3.29.2003
You know, I try to stay in the background of this project I call Estimated Prophet; a presence you can gain insight about through my choices of topics and links as well as my rants (more politely called 'musings'). I haven't shared much about myself, it doesn't seem all that pertinent to the idea of 'popular education' that I hold; my hope is you see things I post, look into them, talk about them with friends- agree with my perspective or not. E-mail or comment if the spirit moves you. I don't matter. I'm just a regular guy, of working class roots in a small town in New England. Pretty much Joe Average. Joe Sixpack if we're talking a good microbrew.
Something that has slowed down my posting the last few days has been the unexpected death of a friend. I guess what I have been striving to communicate since this rush to war has been going on is that "People are People, Life is Sacred, a Gift". And when is this fact of life most pronounced? At births, at weddings, and yes, at funerals. Do you remember the last funeral or memorial you attended, the pain apparent in the eyes all around you? The loss suffered, the empty spot ones absence revealed as well as the fact that what makes our lives valuable, this 'experience of being' worthwhile are the connections: what we share. At births, at weddings and at funerals we are reminded what being human is about.
Folks in Iraq, people like you and I, who's lives are just as valid as ours, who love their kids and parents, who have the same concerns for the future as we all do are suffering the effects of war because Mr Bush wanted one. A leader and his administration attempting to prosecute a just war would not have to mislead our nation. He would not have to break international law.
"He rules by fear because he knows there is no underlying support. Support for Saddam, including within his military organization, will collapse after the first whiff of gunpowder." Richard Perle, then-Pentagon Defense Policy Board chairman, July 11.
I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators." Vice President Richard Cheney, March 16, NBC's "Meet the Press." (quoted from a Reuters article)
I feel badly for our troops in Iraq. Not only is it possible that an inept administration has seen to it that some troops are only eating once a day; this illegal war may very well be dehumanizing them. But people are people, as this piece about Iraqi civilians feeding US Marines reaffirms. Hopes of Iraqi people welcoming US soldiers with open arms seem rather limited though as many innocent Iraqi folks are dying from US cruise missiles and bombs.
I've had dial up trouble all day; thank you for your consideration.
Perle sort of resigned; the jerk is still on the Defense policy Board, which is old news to most of you. In this 1996 document he advocates removing Saddam Hussein from power, and also attacks on Syria. He seems to deserve the moniker " Prince of Darkness". You'll note Douglas Feith's name on this paper to Netanyahu as well. Of the 30 members of the Defense Policy Board, nine have ties to companies with contracts that have gained 76 billion in defense contracts in the last couple years. Death pays bigtime. Or else the combination of human decency, international law and world opinion would see the US using the UN and international courts rather than bombs to punish terrorists and constrain and even depose Hussein.
3/29/2003
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3.28.2003
The demands of life are getting in the way of posting today. Use the site as a portal, check out the news sources and blogs in the sidebar.
Share what you learn.
3/28/2003
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Just so you know: A memorial service for murdered 23 year old peace activist Rachel Corrie was violently disrupted. I would not use the word 'murdered' but it seems to me the actions of the IDF say a lot in themselves about respect, for people living and dead.
Joe Smith, a young activist from Kansas City, said about 100 people were gathered to lay carnations and erect a small memorial when the first armoured personnel carrier appeared.
"They started firing teargas and blowing smoke, then they fired sound grenades. After a while it got hectic so we sat down. Then the tank came over and shot in the air," he said. "It scared a lot of Palestinians, especially the shooting made a lot of them run and the teargas freaked people out. But most of us stayed."
Another witness said the army failed to break up the service.
"People were laying carnations at the spot where Rachel was killed when a tank came and fired teargas right on them. Then a core group of the peace activists took an ISM cloth banner to the fence and pinned it up.
"The tank chased after them trying to stop them with teargas but the wind was against the army," she said.
Tensions rose further when a convoy of vehicles, including the bulldozer that killed Ms Corrie, passed the area.
I just don't get it...
Just so you know: Israel is counting on 10 Billion dollars in aid from the United States. US tax dollars, only about a tenth of the money Mr Bush wants for the war he started with Iraq. Only a small percentage of our pre-war deficit of 193.9 Billion, a debt to the future three times that of a year ago...
This article mentions that during this time of war Mr Bush's Republican Party is trying to cut Veterans benefits by 28 billion dollars. Now that's supporting our troops...
