Go collect your social security check, boomer. Your generation has failed us all.

-- Ed Richter

Dear Ed, there is an old saying that my WWII generation mother taught me: two wrongs don't make a right. Ever heard it?

I'm sorry you feel insulted (and I don't blame you). However, there is no need to start swinging and insulting those around you.

As with any large group of people, there are good members and not-so-good members. So far, I'm not amazingly impressed with the Gen-x and y group, either, but it seems counterproductive to insult and dismiss them all.

via Antiwar.com this morning:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/08/05/EDJFRB8AF1.DTL

An article looking at the effects of the Executive Order the Bush Regime just recently made concerning giving aid to anyone who wants to undermine the Iraqi government.

What Constitution?

Now that our politically active son is going to go away to college overseas this Fall, I'm happy to know that all our conversations and e-mails with him will be tapped. And if our son should donate money to a charity that the Maliki government decides is against Maliki, our son's assets can be frozen. If we give money to our son, or give him shelter, or hire an attorney for him, our assets will be frozen. If an attorney agrees to take his case, the attorney's assets will be frozen.

And shooter has no problem with any of this. After all, our rights aren't being violated. Of course, they're not. We have no rights.

God, Glenn, that link was heart wrenching. The horrible thing is there are many people in this country who would be shocked and upset if someone they knew said "fuck" in front of them, but the fact that their government is doing this to people, in their name, everyday, doesn't shock and upset them at all. It's not torture, it's just fightin' terraism and keepin' us safe!

Sometimes, it's hard not to despair.

is extremely intelligent and very well educated. He is also an extremist bigot -- the David Duke of the Likudnik intelligentsia.

Luck had not a damned thing to do with my "guesses". My first thought upon hearing about Iraq was...WTF?! It went downhill from there. So, as matter of necessity (in order to maintain my sanity, more or less) I read everything I could find that went beyond the MSM or the Bush Administration line. Or is that a redundancy?

One example that really stands out in my mind was when I watched Powell's presentation to the UN. I listened intently. Laughed out loud at some of the cartoon pictures he held up as "evidence" that Saddam Hussein had cute little wagons of bio weapon makers, and that he had caravans of trucks carting off WMD out of buildings...under our noses.

We know a number of people who are either in or were in the foreign policy establishment, most of them very bright people. Almost without exception, they all believed Powell's UN presentation to be "serious", with "solid and disturbing" evidence of Saddam's perfidy. When we said it sounded like bollocks to us -- and even cited some articles we had read via antiwar.com -- what we basically got was a metaphorical pat on the head for our unseriousness. One of these friends even went so far as to lecture me on my emotionally "unhealthy" anger at the Bush administration for what I perceived as their lying.

The kicker: these people are all Dems, none of them Hawks -- but all of them basically assume American hegemony and the rightness thereof.

Maybe in addition to a rotting culture of experts, we need to look at exactly how that motivation arises. Is it fear? Fear of what? Of losing a job, deadending a career, being wrong in public? Is it more insidious? Threats of some kind, fear of accusations or persecution or arrest or something? Is it adulation? Do these people believe so fervently in something? Is it secrecy?

That the fact that invading Iraq was not only morally wrong but also the recipe for disaster seemed obvious to many of us -- some with real experience in the area and in military matters, others with just some common sense, brings up the question of why they went along (as you've noted above so well). But even if those who voted for it (and have since expressed regret for their vote) did not do any research, did not examine their premises, did not look at the character of the people urging them on -- could they not have listened to Sen. Byrd and his eloquent, logical and stirring speech right before the vote? He laid out all the arguments pro and con and convincingly came up with a strong "con" against going to war with Iraq, but they would not listen. What was stopping up their ears?

Citing Four-Day Old Surveillance Law, Bush Seeks Dismissal of Lawsuit Challenging NSA Spying

These guys are just unbelievable. They really plan everything out and go for all the angles, don't they? At least when it comes to political maneuvering anyway. When it comes to planning stuff in the real world, like occupations and recovery from catastrophic events, they're not so good.

Who is/are the planner/s? Cheney? Rove? Addington? I can't see Gonzo and the Shrub having the brains to think this stuff through.