Politics, Everyday, All day... morning, noon and night....

[Don Muerto]

Well, you could start with *one* point and go from there.

[Force]

Joel, I think the correct spelling of Safire's name has very little to do with the strength of Stuart's arguments.

You're correct, but maybe not for the reason you think- It's not the spelling of Safire's name that has to do with the strength of the argument, it's the association of his name with any group of words that discredit the ideas contained therein.

For example, my first thoughts when I see a William Safire article are; "Oh, great, what did that William Safire jackass spout off about now?", and "How bored am I?" to determine whether I will even bother to read the words. Since the article joel posted wherein Safire dismissed those discussing the very real problem of jobs going overseas as whiners and pessimists, he revealed himself to be either irredeemably biased or just plain stupid. Either of which makes it a waste of time to debate or debunk him. I have skimmed an article or two since then, but I'm learning not to waste the precious seconds of my life arguing with fools, and have stopped reading them completely.

[DVD Burner]

Well, you could start with *one* point and go from there.

Ok, but I'm a little worried that some may not have skin thick enough to handle what I've got to say. Let alone my grammar. Also I'm kinda waiting for the events of the week to happen before I say anything.

If everyone can oversee that to a certain extent and allow me to be serious temporally then cool. (hey at least I have spell check.)

As I've said before I outsource my writing. I dont do it for eplaya because it's not cost efficient. It takes me some time to write in a pleasant enough way that's acceptable.

Besides, the war is going as planned, Americans are being welcomed with open arms. The kind with an open barrel at the end of it.

[Don Muerto]

Ok, but I'm a little worried that some may not have skin thick enough to handle what I've got to say. Let alone my grammar.

I am sure that we can hack it when you hack it.

[Tancorix]

Just bring it on, I doubt you'll shock us.

[DVD Burner]

cool. give me a little bit o time. brb.

[Simply Joel]

April 7, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Two-Front Insurgency
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

WASHINGTON — In light of about a dozen American combat deaths yesterday, we should keep in mind our historic bet: that given their freedom from a savage tyrant, the three groups that make up Iraq could, with our help, create a rudimentary democracy that would turn the tide against terror.

In the northern group, we can see success: rival Kurdish parties have come together to work within an Iraqi parliament when elections come. "Kirkuk is our Jerusalem," they say, and that oil-rich area — long the center of Iraqi Kurdistan, before Saddam's ethnic cleansing — should be their regional capital in unified Iraq.

In the center group — the Sunnis, who profited most from Saddam's dictatorship — we see mostly a sullen population, its Baathist diehards allied with an affiliate of Al Qaeda longing for regime restoration. There is where the atrocities of Falluja were committed in the fiercest Sunni challenge to liberation.

In Baghdad and the South, long-oppressed Shiites — 60 percent of Iraq's population — have the most to gain from democracy and reconstruction. But they are now split. A minority of terrorists led by the firebrand Moktada al-Sadr, under Iran's influence, are challenging the quietist Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani. That ayatollah is keen to protect his following by complaining about the liberation and wrings his hands about Sadr, who has openly declared alliance with Hamas and Hezbollah and war on the West.

All this means that we are now fighting an active two-front insurgency. That calls for a change in our strategy. Up to now we have tried to hunker down and train Iraqis to handle security, lest we appear to be nasty "occupiers." That only emboldened the Sunni terrorists and Shiite Iranists. One anti-American confidently told another Iraqi with cool nonpartisanship about ousting U.S. presidents: "We'll do to Bush what we did to Carter."

But now that the Saddam restorationists and Islamic fundamentalists have made their terrorist move on both fronts, we can counterattack decisively.

"In war, resolution." Having announced we would pacify rebellious Baathists in Falluja, we must pacify Falluja. Having designated the Shiite Sadr an outlaw, we must answer his bloody-minded challenge with whatever military force is required and with fewer casualties in the long run.

