Politics: J'accuse!

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Not Me
I didn't think this was out of the ordinary behavior for me. But if that bitch Gorelick isn't booted off that Commission by Friday, you won't be so well informed with the news for the next week.

Before you go, could you link to an artists' rendition of you bottomless? TIA.

S_A_M

[The Larry Davis Experience]

To continue my chronicling of what the previous incarnation of Ty dubbed "the Chalabi Special Olympics"*, it looks like our boys in Baghdad aren't playing nice with others. Or at least their friends in the INC aren't, to the tune of abduction, robbery, auto theft and shooting at the police.

To be fair I'm sure more of that stuff is going on than just with the INC's miscreants. I just wish it wasn't our Chosen People doing it too.

Anyway, I loved this quote from, of all people, David Kay:

In fact, the former head of the weapons hunt, David Kay, questions why a group that provided “fabricated information” is still on the U.S. payroll. “You know, once taken, excused," says Kay. "Twice taken you’re an idiot. And I think we’re now at the point of we’re really an idiot.”

* I am not sure I get the gist of this title, but it sure is catchy...

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
Before you go, could you link to an artists' rendition of you bottomless? TIA.

S_A_M

[SPREE - Artist's rendition of me bottomless]
Artist's Rendition of Me Bottomless

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Beauty
If you really think that such speech is going to make a dispositive difference for our military efforts, isn't there a patriotic duty for everyone to shut up until the war is over? If not, why not? And if not, why shouldn't Johnson shut up?

There is an inherent tension between the preservation of our complete freedom of speech, and the strategic (note I say that, and not "patriotic" - big difference) wisdom of saying things that bolster an enemy's fight. You keep wanting to treat this as a one-issue subject, and it's tiring. There are two issues, intertwined. Can I give you the perfect answer to, what to do? Nope. I see you've got the perfect answer, but you only get it by ignoring the half of the issues that don't serve you well.

[Bad_Rich_Chic]

Originally posted by The Larry Davis Experience
Your pre 9/11 point is well taken, but I thought the freakouts were due to Bush preparing war plans for Iraq in the months after 9/11, when we had a good idea that the attacks did not originate in Iraq and when Bush was telling the media that his meetings were focused on Afghanistan. But maybe I don't have a handle on all the freaking out going on.

Some people are freaking out about one or the other, some about both. There has actually been a lot of freaking out about "Bush wanted to invade Iraq from Day 1 of his admin! See, they talked about it in meetings! It's proof he's obsessed with avenging Dad and benefiting his oil cronies! 9/11 was just an excuse!" We appear to be agreed that most sensible people find this silly and think the serious questions about what the hell they think they are doing lie elsewhere.

Actually, I don't particularly understand the freaking out about going in after 9/11, either, but then I never understood the "Bush Lied!" thing simply because it never occurred to me that official/media explanations should be presumed to have anything to do with reality when relating to military and/or diplomatic strategy in time of war. Maybe that's cynical of me, maybe not - Stratfor (sorry) had an interesting blurb a week or so ago which disagrees strongly with my acceptance of disinformation in wartime, contrasting Bush II to FDR's rather shocking candor in dealing with the press during WWII and how it went a long way toward enabling the press & people to understand specific actions & setbacks in a coherent strategic context and feel like we are heading toward some forseeable goal and stick behind it, which sure isn't happening right now.

But, regardless of nonsensical official spin, invading Iraq post 9/11 seemed a great opportunity to me to kill 2 birds with one stone - fix the long fucked-up Iraq situation that would just have gone on absorbing troops and resources to no effect, and put a huge military presence in the most strategically situated country in the region from which our most serious current problems are emanating (and let's be honest - Pakistan is part of the problem and the immediate or proximate location of ObL, but it's pretty friggin' hard to pressure Saudi Arabia, Syria, Oman, Yemen and Iran with "if you don't clean house maybe we will" threats from Afghanistan). I still think it was a good - potentially excellent - move in terms of geopolitical positioning (and yes, therefore, in the "War on Terror"). Sorry sad-sacks seem determined to fuck up the execution as much as they possibly can (not to mention their complete failure to offer anything resembling a sensible explanation for it), though I'm also sort of impressed with their ability, once they've found themselves in the shit yet again, to turn shit into shineola.

