Politics: J'accuse!

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
Except in Hank's case.

well technically, Fringe is my primary, not really a sock- but I'll stop the Hank act for a week

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
Ok, you post a Greek passage - then a link to Blog where some doofus praises Robert Fisk and condemns the US for finally acknowledging that the so-called "right of return" is a ludicrous non-starter that no one will ever take seriously.

Please clarify (a) what I didn't read and (b) what makes this any different from any one of a gazillion Thottam posts, save the silly moniker like "Tears in Rain" or "Boxer"?

I wasn't being sarcastic. Way to prove you read the post I cited to.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
well technically, Fringe is my primary, not really a sock- but I'll stop the Hank act for a week

Only if she dies, Hank. Only if she dies.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
Where to start?

In a system that disqualifies for even a perception of conflict, we've got what's-her-name investigating herself. And we've got Kean angrily telling the AG to butt out, that that's not a conflict upon which he should be commenting.

How odd. I'm looking back for your complaints about Zelikow's failure to recuse, but I'm not seeing any.

And speaking of odd, how odd that all these conservatives were so quiet about the Gorelick thing until the spotlight was on Ashcroft, and he made the charge.

Nice article in the NYT today with the commissioners explaining why they've been so public about things.

• Mr. Kean said the panel had closely studied the work of the commissions that examined the Pearl Harbor attack and the Kennedy assassination and concluded that their secrecy did not serve them well — particularly in the case of the assassination, about which conspiracies still abound. "Those other commissions failed in many ways," Mr. Kean said. "They were sometimes not looked on as credible."

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
How odd. I'm looking back for your complaints about Zelikow's failure to recuse, but I'm not seeing any.

Partially because I have no idea who that person is.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone_Slothrop
How odd.

"We made a conscious decision, and part of it was under strong pressure from the [victims'] families, to make this commission as transparent and as visible as possible."--9/11 commission chairman Thomas Kean on commission members' repeated TV appearances, quoted in the New York Times, April 15

"People ought to stay out of our business."--Kean, on allegations that commissioner Jamie Gorelick has a conflict of interest, quoted in the Washington Post, April 15

[Say_hello_for_me]

Hi all, I just thought I'd note a reading experience that was touching in a way today, and it shows what I think is great about the American media and the effects it can have without editorializing.

If you go to the New York Times website (registration req'd), and if you have a stomach, on the right side of the front page is a link to a pop up of all of our young people who died in Iraq recently. It shows their pictures, their ranks and service-branch, and their names and hometowns.

You'll observe a few marine officers (two 1st lieutenants and 1 captain) in their mid/late 20's, and one or two grizzled NCO types. But for the most part, you'll see a whole bunch of our kids who were only 18-22 years old.

In 20 years will we wonder what the world would have been like for someone if these kids had lived? Will their spouses remarry? will their kids be okay or turn to drugs as they grow older because of this? Do we wonder now about those we lost 20 years ago in places like Beirut?

Anyway, all I'm saying is that these are our nation's beautiful youth, mostly staring intently into a camera with a straight face. They have names, and even if you only read their names for 2 seconds and never remember the name again, I thought it was sort of a strong reading experience.

The pictures are mostly similar to the dress-uniform portraits that are in living rooms all over the country. Most are wearing dress caps, but you'll note at least one NCO wearing a smokey-the- bear hat. Was he a DI somewhere before he got attached to a combat unit? But most are the sort of pictures you get in one of your first military courses around graduation time. Just a bunch of kids who almost certainly would not have stayed in the military for long, and who would have just came back to our cities and towns and villages to hopefully live "normal" lives. Maybe they would have just come home and gone to college, maybe even law school.

Its easy to imagine how devastating these individual losses are for their individual families and communities, its harder to imagine how much more of these individual tragedies we can stomach as a nation. But surely this can't be tolerated much longer.

Hello

[Not Me]

Originally posted by Say_hello_for_me
Its easy to imagine how devastating these individual losses are for their individual families and communities, its harder to imagine how much more of these individual tragedies we can stomach as a nation. But surely this can't be tolerated much longer.

