Year: 2003

Some reminders of how some people’s memories are short. Here’s Maureen Dowd on March 9 of this year:

The case for war has been incoherent due to overlapping reasons conservatives want to get Saddam. The president wants to avenge his father, and please his base by changing the historical ellipsis on the Persian Gulf war to a period. Donald Rumsfeld wants to exorcise the post-Vietnam focus on American imperfections and limitations. Dick Cheney wants to establish America’s primacy as the sole superpower. Richard Perle wants to liberate Iraq and remove a mortal threat to Israel. After Desert Storm, Paul Wolfowitz posited that containment is a relic, and that America must aggressively pre-empt nuclear threats. And in 1997, Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard and Fox News, and other conservatives, published a “statement of principles,” signed by Jeb Bush and future Bush officials — Mr. Rumsfeld, Mr. Cheney, Mr. Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby and Elliott Abrams. Rejecting 41’s realpolitik and shaping what would become 43’s pre-emption strategy, they exhorted a “Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity,” with America extending its domain by challenging “regimes hostile to our interests and values.”

And on June 4, only three months later, we discover that

For the first time in history, Americans are searching for the reason we went to war after the war is over… Conservatives are busily offering a bouquet of new justifications for a pre-emptive attack on Iraq that was sold as self-defense against Saddam’s poised and thrumming weapons of mass destruction.”

So what was it? An incoherent set of multiple reasons or a single, crude one, i.e. self-defense against the “imminent” threat of WMDs? It doesn’t really matter to Dowd, of course. Whatever the Bush administration does, she will criticize it. When it offered many reasons, she lambasted it for incoherence. If it had merely offered one, she’d be making the same inane case today that they weren’t complex enough. They can’t win. And she merrily goes on criticizing whatever it is they will do tomorrow.

“AN EXPANSIVE VISION”: She’s not the only one. Only recently, the New York Times cited the “imminent threat” canard as the sole justification used for war. Here’s another trip down memory lane:

President Bush sketched an expansive vision last night of what he expects to accomplish by a war in Iraq. Instead of focusing on eliminating weapons of mass destruction, or reducing the threat of terror to the United States, Mr. Bush talked about establishing a ‘free and peaceful Iraq’ that would serve as a ‘dramatic and inspiring example’ to the entire Arab and Muslim world, provide a stabilizing influence in the Middle East and even help end the Arab-Israeli conflict. The idea of turning Iraq into a model democracy in the Arab world is one some members of the administration have been discussing for a long time.

Sounds like my retroactive defense of what the White House said and did. But that was, in fact, the New York Times editorial on February 27. How quickly the anti-war brigade changes its tune. Here’s liberal columnist E. J. Dionne in January, making a very similar point:

Bush still has a problem that goes beyond style: We don’t know if this war is primarily about (1) taking weapons of mass destruction out of Saddam Hussein’s hands, or (2) removing Hussein from power, or (3) bringing democracy to Iraq and revolutionizing the politics of the Middle East. Supporters of war argue that all three goals are compatible. In principle, they are. But because the administration has gone back and forth about which of these goals matters most and how they fit together, its policy has been open to easy challenge.

So the administration actually provided a whole welter of reasons to go to war; it didn’t simply focus on one thing – WMDs – although that was always a part of the case. But, again, if all that is true, how can we take today’s one-note criticism seriously? It’s not the administration that should be having a credibility problem these days. It’s their critics.

The disingenuousness of some anti-war critics is a piddling matter compared to the left’s now-explicit campaign to leave Iraq in the lurch. Here’s a Moveon.org direct email letter sent out this week:

Something incredible is happening. Just a week ago, it appeared that President Bush would get $87 billion for the Iraq war and occupation in a landslide vote. But thanks to hundreds of thousands of emails, tens of thousands of calls, and constituent visits by thousands of Americans, more and more members of the House and Senate are declaring that they will vote No.
This is big news. It appears that members of Congress are standing up and demanding that the President face the facts and make real changes to his Iraq policy. Members of Congress need to know that if they take a leap of faith here and do the right thing, we’ll be behind them. With the vote scheduled for tomorrow in the House and Friday in the Senate, it’s critical that they hear from us TODAY.
Over the next 48 hours, we’re working with Working Assets and True Majority to deliver a flood of phone calls and emails to Congress telling them to take a stand. Please take a moment to call your Representative and both your Senators right now. Let them know that you expect them to vote AGAINST Bush’s additional $87 billion request for Iraq.
Over the weekend, Senator John Kerry announced he’s inclined to vote against the request. Yesterday, Senator John Edwards declared in strong language that he will also vote no: “This mission will never be successful unless the president dramatically changes course.” Even Senate and House leaders Tom Daschle and Nancy Pelosi have signaled that they may well vote against the bill.
President Bush and Republican leaders are trying to portray the $87 billion package as the only way to help the troops in Iraq. But it’s the President’s failed policies that put the troops in harm’s way, and it’s the President’s refusal to work with the UN that keeps them there. It’s time for Congress to draw a line in the sand and tell the President that for our national security, the safety of the troops, and the stability of the Middle East, he must change course. A strong vote against the $87 billion will demonstrate just that.

