02 July 2004 Blog Home : July 2004 : Permalink
The Britain in Europe group have a briefing on the constitutional treaty which is nice to compare and contrast with the EU referendum analysis (hosted on this very website as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago). If you do read the full PDF then one thing jumps out at you. Although it seems reasonably long - 13 pages vs the EU referendum document's 16 - it is less an analysis of what has been agreed to than a series of attacks on the wilder statements of those opposed to the EU. In only a few places does it actually mention what has been agreed and cite sections and paragraphs and nowhere does it actually quote them. I wonder why? could this be because the impenetrable bueaucratese that is in the various sections is liable to be off-putting...
Anyway lets look at the introductory text and see what it says:
The draft EU constitutional treaty is a long and complicated document.
We agree here. The document is extremely long and filled with clear as mud sentences such as
Where a provision of the Constitution which may be applied in the context of enhanced cooperation stipulates that the Council shall act unanimously, the Council, acting unanimously in accordance with the arrangements laid down in Article I-43(3), may decide to act by qualified majority.
Unfortunately, anti-Europeans have further muddied the waters by spreading myths and misinformation about it. Some people go so far as to forecast the end of our country as we know it. Many inaccurate ideas about the Treaty's contents are circulating. This briefing aims to set the record straight.
Since we can't defend the treaty we'll try and distract your attention by attacking the critics.
People have legitimate differences of opinion about Europe and the constitutional treaty. We relish the opportunity of putting the pro-European case in a big national debate about Britain's future. But let the debate be based on fact, not fiction.
Another bit we can all agree on but that is probably the last point where agreement can be reached.
Most of the claims made by anti-Europeans about the constitutional treaty are simply untrue. Not differing interpretations - just plain wrong. Whatever you think about the merits of European integration, the EU president is not going to replace the Queen as our head of state, the EU foreign minister will not oust Britain from its seat on the UN Security Council and the EU is not about to acquire tax-raising powers.
Oh look the strawman tactic. What you do is make an outrageous claim and then demolish it fialing to mention that a slightly less exaggerated version would be harder to laugh away. Taking the three mentioned in turn:
Moreover, many of the objections to the constitutional treaty are directed at aspects that are not new. EU law, for instance, already takes precedence over domestic law. It would make no sense to pass EU laws and then to allow member states to have laws which conflicted with what had been decided by Ministers. This does not imply a European superstate now - as even The Sun concedes - so why should it suddenly do so once the constitutional treaty is adopted? The primacy of EU law in some areas does not entail the end of British independence; it just means that member states must abide by the rules of the club they have signed up to.
Well I think the point we are getting at is that we think that the chaps and chapesses in Brussels seem to be passing too many of the wrong sort of laws. We all know that politics involves compromise but us sceptics are beginning to think that the proportion of silly laws is greater than the proportion of sensible ones.
Although we strongly disagree with them, those who call for withdrawal from the EU are entitled to do so. But they cannot be allowed to pretend that leaving the EU is cost-free. Nor should they get away with inflated estimates of the financial burden of being a member of the EU.
Although I note that you fail to mention any numbers here. The implication is that the costs would be greater than the money paid currently to Brussels. Since according to Britain in Europe's own figures the UK is a net £3.7Billion contributor each year the costs of withdrawal would need to be of that order to make it a net loss.
Likewise, some may urge that the British people reject the constitutional treaty in a referendum. But it is a fantasy to suggest either that a No vote would leave Britain with the same relationship with Europe as prior to the constitutional treaty debate, or that it could lead to a reconfiguration of that relationship entirely on our terms.
Ah heare we go strawman again. There are a couple of assumptions built in here: the first is that the UK would be the only country to reject the treaty and the second is that any subsequent renegotiations would be worse for the UK. How about an alternative strawman? what if the UK was one of say half a dozen countries to reject the treaty - what then?
Voting No would give political momentum to those who favour our withdrawal from the EU.
Really? you don't say. I'd never have guessed that if you hadn't told me.
