This seems funny to me for some reason. I'm not sure why.
Thursday, May 27, 2004 · Last updated 5:45 a.m. PT
Plane turned around after 9/11 discussion
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
BUFFALO, N.Y. -- A plane was turned around on the runway and returned to the gate after three men were overheard praying and discussing the Sept. 11 terror attacks.
The men - two ministers from Toronto and one of their cousins from the United States - were on a Continental flight Wednesday headed to Newark, N.J.
The pilot taxied back to Buffalo-Niagara International Airport, where members of the joint terrorism task force in Buffalo interviewed the men and fellow passengers.
The ministers were identified as the Rev. Komal Singh and the Rev. Yohan Heenatigala. The third man was not identified.
Singh was on his way to an evangelical crusade in Baltimore when he told another passenger that the passenger's last breath on Earth would be his first breath in heaven if he became a born-again Christian.
"My first reaction was someone was just talking and someone got nervous and that's exactly what it turned out to be, but it has to be checked out," said Peter Ahearn, FBI special agent in charge.
The men were released and the flight took off.
I just found an interesting site about Kerry's military record at a domain that tracks urban legends.
It's not what you think.
Basically it just discusses the whole "Kerry got his medals under fishy circumstances" thing and quotes from various documents relevant to the issue.
You can see it here.
Long story short, people attacking Kerry's military record would seem to be blowing ass.
I have a new theory about these left-to-right converts that seem to be popping up all over the internet like a plague crop of pod people.
You know those arguments you have with Annoying Liberals, where you ask a question or suggest a hypothesis and they shoot back with some comment that begins, as many of Noam Chomsky's do, "Any intelligent person knows…" or, "Well-informed people have known for years…" but then they don't actually say anything that doesn't boil down to "you're wrong"? They just have an opinion, and it's The Smart Person's Opinion. But it's never specific. It's never, "Any intelligent person knows that cars produce more than half of their pollution during the manufacturing process," or even, "Any intelligent person knows that George W. Bush wears a rubber clown nose to bed."
Instead, it's always something like, "Any intelligent person knows that the Bush administration is full of wealthy criminals."
Which may well be true. But it's also too vague to argue against. What are we calling "wealthy"? Who are we calling a "criminal"? What's "full of"? More than half? One third?
You see where this is going.
Because for a long time I thought it was just an idiosyncrasy of Ryan's debating style: his occasional "consider the source" and "that's just crazy" rebuttals. But then I went over to A Small Victory which is basically just a giant standing wave front of, "Left-wingers are irrational ideologues! They're crazy! They make funny faces when they get mad! No sane person would vote for these lunatics!"
You start following comment links from her page, it's more of the same: personal attacks, generalizations, sarcasm and hyperbole. And it all sounds… well, vaguely familiar.
And not in a good way.
So, this is kind of interesting.
Every year, the White House produces a document called The Economic Report of the President which contains, among other things, data about gross savings and investment, year by year.
According to the ERP, in 1973, personal savings (that's money held in savings by non-corporate entities, aka "people") in the United States totaled $102.5 billion. That same year, gross business savings totaled $153.9 billion.
Now, fast forward 29 years.
In 2002, gross personal savings totaled $169.8 billion. Gross business savings totaled…
…wait for it…
$1,229.5 billion. Yes, that's $1.3 trillion.
Now, to put that in perspective, consider the following:
Between 1960 and 1979, gross corporate savings was pretty consistently about twice as much gross personal savings. So, for example, in 1972, GPS (gross personal savings) totaled $76.9 billion and GCS (gross corporate savings) totaled $140.1 billion. And that's a reasonably consistent trend from 1960 to 1979. There are exceptions, but they tend to favor personal savings: in 1970, GPS was $69.5B, and GCS was $104.8B.
Now, between 1980 and 1989, the scales started to tip a little. There was still, generally, about a 1:2 ratio between GPS and GCS, but those "exception years" favored GCS instead of GPS.
Both figures grew steadily until 1992, when GPS topped out at $413.7 billion, then started to decline pretty sharply. Meanwhile, GCP took off in an uninterrupted slope. If you chart the two values, you get a widening "V" shape that flares at the end, like the bell of a trumpet.