But we must impress on the minds of millions of Shiites that there is no free ride to freedom. We should keep the heat on Shiite ditherers by holding fast to the June 30 deadline for the delivery of sovereignty to Iraq's three groups. It's less about the U.S. election than demanding that Iraqi leaders and U.N. facilitators live up to their promises.

We should couple this with a temporary increase in troop strength, if necessary: we will pull alongside, not pull out or pull alone. We should take up the Turks on their offer of 10,000 troops to fight on our side against two-front terror. The Kurds, who have patched things up with Ankara and know which side of the two-front war they and we are on, would withdraw their ill-considered earlier objection.

We should break the Iranian-Hezbollah-Sadr connection in ways that our special forces know how to do. Plenty of Iraqi Shiites, who are Arab, distrust the Persian ayatollahs in Iran and can provide actionable intelligence about a Syrian transmission belt.

And we should coolly confront the quaking quagmirists here at home.

Does Ted Kennedy speak for his Massachusetts junior senator, John Kerry, when he calls our effort to turn terror-supporting despotism into nascent liberty in Iraq "Bush's Vietnam"?

Do the apostles of retreat realize how their defeatism, magnified by Arab media, bolsters the morale of the insurgents and increases the nervousness of the waverers?

Does our coulda-woulda-shoulda crowd consider how it dismays the majority of Iraqis wondering if they can count on our continued presence as they feel their way toward freedom?

These are the times that try men's souls, and — as Tom Paine's enlightened acquaintance, Mary Wollstonecraft, would have added — women's, too. This is the crisis; we'll come though it.

[Simply Joel]

The New York Times


April 7, 2004
Iraq Needs a Credible U.N.

For the first time since last May, word came yesterday that American forces were engaged in serious combat in Iraq, this time against Iraqi insurgent forces who attacked American marines in a city southwest of Baghdad, and against an armed Sunni resistance in the town of Falluja. Reports of significant casualties on both sides in the pitched battle in the city of Ramadi were a grim and powerful reminder of how badly the United States needs a strong, credible and engaged United Nations.

Unfortunately, not only is the role of the U.N. still unsettled, the world organization is suffering from two self-inflicted wounds. One is a kickback scandal of multibillion-dollar proportions swirling around the U.N.-run oil-for-food program that kept ordinary Iraqis from starving during the long years of punishing economic sanctions. The other is the recent finding by an independent investigative panel that oversights in U.N. security management may have worsened the death toll in last August's terrorist bombing of the Baghdad headquarters.

Urgent steps, including high-level demotions and dismissals, are already under way to address the security failures. U.N. officials returning to Iraq face unavoidable risks, but everything that can be done to make them safer must be done. Ferreting out the murky details of the financial scandal, and meting out appropriate punishments, is no less urgent or important.

At the heart of the scandal are reports that Iraq collected billions of unmonitored dollars from oil surcharges and kickbacks for awarding consumer goods contracts under the oil-for-food program. U.N. officials clearly failed to supervise effectively the roughly $10 billion a year in transactions and may have been involved in illicit deals.

The oil-for-food program began in the mid-1990's, at Washington's behest, as a way to maintain political support for sanctions in the face of Iraqi civilian suffering. It seems to have fairly well served the limited goals of keeping sanctions intact enough to prevent Iraq from rebuilding unconventional weapons and of easing the burdens on ordinary Iraqis. But exporting the oil and buying the consumer goods required working with a corrupt Iraqi government, with Security Council members eager to maximize commercial gains and with some of Iraq's less than scrupulous neighbors.

U.N. officials have been reporting systematic corruption in the program for years, but the Security Council never insisted on a thorough cleanup. Washington acquiesced, since the faulty program was the only way to maintain support for the sanctions. Now there is finally some political will to investigate, and details of the corruption are emerging from documents seized by American occupation authorities in Iraq.

