The Mess That Is CBS

My beef is that I can no longer use the word “rather” in a sentence without having to resort to using irony laden tones. So I started a petition to change Dan’s name to “Antidisestablishmentarianism”.

Joking aside, it still drives me nuts every time I hear some liberal journalist talk about forged memos, but a “larger truth”. Grrrr.

“Until the CBS hype abates, I’ll post at least one entry a day on the latest developments and blogger comments.”

I wonder why the hype isn’t abating.

While I ordinarily see the collapse of any societal institution as a time for mourning, the fall of the major networks newscasts makes me smile.

No longer do they have a near-monopoly on public information. Maybe they will go back to a 15 minute format. Who knows?

All hail the pajama-clad web-loggers!

I stopped paying attention almost from the beginning. None of it was very surprising to me. And nothing that they could possibly wring out of CBS now will surprise me. The bit about bloggers just being guys in pajamas sitting in their livingrooms with their computers was hilarious though. I started blogging in my pjs just so they could be telling the truth about something.

What’s funny is when Conservatives cry more about Dan Rather’s intelligence blunder than President Bush’s intelligence blunder.

Can anyone explain to me why you are all calling for the resignation of Dan Rather and you don’t seem to care that George W. Bush lied to get us into a war that is killing and maiming our nation’s youth each passing day?

Or is it because George “meant well” and he’s a Christian so he automatically gets a pass. You’d be advised to remember that old saying: the Devil can read scripture, too.

I couldn’have said it better myself Jon, darn’t it.

I short James, “I disagree with Jon”.

“By encouraging our enemies and weakening the resolve of our own people, he has forced the leadership of this country to fight the war on terrorism on two fronts: against the terrorist and against those who wish to exploit setbacks in battle for their own journalistic careers.”

That sounds like a Michael Savage line. If by “setbacks in the battle” you mean thousands of Americans killed and many more thousand missing a limb, then by all means journalists have a right to say “I’m not going to keep swallowing this happy-time pill the White House keeps dishing out.”

Some conservatives mistakenly believe that the journalists role is to support the war effort. Fox News has that side covered. Journalists are supposed to report what is happening, not what the White House wants us to believe is happening. Republicans are up in arms because the general population is being exposed to the “realities” of war and not a sugar-coated version that Bush and Allawi handed out last week.

You also said: “…he lessons the trust that people have in their own elected officials and thus limits their military options.” Again, I argue, that is a good thing. By reminding those in power “We are watching you,” we get a more honest leadership. Personally, I believe we can’t trust our elected officials one hundred percent. After four years of Bush, few would argue otherwise. Those in power must remain accountable, even if you have to be UNPATRIOTIC and demand answers as to why our troops are being blown up on a DAILY basis.

“Remember when his case for war in Iraq included saying we needed to take the fight to Saddam before we as Americans awoke to the irrefutable knowledge that Saddam had WMD’s, knowledge given “in the form of a mushroom cloud”? – James Lamb

Jon,

Pres. Bush believed in the “irrefutable knowledge that Saddam had WMD’s”. The rest of us with common sense knew better.

To scare the American people into believing the Crawford candyland fantasy of Iraq as a world-class danger to the United States, President Bush and his administration justified his war, in part, with the idea that Saddam had nuclear weapons, and that he feared that Americans would only believe that if they awoke to a “mushroom cloud” over American territory.

Nothing Dan Rather has ever lied about in his life could possibly be as damaging to Americans as the lies and misguided policies of President George W. Bush.

I’m personally tired of being neo-conned by my Commander-in-Chief.

“Pres. Bush believed in the “irrefutable knowledge that Saddam had WMD’s”. The rest of us with common sense knew better.”

JLJr-Wow, maybe you should be running for president. It seems you knew more than Bush, Kerry, Clinton, Blair, Putin, the U.N.-everyone! You’re quite a guy. Are you single?

Seriously though,you’re the same one who, if Saddam had maintained control of his weapons and used them against us, would have been crying Bush knew and did nothing to save us. That is, if you didn’t go up in that mushroom cloud.

