Wednesday, July 28, 2004
How's It Hanging, Chad?
The best, most auditable voting technology seems to be punch cards or fill in the circle cards. The technology is simple, easily understood and subject to manual audit. I am very suspicious that the whole "hanging chad" controversy was a big smokescreen intended to create a demand for touch screen voting.
The real controversy in Florida was the disenfranchisement of thousands of black voters and not punch card voting. To me one solution to the hanging "chad" problem would have been to run these punch cards through vote tabulating machines an agreed upon amount of times, 5 for example. Election officials noted that when punch cards are run multiple times through the machines chad debris increased, meaning loose, hanging chads would fall. Loosened, dimpled chads would have fallen off with no favoritism for one side or the other. So called No votes, where it appeared that the voter did not attempt to remove any chad for an office, would be minimized and of course some ballots would be lost due to duplicate votes for the same office. The result would be that voters who mistakenly dimpled two chads for the same office may not have their intended vote counted but the controversy surrounding trying to determine intent would be avoided. Gore may still have lost due to the willful disenfranchisement of thousands of voters in minority communities but then that would have been the major story it should have been from the start.
This article from the NY Times is a great illustration of why fear of election fraud is not lefty paranoia. All Americans should be concerned about protecting the integrity of our elections process. If we cannot have faith in the result of our elections our very democracy is in grave danger. [I include portions of the article due to the Times practice of making you pay for access to the whole article once they archive it.]
Almost all the electronic records from the first widespread use of touch-screen voting in Miami-Dade County have been lost, stoking concerns that the machines are unreliable as the presidential election draws near.
The records disappeared after two computer system crashes last year, county elections officials said, leaving no audit trail for the 2002 gubernatorial primary. A citizens group uncovered the loss this month after requesting all audit data from that election.
... Like "black boxes" on airplanes, the electronic voting records on touch-screen machines list everything that happens from boot-up to shutdown, documenting in an "event log" when every ballot was cast. The records also include "vote image reports" that show for whom each ballot was cast. Elections officials have said that using this data for recounts is unnecessary because touch-screen machines do not allow human error. But several studies have suggested the machines themselves might err - for instance, by failing to record some votes.
After the 2002 primary, between Democratic candidates Janet Reno and Bill McBride, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida conducted a study that found that 8 percent of votes, or 1,544, were lost on touch-screen machines in 31 precincts in Miami-Dade County. The group considered that rate of what it called "lost votes" unusually high.
When the CEO of Diebold, a major voting machine company, works for Bush's reelection campaign in Ohio and"guaranteed" a victory for Bush in Ohio and a sitting Republican Senator failed to disclose his holdings in the voting machine company, Election Systems and Software of Omaha, that tabulated 85% of votes cast in his last two Senate races and when these systems have been shown to be easily manipulated and many are not auditable is it paranoia to be worried about them or is it common sense? (On a side note, I found it interesting that once Chuck Hagel's voting machine controversy popped up he suddenly became an outspoken critic of some of Bush's policies - call me a conspiracy theorist (a lot of people do) but I have to wonder if this isn't a ploy to reduce our alarm over a very alarming situation.)
What a sad state of affairs it is when the US may need the UN to monitor our elections for fairness. That seems to be where we are now.
Several months ago I was upset about the number of people that I was meeting who seemed to believe that this administration would not leave office peacefully regardless of the will of the voters. I thought these people had gone way overboard when they claimed that the election would either be stolen, again or cancelled when Bush and company declared a terrorism related emergency. Wow, I thought I was a cynical but these folks were really nuts. Then we were introduced to DeForest Soaries and now I am not so sure. It is funny how life keeps surpassing fiction. As Lily Tomlin said, "No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up!"
We can and will stop these crooks if we keep our eyes open and never underestimate the corrupting power of power. At least we have mail in voting here in Oregon, with good old fashioned punch cards and fill in the ovals voting.
Keep the faith but keep in mind the words of The Gipper, "Trust, but verify". (Who'd a thunk I'd ever quote him favorably?) Maybe that reminder will encourage Republican voters to get worried about election fraud too since democrats are every bit as capable of stealing an election as republicans. This should not be a partisan issue.
The best, most auditable voting technology seems to be punch cards or fill in the circle cards. The technology is simple, easily understood and subject to manual audit. I am very suspicious that the whole "hanging chad" controversy was a big smokescreen intended to create a demand for touch screen voting.
