A New Beginning
Written by at 11:06 AM
This is a shameless plug for my new blog
Neocon Blues. If you've ever enjoyed reading what I have to say, please feel free to take a gander at my site, along with myh other published works and forthcoming projects. Thanks guys.
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A Note to the Few Readers We Have
Written by at 10:26 PM
Hi. That's probably the most appropriate address to anyone who still follows Rogue Statesmen in any capacity. We haven't written in a while, and we apologize for that. So, yes, hi. In the words of Clark, I hope you are all well.
The reason we've been down for quite some time deals with the existential nature of this blog. We've realized that there have been a few persistent problems, one being our inability to expand our readership base and actually generate any modicum of advertising profits. The other was the collapse of our "crossfire" model. It resulted in many inconsistencies and personal feuds, and it hurt the overall blogging "morale" of all our contributors. More significant, I would think, is the fact that maintaining a blog in your first year of college is a very taxing endeavor. I'm sure Chow and Conlon are just as busy at Cornell, and Clark just as busy at BU, as I am at Toronto. In fact, I'm sure they're even busier: engineering is just a tad bit more work than business and economics.
Over the Christmas break we will do one of two things. Either we will permanently shut down Rogue Statesmen, or we will do a full-scale restructuring. The outlooks seems favorable towards the latter, but I can't be sure. Either way, the crossfire model will probably be scrapped.
If we do indeed end our young, and for the most part insignificant, blog, then I would like to say a word of thanks to the folks at
Urbanagora. Brian and especially Billy have provided the moral support that at many times inspired us to actually do a good job and work hard on our posts and attract readers, whether they realized it or not. For simply adding us to their blogrolls, recommending us to their readers, and coommenting on our posts when nobody else would, I thank them. It's been a fun blogging experience, and they've made it more enjoyable. And, to return the favor, here are some recent posts that are undeniably interesting to read:
Brian's response to Iran,
controversial arguments against McCain,
Some painful thoughts on Darfur.
Thanks, and that's all for now,
- Josh aka Doctor X.
Two wrongs don't make a right - but let's flush out all wrongs while we're on the subject.
Written by at 1:05 AM
The Culture of Obstruction
Let’s talk competence.
By Andrew C. McCarthy
Imagine for a moment a public official of the highest order. He was a confidant of the vice president and the president. Entrusted with the most sensitive national defense information, he enjoyed full access to the gamut of our country’s deepest secrets. In short, he was as central as any member of the executive branch to the decisions on which hinged the security of nearly 300 million Americans.
The times were tumultuous and critics abounded. Some of them accused the administration of rank incompetence, of gratuitously putting loyal public servants lives at risk. The administration circled the wagons, and our high public official became its point-man for rebutting the charges. He used his extraordinary public trust to gain access to relevant classified information.
In his ardor to protect his principals, he went overboard. He was, to put it mildly, recklessly irresponsible with intelligence. When they learned of his actions, others in government decided there was no alternative: However reluctantly, an investigation had to be opened. Investigators confronted the high public official. He was, of course, under no obligation to speak. The Fifth Amendment gave him that protection. But he calculated that the political risk of refusing to appear cooperative was too great. So he submitted to questioning … and lied, wantonly.
Quickly, evidence mounted. The high official had obstructed an official investigation — one that the press and Democrats had clamored for; one that cost the public millions. The potential jeopardy mounted, too. Under federal law, making false statements to investigators is a felony — each individual lie exposing the declarant to as much as five years in jail. Obstruction of justice is at least equally grave. And more serious still is the purloining and misusing of intelligence — each instance exposing an offender to up to ten years’ incarceration. Our high public official was easily staring at a possibility of spending the remainder of his professional prime in a federal penitentiary.
Sound familiar? It should, but it’s not.
