Washington
Contrary to what the evidence might suggest…
You know, one of the things I find amazing about the current administration is how flexible their definition of events and scenarios are. And how they see whatever they want to see, and declare whatever they see fit, ratified by presidential decree. Even when it is obvious as the light of day that the truth is actually contradictory to the presidents view of things.
Like the President declaring “Mission Accomplished” without having achieved any of the stated mission goals. Or that the national outrage about the war in Iraq is little more than the opinions of a focus group. Or even that global warming is a natural phenomenon. Or that you can win a war with terrorists using conventional warfare. Or that you can introduce national stability into a country torn by civil war using the aforementioned conventional warfare. I could go on, but I think the picture is abundantly clear.
But then again I’ve never governed a country. But when former presidents of said country begin to speak out against the current administrations actions then, well, hey there has to be some merit to it right? Apparently not.
Former president Jimmy Carter, in a recent interview, called out the president on the issue of prisoner torture and the violation of human rights, in regard to:
… secret Justice Department memorandums supporting the use of “harsh interrogation techniques.” These include “head-slapping, simulated drowning and frigid temperatures,” – [CNN Politics]
The Prez’s response?:
Responding to the newspaper report Friday, Bush defended the techniques used, saying, “This government does not torture people.” – [CNN Politics]
The white house response?:
After reading a transcript of Carter’s remarks, a senior White House official said, “Our position is clear. We don’t torture.” – [CNN Politics]
Well OK then. I am by no means an authority in torture, however slapping a person upside the head until they sing like a bird, sounds like torture to me. I mean, it ain’t exactly the same as a swedish massage now is it? But if the President and White house officials say it’s not torture, well then I stand corrected!
But if I slap my next door neighbor cross-eyed while attempting to find out what he did with the lawn mower I lent him last year, I better not hear any lip about it from the peanut gallery. And I’ll sue whoever calls the police…
- ‘Mission Accomplished’ Whodunit – [CBS News]
- When Denial Goes Pathological – [CounterPunch]
- Carter says U.S. tortures prisoners – [CNN Politics]
- President Bush: State of Denial About Iraq – [FOX News.com]
- President Bush Discusses Global War on Terror – [WhiteHouse.gov]
- The Secret Campaign of President Bush’s Administration To Deny Global Warming – [Rolling Stone]
Ya need a “Speak & Spell” with that?
Notwithstanding my recent rant about the qualities I think a good president should have, this gem I ran into today was good for a laugh:
A quickly remedied glitch momentarily gave visitors to the UN website a version of Bush’s UN General Assembly speech that included phonetic spellings for world leaders, a former Soviet satellite, and at least one capital.
OK, now I do know that teleprompters are a common appearance at public speeches but the text contained in this particular teleprompter elicited a little chuckle from yours truly:
French President Nicolas Sarkozy is “sar-KO-zee.” Mauritania should be said “moor-EH-tain-ee-a.” Kyrgyzstan sounds like “KEYR-geez-stan.” And the capital of Zimbabwe President Robert “moo-GAH-bee” Mugabe is Harare “hah-RAR-ray.”
This makes me wonder if he just flat out ignores the teleprompter whenever he is supposed to say “nuclear”. I even found the response from the White house spokeswoman, when asked about the presidents elocutive “difficulties”, hilarious:
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said such phonetic guidance is common but curtly rebuffed a questioner who wanted to know whether Bush has a hard time with certain names: “I think that’s a offensive question. I’m going to just decline to comment on it.” – [Yahoo/AFP]
Oh, come now Ms. Perino. Exactly how is that question offensive? Is it offensive because he has difficulties or because he doesn’t? I mean, I could see how asking that question of a mentally challenged person could be construed as offensive or insensitive, but our president isn’t mentally challenged is he…? Wait… Err… Mercy…
Speak ‘Bush’ in one easy lesson – [Yahoo/AFP]
Mission NOT Accomplished…
Today, I read an article that, I think, basically confirms what I’m sure most of us already figured out.
Congressional auditors have determined that the Iraqi government has failed to meet the vast majority of political and military goals laid out by lawmakers to assess President Bush’s Iraq war strategy, The Associated Press has learned. – [Yahoo/AP]
I’m not going to go into all that much detail about it because it’s all in the article (the link is below) But I will say this. As an American citizen I feel that we have been mislead, lied to, and flat out treated like imbeciles, by our government. No matter how much spin you put on a deception, it is still a deception.
The fact that our president could brazenly claim “Mission Accomplished” when so many of the goals we believed he intended to achieve had not been reached, is to me, showing a lack of respect for the citizens of this great nation. We have not accomplished our mission. I say we have been party to an “Epic Fail”.
Little progress seen on Iraq goals – [Yahoo/AP]
The latest oxymoron… “Military Progress”
In this bloggers humble opinion, following in the uncompromising traditional paradox of “Military Intelligence” and “Military Solutions” follows the idea of “Military Progress”:
Even some critics of President Bush’s Iraq war policies are conceding there is evidence of recent improvements from a military standpoint. But Bush supporters and critics alike agree that these have not been matched by any noticeable progress on the political front.
Despite U.S. pressure, Iraq’s parliament went on vacation for a month after failing to pass either legislation to share the nation’s oil wealth or to reconcile differences among the factions. And nearly all Sunni representatives in the government have quit, undermining the legitimacy of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite.
OK, so apparently there has been no real governmental progress in Iraq, no political stability. What they do have is a stalled legislature, parliament on vacation and the mass departure of all Sunni reps. But that troop surge sure is is going good!! Yay for “Military Progress”!! So that’s why we are there is it? Military progress? Huh?
