It Looks Like This (sorry, no ice cream) 

Is that Blood on our Hands?

With so many such stories popping up lately, it's hard to know where to start, so let's just start with these two, which showed up today:

From the New York Times (sorry, you'll have to register if you already haven't), we find this story describing the Reagan Administration's complicity in some of the most heinous of Saddam's atrocities, with special attention paid to Ole Rummy's role.

From Alternet we get Noam Chomsky's take on the moral flexibility of our policy makers, notably, in this case, Paul Wolfowitz.

Wasn't that long ago, was it, that the Republicans were decrying the "moral relativism" of the Democrats? When it comes to such relativism, I'd much rather the result be an illicit affair with a younger woman than complicity in crimes against humanity. But then, that's just me.

A Little Revisionist History, No?

This is kind of scary, don't you think?

A Foray Off-Track: Greatest Movie Trilogy?

Hmmm. I'm about to venture into uncharted waters for this blog, and I won't make a habit of it, but I have to comment on this. I just read an article that tries to argue that the Godfather trilogy of movies is the greatest of all time, surpassing the Lord of the Rings. I just can't allow such an absurd claim to pass.

Let me explain, right out, that I think the Godfather is the greatest film of all time and that the Godfather II is in my top ten. But for a claim for greatest trilogy to be sustained you can't have such a complete drop-off in quality as you get with the Godfather III. All it shares with the earlier films is character names and a director. Aside from that it is at best a red-headed step child.

To judge a trilogy as great, or even as good, you need sustained quality, and Lord of the Rings provides that to a far greater extent than any other. It surpasses, not only the Godfather, which was not even in the running, having stumbled and fallen badly at the second baton toss, but Star Wars, which though it declined in quality from the second to the third films, was still far more consistent than the Godfather.

What do you think? Can you count trilogies that don't know when to quit? (for example, could you count the first three Lethal Weapon movies?) How about "accidental" trilogies, like Mad Max, that weren't planned as such, but just kept going until there were three?

Just what we need; another amendment

There is in Today's New York Times (as well as on the fron page of today's Santa Rosa Press Democrat - a NYT rag) a story on a poll that supposedly shows, according to the hacks writing the article, strong support for a Constitutional Amendment banning gay marriage.

I wonder how the thinking on this goes. Do the people in favor of such an amendment honestly believe that had the founding fathers been aware of such issues that they would have thought this a good thing to add to the Constitution? AS I noted in an earlier post about an amendment to ban flag burning, most of the twenty-seven amendments provide for curtailment of government power and expansion of people's rights. This amendment would cut across that history, inscribing in the Constitution limitations on the rights of some. Don't you just love it that some people think that one of the great problems in this country is that we have too much liberty and too little government proscription of what we can and cannot do?

Why not another Bush entry?

There's a discussion at another weblog, Pandagon, about whether President Bush should attend funerals or memorial services for our soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. I've yet to see an argument against the President attending such services that didn't seem like anything more than trying to defend and rationalize an indefensible position. The ways this President has failed to support the troops, whether those fighting in his war, or those who fought in his father's war, will be the subject of a future entry. In this case, though, attending services for the men who have paid the price for him having put them in harm's way would be a small but necessary signal of his gratitude for their sacrifice. Far more meaningful then "bring them on."

But that's not the part of the discussion that I want to address. A point is made that Colin Powell and Wesley Clark resisted going to war in Iraq and Bush was so gung ho for it because Clark and Powell have been in war, they have seen their comrades and those for whom they are responsible killed and maimed, and Bush has not, and that has colored their respective perspectives. I doubt that is the case, at least as it applies to Bush. There is nothing I have seen of the man that leads me to believe that he has the depth of intellect or character to doubt the rightness of his cause. He believes that he is an instrument of God, placed here to spread his warped vision of democracy and his horribly limited and warped version of freedom. Such a crusader would not let the blood spilt by others cause him to falter. I wonder if that belief in his own specialness also contributes to his seeming indifference to the suffering and deaths of the men and women serving and dying for him. Though they are mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, husbands and wives to others, to Bush they are mere instruments of his righteous might. If they must bleed for him to fulfill his destiny, so be it.

Do you sense that my impression of Bush is not improving with age?

Bush = Unelectable

There is a television commercial, bought and paid for by Democrats currently unafiliated with any campaign, questioning Howard Dean's competence to handle foreign policy and his ability to measure up to George Bush in this area. Although there is a lot about this commercial, including its provenance, that bothers me, it is this last bit, that George Bush can somehow run so strongly on his foreign policy record that it would take an exceptionally strong Democratic candidate to challenge him in this area, that I find most bothersome.