For this is not about Scooter Libby and the Plame leak investigation. To be sure, the vice president’s former chief of staff was probed for a violation of the espionage act over suspicion that he misused classified information in an effort to respond to Joseph Wilson’s slander of the Bush administration’s invasion of Iraq. But Libby was not charged with that offense after a famously zealous investigation. To this day, moreover, it remains unclear whether the classified information at issue — the unremarkable fact that Valerie Plame Wilson worked at the CIA — was of any real consequence to national security. And yes, Libby has been charged with making false statements to, and obstructing, an official investigation. But whether he actually did those things remains unsettled, and vigorously contested.
No, the high public official described above is Sandy Berger, national-security adviser to President Clinton. Berger was principally responsible for responding before the high-profile 9/11 Commission to claims that the Clinton administration did not do enough to stop al Qaeda.
Contrary to Libby’s situation, the essential facts of Berger’s case do not seem to be in dispute. Because of his high-level position, Berger was permitted access to the national archives to prepare for his commission testimony (and to help prepare President Clinton for his). He used that public trust as an opportunity to filch, on at least two occasions, highly classified information — stuffing some of it into his clothing to avoid detection. This bizarre behavior caused authorities to investigate and discover the theft. In the ensuing investigation, Berger brazenly lied. He told the government that his undeniable removal of the intelligence was an honest mistake … only to admit later (as the Washington Times reported) that he had quite intentionally stuffed the documents into his pants, jacket and a leather portfolio.
That’s not the end of the story — not by a long-shot. Berger did not take just any documents. As recounted by National Review’s Byron York, among others, he took various drafts of a so-called “after-action report” prepared by top Clinton counterterrorism officials. The purpose of the report was to assess the Clinton administration’s 1999 performance in connection with terrorist threats that riddled the run-up to the millennium observance. Annotated on some of those copies is believed to be reactive commentary by some high-ranking Clinton officials. The report and the manner in which it was finalized were patently germane to the commission’s investigation.
In public testimony and statements, top Clinton officials have repeatedly portrayed this period as the administration’s finest hour — barely veiling the contrast of themselves to Bush officials who, in this telling, were purportedly asleep at the switch in the months before 9/11. Indeed, Berger himself told the 9/11 Commission:
In late 1999, as we approached the Millennium celebrations, the CIA warned of five to fifteen plots against American targets. This was the most serious threat spike of our time in office. My judgment was that it required ongoing attention at the highest levels of government. Accordingly, I convened national security principals, including the Director of Central Intelligence, the Attorney General, and top FBI, State and Defense officials at the White House virtually every single day for a month. I am convinced that our sustained attention and the rigorous actions that resulted prevented significant losses of life. [Emphasis supplied.]
Does the after-action report support this heroic version of events? Former Attorney General John Ashcroft, who has seen the report, says no — that the assessment indicates dumb luck was behind the foiling of, for example, the plot to bomb Los Angeles International Airport. But we can’t judge for ourselves because we have never seen the report.
If that seems strange, it ought to. The imperative of publicly airing all evidence pertinent to the government’s counter-terror response was deemed so essential during the commission’s circus-like hearings that the Bush administration was pressured into declassifying reams of precious intelligence by the press, Democrats, and sundry Republicans. Public disclosures included information about al Qaeda’s plans to attack the U.S. set forth in an August 2001 presidential daily briefing — notwithstanding that PDBs are roundly adjudged the intelligence community’s most closely held product. Yet, the after-action report about well-known events that took place six years ago has, for some reason, never been declassified, much less publicized — even though we now know iterations of it were the focal point of a criminal investigation of the former National Security Adviser.
Imagine for a moment that Bush National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley or, say, Scooter Libby, had intentionally exploited his security clearance to steal top-secret documents out of the national archives. Is there any chance that would not be daily front-page fodder for the New York Times?
Would the broadcast networks, CNN, the Washington Post, and the rest of the mainstream media give us five seconds of peace if all of America had not yet been shown every jot and tittle of what any high-ranking Bush official had been caught red-handed trying to hide?
Of course, as it turns out, Berger was not content merely to conceal the drafts of the after-action report. He has admitted deliberately destroying some of the documents he took. Unauthorized destruction of classified information, it bears noting, is yet another felony violation of federal law, carrying a potential ten-year penalty.
