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December 22, 2005
Driving Home a Point
The story about the British government's plan to monitor the movements of every vehicle in the country (linked on today's STR home page) ought, at the very least, to put the lie to the notion that the British government joined Uncle Sam's war on Iraq for the purpose of bringing freedom to the Iraqis. After all, if the British government doesn't care a whit about freedom in Britain, why on earth should it care about freedom in Iraq?
Posted by Mike Tennant at 11:13 AM | Comments (0)
Clinton Did It, Too
You've all heard the argument: You can't criticize Bush for his assaults on our liberties (which are only being done to protect us from terrorists anyway) because Democrats have done the same things.
Well, it's true that Democrats have done the same things, and here's proof that Bill Clinton (with an assist by George H.W. Bush) has to answer for the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.
Of course, the fact that both parties do it does not excuse either of them from blame. In fact, if anything it means that they're equally as evil and deserving of the utmost contempt. Try telling that to your average "conservative," however, and be prepared for the worst tongue-lashing you've ever received.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 10:40 AM | Comments (0)
Surprise! Another Liberator Is Here
The other leader of the great coalition to liberate the Iraqis visited his success story--and just as all the other great liberators did, he went in unannounced.
I just don't get it. If Iraq is in such great shape now and improving every day, why won't any of its liberators show up with advance warning, to a crowd of average, non-handpicked Iraqis?
Oh, never mind. I get it.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 09:38 AM | Comments (0)
December 20, 2005
Good News from the Iraq War
The only good thing to come out of the war in Iraq is this:
President George W. Bush acknowledged on Monday that mistaken intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons program makes it more difficult to persuade the public that Iran's nuclear program poses a threat.
Speaking at a White House news conference, Bush said that when the United States tries to make its case on Iran, people will say "Well, the intelligence failed in Iraq; therefore, how can we can trust the intelligence in Iran?"
Then again, Bush also said, of the Iran situation, "Of course we want this to be solved diplomatically . . . ." Of course you do. We all believe that. We also all believe in Santa Claus.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 01:26 PM | Comments (0)
December 19, 2005
Keep Talking, Mr. President
George W. Bush's More and More War Tour may be annoying, although it is largely ignorable if one doesn't tune in conservative talk shows (where each speech is praised as the greatest since the one before). However, the fact that Bush feels compelled to make this tour and continually to tell us that the war is going well, that it's absolutely vital to the security of America, and that critics only aid terrorists, is a very good thing. It means that public support for the war is flagging and that Bush can no longer count on the reserve of public support he enjoyed after the government's most massive failure ever, on 9/11/2001. When he doesn't have to keep trying to drum up public support is when we should be upset.
So I say: The more speeches Bush is forced to make, the better. Plus, if we can get him to spend all his time speechifying, he won't have time to do us any other harm.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 02:03 PM | Comments (0)
Like a Thief in the Night
Once again one of our brave leaders demonstrates what a success the Iraq war has been by sneaking into and out of the country under heavy secrecy. As Forbes reports:
The daylong tour of Iraq was so shrouded in secrecy that even Iraqi Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jaafari and President Jalal Talabani were kept in the dark. The prime minister said he was surprised when he showed up for what he thought was a meeting with the U.S. ambassador and saw Cheney.
Yes, folks, things are going so well that our government wouldn't even tell the heads of the Iraqi government that Cheney was going to be in the country. Nor would they tell any of the reporters along for the ride:
The unannounced stops in Iraq came at the beginning of a five-day tour aimed at strengthening support for the war on terror. Stops include Oman, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Cheney's staff kept the Iraq portion secret from reporters, waiting to reveal the plans when Air Force Two was preparing to refuel in the United Kingdom. Once on the ground, the entourage transferred from his conspicuous white and blue 757 to an unmarked C-17 cargo plane that would fly overnight to Baghdad International Airport.
And they wonder why people distrust them and their war.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 01:56 PM | Comments (0)
December 16, 2005
Success In Iraq: A Government as Incompetent as Our Own
I think our government can officially declare success in Iraq and get out. Why? Because it has managed to create a government as incompetent as itself.
As CNN reports: "Iraqi security forces caught the most wanted man in the country [Abu Musab al-Zarqawi] last year, but released him because they didn't know who he was, the Iraqi deputy minister of interior said Thursday."
This sounds just about like our own dear leaders--or, for that matter, any government, which is competent only at robbing, destroying, and killing.
