Spent Authority – Moon of Alabama

October 11, 2006

Spent Authority

London Times (Murdoch alarm sounding) OpEd:

[T]he 43rd President of the United States of America has squandered the political authority of a great country. Never mind whether world leaders still feel the need to check in with the US; ordinary people no longer expect from Washington international leadership of any use. So spent is the authority of the United States that even a foreign affairs ingénue such as myself recognises that there is little constructive it can do any more. So it doesn’t really matter what the President thinks.

Well, it still matters a lot that he can order whomever to be bombed.

But anyhow – to read this in a Murdoch rag is definitly a sign that the obscure elite has thrown the towel on GW Bush. Just wonder if, or when, he will notice.

Posted by b on October 11, 2006 at 19:46 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Right about that b, especially with regards to whats to be gained by bombing (Iran/NK) as opposed to be lost by it. As far as I can see not much to be lost by it, that isnt already lost. The last ditch, going for broke hope of escape, in military terms, is to call in artillery on your own position.

Posted by: anna missed | Oct 11 2006 20:13 utc | 1

Well my first reaction was “They pay someone to write this claptrap?”
The only thing that the author got correct was that the amerikan president lacks moral authority. The rest of the bullshit, particularly that the head of any empire which survives by opressing others, can actually have moral authority in the first place, is a waste of bits/electrons or whatever we can measure the usuage of the Interweb in.
I suspect I would happily forgo the pleasure of seeing Dubya, Cheney, Rummy, and the Bliar standing in a cage protesting that their microphones were turned off whenever they spoke, in return for seeing Rupert Murdoch and the cabal of NewsCorp investors who have been with him right from the get-go, in chains pleading for their rights.
One can be fairly sure that they would lack the courage that Hussein has, surprisingly, displayed thus far.
The most depressing TV programs I watched this year was a gardening show. It featured an interview with Rupert Murdoch’s mother, who was being asked about the garden she had created at the Murdoch family’s South Australian estate.
Now that Rupert has access to the best organs which China’s death row inmates can provide he’s going to be around, and in charge of his evil, mind control of the masses factory, at least for long enough rto permit his new heirs to reach maturity and then take over the business. Of course if they too, are found wanting he will find a new wife (maybe from Mars this time if that planet has been ‘globalised’ and NewsCorp needs the media licenses) and have another go.
Anyone else have the sinking feeling that their grandchildren are going to be ‘text-casting’ their anger toward Rupert Murdoch?

Posted by: Debs is dead | Oct 11 2006 21:02 utc | 2

“I hate what the US has done to itself and, were I an American, I would hate it even more.”
Yup.

Posted by: beq | Oct 11 2006 23:27 utc | 3

Agreed, Bernard.
If Mudock has given up on Bush, then the Powers that Be really are done with him.
I think this is the real meaning of the Foley scandal: Foley has long been getting away with sexually abusing minors, and was no doubt surprised to discover it was suddenly an issue, and moreover public. This is the PTB turning.
As for Iran, North Korea, & al–even as Bush/Cheney want more than ever to start bombing, the apparent opposition of the PTB introduces a problem: Only the commanders that really think it will work will be on board with them, because if (when) it fails, everyone involved will just get burned, and the PTB, if they have been crossed, will not be dispensing mercy.

Posted by: Gaianne | Oct 12 2006 5:59 utc | 4

Your thoughts….
Could it be possible that Iran and North Korea orchestrated the testing of a nuclear device together in order to put the brakes on the Bush administration’s plans to (possibly) bomb Iran?
We know that when the North Koreans were testing the Taepodong missiles that the Iranians were there (well that is what the administration claims).
Link
Supposing that there is an established arms trade between North Korea and Iran, I wonder if Iran might have had a hand in getting Korea to move forward. After all, it is now a hard sell to make to the rest of the world that Iran must be stopped at all costs when we allowed North Korea to get this far.
Furthermore, it would appear to be working if this is actually the case; less than two weeks ago, the Terror propaganda on a nuclear Iran was all the rage.
???

Posted by: Fiat Lux | Oct 12 2006 6:53 utc | 5

Fiat Lux –
With no idea who else could have instigated the N Korean test, it does seem that the Iran calculus has been jostled. I’ve wondered, too, whether interested outside parties spurred N.Korea on. Or does Kim Il Jong live so entirely by his own timetable that none outside can penetrate or interpret?

Posted by: small coke | Oct 12 2006 7:48 utc | 6

@Fiat Lux – I do think Iran and NoKo do coordinate about every step. They have good reasons. The missile program, uranium enrichment (though NoKo isn´t any good for that, they went the plutonium way). Iran has a lot of energy to sell and NoKo a lot of need.
But there is the “supervising consultant” in Peking that does some coordination too. That`s where I assume the real strategic thinking is taking place.

Posted by: b | Oct 12 2006 8:54 utc | 7

I recall, in the runup to the Iraq war, North Korea doing everything it could to grab attention, though naturally, I can’t remember exactly what it was doing now. But I recall it was somewhat akin to a second-grader jumping up and down saying “Lookit me! Pay attention to ME!!!”