And if Britain votes No to a treaty that the other 24 EU countries have approved, we should not fool ourselves into believing that those 24 will allow our objection to deflect them from the common path they have chosen. They may make minor concessions to secure Britain's support, but they will not ditch the treaty altogether. In short, if the choice facing the British people in the referendum is not "in" or "out" - it is certainly "in" or out on the margins.
Note the assumption that all the other nations accept the treaty. Also I like the suggestion that if we reject the treaty we might get lucky and get some better conditions for a next time. This kind of hints that just maybe the current treaty is not as wonderful as it might be because surely if it were perfect then no one would dare to meddle with it... It also has the implication that being left out is bad, just the way the lemming that decides not to join his family and friends on their migration is a bad boy.
Thanks to Tim Worstall for giving me the incentive to sign up to Britain in Europe and read their tosh.
Permalink07 July 2004 Blog Home : July 2004 : Permalink
A find by Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine mentions that the US is requiring foreign journalists to renew their visas abroad. The article he references and he himself seem to be of the opinion that this is an attack on press freedom and especially uppity foreign journalists.
Well actually I think that is just as side-effect, what we see here is the Dept of Homeland Security doing its absolute best to kill the faltering economic recovery. If you look at the relevant State Dept webpage you see that its more widesweeping than just picking on journalists as it affects many other classes of foreign worker within the US:
After many years of service, the Revalidation Division must discontinue its domestic revalidation service for E, H, I, L, O, and P visas. Section 303 of the Enhanced Border Security and Visa Entry Reform Act requires the Department of State to collect a biometric identifier (fingerprint) from all non-diplomatic visa applicants. It is not feasible for the Department of State to collect the biometric identifiers.
We encourage all applicants to apply for new visas in their home countries. If you are not traveling to your home country, you may apply at a U.S. visa processing post in Canada and Mexico provided you have made a visa interview appointment. You may also apply at a U.S. visa processing post in a third country provided you have made an interview appointment. You should understand that if there is a delay in visa issuance, you may need to spend more time overseas than you originally planned.
Journalists as Class I visa holders and as you can see are just one of the half-dozen visa types that must now leave the USA in order to renew their visas. Although journalists are probably important (though not as important as the often think they are) in this case they are just the canary in the mine when it comes to suffocation under swathes of red-tape. H and L visas for example are the ones used by technology companies to get the engineering talent they need. I have no idea how many Silicon Valley workers are on L-1 or H1-B visas but I'm going to predict its a significant number. If these people have to spend an uncertain period of time that could be as long as 6 weeks or whatever in their home country at the beck and call of the friendly US INS and DHS every time they change jobs then that is going to add a significant burden to the sort of innovative comapnies that America needs to keep its technology leadership and keep the current economic recovey going.
When you put this sort of roadblock in the way then you really really increase the probability that high tech R&D is going to be outsourced. A rational business manager is going to look at the costs and uncertainties of hiring people to work in Silicon Valley and start suggesting that the people he would have hired from India or China stay in theit home country with the same salary and work there. So is outsourcing your R&D to potentially hostile nations, not to mention hurting the economy and proprty tax base of some of the wealthier parts of the country, just the price America has to pay for increased security?
You might argue that this would in fact be a reasonable trade off for security except for one minor detail: these people are not a security risk. Why? because in general they are working 50 hour weeks and if you are working 50 hour weeks you don't have time to spy or plot terrorst attacks. The legal workers who produce things of value for the economy, pay their taxes and help drive up property prices in Silicon Valley have to take the hit while the illegal workers who don't pay any taxes receive support to get driving licenses and so on. As Michelle Malkin has pointed out numerous times the way to get in to the US is as an illegal alien or abuse the tourist visa/visa waiver program. What we are seeing here is the usual bureacratic response to something bad - make the law-abiding jump through additional hoops which utterly fail to affect the law-breaking. You and I take our shoes off and lose our laptops in airports across America while conmen flash false credentials and get escorted to the front of the line. The same applies to this visa renewal thing.
Biometric visas - lets hurt tourism and high tech industry by mandating a system that doesn't work but does give full employment to bureaucrats.