3/28/2003
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3.27.2003
Why we need to talk to and educate everyone we know:
"All this was inspired by the principle - which is quite true in itself - that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes.
Adolph Hitler "Mein Kampf"
Hitler called one technique he used in governance, the misleading of the populace through mis-statements, outright lies and their repetition "The Big Lie". Read just how successfully present day goverment/media manipulation has worked, allowing Mr Bush and his administration to sway public opinion enough to break American tradition and stage a pre-emptive attack. A few samples:
In a Jan. 7 Knight Ridder/Princeton Research poll, 44% of respondents said they thought "most" or "some" of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers were Iraqi citizens. Only 17% of those polled offered the correct answer: none. This was remarkable in light of the fact that, in the weeks after 9/11, few Americans identified Iraqis among the culprits. So the level of awareness on this issue actually plunged as time passed. Is it possible the media failed to give this appropriate attention?
In the same sample, 41% said that Iraq already possessed nuclear weapons, which not even the Bush administration claimed. Despite being far off base in crucial areas, 66% of respondents claimed to have a "good understanding" of the arguments for and against going to war with Iraq.
Then, a Pew Research Center/Council on Foreign Relations survey released Feb. 20 found ...that 57% of those polled believed Saddam Hussein helped terrorists involved with the 9/11 attacks, a claim the Bush team had abandoned. A March 7-9 New York Times/CBS News Poll showed that 45% of interviewees agreed that "Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks," and a March 14-15 CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll found this apparently mistaken notion holding firm at 51%.
Knowing this was a crucial element of his support -- even though he could not prove the 9/11 connection -- the president nevertheless tried to bolster the link. Bush mentioned 9/11 eight times during his March 6 prime-time news conference, linking it with Saddam Hussein "often in the same breath," Linda Feldmann of The Christian Science Monitor observed last week. "Bush never pinned the blame for the [9/11] attacks directly on the Iraqi president," Feldmann wrote. "Still, the overall effect was to reinforce an impression that persists among much of the American public."
For people who go about their lives in Iraq it would have been a lot better for them if diplomatic means were used to liberate them from life under the rule of Saddam Hussein. They would not now be among the increasing numbers of folks so glibly termed "collateral damage"; a phrasing that acts in the same way as all unnecessary technical talk we hear about this or that weapon by obscuring what is really going on. It has been called "War porn".
As a kid I apprenticed to Marty the Magician, who taught me about the necessity of "patter", keeping the audience's mind engaged verbally, coupled with controlling the eyes through physical flourishes and eye contact, to be a successul 'slight of hand' artist. In "magic" people want to be fooled, bamboozled, it adds charm and mystery to life. In wartime such as this, people at home want to be bamboozled because the reality of what war is runs against the grain of commonsense and decency in even the most just seeming instances. And television is the media to accomplish this. Blending video game graphics with a sporting event sensibility wrapped in the drama of "real time" occurences, the repetitive data flow and theatrics numb the mind.
We hear a great deal about precision guided weaponry, so-called "smart bombs" that hit within fifty feet of their target:
To begin, one must distinguish between the precision with which a bomb or missile hits its intended point of impact -- often claimed to be only a few meters most of the time -- and the area within which lethal damage will be wreaked when the warhead explodes. In Iraq, for example, the much-used Joint Direct Attack Munition -- a 2,000-pound Mark-84 dumb bomb, called a JDAM, with a global positioning system's guidance kit attached to enhance its accuracy -- is supposed to strike within 13 meters (42 feet) of its intended point of impact, as compared to an error range of some 60-70 meters (some 200 feet) for its dumb counterpart. Evidently, this difference is what elicited Rumsfeld's remark about the humanity of the use of such weapons: Whereas the dumb bomb places at risk innocent souls 70 meters away, the smart one spares everybody beyond, say, 15 meters (49 feet). If only it were so.
Recalling the hugely exaggerated claims made for precision bombing in past wars, we are entitled to skepticism even with respect to the accuracy claims themselves. According to some authorities, perhaps 7 to 10 percent of the smart bombs fall beyond the claimed accuracy radius -- some of them miles away -- because of mechanical and electrical malfunctions. The potential harm caused by a 2,000-pound bomb hitting substantially off target in a city would be sufficiently obvious to anyone.