And those are just the ones who are dead. I saw a piece not too long ago on the injured. A 20 year old who lost both his legs and both his eyes. Blind with no legs. At 20.

What are you proposing? I am seriously asking this because I don't have a good proposal to offer. I can tell you what needs to be done, i.e., put down the insurgency, train the Iraqis to be their own security force, rebuild the infrastructure, but don't know how it can be done faster with fewer lives lost. Do you?

Pulling out seems out of the question. The question I need an answer to is how to stay there and minimize deaths/injuries. Are more troops the answer?

[Not Me]

Originally posted by bilmore
Partially because I have no idea who that person is.

This article from the NYT will tell you:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/14/po...partner=GOOGLE

The Sept. 11 commission's executive director, Philip D. Zelikow, worked on national security as part of the Bush transition team before Mr. Bush was inaugurated. In 1995, he wrote a book about German unification with Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser and the chief witness before the commission last week.

During the transition, Mr. Zelikow sat in on a detailed briefing about Al Qaeda from Mr. Clarke. Mr. Zelikow has also been formally interviewed by his own staff about the transition period. He has disqualified himself from participating in any of the commission's work involving the transition. . . .

But Ms. Gorelick's baggage seems somewhat heavier than the others'. Last week, questioning Ms. Rice, Ms. Gorelick asserted: "We have big systemic problems. The F.B.I. doesn't work the way it should, and it doesn't communicate with the intelligence community."

[Skeks in the city]

Originally posted by Sidd Finch

IAEA reports that nuclear material has been vanishing from Iraq. (No, not the WMD -- material from nuclear power plants.) http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...=540&ncid=1480

This is no surprise. It's predictable that unemployed scientists, much less minimum wage rent-a-cops, are selling know-how and supplies for making nukes. If the U.S. doesn't buy up the scientists and supplies, the market will.

[SlaveNoMore]

Tyrone_Slothrop
I wasn't being sarcastic. Way to prove you read the post I cited to.

Nor was I.

But behind all of that, and behind any Palestinian leader seeking to negotiate a settlement with Israel, are those families still dreaming of their orange trees and clutching their title deeds. And that is what the “right of return” is all about. It is about justice for those people and their descendants, and about recognition of the wrongs that were done to them...
I don’t want this screed to get too long-winded and sanctimonious. Where it is going should be clear. George W. Bush, by setting out as a matter of policy that the right of return to lands inside Israel will not be recognized, and that “new realities on the ground” should trump claims of justice, and that many settlements illegally established by Israel on the West Bank since 1967, has
probably permanently undermined any prospect of the reconciliation I just wrote about. He may even have done this for short-term electoral advantage. So the nation that all parties relied upon to broker a compromise has come out as a partisan not just of one side, but of extremist elements on that side.

You've become Pete. Congrats.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
"We made a conscious decision, and part of it was under strong pressure from the [victims'] families, to make this commission as transparent and as visible as possible."--9/11 commission chairman Thomas Kean on commission members' repeated TV appearances, quoted in the New York Times, April 15

"People ought to stay out of our business."--Kean, on allegations that commissioner Jamie Gorelick has a conflict of interest, quoted in the Washington Post, April 15

That second quote makes more sense if you substitute "Ashcroft" for "People."

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
You've become Pete. Congrats.

Fuck you. I didn't quote that. I stuck to quoting dead Greeks.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore

You've become Pete. Congrats.

Fuck you, too. I'll be the first to let you knowwhen imaginary Marines start wandering around the bus stops here .

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Not Me
This article from the NYT will tell you:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/14/po...partner=GOOGLE

Sacred Terror goes on for ten pages about the FBI's inability to (a) focus on crimes before they are committed, as with counterterrorism, and (b) share any sort of information with other government agencies. The book attributes this to Rule 6(e) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, but says nothing about "the wall." Attributing the FBI's mis- and non-feasance to "the wall" is the worst kind of opportunism. Happily, this is the topic of the day only because Ashcroft's apologists are pushing it, but it will disappear soon.