On the other hand, perhaps they decided it was better to have a handy enemy at large, much as our government has done with another al-Qaeda figure--you know, Osama What's-his-name.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 03:51 PM | Comments (0)
Patriot Act Stopped in the Senate--Sort Of
The Senate today was unable to break a filibuster by Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Larry Craig (R-ID) designed to prevent reauthorization of portions of the Patriot Act. This seems like good news at first until you read further into the story, where you will find that "Feingold, Craig and other critics . . . have called for the law to be extended in its present form so they can continue to try and add more civil liberties safeguards." In short, rather than allowing this horrendous law to expire, these brave senators want to extend it for a shorter period of time than the White House does. During that time they just want to tinker around the edges to make it appear more freedom-friendly.
"If a compromise is not reached, the 16 Patriot Act provisions expire on Dec. 31," says the AP. Let's hope they keep bickering for a long time to come.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 03:41 PM | Comments (0)
Big Brother Is Watching You . . . and You . . . and You . . .
Months after the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans and others inside the United States to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying, according to government officials.
Under a presidential order signed in 2002, the intelligence agency has monitored the international telephone calls and international e-mail messages of hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people inside the United States without warrants over the past three years in an effort to track possible "dirty numbers" linked to Al Qaeda, the officials said. The agency, they said, still seeks warrants to monitor entirely domestic communications.
The previously undisclosed decision to permit some eavesdropping inside the country without court approval was a major shift in American intelligence-gathering practices, particularly for the National Security Agency, whose mission is to spy on communications abroad. As a result, some officials familiar with the continuing operation have questioned whether the surveillance has stretched, if not crossed, constitutional limits on legal searches.
However, as The Raw Story points out, notice how solicitous our supposedly independent media was when the government asked them not to report this story:
The White House asked The New York Times not to publish this article, arguing that it could jeopardize continuing investigations and alert would-be terrorists that they might be under scrutiny. After meeting with senior administration officials to hear their concerns, the newspaper delayed publication for a year to conduct additional reporting. Some information that administration officials argued could be useful to terrorists has been omitted.
At least in Iraq the U.S. government has to pay the press to behave. Here they do it for free!
Posted by Mike Tennant at 03:34 PM | Comments (0)
December 14, 2005
Conservatives: Tax Everyone!
The alleged conservatives at CNSNews.com have a reader poll on the front page today that asks the following question: "Should all working Americans be forced to pay a certain minimum of taxes?"
The only choices for a response are:
- No, just wealthy Americans
- No, just wealthy and middle-class Americans
- Yes, including low-income Americans
Is it just me, or is there an obvious choice missing from this list? That's right: the option "No, nobody should be forced to pay taxes" is completely absent! That's "conservatives" for you.
By the way, the results of the poll at this time are: 6 percent for "just wealthy," 3% for "just wealthy and middle-class," and a whopping 91% for, essentially, "everyone." So there you have it: "conservatives" want everyone to have to pay a certain minimum in taxes. No one ought to be exempt from legalized theft.
Is it any wonder these people never succeed in reducing government, as they claim to desire?
Posted by Mike Tennant at 10:07 AM | Comments (0)
December 13, 2005
Bush: 30,000 Iraqis Have Died in the War
Dubya made another war speech last night, but he made the fatal mistake of letting a not-quite-so-handpicked audience ask questions:
One woman asked how many Iraqis had been killed in the war.
"I would say 30,000, more or less, have died as a result of the initial incursion and the ongoing violence against Iraqis," Bush said. "We've lost about 2,140 of our own troops in Iraq."
So now, war supporters, do you think your war was "worth it"? Are 30,000 (or, likely, many more) Iraqi lives a fair price to pay for ousting a man who wasn't a threat to us or his neighbors, had no WMD, and was not connected in any way with al-Qaeda or 9/11?
If you answered "yes," please consider yourself hereby banished from the civilized world.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 01:22 PM | Comments (0)
More Looting in New Orleans
In America, when disaster strikes, it means an opportunity to rob your fellow citizen.
Yes, folks, the looting in New Orleans continues, albeit through legal means.
For example, a group of former New Orleanians managed to scrape together $10,000, but not to help repair damage to their homes. No, they put the money to a better use: placing a full-page newspaper ad demanding that Congress take the money of other citizens and build stronger flood protection in New Orleans.
Never mind the fact that tons of money has been appropriated by Congress for this very use over the years but has, as usual, been squandered by the politicians. If they just spend enough money this time, the problem will be solved.
Meanwhile, a federal judge ordered FEMA to continue to spend taxpayers' money to house "42,000 evacuee families still living in 4,000 hotels in 47 states and the District of Columbia" until February 7.
Spake the judge: "Underlying FEMA's position is a theme that every person ultimately has to take care of him or herself. Certainly as a general rule this is true, but perhaps that position is unduly callous under the circumstances wrought by Hurricane Katrina."