Permalink08 July 2004 Blog Home : July 2004 : Permalink
Kathryn Lopez at the NRO gives the good news that Uganda's AIDS/HIV infection rates have dropped dramatically. She seems to believe this is not due to condoms but to behaviour change. I suggest that this is not an either/or situation. What has happened in Uganda, and in no other developing country that I am aware of - certainly no African one, is that the government got serious about explaining exactly how AIDS spreads.
In the rest of Africa utterly bogus explanations about the cause and (lack of) cure for AIDS abound and there is no simple official message. Indeed in countries such as Zimbabwe the government seems to prefer embarassed silence and denial that the sex-trade exists to any explanation what so ever. In such cases it is not surprising that a generally poorly educated population will tend to believe whatever crackpot urban legend they can.
It is surely the widespread information and education that has caused the reduction in AIDS. Explaining to the entire population that promiscuity and particularly unprotected promiscuous sex will give you AIDS and that you will die as a result since there is no cure. OF course this means behaviour change but condom usage is of itself a behaviour change. The result is that the prostitutes insist on condoms because they have the knowledge to make the informed choice that extra money for unprotected sex today will lead to premature death tomorrow. Likewise users of prostitutes can also debate whether slight additional pleasure is worth the risk of death.
What works is information and removing the taboo of discussing sex combined with providing the means to avoid the consequences of "slips from grace". Pretending that good people will not "slip" and that only "criminals" or "delinquants" will is preceisely what causes people to try and hide their condition and most-likely spread the disease.
Permalink13 July 2004 Blog Home : July 2004 : Permalink
On Friday while we were doing the weekly shopping I noticed some beer that purported to come from close by - Menton in fact. This was somewhat of a shock as I live in the South East of France and France is not precisely renowned for its beers. Actually there are good French beers but they almost all come from the region that borders Flanders (Belgium) and tend to be of similar styles.
The beer cost more than I normally wish to pay for my booze - but not outrageously so - so I bought a bottle of the brown Abbé des Anges varient. It looks like the picture on the right and was most toothsome when it was opened Saturday night. So much so that my wife who normally eschews non-yellow beers drank half the bottle.
This led to a problem - lack of tasty beer - and thus on Sunday we embarked upon a quest - see if the brewery was as cool as the beer it produced. A check of the website gave directions. It turned out that the brewery was not IN the town of Menton but in one of the little villages behind it called Castillon. So after a 45 minute drive towards the Italian border dodging the morons on the Autoroute (its tourist season so there were plenty to dodge) we arrived at the Menton exit and headed up hill away from the coast. Passing through the village of Monti we decided that when we win the lottery we will buy a restuarant here to be called Python, but I digress.
Viaduct on the way up to Castillon
View looking down towards the sea from Castillon
After winding this way and that the road promised that Castillon and its brewery were 300m on the right. At this point there was no sign of anything more urban than a couple of olive trees and a ruined cottage, but a couple of wiggles later the village appeared and we found a spot in the Parking Publique. A short stroll around the village to locate the brewery and then to see if the village was worth photographing and to work up a thirst. Castillon, built on the side of a steep hill, has to be one of the neatest French villages in existence, full of flowers and not a dog turd to be found. Its also got lots of artist's galleries and cafés (rather like a small St Paul de Vence) - but somehow it failed to inspire my wif to photography - perhaps because not even mad dogs were out of doors in the early afternoon sun.
The brewery is also small, its brewing part is essentially one large room in a three story building with a café on the top and unused space underneath (option for expansion?). Next to the brew room is a shop and a veranda where patrons may sample beers (as they can in the café above). The brewery produces 4 sorts of beer - a lager, a white beer, a (hoppy) amber and the afore mentioned brown. We tasted the white and the lager that afternoon and both were pleasant in a yeasty Belgian sort of way (think Hoegaaden for the white and Leffe blonde for the lager). It also produces some lemonades and sodas but I have no idea about their taste. Unfortunately the price at the shop is not much cheaper than I could get in Auchan (€41 for a case of 24 mixed 33cl beers) but they do taste good and the scenery is spectacular.
