Well, it didn't matter that his approval ratings were at a long time low or that voices were getting louder for getting out of Iraq.
Now the city of New Orleans faces anniliation, and,yet, Mr Magoo drives around his Crawford Texas ranch, seemingly unaware of the possible consequences.
Is this guy on drugs?
Mr. Magoo Stays On Vacation
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jbuck919
- Military Band Specialist
- Posts: 26856
- Joined: Wed Jan 28, 2004 10:15 pm
- Location: Stony Creek, New York
Is that fair? He's already declared the area an emergency area, or whatever you do before it becomes a disaster area. I may not agree with George W.'s politics, but he has enough sense to respond appropriately to this. And let's just hope it's not as bad as it looks like it's going to be.
(I mean, never, never, has anyone evacuated a city of half a million.)
(I mean, never, never, has anyone evacuated a city of half a million.)
There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
-- Johann Sebastian Bach
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jbuck919
- Military Band Specialist
- Posts: 26856
- Joined: Wed Jan 28, 2004 10:15 pm
- Location: Stony Creek, New York
The same criticism was made of Ronald Reagan. I believe it was referred to as his relentless vacation schedule. The President never takes a vacation from events. He'll do what he needs to do, and be where he needs to be, when he needs to do it and be there.Lilith wrote:I'm not in the business of being fair.
Can you remember the last time this guy was in a suit in Washington DC?
From a hymn by the great pietist hymnist Joachim Neander, for whom the Neander Valley in Germany is named (hence, Neanderthal):
Tell me, who can trust our nature,
Human, weak and insecure?
Which, of all the airy castles
Can the hurricane endure?
There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
-- Johann Sebastian Bach
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jbuck919
- Military Band Specialist
- Posts: 26856
- Joined: Wed Jan 28, 2004 10:15 pm
- Location: Stony Creek, New York
Let me lay this out for everybody: A hurricane of force five with winds of 170 mph passing slowly over a major city will wreak havoc the equivalent of a nuclear detonation. I lived on the ilsand of Guam in 1963 when it had its (up to then) historically worst typhoon, and I will not bore you with the details, but I do speak with something of the voice of experience.
All the wooden structures in New Orleans (such as the famous gunshot houses) will be leveled to the ground. Perhaps the majority of concrete construction buildings will be damaged beyond repair. The damage to the public works infrastructure will require a response on the level of Chernobyl or Kuwait.
This storm is, apparently, and I hope I'm wrong, going to teach us how much we are a city culture, and how little we can afford a true big-city disaster.
All the wooden structures in New Orleans (such as the famous gunshot houses) will be leveled to the ground. Perhaps the majority of concrete construction buildings will be damaged beyond repair. The damage to the public works infrastructure will require a response on the level of Chernobyl or Kuwait.
This storm is, apparently, and I hope I'm wrong, going to teach us how much we are a city culture, and how little we can afford a true big-city disaster.
There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
-- Johann Sebastian Bach
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Ralph
- Dittersdorf Specialist & CMG NY Host
- Posts: 20990
- Joined: Fri Mar 25, 2005 6:54 am
- Location: Paradise on Earth, New York, NY
In this instance Bush can't do anything in D.C. he hasn't done in Crawford. Attacking him for being on a long vacation in the context of Katrina makes little sense. Save your ammo, Lilith.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Albert Einstein
While on Christmas vacation it took W 3 days to respond to the tsunami, with an abject $35 million. Hope it is different this time, but IMO the jury is still out.
'She wants to go with him, but her mama don't allow none of that.'
Elementary school child at an opera outreach performance of "Là ci darem la mano!" Don Giovanni - Mozart.
Elementary school child at an opera outreach performance of "Là ci darem la mano!" Don Giovanni - Mozart.
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karlhenning
- Composer-in-Residence
- Posts: 9812
- Joined: Wed Apr 20, 2005 11:12 am
- Location: Boston, MA
- Contact:
That's a line of business we should all take a proprietary interest in, I had thought.Lilith wrote:I'm not in the business of being fair.
Cheers,
~Karl
Karl Henning, PhD
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston, Massachusetts
http://members.tripod.com/~Karl_P_Henning/
http://henningmusick.blogspot.com/
Published by Lux Nova Press
http://www.luxnova.com/
Composer & Clarinetist
Boston, Massachusetts
http://members.tripod.com/~Karl_P_Henning/
http://henningmusick.blogspot.com/
Published by Lux Nova Press
http://www.luxnova.com/
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Ted
Lilith Wrote:
You certainly sound like a member of the Magoo Family
Lilith Wrote
Only a close-minded, knee jerk Looney bird can facilitate the arduous endeavor of motivating me to defend G W Bush.
You can definitely put that feather in your cap
Are you Ms Magoo?Mr. Magoo Stays On Vacation
You certainly sound like a member of the Magoo Family
Lilith Wrote
Which is precisely why you have 0% credibility.I'm not in the business of being fair.
Only a close-minded, knee jerk Looney bird can facilitate the arduous endeavor of motivating me to defend G W Bush.
You can definitely put that feather in your cap
I am an advocate and proud to admit it. There are times when I try to be balanced, other times when I am not disposed that way.
I didn't realize I was in the company of such highly principled, totally fair minded, 'striving for the highest virtues' people, ie. the saints of the internet all congregate here.
What balderdash! You all have an axe to grind, but some of you just would never admit it.
I didn't realize I was in the company of such highly principled, totally fair minded, 'striving for the highest virtues' people, ie. the saints of the internet all congregate here.
What balderdash! You all have an axe to grind, but some of you just would never admit it.
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Huckleberry
- Posts: 445
- Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2005 8:33 am
- Location: A mostly gentle person in a mostly gentle land
Please forgive me for respectfully providing a newcomer's point of view here.Lilith wrote:There are times when I try to be balanced, other times when I am not disposed that way.
What balderdash! You all have an axe to grind, but some of you just would never admit it.
I'm not sure that one can be balanced at one moment, unbalanced at another, fair at times, and unfair at others, and yet have credibility. Civilized and constructive dialogue has always seemed to be a better alternative. If such dialogue on an issue is impossible, why not post on a topic where the discourse involves real exchange?
As for the current situation, Americans should forget about some personal ax we have to grind, focus on the awful weather conditions in the affected states, and if we can't help in any way, stop using the situation to force a personal agenda upon others, or at least not while this storm is devastating our neighbours.
I apologize if I have given offence here.
Huckle
I finally know what I want to be when I grow up:
Chief Dog Brusher, Music Room Keeper, and Assistant Sunlight Manager
in a hillside Mansion for Ancient Musicians.
Chief Dog Brusher, Music Room Keeper, and Assistant Sunlight Manager
in a hillside Mansion for Ancient Musicians.
Yet when I told you last week that your attitude is counterproductive to getting the people you seem to hate out of office, you said you don't care about that. You are only interested in what's best for the country.Lilith wrote: I didn't realize I was in the company of such highly principled, totally fair minded, 'striving for the highest virtues' people, ie. the saints of the internet all congregate here.
What balderdash! You all have an axe to grind, but some of you just would never admit it.
Ted had you nailed just right.
"If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee." - Abraham Lincoln
"Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed." - Winston Churchill
"Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement." - Ronald Reagan
http://www.davidstuff.com/political/wmdquotes.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pbp0hur ... re=related
"Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed." - Winston Churchill
"Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement." - Ronald Reagan
http://www.davidstuff.com/political/wmdquotes.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pbp0hur ... re=related
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Ralph
- Dittersdorf Specialist & CMG NY Host
- Posts: 20990
- Joined: Fri Mar 25, 2005 6:54 am
- Location: Paradise on Earth, New York, NY
Bush promises post-storm help for victims
8/29/2005, 9:01 p.m. ET
By JENNIFER LOVEN and RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
The Associated Press
RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif. (AP) — President Bush on Monday pledged extensive federal help for victims of Hurricane Katrina to "get your lives back in order." The government put into effect a massive emergency assistance program that included rushing baby formula, communications equipment, generators, water and ice into hard-hit areas.
Bush also was expected to tap into the nation's emergency petroleum stockpiles to help refineries affected by the storm, administration officials said. Final details were being worked out, they said.
The government's supply — nearly 700 million barrels of oil stored in underground salt caverns along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast — was established to cushion oil markets during energy disruptions.
As the storm surged ashore just east of New Orleans on Monday, Bush was traveling in the West — here and in El Mirage, Ariz. — to pitch a new Medicare prescription drug benefit. The hurricane, however, took top billing at both stops.
By the time Bush spoke in California, his focus had changed from urging people to stay out of harm's way to talking in the past tense of "a storm that hit with a lot of ferocity."