Sandy Berger needn’t worry about ten-year penalties, though. He needn’t concern himself with a prosecution for false statements or obstruction of justice. He needn’t sweat for two years over whether he will be charged with multiple black-and-white classified information violations.
No, Berger is home-free. Next year, when Scooter Libby starts trial on false-statement and obstruction-of-justice allegations that carry potential decades of jail time, Sandy Berger will be starting the second half of his two-year term of probation.
You see, for misconduct orders of magnitude more weighty than what Libby stands accused of, Berger was permitted by the Justice Department to plead guilty to misdemeanor mishandling of classified information. No jail time. He was fined $50,000 — and that was only because the outraged sentencing judge quintupled the $10,000 fine proposed by Berger and (astoundingly) the Justice Department.
And by 2008 — when Libby, if he were convicted, would probably start any sentence of imprisonment — Berger will even be getting his security clearance back … just in time to offer his unique skills to a prospective new Democratic administration.
The Washington Times reported on Thursday that several top House Republicans are demanding a congressional investigation into the Berger caper. One can only wonder what on earth possessed them to wait so long — Berger having lifted the classified documents in autumn 2003 (i.e., around the same time Libby was first interviewed by the FBI) and having been sentenced on the single misdemeanor charge in autumn 2005 (i.e., around the same time Libby was indicted on five felony counts). In a letter to House Government Reform Committee Chairman Thomas M. Davis III (R., Va.), the members asserted that it was important “to determine what records were destroyed, removed or are missing.” No kidding.
In this campaign season, when not incanting raunchy instant messages and explaining how “transparent” Sen. Harry Reid’s finances are, Democrats are fond of prattling about the Republican “culture of corruption” and how incompetently the Bush administration has managed the war on terror.
Fine. Let’s talk competence. Let’s talk corruption. And let’s finally see the drafts of that after-action report.
Clinton bashing isn't politics, it's the truth.
Written by at 10:18 PM
McCain criticizes Clinton on North Korea - Yahoo! News
Republican Sen. John McCain on Tuesday accused former President Clinton, the husband of his potential 2008 White House rival, of failing to act in the 1990s to stop North Korea from developing nuclear weapons.
"I would remind Senator (Hillary) Clinton and other Democrats critical of the Bush administration's policies that the framework agreement her husband's administration negotiated was a failure," McCain said at a news conference after a campaign appearance for Republican Senate candidate Mike Bouchard.
"The Koreans received millions and millions in energy assistance. They've diverted millions of dollars of food assistance to their military," he said.
Democrats have argued President Clinton presented his successor with a framework for dealing with North Korea and the Republican fumbled the opportunity. In October 2000, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made a groundbreaking visit to Pyongyang to explore a missile deal with Chairman Kim Jong Il. There was even talk of a visit by President Clinton.
Reports this week suggesting North Korea tested a nuclear device prompted a number of Democrats to criticize Bush, arguing that he focused on Iraq, a country without weapons of mass destruction, while ignoring legitimate threats from Pyongyang.
The criticism took a presidential campaign turn on Tuesday as McCain, the Arizona senator considered the Republican front-runner for the party nod, assailed Clinton's husband and mentioned her by name. The New York senator is considered her party's leading candidate in 2008.
First it was the ABC "documentary" on 9/11, then it was Chris Wallace of Fox News, now it's John McCain. Why is everyone all of the sudden bashing Clinton now? Because he's not as untouchable as he used to be. He's become
Hilary's husband and as a result, he's now spinning his far-left rhetoric. Clinton's criticism of the Bush administration doesn't even make sense given the fact that he constantly compares how well he handled every aspect of his foreign policy to how poorly Bush is handling America's foreign affairs. I'm fine with Clinton dealing out criticism of the Bush administration; dissent is good. But if he's going to criticize Bush, he's going to have to learn how to take criticism as well.
Diesel Ain't the Diesel you used to know.
Written by at 10:02 PM
Clean Version of Diesel Fuel Widely Available as Deadline Nears - New York Times>
The biggest revolution in highway fuels since lead was removed from gasoline is nearly complete, federal officials said today, with most of the nation’s trucks and buses now running on a cleaner-burning version of diesel fuel.