The real controversy in Florida was the disenfranchisement of thousands of black voters and not punch card voting. To me one solution to the hanging "chad" problem would have been to run these punch cards through vote tabulating machines an agreed upon amount of times, 5 for example. Election officials noted that when punch cards are run multiple times through the machines chad debris increased, meaning loose, hanging chads would fall. Loosened, dimpled chads would have fallen off with no favoritism for one side or the other. So called No votes, where it appeared that the voter did not attempt to remove any chad for an office, would be minimized and of course some ballots would be lost due to duplicate votes for the same office. The result would be that voters who mistakenly dimpled two chads for the same office may not have their intended vote counted but the controversy surrounding trying to determine intent would be avoided. Gore may still have lost due to the willful disenfranchisement of thousands of voters in minority communities but then that would have been the major story it should have been from the start.
This article from the NY Times is a great illustration of why fear of election fraud is not lefty paranoia. All Americans should be concerned about protecting the integrity of our elections process. If we cannot have faith in the result of our elections our very democracy is in grave danger. [I include portions of the article due to the Times practice of making you pay for access to the whole article once they archive it.]
Almost all the electronic records from the first widespread use of touch-screen voting in Miami-Dade County have been lost, stoking concerns that the machines are unreliable as the presidential election draws near.
The records disappeared after two computer system crashes last year, county elections officials said, leaving no audit trail for the 2002 gubernatorial primary. A citizens group uncovered the loss this month after requesting all audit data from that election.
... Like "black boxes" on airplanes, the electronic voting records on touch-screen machines list everything that happens from boot-up to shutdown, documenting in an "event log" when every ballot was cast. The records also include "vote image reports" that show for whom each ballot was cast. Elections officials have said that using this data for recounts is unnecessary because touch-screen machines do not allow human error. But several studies have suggested the machines themselves might err - for instance, by failing to record some votes.
After the 2002 primary, between Democratic candidates Janet Reno and Bill McBride, the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida conducted a study that found that 8 percent of votes, or 1,544, were lost on touch-screen machines in 31 precincts in Miami-Dade County. The group considered that rate of what it called "lost votes" unusually high.
When the CEO of Diebold, a major voting machine company, works for Bush's reelection campaign in Ohio and"guaranteed" a victory for Bush in Ohio and a sitting Republican Senator failed to disclose his holdings in the voting machine company, Election Systems and Software of Omaha, that tabulated 85% of votes cast in his last two Senate races and when these systems have been shown to be easily manipulated and many are not auditable is it paranoia to be worried about them or is it common sense? (On a side note, I found it interesting that once Chuck Hagel's voting machine controversy popped up he suddenly became an outspoken critic of some of Bush's policies - call me a conspiracy theorist (a lot of people do) but I have to wonder if this isn't a ploy to reduce our alarm over a very alarming situation.)
What a sad state of affairs it is when the US may need the UN to monitor our elections for fairness. That seems to be where we are now.
Several months ago I was upset about the number of people that I was meeting who seemed to believe that this administration would not leave office peacefully regardless of the will of the voters. I thought these people had gone way overboard when they claimed that the election would either be stolen, again or cancelled when Bush and company declared a terrorism related emergency. Wow, I thought I was a cynical but these folks were really nuts. Then we were introduced to DeForest Soaries and now I am not so sure. It is funny how life keeps surpassing fiction. As Lily Tomlin said, "No matter how cynical you get, it is impossible to keep up!"
We can and will stop these crooks if we keep our eyes open and never underestimate the corrupting power of power. At least we have mail in voting here in Oregon, with good old fashioned punch cards and fill in the ovals voting.
Keep the faith but keep in mind the words of The Gipper, "Trust, but verify". (Who'd a thunk I'd ever quote him favorably?) Maybe that reminder will encourage Republican voters to get worried about election fraud too since democrats are every bit as capable of stealing an election as republicans. This should not be a partisan issue.
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
China
Wow. Think torture works? Write your thought report every night after torture. Rumsfeld could learn a thing or two from these guys or the other way around.
Wow. Think torture works? Write your thought report every night after torture. Rumsfeld could learn a thing or two from these guys or the other way around.