Hey, what does all that mean?
Well, that depends on how you look at it. What it means to me is that there has been a steady decline in the economic prosperity of private citizens in the United States since, at least, 1992— and that, during that same period, there was a sharp increase in the economic prosperity of corporations.
This leads me to some disturbing conclusions about the economic franchise of the electorate. Savings, to some extent, equal economic stability. At the present time, private citizens have very little economic stability, while corporate entities (all evidence to the contrary) have a great deal of it. I look at that, I see an alarming lack of autonomy; the private consumer no longer has the resources to engage in economic negotiations with the corporate planning system. We can't afford to boycott and we can't afford to strike— the two most direct tools for negotiating with corporations from one end or the other. And we are being totally outclassed in campaign spending and other economic controls of the civil infrastructure.
This trend has not, as near as I can tell, been significantly reversed under Bush. If anything, Bush seems inclined to cut out the middle man, handing large tax breaks directly to the rich, maintaining the tax burden on the general population, and using tax revenues to fund defense projects (and purchase fuel and other associated consumables) that directly benefit a fairly small number over powerful corporations with highly focused spending habits: a 15,000 pound bomb costs about as much as a car to build, but employs many fewer people in the effort.
So that's all pretty bad.
Have a nice day.
I don't believe that all cultures are equal: some are better than others, and I'm not ashamed to say I think so. Some cultures are backwards, murderous, or self-destructive. It happens. I know it, and I think anyone who refuses, for whatever reason, to acknowledge the fact is naïve, ignorant, stupid, or some combination of the three.
I look at many forms of radical Islam, I see religious extremists of a very familiar sort. I see the KKK and Elijah Mohammed's Nation of Islam. I see very dangerous people who want to kill me for a narrow spectrum of perfectly absurd reasons. Multiculturalism doesn't excuse it. These people are a problem that must be dealt with.
And yet: I disagree with those who are saying that George W. Bush is the best choice for the United States presidency. I disagree with those who supported the invasion of Iraq. I disagree with those who see Israel as the helpless victim of Arab xenophobia, and I disagree with people who think the best solution to the problems the United States faces in the Middle East is a military solution.
The difference, I daresay, between myself and many others who hold similar views is twofold.
One, the notion that people who have never met me would want to kill me because of the color of my skin, or the dominant religion of my country or what have you, is not a novel one to me. I was raised to hate Black people and Asians; to see them as competitors for jobs and housing. I was raised to believe they were inferior, and that their anger toward European Americans was the jealousy of an inferior race, directed at their betters.
As a teenager I abandoned those prejudices and exchanged them for one that seemed more relevant to my personal experience; a powerful class hatred, aimed at the rich. I read books written by various class warriors and political revolutionaries, to see what had been tried-- what worked and what didn't and why. After a couple of years of that kind of thing, I was constantly aware of the antagonism that hums just under the surface of most human interaction, and just how easy it would be to set the whole thing off.
Given all this, the events of September 11, 2001, didn't surprise me a bit. And this is not to say that I was one of those, "American had it coming," people. I did think America had it coming, but not in the way most people mean that. I didn't think America had it coming for being racially or economically insensitive. I didn't think American had it coming because the United States is a "bad" country, or any such similar drekh. I thought America had it coming for having a foolish, short-sighted foreign policy that relied on military superiority to protect its borders. I thought America had it coming for pissing off all the wrong people, and assuming that our big guns and our nuclear arsenal would keep us safe. I thought America had it coming for tempting fate. For walking around with a big hammer and treating every foreign-policy problem like a nail.
Because it wasn't the FBI that eliminated the threat of the Nation of Islam; it was the Civil Rights Act. Likewise foreign threats to America's national security; the most effective way to circumvent those threats is to co-opt them. That's just simple pragmatism, and the United States has been trading pragmatism for elitism and expediency for far too long.
Two, I am not an essentialist. Arabs invented zero. The Chinese invented gunpowder. The Egyptians had brain surgery and surgical techniques for pinning broken bones back together. There was a Roman Empire and there were Dark Ages, and which parts of the Bible people choose to live by has changed from one century to the next. The moral of the story of human history is, "this too shall pass," and the constant is change. History can turn on a dime, and a hundred million people can change their minds in the time it takes to say "the Creel Commission."