You are focusing on a single point. We were going to go to war in Iraq regardless. WMD’s was, according to intelligence, the most compelling reason. There are plenty of other reasons to have liberated Iraq. Unfortunately, everyone focuses on WMD’s. And if we were misled, then so were Clinton, Gore, Kerry, Mubarak, and on and on and on. These leaders made many speeches about Saddam and his pursuit and possession of WMD’s. Clinton even changed the official U.S. policy on Iraq to removing Saddam. Sometimes intelligence is wrong. He had plenty of foreign leaders assuring him that our intelligence is correct. You forget that the UN authorized force based on the same information. So did Congress. Our intelligence services compiled this information from many credible international sources. Does that make President Bush a liar? Absolutely not. Am I glad that we are over there? Absolutely. Saddam was a known supporter of terrorism, and with UN Oil-for-Food money in his pocket, it would be only a matter of time before he concocted a plot to strike at us. If you need examples of his reach, just ask any of the Israeli families affected by his terrorist ties. Why let his reach extend any further?

Just like I was tired of being liberal-conned by Commander-in-Chief Clinton about his escapades in the Oval Office?

:> Having fun James?

You should trackback some of this stuff to your blog.

SCSI/Chris…Ditto

>>Couldn’t use them against anyone but his own people (I know, the Baathist didn’t consider the Kurds and March Arabs as their people). And the Iranians.
That’s the point, isn’t it. We know Saddam once had these weapons — because he acquired them from us and our allies because he was our ally against the Ayatollahs. Call me cynical, but that’s why I don’t buy the “liberate Iraq” story. Western powers supported Saddam because it suited our economic and strategic interests to do so, even though his regime was brutal and oppressive. We went to war with him because he became a threat to those interests.

We may never really know what WMD Iraq prior to the invasion because, just as they publicly destroyed the missiles just before the war and buried the fighters in the desert, they probably also hid many other weapon systems during the years leading up our sudden rush to war.

But that doesn’t make Bush a liar, unless you also believe the people listed on this page -http://www.jrwhipple.com/war/wmd.html – are part of the conspiracy.

Just because we were forced to use Iraq to contain Iran doesn’t mean that a time comes when the right thing to do is to fight Iraq. Perhaps a liberal won’t understand why, but we did fight a cold war against the Soviet Union after being on the same side in WW2.

Dan Rather is a reporter, not a Commander In Chief. I would think the Left would be more upset at him than the Right, because he sucked the oxygen out of September, and Kerry still needs to connect with voters. The Right has been disgusted with him for a long time, and now that is a settled question.

Big difference between outright lying and making errors based on faulty intelligence. Lying involves willful deception. President Bush has willfully decieved no one. Like I have said over and over, which no one wants to refute, there were countless reasons for going to Iraq, yet everyone focuses on WMD’s. President Clinton lied about his involvement with a White House intern. President Nixon lied about his involvement in Watergate. Military commanders lied about what happened in the Gulf of Tonkin. Those are examples of willful deception. Everyone who thinks President Bush willfully decieved people are fooling themselves.

Chris,
Isn’t it good to know, that some liberals see Bush and co as being so smart, so all knowing, that any time they appear wrong, it is because they chose to be wrong? Where Clinton was so hapless that he can’t be held responsible for bombing an asprin factory when Lewinsky was taking the stand? Or didn’t know who hired who working in the White House, or how the travel staff got fired, or how those pesky FBI files got ‘lost’ then found? Not to mention the Rose law firm documents…

Actus,
Judith Miller should have been fired for being taken in by the criminal Chalabi. Rather should also be fired but his actions did not lead to war.

Richard,
You are exactly right on Sadaam. He was our creation for whatever reasons, mentored by VP Bush and Rumsfeld. Nearly all the atrocities Pres. Bush and others rightly accused him of were committed while he was our guy, including the gassing of the Kurds and the slaughter of the Kurds and Shiites after Pres. Bush encouraged them to revolt and then stood by. It is very important that we get a wide view of history by studying the actions of the Brits, French and Americans after the breakup of the Ottoman Empire and up until the present time. Getting involved in or carrying on those two countries’ colonial adventures has caused us nothing but trouble.