Friday, July 16, 2004
Our Gift of Freedom
This story from the NY Times relates the scenes at recently opened passport offices in Iraq:
At one point, Iraqi policemen charged at the crowd, wielding batons. A couple of shots were fired in the air. The line, if it can be called that, disintegrated and the crowd retreated toward a barbed wire fence before lunging forward again.
Jobless, rattled, fed up, Iraqis are dreaming of getting out.
"Escape from Iraq" is how Muhammad Kadhum, 26, a college student, described his intentions. "I cannot live here in Iraq. I cannot feel like a man."
Zeinab Heart, 24, waiting in black in the already wilting midmorning heat for a chance to move to her husband's native Lebanon, lamented: "I want to get out. I want my children to live in a peaceful place."
And here is another story detailing Iraq's brain drain in Al Jazeera:
More than 1000 leading Iraqi professionals and intellectuals have been assassinated since last April, among them such prominent figures as Dr Muhammad al-Rawi, the president of Baghdad University.
The Al Jazeera unsupported claim that Israel may be behind the assassination of Iraqi intellectuals should be taken with a big grain of salt. The killing of large numbers of Doctors, Professors, Engineers and other intellectuals however, is well documented and not just by Al Jazeera. The question remains, who is intentionally wiping out these people and encouraging educated Iraqi's who can get out of the country to leave?
If things continue on the present path Iraq may well become a basket case. As in most places around the world where things go to hell in a hand basket it is the talented and able who leave first. This exodus accelerates the slide into chaos for those who remain and invites dictatorship. So much for the promise of "a shining example of peace and democracy in the Middle East".
This is one of the reasons why you don't start wars after only reading the Cliff Notes version of intelligence reports and ignoring the warnings of career intelligence officials, military leaders, foreign service officials, close allies of 50 years and common goddamn sense! The other reason is, it is pre-meditated murder on a vast scale. Add to this the fact that the justifications for the said war have been proven to be false and now you are in war crimes territory.
Impeach Bush!
This story from the NY Times relates the scenes at recently opened passport offices in Iraq:
At one point, Iraqi policemen charged at the crowd, wielding batons. A couple of shots were fired in the air. The line, if it can be called that, disintegrated and the crowd retreated toward a barbed wire fence before lunging forward again.
Jobless, rattled, fed up, Iraqis are dreaming of getting out.
"Escape from Iraq" is how Muhammad Kadhum, 26, a college student, described his intentions. "I cannot live here in Iraq. I cannot feel like a man."
Zeinab Heart, 24, waiting in black in the already wilting midmorning heat for a chance to move to her husband's native Lebanon, lamented: "I want to get out. I want my children to live in a peaceful place."
And here is another story detailing Iraq's brain drain in Al Jazeera:
More than 1000 leading Iraqi professionals and intellectuals have been assassinated since last April, among them such prominent figures as Dr Muhammad al-Rawi, the president of Baghdad University.
The Al Jazeera unsupported claim that Israel may be behind the assassination of Iraqi intellectuals should be taken with a big grain of salt. The killing of large numbers of Doctors, Professors, Engineers and other intellectuals however, is well documented and not just by Al Jazeera. The question remains, who is intentionally wiping out these people and encouraging educated Iraqi's who can get out of the country to leave?
If things continue on the present path Iraq may well become a basket case. As in most places around the world where things go to hell in a hand basket it is the talented and able who leave first. This exodus accelerates the slide into chaos for those who remain and invites dictatorship. So much for the promise of "a shining example of peace and democracy in the Middle East".
This is one of the reasons why you don't start wars after only reading the Cliff Notes version of intelligence reports and ignoring the warnings of career intelligence officials, military leaders, foreign service officials, close allies of 50 years and common goddamn sense! The other reason is, it is pre-meditated murder on a vast scale. Add to this the fact that the justifications for the said war have been proven to be false and now you are in war crimes territory.
Impeach Bush!
Thursday, July 15, 2004
Bush: The Buck Stops Over There
Great summary of Bush laziness and incompetence here.
I am so tired of hearing that the supposed mountain of pre-war intelligence indicated that Saddam was a huge threat. Everything known now was known then. For example, within days of Colin Powell's humiliating performance at the UN, when hawks were comparing his performance to the "smoking gun" revelations by Adlai Stevenson to the UN during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the evidence he presented was thoroughly picked apart and debunked by the European press and internet bloggers far smarter than I. Words like obvious forgeries, plagiarism, inconclusive abounded in the descriptions of Powell's triumphant speech and this was supposed to be the final treatise justifying the use of overwhelming force on a helpless country ruled by a brutal dictator. Only later did we learn that Powell himself angrily tossed out parts of the speech he was encouraged to give because it would have made him look even more ridiculous.