The adherents of radical Islam can be turned from their course. There is no doubt in my mind that it is possible. I am absolutely convinced that it is necessary. But it's my considered opinion that the tactics currently being employed by the United States are the wrong tactics for achieving that goal. The tactics currently being used are, in point of fact, exactly the wrong tools for this job. They exacerbate the conditions that created "radical" Islam.
- + - + - + -
I just read a very good essay by a guy named Bill Whittle, which I arrived at via a link from A Small Victory. And the thing that's interesting to me is that Mr. Whittle and I seem to be looking at the same historical evidence, drawing many of the same conclusions-- and choosing opposite sides on the matter of the war in Iraq and the decisions of the Bush administration.
Mr. Whittle talks about the Civil War, and the surrender at Appomattox; the lessons learned there, and the lessons of the Civil War. And he comes to the conclusion that the United States is doing right in the Middle East. I look at the same events and I recall, over and over again, Lincoln's advice to a Union general in regard to the conquered people of Richmond: "If I were in your place, I'd let 'em up easy, let 'em up easy." I recall that Grant let the Confederate soldiers keep their horses and weapons. I recall that Lincoln understood --better than almost anyone in the Union-- that when the war was over, North and South would have to form one country again and that taking too punitive or oppositional an attitude toward the South and her leaders would spoil the chances of a long-term Union victory.
Mr. Whittle looks at George W. Bush, and sees a kind of Lincoln. I look at George W. Bush and I remember Lincoln's appeal to the South before the war:
"I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battle-field, and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."
I compare that to "bring 'em on," and I find myself feeling very grim about George W. Bush's potential as a leader for peace.
George W. Bush is the wrong guy for this job. This is not to say that John Kerry is the right guy. But he is a better guy.
And one of the many unfortunate things about the way this war is discussed in this country is how many crazy and misguided people there are on the side of "the left". When John Kerry is supported by people who compare George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler, or who claim that the Mossad staged 9/11, it's easy to take sides against him. And there's an equivalency argument there: Bush is supported by people who don't believe in evolution. But to some extent, that's irrelevant.
Bill Whittle raises an interesting point about how many people have reacted to certain obstacles in Iraq:
Only it turns out that the United States military may have produced a few life-long professionals who actually hold victory more precious than crowing loud. Many of us value reason over emotion, and reality over wishful thinking. Well, we did not level Fallujah, and we did not do it because those bodies on that bridge were bait, pure and simple. We didn’t take the bait. Or, I should say, our military didn’t take the bait; I took it, hook line and sinker. I wanted to level the goddam city and then walk away and let them kill each other.
Now, that speaks well of our military. But the fact is, I think George W. Bush is a guy who takes the bait every fucking time. And I think John Kerry is a guy who knows better.
Don't get me wrong. I think John Kerry is a douche bag. But I'm voting for him anyway, because I think he's got a better understanding of what needs to happen in Iraq than George W. Bush does. John Kerry is certainly no Abraham Lincoln. But he's a hell of a lot closer than George W. Bush.
Anyway. I need to go home now and do laundry, so I can't really go as far with this as I'd like. The point I want to make here is a comment to Mr. Whittle and, to some extent, a comment to Michele, over at ASV: not everyone who disagrees with you about George W. Bush and the war in Iraq (and Afghanistan, for that matter), is a "multi-culturalist" or a "moral relativist". We aren't being snowed by John Kerry, and we're not drinking Kool-Aid. Some of us think Michael Moore's an idiot and John Kerry's a douche bag. And yet-- some of us will still vote for Kerry because we think he's the better man for the job. Some of us still think Iraq is being mishandled. And not for any of the reasons you think are stupid (U.S. out of Iraq now!), but because on the merit of subtler points of logic (Awarding of defense contracts to Hailliburton hampers the war effort because it's terrible PR, and this is a war for hearts and minds).
It may behoove you, as intelligent people, to consider some of these points.
Josh: I started a new blog today.
The Girl: Yeah?
Josh: Yeah. Basically it's for politics. And also, to talk shit about Michele.
The Girl: Who's Michele?
Josh: That chick in New York that does A Small Victory.
