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October 23, 2005
WB: Hard News Lead
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And now for the extended weather forecast: There might be some precipitation in the coming week, which could be either light or heavy. It might also remain dry.
Posted by: Monolycus | Oct 23 2005 7:38 utc | 1
Frank Rich (liberated here) in his column puts the Plame affair into the historic context.
By Memorial Day 2002, a USA Today poll found that just 4 out of 10 Americans believed that the United States was winning the war on terror, a steep drop from the roughly two-thirds holding that conviction in January. Mr. Rove could see that an untelevised and largely underground war against terrorists might not nail election victories without a jolt of shock and awe. It was a propitious moment to wag the dog.
Enter Scooter, stage right. As James Mann details in his definitive group biography of the Bush war cabinet, “Rise of the Vulcans,” Mr. Libby had been joined at the hip with Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz since their service in the Defense Department of the Bush 41 administration, where they conceived the neoconservative manifesto for the buildup and exercise of unilateral American military power after the cold war. Well before Bush 43 took office, they had become fixated on Iraq, though for reasons having much to do with their ideas about realigning the states in the Middle East and little or nothing to do with the stateless terrorism of Al Qaeda. Mr. Bush had specifically disdained such interventionism when running against Al Gore, but he embraced the cause once in office. While others might have had cavils – American military commanders testified before Congress about their already overtaxed troops and equipment in March 2002 – the path was clear for a war in Iraq to serve as the political Viagra Mr. Rove needed for the election year.
But here, too, was an impediment: there had to be that “why” for the invasion, the very why that today can seem so elusive that Mr. Packer calls Iraq “the ‘Rashomon’ of wars.” Abstract (and highly debatable) neocon notions of marching to Baghdad to make the Middle East safe for democracy (and more secure for Israel and uninterrupted oil production) would never fly with American voters as a trigger for war or convince them that such a war was relevant to the fight against those who attacked us on 9/11.
…
(read the whole piece)
Why does it take an OpEd columnist to do such wide view reporting?
That article reminds me exactly why I have such a short concentration span with MSM.
To them balance is reporting two extreme positions.
For example apparently not supporting the troops has become a paid profession according to CBS so Joe Wilson is described as :
“Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson”
This is carried on into the description of Valerie Plame who gets the sort of denigration that CIA agents normally get over here in left Blogistan rather than the MSM. She’s not a person. She’s “the wife of Iraq war critic Joseph Wilson (who) worked for the CIA.”
Not only is she a CIA worker not a CIA agent she’s the wife of a war critic.
Apparently all the effort this couple appear to have put into establishing themselves as separate entities means nought to CBS who still live in the fifties where women are famous for their husbands work. Anything they do is just a ‘hobby’.
Now in an effort to be ‘balanced’ CBS throw in this line:
“I was in the Nixon White House during Watergate, and we pretended that we were all about business as usual. And we had a president who was talking to the portraits. It was not business as usual, but you have to say it,” former presidential adviser David Gergen told CBS News’ The Early Show.
“
The thing is the lines that demean the Wilsons and play down the outing vastly outnumber any rebuke that BushCo cops, but even if the numbers were the other way around, reading the news isn’t meant to be umpiring a tennis match. Why don’t these alleged reporters just report the facts and leave the interpretation to the editorial section?
yeah I know. That was rhetorical.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Oct 23 2005 8:04 utc | 3
damn fine deconstruction debsisdead, thank-you. This is why they call it prop-agenda the evolution of propaganda. It us not so much the control of what we think, but the control of what we think about .Big difference; an aristotle semantic straight jacket.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 23 2005 8:27 utc | 4
@ Quoth Uncle: “It us not so much the control of what we think, but the control of what we think about.”
It also suppresses thought via visual diddling – rapidly varying visual stimuli capture visual attention recruitment/processing circuits and divert resources from content processing.
For which reason some of us have banished the teevee. It pollutes our life’s time.