I remember Bush being asked in the run up to the invasion why, if our European allies were given access to the same intelligence that we had, did they come to opposite conclusions regarding the necessity of invasion over containment? Bush asserted at the time they he had given French and German leaders access to "all of the intelligence" on the matter that he had. The patriotic bigots amongst us said that this was just another sign of European ungratefulness, immorality and laziness and that the French were "surrender monkeys".
Now we know that our allies actually read the intelligence and analyzed it while for Bush the invasion was a forgone conclusion probably from the moment he took the oath of office.
The worst part is the man's refusal to accept responsibility for the ugly results of his go-it-alone policy. Never before has a president so deserved being run out of office on a rail.
Great summary of Bush laziness and incompetence here.
I am so tired of hearing that the supposed mountain of pre-war intelligence indicated that Saddam was a huge threat. Everything known now was known then. For example, within days of Colin Powell's humiliating performance at the UN, when hawks were comparing his performance to the "smoking gun" revelations by Adlai Stevenson to the UN during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the evidence he presented was thoroughly picked apart and debunked by the European press and internet bloggers far smarter than I. Words like obvious forgeries, plagiarism, inconclusive abounded in the descriptions of Powell's triumphant speech and this was supposed to be the final treatise justifying the use of overwhelming force on a helpless country ruled by a brutal dictator. Only later did we learn that Powell himself angrily tossed out parts of the speech he was encouraged to give because it would have made him look even more ridiculous.
I remember Bush being asked in the run up to the invasion why, if our European allies were given access to the same intelligence that we had, did they come to opposite conclusions regarding the necessity of invasion over containment? Bush asserted at the time they he had given French and German leaders access to "all of the intelligence" on the matter that he had. The patriotic bigots amongst us said that this was just another sign of European ungratefulness, immorality and laziness and that the French were "surrender monkeys".
Now we know that our allies actually read the intelligence and analyzed it while for Bush the invasion was a forgone conclusion probably from the moment he took the oath of office.
The worst part is the man's refusal to accept responsibility for the ugly results of his go-it-alone policy. Never before has a president so deserved being run out of office on a rail.
Saturday, July 10, 2004
When the Truth is Found to Beeee Lies
Here is a good illustration of how hard it is to get to the truth.
What would you bet that we won't hear or read a full accounting of the prisoner "abuse" (TORTURE) of Iraqi detainees before the election? It's not even right to call them prisoners since most of them were found to have not committed any crime.
Here is a good illustration of how hard it is to get to the truth.
The Truth?
You can't handle the truth!
What would you bet that we won't hear or read a full accounting of the prisoner "abuse" (TORTURE) of Iraqi detainees before the election? It's not even right to call them prisoners since most of them were found to have not committed any crime.
Saturday, July 03, 2004
Big Time Rant
Imagine you are a 20 year old American soldier in Iraq. You have been told that your mission is to stop a madman, the worst since Hitler, possessor and willing user of weapons of mass destruction, even against his own people. He is a man capable of ruthless acts and, should America blink, within 45 minutes he could unleash a living hell on your loved ones back home that would make 9/11 look like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Your family, your town, your country is counting on you to save them. Then you watch a film with a title such as; "People in the Final Stages of Death by Small Pox". You take your small pox vaccine shots that have not been thoroughly tested, receive training in donning your chemical weapons protective gear and head for Iraq.
You have been told that Saddam and Usama Bin Laden are indistinguishable. You see the pictures of September 11 playing over and over in your head. You are scared but you are proud of being given the chance to save the lives of possibly hundreds of thousands of people. September 11, or much worse wasn't going to happen again if you had anything to do with it.
Then you get to Iraq. A nation "the size of California" but in much, much worse shape. You ask yourself, "these people, this army, was a threat to my country?" You meet with very little resistance. Then you hear that it does not really matter if we actually find weapons of mass destruction, only that they had plans to develop programs for the reconstitution of their WMD programs.