"It's a storm now that is moving through and now is the time for governments to help people get their feet on the ground," Bush said. "For those of you who are concerned about whether or not we are prepared to help — don't be. We are."
He added, "We're in place, we've got equipment in place, supplies in place and once we're able to assess the damage we'll be able to move in and help those good folks in the affected areas."
The Federal Emergency Management Agency had medical teams, rescue squads and groups prepared to supply food and water poised in a semicircle around New Orleans.
"I was impressed with the evacuation. Once it was ordered it was very smooth," FEMA Director Michael Brown said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. With the storm moving north, Brown said he expected to see flooding in Tennessee and the Ohio Valley.
In other storm-related developments:
_The president made emergency disaster declarations for Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The difference between these declarations and preliminary ones issued over the weekend was that the new declarations allow for the drawdown of federal funds in disaster relief and recovery.
_The American Red Cross said it had thousands of volunteers mobilized for the hurricane. It was the "largest single mobilization that we've done for any single natural disaster," said spokesman Bradley Hague. The organization set up operational headquarters in Baton Rouge.
_The Environmental Protection Agency dispatched emergency crews to Louisiana and Texas because of concern about oil and chemical spills.
_The Coast Guard closed ports and waterways along the Gulf Coast and positioned craft around the area to be ready to conduct post-hurricane search and rescue operations.
_The Agriculture Department said its Food and Nutrition Service will provide meals and other commodities, such as infant formula, distilled water for babies and emergency food stamps.
_The Federal Aviation Administration said airports were closed in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, La.; Biloxi, Miss.; Mobile, Ala.; Pensacola, Fla., and Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. Airlines have moved their equipment away from the stricken areas and canceled all flights, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said. Many air traffic control facilities in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama were closed.
_The Defense Department dispatched emergency coordinators to Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi to provide a wide range of assistance including communications equipment, search and rescue operations, medical teams and other emergency supplies.
_The Health and Human Services Department sent 38 doctors and nurses to Jackson, Miss., to be used where needed, and 30 pallets of medical supplies to the region, including first aid materials, sterile gloves and oxygen tanks.
Meanwhile, Brown gave Bush two briefings on the powerful storm, said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
"The federal government and the state governments and the local governments will work side-by-side to do all we can to help get your lives back in order," Bush said.
The president was expected to authorize at least a loan of some oil from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve, said administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
McClellan said the president was waiting to hear the Energy Department's recommendation before making a decision. "Obviously, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is there for emergency situations, and that would include natural disasters," the spokesman told reporters.
McClellan later said Bush had spoken with the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama "to make sure they were getting what they needed from the federal government."
In a statement, Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman said, "Beginning last week, we have been in close contact with our federal partners, site managers at various locations of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and companies that operate oil refineries to prepare for any disruption in oil production."
"Over the next few days, we will continue to gain more information on the specific needs and then be able to make a better determination on how we can help," Bodman said.
The Gulf of Mexico is the heart of U.S. oil and natural gas operations, and the storm so far has caused the shutdown of about 8 percent of U.S. refining capacity — or about 1 million barrels, further driving up gasoline costs.
It was not known how long oil and natural-gas production in the Gulf would be shut down.
If Bush decides to tap the reserves, as he did in 2004 when Hurricane Ivan struck the Gulf of Mexico, it would not be designed to put downward pressure on gas prices but to give refineries in the area a temporary supply of crude oil to replace interrupted shipments from tankers or offshore oil platforms affected by the storm.
Some 6,000 National Guard personnel from Louisiana and Mississippi who would otherwise be available to help deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina are in Iraq.
Even so, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said the states have adequate National Guard units to handle the hurricane needs, with at least 60 percent of the guard available in each state. He said about 6,500 National Guard troops were available in Louisiana, about 7,000 in Mississippi, nearly 10,000 in Alabama and about 8,200 in Florida.
The First U.S. Army, based at Fort Gillem near Atlanta, has 1,600 National Guard troops who were already there training to go to Iraq, and they will be available to assist the states or evacuate Camp Shelby in Mississippi, if necessary.
According to the Navy, two ships were moved from Pascagoula, Miss., and taken out to sea where they could ride out the storm. Most of the Navy's ships were on the east coast of Florida and were not affected. The Navy also moved dozens of aircraft out of Pensacola, Fla., and sent them to bases in Oklahoma and Texas. Aircraft that were not able to fly were put in hangars.
___
Randolph E. Schmid and Associated Press reporters Leslie Miller, Libby Quaid, Kevin Freking and John Heilprin contributed to the report from Washington.
8/29/2005, 9:01 p.m. ET
By JENNIFER LOVEN and RANDOLPH E. SCHMID
The Associated Press
RANCHO CUCAMONGA, Calif. (AP) — President Bush on Monday pledged extensive federal help for victims of Hurricane Katrina to "get your lives back in order." The government put into effect a massive emergency assistance program that included rushing baby formula, communications equipment, generators, water and ice into hard-hit areas.
Bush also was expected to tap into the nation's emergency petroleum stockpiles to help refineries affected by the storm, administration officials said. Final details were being worked out, they said.
The government's supply — nearly 700 million barrels of oil stored in underground salt caverns along the Texas and Louisiana Gulf Coast — was established to cushion oil markets during energy disruptions.
As the storm surged ashore just east of New Orleans on Monday, Bush was traveling in the West — here and in El Mirage, Ariz. — to pitch a new Medicare prescription drug benefit. The hurricane, however, took top billing at both stops.
By the time Bush spoke in California, his focus had changed from urging people to stay out of harm's way to talking in the past tense of "a storm that hit with a lot of ferocity."
"It's a storm now that is moving through and now is the time for governments to help people get their feet on the ground," Bush said. "For those of you who are concerned about whether or not we are prepared to help — don't be. We are."
He added, "We're in place, we've got equipment in place, supplies in place and once we're able to assess the damage we'll be able to move in and help those good folks in the affected areas."
The Federal Emergency Management Agency had medical teams, rescue squads and groups prepared to supply food and water poised in a semicircle around New Orleans.
"I was impressed with the evacuation. Once it was ordered it was very smooth," FEMA Director Michael Brown said in a telephone interview with The Associated Press. With the storm moving north, Brown said he expected to see flooding in Tennessee and the Ohio Valley.
In other storm-related developments:
_The president made emergency disaster declarations for Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama. The difference between these declarations and preliminary ones issued over the weekend was that the new declarations allow for the drawdown of federal funds in disaster relief and recovery.
_The American Red Cross said it had thousands of volunteers mobilized for the hurricane. It was the "largest single mobilization that we've done for any single natural disaster," said spokesman Bradley Hague. The organization set up operational headquarters in Baton Rouge.
_The Environmental Protection Agency dispatched emergency crews to Louisiana and Texas because of concern about oil and chemical spills.
_The Coast Guard closed ports and waterways along the Gulf Coast and positioned craft around the area to be ready to conduct post-hurricane search and rescue operations.
_The Agriculture Department said its Food and Nutrition Service will provide meals and other commodities, such as infant formula, distilled water for babies and emergency food stamps.
_The Federal Aviation Administration said airports were closed in New Orleans and Baton Rouge, La.; Biloxi, Miss.; Mobile, Ala.; Pensacola, Fla., and Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. Airlines have moved their equipment away from the stricken areas and canceled all flights, FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said. Many air traffic control facilities in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama were closed.
_The Defense Department dispatched emergency coordinators to Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi to provide a wide range of assistance including communications equipment, search and rescue operations, medical teams and other emergency supplies.
_The Health and Human Services Department sent 38 doctors and nurses to Jackson, Miss., to be used where needed, and 30 pallets of medical supplies to the region, including first aid materials, sterile gloves and oxygen tanks.
Meanwhile, Brown gave Bush two briefings on the powerful storm, said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
"The federal government and the state governments and the local governments will work side-by-side to do all we can to help get your lives back in order," Bush said.
The president was expected to authorize at least a loan of some oil from the nation's Strategic Petroleum Reserve, said administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.
McClellan said the president was waiting to hear the Energy Department's recommendation before making a decision. "Obviously, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve is there for emergency situations, and that would include natural disasters," the spokesman told reporters.
McClellan later said Bush had spoken with the governors of Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama "to make sure they were getting what they needed from the federal government."
In a statement, Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman said, "Beginning last week, we have been in close contact with our federal partners, site managers at various locations of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and companies that operate oil refineries to prepare for any disruption in oil production."
"Over the next few days, we will continue to gain more information on the specific needs and then be able to make a better determination on how we can help," Bodman said.