The U.N. investigation now under way can be credible only if it is independent of Security Council control. The investigators must put aside diplomatic niceties and concentrate on cleansing the U.N.'s reputation.

[stuart]

it's not Bush's Vietnam. It's Bush's Northern Ireland.
The folks attacking american troops are not terrorists, they are natives resisting an unwanted military occupation by a foriegn imperial power. If we call these folks terrorists then we have truly delegitimized that term to our detriment.

[Zane5100]

So what's the difference between a "freedom fighter" and a "terrorist"?

[Don Muerto]

Nobody targeting military assets is a terrorist. A terrorist seeks to effect political change through terrorizing a civilian populace.

I don't care if these guys are wearing bomb-belts and dreaming of their 70 virgins when they detonate, as long as they are targeting our soldiers they are not terrorists.

al Sadr's army is best characterized as a militia. They don't even rank as irregulars since there is no Iraqi army they are adjunct to.

[III]

do mercenaries, err "civilian contractors" count as civilians?

[stuart]

So what's the difference between a "freedom fighter" and a "terrorist"?

probably has something to do with the difference between civil war and revolution.

[Don Muerto]

do mercenaries, err "civilian contractors" count as civilians?

No, and the two are only the same thing in propaganda speak.

I think that anybody who travels to an occupied country to assist the occupiers risks the wrath of the occupied.

[Simply Joel]

So what's the difference between a "freedom fighter" and a "terrorist"?

The difference is whether you with us, or against us...

[Zane5100]

So what's the difference between a "freedom fighter" and a "terrorist"?

The difference is whether you with us, or against us...

When looking at conflicts, it sure seems to work out that way in the long run.

BTW, targeting the civilian population has been a part of warfare for centuries, but W.T. Sherman really clarified it for us when he did his little jaunt through the countryside.

The civilian population supports the military. If you take out the civilians, you take out the military. It may not be right/fair/legal/moral, but it works, and when you're back is against the wall (victory or death); the rules tend to matter less and less.

I'm not saying that we should start rounding up civilians and doing mass executions. What I am saying is that you have to attack the enemy at its weakest points and at what supports it. You are not going to attack a M1A1 with a pistol and hope to win, and it's rather silly of us to expect the enemy to do the equivalent. They are going to attack at our vulnerabilities, and they always will. We will respond, and the cycle will continue until both sides are tired killing and find other ways of dealing with their shit.

[Force]

re; Joel's first post- anyone care to boil down what that jackass safire's saying, or does my cursory scan of the first few words of each paragraph and my resulting impression pretty much capture it; "I'm Bush's man, what we're doing in Iraq needs doing, and here's how we're succeeding in doing it" pretty much capture it?

re; Joel's second post- is that safire, and are you trying to avoid the taint of the safire stink by not attributing it to him?

[DVD Burner]

Dont forget to pick up your "Pig book"

http://www.cagw.org/site/PageServer?pag ... igbook2004

[Simply Joel]

re; Joel's first post- anyone care to boil down what that jackass safire's saying, or does my cursory scan of the first few words of each paragraph and my resulting impression pretty much capture it; "I'm Bush's man, what we're doing in Iraq needs doing, and here's how we're succeeding in doing it" pretty much capture it?

re; Joel's second post- is that safire, and are you trying to avoid the taint of the safire stink by not attributing it to him?

Question 1. No.

Question 2. No, it was the New York Times editorial...

as a reminder (because it is printed somewhere on the e-playa), I re-post editorials from the New York Times on the e-playa because NY Times site requires registration in order to read it on-line, thereby doing an e-playa community service by providing a wee bit of curmudgeonly perspective from Mr. Safire. Maybe one could think of him as the Mr.Wilson to all the Dennis the Menace personas that make up Burning Man.

And yes, I am sure some of you are saying... "Joel, don't do us anymore favors!"

trust me, I'll post what I wish... I think they refer to it as First Amendment rights... the ones I spent a career defending.