The new diesel mixture, which contains just 3 percent of the pollution-generating sulfur that was in the old one, was to be available at most U.S. filling stations by Sunday under an Environmental Protection Agency regulation.
Like lead, sulfur generates airborne pollution that leads to severe health consequences. It also gums up the works of finely tuned pollution-control devices, making it difficult to produce cleaner-burning engines. So the new low-sulfur fuel will pave the way for new generations of diesel engines that will eventually cut lethal particulate pollution from diesel tailpipes by 95 percent.
On Tuesday, the Bush administration embraced this signal accomplishment as its own, ignoring the 1990’s origins of the underlying regulation and the fact it became effective in the month before President Bush took office.
Well, if Bush is blamed for the recession that started under the Clinton administration, then I guess he can take credit for making clean diesel widely available. Not to mention that he also benefits from another of Clinton's doing: the increased salary of the President (to $400,000).
But I digress...
As I've stated before, I'm a huge fan of diesel cars as a short-term alternative to gasoline powered cars. That is until an actual alternative energy source replaces gasoline/diesel.
Aww, it's Like Crossfire
Written by at 12:07 PM
Speaking of spin artists, has anyone noticed Josh's zingers? Saying that I want to be associated with a pedophile. Ready for this one? I'll provide a real nice dose of counter-zing:
Josh said:
"Pedophiles are the world's greatest."
Shock! Awe!
Incidentally, Josh didn't really say anything in his all too vague and idealistic
counter to my recent post concerning Iraq. For example, Josh said that a great deal of the hype concerning the NIE leak was due to "out-of-context citings." Sure, the leaked NIE estimate may have said that if the US were to defeat the "jihadists" in Iraq the overall global jihadist movement would be weakened significantly, but is this even relevant? As not only myself, but Thomas L Friedman have cited in recent days, real democracy is not the first priority of most Iraqis; rather, many would prefer independence from US influence and then the pursuit of their own governmental ideals. As a result, many moderates are turning to take arms against the US and this, along with every US-caused civilian death and torture scandle, is spawning terrorists. As Josh himself cited, the jihadist movement is only a small portion of the insurgency in Iraq, but it will grow as other insurgents embrace radical jihadism. If the goal of the US is to eliminate jihadists, we have to realize that this is becoming an increasingly difficult procedure, as we have different enemies firing at us left and right and a resentful population of civilians to deal with. Sure, it would be great to defeat the jihadists, but is it really feasible? Is it even worth the effort to try? Perhaps it would have been worth it had we used different tactics, such as not firing every Saddam-era Iraqi government worker in an instant and turning our heads whenever torture was in progress. However, the reality is that this administration has yet to prove that it can effectively wage war. Considering the incredible incompetance of the current administration, is success really a possibility, let alone worth its price?
Getting back to the issue of civil war breaking out in Iraq, I don't think it matters whether the US tries to prevent it. Insurgents of all sorts will fight the US influence (and one another) until we leave and then they will continue to have their civil war if it is their wish. We are not going to make significant diplomatic progress while they are already fighting one another as well as us, so is there really a point in continuing?
Let's hope for his sake that Josh never enters a casino.
The Mess that is now known as the Republican Party
Written by at 1:10 AM
From the way things look, it looks like the House will be going to the Democrats in the fall election, and for the most part, that's not a bad thing.
The Republican House has proven time and time again that it is more concerned about politics than the matters concerning America. They've failed to put together a comprehensive immigration bill and have been marred with scandals, scandals, and more scandals. For the most part, it hasn't been the scandals that have significantly damaged the Republican party, it has been their reaction to them. When Tom DeLay was indicted, the Republicans wanted to change the House rules to accommodate him as Speaker of the House. Now apparently Dennis Hastert knew about the emails long before they were released to the media and he didn't do anything about it.