For purposes of the present discussion, however, let us concede that the bombs and missiles strike with all the accuracy claimed for them. What happens then? As described recently by Newhouse reporter David Wood, the 2000-pound JDAM "releases a crushing shock wave and showers jagged, white-hot metal fragments at supersonic speed, shattering concrete, shredding flesh, crushing cells, rupturing lungs, bursting sinus cavities and ripping away limbs in a maelstrom of destruction."
Hardly anyone survives within 120 meters (about 400 feet) of the blast, where pressures of several thousand pounds per square inch and 8,500-degree heat simply obliterate everything, human and material. Metal fragments are spewed nearly three-quarters of a mile, and bigger pieces may fly twice that far: No one within 365 meters (400 yards) can expect to remain unharmed, and persons up to 1,000 meters (over 1000 yards) or farther away from the point of impact may be harmed by flying fragments. Of course, the explosions also start fires over a wide area, which themselves may do vast damage, even to structures and people unharmed by the initial blast.
I am no munitions expert, but I am pretty good at basic math. Baghdad is a city of some 6.4 million persons living in an area of approximately 734 square kilometers -- roughly comparable to the urban areas of Boston or Detroit. If it were a perfect square it would be approximately 27 kilometers (17 miles) on a side, but the central, most densely populated part, where the prime military targets are concentrated, is a much smaller area. What are the odds that the damage wreaked by exploding 2000-pound JDAMs and other powerful munitions, such as the 1000-pound warheads on the Tomahawk missiles, will not touch the ordinary people of the city?
Taken from "Military precision versus moral precision" by Robert Higgs.
Unless we are festering with media bred jingoistic hate we have to mislead ourselves as a people to condone the bombing of a city of five million civilians, half which are under the age of fifteen, just kids. And I'm figuring half the adult population must be female. So to feel good about your countries actions you have to put up mental walls. I don't mean just the suspension of disbelief required to reconcile the ever shifting reasons the Bush regime has been floating by us for attacking Iraq, including a bunch that were shown to be outright deception, rather than using what were ever tightening diplomatic methods to disarm the despot. I'm saying an honest citizen of our country needs to stop thinking to be able to condone what Mr Bush and Administration are doing in our name. Or must have fallen victim to the "Big Lie".
Q: Can you guess who is quoted here? I'll give you a clue or two. He is an ex -military man, decorated for his performance in Gulf War 1, but also reviled for his murderous lack of humanity.
"Therefore, this bombing was also meant as a pre-emptive (or pro-active) strike against those forces and their command and control centers within the federal building. When an aggressor force continually launches attacks from a particular base of operations, it is sound military strategy to take the fight to the enemy. Additionally, borrowing a page from U.S. foreign policy, I decided to send a message to a government that was becoming increasingly hostile, by bombing a government building and the government employees within that building who represent that government. Bombing the Murrah Federal Building was morally and strategically equivalent to the U.S. hitting a government building in Serbia, Iraq, or other nations. Based on observations of the policies of my own government, I viewed this action as an acceptable option. From this perspective what occurred in Oklahoma City was no different than what Americans rain on the heads of others all the time, and, subsequently, my mindset was and is one of clinical detachment. (The bombing of the Murrah Building was not personal no more than when Air Force, Army, Navy or Marine personnel bomb or launch cruise missiles against (foreign) government installations and their personnel)"
(September 2001 "Vanity Fair" Article by Gore Vidal "The Meaning of Timothy McVeigh")
A: Timothy McVeigh
Now when it is not Mr Bush or Donald Rumsfeld Tommy Franks speaking and when the folks being murdered for a specific objective are American the obvious moral depravity of blowing people up is revealed. Innocent people. When it is a faceless people far away somehow it seems less contemptible.
People are people. No matter where they live.
3/27/2003
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3.26.2003
This blog speaks to the power of media in shaping our political as well as mental environments relatively often. In time of war these instances of media manipulation seem accelerated in both frequency and import.
I'm sure you heard or read the other day that a large Iraqi chemical weapons factory was found and then the story became about an 'alleged' chemical weapons factory and then it faded away. The same sort of story concerning Scud missiles. Stories that turned out to be false.
Tom Hayden asks "Who will verify discoveries in Iraqi arsenals?" A a short thought provoking piece that reminds us just how many times fabricated accounts have been brought up in support of war.