Have a nice day in a free world, compliments of the United States of America...

[DVD Burner]

For any Burners around the world that wants to watch the Condi Rice broadcast and cant get it where they are at you can go to one of my sites. It is being broadcast there now.


http://pages.sbcglobal.net/digicastipv7/

[DVD Burner]

Well,


Nothing special in that inquiry.

[Simply Joel]

Well,


Nothing special in that inquiry. :?

and you were actually expecting something?

Frankly, the Congress looking into the matter is akin to "the fox guarding the hen house" (good old farmer wisdom).

[Simply Joel]

And now an opinion slightly left of center....



April 8, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST
Are There Any Iraqis in Iraq?
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

We are at a perilous juncture in Iraq. Two things are clear, and there's only one question left to be answered. What's clear is that there are no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and there are no Viet Cong in Iraq. The key unanswered question is: Are there any Iraqis in Iraq?

When I say that there are no Viet Cong in Iraq, I mean that the Iraqi "insurgents" opposing the U.S. today cannot plausibly claim to be the authentic expressions of Iraqi nationalism — as the Viet Cong claimed to be in the Vietnam War. The forces killing Americans and Iraqi police are primarily Sunni Muslims who want to restore the rule and privileges of their minority community and Baath Party, or foreign and local Islamists who are trying to undermine any prospect of modernism, pluralism and secularism in Iraq.

Virtually every poll taken since the fall of Saddam indicates that neither of these groups — who have tried to disguise their real objectives behind a mask of anti-Americanism — represents the vast majority of Iraqis, who want to elect their own government, free of intimidation.

But wars are not won by polls. They are won by those ready to fight and die in the alleys for their cause. Armed, masked young Arab men — motivated by the toxic mix of radical Islam, anti-Americanism and humiliation, and high on the drug of defeating the hated foreigner, even if it will be ultimately self-defeating for them — can be turned back only by an Iraqi army motivated by a sense of nationhood and a desire for self-determination.

We cannot want a decent Iraq more than the Iraqi silent majority. Because this is an urban war, and U.S. soldiers having to fight house to house inside Iraqi cities cannot win it. Only Iraqis can. If we try to fight this war ourselves, we will kill too many innocent Iraqis, blow up too many mosques and eventually turn the whole population against us — even if they know in their hearts that what we're trying to build is better than what the insurgents want.

In fairness to Iraqis, though, asking the silent majority there to stand up right now is asking a lot. After decades of Saddam's brutal rule, civil society there was just beginning to come back, and the first threads of trust between the different communities were just beginning to be tied. The whole purpose of the U.S. occupation was to build a constitutional framework in which this center could be developed.

This was always a long shot. But, I believe, after 9/11, trying to build a decent state in the heart of a drifting Arab-Muslim world — a world that is manufacturing millions of frustrated, unemployed youths — was worth trying. But it takes resources and legitimacy, and the Bush team has provided too little of both.

From the start, this has always been a Karl Rove war. Lots of photo-ops, lots of talk about "I am a war president," lots of premature banners about "Mission Accomplished," but totally underresourced, because the president never wanted to ask Americans to sacrifice. The Bush motto has been: "We're at war, let's party — let's cut taxes, forgo any gasoline tax, not mobilize too many reserves and, by the way, let's disband the Iraqi Army and unemploy 500,000 Iraqi males, because that's what Ahmad Chalabi and his pals want us to do."

From the day the looting started in Baghdad, it has been obvious that we did not have enough troops to create a secure framework and to control Iraq's borders. As a result, local militias began to spring up everywhere. If you turn on your TV, you can see how well armed they became while Donald Rumsfeld was insisting we had enough troops there to control Iraq.

I know the right thing to do now is to stay the course, defeat the bad guys, disarm the militias and try to build a political framework that will hold the now wavering Shiite majority on our side — because if we lose them, the game is over. But this will take time and sacrifice, and the only way to generate enough of that is by enlisting the U.N., NATO and all of our allies to make the development of a decent state in Iraq a global priority.