For the record, I believe that Pres. Clinton should have been removed from office.

Stan in San Diego

Stan,
Why do you believe that I would think WMDs are reason enough, and the only reason, to go to war in Iraq?
I want the full collection of Star Wars legos (my god-son and I have a blast building things with the mind-storms sets), but I don’t want to invade Denmark to get at them. However, San Diego is closer… though maybe I can annex the German Legoland, using a trip to Oktoberfest as a cover…

Stan,
I asked why you think WMDs are enough, in my opinion, to invade a nation. I’ll wait on that answer, but since it didn’t sink in, I don’t think it is. Lame is in the eye of the beholder… so I’ll continue with them, TYVM (esp since I do love them so [Germany is looking better all the time: tubas, leather shorts, beer and legos; does it get any better?)
While I support the war in Iraq, WMDs were only part of the reason. The UN resolutions, the issue of a hostile regime that payed peoples families when they blew themselves up on buses or school playgrounds, opressing an entire gender, ethnicly cleansing the kurds and marsh arabs, attempting to assassinate a US president, etc.
And yes, for whomever will say it (you know who you are) the US helped Sadam in the past, when Iran was seen as the greater evil. But to me, that is all the more reason to take him on. We helped create the mess, so lets clean it up. If Hussein Inc ever did nuke or gas somebody, you can be sure fingers will be pointed at us. Since we are damned if we do, damned if we don’t vis a vis Saddam, I’d rather he be dealt with before he strikes again (really, aren’t the millions of Iraqi, Iranian, Isreali and Kuwaiti dead enough)
Now, you’ve never answered my questions on the justice for San Diego’s previous inhabitants or the above WMD question, so, until then, No More Answers For You! (ala the Soup Nahtzi)

Unfortunately we are cleaning up the messes of all European countries and their actions in the late 1800’s through the early 1900’s. It’s their mess that led us to Rwanda, Sudan, Algeria, et al. The Middle East mess was caused by Europeans after what liberals say we are over there for….oil. It was their mess before it was ours. We were just trying to bend it in our favor and lost. We are forever cleaning up the mess of European imperialism.

Exactly right, Chris. I do humanitarian in Cambodia and that whole Indo-China mess was an outgrowth of cleaning up a French mess.

Stan

Stan; “But the adminstration and folks like O’Reilly scoffed at anyone who would bring the history up and implied a lack of patriotism on the part of those who tried.”

Main reason why most “scoff” at lame revisionist history is because we know where the conversation is going — an endless and pathetic roundabout against taking any kind of decisive action. Yes, we can learn from the past, but we also need to look around us with eyes wide open.

As SCSIwuzzy and others have maintained, enough of the fingerpointing about the past. We were attacked on our homeland with 3,000 souls snuffed put in a day, and that changed the equation for everyone, including known sponsors of terrorism. Until that day, we were “content” to regard Islamofacism pretty much as a pesky mosquito. All that plus, we are forever cleaning up after the mess the Euros have made of everything in general.

For what it was worth, Carter was also reaching out to Iraq after Saddam took over in ‘79, to draw him into our “sphere of influence”. It was under the Carter Administration that Saddam attacked Iran, in Sep ‘80. Reagan, Bush Sr & Rummy didn’t come along until well over 5 months thereafter. And don’t forget, we were in the midst of a Cold War with the Warsaw Pact.

WMD or not, Saddam had not only grand ambitions for Pan-Arabia, bar none, he also had the resources. And the dynamics of the SWA region makes him the logical focal point of our action to date. To wit;

1) It was just a matter of time before sanctions would be lifted by the UN. If it weren’t for 9/11, it would have been a slam dunk. France, Russia and Germany were most anxious to resume trading. In that sense, bin Laden spoiled that scenario for him.