The Girl: Oh. That seems like kind of a strange use of time.
Josh: Yeah. I know. Everybody needs a hobby.
The Girl: You've got, like, six hobbies.
Josh: Well, now I've got seven.
The Girl: Why does she bug you so much?
Josh: Generally speaking, it's not her so much as her readers that really get on my nerves. In her case though, the main thing is that she used to be normal. And then she just, I don't know-- flipped out at some point.
The Girl: How do you know she used to be normal?
Josh: I went back and read some of her archives. It's just weird. 'Cause even after 9/11, she still seemed pretty grounded. Then she just kind of... I don't know. Got really militaristic. I haven't read the entire archive to try and figure out what the trigger was.
The Girl: Hm.
Josh: It just bugs me. Like, if a rational person can just lose their mind like that, I want to know what causes it.
The Girl: It sounds like something that would happen if she got a new boyfriend or something.
Josh: I think she got married at some point in the last three years.
The Girl: Well, that could be it.
And it turns out new evidence supports The Girl's take. Go figure.
So it's the daily A Small Victory Freaky Rant Round-Up.
From one of Michele's recent posts:
Root causes, my ass. You know what the root cause of all this? For 2,000 years, radical Islamists have believed that they own the right to chop off the heads of infidels. Last I checked, George W. Bush was not around 2,000 years ago.
Okay, so this is a woman who has written, I shit you not, hundreds of entries about "radical Islam" and "Islamofascists" and on and on like that. She gets somewhere between five and ten thousand hits a day.
But she evidently doesn't know that Islam has only been around for about 1,350 years. How many of those years have been "radical" is, I suppose, a matter of interpretation.
But also, there's the issue of the core content of her post:
Mike Berg is an opportunist who is seizing the moment of his son's death as a way to spread his leftist propaganda.
So when Mike Berg, Nick Berg's dad, expresses his opinion that George Bush is responsible for his son's death, that's disgusting leftist propaganda. But when Michele writes:
Nick Berg's murder should bring us together. It should have the exact opposite effect that the murderer's intended. It should make us feel that, as Americans, our lives are at stake. It should make us feel the way we did on September 11, 2001 when we stared out our windows or at our televisions and said holy shit, we are at war. Our enemy has not changed since that day; we are still fighting the same core group of fundamentalists that have the common goal of wanting the infidels dead. And who are the infidels? Americans and Jews.
that's heartfelt sorrow and true blue American patriotism?
Let me repeat that: when the guy's father talks about how he feels about his son's murder, Michele can tell, through her powers of telepathy, that Mike Berg is cold bloodedly, calculatingly and cynically, using the death of his son as a way to spread his "leftist propaganda."
But when Michele uses it as a basis for declaring that we should all get behind George W. Bush and kill us some terrorists, she's not using Nick Berg's death to leverage her own agenda.
What is that? Selective memory? Hypocrisy? Stupidity— can she just not see the contradiction? Or is she so dogmatic that she just chooses not to?
I don't know, but it freaks me out. Michele has plenty of working brain cells. That she has, since September, 2001, become that rabid and incapable of analyzing her own rhetoric —that egocentric and hateful— is profoundly disturbing.
New York City Transit has apparently decided that the best way to protect the security of their trains in the new and improved post-9/11 world is to make a law against taking pictures in the subway. Because, you know, you never know when a terrorist might want a photograph of a bum passed out in a pool of his own piss.
Never mind that modern digital camera technology makes it possible to hide a camera pretty much anywhere and take hundreds of pictures without so much as having to change out the film, making such a law, at best, a minor inconvenience to anyone who just wants to collect schematic data on the train system.
What's more disturbing, at least to me, is the furthering of this cowardly Fortress America mentality. We're locking down our borders. Now we're unnecessarily restricting freedoms on public property, essentially just to make stupid people feel safer. This has been true of airport security for ages— it's designed for stupid people, to stop stupid people. And god knows there's no shortage of stupid people in the world— but that's nothing new. I hardly see why we need to implement a catalogue of restrictive security reforms that'll do fuck-all to stop real terrorists.
What a crock of shit.
