Wait For It . . .

Ken AshfordBush & Co., War on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

TODAY:

Bush: U.S. probes possible Iran links to 9/11

WASHINGTON (CNN) — Iran is harboring members of al Qaeda, and the United States is investigating whether the Iranian government had a role in the September 11, 2001, attacks, President Bush said Monday.

YESTERDAY:

Halliburton Subpoenaed Over Unit’s Iran Work

HOUSTON (Reuters) – A U.S. grand jury issued a subpoena to Halliburton Co. seeking information about its Cayman Islands unit’s work in Iran, where it is illegal for U.S. companies to operate, Halliburton said on Monday.

The oilfield services company, formerly headed by Vice President Dick Cheney, said it understood that the investigation of its subsidiary’s work in Iran had been transferred to the U.S. Department of Justice from the Treasury Department, which first initiated an inquiry in 2001.

Halliburton has a Cayman Islands unit, eh? Okay.

Not to mention that when Cheney was CEO of Halliburton, he railed against the economic sanctions imposed against Iran. Not that that stopped Cheney from doing business with Iran ANYway.

As I was putting this together, I realized that all this looks very bad for Cheney. And then it dawned on me . . . .

ALL THIS LOOKS REALLY BAD FOR CHENEY

Is this some way for Bush to dump Cheney without making it look like he was doing it because Cheney was a drag on the ticket?

Drunk Flight Crew Members Beat Passenger

Ken AshfordRandom MusingsLeave a Comment

If you are not worried about Syrian musicians on your flight, then maybe you should worry about swarthy flight attendents.

That’s right — the friendly skies have just got . . . uh . . . stupider.

MOSCOW – Drunken passengers often give air crews trouble, but Russia’s leading airline on Tuesday reported an "unprecedented" reversal: A passenger was assaulted by intoxicated flight attendants.

Two crew members on a domestic Aeroflot flight beat up a passenger who had complained that the flight attendants were drunk, airline spokeswoman Irina Dannenberg said.

The passenger, identified only as A. Chernopup, was aboard a recent flight from Moscow to the Siberian city of Nizhnevartovsk, Dannenberg said. She said the crew belonged to another airline, Aviaenergo.

Seeing that the crew were intoxicated and were not fulfilling their duties, Chernopup asked to be served by a sober and competent flight attendant, Dannenberg said. He was then beaten up by crew members.

(Source)

I’ve flown Aeroflot before. This doesn’t surprise me.

Are You Rrrrready to Rrrrrrrumble?

Ken AshfordRight Wing and Inept MediaLeave a Comment

Apparently, Moveon.org has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission claiming that Fox News Channel’s slogan "fair and balanced" violates the FTC’s prohibition against deceptive advertising. (Source, although there are probably others).

I’m not sure what Moveon.org hopes to achieve — they are unlikely to win, in my view. However, they will clearly cause a lot of damage and embarrassment to Fox along the way. That’s probably why they are doing it.

How To Show You Are Tough On Terrorism: Lie

Ken AshfordWar on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

Federal prosecutors in Iowa claim they built 35 terrorism-related cases in the two years after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

Wow! Thirty-five terrorism cases? In Iowa? That’s surprising news to me. It also came as surprising news to the judge who tried some of the cases:

"If there have been terrorism-related arrests in Iowa, I haven’t heard about them," said U.S. District Judge Robert Pratt. But Pratt himself presided over courtroom proceedings in at least six of the criminal cases that federal prosecutors had cataloged as terrorist in nature.

Mmmmm. Apparently there is a disconnect somewhere.

Included among the 35 cases were:

• Four American-born laborers who omitted mention of prior drug convictions or other crimes when they were assigned by a contractor to a runway construction project at the Des Moines airport or when they applied for manual-labor jobs there.

• Five Mexican citizens who stole cans of baby formula from store shelves throughout Iowa and sold them to a man of Arab descent for later resale.

• Two Pakistani men who entered into or solicited sham marriages so that they and their friends could continue to live in the Waterloo area and work at convenience stores there.

Ah, yes, terrorism is EVERYWHERE, especially if every little thing counts as "terrorism" (and doubly so if you happen to be non-white!). Just the other day, a guy cut me off in traffic — that f**kin’ terrorist!

Actually, the reason for the jacked up figures (i.e., the "lie") is so that when Attorney General John Ashcroft lobbys lawmakers for continued support of the Patriot Act, he has some (bogus) successes to point to. Creep.

Anyway, read the full article.

Bush Presidency is “the Least Democratic in the Modern History of the Presidency”

Ken AshfordBush & Co.Leave a Comment

That sounds like typical partisan screed, but Jonathan Chait does an amazing — almost bulletproof — job backing it up with concrete examples and logical argument. He takes various definitions of "democracy" — including one supplied by GWB himself — and shows that the Bush Administration is more undemocratic than any other administration in recent memory.

