Letters to the Editor
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Plenty of pimps in DC
...though I am not one of them.
Mr. Vitter (and many others, to hear a former DC cop tell it) would be able to speak to that.
I listen to Amy Goodman whenever I can. She had that pro-war gasbag Mike Gordon from the NY Times on her show a while back. Amy did her best to rip him a new one, despite his hubris-filled attempts to talk over her. She has Glenn on the show every once in a while, as well.
Intel Vet: glad to hear you and your like minded cohorts are working within the beast at the five sided polygon. Five years ago, almost every member of the military brass that Amy Goodman interviewed about the invasion disagreed with the Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Cheney ramp up to the war. I don't know if she has talked to Admiral Fallon, but I wish mightily that she would put him on her show.
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It's called Manufacturing Consent.
Tell the audience you're giving them the whole range of views and then give them about 1/10th of the political spectrum. And of course that part of the spectrum is the part that agrees with 90% of the concepts of the military-industrial state. It's simple and it's been going on for decades.
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Cracks in the myth of the surge?
Paul Dirks noted Joe Klein's pitiful efforts to disavow his support for the war and asked if this was indicative of a move generally to rewrite the history of the war and who has supported it. I've been following the reporting on the uptick in violence in Iraq and especially on what is happening with Muqtada al Sadr's militia. A report that just came out from AP has an interesting angle in it that could start to chip away at the basis for the "success" of the surge:
The violence marked a stunning escalation in the confrontation between the Shiite-run government and al-Sadr's forces, who have bitterly complained about the recent arrests of hundreds of backers.
The clashes also threaten to reverse the security gains achieved by U.S. and Iraqi forces — which have been hailed by Washington as key signs that Iraq was headed for better days.Al-Sadr declared a unilateral cease-fire last August. That move — along with a U.S. troop buildup and a Sunni alliance with the American forces — has contributed to a steep drop in violence over the past several months.
Link:http://tinyurl.com/2qrxae
I find it fascinating that al Sadr's cease-fire gains equal billing to the surge in the decline in violence in Iraq earlier this year. While the surge was "working" so well, I don't think we were hearing that.
You can bet the house that if Iraq explodes again, as it well could, all blame will fall on al Sadr and his militia. The role of Petraeus in arming and paying off groups naturally antagonistic to al Sadr will be nowhere to be found in the reporting even though there is a cryptic reference here.
If the press thinks we are "out of options" now, just wait until the armed Sunni groups and al Sadr's militia are in open warfare with each other.
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For those who are having trouble with all the words in this debate ...
... here it is in pictures:
http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2008/03/24/tomo/
courtesy of Tom Tomorrow.
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LWM
Was I shreiking with irony?
I briefly considered whether you meant that sarcastically and then rejected it - not sure why. I hate when people overlook sarcasm/irony and hate even more when I do it. I'm going to go bang my head against the table for the next few minutes as punishment.
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YIP YIP! ARF ARF!
Charlie Rose makes Corporate Warmongering Lapdogs, Chris Matthews and Tim Russert almost look like journalists by comparison.
Charlie Rose even makes Geraldo Rivera look good.
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I was quite a fan of Charlie Rose for about 20 years -- I remember him on Nightwatch on CBS ...
in the 1980 which ran from 2 am to 6 am, fabulous for us insomniacs. Rose was always at his best, usually one-on-one, and was amazing ... I remember an interview with Lena Horne that still brings a knot to my throat ...
He's aged ... 09/11 happened ... he's had serious emergency heart surgery ... I stopped watching much in the run up to Iraq ... For years, he had always been a reliable venue for Fuad Anjami and Chalabi and others, including Judith Miller and Bernard Lewis and other -- which I welcomed back then as a rare source of "international perspective" (before I understood what an in-crowd it all was) ...
As far as I could tell, like Tom Friedman, Rose got caught up in the "we're going to make a difference" romance of deposing Saddam and bringing "democracy" to the region, and both have had a truly obstinent "with all this shit, there's gotta be a pony somewhere" attitude that refuses to admit their mistakes -- hubris, trusting people they should not have trusted at all or not nearly as much as they apparently did.
Rose does use his forum (heavily endowed, as far as I can tell by his good friend Mike Bloomberg) to show art exhibits, discuss science and medical breakthrough, do the in-depth interviews of artists/actors, etc.
I do think his level of engagement has fallen off. I recall someone -- a couple of year ago -- In exasperation, explaining to him that MOST countries in this world had at least partially nationalized utilities and transportion, for NATIONAL SECURITY and internal security reasons (the better to protect the citizenry from the robber barons) ... a concept that seemed to be foreign to Rose (and is probably foreign to most Americans born after 1975)
Tongue in cheek I also blame that "greatest generation" book that I think made a lot of boomer's, particularly males, particularly those who never put on a uniform, wonder what their "legacy" would be ... and that includes Bill Clinton ...
The narrowness of the discussion is such that anyone who is "anti-war" on general principles is too fringe to get a seat ... how sad is that?
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Shooter
* There is no room for conversation in your position. "War is bad because people get killed." End of discussion. What else are you going to say to fill up airtime?
There's a lot more to it than that and you know it.
the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat: how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention to this point that I can foresee who is likely to w in or lose.
-Sun Tzu, the Art of War
That the US made no calculations at all for the occupation made it quite clear that we were likely to lose the occupation.
* Why would it have been better to gamble, that Saddam has no weapons, no bad intent, and is just posturing?
Part of analyzing a military threat is determining intent.. Yet another part is determining capabilities.. Saddam had no capabilities to speak of, Iraq was a third rate power which we had bombed at will for a long time.
* If said gamble is wrong ten,hundreds, thousands, millions of American lives are in jeopardy. Why isn't that a concern?
Those lives are still in jeopardy, quite probably even more so now that ant-American sentiment has been whipped up even more all around the world.
L* Lastly, I'd love to hear the anti-war crowd explain to the nation, why they were willing to lie down for Saddam.
Why were Rumsfeld, Ctheney and Bush willing to "lie down for Saddam"?
At least they were until Saddam decided to sell Iraqi oil for euros rather than dollars. That was the real trigger for the drive to overthrow Saddam.
The willingness to leave the country "defenseless" after a life-altering terrorist act is not a position that can be taken seriously. Ergo, no interviews.
That anyone can think the nation that spends half the entire world budget on things military is "defenseless" is even more stupid than your usual commentary.