Then you are told that your president never really said that he was certain that Saddam and Usama got along well, in fact there is no evidence that they actually cooperated in any way. If you got that impression, it didn't come from the president or Big Dick Cheney. Then you are reminded how much of a monster Saddam Hussein was and that you have saved the world from what would eventually become a Hitler who would slaughter millions and then force feed a few of his top officials into a wood chipper just to prove his sadism. You are reminded of the mass graves which would have been even more massive if it hadn't been for you. Then you find out that the mass graves were Shiites who rose up to overthrow Saddam ten years ago thinking we had their back.
Now you're told that your mission was actually a humanitarian one. Your country was not in eminent danger but it was considered a winning strategy to scare the bejesus out of the folks back home to justify the invasion rather than tell them that you were being sent to fight to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqis. Your country loves these poor abused people so much that we along with the rest of the civilized world starved them to death for a decade to make them ornery enough to liberate themselves from the brutal Saddam. It didn't work. We didn't count on so many of them dying from diarrhea when we intentionally destroyed their sewage treatment plants and electrical utilities during the first gulf war. Who knew how difficult it was to mount a coup while overcome with lower gastrointestinal diseases, such as cholera, previously eradicated in much of the developed world including Iraq?
Then you are told to help torture some guys who were picked up for committing a crime that may have varied in significance from exploding an improvised bomb which killed two of our guys to looting a shop. Don't worry, your government will back you up, and if you don't do it we won't find Saddam's spider hole and eventually he will crawl out of it like a grotesque 17 year cicada just when we forget about him and he'll devour the world! Wait. The president doesn't have your back. He is saying that a few bad apples such as Lindy England were at fault. That sick backwoods slut has made us look bad and the president is saying that he never authorized mistreating prisoners. You turn on Armed Forces Radio to see what is going on back home and hear Rush Limbaugh saying that the torture at Abu Ghraib was "a brilliant idea" and was no worse then a fraternity prank.
We've always been for regime change in Iraq. You must now help make sure that the bad men never come back to run their country. Your country will teach them to be a democracy and will insure this by selling off all of the country's publicly owned enterprises. Lots of independent contractors are brought in and paid 4 times your monthly salary to provide security. When a couple of them are killed it is your job to shell a city packed with civilians for several weeks to pay them back for their lack of gratitude. Then the death toll really starts to rise on our side but you are told not to worry, we'll hand over control of Iraq to the Iraqi's in two months no matter what. Power will not be handed to Chalabi, the Pentagon favorite and the source for much of the pre-war evidence of Iraqi possession of WMD, since he was working as a spy for the Iranians.
You cannot ignore the thousands of innocent Iraqi's that you know have been killed or seriously injured since your mission to save the world started. You notice that they never welcomed you like the lovely French girls in Paris did for your grandfather. "I was sent here for them and they hate me?" you say. There are over 800 dead and thousands injured very seriously on our side and 15,000 or more dead and injured Iraqis. There are nearly 5 September 11ths worth of dead "non-combatants" and over $200 billion of deficit spending used to fight this war alone with most of our traditional allies condemning our actions and Iraq seems as far from being a functioning democracy as it ever was.
Then you are reminded that the "Greatest Generation" lost 400,000 and ended in a mushroom cloud that finally tamed the world in the "good war". Your grandfather got to see millions killed and you're whining about a few lousy corpses, what are you, a pussy! This war on Terror may last the rest of our lives you are told. Never mind that it was supposed to be a walk in the park and pretty much over by last May.
They finally complete grandpa's memorial in Washington and they use his sacrifice to justify yours but you notice that they don't have anything to do with each other. Grandpa fought two war machines that had spread from their borders across continents and oceans. You were sent to fight an army that your country outspent 281 to 1 on defense and who had much of its infrastructure and all of its heavy manufacturing capacity reduced to rubble a decade before you got there. You got to Baghdad in the blink of an eye and grandpa served for two years before he made Berlin. These people were no threat to Topeka, KS and you knew it, but they are a big threat to you now as you drive through their neighborhoods wondering when something will explode underneath your vehicle. Your boots are on the ground and you cannot find any ground to fight over, the country is a mess, nothing can be made to work and most of the people, 9 out of 10, consider you an occupier not a liberator. You no longer have any idea what this war was about, you only hope to stay alive long enough to be sent home in one piece since your president has chosen to cut funding for veterans assistance so he could reduce the future tax burden of Paris Hilton. Your job is to provide security so schools can be built while your kids' schools back home close 14 days early because they are broke.
