custody. It, after all, has been a crime for many years, and there can be no absolution of responsibility.

But simply admitting error is not really what most people here want.

Anticipating shooter242's next insane response - if we haven't yet punished Osama bin Laden, then besides that, all other crimes are trivial (and ought to be forgiven)

The $10 billion spent in propping up Musharraf - money supposedly meant for fighting terrorists on Pakistan's western borders, but given to Musharraf as a blank check - was instead used to arm against India. Indians suspected that all along, but are anyway pissed to have the fact confirmed recently.

The US military-industrial complex thus symbiotically grows that of Pakistan and India. Moreover, I'm quite certain that China too spent a bit to balance US influence in Pakistan. Thus the monster grows.

E.g., spending that money to help Pakistan grow its manufactured goods exports or setting up IT infrastructure would have had a more lasting effect and more beneficial too - if that money had to be spent, that is.

A nation comprised of about 30% shooter242s has about 80% of its journalists of caliber around that of Kristol. Just how did that happen?

This idea of journalism - that it is or should be some great noble and ethical profession of Socratic truetellers - mystifies me somewhat since it doesn't appear to based on the behaviour of anyone who's ever worked in the field.

From my childhood -

Ramnath Goenka, The Indian Express, 1975-77, during Indira Gandhi's Emergency Rule in India.

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If I had a customer-facing job and I replied to one's criticism in the way John King replied to Glenn Greenwald, I imagine I would be fired. At least, I hope that I would be fired.

Prof. Smith,

Your note leaves me questions about your qualifications. Do you have any at all?

-Arun

PS: If I left it there, I'd be doing exactly what you did, which is not address anything of substance. I see two substantial questions in your note, one regarding qualifications and the second regarding style.

Are qualifications relevant? Are qualifications necessary to know that a job was poorly done (no matter how hard the job is or what qualifications it takes to do the job)? The answer is - in general, no. I know my car was not fixed, the quarterback played poorly, the food tastes lousy, the music or movie was bad, etc., etc., (gasp) the President made a poor decision to invade Iraq without being qualified to do any of those things.

Division of labor and specialization is possible precisely because of this property of the world - you do not have to have qualifications to know whether something is done poorly or not. If I needed to hire an expert to tell me whether another expert has done his job, then you see I have an infinite regress of experts. How do I tell whether the hired expert has done his job - hire another one?

Is Glenn Greenwald unjustified in his style? - vitriolic, you termed it. Well, we've wrongly invaded a country, worsened our problem with terrorism, lost habeas corpus and the 4th Amendment, suffered through two terms of George Bush in part because of the lousy job done by people like John King. When thousands die, are wounded, and millions become refugees as a consequence of journalists not being skeptical of government only vitriol is appropriate. Perhaps a journalism-war-crimes tribunal is even more appropriate.

Maybe if the reasoning power of our journalism professors was better, we wouldn't have John Kings.

http://www.ratemyprofessors.com/ShowRatings.jsp?tid=16512

We can't cut down the forest of Joe Kleins tree by tree, it will never end.

In December the voice mailboxes of the Senators were full. Today, not so. Will we generate the one million calls?

Call your Senators, please!!!!!!!

Actually, the telecom privacy laws restrict what even the telecoms can do internally with user call information. If they reveal without authorisation or misuse subscriber information, not just to the gummint, but at all, they can be liable.

Excellent point.

http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/phoneaboutyou.html

As an example, (I'm a telecom person, btw), a telco cannot use your call patterns (e.g., you call Ireland a lot) to try to sell you a international calling plan. That is, you can call the telco and say, I make a lot of calls to Ireland, is there some way I can save money? and with that permission, the telco can look at your records and market you something.

But the telco cannot look into their records, say, hmm, we see X makes a lot of calls to Ireland, let's call X and try to sell him this plan. It is forbidden by the law.

(Nothing here represents the views of my employer, these are my views alone.)

Thanks! Do you think faxing the Senators' offices (which I can do over the weekend) is as good as calling?