This, of course, is the excuse for every government wealth redistribution program. Buy into one, and you've bought into them all.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 01:09 PM | Comments (0)
December 12, 2005
When Is a Lie Not a Lie? When Bill Clinton Agrees With It
Rush Limbaugh employs his "truth detector" to demonstrate why the story about the phony intelligence linking Iraq and al-Qaeda is all wrong. It doesn't prove anything because . . . Bill Clinton said there were links, too!
I continue to marvel at the spectacle of people who, to this day, insist (and not without reason) that Bill Clinton never told the truth in his entire life, now citing Clinton as a witness that Bush wasn't lying about Iraq either.
Besides, so what if Clinton believed it? The fact is that the Bushies sent this guy off to Egypt to be tortured--a notion to which Limbaugh responds with a mock "gasp"--in order to get him to tell them what they wanted to hear, then used that "intelligence" to justify their war. Whether or not Clinton believed that Iraq and al-Qaeda were connected is irrelevant. There's no doubt that he could have done exactly the same thing as Bush and that these so-called conservatives would be completely opposed to the war that resulted and demanding his head for these lies.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)
December 09, 2005
First Comes a Socking From Mr. Will
Ouch! George Will delivers a biting column on the latest entitlement wending its way through Congress, all but certain to be signed by our compassionate conservative president: free analog-to-digital TV converter boxes. Will lays into "compassionate conservatism" big time, but the best quote of all is this: "no matter how deeply you distrust the government's judgment, you are too trusting."
That, of course, is why some of us don't trust government at all.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 02:44 PM | Comments (1)
80,000 Potential Terrorists Can't Be Right
This is just ridiculous:
A watchlist of possible terror suspects distributed by the US government to airlines for pre-flight checks is now 80,000 names long, a Swedish newspaper reported, citing European air industry sources.
The classified list, which carried just 16 names before the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington had grown to 1,000 by the end of 2001, to 40,000 a year later and now stands at 80,000, Svenska Dagbladet reported.
Are there really 80,000 terrorists in the entire world, let alone 80,000 anti-U.S. terrorists (not that our government isn't doing a good job of upping the numbers for us every day)? We know that many innocent people have been caught up in this stupid list because there are lots of common names on the list (such as David Nelson and Edward Kennedy). This story says that "2,000 passengers checking in at Stockholm's Arlanda airport have had to be cleared with the US authorities because of name matches on the 'selectee' list this year, although none was prevented from boarding." Even if no innocent people were caught up in it, though, a list this huge is worthless.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 09:12 AM | Comments (1)
A False Rendition of al-Qaeda/Iraq Links
It seems that every day we learn more about the lies and distortions that went into (and continue to go into) the Iraq war.
This should be a biggie, but it probably won't be (and you can be sure all the "conservatives" will ignore or downplay it):
The Bush administration based a crucial prewar assertion about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda on detailed statements made by a prisoner while in Egyptian custody who later said he had fabricated them to escape harsh treatment, according to current and former government officials.
The officials said the captive, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, provided his most specific and elaborate accounts about ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda only after he was secretly handed over to Egypt by the United States in January 2002, in a process known as rendition.
There you have it: The U.S., under a policy begun under Bill Clinton and continued by George W. Bush, sent a prisoner to Egypt because he wouldn't talk. The Egyptians tortured him, as our government knew they would, and so he fabricated the entire Iraq-al Qaeda link story just to escape torture. Then our government went to war partly on the basis of these lies. If Bush and his whole administration don't deserve to be strung up for this war and all the lies surrounding it, then I'm Brad Pitt.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 09:06 AM | Comments (0)
December 08, 2005
Marshalling All the Facts About the Shooting
The 24-hour news cycle has its benefits. The official story of the shooting of the man by air marshals in Miami yesterday is already beginning to unravel, as expected.
Air marshals said Rigoberto Alpizar announced he was carrying a bomb before being killed.
However, no passenger has publicly concurred with that account.
Does it not seem strange that not one other person on the plane heard the alleged bomb threat?
There is, on the other hand, one witness who told Time magazine that the victim never said anything about having a bomb:
"I don't think they needed to use deadly force with the guy," says John McAlhany, a 44-year-old construction worker from Sebastian, Fla. "He was getting off the plane." McAlhany also maintains that Alpizar never mentioned having a bomb.
"I never heard the word 'bomb' on the plane," McAlhany told TIME in a telephone interview. "I never heard the word bomb until the FBI asked me did you hear the word bomb. That is ridiculous." Even the authorities didn't come out and say bomb, McAlhany says. "They asked, 'Did you hear anything about the b-word?'" he says. "That's what they called it."
