Why, when I was a kid...

Sometimes when I read about people quivering in terror at the prospect of international terrorism I have to resist the temptation to laugh in their faces. The cold reality is that, in his fondest dreams, the most Osama bin Laden could hope to do to us would be to take out a major American city. During the Cold War, I had to live with the daily possibility of the entire human race being wiped out in a single day!

You live through eight years of Ronald Reagan with his finger on the button and you come to appreciate different levels of potential horror.

Consider that, then go read this column by Matt Bivens about just how close we came to having the Cold War turn into a hot war.

"By all rights we should have blown ourselves to bits by now, but good luck and good judgment up and down the chain of command have spared us this fate ... so far." -- Bruce Blair, former Minuteman nuclear missile launch officer in the 1970s

Now imagine if the current crew were in charge back in the 1980s and see if that idea doesn't give you the shakes.

Scary

...because for a while there I wasn't sure whether they were serious or not.

 

At least, I'm pretty sure they aren't serious.

Afternoon Surprise

Could Glenn be toying with leaving the reservation?

Whoops!

Can these guys do anything right?

Exiled Allawi was responsible for 45-minute WMD claim
By Patrick Cockburn
29 May 2004

The choice of Iyad Allawi, closely linked to the CIA and formerly to MI6, as the Prime Minister of Iraq from 30 June will make it difficult for the US and Britain to persuade the rest of the world that he is capable of leading an independent government.

He is the person through whom the controversial claim was channelled that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction could be operational in 45 minutes.

Enlightened Commentary

Idiots

Telling the truth requires courage

Krugman:

People who get their news by skimming the front page, or by watching TV, must be feeling confused by the sudden change in Mr. Bush's character. For more than two years after 9/11, he was a straight shooter, all moral clarity and righteousness.

But now those people hear about a president who won't tell a straight story about why he took us to war in Iraq or how that war is going, who can't admit to and learn from mistakes, and who won't hold himself or anyone else accountable. What happened?

The answer, of course, is that the straight shooter never existed. He was a fictitious character that the press, for various reasons, presented as reality.

The establishment media has many problems, but chief amongst them is cowardice. They are to easily cowed by those who scream the loudest about the imminent danger we are in and thus, by their hesitancy, they give disproportionate weight to the arguments of those who push fear, uncertainty and doubt.

The thinking goes this way: "if I report the doubts about what the Bush people are telling me and then Condi's prediction about the smoking gun being a mushroom cloud turns out to be true then I will feel responsible for downplaying their warnings."

What they fail to understand is that giving to much heed to warnings that prove to be groundless can be equally damaging to this country. The reason they don't understand it is because they don't listen as closely to those who try to offer reasoned argument on these points. It is much easier to just report the bombast rather than spend time trying to digest the thoughts of the more deliberative.

Just like everyone else, the press doesn't like nuance. Yet we live in a world of nuance and it is mature and brave individuals who stand up for nuance that ultimately lead the way to a more promising future.

Support the troops?

Support the troops?

Courtesy antiwar.com comes this Free Republic thread. It contains the freeper response to a story about the poor living conditions our troops in Iraq are dealing with. Here are a few choice examples:

"unprotected tents and using filthy showers"

They have showers??? Damn! High living! What the heck is a "protected" tent vs an "unprotected" tent?

Protected has a rubber?

3 posted on 05/26/2004 2:02:35 PM PDT by steplock (http://www.gohotsprings.com)

 

"nowhere to seek shelter "

They don't know how to dig a foxhole?

6 posted on 05/26/2004 2:03:49 PM PDT by steplock (http://www.gohotsprings.com)

 

Ya know, I'd have to say that maybe all this time spent bitching about "no protection" would have been better spent constructing bunkers? I mean, those few have all that time to complain...

10 posted on 05/26/2004 2:07:20 PM PDT by Chad Fairbanks (You make me feel warm all over. No...wait...I'm soaking in a puddle of my own urine.)

You know, it's not that these people want us to "support the troops". It's just that they don't want to hear anyone complain about anything. Because then it might drown out their own complaints.

Watch President Gore

here

Irony lives

Sidney Blumenthal:

Either Chalabi perpetrated the greatest con since the Trojan horse or he was the agent of influence for the most successful intelligence operation conducted by Iran, or both.

Sidney has the goods this morning on the FBI going around to the various neo-con offices in Washington and interviewing people about Chalabi as part of an espionage investigation. That's right. The guys who screamed "treason" the loudest whenever someone questioned their plans for Iraq are now themselves the subject of an espionage investigation.

It's about time for some prominent voices to state what is becoming clearer by the day: the Bush administration was played like a cheap violin. The spooks are sitting back in a mixture of disgust and awe. Disgust at the Bushies who bought a bill of goods and awe at the skill at which that bill of goods was sold.

The Bush administration gives proof to the old P.T. Barnum saying that there is a sucker born every minute. This administration is full of them.

Over-reacting?

Is Ashcroft over-reacting to the threat of new terrorism? Newsweek has a web exclusive on how some U.S. intelligence officials don't think there is any "fresh information that justified such an extraordinary public announcement." (courtesy The Left Coaster)

It's one thing when paranoid, lefty-bloggers suggest that terror alerts aren't on the up-n-up. But what are we to think when you respected institutions like Newsweek start doing the same?

This is indicative of the failure that is this administration. In order for these terror alerts to be at all effective the populous must first have faith that they are legitimate. But how can anyone take as legitimate the warnings that come from people that have fucked up so badly over and over again?

The real tragedy of it is that there are bad guys out there who want to cause us harm. When we lose faith in our leaders then that just makes the bad guy's job easier.

What might have been

I agree with Atrios, Wow.

I like the framing the Gore has given to this issue: Bush represents the desire to dominate enemies and friends, a desire that is natural in the face of a complex world, but a desire which, when acted upon, has consequences that are even worse than the original evil you were trying to defeat.

Some supporters of the Bush doctrine of dominance argue that America should not go into the fight with terrorism with one hand tied behind their back. Gore, in this speech, harkens back to a time when when America could defeat its enemies with the strength of only one hand. Indeed, it was precisely the fact that we did restrain our baser desires that gave us our greatest strength.

Bush, by releasing the full might of America, has shown America to be weaker, not stronger.

Typical

Typical Bush administration move. For months people have been calling for the razing of Abu Ghraib, both before and after the prison scandal broke. The administration basically pooh-poohed the idea.

Now Bush has announced that they will demolish the prison after all.

Look for them to act like it was their idea all along.

It's what they always do.

...Just heard that they will first be building a new prison before tearing down Abu Ghraib.

I wonder who will get the contract for that job?

Rumsfeld bans camera phones

That didn't take long (I predicted this just last week).