It must be something invisible or underground that you are fighting for if you don't see it on the surface. If it wasn't about WMD or 9/11 or human rights what was it about? Could it be the oil? Could those damn goofy protesters with their crazy piercings who hate America be right?
Shit.
Imagine you are a 20 year old American soldier in Iraq. You have been told that your mission is to stop a madman, the worst since Hitler, possessor and willing user of weapons of mass destruction, even against his own people. He is a man capable of ruthless acts and, should America blink, within 45 minutes he could unleash a living hell on your loved ones back home that would make 9/11 look like the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Your family, your town, your country is counting on you to save them. Then you watch a film with a title such as; "People in the Final Stages of Death by Small Pox". You take your small pox vaccine shots that have not been thoroughly tested, receive training in donning your chemical weapons protective gear and head for Iraq.
You have been told that Saddam and Usama Bin Laden are indistinguishable. You see the pictures of September 11 playing over and over in your head. You are scared but you are proud of being given the chance to save the lives of possibly hundreds of thousands of people. September 11, or much worse wasn't going to happen again if you had anything to do with it.
Then you get to Iraq. A nation "the size of California" but in much, much worse shape. You ask yourself, "these people, this army, was a threat to my country?" You meet with very little resistance. Then you hear that it does not really matter if we actually find weapons of mass destruction, only that they had plans to develop programs for the reconstitution of their WMD programs.
Then you are told that your president never really said that he was certain that Saddam and Usama got along well, in fact there is no evidence that they actually cooperated in any way. If you got that impression, it didn't come from the president or Big Dick Cheney. Then you are reminded how much of a monster Saddam Hussein was and that you have saved the world from what would eventually become a Hitler who would slaughter millions and then force feed a few of his top officials into a wood chipper just to prove his sadism. You are reminded of the mass graves which would have been even more massive if it hadn't been for you. Then you find out that the mass graves were Shiites who rose up to overthrow Saddam ten years ago thinking we had their back.
Now you're told that your mission was actually a humanitarian one. Your country was not in eminent danger but it was considered a winning strategy to scare the bejesus out of the folks back home to justify the invasion rather than tell them that you were being sent to fight to bring freedom and democracy to the Iraqis. Your country loves these poor abused people so much that we along with the rest of the civilized world starved them to death for a decade to make them ornery enough to liberate themselves from the brutal Saddam. It didn't work. We didn't count on so many of them dying from diarrhea when we intentionally destroyed their sewage treatment plants and electrical utilities during the first gulf war. Who knew how difficult it was to mount a coup while overcome with lower gastrointestinal diseases, such as cholera, previously eradicated in much of the developed world including Iraq?
Then you are told to help torture some guys who were picked up for committing a crime that may have varied in significance from exploding an improvised bomb which killed two of our guys to looting a shop. Don't worry, your government will back you up, and if you don't do it we won't find Saddam's spider hole and eventually he will crawl out of it like a grotesque 17 year cicada just when we forget about him and he'll devour the world! Wait. The president doesn't have your back. He is saying that a few bad apples such as Lindy England were at fault. That sick backwoods slut has made us look bad and the president is saying that he never authorized mistreating prisoners. You turn on Armed Forces Radio to see what is going on back home and hear Rush Limbaugh saying that the torture at Abu Ghraib was "a brilliant idea" and was no worse then a fraternity prank.
We've always been for regime change in Iraq. You must now help make sure that the bad men never come back to run their country. Your country will teach them to be a democracy and will insure this by selling off all of the country's publicly owned enterprises. Lots of independent contractors are brought in and paid 4 times your monthly salary to provide security. When a couple of them are killed it is your job to shell a city packed with civilians for several weeks to pay them back for their lack of gratitude. Then the death toll really starts to rise on our side but you are told not to worry, we'll hand over control of Iraq to the Iraqi's in two months no matter what. Power will not be handed to Chalabi, the Pentagon favorite and the source for much of the pre-war evidence of Iraqi possession of WMD, since he was working as a spy for the Iranians.
You cannot ignore the thousands of innocent Iraqi's that you know have been killed or seriously injured since your mission to save the world started. You notice that they never welcomed you like the lovely French girls in Paris did for your grandfather. "I was sent here for them and they hate me?" you say. There are over 800 dead and thousands injured very seriously on our side and 15,000 or more dead and injured Iraqis. There are nearly 5 September 11ths worth of dead "non-combatants" and over $200 billion of deficit spending used to fight this war alone with most of our traditional allies condemning our actions and Iraq seems as far from being a functioning democracy as it ever was.
