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![]() Just Above Sunset
April 3, 2005 - Newsmen Don't Throw Curveballs
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Rick, The News Guy
in Atlanta, who often comments in the pages, says he thinks somebody should find some way to connect in print this week’s
spy report, that showed Bush was getting "lies" and exciting "headlines" in his daily briefings on Iraq, and his statements
at the time that the reason he doesn't read newspapers or watch television news because he'd rather get his news from the
"objective" folks who put together his daily briefings. Well, we do have a mess.
The presidential commission investigating the intelligence fiasco that preceded the Iraq invasion reported this week that
the damage done to US credibility would "take years to undo.” The general idea in the report was that American intelligence
was in chaos, often paralyzed by the rivalry of fifteen different agencies and affected by unchallenged assumptions about
Baghdad's supposed weapons of mass destruction. I'm shocked, shocked to think that anyone would interpret Dick Cheney's visits to the CIA, W's
immediate assignment of blame to Iraq after 9/11 and Don Rumsfeld's, Colin Powell's and Condi Rice's flagrant disregard for
facts, evidence and integrity in the run up to war as somehow proving much of the blame lies with senior cabinet members.
Next you'll be asserting that the man who preaches personal responsibility and honesty should take a "buck stops here" approach
and accept accountability for a war that never should have been fought. Oh and I'm sure you'll want to dredge up the ever
changing "101 Best Reasons We Went to War" aided by the MSM [mainstream media] and how facts were interpreted at the White
House in the worst possible light in order to justify an unjustifiable attack. Well if you're going to be a spoilsport, we'll
just have to empanel another commission--this one to prove there never was a second Iraq war and that this has all been misinformation
fed to us by that liberal media. That'll show you. Whatever. To President Bush, the news is like a cigarette. You can get it filtered or unfiltered. And which
way does he prefer it? Well, that depends on the circumstances. When he is trying to send a message to the public, Bush prefers
to have it go out unfiltered. He feels, for example, that the "good news about Iraq" is getting filtered out by the national
media. "Somehow you just got to go over the heads of the filter and speak directly to the American people," he said the other
day. So, lately he has been talking to local and regional media, whom he trusts to filter less. Drat, it SO hard to find
good servants these days! … And where does the Rice-Card News Service obtain its uncontaminated information? Bush
conceded his shocking suspicion that Rice and Card "probably read the news themselves." They do? Whatever is next? The president
apparently is willing to tolerate the reading of newspapers by his staff members in the privacy of their own homes, as long
as they don't flaunt this unseemly habit by bringing the wretched things into the White House or referring to them at staff
meetings. Well, you have to assume
a functioning, inquisitive press, digging into things – they call it investigating – to go with Kinsley here.
Does our press still do that? That would be a fellow
who claimed to be an Iraqi chemical engineer who defected to the side of the good guys. That would be us. Unfortunately
he was a liar and a drunk. The local paper here, the Los Angeles Times, broke the story on him in March of 2004
– but he’s key now. Prewar claims by the United States that Iraq was producing biological weapons were based almost
entirely on accounts from a defector who was described as "crazy" by his intelligence handlers and a "congenital liar" by
his friends. Well, at least Curveball
wasn’t an investigative newspaper reporter. … there were problems with Curveball's claims at an early stage. Some CIA officials noted
that Curveball's memory showed significant "improvement" as he pursued a European immigration deal and deteriorated when it
was granted. Well, at least Curveball
wasn’t a reporter. The commission report revealed details about problems with other prominent prewar claims. The
CIA asserted that Iraq was importing aluminum tubes to be used as centrifuges in a nuclear weapons program, although authorities
have since concluded they were for conventional rockets. Oh well, we wanted that
stuff to be true. … the work intelligence men and women do is, by nature, secret, which is why the American
people never hear about many of their successes. I'm proud of the efforts of our intelligence workers. I am proud of their
commitment to the security of our country. And the American people should be proud too. Again, whatever. Bush's bizarre press conference on Thursday was according to the Washington Post "on Terri
Schiavo and Weapons of Mass Destruction." That US newspapers report this bewildering juxtaposition without so much as a "Huh?"
tells you to what estate political discourse in this country has fallen. Oh my! But Bush did say nice things
about our intelligence folks, didn’t he? That is supposed to make it all right that we sent a high-tech army into a poor, weak country
and turned it into a failed state, killing 40,000 innocent Iraqis and suffering over 1500 coalition troops dead and over 10,000
US troops wounded, many maimed for life, and spending $300 billion on it? For no reason? When the poor weak state did not
in fact have the weapons of mass destruction that Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz insisted it had? When they bullied
anyone who questioned their evidence for all this, and got their billionaire buddies who own the media to have their anchors
and editorialists also bully any dissidents? Well, yeah, if your read
the transcript you’ll find Bush talking about protecting life, as in the Florida pull-the-plug controversy, and alluding
to opposing abortion as also protecting life, and to the intelligence report. Are these connected? It turns out that anti-abortionism is not about life at all. It is about social control. It helps
establish a hierarchical society in which men are at the pinnacle and women kept barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen. Likewise,
the Schiavo case was in part about the religious Right dictating to Michael Schiavo how he must lead his private life. Perhaps you should read
the whole Cole item at the link. You’ll see his point. |
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This issue updated and published on...
Paris readers add nine hours....
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