[Not Me]

http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/me.../29/iraq.poll/

[Beauty]

Originally posted by bilmore
There is an inherent tension between the preservation of our complete freedom of speech, and the strategic (note I say that, and not "patriotic" - big difference) wisdom of saying things that bolster an enemy's fight. You keep wanting to treat this as a one-issue subject, and it's tiring. There are two issues, intertwined. Can I give you the perfect answer to, what to do? Nope. I see you've got the perfect answer, but you only get it by ignoring the half of the issues that don't serve you well.

What do you mean, I keep wanting to treat this as a one-issue subject? My position is clear: The claims about giving comfort to Al Qaeda are, without more, completely speculative. We'd have to do some kind of balancing if we had anything to balance. You at least seem to think you have competing interests to balance, but you aren't saying what you do with them. What more (if anything) do you need to know before you can form an opinion that Johnson is a fathead who should shut up, or that opponents of Bush owe it to our boys and girls in Iraq to keep it to themselves for a while. I don't need a perfect answer -- I'd settle for any answer. Saying these are factors you need to consider is just ducking the question.

[Not Me]

Link to the Vatis memo:

http://www.cnsnews.com/pdf/2004/doj_response.pdf

http://www.cnsnews.com//ViewSpecialR...20040429b.html

• White, who was the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, spelled out her concerns shortly after Gorelick wrote the memo establishing the new guidelines for federal investigations.
  
  The reply that followed came from Michael Vatis, deputy director of the Executive Office of National Security, with Gorelick signing off on Vatis' language.
  
  White was concerned that Gorelick's new guidelines for investigations had made it too complicated for the FBI to contact the U.S. attorney's office and launch a probe of suspicious activity. White suggested that only the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review at the Department of Justice needed to approve such an investigation, and not the department's criminal division.
  
  However, the Vatis/Gorelick memo offered a blunt reply.
  
  "I recommend rejecting this change," the June 19, 1995 document stated. "[A] USAO (U.S. attorney's office) should not be notified of a national security investigation -- particularly one that has not yet developed into a criminal case -- without the approval of the AAG (assistant attorney general), Criminal Division."
  
  The Vatis/Gorelick memo also addressed White's reservations over how the new investigative guidelines would impact a probe under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). White contended that once the Justice Department's Criminal Division had decided that criminal law enforcement concerns existed in a FISA investigation, the appropriate U.S. attorney should be contacted.
  
  Vatis rejected this notion as well.
  
  "Notifying the USAO as soon as law enforcement concerns exist -- but before Crim. thinks that the investigation should 'go criminal' -- is simply too early," the document stated.

[The Larry Davis Experience]

Originally posted by Bad_Rich_Chic
Actually, I don't particularly understand the freaking out about going in after 9/11, either, but then I never understood the "Bush Lied!" thing simply because it never occurred to me that official/media explanations should be presumed to have anything to do with reality when relating to military and/or diplomatic strategy in time of war. Maybe that's cynical of me, maybe not - Stratfor (sorry) had an interesting blurb a week or so ago which disagrees strongly with my acceptance of disinformation in wartime, contrasting Bush II to FDR's rather shocking candor in dealing with the press during WWII and how it went a long way toward enabling the press & people to understand specific actions & setbacks in a coherent strategic context and feel like we are heading toward some forseeable goal and stick behind it, which sure isn't happening right now.

But, regardless of nonsensical official spin, invading Iraq post 9/11 seemed a great opportunity to me to kill 2 birds with one stone - fix the long fucked-up Iraq situation that would just have gone on absorbing troops and resources to no effect, and put a huge military presence in the most strategically situated country in the region from which our most serious current problems are emanating

Clearly I favor the FDR approach. I have a problem with our armed forces being sent to do these things without the American people knowing this. That's why we used to require congress to declare war before we did stuff like this. Your view seems kind of paternalistic (don't worry, children, we're doing this for good reasons that don't concern you).

(and let's be honest - Pakistan is part of the problem and the immediate or proximate location of ObL, but it's pretty friggin' hard to pressure Saudi Arabia, Syria, Oman, Yemen and Iran with "if you don't clean house maybe we will" threats from Afghanistan).

Why? It hasn't stopped folks from claiming that the Iraq invasion worked to pressure Libya. I just don't get how people can claim that OBL is somehow peripheral to this war on terror. Maybe that's not what you're doing, but it certainly sounds that way as you make this unstated case for the war on Iraq.

Sorry sad-sacks seem determined to fuck up the execution as much as they possibly can (not to mention their complete failure to offer anything resembling a sensible explanation for it), though I'm also sort of impressed with their ability, once they've found themselves in the shit yet again, to turn shit into shineola.

