I have always believed that the narrative of framing the War as a matter of execution of tactics is in and of itself a form of distraction and a psy-op, because it assumes the entire war on terror premise as a given. That's why Power of Nightmares, encouragingly mentioned here, cannot be shown in the US. Get the public fascinated with the tactical details and metics of execution, and that expensive technology which we have to pay other countries to take because of its dubious cost benefit, vulnerability, and inappropriateness to insurgency. Show them ribbons and for god's sake hope they never ask about the hero of the war they assassinated because he was a liberal.

The counter to this is not to play into their hands by putting critics of tactics against the Pentagon's shills. It is to hammer on the real war of black budgets and mercenaries, Israeli spies and teenage Zionist sweetheart arms deals for dangerous junk. Sy Hersch should set the agenda, not Murdoch and Co.

Which brings me to the second point. Glenn, we need to put a human face on "the media". The jingoist press is a few individuals, much as the British press lords. Morris points out in Pax Brittanica Trilogy, as we should, that the average Briton did not benefit from the Empire flogged by a few press lords with financial stakes. The doings of these people, not their hired help, ought to be opened up to minute examination, with particular attention to foreign ownership. Rather than CNN or ABC we ought to be talking about the biography and associations of the owners and their financial and social relationships to Neoconservative agendas.

Oh, and I'm not oppressed. Men like you, who are weak enough to think that a comparison to a woman somehow automatically lessens you, aren't strong enough to oppress me.

I disagree with you about resurrecting the draft, but otherwise that comment -- like so much else you write -- is the bee's knees, cat's pajama's etc...

Sho nuff. Hope you like it! Remember I warned you about MT's writing ... but the thinking makes it worth the slog.

Just what this blog needs.

Another humorless ass.

;-)

I think J has some creative arguments, his politics are mostly acceptable, but he is that scary kind of "liberal" that even I want distance myself from. Or maybe I'm getting older and more conservative. Maybe he'll settle down if I stop teasing him.

Thanks for the welcome and the appreciative comments!

Yep, love Harper's. I confess to being something of a leech, though. When my wife and I were abroad (... well, she was a broad, I was ... nevermind), her sister started sending us CARE packages of the stuff we couldn't get: New Yorker, Harper's, Atlantic, TNR, TAP, etc. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement, since she would just throw out the ones that were more than a month old, and we wouldn't have had time to read them when they were new anyway. Anyways, we came back to the US late last year, but we're still getting the CARE packages.

RE Powell -- I've tried to cut him some slack too, but mostly out of compensation. His mostly-silence now, as things have spiralled even after his departure, speaks volumes to me. The fact that we want to believe the best of him just tells you how bad everyone else around him is ...

Thanks again!

L.W.M. --

Agreed

1. "The gov't is lying to us about marijuana." [Correct.]

then jumped to this conclusion --

2. "Therefore, the gov't is lying to us about all drugs." [WRONG.]

I see that same oversimplification, that same jumping-to-erroneous conclusion happening today.

"Where you and I disagree is that, let's call it hard drug abuse, is really a victimless crime that should be treated asa public health issue, not a criminal justice issue BECAUSE it does affect the lives of others besides the addict."

1. I've all along been for treating drug abuse as a health issue, rather than as a law enforcement problem (except where regulation, which includes prohibition, is necessary). In fact, one of the constructive things Nixon did re. the "War on Drugs" was to enact a law that had as an alternative to jail -- that being the only response to that point -- getting "help," mostly in the form of psychological, but also in the form of detoxification when the addiction was physical. A result of that was the establishment of counseling and treatment programs funded by the taxpayer. (I know because I cofounded such a program.)

There were downsides, not all of them from the clientel, but that's a separate NON-victimless-crime thread.

2. "BECAUSE it does affect the lives of others besides the addict" is precisely why it IS NOT a "victimless crime".

Even if that meant only that taxpayer monies went to treating addicts.

"But that does not make them victims of the victimless "crime" that is only a crime by dint of the overuse of the criminal sanction."

The use or overuse or even non-use of the criminal sanction is not what makes it a NON-victmless crime. A mugging by an addict not prevented by the criminal sanction has a victim.

Nor does the lack or provision of medical treatment as intervention make it a NON-victimless crime: someone -- the taxpayer -- must pay for that, when the taxpayer might prefer to see those monies put to "more constructive" use. Thus the taxpayer is a victim.

Nor does the criminalization of hard drugs (as example) magically create victims out of the harmless-therefore-victimless-until-it-was-made-illegal, "Libertarians" notwithstanding.

Would it be better if heroin, as example, were available by prescription so addicts needn't steal and mug to feed their addiction? Perhaps -- perhaps not. If you've dealt with addicts who are on an equivalent "maintenance" program, you know they can and do find ways to sell their dose of Methadone in order to buy heroin.

Again: there is no such thing as a "victimless" crime -- or for that matter a "victimless" good.

I was too late yesterday to join in the female-body-parts-as-disgusting-epithets discussion in real time.

Glad you were here, instead. You have a better sense of humor on that topic than I do. ;~)

Can't wait to see whether McCain's people continue to eject those who question his use of such language at his campaign events.