Being a politician, being in charge of the legislating the law, does not mean that Congressmen can do whatever they please. Nixon learned that the enforcer of the law still has to abide by the laws that he enforces. All members of Congress will have to learn that the makers of the law are still subject to those very same laws.
Congress is forgetting their primary purpose: to make laws. All they've been able to do is avoid the problems that plague America and any pieces of legislation that might cause political debate and continually work and raise money for their reelection campaign. After all, isn't that what pork is? There have been no solutions from Congress on the major issues. Entitlement spending? Nope. Social Security and Medicare? Nope. Illegal Immigration? Nope. They sure have been good at saying NO to anything that may hurt their campaign. But their actions have gone to an extreme. Members are Congress are making sure which votes to take on certain issues not because of the issue, but because of how their voting record looks. Let's take the best example possible: Hillary Clinton. What has she proposed other than main stream ideas? What pieces of legislation has she supported?
Congress is dead.
The Democrats don't deserve to win in the fall election. Republicans just deserve to lose it. And it's as simple as that.
Is Clark Ever Wrong? Does Kim Jong Il Fetishize American Actresses?
Written by at 12:47 AM
Yes and yes, and for both absolutely always. So where have I been the past week? Studying. I aspire to be a BMW-driving, cocaine-snorting, womanizing Wall Street yuppie. Therefore, I need to hit the books. Hard. With Bacardi rum like it's yo birfday.
Anyways, onto my response to Clark's post:
if Clark wants to be associated with a pedophile it's his choice. I guess pedophiles are the world's greatest.Let me first address the issue of the NIE leaks. A lot of the hype over this intelligence estimate has been due to the out-of-context citings of said estimate. What followed after the statement that has mostly been warped into "Iraq has become a recruiting ground for terrorists?" Basically, that if the U.S. were to defeat the
jihadists (I highlighted that because while very deadly, said group only contributes a portion of the violence and bloodshed in Iraq and certainly aren't the majority insurgency) within Iraq then the global fundamentalist/jihadist movement will be significantly weakened. So maybe there is
some incentive to stay in Iraq. So there's some clarity, or "damage control" as I'm sure the left will call it.
But onto more important things. I'm not surprised the left has become enamored with the intelligence community. Afterall, these are the guys they've hated on for decades(and rightfully so) for their atrocious covert operations in Latin America and their role in the assassination of a democratically elected Iranian president prior to the Shah and Khomeini. Why love them now? Because their findings, when taken out of context or spun, can be highly critical of Bush. For the movement in its present form, that's awesome. For Democrats who aren't necessarily self-proclaimed leftists but are nonetheless liberal or "progresive," it's a good way to get a majority in congress. Cynical political maneuvering at its finest. But let's not forget that the American intelligence community also has a strong record of incompetence, a tendency to group think on political realist and militarily machiavellian foreign policy, and a stubborness to reform itself. I don't expect them to understand the concept of Islamofascism when they barely have 20 experts on the Middle East. As we speak, Bush's efforts to reform the CIA by making it more accountable and efficient with Porter Goss were fought off by the organizational insiders. And what does Christopher Hitchens have to say about them? Nothing good:
The CIA has never got anything right. Actually, I think I know it's a trillion-dollar intelligence budget. Unconstitutionally, the CIA, which I agree with Senator Moynahan, should have been closed and abolished some years before now, doesn't have to reveal how much money it spends. But let's say it's a trillion dollars. The only American who was able to infiltrate the Taliban in that entire period was John Walker Lynde, an al-Qaeda fancier from Marin County, California, and a drifter. The CIA has recently fired two or three dozen of its very few translators into a Arabic and Persian because they're homosexual. It is famously incompetent, corrupt and viral and it has never got anything right by either Iraq, Afghanistan or al-Qaeda. George Tenet on - this time, exactly this time five years ago, was watching the smoke with Senator David Barron, formerly of Oklahoma, and is quoted directly by Robert Woodward as having said, "Gee, I hope it's nothing to do with those guys in the flight schools in the mid-west," who the CIA knew about that and did nothing about. It's remarkable that the leaders of the CIA have not been impeached and put on trial for criminal and culpable negligence and this contribution to this fantastically mediocre Senate report is only the latest of their many failures. That's what I think about the CIA.