Posted by: Rowan | Oct 12 2006 9:02 utc | 8

Not just Dubya coming in for criticism from the establishment today viz. Judge critical of MI5 testimony (BBC News, 12 Oct 06):

A judge has criticised the Home Office over contradictory MI5 intelligence in secret hearings involving two terrorism suspects, it has emerged.
The error came to light only because one barrister acted in both Special Immigration Appeals Commission cases. …
The cases were being heard separately by the Special Immigration Appeals Commission, known as Siac.
But after MK’s case had finished it became clear that the evidence against him was being contradicted by that in the Abu Doha hearings.
In a ruling produced in May, but only now made public, the judge accepted the mistake was not deliberate.
But Mr Justice Newman went on to say the “administration of justice is put at risk” if such failures occur.
Shami Chakrabarti, director of human rights group Liberty, said: “Our worst fear has been realised when the government submits flawed secret intelligence to a commission, which will determine if people are to be returned to countries where they may face torture.
“The home secretary has a duty to explain why the commission was misled, and how this can possibly be prevented under these shadowy arrangements in the future.”

This is the world that Duyba has wrought (abetted of course by that puddle of piss Bliar, and the Murdoch empire itself, funnily enough).

Posted by: Dismal Science | Oct 12 2006 11:39 utc | 9

The notion that Iran and North Korea are coordinating is plausible. However it’s also very easy to see this being spun in just the opposite direction, as several Israel leaders have been trying to do in recent days: To argue that North Korea, now that it has the bomb, will share that technology with Iran so uh oh, we better take out Iran’s nuclear capability, whatever it may be, right now before it’s too late. We wouldn’t want TWO “rogue states” going nukular…. yadda yadda. I haven’t seen that argument made yet over here in the US — has anyone? But it did feature prominently in the Israel press.

Posted by: Bea | Oct 12 2006 12:47 utc | 10

bea
a coordination between n k & iran would seem highly implausible to me for many reasons, least of them all ideological though i agree with b that the great mothership, china – has many pans in the fire
but i doubt whether ‘exchanges’ constitute coordination

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Oct 12 2006 13:17 utc | 11

Murdoch on the bandwagon! The obscure elite are slow sheep as well.
Could it be possible that Iran and North Korea orchestrated the testing of a nuclear device together in order to put the brakes on the Bush administration’s plans to (possibly) bomb Iran?
I don’t think so, but have nothing to back that opinion up. (see rgiap above though.) My reading was that possibly the NK test or minor boom or whatever it was might have been moved forward, because of a blanket feeling of ‘urgency’. In such enterprises, that feeling of urgency if often needed, because a certain degree of irrationality is present in any case.
Second, the calculation that a ‘test’ by NK would stop the US doing anything it has decided to do is doubtful. Third, if Iran does not expect any kind of serious attack, whatever NK does is immaterial. But who knows.
If anything NK’s test looks more like an long-planned, on the rails response to the history of US escalation and perfidy.

Posted by: Noirette | Oct 12 2006 15:58 utc | 12

Whatever happened to this guy?
Comments for this post are now closed.
Uncle?

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Oct 12 2006 16:06 utc | 13

Thank you for the input.

Posted by: Fiat Lux | Oct 12 2006 17:16 utc | 14

Cloned poster–
You have incompetence, and the over-arching organizational need to cover up the incompetence, which is the surface reason this whistle-blower is getting no traction.
But there is another level. Security holes in supposedly safe systems facilitate black ops. A para-government agency can use government resources (in this case, the Coast Guard boats) without leaving a trail, and with a technical cover of innocence (“It couldn’t have happened. We have SECURITY.”)
My own thought, and only one possibility of many: Now the Coast Guard ships THEMSELVES can be used to smuggle the Bushies’ cocaine–while patroling for smugglers!

Posted by: Gaianne | Oct 12 2006 21:52 utc | 15

sideshow, but it will keep the nuts away from voting repub:
Report Says Nonprofits Sold Influence to Abramoff

Five conservative nonprofit organizations, including one run by prominent Republican Grover Norquist, “appear to have perpetrated a fraud” on taxpayers by selling their clout to lobbyist Jack Abramoff, Senate investigators said in a report issued yesterday.
The report includes previously unreleased e-mails between the now-disgraced lobbyist and officers of the nonprofit groups, showing that Abramoff funneled money from his clients to the groups. In exchange, the groups, among other things, produced ostensibly independent newspaper op-ed columns or news releases that favored the clients’ positions.

Bush Confounded by the ‘Unacceptable’

In the first nine months of this year, Bush declared more than twice as many events or outcomes “unacceptable” or “not acceptable” as he did in all of 2005, and nearly four times as many as he did in 2004. He is, in fact, at a presidential career high in denouncing events he considers intolerable. They number 37 so far this year, as opposed to five in 2003, 18 in 2002 and 14 in 2001.
Through a spokesman and then in a televised statement, he declared North Korea’s claimed nuclear test “unacceptable” before and after it occurred Oct. 9. But he could also be heard on Jan. 9 lecturing students at an elementary school in Glen Burnie, Md., that their recent scores on math and reading proficiency tests were “unacceptable.”
Having a president call something “unacceptable” is not the same as having him order U.S. troops into action. But foreign policy experts say the word is one of the strongest any leader can deploy, since it both broadcasts a national position and conveys an implicit threat to take action if his warnings are disregarded.
…

Posted by: b | Oct 13 2006 5:33 utc | 16

Back to Main