The reason the article is both damning and intriguing is because it relies little on one’s political views (conservative vs. progressive). Instead, Chait offers a harsh criticism of the Bush Administration’s process: a process intentionally and systematically mired in secrecy, misdirection and manipulation — three things which confound and frustrate bedrock democratic principles.

Recommended reading.

On Pre-War Intelligence and Post-War Lies

Ken AshfordBush & Co., IraqLeave a Comment

A hat tip to Eric Alterman who realizes that he is going to be branded as an anti-Semite for merely pointing to this article from the nation’s leading Jewish newspaper. The article describes the recent Senate Intelligence Committee Report dealing with pre-war intelligence. It also refers to the Knesset report — the Israeli equivalent of the Senate report. The money quote:

Along similar lines, the Senate report criticized what it described as the creation of an "assumption train" — a chain of false assumptions based on faulty, unscrutinized intelligence. Judging from the Knesset report, issued in March by an investigative committee appointed by the Israeli parliament’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, several of the assumption train’s cars were made in Israel.

That’s a pretty hefty accusation, coming from the Jewish media.

So if our pre-war intelligence came from Iraqi defectors (folks like Chalabi with an axe to grind and a vested interest in Iraq’s overthrow), and Israel (not exactly a neutral party either), why is everyone so dumbfounded about intelligence failures? It’s like thinking you will uncover accurate information about the Hatfields by interviewing the McCoys . . . and then acting "surprised" when the intelligence turns out to be faulty.

And now to the post-war lies . . .

Eric Alterman also opens himself to being labeled (libeled?) an America-hater and a Saddam supporter, simply for referring to this article, which tells how Saddam’s mass killings were apparently exaggerated by Blair.

Let me get the perfunctories out of the way. You see, certain idiots think that if you raise facts and allegations that indicate Bush or Blair exaggerated/mislead/lied, then you must therefore hate America, and (as Alterman puts it) "wish that Saddam was back in power". I’m not sure which is more embarrassing: the idiots’ illogical argument, or giving credibility to the idiots’ argument by actually responding to it with all seriousness. Nonetheless, I will state that which I think should be hopefully obvious: I do not hate America. Nor is this a defense of Saddam. After all, one unjust death is one unjust death too many.

But the point is this: if Saddam Hussein was truly evil (and I personally think he was), why was it necessary to lie and exaggerate to demonstrate that? Why was it necessary for Blair to say that "’400,000 bodies had been found in Iraqi mass graves", when the truth is that only 5,000 have been found (in the 215 of the 270 sites inspected so far)?

Did our leaders have to lie about Hitler in order to rally public support for the war? Did they have to "pad" the death toll from Pearl Harbor?

Wasn’t the truth, stately plainly, good enough? If the Iraq war was justifiable, there would have been no need to "make a case" for it before it began. And there would be no need to continue to lie about the war rationale after-the-fact.

Energetic Response

Ken AshfordBush & Co., War on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

We all remember the hubbub several months ago regarding the Bush White House’s "ho-hum" response to the August 6, 2001 PDB ("Presidential Daily Briefing") — the one with the headline saying: "Bin Laden Determined To Strike In U.S.". As you may recall, Condaleeza Rice dismissed the August 6 PDB as an "historical document" that said "nothing new". She and the administration did not consider it a "warning".

Well, it looks like the 9/11 Commission, in their report to come out this week, is going to talk about that PDB, as well as an earlier PDB that went before Clinton’s eyes.

Dated December 4, 1998, the earlier PDB was entitled: "Bin Laden preparing to hijack U.S. aircraft and other attacks."

The 9/11 commission will not only declassify the December 1998 PDB, but the commission’s report will "describe an energetic response to that (1998) report," says Philip Zelikow, executive staff director at the commission, including "efforts to determine if the plot reports were true". (Source)

Not that it would have prevented a tragedy (but who can say for sure?), but don’t you just WISH that the Bush White House had responded to the August 2001 PDB with the same "energetic response" that the Clinton White House did when confronted with the December 1998 PDB . . . rather than being so dismissive, wimpy, and unconcerned?

Hawking Flip-Flops About Universe

Ken AshfordRandom Musings1 Comment

After almost 30 years of arguing that a black hole swallows up everything that falls into it, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking backpedaled Thursday.

Source.

Does this mean we can all get rid of "A Brief History of Time" which none of us ever read anyway?

P.S. On second reading, it occurs to me that "backpedaled" might not have been the best word for MSNBC to use . . .

How To Correct Mistakes

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

You bury them. And the bigger the mistake, the deeper you bury the correction.

From Tuesday’s Washington Post on page A02:

A story in the July 12 Sports section should have indicated that the top four finishers in the men’s 100-meter dash at the U.S. Olympic trials were separated by eight-hundredths of a second.

A story in the July 11 Sports section should have indicated that Katie Hoff won the 400-meter individual medley at the U.S. Olympic swimming trials.

The Web Watch column in the July 11 Business section misstated the name of a new business partner of the Evite Web service. The company is TicketWeb, not TicketNow.