Brewery Entrance
Brew room
Memorial to the liberating US/Canadian Troops Sept 1944
13 July 2004 Blog Home : July 2004 : Permalink
Firstly there is this Orson Scott Card piece in the WSJ comparing the Fox with the rest of the US mainstream media. I think he overstates his case a bit but he has a bunch of good examples of how the media fails to be as impartial as it might be. And its not an historical curiousity, Rich Galen does an excellent job of showing how Sunday's Washington Post was well skewed in the anti-Bush/pro-Kerry direction and you can read the articles yourself since they are all online and linked to in the appendix .
We have seen in recent days lots of comment about how "Groupthink" affected the CIA and other intelligence agencies so that they believed that the Iraqi regime had more WMD capability than it really did (note that it did not have zero capability just not as much as was believed), but there has been as bad groupthink in the opposite direction too by the generally Bush-hating media. For example the "yellowcake" story which was trumpeted as evidence that Bush lied now turns out to be rather more complex and in fact to be more like the opposite. Bush told the truth - Iraq did buy or attempt to buy yellowcake from Niger and Joseph Wilson who claimed otherwise was lying through his teeth and knew he was. Then there is the "plastic" turkey story which gets trotted out all over the place - the NY Times has finally admitted that the story is false with this correction
An article last Sunday about surprises in politics referred incorrectly to the turkey carried by President Bush during his unannounced visit to American troops in Baghdad over Thanksgiving. It was real, not fake.
and so on. Indeed the Bush Destruction of Military Records flap that resrufaced recently is another example where the NY Times has to admit that this is not new news - Michelle Malkin has the story with this correction
An article yesterday about the destruction of some payroll records of National Guard members, including President Bush, misstated the record of White House acknowledgment of the loss. The White House indeed took note of the missing information last February when it released hundreds of pages of Mr. Bush's military files. In a briefing paper for reporters on Feb. 10, summarizing those files, it noted that payroll records for the third quarter of 1972 had been lost when they were transferred to microfiche.
The problem of course is that the original vitriol gets splashed on page 1 while the correction gets hidden away on page 32 so unless you read the whole paper or are willing to do some research you still believe the original story.
The media has spent the last year trying to show that Saddam Hussein did not have WMD and was no threat to the USA. They have claimed that Iraq had no links with Al Qaeda, that Iraq had no WMD and that Iraq was making no attempt to gain any of them. Various sources within the US Government who have been prepared to agree with these positions publicly have had top billing to spread their story even though in many cases subsequent investigation of their claims shows that they are either twisting statements misleadingly, suppressing inconvenient facts or in a few cases outright lying. The corrections that occur when the sources and the media are called on their errors tend to involve a swift moving of goalposts to claim that the evidence provided is still not sufficient
This fairly long analysis of the recent senate intelligence report - with links to the PDF file so you can read it - is pretty clear about one thing. The CIA may have had duff intelligence but they did not bow to political pressure and their intelligence and its analysis did indicate precisely what Bush, Powell, Cheney etc. said in the period leading up to the war, but you wouldn't realise it if you read the newspapers:
To go back to the bias question. This report is in its way a good example of how bias and editorializing should be avoided in a straight news item. The report also has a link to this article which is a politically charged opinion piece and which makes no attempt at being non-partisan. This opinion piece is essentially based upon the research in the article I have linked to first and the contrast is IMO educational. Not because they disagree but because the first document is just an analysis/précis of the senate report whereas the second builds on the précis to name names, theorise connections and so on. The problem with the "liberal" media is that they seem to have forgotten the difference between reporting and editorializing and they shove in opinions and conjectures in apparently straight-news reports without making it clear where the reporting ends and the opinion bits begin.
19 July 2004 Blog Home : July 2004 : Permalink
The NY Times had an article about an apparently self-centered woman who decided to kill off two of the triplets she was carrying and just give birth to one live baby. Michelle Malkin called the story "creepy" and garnered many comments at other blogs about the sorry tale. One of those was the couple of articles at "A Small Victory". In the second of the two the blogger and her commenters make a number of excellent points - starting with this from Michelle which would describe my own viewpoint to a T:
Pro-choice does not necessarily mean pro-abortion. There are so many mitigating factors that lie within my stance on abortion that I honestly don't know what to call myself anymore.