Then you are reminded that the "Greatest Generation" lost 400,000 and ended in a mushroom cloud that finally tamed the world in the "good war". Your grandfather got to see millions killed and you're whining about a few lousy corpses, what are you, a pussy! This war on Terror may last the rest of our lives you are told. Never mind that it was supposed to be a walk in the park and pretty much over by last May.
They finally complete grandpa's memorial in Washington and they use his sacrifice to justify yours but you notice that they don't have anything to do with each other. Grandpa fought two war machines that had spread from their borders across continents and oceans. You were sent to fight an army that your country outspent 281 to 1 on defense and who had much of its infrastructure and all of its heavy manufacturing capacity reduced to rubble a decade before you got there. You got to Baghdad in the blink of an eye and grandpa served for two years before he made Berlin. These people were no threat to Topeka, KS and you knew it, but they are a big threat to you now as you drive through their neighborhoods wondering when something will explode underneath your vehicle. Your boots are on the ground and you cannot find any ground to fight over, the country is a mess, nothing can be made to work and most of the people, 9 out of 10, consider you an occupier not a liberator. You no longer have any idea what this war was about, you only hope to stay alive long enough to be sent home in one piece since your president has chosen to cut funding for veterans assistance so he could reduce the future tax burden of Paris Hilton. Your job is to provide security so schools can be built while your kids' schools back home close 14 days early because they are broke.
It must be something invisible or underground that you are fighting for if you don't see it on the surface. If it wasn't about WMD or 9/11 or human rights what was it about? Could it be the oil? Could those damn goofy protesters with their crazy piercings who hate America be right?
Shit.
Thursday, July 01, 2004
Michael Moore
Moore is obviously not a great "documentary" film maker. His bias is clear and his many critics do a good job in pointing this fact out. His movie "Bowling For Columbine" was pack full of errors, deception and downright meanness in its treatment of the Alzheimers afflicted Charlton Heston, yet much of the movie posed very good questions that needed to be asked. In the next few weeks many will take shots at some of the more wild innuendo presented in Moore's latest film. I still stand by my strong recommendation for people to go see it for themselves.
Why do I still think it is worth seeing and discussing? Mainly because the truth lies somewhere between Moore's conspiracy theories and the major networks complete silence on most of the issues that he brings up and the fact that our mainstream press has utterly failed to inform the American public that many controversies exist in Bush's handling of the so called War on Terror.
In this piece by Christopher Hitchens in Slate he tears Moore a new rearend for some of his more outrageous suggestions in the film and for his flip flopping on the issues. Nevermind that Hitchens wrote a book and made a documentary in which he calls Mother Teresa and evil ghoul and until fairly recently was a savage critic of the neo-cons. For a counterpoint to Hitchens angry diatribe read Paul Krugman:
There has been much tut-tutting by pundits who complain that the movie, though it has yet to be caught in any major factual errors, uses association and innuendo to create false impressions. Many of these same pundits consider it bad form to make a big fuss about the Bush administration's use of association and innuendo to link the Iraq war to 9/11. Why hold a self-proclaimed polemicist to a higher standard than you hold the president of the United States.
Yes, I wish that Moore was better at presenting a more evenhanded critique of the Bush administration. Yes it is embarrassing to me when light is shined on some of his more outrageous suggestions - such as we may have attacked Afghanistan for Unocal so they could build a pipeline.
But what we have seen in the mainstream press in the last 3 and 1/2 years is no light being shined on any policy of the Bush Junta. Lower taxes on the rich equals economic growth. OK. Massive deficits as far into the future as the eye can see. Ok. Global warming is controversial and not a big problem. OK. Al Quaeda and Saddam connected. Ok. Iraq a great and gathering menace that cannot be contained other than by invasion and occupation. OK. The Iraqi's will welcome us with open arms and reconstruction will not cost us more than $1.8 billion. Ok. Torture openly discussed as an acceptable instrument of national security. OK.
Not until images of torture were forced before our eyes, not by the major media but by amateurs threatening to "irresponsibly", in the mind of Donald Rumsfeld, present this kind of information on the internet did the major media pick up the story. This is Michael Moore's roll, to be "irresponsible" so others know that their is another side to the story. The danger of course is that by knocking down one of Moore's strawmen critics may convince large numbers of people that nothing Moore presents is credible. How credible is Bush?