The Gulf of Mexico is the heart of U.S. oil and natural gas operations, and the storm so far has caused the shutdown of about 8 percent of U.S. refining capacity — or about 1 million barrels, further driving up gasoline costs.
It was not known how long oil and natural-gas production in the Gulf would be shut down.
If Bush decides to tap the reserves, as he did in 2004 when Hurricane Ivan struck the Gulf of Mexico, it would not be designed to put downward pressure on gas prices but to give refineries in the area a temporary supply of crude oil to replace interrupted shipments from tankers or offshore oil platforms affected by the storm.
Some 6,000 National Guard personnel from Louisiana and Mississippi who would otherwise be available to help deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina are in Iraq.
Even so, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said the states have adequate National Guard units to handle the hurricane needs, with at least 60 percent of the guard available in each state. He said about 6,500 National Guard troops were available in Louisiana, about 7,000 in Mississippi, nearly 10,000 in Alabama and about 8,200 in Florida.
The First U.S. Army, based at Fort Gillem near Atlanta, has 1,600 National Guard troops who were already there training to go to Iraq, and they will be available to assist the states or evacuate Camp Shelby in Mississippi, if necessary.
According to the Navy, two ships were moved from Pascagoula, Miss., and taken out to sea where they could ride out the storm. Most of the Navy's ships were on the east coast of Florida and were not affected. The Navy also moved dozens of aircraft out of Pensacola, Fla., and sent them to bases in Oklahoma and Texas. Aircraft that were not able to fly were put in hangars.
___
Randolph E. Schmid and Associated Press reporters Leslie Miller, Libby Quaid, Kevin Freking and John Heilprin contributed to the report from Washington.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Albert Einstein
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Huckleberry
- Posts: 445
- Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2005 8:33 am
- Location: A mostly gentle person in a mostly gentle land
Congratulations. You sound like a heavyweight. Or at least a heavy.Lilith wrote:"Ted had you nailed just right"
Ted has nothing nailed just right- neither do you. Both of you are sanctimonious puffs (lightweights).
Actually, Lilith, I'm a little curious. What does your name mean? (I apologize in advance if that is an impertinent question. I'm just curious.)
- Huckle
I finally know what I want to be when I grow up:
Chief Dog Brusher, Music Room Keeper, and Assistant Sunlight Manager
in a hillside Mansion for Ancient Musicians.
Chief Dog Brusher, Music Room Keeper, and Assistant Sunlight Manager
in a hillside Mansion for Ancient Musicians.
Lilith,Lilith wrote:"Ted had you nailed just right"
Ted has nothing nailed just right- neither do you. Both of you are sanctimonious puffs (lightweights).
One would have to look long and hard to find two posters I admire as much as Barry and Ted. And it isn't that I agree with the substance of their posts (90% of the time I disagree with their views). But I admire the fact that they are, IMO, fair. Instead of insulting them, go back and read some of their posts. You might learn something.
"Free trade, one of the greatest blessings which a government can confer on a people, is in almost every country unpopular."
-Thomas Macaulay
-Thomas Macaulay
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Ted
Kevin Wrote:
You can substitute your name for mine or Barry’s…in fact I’ll raise ya one
But here’s the thing about “Lillith”
And it has nothing to do with her politics but everything to do with Mendacity… as in posters who hide behind aliases—as in a certain female who is well known to most of us from boards past….as in Owlice who left here in a huff, demanding that her membership here be terminated only to return as “Lillith”
The pathology behind her subterfuge is of course cowardice (with her name almost being an anagram of cowardice)
The irony re Bush is poetic/tragic as she remains the very thing she so despises.
In recording these factors I do so as an observer without rancor for I must pity those who are so insecure as to place themselves in what has to be a humiliating position…especially when the cat is out of the bag.
As always Kevin
Cheers
t
KevinOne would have to look long and hard to find two posters I admire as much as Barry and Ted
You can substitute your name for mine or Barry’s…in fact I’ll raise ya one
But here’s the thing about “Lillith”
And it has nothing to do with her politics but everything to do with Mendacity… as in posters who hide behind aliases—as in a certain female who is well known to most of us from boards past….as in Owlice who left here in a huff, demanding that her membership here be terminated only to return as “Lillith”
The pathology behind her subterfuge is of course cowardice (with her name almost being an anagram of cowardice)
The irony re Bush is poetic/tragic as she remains the very thing she so despises.
In recording these factors I do so as an observer without rancor for I must pity those who are so insecure as to place themselves in what has to be a humiliating position…especially when the cat is out of the bag.
(Movie I quote from?)”If you are in there you are also hypnotized and must answer all my questions…reveal yourself”
As always Kevin
Cheers
t
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Huckleberry
- Posts: 445
- Joined: Wed Aug 24, 2005 8:33 am
- Location: A mostly gentle person in a mostly gentle land
Thanks for the illumination.-
Ted
Boy Ralph, it didn’t take you long. As one who shies away from these kinds of altercations only the mention of the name Owlice can draw you out.Ted,
What evidence do you have that "Lilith" is "Owlice?"
Right now I only have intuition, speculation, innuendo and a “leak” of sorts by one who is privy to the inner workings of CMG.
But beyond that, anyone with a half a brain can deduce that Lillith’s sudden appearance here, her moronic comments that spawned the posts in this thread reek of Owlice.
I will stand by my perfect record of weeding out the duplicitous
t
-
John Bleau
- Posts: 283
- Joined: Sun Feb 08, 2004 1:50 pm
I doubt Lilith is Owlice. Her turns of phrase and reasoning appear to be different, for example, Owlice tends to say 'couldn't care less' and Lilith said 'could care less.' I doubt the former could bring herself to make what she perceives to be a grammatical inaccuracy even if it were for the purpose of camouflage.
-
jbuck919
- Military Band Specialist
- Posts: 26856
- Joined: Wed Jan 28, 2004 10:15 pm
- Location: Stony Creek, New York
For someone whom (or should I say who?) so many posters apparently disliked (not I), she does seem to have been taken quite seriously.John Bleau wrote:I doubt Lilith is Owlice. Her turns of phrase and reasoning appear to be different, for example, Owlice tends to say 'couldn't care less' and Lilith said 'could care less.' I doubt the former could bring herself to make what she perceives to be a grammatical inaccuracy even if it were for the purpose of camouflage.
There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
-- Johann Sebastian Bach
-
Ralph
- Dittersdorf Specialist & CMG NY Host
- Posts: 20990
- Joined: Fri Mar 25, 2005 6:54 am
- Location: Paradise on Earth, New York, NY
*****Ted wrote:Boy Ralph, it didn’t take you long. As one who shies away from these kinds of altercations only the mention of the name Owlice can draw you out.Ted,
What evidence do you have that "Lilith" is "Owlice?"
Right now I only have intuition, speculation, innuendo and a “leak” of sorts by one who is privy to the inner workings of CMG.
But beyond that, anyone with a half a brain can deduce that Lillith’s sudden appearance here, her moronic comments that spawned the posts in this thread reek of Owlice.
I will stand by my perfect record of weeding out the duplicitous
t
It's not a question of drawing me into an altercation. I've said a number of times that I regret Owlice's withdrawal which, at the time, I personally communicated to her. She responded that she found several regular posters abusive, thanked me for speaking up for her and said she would be active on GMG. A post here the other day said she is a mainstay on that board which I don't visit.
It does interest me that anyone would suggest Lilith is Owlice because the latter never posted under a nom-de-cyberspace and Lilith's writing style is very different from what I recall of Owlice's.
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Albert Einstein
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Ted
If Lilith were Owlice I doubt she would have been able to refrain from mentioning her boyfriend's "big instrument" for this long.
It was probably her boyfriend (and instrument expert on this board) who said Owlice was a "mainstay" on the other board, a notion which few people on that board would be ready to affirm.
In other words, a truly mutually admiring twosome, which is why I have a hard time thinking Lilith = Owlice.
I prefer Lilith to be Lilith.
And going bac to the original subject. Being a president is largely a matter of perception. If you spend so much time on vacation on the ranch, cutting wood, golfing, whatever, you're sending a message that the "most powerful man" doesn't really need to do anything.
I think that's wrong.
You don't want to sweat the small stuff, but if your main message is you've got no business in DC that's truly weird.
It was probably her boyfriend (and instrument expert on this board) who said Owlice was a "mainstay" on the other board, a notion which few people on that board would be ready to affirm.
In other words, a truly mutually admiring twosome, which is why I have a hard time thinking Lilith = Owlice.
I prefer Lilith to be Lilith.
And going bac to the original subject. Being a president is largely a matter of perception. If you spend so much time on vacation on the ranch, cutting wood, golfing, whatever, you're sending a message that the "most powerful man" doesn't really need to do anything.