A July 10 story on a new Senate report on intelligence failures said that former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV told his contacts at the CIA that Iraq had tried to buy 400 tons of uranium from the African nation of Niger in 1998. In fact, it was Iran that was interested in making that purchase, but no contract was signed, according to the report.

Obviously, you can see how eager WaPo was to correct a story which confused Iran and Iraq — the correction was prominently placed after two separate corrections relating to stories about the U.S. Olympic trials, and after a correction about the name of a web-based ticketing service.

Nice mea culpa, boys.

Meet the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

The scene is a courtyard adjacent to a police station in Baghdad. Saddam is there with several prisoners. An eyewitness tells the story:

"The prisoners were against the wall and we were standing in the courtyard when [he] said that he would like to kill them all on the spot. [He] said that they deserved worse than death – but then he pulled the pistol from his belt and started shooting them."

***

Re-enacting the killings, one witness stood three to four metres in front of a wall and swung his outstretched arm in an even arc, left to right, jerking his wrist to mimic the recoil as each bullet was fired. Then he raised a hand to his brow, saying: "He was very close. Each was shot in the head."

***

The Herald has established that as many as 30 people, including the victims, may have been in the courtyard.

Except — you guessed it — I lied. It wasn’t Saddam; it was Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq . . . just a few days after we handed control of the country to him. Will some moral absolutist explain this to me? Read more.

What Is Rove Doing?

Ken AshfordElection 2004Leave a Comment

That’s the question that has been plaguing me for a while. I see Bush going out to states where he is already doing well, and talking about issues that merely mobilize his base, rather than trying to attract the crucial swing voters. How can he hope to win an election THAT way, I constantly ask?

Well, according to this analysis, Bush can win an election that way.

Therein lies an important key to understanding Bush’s reelection strategy. Although age-old campaign rules dictate that the general-election candidate must emphasize moderate "swing" voters and political independents, Bush strategists are predicting that this election, more than previous ones, will be determined by the turnout of each side’s partisans. Although not discounting swing voters, Bush is placing unusual emphasis so far on rallying the faithful.

Mmmmm. So maybe he does have an actual campaign strategery (other than cheating, I mean).

The problem that I see with that strategy is this: while Bush may be mobilizing his base, he unwittingly mobilizes Kerry’s base at the same time. For example, when he speaks on subjects that please the social conservatives, he invigorates the progressive movement and others who really hate that moralizing shit! In other words, Bush motivates his no-base to vote against him just as much (if not more) than he motivates his base to vote for him.

Anyway, it’s an interesting read for anyone interested in political campaigns.

No Respect For One’s Elders

Ken AshfordBush & Co.Leave a Comment

"Trying to eliminate Saddam…would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible…We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq…there was no viable ‘exit strategy’ we could see, violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern of handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations’ mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."

– From "A World Transformed" by Former President George Bush

"Step outside and let’s you and me have at it, mano a mano, old man!"

– My paraphrase of a young, drunk Dubya confronting his father around Christmas 1972, in a widely-underreported incident

I Love Stats Like These

Ken AshfordRepublicans, Right Wing and Inept MediaLeave a Comment

They’re rich and chock full of meaning. This I lifted from Eric Alterman’s site. This is, in fact, part of the new afterward to the paperback edition of his book "What Liberal Media?", and it is sssoo-wwweeet:

An in-depth study undertaken for the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes and published around the time of the second anniversary of the attacks found that over sixty percent of Americans believed one of the following misperceptions:

* There’s clear evidence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein worked closely with the Sept. 11 terrorists.

* U.S. forces found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

* People in foreign countries generally either backed the U.S.-led war or were evenly split between supporting and opposing it.

Moreover, the researchers discovered a direct correlation between these misperceptions and the consumption of television news as opposed to newspapers or National Public Radio. According to its figures, 80 percent of Fox News’ audience and 71 percent of CBS’s bought into at least one of the above falsehoods.

Meanwhile only 47 percent of newspaper and magazine readers and just 23 percent of those who said they relied on PBS or NPR found themselves similarly misled.

And lest we forget, phony ideas have consequences. Support for Bush’s war reached 53 percent among those who believed one of the lies, 78 percent among those who accepted two of them and a full 86 percent among those who embraced all three.

Meanwhile fewer than a quarter of people who understood the truth of the situation–rejecting all three phony canards—were willing to take a trip on Bush and Cheney’s not-so excellent adventure.

(Emphasis mine) So, where do YOU fall in this little statistical paradigm?

More America Haters

Ken AshfordRight Wing and Inept MediaLeave a Comment

”Do not fall into the easy trap of mourning the loss of U.S. lives,” it reads.

Oh, geez. Not Moore’s website again. Doesn’t that guy EVER get tired of making light of dead American soldiers???

Actually, it’s not Moore. It’s Fox.

It’s a memo from Fox Senior Vice-President for News instructing Fox News not to report TOO much on dead American soldiers. Read more and/or buy the DVD.