2) Saddam had the know-how. It may have been dormant and all of the back & forth blustering was for his Arabic audience — little David standing up against Goliath. UN inspections notwithsatnding, Saddam had the lamp and it was just a matter of him giving the orders to uncap the genie.

3) Syria is a two-bit poseur. Resource-wise, they ain’t got much — their biggest role is playing the “middle-man” to Iraq, and funneling Pan-Arabian funds to Hezbollah and by extension antagonizing Isreal. Plus, Bashar al-Assad is just a green rookie recently ascended to the throne. While hope remains overly optimistic that the boy-king might mend his ways a la Qaddafi, eventually, we may have to do something serious about him. Nonetheless, we’re well aware of his recent attempt to funnel Iraqi WMD scientists and materials to Iran.

4) Iran is probably the next major problem to be faced militarily. For the time being we’re abiding by diplomatic means to reign in Iran for, but once again, it looks like the UN and IAEA is going to rollover. Unless the Mullahocracy is overthrown within the next year or so, we’re going to have to throw down the guantlet on them as well. In this case, it is very likely along the lines of a 24-hour ultimatum to clear the areas of concern before blasting them to smithereens and cranking up the simmering people’s neo-revolution to full boil, thereby negating the need for us to “liberate”.

5) Saudi Arabia is pretty much divided between secularists and radical wahabists — a low-intensity religio-political civil war has been running for quite a while. While we can argue about how true the Saudis are; the case can be made that the govt is not 100% antagonistic to us. So the way to deal with them for now, is to make it plain to them that the secularists better well clean out the rot from within.

6) likewise, Jordan has internal problems, but for all practical purposes, they’re allied with us. Especially since they know that they’re on AQ’s hit list.

7) Libya already cried “Uncle” and is providing plenty of shocking but useful intel regarding WMD black market.

North Korea can wait, better yet China might even do the dirty work of regime change for us.

9) Sudan’s number is coming up fast, and in fact, they have already put out the call for jihaiis to come help reinforce the regime, in case the UN decides to get tough. Again, because of the inadequacies of everyone else, we’ll have to step in like we did with Bosnia/Kosovo.

Finally, to believe that Saddam was incapble of reaching out to us is patently naive and ridiculous. Consider that a Dutch company found radioactive materials (dirty bomb grade) in the scrap that they imported from Iraq a couple of years ago. Now if a Dutch company, albeit innocently, received a shippment of radioactive waste under the nose of the Dutch authorities, imagine if Saddam had intended the final destination to be NY or CA? What if an Iraqi agent had received it, then forwarded the stuff to the US by breaking up the shipments among a number of secondary shippers, all in different containers coming from a number of EU countries. Back then, we only inspected approx 2% of all inbound shipments, with focus being on interdicting narco shipments. If just one, a couple of pounds will do, got thru customs without notice, think of the damage & panic if just that one shipment was mixed with a “conventional” chemical truck bomb (think of the truck bomb that the Jordanians intercepted last Spring) in downtown NY, or for that matter San Diego. Given the best to worst case scenario, what is the cost value of taking down Saddam sooner than later, along with bin Laden? Would it be worth 1,000 of our troops and $200 billion? How about 10,000 soldiers and $1 trillion to avert a disaster in just one metro area?

Given that cost-value proposition, is it any wonder that although we may not like the fact that we even have to go to war, it’s either there or it’s here. Even then there’s no guarantee that it still won’t happen here. Eliminating Saddam takes some of the pressure off, but there are plenty of free agents willing to fill the vacuum. For the simple majority of Americans, sticking our heads in the sand is not an option. All things considered, those insisting that we do nothing may well be considered reckless and “unpatriotic” by the rest. Just as letting a child endanger himself/others would be a sign of poor or negligent parenting.

I’m curious. What is your view on Isreal — oppressed or cabal-of-zionist-oppressors? Do you feel that perhaps by taking action in Iraq, we might be hastening Armageddon?