ibenez wrote:

Sadly, Mr. Bush wasted his opportunity last night, giving a speech that only answered questions no one was asking. He told the nation, again and again, that a stable and democratic Iraq would be worth American sacrifices, while the nation was wondering whether American sacrifices could actually produce a stable and democratic Iraq.

Sure dude. Your hatred for Bush makes you say really stupid things.

I understand your confusion now. There have always been people wondering whether American sacrifices could actually produce a stable and democratic Iraq. The question is whether this reflects the opinion of the nation broadly. The recent Senate hearing seemed to indicate that even Republicans felt that it does reflect the opinion of the nation. Why has this point of view been rejected by Republicans until just now? Has there been a sudden shift in public opinion? I don't sense that there has been.

It has taken me a few days to digest this hearing. I think I understand now.

There is a specific reason that this point of view is suddenly being accepted, and it is because its in our interest to accept it now. The more Americans are unhappy about their involvement with the Iraq war, the more it will look like we're going to pull out. The more it looks like we're going to pull out, the more Iraq will realise that they are going to have to deal with the domestic security problems on their own, or live with them forever. The faster they get that, the faster they'll become a strong, independent nation. If we let their government hide behind our skirt they'll never have the strength to deal with the difficult international politics in the region.

Nations are founded upon shared experience. They didn't overthrow Saddam. They won't be able to look back on their history, as we do, and say "we did it." They need a formative experience. This insurgency is that experience. If they can overcome it, it will shape their national identity. We can't do it for them. If we do their country won't mean anything to them.

I'll bet the Republicans would be willing to sacrifice the 2008 presidential election if it meant scaring the Iraqis into taking responsibility for themselves, but in any event if they have to do something with makes them look bad politically, like getting a large precentage of Americans to think that Iraq is not a good place for our military to be, now is the time to do it, when they've got several years before having to face public opinion in the ballot box.

You're going to hear more of this kind of thinking. Frogs boil slow, this hearing was the first step.

RE: President Bush's Speech About Iraq - New York Times

Acidus wrote:
It is clear what the Iraq war is about: securing vital oil resources that we need to remain a super power. Human rights and "democracy" are just as worthless of an excuse as Germany saying it invaded Poland because of Polish saboteurs.

Is it? This has been a favorite theory of the left since the start but I have never found it particularly compelling. The logic is:

1. Bush says there is an imminent threat that Saddam will give WMD to Al'Q.
2. Turns out there probably wasn't a significant amount of WMD and the connections between Saddam and Al'Q were tenuous at best.
3. The real reason for the war MUST be [insert my favorite conspiracy theory here].

Obviously, 3 does not follow from 2, regardless of what 3 is. 3 must have its own justification which exists independently from the validity or invalidity of 1.

In fact, I don't think taking over Iraq would have significantly reduced our price for Iraqi oil, if all other things were equal. The primary reason the oil wasn't available is because the international community wasn't buying it from Saddam, because Saddam was a problem. If this was all just a greedy resource grab we could have simply not embargoed him in the first place and the resource would be far more available then it is now. We embargoed him because he was a problem. Ergo, even if we really DID go in there to free up the oil, it was really about Saddam, and not about the oil per say. Were Saddam not a bastard there would have been no need for a "resource grab."

I think 1 is oversimplified. I'm not convinced that the war was justified. However, I'm not convinced it wasn't either. The trouble with the dialog is that no one on the right is willing to accept 2, and everyone on the left is convinced of 3. I think the reality is that 1 was not totally unreasonalbe but not compelling enough to justify a war, and that 3 is totally unreasonable, but because we can't let both theories go we can't really have a national dialog about what the hell we ARE actually doing.

And this has gone on long enough now that it really doesn't matter anymore. The damage is done. We're in there. And frankly, we need to stay engaged until the situation is sustainable. It doesn't matter why we went in the first place. We cannot simply withdraw because we decide we're no longer happy with our original justification.

I think the recent Senate hearing and Bush's statement which was discussed here was orchestrated to put pressure on the Iraqi government to take more responsibility for domestic security. I don't think that after all of this, people in South Carolina are now suddenly wondering whether we ought to be in there, nor do I think the Republicans would be taking such a sentiment seriously if it weren't in their interest to do so. You're going to hear more about how the American people are getting tired of Iraq. You might even see a return of the protests. This is how we're going to negotiate with the Iraqi's. They rightly think its our mess to clean up, but if we're unwilling to do that they have to do it or live in it. They'll do it.

Our next problem will be keeping them from hating us for making them do it.

RE: CNOOC: Unocal Bid Not About Politics - Yahoo! News

Newly empowered by the oil price boom which has put an extra $30 billion into Iran's treasury in the last 12 months, the Iranian religious authorities have now swept away the remnants of the reformist civilian government that won the last two presidential elections. All three main arms of the Iranian state, the government, the Supreme Council of the religious leadership, and the Pasdaran-Basij security force and power base, are now in the hands of militant Islamic hard-liners who see the U.S. and Israel as their mortal enemies.

World Peace Herald: Nuke crisis looms with hardline Iran

How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model?

Real stars are not riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do their nails. They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer

Ben Stein, author, actor, economist, speech writer, and pundt, column about how out of wack some of our perceptions are.

Ben Stein's final column

Daily Show Bill Frist Retracts Schiavo Diagnosis: "Jon Stewart mocks Bill Frist on the retraction of his diagnosis of Terry Schiavo."