I think that's wrong.
You don't want to sweat the small stuff, but if your main message is you've got no business in DC that's truly weird.
Whether it's done him any good in the polls or not, Bush has made his strongest defense of the war in quite some time during this "vacation." He's been in different regions of the country discussing the war and other issues.
These types of issues are the same sorts of things the left slammed Bush over relentlessly during his first term. It did them so much good that he got to stuck around for a second.
He's made plenty of mistakes in his handling and selling of the war, but Bush should get credit for not significantly shifting his policy (i.e. cutting and running) because his poll numbers have gone down.
And for Lilith, I'm going to repost the column that I posted on another thread last night. I could quibble with Hitchens on one or two of the minor points in there, but on the whole, I agree with him, and I like the fact that he throws both the morality and strategically unsound issues back in the faces of those who say the war is an immoral, as well as stragically unwise one:
The Weekly Standard
A War to Be Proud Of
From the September 5 / September 12, 2005 issue: The case for overthrowing Saddam was unimpeachable. Why, then, is the administration tongue-tied?
by Christopher Hitchens
09/05/2005
LET ME BEGIN WITH A simple sentence that, even as I write it, appears less than Swiftian in the modesty of its proposal: "Prison conditions at Abu Ghraib have improved markedly and dramatically since the arrival of Coalition troops in Baghdad."
I could undertake to defend that statement against any member of Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International, and I know in advance that none of them could challenge it, let alone negate it. Before March 2003, Abu Ghraib was an abattoir, a torture chamber, and a concentration camp. Now, and not without reason, it is an international byword for Yankee imperialism and sadism. Yet the improvement is still, unarguably, the difference between night and day. How is it possible that the advocates of a post-Saddam Iraq have been placed on the defensive in this manner? And where should one begin?
I once tried to calculate how long the post-Cold War liberal Utopia had actually lasted. Whether you chose to date its inception from the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, or the death of Nicolae Ceausescu in late December of the same year, or the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, or the referendum defeat suffered by Augusto Pinochet (or indeed from the publication of Francis Fukuyama's book about the "end of history" and the unarguable triumph of market liberal pluralism), it was an epoch that in retrospect was over before it began. By the middle of 1990, Saddam Hussein had abolished Kuwait and Slobodan Milosevic was attempting to erase
the identity and the existence of Bosnia. It turned out that we had not by any means escaped the reach of atavistic, aggressive, expansionist, and totalitarian ideology. Proving the same point in another way, and within approximately the same period, the theocratic dictator of Iran had publicly claimed the right to offer money in his own name for the suborning of the murder of a novelist living in London, and the génocidaire faction in Rwanda had decided that it could probably get away with putting its long-fantasized plan of mass murder into operation.
One is not mentioning these apparently discrepant crimes and nightmares as a random or unsorted list. Khomeini, for example, was attempting to compensate for the humiliation of the peace agreement he had been compelled to sign with Saddam Hussein. And Saddam Hussein needed to make up the loss, of prestige and income, that he had himself suffered in the very same war. Milosevic (anticipating Putin, as it now seems to me, and perhaps Beijing also) was riding a mutation of socialist nationalism into national socialism. It was to be noticed in all cases that the aggressors, whether they were killing Muslims, or exalting Islam, or just killing their neighbors, shared a deep and abiding hatred of the United States.
The balance sheet of the Iraq war, if it is to be seriously drawn up, must also involve a confrontation with at least this much of recent history. Was the Bush administration right to leave--actually to confirm--Saddam Hussein in power after his eviction from Kuwait in 1991? Was James Baker correct to say, in his delightfully folksy manner, that the United States did not "have a dog in the fight" that involved ethnic cleansing for the mad dream of a Greater Serbia? Was the Clinton administration prudent in its retreat from Somalia, or wise in its opposition to the U.N. resolution that called for a preemptive strengthening of the U.N. forces in Rwanda?
I know hardly anybody who comes out of this examination with complete credit. There were neoconservatives who jeered at Rushdie in 1989 and who couldn't see the point when Sarajevo faced obliteration in 1992. There were leftist humanitarians and radicals who rallied to Rushdie and called for solidarity with Bosnia, but who--perhaps because of a bad conscience about Palestine--couldn't face a confrontation with Saddam Hussein even when he annexed a neighbor state that was a full member of the Arab League and of the U.N. (I suppose I have to admit that I was for a time a member of that second group.) But there were consistencies, too. French statecraft, for example, was uniformly hostile to any resistance to any aggression, and Paris even sent troops to rescue its filthy clientele in Rwanda. And some on the hard left and the brute right were also opposed to any exercise, for any reason, of American military force.
The only speech by any statesman that can bear reprinting from that low, dishonest decade came from Tony Blair when he spoke in Chicago in 1999. Welcoming the defeat and overthrow of Milosevic after the Kosovo intervention, he warned against any self-satisfaction and drew attention to an inescapable confrontation that was coming with Saddam Hussein. So far from being an American "poodle," as his taunting and ignorant foes like to sneer, Blair had in fact leaned on Clinton over Kosovo and was insisting on the importance of Iraq while George Bush was still an isolationist governor of Texas.
Notwithstanding this prescience and principle on his part, one still cannot read the journals of the 2000/2001 millennium without the feeling that one is revisiting a hopelessly somnambulist relative in a neglected home. I am one of those who believe, uncynically, that Osama bin Laden did us all a service (and holy war a great disservice) by his mad decision to assault the American homeland four years ago. Had he not made this world-historical mistake, we would have been able to add a Talibanized and nuclear-armed Pakistan to our list of the threats we failed to recognize in time. (This threat still exists, but it is no longer so casually overlooked.)
The subsequent liberation of Pakistan's theocratic colony in Afghanistan, and the so-far decisive eviction and defeat of its bin Ladenist guests, was only a reprisal. It took care of the last attack. But what about the next one? For anyone with eyes to see, there was only one other state that combined the latent and the blatant definitions of both "rogue" and "failed." This state--Saddam's ruined and tortured and collapsing Iraq--had also met all the conditions under which a country may be deemed to have sacrificed its own legal sovereignty. To recapitulate: It had invaded its neighbors, committed genocide on its own soil, harbored and nurtured international thugs and killers, and flouted every provision of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The United Nations, in this crisis, faced with regular insult to its own resolutions and its own character, had managed to set up a system of sanctions-based mutual corruption. In May 2003, had things gone on as they had been going, Saddam Hussein would have been due to fill Iraq's slot as chair of the U.N. Conference on Disarmament. Meanwhile, every species of gangster from the hero of the Achille Lauro hijacking to Abu Musab al Zarqawi was finding hospitality under Saddam's crumbling roof.
One might have thought, therefore, that Bush and Blair's decision to put an end at last to this intolerable state of affairs would be hailed, not just as a belated vindication of long-ignored U.N. resolutions but as some corrective to the decade of shame and inaction that had just passed in Bosnia and Rwanda. But such is not the case. An apparent consensus exists, among millions of people in Europe and America, that the whole operation for the demilitarization of Iraq, and the salvage of its traumatized society, was at best a false pretense and at worst an unprovoked aggression. How can this possibly be?
THERE IS, first, the problem of humorless and pseudo-legalistic literalism. In Saki's short story The Lumber Room, the naughty but clever child Nicholas, who has actually placed a frog in his morning bread-and-milk, rejoices in his triumph over the adults who don't credit this excuse for not eating his healthful dish:
"You said there couldn't possibly be a frog in my bread-and-milk; there was a frog in my bread-and-milk," he repeated, with the insistence of a skilled tactician who does not intend to shift from favorable ground.
Childishness is one thing--those of us who grew up on this wonderful Edwardian author were always happy to see the grown-ups and governesses discomfited. But puerility in adults is quite another thing, and considerably less charming. "You said there were WMDs in Iraq and that Saddam had friends in al Qaeda. . . . Blah, blah, pants on fire." I have had many opportunities to tire of this mantra. It takes ten seconds to intone the said mantra. It would take me, on my most eloquent C-SPAN day, at the very least five minutes to say that Abdul Rahman Yasin, who mixed the chemicals for the World Trade Center attack in 1993, subsequently sought and found refuge in Baghdad; that Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, Saddam's senior physicist, was able to lead American soldiers to nuclear centrifuge parts and a blueprint for a complete centrifuge (the crown jewel of nuclear physics) buried on the orders of Qusay Hussein; that Saddam's agents were in Damascus as late as February 2003, negotiating to purchase missiles off the shelf from North Korea; or that Rolf Ekeus, the great Swedish socialist who founded the inspection process in Iraq after 1991, has told me for the record that he was offered a $2 million bribe in a face-to-face meeting with Tariq Aziz. And these eye-catching examples would by no means exhaust my repertoire, or empty my quiver. Yes, it must be admitted that Bush and Blair made a hash of a good case, largely because they preferred to scare people rather than enlighten them or reason with them. Still, the only real strategy of deception has come from those who believe, or pretend, that Saddam Hussein was no problem.
