A simple man:

Tom Tomorrow nails it. While watching the Bush press conference last week, he posted these all-too-true and so-sad-they're-almost-amusing words:

April 13, 2004

Oh god
He's so awful. He just flounders around until he can dredge up a marginally appropriate sound bite--and when the question doesn't allow for that, he's just utterly lost.

posted by Tom Tomorrow at 09:28 PM | link

Play this game
what are you reading?...

Kevin Jones says - in his Book game post:

"it's the latest info fad, the newest wrinkle in expanding the acoustic resonance of the echo chamber; join in now!"

The book I am currently reading is The Faiths of Our Fathers by Alf J. Mapp Jr. and here is my sentence (it's a long one):

~~~~~~~~~~~~

'In words that seem an anticipation of space-age science fiction, [Benjamin] Franklin says:

"When I stretch my imagination through and beyond our system of planets, beyond the visible fixed stars themselves, into that space which is every way infinite, and conceive it filled with suns like ours, each with a chorus of worlds forever moving round him, then this little ball on which we move seems, even in my narrow imagination, to be almost nothing, and myself less than nothing, and of no sort of consequence."

~~~~~~~~~~

If you would like to play and dip your prose toes into this memepool - here are the rules:

1. Grab the nearest book.
2. Open the book to page 23.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.

Headlines


Listen up--this is important:

In his new book, Bob Woodward describes a relationship between Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell that became so strained Cheney and Powell are barely on speaking terms. Cheney engaged in a bitter and eventually winning struggle over Iraq with Powell, an opponent of war who believed Cheney was obsessively trying to establish a connection between Iraq and the al Qaeda terrorist network and treated ambiguous intelligence as fact.
Powell felt Cheney and his allies -- his chief aide, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby; Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz; and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and what Powell called Feith's "Gestapo" office -- had established what amounted to a separate government.

A SEPARATE GOVERNMENT. A "Gestapo Office". Strong accusations...made by our Secretary of State.


Clear Channel dumped Howard Stern...and they surely don't want you to hear Howard on Satellite Radio, either. Why? They know you'll flock to Satellite to hear Howard Stern--leaving the boring FCC-suck-ups in the dust.

Dominoes? Spain is withdrawing its troops from Iraq. Portugal may follow suit.

Guerrilla warfare is becoming a major concern for our U.S. Military. If one hair on faithful soldier Matt Maupin's head is touched, I'm afraid the few Americans who still have faith in Bush's handling of Iraq will change their minds quickly.

In Kosovo (of all places), Jordanian U.N. peacekeeper Ahmed Mustafa Ibrahim Ali has reacted violently to an emotional argument among fellow police officers over the war in Iraq. What a nightmare!

The anti-Islamic-slanted information source MEMRI is asserting that most Muslim intellectuals are 'all for terror' even though they 'talk of love and peace in Islam'. They say it's just a cover for violence. Consider the source. In my opinion, information sources like MEMRI do absolutely nothing to further peace or understanding in this world.

World Net Daily is all-a-twitter because folks like Warren Buffett, George Soros, Bill Gates Sr. and some of the Rockefellers might make some dough if Kerry's elected. I say "Who cares as long as all our boats are lifted?" WND hates 'em because they're liberal. Could it BE more obvious?

The pseudo-holy-rollers at World Net Daily are spreading more hatred toward Muslims in this beauty of an "article". Muslim clerics preach wife-beating. Where did they get this tripe, you ask? Once again, from none other than the Islam-haters at MEMRI.

This banner is running at MEMRI now (pardon the capital letters..it's them..not me):

IN A COMMUNIQUÉ IN RESPONSE TO THE ASSASSINATION OF HAMAS LEADER ABD AL-'AZIZ AL-RANTISI, FATAH'S AL-AQSA MARTYRS BRIGADES STATED: 'BUSH AND SHARON ARE THE HITLER OF THE ERA, AND THEY CONSTITUTE A DANGER TO WORLD SECURITY. ALL THE FIGHTING [PALESTINIAN] FACTIONS ARE CALLED UPON TO CAUSE AN EARTHQUAKE TO THE ZIONIST ENEMY. THE OCCUPATION WILL PAY A PRICE FOR ITS CRIMES, AND EVERYONE IN THE ZIONIST ENTITY IS NOW A TARGET, EVEN CHILDREN. THEY WILL PAY, IN BLOOD, THE PRICE FOR THE TEARS SHED BY THE PALESTINIAN MOTHERS.' (AL-HAYAT AL-JADIDA, PA, 4/18/04)

Here is Haaretz' take on the Israeli-Palestinian situation.
Richard Gwyn of the Toronto Star claims it all boils down to Incurious George.