Without more allies, without more global legitimacy — and without an Iraqi center ready to stand up against their Khmer Rouge now posing as their Viet Cong — we cannot win in Iraq. We will be building a house with bricks and no cement. In that case, we will have to move to Plan B. Too bad we never really had Plan A.

[Simply Joel]

"Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out...and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel. ..And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man"--with his mouth."
- What Is Man?

[Simply Joel]

PEACE

"Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done."

- Letter to William T. Stead, 1/9/

[stuart]

And now an opinion slightly left of center....

that's rather debatable. Friedman is saying it was a good thing we did Iraq but unfortunate we did not do it well enough.

That opinion is hardly left of center. Neither is Friedman for that matter.

[stuart]

try this instead


Condi Gets A Reality Check

By David J. Sirota and Christy Harvey and Judd Legum, Center for American Progress
April 8, 2004

Opening Statement


CLAIM: "We decided immediately to continue pursuing the Clinton Administration's covert action authorities and other efforts to fight the network."


FACT: Newsweek reported that "In the months before 9/11, the U.S. Justice Department curtailed a highly classified program called 'Catcher's Mitt' to monitor al-Qaeda suspects in the United States." Additionally, AP reported "though Predator drones spotted Osama bin Laden as many as three times in late 2000, the Bush administration did not fly the unmanned planes over Afghanistan during its first eight months," thus terminating the reconnaissance missions started during the Clinton Administration. [Sources: Newsweek, 3/21/04; AP, 6/25/03]


CLAIM: "The strategy set as its goal the elimination of the al-Qaeda network. It ordered the leadership of relevant U.S. departments and agencies to make the elimination of al-Qaeda a high priority and to use all aspects of our national power – intelligence, financial, diplomatic, and military – to meet this goal."


FACT: 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick: "Is it true, as Dr. Rice said, 'Our plan called for military options to attack Al Qaeda and Taliban leadership'?" Armitage: "No, I think that was amended after the horror of 9/11." [Source: 9/11 Commission testimony, 3/24/04]


CLAIM: "We bolstered the Treasury Department's activities to track and seize terrorist assets."


FACT: The new Bush Treasury Department "disapproved of the Clinton Administration's approach to money laundering issues, which had been an important part of the drive to cut off the money flow to bin Laden." Specifically, the Bush Administration opposed Clinton Administration-backed efforts by the G-7 and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development that targeted countries with "loose banking regulations" being abused by terrorist financiers. Meanwhile, the Bush Administration provided "no funding for the new National Terrorist Asset Tracking Center." [Source: "The Age of Sacred Terror," 2003]


CLAIM: "We moved quickly to arm Predator unmanned surveillance vehicles for action against al-Qaeda."


FACT: According to AP, "the military successfully tested an armed Predator throughout the first half of 2001" but the White House "failed to resolve a debate over whether the CIA or Pentagon should operate the armed Predators" and the armed Predator never got off the ground before 9/11. [Source: AP, 6/25/03]


CLAIM: "We increased funding for counterterrorism activities across several agencies."


FACT: Upon taking office, the 2002 Bush budget proposed to slash more than half a billion dollars out of funding for counterterrorism at the Justice Department. In preparing the 2003 budget, the New York Times reported that the Bush White House "did not endorse F.B.I. requests for $58 million for 149 new counterterrorism field agents, 200 intelligence analysts and 54 additional translators" and "proposed a $65 million cut for the program that gives state and local counterterrorism grants." Newsweek noted the Administration "vetoed a request to divert $800 million from missile defense into counterterrorism." [Sources: 2001 vs. 2002 Budget Analysis; NY Times, 2/28/02; Newsweek, 5/27/02]


CLAIM: "While we were developing this new strategy to deal with al-Qaeda, we also made decisions on a number of specific anti-al-Qaeda initiatives that had been proposed by Dick Clarke."