I have a ready answer to those who accuse me of being an agent and tool of the Bush-Cheney administration (which is the nicest thing that my enemies can find to say). Attempting a little levity, I respond that I could stay at home if the authorities could bother to make their own case, but that I meanwhile am a prisoner of what I actually do know about the permanent hell, and the permanent threat, of the Saddam regime. However, having debated almost all of the spokespeople for the antiwar faction, both the sane and the deranged, I was recently asked a question that I was temporarily unable to answer. "If what you claim is true," the honest citizen at this meeting politely asked me, "how come the White House hasn't told us?"
I do in fact know the answer to this question. So deep and bitter is the split within official Washington, most especially between the Defense Department and the CIA, that any claim made by the former has been undermined by leaks from the latter. (The latter being those who maintained, with a combination of dogmatism and cowardice not seen since Lincoln had to fire General McClellan, that Saddam Hussein was both a "secular" actor and--this is the really rich bit--a rational and calculating one.)
There's no cure for that illusion, but the resulting bureaucratic chaos and unease has cornered the president into his current fallback upon platitude and hollowness. It has also induced him to give hostages to fortune. The claim that if we fight fundamentalism "over there" we won't have to confront it "over here" is not just a standing invitation for disproof by the next suicide-maniac in London or Chicago, but a coded appeal to provincial and isolationist opinion in the United States. Surely the elementary lesson of the grim anniversary that will shortly be upon us is that American civilians are as near to the front line as American soldiers.
It is exactly this point that makes nonsense of the sob-sister tripe pumped out by the Cindy Sheehan circus and its surrogates. But in reply, why bother to call a struggle "global" if you then try to localize it? Just say plainly that we shall fight them everywhere they show themselves, and fight them on principle as well as in practice, and get ready to warn people that Nigeria is very probably the next target of the jihadists. The peaceniks love to ask: When and where will it all end? The answer is easy: It will end with the surrender or defeat of one of the contending parties. Should I add that I am certain which party that ought to be? Defeat is just about imaginable, though the mathematics and the algebra tell heavily against the holy warriors. Surrender to such a foe, after only four years of combat, is not even worthy of consideration.
Antaeus was able to draw strength from the earth every time an antagonist wrestled him to the ground. A reverse mythology has been permitted to take hold in the present case, where bad news is deemed to be bad news only for regime-change. Anyone with the smallest knowledge of Iraq knows that its society and infrastructure and institutions have been appallingly maimed and beggared by three decades of war and fascism (and the "divide-and-rule" tactics by which Saddam maintained his own tribal minority of the Sunni minority in power). In logic and morality, one must therefore compare the current state of the country with the likely or probable state of it had Saddam and his sons been allowed to go on ruling.
At once, one sees that all the alternatives would have been infinitely worse, and would most likely have led to an implosion--as well as opportunistic invasions from Iran and Turkey and Saudi Arabia, on behalf of their respective interests or confessional clienteles. This would in turn have necessitated a more costly and bloody intervention by some kind of coalition, much too late and on even worse terms and conditions. This is the lesson of Bosnia and Rwanda yesterday, and of Darfur today. When I have made this point in public, I have never had anyone offer an answer to it. A broken Iraq was in our future no matter what, and was a responsibility (somewhat conditioned by our past blunders) that no decent person could shirk. The only unthinkable policy was one of abstention.
Two pieces of good fortune still attend those of us who go out on the road for this urgent and worthy cause. The first is contingent: There are an astounding number of plain frauds and charlatans (to phrase it at its highest) in charge of the propaganda of the other side. Just to tell off the names is to frighten children more than Saki ever could: Michael Moore, George Galloway, Jacques Chirac, Tim Robbins, Richard Clarke, Joseph Wilson . . . a roster of gargoyles that would send Ripley himself into early retirement. Some of these characters are flippant, and make heavy jokes about Halliburton, and some disdain to conceal their sympathy for the opposite side. So that's easy enough.
The second bit of luck is a certain fiber displayed by a huge number of anonymous Americans. Faced with a constant drizzle of bad news and purposely demoralizing commentary, millions of people stick out their jaws and hang tight. I am no fan of populism, but I surmise that these citizens are clear on the main point: It is out of the question--plainly and absolutely out of the question--that we should surrender the keystone state of the Middle East to a rotten, murderous alliance between Baathists and bin Ladenists. When they hear the fatuous insinuation that this alliance has only been created by the resistance to it, voters know in their intestines that those who say so are soft on crime and soft on fascism. The more temperate anti-warriors, such as Mark Danner and Harold Meyerson, like to employ the term "a war of choice." One should have no problem in accepting this concept. As they cannot and do not deny, there was going to be another round with Saddam Hussein no matter what. To whom, then, should the "choice" of time and place have fallen? The clear implication of the antichoice faction--if I may so dub them--is that this decision should have been left up to Saddam Hussein. As so often before . . .
DOES THE PRESIDENT deserve the benefit of the reserve of fortitude that I just mentioned? Only just, if at all. We need not argue about the failures and the mistakes and even the crimes, because these in some ways argue themselves. But a positive accounting could be offered without braggartry, and would include:
(1) The overthrow of Talibanism and Baathism, and the exposure of many highly suggestive links between the two elements of this Hitler-Stalin pact. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who moved from Afghanistan to Iraq before the coalition intervention, has even gone to the trouble of naming his organization al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
(2) The subsequent capitulation of Qaddafi's Libya in point of weapons of mass destruction--a capitulation that was offered not to Kofi Annan or the E.U. but to Blair and Bush.
(3) The consequent unmasking of the A.Q. Khan network for the illicit transfer of nuclear technology to Libya, Iran, and North Korea.
(4) The agreement by the United Nations that its own reform is necessary and overdue, and the unmasking of a quasi-criminal network within its elite.
(5) The craven admission by President Chirac and Chancellor Schröder, when confronted with irrefutable evidence of cheating and concealment, respecting solemn treaties, on the part of Iran, that not even this will alter their commitment to neutralism. (One had already suspected as much in the Iraqi case.)
(6) The ability to certify Iraq as actually disarmed, rather than accept the word of a psychopathic autocrat.
(7) The immense gains made by the largest stateless minority in the region--the Kurds--and the spread of this example to other states.
( The related encouragement of democratic and civil society movements in Egypt, Syria, and most notably Lebanon, which has regained a version of its autonomy.
(9) The violent and ignominious death of thousands of bin Ladenist infiltrators into Iraq and Afghanistan, and the real prospect of greatly enlarging this number.
(10) The training and hardening of many thousands of American servicemen and women in a battle against the forces of nihilism and absolutism, which training and hardening will surely be of great use in future combat.
It would be admirable if the president could manage to make such a presentation. It would also be welcome if he and his deputies adopted a clear attitude toward the war within the war: in other words, stated plainly, that the secular and pluralist forces within Afghan and Iraqi society, while they are not our clients, can in no circumstance be allowed to wonder which outcome we favor.
The great point about Blair's 1999 speech was that it asserted the obvious. Coexistence with aggressive regimes or expansionist, theocratic, and totalitarian ideologies is not in fact possible. One should welcome this conclusion for the additional reason that such coexistence is not desirable, either. If the great effort to remake Iraq as a demilitarized federal and secular democracy should fail or be defeated, I shall lose sleep for the rest of my life in reproaching myself for doing too little. But at least I shall have the comfort of not having offered, so far as I can recall, any word or deed that contributed to a defeat.
These types of issues are the same sorts of things the left slammed Bush over relentlessly during his first term. It did them so much good that he got to stuck around for a second.
He's made plenty of mistakes in his handling and selling of the war, but Bush should get credit for not significantly shifting his policy (i.e. cutting and running) because his poll numbers have gone down.
And for Lilith, I'm going to repost the column that I posted on another thread last night. I could quibble with Hitchens on one or two of the minor points in there, but on the whole, I agree with him, and I like the fact that he throws both the morality and strategically unsound issues back in the faces of those who say the war is an immoral, as well as stragically unwise one:
The Weekly Standard
A War to Be Proud Of
From the September 5 / September 12, 2005 issue: The case for overthrowing Saddam was unimpeachable. Why, then, is the administration tongue-tied?
by Christopher Hitchens
09/05/2005
LET ME BEGIN WITH A simple sentence that, even as I write it, appears less than Swiftian in the modesty of its proposal: "Prison conditions at Abu Ghraib have improved markedly and dramatically since the arrival of Coalition troops in Baghdad."
