C. Lounsbury on the US military’s discovery that people don’t hate you as bad when they are accorded some respect and allowed to retain their dignity. Unfortunately, as one Iraqi points out, it’s “too little, too late.” When the US military will realize that bombs in cities raining death down on neighborhoods are worse than bags on heads and boots on necks remains to be seen.
Arthur Silber points out a great rant by Ken Layne. A sample:
With the Crystal Methamphetamine Ball I keep for such occasions, I can predict those of you who continue to invent apologies for this government will tell me that logic, responsibility, coherence and competence don’t matter a damned bit & never will again, because 3,000 of the 300,000,000 people living in this country were killed by an elusive enemy three years ago, and that for some mysterious reason the current inept administration should be further rewarded for failing to catch the culprits, failing to make this country safer from either similar or new-fangled attacks, failing to remove the Taliban and Al Qaeda from Afghanistan or Pakistan, failing to win an elective war that had nothing to do with those who launched a war on our shores, and not only failing to make a dent in the Islamic Terrorism movement but in fact creating millions upon millions of ready new converts who now have a massive wrecked state in the center of the Middle East as a home and training base for decades to come, along with a very new and real reason to attack us on every flank that makes Bin Laden’s flowery historical rhetoric seem quaint by comparison.
I just can’t figure out how anyone can look at our post Sept. 11 leadership and see anything but a smoking heap of tragic failure, and yet that seems to be the only thing the Bush loyalists have to offer as a concrete reason to re-elect this administration. Why? Is Losing the new Winning?
Go to Arthur’s place and follow the links for the rest. In another post regarding the Bushies’ morning-after kiss off of their pet Democrat, Arthur asks, “So Miller ‘was speaking only for himself’ — but he gave the keynote address? And he was selected to give the keynote address precisely because it was known that he would express exactly the views he did?” Not only that, but rumor has it that the RNC PTBs actually vetted Miller’s speech and substantially altered it.
Ken MacLeod On the Axis of Agony:
There can be few who don’t feel anguish at the sight of the Russian school seige and mass terrorist hostage-taking of 400 people, half of them children. The agony of the parents whose children are at the mercy of the murderous Chechen terrorists and the ruthless and bungling Russian security forces is painful to imagine. The prospect of a bloodbath like this anywhere is horrible enough, but its location is one that may yet concern the rest of us.
Northern Ossetia borders not only Chechnya but Southern Ossetia, which is the only place in the world where Russian and US troops are physically present on opposite sides of a shooting war, albeit (for now) a low-key one. (US-backed Georgia is trying to hold on to South Ossetia, whose population has either fled north or is eager to separate from Georgia and re-unify with Russia.) Ossetians are the people everybody called Alan is named after, which may be a subtle clue that messing with Ossetians is not a good idea. The Caucasus could become for this century what the Balkans were for the last.
For further analysis, Ken points us to the War Nerd.
Paul at Explananda posts some interesting numbers from an Independent article analyzing Bush double standards. Here are just a few:
- 1 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security issued between 20 January 2001 and 10 September 2001 that mentioned al-Qa’ida.
- 104 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defence in the same period that mentioned Iraq or Saddam Hussein.
- 101 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defence in the same period that mentioned missile defence.
- 65 Number of Bush administration public statements on National security and defence in the same period that mentioned weapons of mass destruction.
- 0 Number of times Bush mentioned Osama bin Laden in his three State of the Union addresses.
- 73 Number of times that Bush mentioned terrorism or terrorists in his three State of the Union addresses.
- 83 Number of times Bush mentioned Saddam, Iraq, or regime (as in change) in his three State of the Union addresses.
TBogg is right – This is good blogging. James Wolcott:
With the transparent, calculating cynicism that marked his two terms in office, Bill Clinton chose to burglarize the majesty of President Bush’s Churchillian convention address by conveniently entering the hospital for heart surgery. Unable to yield the spotlight, Clinton clutched his chest like Fred Sanford and called 911 in a desperate bid to deny Bush the “big mo” he was beginning to enjoy after addressing the nation last night from a mound of skulls at Madison Square Garden, each skull beautifully handcrafted by Thai sweatshop workers.
Michael Bérubé transforms from latte-swilling liberal elite literature professor to rabid far-right Republican he-man warmonger and back again! See the RNC blogged from the point of view of a fanatic new convert trying desperately to cash in on no-bid Iraq contracts, just like a real Republican!Unfortunately, he didn’t quite make it through Bush’s acceptance speech:
Cheers, cheers, and more cheers. But when the cheers died down, Bush went off on this riff about how John Kerry wants to spend two quintillion dollars on government programs that tell people how to run their lives, and at that point, I had to poke Norquist again and say, “hsssst, Grovermeister man, this speech is seriously in the realm of Johnny Cochrane it-does-not-make-sense land. Bush has got to talk about grabbing terrorists’ throats, m’fren’, and– ”
Readers, I never finished that sentence. First, Grover turned to me, whistled for silence in the suite, and then took my tumbler of single-malt, walked slowly over to the wet bar, and ceremoniously dumped it in the sink. Suddenly I felt a hand on my neck and a couple of hands in the small of my back, and before I knew it, four or five of my new friends were hustling me out of the suite, into the elevator, and right out one of Madison Square Garden’s service entrances on the 31st Street side. Rich Lowry followed me down, roughly tossed my laptop and my no-bid Najaf contract to me, and said, “you should know that you’re now back on the Lynne List. And if you blog about this, you French-fried flip-flopper, you can just forget about boarding an airplane for the next four years.”
I called one of my friends at Najaf today, Dr. Haidar, and he was telling me how catastrophic the situation in the city is. He said that the number of CIVILIANS killed is 950, and another 1570 were injured which is more than 5 times the number of Iraqis killed and injured in Najaf during the 2003 war.
Haidar used to work in the main hospital in Najaf before the U.S Army closed it some months ago because they were attacked by Iraqi fighters from the hospital, and the hospital was never re-opened.
Najaf, as Haidar says, looks like a battle field. Most of the houses were affected in a way or another because of the street-fighting there. Two of his cousins were killed during the fights, one of them is a mother of two children, and the other the father of five. Both of them were at their homes.