I am generally speaking pro-choice - but I believe that for a rational woman choosing an abortion (or a selective reduction) should be an option of last resort. However - and this is the key bit - I both remain tolerant of other views and believe that abortion will always shades of gray. There are of course isolated and rare cases at both ends of the spectrum but the majority of cases where a woman considers an abortion are cases where there simply are no right answers; there are just a range of answers that are wrong in one way or another. It's a question of the lesser of evils rather than a choice between good and evil. As a believer in personal responsibility I think that the decision to have an abortion or not is not one that should be taken by anyone other than the mother. Of course she may be advised by others but its her body and no matter what happens she is the person who will have to live most closely with the consequences.
This is why I see no reason to make abortion illegal. Having legal access to abortion does not force women to obtain one but making abortion illegal means that you are forcing your choices on someone else. This is an asymmetrical coercion in an area where not only is there no consensus about the possible options there is fundamental disagreement about the basis on which the choices should be made. To be clear, I believe that late-term abortions are borderline infanticide but I don't believe it is possible to state a clear rule about where the border lies other than the clear one of birth. For every attempt to make a rule someone will find a reasonable exception - rather than make bad law I'd rather have no law, just education and moral 'suasion.
Permalink20 July 2004 Blog Home : July 2004 : Permalink
Amnesty has some suggestions about what to do about the killing in Sudan. This is really a serious matter but I couldn't help smile when I saw the following:
Action 1: Call on your MP to take action
Action 2: Call on the international community to take action
Action 3: Mass Executions
Activist toolkit
...
Not quite sure who is going to be executed - the international community if it doesn't take action?
Seriously though Amnesty, HRW and the rest do need our support to make sure that the glare of publicity is brought to bear on Sudan and stays there. Maybe this will be enough to stop the atrocities. Unfortunately I fear that this is going to be a case where AI's third action may in fact turn out to be necessary because the Sudanese government and Janjawid militia's aren't going to be stopped by anything short of armed intervention. My prediction is that sometime around December we'll be seeing statements that "Bush did nothing while thousands were killed in Sudan" because I practically guarantee that no UN peacekeepers will be deployed or if they are their mission will be so vague and wishywashy that they won't actually dare do anything against the Sudanese government or the Janjawid
(Link via Harry's Place)
21 July 2004 Blog Home : July 2004 : Permalink
Baldilocks has noted that a US state - Colorado - has passed a law to forbid travelling in the left-hand lane of a multilane road unless you are overtaking. In my humble opinion this would be better known as "common sense" or "Doh" but I'm sure some stick in the muds will fail to understand what the law means. The VodkaPundit helpfully provides an additional Public Service Announcement:
Drivers of minivans, Volvos, and contractor pickup trucks, as well as old people and women on cell phones -- your attention please. The law covers the entire stretch of I-25 between the North Academy exit in Colorado Springs and Denver's C-470 interchange.
If you're caught dawdling anywhere in that area, I hope a cop puts a ticket so far in your pants, it would make Sandy Berger cringe.
Unfortunately I fear this will not be enough and, since I doubt that Colorado's finest will be able to devote too much time to enforcement, I suggest that the citizens adopt a European approach to persuading the scofflaws that they should consider obeying the law. For that have not had the pleasre to drive the Autobahns, Autoroutes, Autostrade and/or Motorways of the old world, the European approach is as follows:
Note that you do not need to have one of those big fast german automobiles to successfuly pursue this strategy, I have seen it performed by a Renault Twingo on one of those aforementioned german automobiles.
25 July 2004 Blog Home : July 2004 : Permalink
This post is anecdotal evidence that may or may not be worth extrapolating ....
In the past 10 years or so I have had numerous contacts with various Israeli High Tech startups. I have at least 3 friends who have had entirely separate contacts with different Israeli High Tech startups. We all say the same thing and at second or third hand and after a few beers I have heard similar stories from many others.