Posted by: eftsoons | Oct 23 2005 15:52 utc | 6
as if their fucking lies and distortions were not reason enough.
Posted by: eftsoons | Oct 23 2005 15:55 utc | 7
Many psychologists believe that TV watching at ages 0-3 and older is one of the co-causes of Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorder.
It’s apparently very hard to get funding to study this aspect. So the evidence for the relationship is slim.
Posted by: Noisette | Oct 23 2005 16:25 utc | 8
Well, everyone else and their dog is weighing in with predictions, so here’s mine FWIW:
http://greyhairsblog.blogspot.com/2005/10/fitzmas-eve_23.html
@ quoth Noisette: “It’s apparently very hard to get funding to study this aspect. So the evidence for the relationship is slim.”
Such a study would be cheap and easy, so I doubt the problem is funding. It would also be inhumane. Even worse, it would be a major career killer.
Posted by: eftsoons | Oct 23 2005 17:27 utc | 11
In anticipation of the Republican defense that these guys are likely to be indicted on perjury, rather than the original focus of the investigation, it will be fruitful to use their own words against them. Here are a few fine Republicans at the Cliton impeachment trial.
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0617-09.htm
Posted by: steve expat | Oct 23 2005 20:45 utc | 12
@ steve expat
were it not so but politicians have gotten to the point where if someone drags out an example of earlier histrionics they have used, in an attempt to reveal their duplicity, they just wink and smile sweetly to the camera.
A sort of unspoken acknowledgement that they are politicians and as such are expected to say anything or hold any position in order to further their ends.
They have manouvered the sheeple in the best of both worlds. That is sheeple are expected to accept whatever mendacious equivocation is on offer and act on it, but that later on the sheeple will also agree that aforesaid mendacity was necessary for the good of the party.
And they reckon we are cynical!
Posted by: Debs is dead | Oct 23 2005 21:43 utc | 13
OK, it’s wack, but happy-wack, because it’s
probably the only time we’re every going to
hear ‘Bush’, ‘Cheney’ and ‘indictment’ in
the same sentence. TomFlocco.com Laugh riot!
George Bush found staggering around on the
White House lawn, talking to Elders of Zion
that only he can see. Cheney in the crapper,
slicing away at his knee surgery bandages.
Don Rumsfeld, straight-jacket, apoplectic.
Ahhh,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha. Like smoking ganga.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20051021.html
Posted by: tante aime | Oct 23 2005 23:17 utc | 14
Immoral Relativism
And Other Distractions of the Age of Bush
“At a breakfast meeting with reporters, Wolfowitz said he hasn’t read the [Downing Street] memos because he doesn’t want to be ‘distracted’ by ‘history’ from his new job as head of the world’s leading development bank. He returned this weekend from a tour of four African nations.
“‘There’s a lot I could say about what you’re asking about, if I were willing to get distracted from the main subject,’ Wolfowitz said. ‘But I really think there’s a price paid with the people I’ve just spent time with, people who are struggling with very real problems, to keep going back in history.'” (Jon Sawyer, Wolfowitz won’t talk about war planning, St. Louis Post-Dispatch.)
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Oct 24 2005 2:19 utc | 15
Uncle the only comfort we can take from ‘Wolfie’s’ weak attempt to avoid the consequences of his asinine thinking is that the end is nigh.
This ‘ignore the elephant’ ploy surfaces when things have gotten so bad that none of the usual lies, rationalisations, or distortions have any credibility whatsoever.
Prior examples of this that I could give would be lost on many as although this sort of avoidance is common enough in smaller organisations or countries (such as NZ), large administrative jurisdictions have normally weeded out people so grossly incompetent that ignorance is the only exit, long before they reach the administrative apex.
However this sort of attitude wasn’t that unusual in the early Soviet days where everything especially reality was bent to fit the five year plan .
Of course given Wolfowitz’s history of Trotskyism it is no surprise that he has made the same error that many other unimaginative control freaks have.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Oct 24 2005 3:36 utc | 16