Americans, like most human beings, believe strongly in the concept of "us and them", and subscribe wholeheartedly to a belief in American exceptionalism. The basic idea is that Americans are, by nature, the "good guys" and that we oppose the "bad guys". That America is a good place with a good government that breeds good people.
Many people, particularly— though not exclusively —those on the left, find such an attitude naïve. But their opposition generally comes down to an opinion, usually no better supported than the blind patriotism they're objecting to.
That in mind, let me remind you of two experiments that have been discussed quite a bit since the Abu Ghraib torture scandal: the Stanley Milgram "obedience to authority" experiment, and the Stanford Prison experiment.
The Stanley Milgram experiment was developed in the 1960's and repeated, with variations in sample, location, and method, well into the 1970's. The basic set up was that a subject would be brought into an office as a "teacher". They would be placed in front of a machine with a dial and a button on it. The dial listed voltages. The button would supposedly administer a shock of the voltage listed on the dial to a "learner" in another room. The "teacher" was told that their job was to ask the "learner" questions and administer a shock every time the "learner" got the question wrong. Each shock was to be at a higher voltage than the last. There were markers on the dials indicating what the shock would do to the "learner", up to and including death.
There was no actual shock being administered, but the "teachers" didn't know that. Actors pretending to be "learners" screamed and thrashed in another room, as if they were actually being electrocuted.
In one session of the experiment, 85% of the "teachers" willingly administered voltages listed as "lethal" to "learners" when ordered to do so. Generally, at least 65% of the "teachers" would administer repeated painful shocks to "learners".
The Stanford Prison experiment was more complex but, in many respects, no less disturbing. A group of college clinicians simulated the arrest of 18 male college students, then divided them into 9 "prisoners" and 9 "guards" at random. Over the six days that the experiment took place, "guards" isolated and tortured "prisoners". "Prisoners" began to panic and suffer from signs of acute mental distress. And the clinicians lost all objectivity and began to plot with the guards to keep the "prisoners" under control, even though they knew as well as anyone that the "prisoners" had done nothing, and that the entire thing was just an experiment.
The moral I see in all this is that Americans can be induced to torture and degrade helpless people on very little pretense— that there is nothing so inherently noble in our character that we can't be the "bad guys" and that, in fact, the likelihood of our being "bad guys" is closely associated with the "goodness" or "badness" of our leadership. If this point had been forgotten we may certainly have been reminded of it by the recent spate of illegal strip searches performed on customers at various retail and fast food outlets around the country.
In conclusion, Americans are not necessarily the "good guys" and anyone who uses that as the basis of their argument against accusations of misconduct is living in denial. That many Americans do just that, and are encouraged by their fellows, suggests to me that we as a people have forgotten our sense of responsibility to ourselves and to our country. It makes it all too easy to pretend that simply being an American excuses one from putting forth the effort to be moral.
Or, to put it another way, we are only the "good guys" if we make good choices. We all have to keep an eye out for the authority figure who gives us a button and a dial and tells us what our job is. In the 1960's, something on the order of 65% of Americans failed that test of character.
We're failing it again today.
So, about six months ago I started this blog as a forum for arguing with Ryan. I had no other purpose in mind. This blog is a forum for all the angry things that popped in my head in response to Ryan's personal politics.
Since then, Ryan and I have more or less played each other out on most topics. The UN? We've come to a consensus on as many points as can be agreed upon, and abandoned the rest. Iraq? Ditto, pretty much. Gay marriage? Been there. Done that. That new Star Trek Enterprise series? We haven't talked about that, but I'm willing to bet we both hate it.
Since then, I've moved on to louder, more obnoxious and deeply freakishly partisan right-wing bloggers who have taught me, among other things, to appreciate all the ways in which Ryan is a sane, balanced, considerate human being.
Mostly, I've run up against these people in A Small Victory.
So what you'll see here from now until I get bored with this, is mostly rants against Michele, who runs ASV, and her more frequent commenters. I will try to add context, so that the rants are entertaining in and of themselves and, of course, I'll do my best to make sure the comments here are worth reading.
That said, I have a point about this whole "Those Lefties are saying X!" and "Those Righties are saying Y!" thing. Consider, please, the following two quotes taken off of the ASV comment string, hearings or spanish inquisition?