What we have discovered is that Israeli business practises are extraordinarily agressive and completely amoral. Here are some guidelines:
There is no point in making a fair offer, any offer you make will be rejected and they will attempt to haggle you down to the point where you are making a loss. They also tend to be slow, late payers with one excuse after another for not making payment on time. The only way to have a beneficial relationship with an Israeli company is to have something they can't get from anywhere else. Then tell them the price and insist on payment in advance. Do not bother negotiating. Just repeat the terms.
Two of my friends have reported that Israeli companies often make an extremely complex bidding process where the bidder has to provide detailed answers to questions about the project and possibly even free samples. Frequently after all the bids are in bidders get told that "the budget has been cancelled sorry" but the company keeps the samples and the bid responses. In these cases it seems that in fatc the company had no intention of awarding the deal, they just wanted the free samples/information in the response.
Insist that all bonuses, incentive based pay etc have the terms written down then go over them with a lawyer to make sure that they are what you think they are. One friend of mine took his (about to be former) employer to court because the employer refused to pay bonuses that he had earned. He only won some of them, those that he had had a lawyer look at and revise.
Insist on a warranty. Insist on stringent penalties for failure and ensure that a lawyer agrees with you. Do not pay in advance. Do not trust Israeli quality control for hardware. Do not buy anything before you have seen it working in your configuration. I have personally witnessed Israeli companies selling products/features that they know do not exist or do not work as have my friends. I have personally seen Israeli hardware with a defect rate of 20%-30% (i.e. about one box in four doesn't work when shipped).
Many of the practises noted above also occur elsewhere. But in my experience there is a difference in degree. There is no good will, no give and take. In cases where I have given the benefit of the doubt and done a little extra I found that henceforward the little extra was expected every time and so on. To put it bluntly there is an assumption that every deal has one winner and one loser. Concepts of win-win or mutual benefit do not seem to be present. Nor does the concept of customer loyalty / long term relationship.
When I look at Israels attitude to the world I see very similar traits.
This is a problem because these traits make it hard for successful negotiations....
It could be that this attitude is the result of generations of discrimination (actually I suspect it is in part), but this is one of those chicken and egg situations because if one party to a deal/negotiation believes that its an all or nothing game then the there won't be many successful deals which means people won't like dealing with you which means discrimination etc.
This means that unfair or not the wall may be the best solution. With a wall there is a definite border and no negotiation and hence no need to feel like have to win. There is an old English saysin thet "good fences make good neighbours" and I think it applies here as much as in suburban gardens or rural farms.
Permalink25 July 2004 Blog Home : July 2004 : Permalink
This is a prediction:
at some point in the future historians of the Olympic games will look back at the 2004 event and use it as a textbook example of how not to hold a massive sporting event.
My wife knows an IOC related person who is currently in Greece to prod buttock. According to that lady the Athens games look likely to be an utter shambles even if there are no terrorist troubles. Phrases like "couldn't organize a pissup in a brewery" and "third world country with delusions of grandeur" are just two of the comments and probably the only two that I can repeat without including obscenities, blasphemies and references to Oedipus and other Greek myths. Just imagine your favourite Drill Sargeant's invective and you'll get the picture.
However the most interesting comment she made is that most of the Greeks don't actually realize their lack of capability. They think they are going to do a wonderful job and have no idea how the world at large is going bitch and moan at their sloppiness. To the Greeks those little quirks, such as the fact that sometimes the new Metro trains don't stop at every station they should, are just the way life is but I have a feeling that the rest of the world will disagree
Now as is well known one anecdote doesn't prove anything, but I have a second eyewitness report to provide corroboration. One of the largest banks in Greece who shall remain nameless has decided to upgrade the network that links its cash machines (ATMs) to head office and thence to the foreign banks that will allow tourists to withdraw money. OK sounds sensible, after all Athens is expecting lots of additional visitors for the Olympics and the old network uses X.25 and 1970s era technology so an upgrade seems wise. But here's the kicker. The upgrade, which is essentially a total replacement using a completely different scheme based on IP and MPLS, is intended to go live before the games start in 3 weeks time. They haven't yet got the lab pilot running. So the chances are extremely high that they will roll this new network out before the games and see it collpase in a heap. Personally I'd make sure I got my €uros before I got on the plane to Greece if I had to go and since I don't I'm going to stay as far away as possible.