Those of you who were pissed off about this might enjoy watching Bill Frist contradict himself.

Daily Show Bill Frist Retracts Schiavo Diagnosis - CommonBits

There is ample reason for Amnesty to be critical of certain U.S. actions. But by using hyperbole and muddling the difference between repressive regimes and the imperfections of democracy, Amnesty's spokesmen put its authority at risk.
When Amnesty spokesmen use the word "gulag" to describe U.S. human rights violations, they allow the Bush administration to dismiss justified criticism and undermine Amnesty's credibility. Amnesty International is too valuable to let it be hijacked by politically biased leaders.

I've been ignoring this article all weekend mostly because its popular with the same people who are calling for Dick Durbin's censure. However, its actually the most balanced and reasonable piece on this Amnesty situation I've yet read.

No American 'Gulag'

Acidus gives Elonka a run for the money. Way to go Acidus!

How scary. And how refreshing.

Make, a new quarterly put out by O'Reilly Media, is a throwback to an earlier time, before personal computers, to the prehistory of geekiness - the age of how-to manuals for clever boys, from the 1920's to the 50's.

The technology has changed, but not the creative impulse. Make's first issue, out in February, explained how to take aerial photographs with a kite, a disposable camera and a rig of Popsicle sticks, rubber bands and Silly Putty. It also showed how to build a video-camera stabilizer - a Steadicam, basically - with $14 worth of steel pipes, bolts and washers; how to boost a laptop computer's Wi-Fi signal with foil from an Indian take-out restaurant; and how to read credit card magnetic stripes with a device made with mail-order parts and a glue gun.

Congratulations to Acidus on being the first MemeStreams user to make the New York Times op-ed page. And on a Sunday, no less! (14:59, 14:58, 14:57, ...)

A New Magazine's Rebellious Credo: Void the Warranty!

The Darfur conflict is an ongoing conflict in the Darfur region of western Sudan, mainly between the Janjaweed, a government-supported militia recruited from local Arab tribes, and the non-Arab peoples of the region. Note that both sides are largely black in skin tone, and the distinction between "Arab" and "non-Arab" common in western media is heavily disputed by many people, including the Sudanese government. The conflict has been widely described as "ethnic cleansing", and frequently as "genocide".

As I surfed the poliblogosphere one meme that seemed to be common on right and left blogs was Darfur. Both political groups are covering the issue and seemed concerned at the lack of MSM coverage or attention from the Administration. Ironically, Bush called the Darfur situation genocide today, apparently after not mentioning the issue for 3 months.

Darfur conflict - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Amnesty report has been mentioned by both Cheney and Bush in recent days. The header of the CNN story Acidus memed is somewhat misleading, as one could read it to imply that he said that people who've raised questions about Gitmo "hate America." This isn't actually what he said. CNN is blowing the exchange out of proportion because it started with a Larry King interview that they are trying to market.

] In terms of the detainees, we've had thousands of people
] detained. We've investigated every single complaint against the
] detainees. It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on
] the word of -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in
] detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some
] instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth. And so it
] was an absurd report. It just is.

Bush is saying that a lot of the detainees hate America. He is not saying that Amnesty international hates America. However, those who are given to believing such things are likely to believe thats what he said.

The question is what did Amnesty say, and is it truly absurd?

] In the US, almost a year after the Supreme Court decided that
] detainees in Guantanamo should have access to judicial review,
] not one single case from among the 500 or so detained has reached
] the courts because of stonewalling by the Administration.
]
] Under this agenda some people are above the law and others are
] clearly outside it.
]
] Guantanamo has become the gulag our times, entrenching the
] notion that people can be detained without any recourse to the law.
]
] If Guantanamo evokes images of Soviet repression, "ghost detainees"
] – or the incommunicado detention of unregistered detainees - bring
] back the practice of "disappearances" so popular with Latin American
] dictators in the past.
]
] According to US official sources there could be over 100 ghost detainees
] held by the US.
]
] In 2004 thousands of people were held by the US in Iraq, hundreds in
] Afghanistan and undisclosed numbers in undisclosed locations.
]
] AI is calling on the US Administration to "close Guantanamo and disclose
] the rest". What we mean by this is: either release the prisoners or charge
] and prosecute them with due process.

Hrm... Absurd? I can see that. The rhetoric in this essay is firey and analogies chosen are bad ones. However, the specific allegations aren't false. By responding to the gulag analogy as if it was an accusation of willful detainee abuse (it isn't), Bush and Cheney avoid addressing the actual matter that Amnesty has raised, which is about accountability and not torture. The administration is making a straw man argument, betting that no on... [ Read More (0.3k in body) ]

President on Amnesty report

] RONTLINE/World and BBC reporter Paul Kenyon travels deep
] into Iran to investigate charges that Iran is secretly
] developing a nuclear bomb. With exclusive access to a
] U.N. inspection team, Kenyon visits Iran's most sensitive
] nuclear sites and reports on the escalating diplomatic
] tensions surrounding the discovery of the facilities.

These guys are inside Iran trying to get away with filming aleged nuclear facilities under the nose of the secret police. I wish this report was longer and provided more context, but the footage is really interesting. Best quote: "You can't talk here, they'll kill you." The obvious unasked question is why is nuclear energy so important to OPEC's second largest oil producer. The words "natural gas power plant" come to mind.

FRONTLINE continues to kick ass...