Images matter more than words and arguments for a great deal of people. Critics say of the images of carnage in Iraq prsented in F-911 that we don't need Michael Moore to tell us people get hurt in war. Wrong. Yes we do. It is too easy for many of us to forget and deny what is done in our name. When our government presents the media with a story that our smart bombs and pinpoint attacks are incredibly good at reducing civilian casualties someone needs to question that. Especially given the long history of all governments lying about such things. A careful count is taken of the dead on our side but their coffins are hidden from view. Very few Americans are aware that there have been over 22,000 medical evacuations from Iraq of our troops. The cost in civilian lives has not been taken into account at all. It is not enough to say that Saddam was an evil man and then ignore the costs associated with his removal.
The film is worth seeing and discussing. It is not perfect, fair or balanced and doesn't claim to be.
Moore is obviously not a great "documentary" film maker. His bias is clear and his many critics do a good job in pointing this fact out. His movie "Bowling For Columbine" was pack full of errors, deception and downright meanness in its treatment of the Alzheimers afflicted Charlton Heston, yet much of the movie posed very good questions that needed to be asked. In the next few weeks many will take shots at some of the more wild innuendo presented in Moore's latest film. I still stand by my strong recommendation for people to go see it for themselves.
Why do I still think it is worth seeing and discussing? Mainly because the truth lies somewhere between Moore's conspiracy theories and the major networks complete silence on most of the issues that he brings up and the fact that our mainstream press has utterly failed to inform the American public that many controversies exist in Bush's handling of the so called War on Terror.
In this piece by Christopher Hitchens in Slate he tears Moore a new rearend for some of his more outrageous suggestions in the film and for his flip flopping on the issues. Nevermind that Hitchens wrote a book and made a documentary in which he calls Mother Teresa and evil ghoul and until fairly recently was a savage critic of the neo-cons. For a counterpoint to Hitchens angry diatribe read Paul Krugman:
There has been much tut-tutting by pundits who complain that the movie, though it has yet to be caught in any major factual errors, uses association and innuendo to create false impressions. Many of these same pundits consider it bad form to make a big fuss about the Bush administration's use of association and innuendo to link the Iraq war to 9/11. Why hold a self-proclaimed polemicist to a higher standard than you hold the president of the United States.
Yes, I wish that Moore was better at presenting a more evenhanded critique of the Bush administration. Yes it is embarrassing to me when light is shined on some of his more outrageous suggestions - such as we may have attacked Afghanistan for Unocal so they could build a pipeline.
But what we have seen in the mainstream press in the last 3 and 1/2 years is no light being shined on any policy of the Bush Junta. Lower taxes on the rich equals economic growth. OK. Massive deficits as far into the future as the eye can see. Ok. Global warming is controversial and not a big problem. OK. Al Quaeda and Saddam connected. Ok. Iraq a great and gathering menace that cannot be contained other than by invasion and occupation. OK. The Iraqi's will welcome us with open arms and reconstruction will not cost us more than $1.8 billion. Ok. Torture openly discussed as an acceptable instrument of national security. OK.
Not until images of torture were forced before our eyes, not by the major media but by amateurs threatening to "irresponsibly", in the mind of Donald Rumsfeld, present this kind of information on the internet did the major media pick up the story. This is Michael Moore's roll, to be "irresponsible" so others know that their is another side to the story. The danger of course is that by knocking down one of Moore's strawmen critics may convince large numbers of people that nothing Moore presents is credible. How credible is Bush?
Images matter more than words and arguments for a great deal of people. Critics say of the images of carnage in Iraq prsented in F-911 that we don't need Michael Moore to tell us people get hurt in war. Wrong. Yes we do. It is too easy for many of us to forget and deny what is done in our name. When our government presents the media with a story that our smart bombs and pinpoint attacks are incredibly good at reducing civilian casualties someone needs to question that. Especially given the long history of all governments lying about such things. A careful count is taken of the dead on our side but their coffins are hidden from view. Very few Americans are aware that there have been over 22,000 medical evacuations from Iraq of our troops. The cost in civilian lives has not been taken into account at all. It is not enough to say that Saddam was an evil man and then ignore the costs associated with his removal.
The film is worth seeing and discussing. It is not perfect, fair or balanced and doesn't claim to be.
