June 2004

June 24, 2004

The Agony Of Defeat

Time was, Condoleezza Rice was admonishing the North Koreans -- who were offering to dismantle their nuclear programme in exchange for food aid -- that the United States would not be victimised by Korean bribery.

Condi and friends are now whistling a different tune:

Seeking to persuade North Korea to abandon its threat to produce nuclear weapons, the Bush administration yesterday for the first time handed the North a detailed proposal promising an aid package and a guarantee not to attack in exchange for a commitment to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

Now, any reason the Bush Administration couldn't have offered to lift Iraq's sanctions had Saddam "in exchange" offered a "commitment to abandon its nuclear ambitions"?

Well, maybe because the Bush Administration (like the Clinton Administration before it) was well aware that Saddam had long since abandoned his nuclear (and other banned weapons) ambitions, not to mention the weapons themselves -- if only because he knew that it was a fool's game to try to out-gun the Israelis and the Americans.

Given the Bush Administration's latest about-face, can there be any doubt whatsoever that the Administration had absolutely zero expectations of finding any sign of an extant banned weapons programme in Iraq?

Good ol' Scottie McClellan is keeping a stiff upper-lip, anyway: "One way to look at this is to look at the Libya model. Good-faith action on North Korea's part will be met with good-faith response by the other parties."

No doubt the U.S. will soon be making a similar "good-faith" offer to Iran -- which, it was reported a few months ago, "could be unstoppably on its way to producing nuclear material for its own bombs" as soon as this summer.

So if the Bush Administration can offer "good-faith" negotiations with two of the three charter members of the Axis Of Evil club, why not with the third? (Of course, it's probably now wishing it had done.)

Simple: it saw Iraq as entirely defenceless. In other words, having disarmed at least eight years prior to Bush's merry war, it had nothing of value to offer in return -- save perhaps an oil concession, which the Bush Administration preferred to take outright.

Given that it was a country with a military budget 400 times smaller than the United States', with no weapons of mass destruction to its name, and reeling from a decade of the most punitive sanctions regime in history; stealing Iraq's oil should have been as easy as the proverbial taking of candy from an infant.

Instead, the battered, bruised, and beleaguered Iraqis have stalemated and crippled the U.S. military. (Retired General Barry McCaffrey goes even further: "The Army is accelerating downhill at the moment, and if the course isn't changed, we could damage it significantly or even break it in the next five years.")

The "good-faith" offer to Iran is thus probably a foregone conclusion. Begging the question, how soon 'til the United States makes a "good-faith" offer to bin Laden, marking the official collapse of the "War On Terror" (a topic to which this blogger will return in the near future)?

And, natch, how deftly will Limbaugh and McClellan be able to spin the ignominious grovelling at the feet of the gooks and the towel-heads?

June 18, 2004

Oh, the Mendacity!

One almost has to give credit to the Bush administration -- and especially de facto president Dick Cheney -- for the way they continue to equivocate and lie, in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, about the Iraq-Al Qaeda myth.

As reported in today's LA Times, Cheney is still leaving open the possibility Saddam was behind 9/11 (when we now know it was a plot hatched by Fidel Castro and financed by Syria and Iran):

Asked if Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attack during an interview on CNBC's "Capital Report," he replied, "We don't know. You know, what the commission said is they can't find any evidence of that."

... and still clings to the Mohammed Atta-Iraqi Intelligence Agent meeting fantasy:

Cheney said "the one thing we have" indicating Iraqi support for the attacks is a Czech intelligence service report saying that lead hijacker Mohamed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence official in Prague on April 9, 2001.

"That's never been proven," he said. "It's never been refuted."

Cheney would do well to read the commission's report. From the Times's article on the Atta meeting:

In its report on the Sept. 11 plot, the commission staff disclosed for the first time F.B.I. evidence that strongly suggested that Mr. Atta was in the United States at the time of the supposed Prague meeting.

The report cited a photograph taken by a bank surveillance camera in Virginia showing Mr. Atta withdrawing money on April 4, 2001, a few days before the supposed Prague meeting on April 9, and records showing his cellphone was used on April 6, 9, 10 and 11 in Florida.

What part of "no collaborative relationship" don't these jokers understand?

UPDATE: Saturday's Times provides an explanation as to why the administration is clinging so tightly to the Iraq-Al Qaeda business, and provides this juicy nugget:

One outside adviser to the White House said the administration expected the debate over Iraq's ties to Al Qaeda to be "a regular feature" of the presidential campaign.