I could undertake to defend that statement against any member of Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International, and I know in advance that none of them could challenge it, let alone negate it. Before March 2003, Abu Ghraib was an abattoir, a torture chamber, and a concentration camp. Now, and not without reason, it is an international byword for Yankee imperialism and sadism. Yet the improvement is still, unarguably, the difference between night and day. How is it possible that the advocates of a post-Saddam Iraq have been placed on the defensive in this manner? And where should one begin?
I once tried to calculate how long the post-Cold War liberal Utopia had actually lasted. Whether you chose to date its inception from the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989, or the death of Nicolae Ceausescu in late December of the same year, or the release of Nelson Mandela from prison, or the referendum defeat suffered by Augusto Pinochet (or indeed from the publication of Francis Fukuyama's book about the "end of history" and the unarguable triumph of market liberal pluralism), it was an epoch that in retrospect was over before it began. By the middle of 1990, Saddam Hussein had abolished Kuwait and Slobodan Milosevic was attempting to erase
the identity and the existence of Bosnia. It turned out that we had not by any means escaped the reach of atavistic, aggressive, expansionist, and totalitarian ideology. Proving the same point in another way, and within approximately the same period, the theocratic dictator of Iran had publicly claimed the right to offer money in his own name for the suborning of the murder of a novelist living in London, and the génocidaire faction in Rwanda had decided that it could probably get away with putting its long-fantasized plan of mass murder into operation.
One is not mentioning these apparently discrepant crimes and nightmares as a random or unsorted list. Khomeini, for example, was attempting to compensate for the humiliation of the peace agreement he had been compelled to sign with Saddam Hussein. And Saddam Hussein needed to make up the loss, of prestige and income, that he had himself suffered in the very same war. Milosevic (anticipating Putin, as it now seems to me, and perhaps Beijing also) was riding a mutation of socialist nationalism into national socialism. It was to be noticed in all cases that the aggressors, whether they were killing Muslims, or exalting Islam, or just killing their neighbors, shared a deep and abiding hatred of the United States.
The balance sheet of the Iraq war, if it is to be seriously drawn up, must also involve a confrontation with at least this much of recent history. Was the Bush administration right to leave--actually to confirm--Saddam Hussein in power after his eviction from Kuwait in 1991? Was James Baker correct to say, in his delightfully folksy manner, that the United States did not "have a dog in the fight" that involved ethnic cleansing for the mad dream of a Greater Serbia? Was the Clinton administration prudent in its retreat from Somalia, or wise in its opposition to the U.N. resolution that called for a preemptive strengthening of the U.N. forces in Rwanda?
I know hardly anybody who comes out of this examination with complete credit. There were neoconservatives who jeered at Rushdie in 1989 and who couldn't see the point when Sarajevo faced obliteration in 1992. There were leftist humanitarians and radicals who rallied to Rushdie and called for solidarity with Bosnia, but who--perhaps because of a bad conscience about Palestine--couldn't face a confrontation with Saddam Hussein even when he annexed a neighbor state that was a full member of the Arab League and of the U.N. (I suppose I have to admit that I was for a time a member of that second group.) But there were consistencies, too. French statecraft, for example, was uniformly hostile to any resistance to any aggression, and Paris even sent troops to rescue its filthy clientele in Rwanda. And some on the hard left and the brute right were also opposed to any exercise, for any reason, of American military force.
The only speech by any statesman that can bear reprinting from that low, dishonest decade came from Tony Blair when he spoke in Chicago in 1999. Welcoming the defeat and overthrow of Milosevic after the Kosovo intervention, he warned against any self-satisfaction and drew attention to an inescapable confrontation that was coming with Saddam Hussein. So far from being an American "poodle," as his taunting and ignorant foes like to sneer, Blair had in fact leaned on Clinton over Kosovo and was insisting on the importance of Iraq while George Bush was still an isolationist governor of Texas.
Notwithstanding this prescience and principle on his part, one still cannot read the journals of the 2000/2001 millennium without the feeling that one is revisiting a hopelessly somnambulist relative in a neglected home. I am one of those who believe, uncynically, that Osama bin Laden did us all a service (and holy war a great disservice) by his mad decision to assault the American homeland four years ago. Had he not made this world-historical mistake, we would have been able to add a Talibanized and nuclear-armed Pakistan to our list of the threats we failed to recognize in time. (This threat still exists, but it is no longer so casually overlooked.)
The subsequent liberation of Pakistan's theocratic colony in Afghanistan, and the so-far decisive eviction and defeat of its bin Ladenist guests, was only a reprisal. It took care of the last attack. But what about the next one? For anyone with eyes to see, there was only one other state that combined the latent and the blatant definitions of both "rogue" and "failed." This state--Saddam's ruined and tortured and collapsing Iraq--had also met all the conditions under which a country may be deemed to have sacrificed its own legal sovereignty. To recapitulate: It had invaded its neighbors, committed genocide on its own soil, harbored and nurtured international thugs and killers, and flouted every provision of the Non-Proliferation Treaty. The United Nations, in this crisis, faced with regular insult to its own resolutions and its own character, had managed to set up a system of sanctions-based mutual corruption. In May 2003, had things gone on as they had been going, Saddam Hussein would have been due to fill Iraq's slot as chair of the U.N. Conference on Disarmament. Meanwhile, every species of gangster from the hero of the Achille Lauro hijacking to Abu Musab al Zarqawi was finding hospitality under Saddam's crumbling roof.
One might have thought, therefore, that Bush and Blair's decision to put an end at last to this intolerable state of affairs would be hailed, not just as a belated vindication of long-ignored U.N. resolutions but as some corrective to the decade of shame and inaction that had just passed in Bosnia and Rwanda. But such is not the case. An apparent consensus exists, among millions of people in Europe and America, that the whole operation for the demilitarization of Iraq, and the salvage of its traumatized society, was at best a false pretense and at worst an unprovoked aggression. How can this possibly be?
THERE IS, first, the problem of humorless and pseudo-legalistic literalism. In Saki's short story The Lumber Room, the naughty but clever child Nicholas, who has actually placed a frog in his morning bread-and-milk, rejoices in his triumph over the adults who don't credit this excuse for not eating his healthful dish:
"You said there couldn't possibly be a frog in my bread-and-milk; there was a frog in my bread-and-milk," he repeated, with the insistence of a skilled tactician who does not intend to shift from favorable ground.
Childishness is one thing--those of us who grew up on this wonderful Edwardian author were always happy to see the grown-ups and governesses discomfited. But puerility in adults is quite another thing, and considerably less charming. "You said there were WMDs in Iraq and that Saddam had friends in al Qaeda. . . . Blah, blah, pants on fire." I have had many opportunities to tire of this mantra. It takes ten seconds to intone the said mantra. It would take me, on my most eloquent C-SPAN day, at the very least five minutes to say that Abdul Rahman Yasin, who mixed the chemicals for the World Trade Center attack in 1993, subsequently sought and found refuge in Baghdad; that Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, Saddam's senior physicist, was able to lead American soldiers to nuclear centrifuge parts and a blueprint for a complete centrifuge (the crown jewel of nuclear physics) buried on the orders of Qusay Hussein; that Saddam's agents were in Damascus as late as February 2003, negotiating to purchase missiles off the shelf from North Korea; or that Rolf Ekeus, the great Swedish socialist who founded the inspection process in Iraq after 1991, has told me for the record that he was offered a $2 million bribe in a face-to-face meeting with Tariq Aziz. And these eye-catching examples would by no means exhaust my repertoire, or empty my quiver. Yes, it must be admitted that Bush and Blair made a hash of a good case, largely because they preferred to scare people rather than enlighten them or reason with them. Still, the only real strategy of deception has come from those who believe, or pretend, that Saddam Hussein was no problem.
I have a ready answer to those who accuse me of being an agent and tool of the Bush-Cheney administration (which is the nicest thing that my enemies can find to say). Attempting a little levity, I respond that I could stay at home if the authorities could bother to make their own case, but that I meanwhile am a prisoner of what I actually do know about the permanent hell, and the permanent threat, of the Saddam regime. However, having debated almost all of the spokespeople for the antiwar faction, both the sane and the deranged, I was recently asked a question that I was temporarily unable to answer. "If what you claim is true," the honest citizen at this meeting politely asked me, "how come the White House hasn't told us?"
I do in fact know the answer to this question. So deep and bitter is the split within official Washington, most especially between the Defense Department and the CIA, that any claim made by the former has been undermined by leaks from the latter. (The latter being those who maintained, with a combination of dogmatism and cowardice not seen since Lincoln had to fire General McClellan, that Saddam Hussein was both a "secular" actor and--this is the really rich bit--a rational and calculating one.)