Fifty-seven years ago, Orwell anticipated the obscurantist press briefings of Donald Rumsfeld, the brittle-tempered U.S. defence secretary, when he wrote: "When one watches some tired hack on the platform mechanically repeating the familiar phrases — bestial atrocities, iron heel, bloodstained tyranny, free peoples of the world, stand shoulder to shoulder — one often has a curious feeling that one is not watching a live human being but some kind of dummy: a feeling which suddenly becomes stronger at moments when the light catches the speaker's spectacles and turns them into blank discs with no eyes behind them."
(Taken from " Language one of war's first casualties" by David Olive)
War seems to be promoted to us at this point as entertainment, a televised spectacle that resides in the same dubious entertainment neighborhood as the show "Cops". Add in that certain bloodless quality it offers, along with the graphics and war is turned from an abomination to a surreal spectator event, a 'game'.
"Yellowtimes", a resource you've noted I use and is on the sidebar for your ease of access was taken offline due to graphic war images that it offered at the news site. (It will be up again in the next couple days) I feel no need to see the images while I know they more accurately portray war. War is not the stuff of movies and tv shows. War is death. That's it, plain and simple; whoever kills the most wins. Maybe by wreaking carnage on the civilian population a countries spirit, its' collective will to fight can be broken; at least that is the public consumption reason for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And the reason the brutal cruise missile assault on Baghdad is called 'shock and awe'. War is about Power wielding death and destruction for its' own ends..
I'm not sure which network I saw it on, but I was repulsed to see Iraqi prisoners of war huddled in blankets and sitting and lying on the ground as a reporter spoke about them as if they were animals in the zoo, bright lights in their faces under a dark sky as the reporter picks up foil pouch at one of the 'subjects' feet to tell us that they are being fed self heating MREs... It left me surprised to hear that Iraqis were being told that doing the same sort of things to our servicemen was a war crime. One would think that neither side would stoop to humiliating their captives. Especially us, the US, as we are the 'good guys'.
It seems to me that our treatment of Taliban prisoners at Guantanamo Bay gives us little room to grouse about mistreatment of captives. And as the 'good guys' we are the worse for it. The Geneva conventions were designed fo these instances.
Thinking is Patriotic. Talk to your friends...
3/26/2003
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An article from the Chicago Tribune By Stanley Kutler that merits reading There Will Absolutely Be No Dissension. You need to sign in initially to access the Tribune, that is why I didn't site this article earlier. Sign up, as you have for the NY Times already I hope. Here's a lengthy quotation that just touches the matter; you should read the whole article.
The freedom and diversity we so cherish for others is strikingly lacking in our public discourse. We must not forget our traditions of challenge and dissent. For openers, we can invoke the injunctions of Theodore Roosevelt, the most red-blooded and manly of our presidents--if that is to be the litmus test for strong leadership. In 1918, ex-President Roosevelt challenged Woodrow Wilson's sweeping crackdown against dissent after the American entry into World War I. "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong," Roosevelt said, "is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
Abraham Lincoln more pointedly serves the present, critical need. Challenging President James Polk's dubious response to alleged Mexican aggression against the United States, Congressman Lincoln voted to censure the president in 1848--while the war against Mexico still raged. He contended that the president's justification for war was "from beginning to end the sheerest deception." Polk would have "gone further with his proof if it had not been for the small matter that the truth would not permit him." Lincoln threw down the gauntlet: "Let him answer fully, fairly and candidly. Let him answer with facts and not with arguments. ... Let him attempt no evasion, no equivocation." Lincoln more than suspected that the president was "deeply conscious of being in the wrong."
Today, as we prepare to go to war, will the qualities of democracy, diversity, and the open society President Bush so ardently desires for the nation-building he will do for the Iraqis be available at home? The chorus for unanimity is rising, usually in the name of support for our troops in harm's way. Hardly a new ploy for presidential behavior. Once he commits troops abroad, the argument goes, then we must have a moratorium on criticism.
"This is America, remember?" Debate and dissent are not just freedoms but a pre-requesite of Democracy. Granted with the present White House occupant not the winner of the Presidential election but rather a Supreme Court appointee it seems a bit of stretch of credibility to say the US will foster Democracy in Iraq. It is the whole point of Patriotism to ask questions, to think. If you care about your country you care about how it is governed, about its' actions in the world; by extension they are your actions. Our
actions. Our President and Legislators represent us.