Permalink26 July 2004 Blog Home : July 2004 : Permalink
(This fisk brought to you from the Instapundit via Virginia Postrel).
The latest piece of bile from Maureen Dowd is just so bad that I have to fisk it. I know fisking Dowd is a bit like stealing pennies from a blind beggar but sometimes these things just have to be done so here goes:
Maybe it's because I've been instructed to pack a respirator escape hood along with party dresses for the Boston convention. Maybe it's because our newspaper has assigned a terrorism reporter to cover a political convention. Maybe it's because George Bush is relaxing at his ranch down there (again) while Osama is planning a big attack up here (again). Maybe it's because there are just as many American soldiers dying in Iraq post-transfer, more Muslims more mad at us over fake W.M.D. intelligence and depravity at Abu Ghraib, and more terrorists in more diffuse networks hating us more.
Maybe it's because the F.B.I. is still learning how to Google and the C.I.A. has an acting head who spends most of his time acting defensive over his agency's failure to get anything right. Maybe it's because so many of those federal twits who missed the 10 chances to stop the 9/11 hijackers, who blew off our Paul Reveres - Richard Clarke, Coleen Rowley and the Phoenix memo author - still run things. Call me crazy, Mr. President, but I don't feel any safer.
Well maybe it is because you are crazy, maybe is because you are unclear on cause and effect, maybe its because the moon is in Venus or maybe its because I'm a Londoner. I'm sure we can go on like this with lists that lack any logical connection and contain gratuitous slurs but perhaps we'd better stop and get to the point. I'll just note that so far we have almost half a dozen claims of questionable veracity - such as the indication that Osama is planning anything, that casualties are at the same rate, that Muslims are more mad, that the WMD intelligence was fake, that Abu Ghraib abuse is still occuring.
The nation's mesmerizing new best seller, the 9/11 commission report, lays bare how naked we still are against an attack, and how vulnerable we are because of the time and money the fuzzy-headed Bush belligerents wasted going after the wrong target.
One could agree with that and yet mean different things. I suspect you mean its because the US invaded Iraq instead of just working on Afghanistan but a case could be made that it was the time and effort the wasted buttering up the UN and not insisting that the entire corrupt organization do without US support of any description.
Even scarier, the commissioners expect Congress, which they denounced as "dysfunctional" on intelligence oversight, to get busy fixing things just as lawmakers are flying home for vacation.
Again we see slight possibiltiy of agreement, Congressional oversight is indeed "dysfunctional" and does take long vacations, but it seems from this that the sainted MoDo believes that Congress can't and shouldn't fix anything. Is she suggesting that we need a dicatorial tyrant? A (whisper it) Stalin? or a H_____?
The report offers vivid details on our worst fears. Instead of focusing on immediately hitting back at Osama, Bush officials indulged their idiotic idée fixe on Saddam and ignored the memo from their counter-terrorism experts dismissing any connection between the religious fanatic bin Laden and the secular Hussein.
Of course they ignored that memo. That's because it didn't exist. Someone who actually read the report (and the related Senate one) would have realised that what the relvant memos said was that there was no direct connection between Saddam and Sept 11. There were memos discussing the actual, albeit somewhat informal, links between Saddam and Al Qaeda but it seems that Osama omitted Saddam from his CC list when planning 9/11
"On the afternoon of 9/11, according to contemporaneous notes, Secretary Rumsfeld instructed General Myers to obtain quickly as much information as possible," the report says. " The notes indicate that he also told Myers that he was not simply interested in striking empty training sites. The secretary said his instinct was to hit Saddam Hussein at the same time - not only bin Laden."
At the first Camp David meeting after 9/11, the report states, "Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz made the case for striking Iraq during 'this round' of the war on terrorism."
Six days after the World Trade Center towers were pulverized, when we should have been striking Osama with everything we had, the Bush team was absorbed with old grudges and stale assumptions.
"At the September 17 N.S.C. meeting, there was some further discussion of 'phase two' of the war on terrorism," the report says. "President Bush ordered the Defense Department to be ready to deal with Iraq if Baghdad acted against U.S. interests, with plans to include possibly occupying Iraqi oil fields."