There's no cure for that illusion, but the resulting bureaucratic chaos and unease has cornered the president into his current fallback upon platitude and hollowness. It has also induced him to give hostages to fortune. The claim that if we fight fundamentalism "over there" we won't have to confront it "over here" is not just a standing invitation for disproof by the next suicide-maniac in London or Chicago, but a coded appeal to provincial and isolationist opinion in the United States. Surely the elementary lesson of the grim anniversary that will shortly be upon us is that American civilians are as near to the front line as American soldiers.
It is exactly this point that makes nonsense of the sob-sister tripe pumped out by the Cindy Sheehan circus and its surrogates. But in reply, why bother to call a struggle "global" if you then try to localize it? Just say plainly that we shall fight them everywhere they show themselves, and fight them on principle as well as in practice, and get ready to warn people that Nigeria is very probably the next target of the jihadists. The peaceniks love to ask: When and where will it all end? The answer is easy: It will end with the surrender or defeat of one of the contending parties. Should I add that I am certain which party that ought to be? Defeat is just about imaginable, though the mathematics and the algebra tell heavily against the holy warriors. Surrender to such a foe, after only four years of combat, is not even worthy of consideration.
Antaeus was able to draw strength from the earth every time an antagonist wrestled him to the ground. A reverse mythology has been permitted to take hold in the present case, where bad news is deemed to be bad news only for regime-change. Anyone with the smallest knowledge of Iraq knows that its society and infrastructure and institutions have been appallingly maimed and beggared by three decades of war and fascism (and the "divide-and-rule" tactics by which Saddam maintained his own tribal minority of the Sunni minority in power). In logic and morality, one must therefore compare the current state of the country with the likely or probable state of it had Saddam and his sons been allowed to go on ruling.
At once, one sees that all the alternatives would have been infinitely worse, and would most likely have led to an implosion--as well as opportunistic invasions from Iran and Turkey and Saudi Arabia, on behalf of their respective interests or confessional clienteles. This would in turn have necessitated a more costly and bloody intervention by some kind of coalition, much too late and on even worse terms and conditions. This is the lesson of Bosnia and Rwanda yesterday, and of Darfur today. When I have made this point in public, I have never had anyone offer an answer to it. A broken Iraq was in our future no matter what, and was a responsibility (somewhat conditioned by our past blunders) that no decent person could shirk. The only unthinkable policy was one of abstention.
Two pieces of good fortune still attend those of us who go out on the road for this urgent and worthy cause. The first is contingent: There are an astounding number of plain frauds and charlatans (to phrase it at its highest) in charge of the propaganda of the other side. Just to tell off the names is to frighten children more than Saki ever could: Michael Moore, George Galloway, Jacques Chirac, Tim Robbins, Richard Clarke, Joseph Wilson . . . a roster of gargoyles that would send Ripley himself into early retirement. Some of these characters are flippant, and make heavy jokes about Halliburton, and some disdain to conceal their sympathy for the opposite side. So that's easy enough.
The second bit of luck is a certain fiber displayed by a huge number of anonymous Americans. Faced with a constant drizzle of bad news and purposely demoralizing commentary, millions of people stick out their jaws and hang tight. I am no fan of populism, but I surmise that these citizens are clear on the main point: It is out of the question--plainly and absolutely out of the question--that we should surrender the keystone state of the Middle East to a rotten, murderous alliance between Baathists and bin Ladenists. When they hear the fatuous insinuation that this alliance has only been created by the resistance to it, voters know in their intestines that those who say so are soft on crime and soft on fascism. The more temperate anti-warriors, such as Mark Danner and Harold Meyerson, like to employ the term "a war of choice." One should have no problem in accepting this concept. As they cannot and do not deny, there was going to be another round with Saddam Hussein no matter what. To whom, then, should the "choice" of time and place have fallen? The clear implication of the antichoice faction--if I may so dub them--is that this decision should have been left up to Saddam Hussein. As so often before . . .
DOES THE PRESIDENT deserve the benefit of the reserve of fortitude that I just mentioned? Only just, if at all. We need not argue about the failures and the mistakes and even the crimes, because these in some ways argue themselves. But a positive accounting could be offered without braggartry, and would include:
(1) The overthrow of Talibanism and Baathism, and the exposure of many highly suggestive links between the two elements of this Hitler-Stalin pact. Abu Musab al Zarqawi, who moved from Afghanistan to Iraq before the coalition intervention, has even gone to the trouble of naming his organization al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.
(2) The subsequent capitulation of Qaddafi's Libya in point of weapons of mass destruction--a capitulation that was offered not to Kofi Annan or the E.U. but to Blair and Bush.
(3) The consequent unmasking of the A.Q. Khan network for the illicit transfer of nuclear technology to Libya, Iran, and North Korea.
(4) The agreement by the United Nations that its own reform is necessary and overdue, and the unmasking of a quasi-criminal network within its elite.
(5) The craven admission by President Chirac and Chancellor Schröder, when confronted with irrefutable evidence of cheating and concealment, respecting solemn treaties, on the part of Iran, that not even this will alter their commitment to neutralism. (One had already suspected as much in the Iraqi case.)
(6) The ability to certify Iraq as actually disarmed, rather than accept the word of a psychopathic autocrat.
(7) The immense gains made by the largest stateless minority in the region--the Kurds--and the spread of this example to other states.
( The related encouragement of democratic and civil society movements in Egypt, Syria, and most notably Lebanon, which has regained a version of its autonomy.
(9) The violent and ignominious death of thousands of bin Ladenist infiltrators into Iraq and Afghanistan, and the real prospect of greatly enlarging this number.
(10) The training and hardening of many thousands of American servicemen and women in a battle against the forces of nihilism and absolutism, which training and hardening will surely be of great use in future combat.
It would be admirable if the president could manage to make such a presentation. It would also be welcome if he and his deputies adopted a clear attitude toward the war within the war: in other words, stated plainly, that the secular and pluralist forces within Afghan and Iraqi society, while they are not our clients, can in no circumstance be allowed to wonder which outcome we favor.
The great point about Blair's 1999 speech was that it asserted the obvious. Coexistence with aggressive regimes or expansionist, theocratic, and totalitarian ideologies is not in fact possible. One should welcome this conclusion for the additional reason that such coexistence is not desirable, either. If the great effort to remake Iraq as a demilitarized federal and secular democracy should fail or be defeated, I shall lose sleep for the rest of my life in reproaching myself for doing too little. But at least I shall have the comfort of not having offered, so far as I can recall, any word or deed that contributed to a defeat.
"If this is coffee, please bring me some tea; but if this is tea, please bring me some coffee." - Abraham Lincoln
"Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed." - Winston Churchill
"Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement." - Ronald Reagan
http://www.davidstuff.com/political/wmdquotes.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pbp0hur ... re=related
"Although prepared for martyrdom, I preferred that it be postponed." - Winston Churchill
"Before I refuse to take your questions, I have an opening statement." - Ronald Reagan
http://www.davidstuff.com/political/wmdquotes.htm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pbp0hur ... re=related
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Corlyss_D
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Oh, it seems pretty obvious: the level of ignorance, the reliance on fatuous Moveon.org talking points no matter how hysterical (in the original sense of the word, not the "funny" sense of the word), the doggedness with which she persists on a point, the snideness, the absence of any real substance to the posts, and the fact that we collectively have provided more content in the way of rebuttal to her points as though they were sincere rather than bumpersticker politics.Ralph wrote: What evidence do you have that "Lilith" is "Owlice?"
Oh? Owlice is her real name? I think not. Lance has met her and reports that it's a play on words. Besides, how would you know if she had never posted under a different name if the purpose was to keep others from knowing who she was?It does interest me that anyone would suggest Lilith is Owlice because the latter never posted under a nom-de-cyberspace
Last edited by Corlyss_D on Tue Aug 30, 2005 3:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Corlyss
Contessa d'EM, a carbon-based life form
Contessa d'EM, a carbon-based life form
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Corlyss_D
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Not really. Speaking as a moderator, I can think of a handfull that are not, including at least 3 who have been banned from here and the acolytes of one of those banned.Ralph wrote:*****Well we certainly welcome all here!Ted wrote:It's all in a days Posting Ralph
Lillith or Owlice, she can post to her heart's content as fdar as I'm concerned
Corlyss
Contessa d'EM, a carbon-based life form
Contessa d'EM, a carbon-based life form
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Corlyss_D
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herman wrote:If Lilith were Owlice I doubt she would have been able to refrain from mentioning her boyfriend's "big instrument" for this long.