The horrifying thing to me is that increasingly, when something goes wrong--whatever it is--the reaction of many people in our society is to turn on each other rather than adddressing the problem or the external enemy. I think this is a huge problem, and it seems like it has gotten much worse in the last decade. Anyone agree or disagree? Any thoughts as to causes?
Posted by David Foster at May 18, 2004 08:13 PM
ok David, I'll bite! How about the ACLU, political correctness, our societies lack of willingness to take responsiblity for our own actions. I know a few lawyers, some of them decent, but many more who would sue just for the fun of it.
Posted by Diana at May 18, 2004 09:02 PM
David Foster, a right-winger, asks, "Why must we blame?"
And Diana, also a right-winger, comes back with, "Because of those damn Lefties!"
Now, if I were trying to argue against "the Right" generally, and chose to do so exclusively by picking out contradictions in "their" arguments, this would be a good place to start. After that, I could spend all day just picking out one of these things after another. Some of them would be on "issue" topics, like WMD and al Qaeda. Some of them would be about gay marriage. And so on and so forth.
My point? That whole approach is bullshit. And if you catch yourself saying "The Right wing can't make up its mind," it might be worth your time to stop and ask yourself which "right wing" you're talking about.
Ditto the left.
Also: beware the straw man. I could tear Diane to pieces, and call the right wing vanquished. But I'd be doing David, and myself, a disservice.
Anyway, I have to run and catch a bus now, because I'm one of those Leftie "cars suck" people. You know how they are. And the good news is, that saves you from having to listen to me pound this point into the ground.
The current sitting Justices of the United States Supreme Court are:
1. William H. Rehnquist, Chief Justice
2. John Paul Stevens
3. Sandra Day O’Connor
4. Antonin Scalia
5. Anthony M. Kennedy
6. David Hackett Souter
7. Clarence Thomas
8. Ruth Bader Ginsburg
9. Stephen G. Breyer
And, you know, I hate to admit this, but just the name Clarence Thomas still kind of makes me want to laugh. It's a punchline all by itself. Though I never knew, (or maybe had forgotten) that he used to be an attorney in the pesticide and agriculture division of the Monsanto Company. That's a little creepy.
They're all interesting people. Take a minute to check 'em out.
Now that's just sad...
From today's Seattle Times:
Monday, May 17, 2004 · Last updated 5:52 a.m. PT
Louisiana bill would ban low-slung pants
By MELINDA DESLATTE
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER
BATON ROUGE, La. -- A Louisiana state representative wants to make it illegal for people to wear low-slung pants that expose underwear - or more. But he's having trouble getting some of his colleagues to take him seriously.
When the bill came up for debate earlier this week, Rep. Derrick Shepherd, a Democrat from the New Orleans suburb of Marrero, was met with catcalls on the House floor. The bill would make it a crime to wear clothing in public that "intentionally exposes undergarments or intentionally exposes any portion of the pubic hair, cleft of the buttocks or genitals."
Launching a fiery speech in support of the bill, Shepherd said, "There comes a time in every society where we must draw a line of decency, where we must speak to a group of individuals who would flaunt the laws of our state, who would flaunt the morals of our community."
The result: laughter from some and a facetious chant of "No more crack!" from Rep. Tommy Wright, D-Jena.
Shepherd asked for a delay of a vote and the measure awaits action.
Despite the jokes, some opponents have serious concerns. During a May 6 committee hearing, Heather Hall of the American Civil Liberties Union said Shepherd's bill would institute a literal "fashion police" and a "really invasive violation of the fundamental right to public expression."
House Criminal Justice Committee Chairman Danny Martiny, R-Kenner, said he agreed with the spirit of the measure, but he said the law would be impossible to enforce.
"I don't know that it's respectful to pay my respects at a funeral without my shirt on, but that's not illegal; that's just stupid," he said. "Government can't fix everything."
But there is also support for the measure.
"We should be able to say what is moral, what is decent and what is acceptable behavior for our young people," said Glenn Green, a city councilman from Westwego, near New Orleans.
If Shepherd does get his bill passed, violators of the proposed law would have to perform three eight-hour days of community service at a fire department and could have to pay a fine up to $175.