Well, we’re working with the U.N. already, and have just reached an agreement with Russia, China and Pakistan. What, one wonders, does Moveon want? They want Rumsfeld fired, immediate withdrawal of American and allied troops, no aid to the Iraqi reconstruction effort, and abandoning Iraq to a United Nations that has no ability to run it. What this means is complete chaos, a chaos in which the Baathist thugs of the old regime, together with their terrorist allies around the region, can use Iraq as a new base for international terror. No sane person of good will can justify that – except as pure domestic politics, with an entire country as a play-ball. This is the morality of the left?

There’s a chance that the British Tory leader may have to resign in a petty expenses scandal combined with general malaise. Is there a Churchill-figure on the wings?

IMMINENCE WATCH: More distortion from Jules Witcover in the Baltimore Sun:

When President Bush went to New Hampshire the other day with his current justification for invading Iraq, he seemed to have forgotten those missing weapons of mass destruction he insisted earlier posed such an imminent threat.

Witcover also archly implies that the president asserted a direct link between Iraq and 9/11. He didn’t. Last night, the lie continued on “60 Minutes.” According to CBS News:

Greg Thielmann tells Correspondent Scott Pelley that at the time of Powell’s speech, Iraq didn’t pose an imminent threat to anyone – not even its own neighbors.

Grrr.

A discussion thread calling for the assassination of president Bush. A new low for the anti-war British paper.

“About Rush. I was very much addicted to Oxy – not by prescription – and it took me two years to finally quit – it’s been a year this last July. I never want to go through that again. It’s true. It starts out as one or two and can easily escalate up to 10-20 pills a dose depending on the mg. In the ’80s I did a lot of powder and was able to just stop when it came time to do so w/out a hitch. But the withdrawls from this pill are the worst and from what I read and experienced the closest thing to actually being on Smack. Odd that being in possession of 1 doobie is deemed worse than having a bottle of this serious drug. Of course you get high. After you take your dose fix for about an hour or two the feeling is an intense sense of euphoria and you are so verbal and happy and warm. Your whole aim is to keep that wonderful high. It’s when the drug stops it happy moment that things get ugly and you start planning your next dose.
I, too, have been thinking of what Rush was doing, thinking, and feeling during those broadcasts much like I used to think of what events were going on simultaneously while Clinton was behind closed doors no doubt discussing cigars. At this moment Rush is hating life and he can’t sleep, think or eat. All he wants is that good feeling to return. Remember that scene in “Riding Cars with Boys”? The guy forget his name tells his wife Drew Barrymore, after realizing that he can’t kick the habit, that he has it all figured out. His eyes are all glassy and he’s happy and on top of the world. ‘I just want to take enough to get by’ and then all will be well. Excellent example of what’s going on.
I’m counting on Rush to be more sympathetic to those whom he’s lambasted all these years. A toned down more humble Rush. If he doesn’t, then not much has changed, really. I used to look down on those people as weak, and selfish. Not anymore. I’ve been there.” – more feedback on the Letters Page.

THE BBC CORRECTS: They now credit the United States with actually separating conjoined Muslim twins, after a bunch of emails from you and others taking them to task. Here’s the email from the Beeb:

Thank you for your email. We have now updated this story to make it clear that the operation took place in America. We did report in the fact box at the side of the page that the boys had flown to Dallas for the operation. Our further coverage of this story did mention the location of the operation. – see links below [here and here]. Thank you for your interest in the BBC News website.

Blogs get results! Keep at it.

ASNER UPDATE: Earlier this week I linked to a first person account by one Kevin McCullough of a conversation he had with Ed Asner. Since it was a first person account, I trusted it. McCullough has now withdrawn the gist of his claim about Asner’s reverence for Stalin. It appears he distorted Asner’s remarks; and has now partially retracted. He says he misquoted even himself. I apologize for linking. You can read the actual interchange here. McCullough has a radio show. Let’s hope he doesn’t distort things as readily on the air as he does in print.

“But the BBC’s Orla Guerin says it is not clear whether the easily identifiable convoy was deliberately targeted.” – from the BBC. Even Arafat is quoted as condemning “this ugly crime targeting American observers as they were on a mission for security and peace.” The BBC – finding more excuses for terror than Arafat.

I’m no real baseball fan, but that Cubs game was devastating. I used to think the curse was hooey. Now I’m not so sure.

HALEY BARBOUR’S PHOTO-OP: With the nice folks at the Council of Conservative Citizens. Nice to see that, after Trent Lott, the Southern G.O.P. is no longer cavorting with white supremacists, isn’t it? Barbour says he “knows nothing about the Council.” Who does he think he’s kidding?