Herman, you get the Post of the Week Award.
Just to keep the record straight, that wasn't the instrument we invited him to post about . . . .It was probably her boyfriend (and instrument expert on this board)
Corlyss
Contessa d'EM, a carbon-based life form
Contessa d'EM, a carbon-based life form
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Huckleberry
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Eureka.Corlyss_D wrote:Ralph wrote: What evidence do you have that "Lilith" is "Owlice?"Oh? Owlice is her real name? I think not. Lance has met her and reports that it's a play on words. Besides, how would you know if she had never posted under a different name if the purpose was to keep others from knowing who she was?It does interest me that anyone would suggest Lilith is Owlice because the latter never posted under a nom-de-cyberspace
As a part-time psychologist, I might be a good sleuth on boards.
If Owlice is a play on words, the person's real name is either something related to owl and lice or is a rhyme. The former I can't decode. But the latter would make the following names likely
Ellis or Alice/Alyss/Alicia
Let's say that it is Alice or Ellis. A child with a lisp would say:
Elith or Alith
Now Lilith rhymes with the names above.
A knowledge of patterns of behaviour, deduction, and extrapolation leads me to this conclusion. I may be very wrong. In that case, I apologize.
I finally know what I want to be when I grow up:
Chief Dog Brusher, Music Room Keeper, and Assistant Sunlight Manager
in a hillside Mansion for Ancient Musicians.
Chief Dog Brusher, Music Room Keeper, and Assistant Sunlight Manager
in a hillside Mansion for Ancient Musicians.
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jbuck919
- Military Band Specialist
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Don't give up your day job.Huckleberry wrote:Eureka.Corlyss_D wrote:Ralph wrote: What evidence do you have that "Lilith" is "Owlice?"Oh? Owlice is her real name? I think not. Lance has met her and reports that it's a play on words. Besides, how would you know if she had never posted under a different name if the purpose was to keep others from knowing who she was?It does interest me that anyone would suggest Lilith is Owlice because the latter never posted under a nom-de-cyberspace
As a part-time psychologist, I might be a good sleuth on boards.
If Owlice is a play on words, the person's real name is either something related to owl and lice or is a rhyme. The former I can't decode. But the latter would make the following names likely
Ellis or Alice/Alyss/Alicia
Let's say that it is Alice or Ellis. A child with a lisp would say:
Elith or Alith
Now Lilith rhymes with the names above.
A knowledge of patterns of behaviour, deduction, and extrapolation leads me to this conclusion. I may be very wrong. In that case, I apologize.
There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
-- Johann Sebastian Bach
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Donald Isler
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Don't know, or much care, if Owlice and Lilith are indeed one and the same. As for Owlice:
1) Huckleberry is on the right path as far as figuring out her real name (though I won't reveal it here), and
2) I remember her because a couple of years ago when I offered to give complimentary copies of my CD's to a limited number of CMG posters she was the only one who got one, but failed to thank me for it.
1) Huckleberry is on the right path as far as figuring out her real name (though I won't reveal it here), and
2) I remember her because a couple of years ago when I offered to give complimentary copies of my CD's to a limited number of CMG posters she was the only one who got one, but failed to thank me for it.
Donald Isler
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jbuck919
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I am going to say in all honesty, and totally seriously, that I cannot reconcile this harpy everybody is talking about with the poster on GMG with whom I have had the most pleasant exchanges, even in PMs. I was frankly shocked when this came up, and am frankly upset about the whole business. And even though this all started with someone's overkill on a poster's opinion of George Bush, I do not see why it had to come to this parade of out-of-thin-air vilification, semi-imaginary character assassination and gratuitous retrospective vituperation.
There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
-- Johann Sebastian Bach
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Huckleberry
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jbuck919 wrote:I am going to say in all honesty, and totally seriously, that I cannot reconcile this harpy everybody is talking about with the poster on GMG with whom I have had the most pleasant exchanges, even in PMs. I was frankly shocked when this came up, and am frankly upset about the whole business. And even though this all started with someone's overkill on a poster's opinion of George Bush, I do not see why it had to come to this parade of out-of-thin-air vilification, semi-imaginary character assassination and gratuitous retrospective vituperation.
For a few days I thought that nothing much happened in this forum. Are you the boyfriend (Lilith's and Olice's) they were talking about above?
I'll be honest with all of you. I'm simply checking this board out to see what takes place here and plan to stay if there's something here for me. Do most political discussions feature Lilith (full of rage and bile) at one end of the spectrum and a team of posters who are totally exasperated with her (him?)?
And do discussions about music liven up, or do these polarlized political discussions dominate the scene? I notice that posting has become quicker in the last couple of days, so it could be that I have not got a true picture of the nature of this board.
Some pointers from other posters would be gratefully received.
I finally know what I want to be when I grow up:
Chief Dog Brusher, Music Room Keeper, and Assistant Sunlight Manager
in a hillside Mansion for Ancient Musicians.
Chief Dog Brusher, Music Room Keeper, and Assistant Sunlight Manager
in a hillside Mansion for Ancient Musicians.
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jbuck919
- Military Band Specialist
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- Joined: Wed Jan 28, 2004 10:15 pm
- Location: Stony Creek, New York
That's going to be the laugh of the place for at least the next two weeks. Owlice (who is no longer here) has a fiance--not a boyfriend--who has also posted most intelligently on this forum in the past.Huckleberry wrote:jbuck919 wrote:I am going to say in all honesty, and totally seriously, that I cannot reconcile this harpy everybody is talking about with the poster on GMG with whom I have had the most pleasant exchanges, even in PMs. I was frankly shocked when this came up, and am frankly upset about the whole business. And even though this all started with someone's overkill on a poster's opinion of George Bush, I do not see why it had to come to this parade of out-of-thin-air vilification, semi-imaginary character assassination and gratuitous retrospective vituperation.
For a few days I thought that nothing much happened in this forum. Are you the boyfriend (Lilith's and Olice's) they were talking about above?
We have our characters, but it is the contra-Liliths that may have scared people away here. No, this is atypical. We have an educated and vigorous if occasionally boisterous bunch of posters.
I'll be honest with all of you. I'm simply checking this board out to see what takes place here and plan to stay if there's something here for me. Do most political discussions feature Lilith (full of rage and bile) at one end of the spectrum and a team of posters who are totally exasperated with her (him?)?
Discussions about music tend to center around the music performance/performer scene, though if you go to the board now you will find a refreshing recent infusion of thoughts on recordings, etc. I hope you'll stay with us and try us out. This Lilith thing represents an instance of gratuitous ill feeling that has become increasingly rare. But don't think that if you want to post on the political board you won't find yourself most pleasantly challenged!
And do discussions about music liven up, or do these polarlized political discussions dominate the scene? I notice that posting has become quicker in the last couple of days, so it could be that I have not got a true picture of the nature of this board.
Some pointers from other posters would be gratefully received.
There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
-- Johann Sebastian Bach
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Huckleberry
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Jbuck919, thank you most kindly.
I'll try to read some of the threads on the musical topics here before I start posting regularly. I'm the type who tries to do some homework beforehand, and I'm grateful when my questions are answered with some indulgence as I learn.
I'll try to read some of the threads on the musical topics here before I start posting regularly. I'm the type who tries to do some homework beforehand, and I'm grateful when my questions are answered with some indulgence as I learn.
I finally know what I want to be when I grow up:
Chief Dog Brusher, Music Room Keeper, and Assistant Sunlight Manager
in a hillside Mansion for Ancient Musicians.
Chief Dog Brusher, Music Room Keeper, and Assistant Sunlight Manager
in a hillside Mansion for Ancient Musicians.
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Ralph
- Dittersdorf Specialist & CMG NY Host
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*****Huckleberry wrote:Jbuck919, thank you most kindly.
I'll try to read some of the threads on the musical topics here before I start posting regularly. I'm the type who tries to do some homework beforehand, and I'm grateful when my questions are answered with some indulgence as I learn.
I look forward to your participation on music threads!
"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
Albert Einstein
Maybe Huckle was just curious about the size of your instrument. You do have a powerful organ, don't you?jbuck919 wrote:That's going to be the laugh of the place for at least the next two weeks.Huckleberry wrote: Are you the boyfriend (Lilith's and Olice's) they were talking about above?
<this is as far as I'm taking this.>
However, Buck is completely right in two ways.
1) Lilith is as much entitled to her opinions as anyone else. Some people get their stuff from MoveOn; others from Front Page.
2) It is not really nice to start speculating whether she is Owlice just because some people don't like Owlice either. (Or something along those lines.) It's not nice to the absent Owlice, and not nice to Lilith either.
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