"They feel it's important to their long-term credibility on the issue of the decision to go to war," the adviser said. "It's important because it's part of the overall view that Iraq is part of the war on terror. If you discount the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, then you discount the proposition that it's part of the war on terror. If it's not part of the war on terror, then what is it — some cockeyed adventure on the part of George W. Bush?"

June 15, 2004

It's All Smiles...

...at The Boeing Co., where they're "looking forward to a little hooting and hollering tonight", after having been awarded a $3.9 Billion contract (which could potentially "soar to more than $40 Billion over 25 years") to build the "Navy's next generation of anti-submarine aircraft, known as Multi-Mission Maritime Aircraft (MMA)."

The Seattle Times notes, in its story's lead sentence, that the "huge defense contract...will add 1,200 mostly engineering jobs in the Puget Sound region over the next two years," among 1,600 new jobs "companywide".

The Jobs! angle echoes a recent Washington Post report (entitled "Across U.S., War Means Jobs"): "It is impossible to know how many of the 708,000 jobs created in the past three months are defense-related since the Labor Department does not track defense contractor employment. But anecdotal evidence suggests the contribution is significant."

So now that we know one way to stimulate the economy (viz., a government jobs programme), you think maybe those $4 Billion taxpayer dollars could put 1,200 engineers to work doing something better that building war machines?

How if they figure out how to tap clean, renewable energy sources -- wind, solar, lightning, tidal, et al. -- to replace the antiquated method of ripping open the Earth and burning the polluting, non-renewable sources found inside?

How if they figure out how to build a mass rapid-transit grid?

How if they figure out how to deliver affordable health care and housing? (Maybe not a job for an engineer. But, given how difficult it's proven to be to-date, maybe so.)

How if they figure out how to reverse Global Warming, or the AIDS crisis?

This blogger has refused, since nineteen hundred and ninety-five, to pay Federal Income Taxes, for the precise reason that 50% of those tax dollars are wasted away on programmes such as the "Multi-Mission Maritime Aircraft" (which aren't, of course, only jobs programmes: these implements are put to destructive use all too often). But he would happily pay taxes if put toward socially useful ends.

A side-note:

This blogger frequently pokes fun at Multinational Corporations' absolute mortification at the thought of being exposed to the Free Market. The Times article offers us another example of this most widespread phenomenon.

Carolyn Corvi, head of the plant at which the MMA will be built, notes that had The Boeing Co. not merged its civilian and "defense" wings in 1997, it "wouldn't have had this win." Corvi further enthuses that, "One of the reasons we brought these companies together was to minimize the effects of commerical airplane cycles in our business."

Would that we could all call upon Uncle Sam to lend a $40 Billion helping hand to help smooth out the down-cycles in each of our businesses!

June 07, 2004

Post Reporter Nearly Killed Trying to Cover Fallujah

Western media hasn't reported much on what's been happening in Fallujah since Saddam's Republican Guard took over, and for good reason, it seems, after reading Daniel Williams' unbelievable piece in today's Post that says things aren't A-OK there: Despite Agreement, Insurgents Rule Fallujah

Fallujah byways are a hell of roadside bombs and ambushes. On Friday, an armored sport-utility vehicle carrying this Washington Post reporter and his driver was attacked close to Fallujah on the main highway to Baghdad. Four men in an orange-and-white taxi pumped dozens of bullets from AK-47 assault rifles into the vehicle for more than two minutes, each round causing a loud thump on the vehicle's metal plating and reinforced windows. They shot from behind, from in front and from the sides, where their determined frowns and mustached faces were clearly visible, as they and we weaved down the highway at 90 mph. The fusillade stopped when the SUV, its back tires missing and its rear windows shattered, spun out of control. The gunmen sped down the road, evidently thinking their mission was accomplished. Neither the driver nor the reporter was injured.

and:

In Fallujah on Friday, neither police nor the brigade showed any eagerness to clear the streets of masked men. Their inaction made for a nerve-wracking trip. When my driver and I approached four policemen who were sitting in a squad car and asked them to escort us out of the city, one answered, "If we did that, they would kill us as spies, and kill you, too."

UPDATE: Daniel Williams discusses his ordeal on Monday's edition of All Things Considered.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Even better, Daniel Williams writes a great article about his ordeal in Tuesday's edition of the Post. He's covered conflicts all over the world, and been shot at all over the world, but writes, "...rarely have I been in a place where danger arrives from so many directions as in Iraq."