Don’t miss Jill Stewart’s post-mortem on the Los Angeles Times’ attempt to destroy Arnold Schwarzenegger by any journalistic means necessary. Here are money quotes from someone Stewart calls a “longtime, respected Timesian involved in the Schwarzenegger coverage”:

Toward the end, a kind of hysteria gripped the newsroom. I witnessed a deep-seated, irrational need to get something on this guy [Schwarzenegger]. By Wednesday before it was published, I counted not fewer than 24 reporters dispatched on Arnold, and this entire enterprise was directed by John Carroll himself. Carroll launched the project with the words: ‘I want a full scrub of Arnold.’ This was fully and completely and daily driven by Carroll. He’s as good as his word on being balanced and trying to make this paper more balanced, he really is. But not when it came to Schwarzenegger. Carroll changed completely. It was visceral, and he made it clear he wanted something bad on Schwarzenegger and he didn’t care what it was. The air of unreality among people here was so extreme that when they did the office pool, of something like 113 people who put in a dollar to bet on the outcome of the recall and on who would be chosen governor, only 31 bet ‘yes’ on recall and ‘yes’ Schwarzenegger to win. All you had to do was read a poll to know how wrong that was, but inside this place only about 25 percent of the people could see the recall coming… The mainstream press critics like those published on Romenesko are asleep as to what has happened here. They are defending the L.A. Times in every way. There should be no defense by media critics of what happened here. One woman did not sleep for two nights after a Times reporter showed up at her door, with the thinnest evidence, demanding to know if her child was Arnold’s love child. It never panned out, it was untrue. Why has the L.A. Times become a tabloid, knocking relentlessly on people’s doors for tabloid gossip? And would John Carroll have run a front page Love Child story if it had been true? Could we sink any lower?

It was worse than we thought. Which is a good rule of thumb in liberal media outlets. Recall what we now know about the Raines era at the NYT. Then consider what we don’t know about what’s going on now.

WHAT LIBERAL MEDIA? USA Today says it’s looking for a conservative editorial writer. Here’s what the ad said: “Looking for a conservative who ca (sic) work to achievie (sic) consensus with a diverse editorial board.” Special attention to bad spellers and masochists.

MOORE WATCH: He seems to be leaning toward the notion that 9/11 was a government conspiracy:

MOORE: I’d like to ask the question whether September 11 was a terrorist attack, or was it a military attack? We call it a terrorist attack. We keep calling it a terrorist attack.
But it sure has the markings of a military attack. And I’d like to know whose military was involved in this precision, perfectly planned operation. I’m sorry, but my common sense has never allowed me to believe since that day that you can learn how to fly a plane at 500 miles per hour. And you know, when you go up 500 miles an hour, if you’re off by this much, you’re in the Potomac. You don’t hit a five-store building like that.

What on earth is he getting at?

I’ve been mulling over this question after the Rush Limbaugh pain-killer drug story. The truth about these drugs is not just that they alleviate pain, but that they give you a real high. (That’s why the spin about Rush being somehow different from recreational drug-users strikes me as a little strained.) I was prescribed Vicodin once and experienced some of the high. Apparently, Oxycontin is even more intense. All this leads to a simple question people have so far avoided: was Rush actually high during his broadcasts? Given the enormous amount of drugs in question, given their addictive quality, I’d say that the odds that Limbaugh was high when he was broadcasting are pretty good. Some might argue that you need to have your brain on drugs to say the things Rush said. But I’d argue the opposite. In fact, it might be true that Rush was a better broadcaster because he was high. His particular blend of self-mocking, lacerating, funny and fluent commentary reminds me in a way of people on a kind of high. Or maybe this attitude is actually hard to sustain for so long at such a pitch – and so the drugs helped him endure the slog of daily broadcasting the way drugs can enhance athletes’ performance. Either way, the drugs may well have helped him do his job well. Obviously, he got addicted in a major way – which is the mega-down-side of such meds. And he may have lost his hearing because of enormous abuse of the pills. But it behooves us to notice the upside as well: that these drugs, far from impairing his ability to do great radio, may have helped him. If there were a way for Rush to use the drugs in moderation without getting addicted, why would that be a bad thing? And how would that differ in a deep way from people on anti-depressants who aren’t clinically depressed? Or casual pot-smokers? Or old-time columnists who used to write brilliant columns while under the influence of a triple scotch? (I recall one of my early days on Fleet Street when I asked a brilliant columnist how he could write such stuff after several strong whiskeys in the afternoon. “My dear boy,” he replied, “The real question is how I could write without the whiskey.” Somehow, I get the feeling these permutations won’t be fully developed in our puritan culture. But they should be. There’s a reason Rush enjoyed these rushes. And conservatives benefited.

HOPE IN IRAN: Hoder gets excited about Shirin Ebadi’s return. The photos are here.

Another classic story in which the Beeb goes out of its way not to credit american medicine. They really hate the U.S. over there, don’t they?

NPR CORRECTS: A summary of NPR’s corrections about the Middle East in the past two years finds something remarkable for being unremarkable. All but one correction rebutted a slander against the Jews or the Jewish state. Hmmm.

MY DOG, ADOLF: Weird story about a dog called Adolf who was trained to give the Nazi salute. Ian Buruma told me a story once about an old Jewish lady in Vienna, if I recall rightly, who similarly called her dog Hitler. But she did it for reverse reasons: she got some pleasure from ordering Hitler around for a change. “Come here, Hitler!” “Sit, Hitler!” “Beg, Hitler!” No word on whether she actually grew to love the little Nazi.