"Somebody's telling me how to wear the clothes I've paid for? So my kid is wearing his pants off his booty, he's going to jail?" an incredulous Nikquel Thomas, a 22-year-old New Orleans college student, said about the proposed law.
"It's the land of the free - who cares about what clothes you wear?" added his friend, 18-year-old Leslie Barnum. "It's hot in New Orleans. We're not talking Bourbon Street style - topless. We're talking comfortable, relaxed."
Evidently, someone rigged a 105mm artillery shell as an improvised anti-personnel device in Iraq sometime last week and— surprise surprise —the shell turned out to have nerve gas in it. A spokesman for the U.S. army says he does not believe the insurgents who rigged the shell knew it had nerve gas in it (which makes sense— there are certainly better ways to deploy nerve gas, if you know you have some), and the available evidence suggests to me that the bomb with the nerve gas in it was a stray shell that probably got mixed in with a bunch of conventional artillery rounds by mistake.
To be clear: this marks the first confirmed discovery of any weapon of mass destruction in Iraq. Some Right-wing war bloggers have also claimed a previous discovery of mustard gas, but I'm given to understand that turned out to be jet fuel.
Does this mean Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction after all? Michele, over at A Small Victory certainly seems to think so (if you've never been to ASV before, I apologize ahead of time for exposing you to the jarring tone of the comments section there), and I feel certain that she won't be the first or the last person to conclude that finding one unmarked chemical weapons shell proves that "Saddam Hussein had chemical weapons".
So… let me just put it like this: if you have a bunch of pennies, and some of them are pennies from 1951, and I say, "You must turn over all your pennies from 1951 or I will punch you in the nose," and you do so— but you miss a few pennies —then I'm technically entitled to punch you in the nose if and when I discover that you still have some pennies from 1951. As far as that goes, yes: George W. Bush is finally vindicated. There were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and he was justified in punching Saddam Hussein in the nose.
For my part, I basically consider this shell non-news, except for how the pro-war camp is going to use it to prop up their arguments. Come to that, I think it's possible that, someday, we may find a large cache of WMDs in Iraq. I doubt it, but it's possible. I still think George W. Bush lied to get us into this war. To get back to the penny metaphor:
George Bush wants to punch you in the nose, so he accuses you of having some pennies from 1951. You turn out your pockets and say, "Dude, no pennies." So Bush says, "Let me look in your socks!" and you say, "Blow me." So he compiles some faulty evidence that suggests you have pennies from 1951, then he punches you in the nose. And, after you're lying there on the ground with little birds and planets floating around your head, he goes through all your clothes with a fine-toothed comb and does a body cavity search and finally turns up a penny from 1951.
So. Does that mean Bush wasn't talking out his ass when he insisted that the fact that you wouldn't let him go through your socks proved that you had a 1951 penny? Does that mean Bush wasn't cutting corners when he relied on the testimony of a convenience store clerk who said he may have given you a penny from 1951 once, about six years ago, at 1:30 in the morning when you were buying beer? Does the fact that Bush finally found a 1951 penny that may have slipped through a hole in your pocket into the lining of your jacket— does that fact mean he was justified in punching you in the nose?
Not really. Not in my mind. Undoubtedly Michele would accuse me of moving the goal post. To which I'd respond: "Whatever."
I used to work in an environmental chemistry lab, which means I worked in a lab that specialized in analyzing soil and water to determine if it was contaminated with various kinds of poisons: believe me when I tell you that it is impossible to remove all traces of a given chemical compound from material that has been exposed to it.
There's a story we used to tell in the lab: if you go into a bank in Miami and take all the $100 bills out and spread them out on a floor and have a dog that's been trained to sniff out the smell of cocaine go over those bills, about half of them will test positive for having cocaine residue on them. That does not mean the bank is full of fucking cocaine.
I never doubted that the U.S. would eventually find some WMD evidence in Iraq. But when George W. Bush tells me that he is sufficiently sure of the presence of WMD in a foreign country that we need to invade that country, and when most Americans support the invasion contingent on their belief that the U.S. federal government has proof of WMD in that country— then I goddamn well expect him to be able to produce those stockpiles after the invasion.
Saddam Hussein was a vicious monster, and he needed to be removed from power.
But George W. Bush is still a shitty president who sold this war to the American people on false pretenses.