Letters to the Editor
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and
I would be remiss not to point out (as Brayton did) the inability to see within that Conservapedia quote I provided the inherent logical contradiction between bemoaning the lack of a central authority while criticizing for not accepting an appeal to popularity.
For those responding to Barbara, this might be of some service
http://www.amazon.com/United-States-George-Bush-al/dp/1583227563/sr=8-1/qid=1172098082/ref=sr_1_1/104-3707032-8093548?ie=UTF8&s=books
I watched her give a talk and have so far read the introduction. She's a former prosecutor and the book can almost be read as an aswer to the question posed by Mr. Greenwald's first book ... how would a patriot act?
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U.K. Official Announcement of Force Reduction in Iraq
Tony Blair :
http://www.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/DefenceNews/DefencePolicyAndBusiness/PrimeMinisterAnnouncesUkForceReductionInIraq.htm
U.K. Ministry of Defence
Prime Minister announces UK Force reduction in Iraq
21 Feb 07
In a statement to the House of Commons today, Wednesday 21 February 2007, Prime Minister Tony Blair announced a reduction in the number of UK Forces in Iraq from 7,100 to approximately 5,500. This is a reduction of nearly 1,600 UK troops.We are able to announce this reduction in Force levels because of the growing capacity of the Iraqi security forces...
...This announcement reflects the progress that has been made in the south towards complete Iraqi self-reliance, and also the challenges that remain...
...Since the outset our plan, agreed by Iraq and the United Nations, has been to build up Iraqi capability in order to let them take control of their own destiny. As they would step up, we would, increasingly, step back...
George Aiken :
THE NEW YORK TIMES published Thursday, October 20, 1966; Page 1
Aiken Suggests U.S. Say It Has Won War
By RICHARD EDER Special to The New York TimesWASHINGTON, Oct. 19--Senator George D. Aiken made a "far-fetched proposal" today for achieving peace in Vietnam: that the United States declare that it has won the war...
..."It may be a far-fetched proposal," said the 74-year-old Republican, who is a ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, "but nothing else has worked."...
...Senator Aiken said he was aware that his proposal, made in a speech to the Senate, might strike some as a bit of political drollery. It is intended with all seriousness, he said -- though with only faint hopes that it would work -- as a suggestion for freeing the Administration of one of the considerations that keep it on its present course: the concern that unilateral de-escalation would impair its military credibility...
...The Senator said his proposal was not designed to solve the political problem of Vietnam, but simply to eliminate the issue of the credibility of United States military power -- or more loosely, the question of "face".
Tony Blair is following Senator Aiken's advice on saving "face".
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MBF
I particularly enjoy the first paragraph, how CE is anti-Christian, and NPOV is actually politically correctness.
It supports my fear, that in the end, post-modernism erodes rationality and places "Will To Power" in a glorified intellecutal locale (or vacuum). In the CE example, a more universalist, and therefore anti-relativist, jargon is precisely denigrated for that very quality. Then, after forcefully arguing that conservapedia is specifically "politically correct" from a certain sectarian Christian viewpoint, they then turn that around against the globalist point of view.
So here, they combine a vulgar relativism with then a claim of universality coming out of that very relativism. Oh, what have you wrought, Foucault!
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The Judith Miller School of Journalism
Judy has said exactly the same thing:
"[M]y job isn't to assess the government's information and be an independent intelligence analyst myself. My job is to tell readers of The New York Times what the government thought." (New York Review of Books, Feb. 26, 2004)
And look where that got us.
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Wolfie is a Beltway teabagger
Not that there's anything wrong with that!
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MBF
Wait, wait! Hollingsworth is a real person? I mean, that's a real name that someone is willing to attach those statements to?
Will wonders never cease!
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jojo
Yes, that's what is so insidious about it. But where as people are more or less on to this tactic in regard to intelligent design (although still sympathetic) the public and media has largely been taken in by the "liberal bias" ruse. This is why I believe more works like Brock's Republican Noise Machine documenting the underlying strategy and goal of the movement are vitally important.
Your point about p.c.: this is highlighted by the Politically Incorrect Guide books I mentioned. They are designed to appear as educational tools, but in reality they should be considered subversive attempts to sabotage a person's mind. The title of these books is itself Orwellian, redefining factually incorrect as correct, but not politically correct.
At the same time, this tells exactly how movement conservatives are thinking: reality is defined for them in terms of political correctness; which is to say, reality is defined from the top down, reality is made to fit an ideology, rather than the reverse.
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Ms. Huffington
Yes, Congress has had ample time to investigate the lead up to the war. They did not because the Republicans controlling all the Committees refused to.
The Second half of the Senate's Report on Intelligence, which details the lies and cherry-picking that went on, plus the machinations of Feith and company, was deliberatley held back by Mr. Freedom of Information himself, Senator Roberts (of the 'Republic' Party) of Kansas.
I'm tired of hearing how the Democrats authorized this disaster in 2002. A goodly number OPPOSED it. Unlike our Dear Leader, most Democrats recognize they made a mistake and wish to correct course.
This is what intelligent human beings do. Which is why those operating the Right-Wing noise machine cannot comprehend this penomena.
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Don't Blame Foucault
Jojo, in my reading of him, Foucault was principally a phenomenologist, not a politician. It's possible to observe how a particular narrative modifies the reality we create as well as the one we perceive without recommending that we ignore everything else, much less that we consciously engage in narrative wars. Besides, sophistry as a concept is a lot older than either structuralism or post-modernism.
It doesn't matter that calling a spade a spade is as much an art as constructing a Christianist alternate reality for the ages; in the end the former will have a lot more utility than the latter.