It seems that we live in times of immense historical importance, times where each citizen is called to stand up for what they believe in, what they know to be right; to advocate for America, for it's return to us as a progressively evolving place of promise and of hope for all. To be quiet is to let our nation be Saddamized; turned into a police state where people have none of those rights that are claimed as setting us apart and beyond the other countries of the world. Even as Mr Bush gave his facile reasoning to the American people for the will behind the 9-11 tragedy, "They hate our Freedoms" his administration was working to take those freedoms away .
It is in the spirit of Democracy to ask questions of authority.
The conflicting reasons and rationalizations for this pre-emptive attack and the ensuing war with Iraq are nibbling at the consciousness of folks. Talk to the goodhearted but media misinformed people in your life and do them the favor of helping them learn about this Administration's use of misinformation as a tool of governance. The facts are on our side. They just need to come to light...
3/26/2003
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3.25.2003
Each cruise missile costs 0ne million dollars. Read what it can do to an innocent family.
Thanks to Republican led tax cuts "We the People", the vast majority of Americans will be paying for these weapons.
Chase down this wealth of pertinent links and see why I'm done blogging for the day. There is too much reading to do. From tax cuts for the richest 2% to pronouncements that the Constitution can be watered down in time of war- there is a bunch to get background on. I've hardly touched the sidebar having been overwhelmed by Buzzflash alone.
I'll drop a line when I come up for air.
Send along your thoughts....
3/25/2003
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This is our President- a year ago, quoted from "Time magazine online"
F___ Saddam. We're taking him out." Those were the words of President George W. Bush, who had poked his head into the office of National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. It was March 2002, and Rice was meeting with three U.S. Senators, discussing how to deal with Iraq through the United Nations, or perhaps in a coalition with America's Middle East allies. Bush wasn't interested. He waved his hand dismissively, recalls a participant, and neatly summed up his Iraq policy in that short phrase. The Senators laughed uncomfortably; Rice flashed a knowing smile. The President left the room.
A year later, Bush's outburst has been translated into action, as cruise missiles and smart bombs slam into Baghdad. But the apparent simplicity of his message belies the gravity at hand. Sure, the outcome is certain: America will win the war, and Saddam will be taken out. But what is unfolding in Iraq is far bigger than regime change or even the elimination of dangerous weapons. The U.S. has launched a war unlike any it has fought in the past. This one is being waged not to defend against an enemy that has attacked the U.S. or its interests but to pre-empt the possibility that one day it might do so. The war has turned much of the world against America.
Where's the Gravitas? Sounds like a fratboy to me. A fratboy that watched too many videotapes and knocked back a few too many when he should have been studying. A mediocre fratboy spoiled by Poppy. I suppose we can extrapolate, due to Mr Bush's dismissive nature concerning the involvement of the UN and a true coalition of allies he is also saying "F___ the International community and International Law". A mediocre fratboy that still recieves the benefits of family name and connections and the corporate money and influence that his party rules by.
I can imagine this information as a Karl Rove release to nail down Mr Bush's macho, go-it-alone tuff guy image when reality shows he was AWOL from a cushy Air National Guard placement and the sport he showed the most prowess in was cheerleading. I have nothing against cheerleading, I'm just pointing out it doesn't go with the "down home" Texas 'product' that we are sold.
A fratboy attitude is a sad thing in a young person. A fratboy attitude held by a world leader, on the world stage is an inexcusable liability that has cost many lives already and sadly will cost many more before this is over. A destabilized world, an America besmirched as an aggressor rather than being a diplomatic state working from a position of right are a shameful legacy to leave to the coming generations.
( Thanks to Blah3 for the link )
Let's go here to see just who is in the "Coalition of the Willing" and how much manpower and support they offer the 'cause'. Looks to be a Coalition alrighty, I mean it seems that a bunch of countries signed on, as it were. But it also seems a bit misleading; Australia sending 2000 troops and the other 548 who are not US or UK citizens are from Albania, Poland and Rumania. Where is our good buddy Spain? What gives? If we are a coalition some 40 strong where is the cooperation, the resources from our aforesaid Allies?
A Thank You to Wage Slave Journal for this source. I've linked to Wage Slave Journal's 'Scorecard of Evil' before.
3/25/2003
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3.24.2003
"...conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter nose than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretense but an idea- something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to..."
-Heart Of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The world's major religions have a different perspective of human ideals, especially where they concern this administration's war of pre-emptive aggression on Iraq than do the Bush administration's neo-conservative hawks. Read "This War Brought to You by..."