FACT: Rice's statement finally confirms what she previously – and inaccurately – denied. She falsely claimed on 3/22/04 that "No al-Qaeda plan was turned over to the new administration." [Washington Post, 3/22/04]


CLAIM: "When threat reporting increased during the Spring and Summer of 2001, we moved the U.S. Government at all levels to a high state of alert and activity."


FACT: Documents indicate that before Sept. 11, 2001, the Bush Administration "did not give terrorism top billing in their strategic plans for the Justice Department, which includes the FBI." Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff until Oct. 1, 2001, said during the summer, terrorism had moved "farther to the back burner" and recounted how the Bush Administration's top two Pentagon appointees, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz, "shut down" a plan to weaken the Taliban. Similarly, Gen. Don Kerrick, who served in the Bush White House, sent a memo to the new Administration saying "We are going to be struck again" by al Qaeda, but he never heard back. He said terrorism was not "above the waterline. They were gambling nothing would happen." [Sources: Washington Post, 3/22/04; LA Times, 3/30/04]


CLAIM: "The threat reporting that we received in the spring and summer of 2001 was not specific as to...manner of attack."


FACT: ABC News reported, Bush Administration "officials acknowledged that U.S. intelligence officials informed President Bush weeks before the Sept. 11 attacks that bin Laden's terrorist network might try to hijack American planes." Dateline NBC reported that on August 6, 2001, the President personally "received a one-and-a-half page briefing advising him that Osama bin Laden was capable of a major strike against the US, and that the plot could include the hijacking of an American airplane." Rice herself actually admitted this herself, saying the Aug. 6 briefing the President received said "terrorists might attempt to hijack a U.S. aircraft." [Sources: ABC News, 5/16/02; NBC, 9/10/02]

[Force]

Question 1. No.

Does that mean no I haven't grasped the depth of Safire's comments that lie beneath the asskissing surface? Or does it mean you're not going to boil down the windbags points to save us time from our lives picking through his overly verbose simplistic analysis to see if there's any actual good points there?

"No." is not a real helpful explanation of the error you seem to see in my Safire comments.

as a reminder (because it is printed somewhere on the e-playa), I re-post editorials from the New York Times on the e-playa because NY Times site requires registration in order to read it on-line, thereby doing an e-playa community service by providing a wee bit of curmudgeonly perspective from Mr. Safire. Maybe one could think of him as the Mr.Wilson to all the Dennis the Menace personas that make up Burning Man.

And yes, I am sure some of you are saying... "Joel, don't do us anymore favors!"

trust me, I'll post what I wish... I think they refer to it as First Amendment rights... the ones I spent a career defending.

Have a nice day in a free world, compliments of the United States of America...

I'm not taking issue with your posting his comments here, and I do appreciate your doing it, I'm just saying that as a pinata, Safire is kinda flimsy. I'd kinda like to have to whack him around a little more for there to be any satisfaction in it when he finally caves in.

It just isn't as much fun when he just blows apart with my first shot. And I don't know what that is that sprays out of him, but it sure ain't candy.

[DVD Burner]

I cant find it here on this thread anywhere but I could have sworn that I made mention on here somewhere about the 45 min missing from the FAA and NORAD reports the day of 911.

Did I mention that already? Just trying to get my thoughts together here so I can give my opinion accurately.

[KellY]

I found it interesting the way Friedman parses words...the insurgents are Baathist Sunnis and radical Islamists, the silent Shiite majority are on our side. He neglects to metion that the supposed Islamist are in fact, Shiites. I heard on the PBS News Hour yesterday that the Shiite and Sunni fighters are now working together and supporting each other for the first time since Saddam's overthrow.

And here I thought Bush's "I'm a uniter, not a divider" line was complete bullshit. Now it makes sense - he was talking about Iraq, not America.