The next time someone asks the President if mistakes were made, a Real Audio clip has been provided for those pesky "blank-out" moments. It's titled "Mistakes Were Made".

Contrary to popular belief, you cannot get anything you want at Mohammed’s restaurant.

Iraq and the Bush Administration


There are new ideas and opinions about the war in Iraq swirling around the world of politics, journalism and blogging this week.

Stratfor.com has an interesting (free) analysis of President Bush's recent press conference (try to read it soon as it may be replaced shortly). It contains a point-blank political warning for the Bush administration:

We are convinced that the Bush administration has a defensible strategy. It is not a simple one and not one that can be made completely public, but it is a defensible strategy. If President Bush decides not to articulate it, it will be interesting to see whether President Kerry does, because we are convinced that if Bush keeps going in the direction he is going, he will lose the election.

The summary says, in part:

If the primary purpose of the U.S. invasion of Iraq was to bring democracy to Iraq, then enduring the pain of the current crisis will make little sense to the American public. Taken in isolation, bringing democracy to Iraq may be a worthy goal, but not one taking moral precedence over bringing democracy to several dozen other countries -- and certainly not a project worth the sacrifices now being made necessary.

If, on the other hand, the invasion was an integral part of the war that began Sept. 11, then Bush will generate public support for it. The problem that Bush has -- and it showed itself vividly in his press conference -- is that he and the rest of his administration are simply unable to embed Iraq in the general strategy of the broader war. Bush asserts that it is part of that war, but then uses the specific justification of bringing democracy to Iraq as his rationale. Unless you want to argue that democratizing Iraq -- assuming that is possible -- has strategic implications more significant than democratizing other countries, the explanation doesn't work. The explanation that does work -- that the invasion of Iraq was a stepping-stone toward changes in behavior in other countries of the region -- is never given.

We therefore wind up with an explanation that is only superficially plausible, and a price that appears to be excessive, given the stated goal. The president and his administration do not seem willing to provide a coherent explanation of the strategy behind the Iraq campaign. What was the United States hoping to achieve when it invaded Iraq, and what is it defending now? There are good answers to these questions, but Bush stays with platitudes.

We must ask ourselves...why the platitudes? Why the unwillingness? It makes no political sense in a re-election year.

David Brooks has written a NYT op-ed with the ever-confusing philosophy I find common lately when I read the words of centrist-right mainstream journalists who write for what some people would term "corporate media". Basically, Brooks is saying 'Yes..I was for the war...but not this particular war... a war something like it..." As if you could ever have separated the PNAC Utopian ideals from the failures proved in the realistic results of a foreseeable lack of Bush administration's strategy and old fashioned gut-intuition. I just don't buy this philosophy. "Things are all wrong...but I was right". How was it that disbanding the Iraqi army was visionary? How could one say that General Shinseki's sage advice about a large number of troops was not shunned at the great expense of the cause? How can one look back at the virtual snubbing of the U.N. and say we didn't lose something of invaluable importance when it came to diplomacy and building strong coalitions? How could one say that the burden of paying for reconstruction (with non-adequate security to protect the interests such as the oil pipelines which are being sabotaged far too often) should be placed solely on American taxpayers? How could we look back and say Bush's mistaken use of the word "crusade" from the get-go wasn't a warning sign? This was a sheltered leader with little-to-no true knowlege of the workings and/or mindset of the world outside the U.S. How was it we could not see that he didn't understand the importance of great tact..that he simply didn't "get it"?

On the blog of gifted writer Matthew Yglesias, he comments on the Brooks op-ed and adds some introspective thoughts of his own. I think he's correct in stating that, during the Iraq war lead-up, neither the blind Bush-supporters nor the chanting anti-war crowds fully understood (respectively from right and left standpoints) how unrelated, wrong-minded and Utopian the Bush administration's war plans really were as the right cheered on-- and how the generalities and lack of sophisticated dialogue from the left did not help to make the general public understand what was about to happen. Frankly, I don't think either side had a chance to stop the Iraq "rock"...the Bush administration was bound and determined (before 9-11) to get into Iraq and change its regime. Nothing was going to stop them. Both Brooks and Yglesias have exercised a bit of vanity here..and that's what journalists do.