What is this idea? Who promulgates it and why? Have you thought about the sacrifices, in lives, in our credibility on the world stage, in freedoms we are seeing tacken at home. On our economy now and in the next 10 years...
In addition to that last link, here are some links that offer crucial background on the actual reasons for America waging pre-emptive war:
"Dick Cheney's Song for America" by David Armstrong as it appeared in Harpers Magazine. PDF link and a HTML link
The Robert Dreyfuss article from Mother Jones " The Thirty-Year Itch" (I've linked these before, I know, but folks should read them.)
I suppose it all comes down to a simple question. "Where is your heart? What values do you really hold true?."
When weighing proposition "Is what the Bush administration succeeded in doing, prosecuting pre-emptive war, correct, justifiable, something a good American can stand by as a person of morals, of conscience?", it is a big one. We see the basic nature of the question obscured by stirrings of the idea that to think at all in the time of conflict is unpatriotic, that to keep the inquiry about the validity and nature of this war alive, now that the rush to war has been accomplished and we have people in the field is "not supporting our Troops". This question made larger still by the media, a very potent force in shaping our collective reality and a force with a vested interest. Can/should you blindly follow, is that what Democracy is about? Is that what is best for our country?
We are fighting war on two fronts- the Bush administration has not finished the "war on terror" in Afghanistan yet.
The following quote is from an commentary by Paul Craig Roberts in the conservative (Rev. Moon owned) Washington Times.
We must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their fallen leaders are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started it. And we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of the causes of the war for our position is that no grievances or policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced and condemned as an instrument of policy.
— U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, U.S. representative to the International Conference on Military Trials, Aug. 12, 1945.
"Where is your heart?" Would you buy a used car from these folks, on their word? It seems sensible to "look under the hood", don't you think? Do you believe you can bomb a people into liberation, into Democracy?
We have all heard the conflicting stories told by Mr Bush and company; from the aluminum tubes to the Al-Quaida links proven false. Mr Bush in a White House press conference said he could not claim any Iraqi/ Al-quieda connection linking Iraq to the tragedy of 9-11, but he still mentions them in the same breath in speeches, seemingly suggesting a connection; perhaps playing on the misperception that some 40% of poll respondents held that Iraq did have a hand in it? Mr Powell and Tony Blair presenting a report to the UN Security council that was plagiarised from a 12 year old Doctoral Thesis. Crudely faked documents that Niger had recieved requests for uranium from Hussein's Iraq.
"Next the statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."
-Mark Twain
With the inspections working, even if plodding along, is the US attack legal?
I was at the Peace March In NYC Saturday, and it felt really good to be part of Democracy in action. All told I saw few pro-war folks- oddly enough I've seen two photographs of all these people, about the sum total of all I saw; since except for a couple guys in leather jackets shouting profanities and waving signs that cried out for spellchecking, that was it numbers-wise. One picture caught one half of the group of eight or so, the other picture caught the others. I guess if you wanted to sell exclusive pictures to more than one market you have to do what you have to do... One could have easily stepped back two feet and caught them all in one frame. Sadly, the pro-war folks seem to equate being against this pre-emptive war with a lack of patriotism and a disregard for the safety of our troops. I did notice that the media focused on a minority of protesters that gave the police a hard time and were violent after the march ended. I'm sorry that the event was marred that way, well after it was over.
The march gathered people from all walks of life, all ages all races. For as far as the eye can see people were walking shoulder to shoulder, a vast sea of smiles and signs. Hope flowed through me as the crowd sreamed and streamed and streamed by. As Marched reading wity and really well done signs I wished I had brought a camera, they ranged from a child holding a sign iin her childish scrawl that said " Boo to you Mr Bush" to signs that made cogent statements on administration policy to the simple " Drop Bush Not Bombs". The people I spoke with were well informed and did not relie only on network news to form their worldview. Speaking out as a matter of responsibility and conscience seemed the main reason for being in the parade for peace. I spoke from one fellow who had come all the way from Cincinati Ohio to be part of this event. The people I met were kind and thoughtful.
One thought was mentioned by most everyone: That we need to reclaim America, we need to help our nation live up to it's promise.
Share what you know, what you are learning. What is your vision for America? Does it include freedom of speech, including debate and dissent?
3/24/2003
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