So no, I'm not about to read into their findings without a lot of skepticism. I'm only going to excuse their 2003 Iraq estimate because much of their findings were in agreement with the rest of Israeli, British, French, German and Russian intelligence (and hey, if Bush lied, so did the beloved French - OH NO!).
And what
about Iraq? Is it worth it to stay in the country? Can we win the reconstruction? Will there be civil war? I don't know the answers to the latter two, but the first one I can answer with firm resolve: if you think it's getting expensive and painful now, just wait until what happens when you pull out. The U.S. currently acts as a buffer force between the Shiites and Sunnis, with the Kurds mostly isolated in the north. From a sectarian point of view, neither side likes the other very much. From a political standpoint, though, we're making a lot of progress - and we're not talking about a puppet government either. It's been backed by the major Shiite and Sunni parties, umbrella groups of local organizations that are sometimes the cause of violence. Not to mention that the present makeup of the Iraqi congress was resoundingly elected by Iraqis twice in record high numbers in the face bombs and intimidation. Both sides have said, however, that they want the U.S. military to stay. They may not like the U.S. very much, but they fear that if the U.S. leaves, there will be a security vacumn in the country, with the violent radicals from each side taking over and essentially instigating a civil war. Basically, if you think there
might be a civil war now, facts on the ground almost
guarantee a civil war if the U.S. pulls out. I would assume the left tends to care about humanitarian disasters on a large scale, but you know their knee-jerk anti-Bushism makes almost anything possible today. But say you're cynical enough that you just don't care about the Iraqi people. Let them fuck themselves over, as Daily Kos likes to imply. What does leaving mean for the U.S? Well, there's the intuitive and correct argument that if you leave Iraq, you leave the global jihadist movement strongly galvanized. We don't need the NIE to tell us that. And I would say that's probably not a good thing... but if you contest that, maybe a little negative domino effect will ground you. The Middle East is an intricately interconnected region. What happens in one country, because of the unstable politics, will almost always affect the other countries in significant ways. Why else did Bush gamble on Iraq and try to liberate the country in hopes of democratizing the region? What I think is very possible is an Iranian occupation of Iraq if we pull out. Why? Well, they certainly wouldn't want their fellow Shiites to continue building democracy because that would inspire more hope in the Iranian democratic movement. And Iran's got the not-so-covert fullscale operations in Iraq to prove it. They are just as much a part of the internecine warfare as any sectarian group or Al-Qaeda infiltrators in the vein of the deceased Zarqawi. It's not hard for Iran to justify, at least to themselves, this act of imperialism under the guise of Muslim and Shiite solidarity, as well as stability within the region. This would make Iran immensely more powerful than it already is. And while I'm on the topic, let's make this argument even more convincing with an example. Take the US occupation of Lebanon in 1982. We pulled out in a similar situation with internecine conflict between Sunnis, Shiites, and Druze. What happened? Increased violence, with Syria moving in. And Syria, as badass as it is, doesn't even measure up to Iran's rogue state status.
Finally, is Iraq creating more terrorists? Well, if Clark would like to find an excerpt in the already questionable NIE that points to the fact that
more Islamic fundamentalist jihadists have been created he should feel free to point it out to me. But let's address the issue logically: there's a significant difference between the insurgents and the foreign jihadists in Iraq. The insurgents aren't rooted in ideology so much as grievances and sectarian tensions against one another. And, the former Baathists really, really want their power back and are really, really pissed off. So the foreign jihadists, who are sent mainly by Al-Qaeda's Ayman Al-Zawahiri, are the ones we should concentrate on. Now, the Economist has pointed to the fact that the number of at least Al-Qaeda terrorists has declined by a bit, and that the organization's image in the Middle East is weakening. So the global numbers, though contestable, probably indicate a relatively stagnant jihadist/fundamentalist increase in the world. Logically speaking, we can say that the foreign jihadists who have been exported to Iraq are
concentrated in the country. It raises the stakes for success, but it also raises our payoffs if we can successfully fight them off in Iraq. However, Let me conclude by citing Andrew McCarthy with the bigger picture:
Whether we wish to acknowledge it or not, jihadism is attractive to tens of millions of people in what is called the Muslim world. Out of a total population of about 1.3 billion, that may not be a very high percentage (although I daresay it is higher than we like to think). But it is the ideology that attracts recruits. Grievances are just rhetoric. If the bin Ladens did not have Iraq, or the Palestinians, or Lebanon, or Pope Benedict, or cartoons, or flushed Korans, or Dutch movies, or the Crusades, they’d figure out something else to beat the drums over. Or they’d make something up — there being lots of license to improvise when one purports to be executing Allah’s will.