Actually, read the second paragraph of the excerpt again… I think the real reason we are in Iraq is hidden in there. I’ll give you a hint… Black Gold… And notice that it comes before the reconciliation of the different factions… Yeah…
Petraeus asserted that “we are making progress. We have achieved tactical momentum in many areas, especially against al-Qaida Iraq, and to a lesser degree against the militia extremists.” Still, he told Fox News on Tuesday that “there are innumerable challenges.”
Yeah. Innumerable. Like the fact that terrorists are guerrillas whose modus operandi usually does not include toe-to-toe battles with conventional armies. We can’t beat terrorism with sheer force of numbers people. Wake up!
“Barring a miracle, there will be very little political progress to point to in mid-September,” Cordesman said Thursday in a briefing on his trip.
Michele Flournoy, a former Pentagon defense strategist and now president of the Center for a New American Security, said that “the clock in Washington is running down pretty fast. There’s sort of a wall next March-April. That’s when they’ll have to start replacing units, which will hit the 15-month mark.” Bush recently extended tours of duty from 12 months to 15 months.
“They’re going to have some very tough choices then. Either the ‘surge’ will de facto end and they’ll start bringing people out because there’s no units to replace them. Or you’re going to have to have a presidential decision to extend tours from 15 months to 18 months,” Flournoy said.
Yeah. Lets just keep increasing the tour lengths. Throw more troops out there. Keep on burning our tax dollars on a fruitless pursuit of terrorists hiding on their own turf with home court advantage. They will keep hiding until we leave. 6 months from now, a year, it won’t matter. And just think, in the interim we can create more terrorists by racking up civilian casualties engage and eliminate insurgents. You know. While we are in the neighborhood… Yeah. Great plan.
“The problem is that nobody in the United States sees any significant progress on the political front. The Shiites and Sunni factions in the government don’t seem to be able to get along. And that makes Congress wonder whether we’re making any real progress. Because, even with better security, the country can’t figure out how to take care of itself,” Thompson added. – [Yahoo/AP]
Thank you! Finally! A voice of reason. We can chase terrorists till we are blue in the face. If that country is unable to maintain a working, self regulating government, all on it’s own, it will all have been for naught. We should have thought of that before we even went in there. Oh. That’s right. We let the military do the thinking…
Iraq critics concede military progress – [Yahoo/AP]
Politics Suck. That’s pretty much the gist of it.
When I hit the “New Post” button for this, I intended to rant about how the Clinton/Obama debate had gotten completely off track. But as I sat here thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that it’s an incredible waste of time.
I’m beginning to think that politics is basically just a great big corrupting machine. This fact hit doubly hard when I realized that somehow, the opinions of Mikhail Gorbachev made more sense (for the most part) than that of my own government. The fact that our presidential hopefuls are at each others throats rather than attacking problems isn’t helping my confidence in the future of the country much either.
07/28/2007 – UPDATE :
Now with added Cleavage!!
Clinton-Obama flap shifts race to negative tone – [Yahoo/Reuters]
Gorbachev blasts American ‘imperialism’ – [Yahoo/AP]
Washington split over Clinton cleavage – [Yahoo/AFP]
P2P Suit Abuse…
Ok, I just read yet another article that all too painfully demonstrates the lengths that the RIAA will go to bolster it’s income, for lack of a better description. The article below referred to a case of P2P file sharers on the University of Washington campus. The RIAA alleged that members of the student body had been engaged in file sharing, and had approached the university on the issue. After mulling it over, this is what they decided:
“UW said it will forward notices of pending lawsuits from the Recording Industry Association of America to students who engage in illegal downloading on the university’s computer network.
The notices say offending students have 20 days to settle with the association by paying it about $3,000 to $5,000 or be taken to court without possibility of a settlement…
…The university will not pass the students’ names to the association, but it will use its server to identify them and inform them of their settlement options before they get stuck with a lawsuit, Godfrey said.” – [The News Tribune.com]
Now I see quite a few issues here. First, while it is theoretically possible to identify which computers may have been involved in file sharing, there is no way to verify that the actual owner of the computer was actually the one who did the file sharing. Unlike a home or office, where the number of different people that would have access to any given computer is usually limited, in a dorm room, it is usually a free for all. Most dorms are fairly accessible, and any one of a given residents friends or roommates could generally and reasonably be expected to have access to anothers computer.
Next there is the base assumption by the RIAA, upon which this massive anti P2P campaign is based, that all of this file sharing means lost sales. OK, let’s think about this for a second. The fact that someone downloaded an album does not mean that they would have bought it, regardless of whether or not they could afford it. That is an illogical assumption. The mount of music piracy that occurs is not, by any means, directly proportional to the number of lost sales.
Which brings me to the other point that makes no sense. I cannot blame them for filing suits against illegal file sharers, but where is the RIAA coming up with the settlement figure? An average CD can be had for about $20 from any one of the myriad of online music vendors and clubs that distribute music. $30, maybe for a hot item at full price. At $3000, each defendant would have had to have pirated at least 100 full priced CDs each. At $5000 they would have had to download over 166 CDs (at full price), or at the very least, 250 regularly priced CDs. And thats not counting additional promotions and discounts, etc.
Now that’s a lot of CDs, I don’t care how fast your connection is, and it’s unlikely that any of these students could possibly have downloaded that much music in the time frame given. And I think it’s a fair bet that the RIAA knows this. I think this is nothing more than the RIAA using the law to intimidate people into a reduction of file sharing, and, more heinously, recoup their losses from slumping sales. Yet another example of a $67 million pair of pants… just on a smaller scale. Or larger, depending on how you look at it…
UW will abet file-sharing lawsuits, it says – [The News Tribune.com]
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