This is a remarkable sentence, but I can't follow it even if I squint. Who or what is the shineola at this point?

[Beauty]

Originally posted by Bad_Rich_Chic
But, regardless of nonsensical official spin, invading Iraq post 9/11 seemed a great opportunity to me to kill 2 birds with one stone - fix the long fucked-up Iraq situation that would just have gone on absorbing troops and resources to no effect, and put a huge military presence in the most strategically situated country in the region from which our most serious current problems are emanating (and let's be honest - Pakistan is part of the problem and the immediate or proximate location of ObL, but it's pretty friggin' hard to pressure Saudi Arabia, Syria, Oman, Yemen and Iran with "if you don't clean house maybe we will" threats from Afghanistan). I still think it was a good - potentially excellent - move in terms of geopolitical positioning (and yes, therefore, in the "War on Terror").

Unfortunately, none of Iraq's neighbors should feel threatened right now because we don't even have the military in place to pacify Iraq, let alone to invade one of them. Which is to say that your geopolitics are well taken, but there are other serious constraints on our ability to act in the region.

And you presume that we had reasonable prospects of "fixing" the situation in Iraq, which seems to presume that the problem was Hussein, and not also the situation that gave rise to him. You have three different ethnic groups (one not even Arabs) sharing a "nation" uneasily. The British couldn't make it work, and they had more experience with that sort of thing. I won't disagree that this crowd has screwed things up in a massive way, but I also tend to think that what they were trying to do was futile.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Beauty
My position is clear: The claims about giving comfort to Al Qaeda are, without more, completely speculative.

Sigh.

I've never seen China, myself.

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Beauty
Unfortunately, none of Iraq's neighbors should feel threatened right now because we don't even have the military in place to pacify Iraq, let alone to invade one of them. Which is to say that your geopolitics are well taken, but there are other serious constraints on our ability to act in the region.

Ty, you just don't get it. The thing that threatens these totalitarian regimes in the middle east isn't our military. It is the prospect of a successful democracy in Iraq.

Read the poll I cited to above. The Iraqis may not trust us and may want us out, but they are optomistic about self-government and a free Iraq.

[Diane_Keaton]

Originally posted by Not Me Allegations surfaced in a Baghdad newspaper earlier this year that Benon Sevan, the director of the program, was among 270 sympathetic international political and financial figures who received sweetheart oil deals from Saddam.[/list]

Oh, but Sevan was pretty effective in defending against those allegations you know.

BENON: "You tell me we are skimming. Skimming what? What proof do you have to skim anything? I'm very sorry to say, it's very easy to talk, la, la, la, la, la, you know."

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by bilmore
Sigh.

I've never seen China, myself.

But I have seen Chinese people, ergo I believe that China exists.

Ok, Ty -- in terms of the question of whther terorists such as Al Qaeda care about and/or attempt to influence domestic politics in the West, including the U.S. in this protracted apocalyptic battle that they forsee, what do you think about:

(a) Al Qaeda's offer to the EU nations of a "truce" if they met certain conditions; or

(b) the demands of the kidnappers holding three Italian security guys in Iraq that Italians protest their country's presence in Iraq on a certain day lest their captured countrymen be slain; or

(c) the kidnappings of Japanese and Korean civilians, with demands that those nations withdraw their troops by a certain deadline?

[I believe said Italian protests were scheduled for today or tomorrow.]

BTW -- Bilmore, Ty is correct that you've never said whether or not you agree with Rep. Johnson, et al., or whether you thought that their statements were appropriate.

S_A_M

[The Larry Davis Experience]

Originally posted by bilmore
Sigh.

I've never seen China, myself.

You know, I myself would be a lot more receptive to the "critics are giving aid to our enemies" line of argument if it were recognized that there are many activities that could be seen as doing the same thing.

For instance, I see the key drawback to the Iraq project as being the likelihood of its creating new recruits for terrorist groups both in Iraq and elsewhere. I think, more so than the words of the American public, the corruption of our surrogates over there (see my prior post about the INC) and our somewhat incomprehensible insensitivity at times (see this article on the US's treatment of prisoners held at the infamous Abu Ghraib prison; fake electrocutions at SH's torture factory???) gives aid and comfort to the enemy by bolstering their recruiting efforts. Yet I don't hear much about that from those who are so solidly behind the war effort that they would prefer to stifle the comments of critics rather than letting those ideas be debated in the open.