Then there's more about the police-state tactics employed on the innocent bystanders:
"I was on the phone with my brother. Somebody came down the aisle and put a shotgun to the back of my head and said put your hands on the seat in front of you. I got my cell phone karate chopped out of my hand. Then I realized it was an official."
And finally this:
[McAlhany] thinks the whole thing was a mistake: "I don't believe he should be dead right now."
(Thanks to William Anderson at the LewRockwell.com blog for the Time link.)
Posted by Mike Tennant at 04:11 PM | Comments (0)
December 07, 2005
He Had It Coming
A co-worker was the first to let me know of the unfortunate mentally ill man who was killed by the TSA today. I referred her to Suprynowicz recent commentary, where today's police are so quick to kill, they are in a current conundrum from killing out-of-uniform black members of their own ranks, and that they should go back to operating without firearms and depend on citizen militias for support. My atypical reply led to a quiz on recent high profile killings, leading to a one-hour debate about David Koresh and the Branch Davidian tragedy.
I was speaking with a kind, hard-working, intelligent woman in the middle of a masters degree program. Yet she remembered as truth every misconception about the tragedy possible: that the Davidians were a suicide cult, that Koresh was molesting children and was threatening the feds, and that he "must have done something," otherwise the truth of his story would be out there, and the surviving Davidians wouldn't be doing time today. I'd hazard to guess her recollection of the story jibes with the majority's, and that is even though the Davidians got a relatively (for victims) good airing of their side.
The talk left me bewildered, sad, and an hour late for dinner. I count that conversation typical of 90% of the discussions that I have: that the state is an elemental force like a hurricane, and people who don't bow and scrape before it are responsible for their own demise -- not that it's just a collection of individuals who should be held accountable under the same rules as all humanity.
Posted by Robert Jackson at 10:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
Jean Charles de Menezes All Over Again?
Do we have our own Menezes case now?
According to the AP (via Antiwar.com):
A passenger who claimed to have a bomb in a carry-on bag was shot and killed by a federal air marshal Wednesday on a jetway connected to an American Airlines plane that had just arrived at Miami International Airport from Colombia, officials said. . . .
Homeland Security spokesman Brian Doyle said after the plane had parked at the gate, a passenger indicated there was a bomb in the passenger's carryon bag. The passenger was confronted by air marshals but ran off the plane.
A team of air marshals pursued and ordered the passenger to get on the ground. The passenger did not comply and was shot when apparently reaching into a bag, Doyle said. He said this is the first time an air marshal has shot at a passenger or suspect.
Then there's this: "A woman, apparently the man's wife, said he suffered from bipolar disorder and had not taken his medication, Gardner said."
And you have to love the cops' police state response:
After the shooting, police boarded the plane and told the passengers to put their hands on their heads, [passenger Mary] Gardner said.
"It was quite scary," she told the station [WTVJ-TV] via a cell phone. "They wouldn't let you move. They wouldn't let you get anything out of your bag."
How much you wanna bet the official story turns out to be a pack of lies again?
Posted by Mike Tennant at 04:12 PM | Comments (0)
A Forgotten Post-9/11 Hoax
The great James Bovard tells today of "A Forgotten Post-9/11 Hoax." It was indeed forgotten by me, if I ever knew about it in the first place. Basically it goes like this: To show the public that it was safe to fly after 9/11, a bunch of Bush's Cabinet members took commercial flights one day. They claimed they were flying without any special security. As it turns out, not only were there undercover air marshals on the Cabinet members' flights, but those marshals had been reassigned from flights where the FAA's security director thought they were needed more. (He was fired for refusing to reassign them.)
There's lots more good stuff in here beyond that story as well, including all the pronouncements about how well the FAA was doing despite its massive failure on 9/11.
(Thanks to Antiwar.com for the link.)
For daring to apply the same logic to the sainted Bush as he did to the hated Clintons, Bovard has been labeled a "libertarian looney" by the Freepers, to whom any criticism of Bush is tantamount to treason.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 02:41 PM | Comments (0)
December 06, 2005
Speaking Truth to Other Bloggers
Here is an interesting and insightful post by a usually apolitical blogger, Jaime Weinman, on the subject of our supposedly adversarial press and conservatives' complaints about how the press is beating up on our poor president. The best part of the entry starts with the third quote from Terry Teachout ("What has changed since 1958 . . .").
There are some comments from Yours Truly there, too.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 10:40 AM | Comments (0)
December 01, 2005
Fiat Currency: "I Yam What I Yain't"
Here, courtesy of Don Markstein's Toonopedia, is the most succinct description of fiat currency I've ever seen, courtesy of (of all things) a Popeye comic strip. I'd be interested to know what happened in the strips that followed.
Posted by Mike Tennant at 08:25 AM | Comments (1)