Antiwar.com Blog

Looking over at the main page just now, I see that 589 people have contributed $22,414 to the Antiwar.com pledge drive. That breaks down to about $38 each. At that rate, we need 332 more contributors to break $35,000. Hey, blog readers, have you pledged yet?

Two cheers for satirical media: Julian Sanchez gives props to Daily Show correspondent Mo Rocca, and Brian Dunaway pronounces Jon Stewart brighter than Richard Perle. In other comedy news, Bill Maher’s demotion to pay cable has made him much easier for those of us in the paycheck-to-paycheck crowd to ignore. (By the way, Justin’s ode to Politically Incorrect is funnier than anything you’ll ever hear Maher say.)

Unfortunately, the universe’s drive toward equilibrium has brought Dennis Miller back from the dead, if CNBC counts for resurrection, anyway. His “decidedly intellectual brand of comedy” consists almost entirely of references to sports, ’70s television, B movies, and books you should have read in high school, but don’t worry: he won’t pull his allegedly razor-sharp wit on Dubya.

In case you’re wondering in what cultural context Miller passes for genius, take a look at Comedy Central’s Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn. Quinn, a brain-damaged tough guy who can’t read cue cards, leads a panel of stand-up “comedians” in nightly discussions of world events. Imagine Politically Incorrect with four cokeheads instead of the standard three. Or National Review‘s The Corner minus the prep school finish.

That’s your television roundup. Now quit thinking and turn on that tube! Don’t let the terrorists win!

H.R. 3439, making its way through Congress, would authorize the federal government to "embed" CIA agents within local police departments to blur the distinction between local cops and feds.

The Campaign to Demilitarize the Police is organizing to stop the bill, and has been targeting the bill’s author, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), with protest actions.

Radley Balko donates a new orifice to liberventionism. By the way, if you don’t know what “liberventionism” means and why I use the term with contempt, just check out the piece Balko refers to and the comments beneath.

Yeah, that Boris Johnson of Lord Black’s stable purees the Hutton report:

Let us remember how this affair began. On Tuesday September 24, 2002, Tony Blair stood in the House and waved a document of which he had high hopes. “The threat of Saddam and weapons of mass destruction is not American or British propaganda,” he said. “The history and present threat are real.”

Coo-er, we all thought and, as we riffled through the pages, we found the most chilling detail of all. “The document discloses that Saddam’s military planning allows for some of the weapons of mass destruction to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them,” wrote Blair in the foreword.

Wow, we thought: 45 minutes from attack! Cripes, said a banner headline in the Evening Standard: “45 minutes from attack”. In so far as these claims made sense, they were piffle. …

Public and Parliament were presented with justifications for war that (a) did not reflect the opinions of those who knew most about Iraqi weapons; and (b) had been in key ways embellished by Alastair Campbell. Neither of these staggering facts would have come to light, had it not been for Andrew Gilligan. …

You do not have to oppose the war – and I supported the removal of Saddam – to see that is news worth reporting. What makes the Government’s conduct contemptible is not just that it denied the story, but found the source of the story and put him before the public, in the hope that he would help it quash it. Unable to deny the story, but ashamed to confess that he had been the source, Kelly killed himself.

Whatever Hutton says, Mr Blair has behaved with great slipperiness, not so much for his role in identifying Dr Kelly, but in then denying his role. WMD has been Blair’s ERM. He asked everyone to believe in what turned out to be a fraud. He has lost the trust of the people, and of his backbenchers. As for Andrew Gilligan, he had an important, accurate and exclusive story, and should be reinstated forthwith to his job on Today.

(Thanks to Richard Wall for the link. Oh, and speaking of misinformation, I’ve decided to wait ’til Monday to run my next essay.)

Jacob Sullum on the White House’s “noble” facades:

Last June New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman counted four reasons for the war: the stated reason (Saddam had WMDs and might give them to terrorists for an attack on the U.S.); the moral reason (saving Iraqis and their neighbors from a brutal, murderous tyranny); the real reason (after 9/11, the U.S. had to smack a Muslim country around to show it meant business); and the right reason (defusing the anger that leads to terrorism by transforming Iraq into a model of liberal democracy).

It seems to me the stated reason for war should be the same as the real reason, so the American people can judge for themselves whether it’s right and moral. Distracted by images of nuke-wielding Islamic fanatics, they never really had that opportunity.

Read the whole thing.

I’ve long admired Sullum’s reporting on legal issues, and though my take on Israel is rather different from his (but also see this and this), he has been a consistent critic of Bush’s Iraq policy. Find his archives here.