So what I read from the above is that the government made some initial assumptions based on past events - such as Saddam's sheltering of the previous WTC bomber and his attempt to assasinate Bush père (look I know French too its dead good for impressing hoi polloi) and then when more details emerged modified its assumptions and plans. Of course MoDo is blessed with a hotline from God (Allah?) so she knew on Sept 17th that Osama was acting alone and that Iraq (and Iran for that matter) would not see an opportunity to try and take advantage of American concentration on Afghanistan. Moreover she has pope-like infallibility and never needs advisors to suggest alternative plans which are then not adopted. Not examining these alternatives and then making a decision would in fact be precisely the act of someone with an idée fixe whereas changing ones mind seems to demonstrate a willingness to look at the evidence and engage in mental flexibility.
President Bush was unsure of himself, relying too much on a vice president whose deep, calm voice belied a deeply cracked world view.
Ahh yes well the last bit was a little weak so I'll distract attention from my logical holes with a nice gratuitous insult.
He explained to the commissioners that he had stayed in his seat making little fish faces at second graders for seven minutes after learning about the second plane hitting the towers because, as the report says, "The president felt he should project strength and calm until he could better understand what was happening."
What better way to track the terror in the Northeast skies than by reading "My Pet Goat" in Sarasota?
There is a well known saying
when in danger or in doubt,
run in circles scream and shout
This seems to be what MoDo's infallible wisdom recommends as sound presidential behaviour. Unless President Bush is actually a Clark Gable or Peter Parker he isn't in fact going to be able to add any meaningful assistence to stopping an attack or rescuing people in the first few minutes. On the contrary asking for a briefing in the middle of a disaster just diverts resources that might be able to be used in stopping it or assisting the survivors. During the time that the President was "making fish faces" no one knew whether the first plane crash was an accident or deliberate and no one had any idea whether, if it was an attack, it was a stand alone or not. However all this is imaterial to MoDo who apparently expects her president to have the same hotline to God that she seems to possess.
The commissioners warn that the price for the Bush bullies' attention deficit disorder could be high: "If, for example, Iraq becomes a failed state, it will go to the top of the list of places that are breeding grounds for attacks against Americans at home. Similarly, if we are paying insufficient attention to Afghanistan, the rule of the Taliban or warlords and narcotraffickers may re-emerge and its countryside could once again offer refuge to Al Qaeda, or its successor."
And Iraq under Saddam was not a failed state? and not already at or near "the top of the list of places that are breeding grounds for attacks against Americans"? Mind you this is interesting, it seems that MoDo believes we should keep troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and provide assistance and support to the governments there. Exactly how this differs from the policy of the Bush white house is unclear.
And, if that's not ominous enough, consider this: "The problem is that Al Qaeda represents an ideological movement, not a finite group of people. It initiates and inspires, even if it no longer directs."
"Yet killing or capturing" Osama, the report says, "while extremely important, would not end terror. His message of inspiration to a new generation of terrorists would continue."
So let me see if I have this clear. Not trying to kill or otherwise bother about Osama is the better policy because that way he won't be an inspiration. OK so how do you square that with the statement at the top that "Maybe it's because George Bush is relaxing at his ranch down there (again) while Osama is planning a big attack up here (again)" that makes you scared? To a logical male bereft of MoDo's feminine intuition and infallibility the killing the leader and as many of his followers as you can find while at the same time attempting to reform the culture that inspired them sends a message to "a new generation of terrorists" that all they get is death fighting for a losing cause but maybe I'm just missing something.
If the Bush crowd hadn't been besotted with the idea of smoking Saddam, they could have stomped Osama in Tora Bora. Now it's too late. Al Qaeda has become a state of mind.
And if "Pantsman" Berger had not been rude to Sudan he could have been stuck in Guantanamo bay in 1998 - oh hang on that would be illegal because we couldn't try him and we'd be infringing on his Geneva convention rights so lets try again.
Obviously if Bush had declared war on Afghanistan on Jan 20th 2001 this would have met with MoDo's uncritical approval because it would have been a completely justified war against a clear and present danger to the US?
Yeah right!
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