That would be the Bush record that includes apparently ashcanning the Al Qaeda briefing provided to him by Sandy Berger, apparently turning a deaf ear to suggestions that terrorists would use commercial airliners as weapons, "thinking up" the idea of a department of homeland security six months after leading congressional democrats did, doing nothing to beef up security at our ports or at our commercial chemical and nuclear plants, compromising our search for Osama and weakening our "democratization" efforts in Afghanistan with his adventure in Iraq, lying to the world about WMDs and Iraq's nuclear capability, kissing Chinese butt when they captured one of our planes, thoroughly botching the whole North Korea thing, demonstrably weakening this country's ability, in the wake of Iraq, to defend ourselves against a real threat. Yeah, I can see why someone might have a hard time running against that record.

Saddam, briefly, again

From the New York Times:

"The one thing on which everyone now agrees is that this man caused the deaths of hundreds of thousands of his own people and kept most of the rest in fear and misery. Ironically, that was a vision first painted nearly 15 years ago by international human rights groups, during a period in which American presidents, as well as most of the rest of the world, treated him as a valuable ally and a bulwark against Iranian extremism."

Did Al Gore Invent the Internet

The answer to that question is of course he didn't. Here's another question: did Al Gore claim to invent the internet? Based on what you read in the papers and hear on television and radio, the answer again seems obvious; of course he did. The only problem is, he didn't claim to invent the internet and those who keep repeating that he did are either too ignorant to know better or too immoral and dishonest to tell the truth.

Anyway, here's the skinny on what Gore did say and what he meant by it. I'll leave it up to you to figure out what it means that our esteemed press deems it worthy to keep repeating this fabrication, presenting it as truth.

And, by the way, I recommend that you get your daily dose of the Daily Howler. Bob Somerby works much harder at nailing the press than I did, and you might as well get the story straight from him.

How do we Fight the Saddams?

In a column last winter, about the time of the US invasion of Iraq, Richard Cohen chided those who were protesting this action, asking where were the protests against Saddam for all those years? It was a silly question because of the way he asked it, but it did, very obliquely, bring up an important topic. What can citizens of more or less "free" countries, such as the United States and Great Britian, do to combat regimes like that of Saddam Hussein. Once in awhile a nation, such as South Africa in the eighties, will somehow rise to such a level of public consciousness that its policies become the subject of worldwide condemnation and public protest. That is rare, though, and the kind of brutality practiced by Saddam and his thugs is not rare. It happens every day, still, in countries throughout the world.

So, how do you find out about the behavior of these nations, and what can you do to combat it? It so happens that there is an organization that has, for more than forty years, been dedicated to exposing and combatting the horrors that nations perpetrate upon their own people. You've heard of it. Now please check it out. Just click here, on Amnesty International.

Brief Thoughts on Saddam

The United States having embarked on this Iraqi adventure, I am happy that Saddam Hussein has been captured. I remain unconvinced that his ouster could not have been achieved by less destructive means, but since it wasn't done in some other manner, it's nice that he is finally in custody.

It is nice, too, that he was taken alive, thereby forcing me to put aside, for now, some of my darkest thoughts about the men currently running this country. Thoughts that bloomed with the spectacularly violent manner in which the sons of Saddam met their demise.

I think it is important that we (the people of the world) get a chance to question him, through the United States. Whether anybody believes what he says or not, we need to hear what he has to say, if he will talk, about WMDs and Iraq-9/11 connections. I hope that we can take Mr. Rumsfeld at his word that we won't torture him (and that we won't send him to Syria, so that they can torture him for us).

I hope that Saddam's capture will in fact reduce the armed resistance in Iraq, though I am not optimistic that this will be the case. There seems to be no definitive intelligence to indicate that the resistance has been fomented and carried primarily by the "dead-enders." Unless the post-capture bombings yesterday were a last gasp, the early indications are that the resistance will continue.

Presuming he will be found guilty of whatever he will be charged with in whatever tribunal he is tried, there are a number of alternate proposals for how to dispose of him. Hanging and shooting seem to be the most popular, with gruesome variations and combinations of the two of them floating around. I would like to seem him imprisoned, a la Rudolph Hess, with excellent medical care, until he dies a long-awaited, solitary, distant death. That wish on my part arises from my life-long and total opposition to capital punishment, here tested to the extreme.