Even Thomas L Friedman Really Wants the Dems to Win
Written by at 11:53 AM
Maybe the Dems are winning over the moderates.
Actually, it's more likely that the GOP is losing them and they have nowhere but left to look.
In his
op-ed published in today's Times, Friedman made a very important point. If the Republicans have the satisfaction of winning the House and Senate, think of the message it will send to incompetents like Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rice, let alone the population of the United States and the entirety of the outside world: if the GOP retains control of Congress it will indicate that the populus of the United States is so detached from success and failure and so manipulated by selective media observation and partisanship that performance is no longer an issue in the political arena.
Many Republican nominees will continue to distance themselves from Bush, but this is immaterial: the GOP has had its chance and done its damage and now must suffer the loss of control of Congress in order to preserve the integrity of our democracy. If GOP nominees find this to be unfair, they should entertain the prospect of changing parties and, in the case of their defeat, consider hopping on the bandwagon and blaming Bush for their losses.
I think I may write a letter to the editor of the Times inclusive of the above.
Another important point that Freidman made was the fact that too many Iraqis are putting democracy behind other goals, namely independence from US influence. Sure, the idea of a democratic Iraq is great, but as I have always said, only possible with the support of the Iraqi people. Now, because real democracy is not the first priority of most Iraqis and because our presence in their nation is in conflict with their goals, we must let this fiasco go and allow it to slowly burn out, rather than fueling the fire of the insurgency at the cost of $2 billion/week.
Since When Did the Pentagon Ever Care About Conspicuous Consumption?
Written by at 5:16 PM
Refer to this morning's
article on the front page of the Boston Globe.
In light of the recent surge in the popularity of fuel conservation, the Department of Defense has asked for a replacement for the infamously gas guzzling Humvee, a pleasant change of heart.
But wait for just a minute. When did the DOD ever care about conspicuous consumption? After all, why do we have enough nuclear weapons to destroy not only our planet but every planet in our solar system? And why Humvees? After all, as the Globe cites, the Army uses only 12% of the government's fuel, while the Navy and Air Force respectively use 32% and 53%. The real reason is that, because we all know that Hummers have poor gas mileage and the much heavier, armored Humvees must get even worse mileage, it would be a good thing to replace them. Most wouldn't even think of the Navy and Air Force for a slew of reasons, in particular the fact that many Naval vessels use nuclear energy. Also, many wouldn't think that the Air Force would use fuels so much as they would use some sort of super-explosively energetic compounds. Also, many would think that the Army would use more fuel due to their great amounts of activity. Finally, of course, is the fact that the Humvee is so very much like an automobile in its design (relative to, say, an aircraft carrier or a B-2 bomber) that we can all relate and understand.
So, what's the point? There are two, actually. Firstly, the DOD looks like it actually cares about the environment and its supporters, the taxpayers. Of course, this is a farce; the Pentagon always puts the welfare of its soldiers above that of the environment even if it means dropping carcinogens (Vietnam) into forests and burning them to smithereens and will always demand only the best resources for the military, even if it results in absolutely frivolous spending. The second reason for this action is that this is a great way to increase government spending and make certain stocks rise tremendously. So, my friends, keep your eyes in the news and take note of what company gets the contract. If it's no-bid, you certainly will know where to invest.
