Richard Perle, humanitarian of the year:
If we let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs* about us years from now.Referenced many places. By the way, this sounds like another chap:
Do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more total and radical than anything that we can even imagine today?Who's this? Goebbels! We find ourselves in darker and darker company.
* By "great songs" - does that mean we'll have even more great hits by the likes of Toby Keith and Worley? Awesome (*cough*)! At least they're not traitors (according to a site that ends up being traitorous to any definition of 'freedom' that I have ever learnt outside of animal farm - a site that labels anyone against the President as traitors while completely slandering the previous vice-president. Self contradictory (and full of great aesthetics), one hopes to write it off as "they really know not what they do").
Or, will these great songs be sung by the likes of Boyd Rice?
While Michael Moore can be a bit of a loud boorish wingnut, he's a good counterweight to the some loud boorish wingnuts on the conservative side of the bully pulpit. Anyways, Moore has treated us to a story debunking the Oscar backlash:
And that, my friends, is the real point of this film that I just got an Oscar for – how those in charge use fear to manipulate the public into doing whatever they are told.That was one of the main messages I walked away from Bowling for Columbine with. While it's a far from perfect film, it does raise some good points. The media plays up our fears, because it makes for a more captive audience. A terrific Saturday Night Live skit from a couple of years ago was the "Action 8 News Watch". The point of this skit was all of the news about the news that news shows start out with: "The President was assassinated today, but president of what? We'll tell you at the end of the hour". The rest of the skit was full of the usual "deadly common household items", which the anchors would hint at as being "very common, you or your children could be using it right now" and then say "we'll tell what it is later in the broadcast." Building arbitrary fear into the news has become a staple of American life, long before color coded alert days came into it. And now we have an administration that dishes it out daily. "This man is a menace. We must go in and stop him, before he hits us."
On a local NPR station this morning, a man called in swearing undying support of the Patriot Act, even saying it must be expanded and that yes - the government should know what you're reading and investigate you without the courts interfering. He said this is because "we are in grave times." Horseshit! The situation today is only worse than it was in 1999 due to our middle east actions. Otherwise. sigh In the ten years since the first world trade center bombing, there have only been two successful attacks on American soil, and one of them came from within. There were plenty of attempts, and they were all stopped without the need for the PATRIOT acts! Yes, one devastating attack got through, and it is indeed terrible and tragic that it happened. And it's good that the American public has woken up to the fact that yes, it is a dangerous world. But these are NOT grave times. Well, they're grave times if you're an Iraqi civilian that didn't survive the "shock and awe" and other campaigns, but they're not so grave for us. If you think they are, you are caught up in the propaganda that this administration and their media cronies are pounding you with. And that reminds me of this quote:
"Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country."Who said it? Hermann Goering. My point: Be more cynical. If a quote from Hitler's appointed successor can sum up the current situation, I think it's safe to say that the current situation is fucked.
More reminders about why war sucks, especially a war that didn't need to happen:
With my own eyes I saw about fifteen civilians killed in two days. I've gone through enough wars to know that it's always dirty, that civilians are always the first victims. But the way it was happening here, it was insane.But don't worry, because now we realize that it's really Syria who's the problem, not Saddam. If we hadn't killed all these people in the first place, we never would have known that we'd get to blame someone else yet again for our own ineptitude towards capturing Osama. Does the body count have to be equal to or greater than September 11th in order for us to feel justified? Or do we just have to prove that our Gods are the best? Is Russia next on the list? The United States and Russia have done more to arm these regions/despots/wingnuts we're now soiling our spoilt god-blessed diapers over than Saddam Hussein ever did.
...
I drove away a girl who had had her humerus pierced by a bullet. Enrico was holding her in his arms. In the rear, the girl's father was protecting his young son, wounded in the torso and losing consciousness. The man spoke in gestures to the doctor at the back of the lines, pleading: "I don't understand, I was walking and holding my children's hands. Why didn't you shoot in the air? Or at least shoot me?"
[Laurent Van der Stockt, interviewed by Michael Guerrin for Le Monde, Translated for CounterPunch by Norman Madarasz]
How long before we have the Country Song "I can't even spell Syria, but let's bomb them anyway"?
Anyways, we're still seeking out our justification for the war and having a hard time finding it. I, like others, really wouldn't be surprised if something was eventually found - but for something so dangerous that we were so certain was there, why can't we find anything?
After days of intense digging and searching at least seven suspicious sites near Nassiriya, U.S. experts have found chemical warfare protective suits, but no chemical weapons.We still have a ways to go before this is all over and some stash of these things may be found, but it's certainly not looking to be the terrifying planet killers that we were constantly warned about. Don't you think a few more months of hard-lined inspections could have yielded the same results? Seriously - there are probably more chemical weapons just a few miles west of where I'm typing this than there are in Iraq (and yes - those weapons are being destroyed).
Chief Warrant Officer Alex Robinson, leading the U.S. search in the area, admitted on Thursday that his list of suspect sites in southern Iraq was "kind of drying up". [Croft, Adrien]