Zooming around the television dial, since nothing was on again (whine whine), I caught a bit of a media discussion at some Barnes and Nobles, two of the participants were Paul Krugman and Chris Hedges, the latter sometimes has the flavor of an Old Testament prophet bewailing the falsity of our coverage of war.
An audience member hit hard the anger some of have about what is going on. He referenced one of Cheney's "no doubt" claims before the war, followed up by his claims that he never actually said that. [This is akin to the repeated claims that things ... like the levees breaching, Hamas winning, planes flying into towers etc. ... was nothing ANYONE would have expected, though darn if many did.] Why, the member angrily noted, did the media not just put the two remarks side by side? Apparently, they simply did not want to risk their jobs ... or worse, one might add, their prestige and connections. After all, as referenced in War Made Easy by Norman Solomon, at least the mouthpiece of Saddam could rightly claim that his life was in danger. What is the bloody excuse here?
I am quite happy for the committees of correspondence (Revolutionary War reference), often known as blogs, who do yeoman battles -- usually while having other jobs unlike the media -- putting forth the facts. Consider this, in which when a few Republican senators -- not members of the House, where slavish conformity is apparently required from the campaign days -- show some sign of wanting merely to investigate the President's NSA follies. Traitorous fools! They are helping the Democrats politicize the Intelligence Committe, unlike Sen. Roberts, who just wants to make it an non-entity. The media accounts are somewhat underwhelming. One audience member noted that pre-war, many media accounts could have just tuned into WBAI (or Democracy Now!). They also would be advised to tune into the blogosphere.
Before this crime against humanity in Iraq ("we are taking the war to those who attacked us!!!" liar liar ... asshole), I wrote a decent amount trying to show why I think going to war was wrong, including unconstitutional as being carried forth. As with Gulf War I, it seemed so standard -- we go an avoidable path (we did not warn Saddam respecting Kuwait, but if anything sent mixed signals suggesting we did not really care about it), and now are stuck with a no win solution. One in which people who know it is f-ed warily tell us that we need to continue a problem filled course, since there is no easy way. It's like tossing a child into a highway ... saving him/her will probably result in tragedy somehow ... but hey, we have to save the child! And, you know, just everyone thought he had WMDs. Well, like I said with reluctant war hawk Tim Noah so argued, NO WE DIDN'T.
Thus, I simply cannot focus too much on the exact details. I try to keep up to date, but it's the same old thing, with some signs of hope that makes total hopelessness of some a bit hard to accept. But, that wasn't the low bar that had to be met for war not to have been a good idea. The PTB make it so easy since they are so lousy. Thank you BTC News and others who have the stomach for it. BTC btw has arrived. It has been honored by Daily Kos and Atrios, who linked up to underline its wanker of the day as well as mentioning it on Air America. The wanker btw is the new political commentator at Slate, who leaves a bit to be desired ... his promotion of a lie because of an alleged journalistic duty to protect sources was probably the last straw even before his latest bit on how it was surprising -- since you know insiders told him differently -- that Bush really is not too engaged and such. Slate ... liberal establishment media.
These times seem akin to a Greek Tragedy. The end, like a Colombo episode, was foreordained. It was how you got there that mattered. The repeated accomplishments, so to speak, of the PTB advancing their anti-American agenda must continually be matched by those who in whatever way possible can uphold the values this country and its citizens should follow. And, eventually, we will reach the light at the end of the tunnel ... or see it more clearly than the darkness that overwhelms us too much nowadays. We must not ala Plato's cave, consider the shadows reality.
Or, almost as bad, expect nothing much more.
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PS: Respecting the title, Norman Mailer was on Air America with his son recently and noted that the Democrats didn't deserve to win in '04 given how badly the campaign was run. He referenced in particular the stupid hunting photo-op and Kerry's failure to challenge Bush to criticize attacks on his military record during the debates. I also recall that human rights really was not made an issue. Doesn't sell well, right? The Democrats might not have deserved to win, but we really deserved it. Maybe not. But, we needed it.