War. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. Unh.
February 5th, 2003You want anti-war sentiment? You think my writing can stop a god damned thing? It can’t. The man who stole the presidency with help from his daddy’s cronies is a warmonger. It’s a strong gene.
As much as the board has prodded me, it’s hard to muster up feelings when the info structure and the money and the power are being used to feed us a line of bullshit (note the usage of “branding” in terms of Colin Powell’s speech) that extends around the world twice.
Canadian news on today’s UN biz.
Lefty portal. Favorite article: Jimmy freaking Carter.
Blurbomat doesn’t support the president in his assertions or his virtual declaration of war that he provided in the State of the Union. If the U.S. has the intelligence dirt on Iraq, why isn’t it telling the UN and pointing them to the sites it claims to know about?
W’s mind is made up. He will try to clean up his daddy’s mess. He will only create a bigger mess. o
i agree that lil’ bush will do what he will. he obviously has no respect for democracy. but the point is this is not necessarily about iraq; it is about advancing a hegemonic international policy of unilateralism while looting our natural resources and eradicating civil liberties at home.
and thanks for the links. but don’t even get me started on chomsky. the worst thing to happen to the left intellectual movement in the last thirty years. he should have “tautology” tattoed across his forehead, like that guy in “bumfights.”
You don’t even know me, so how can you diss me? But I’m sure you will after reading this.
Why does being left always seem to mean hating anything that appears right? I thought it meant independent thought, not blindly attributing things to people you don’t like. Dig a bit deeper, and that evidence argument you make incriminates many of the people I assume you would otherwise support…..
Read this (I’ve linked it to pop up in a new window) and see that those leading the crusade against W are the same ones who wanted war against Saddam in 1998. What has changed, other than the party affiliation, since then?
Always trying to stimulate thought, yours truly, and PEACE, PJ
Ack. No HTML allowed in comments? The “read this” above was supposed to be linked to the following: http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/
Articles/000/000/001/607rkunu.asp
Why do you even bother reading the Weekly Standard? It is nothing more than a shill for the right, resorting to tactics that fit right in with the dumb, gun-toting, right-wing stereotype. At least AlterNet doesn’t have a cover image of W with the words “The Liberator” superimposed. The Weekly Standard is jingoistic horseshit at it’s worst. May as well listen to Limbaugh.
Bill Clinton never used the State of the Union to declare war on ANY state. W did. Clinton did attack Osama back in the day. And, as I recall, right at the height of his impeachment. Every right wing knuckle dragger came out of the woodwork to cry foul; Clinton was obviously deflecting attention away from his scandal. Clinton didn’t go far enough. But no war with Iraq is going to get bin Laden, or avenge the deaths from 9/11.
Don’t be hatin on Chomsky. Calling him liberal is a mistake. He’s libertarian by his own admission.
Is it still a “hegemonic international policy of unilateralism” if the New Europe is behind it as well? A declaration of 8 European nations with a combined population of 233 million has to be meaningful in considering things, doesn’t it?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A615-2003Jan30.html
I’m more of a centrist than a hard-line liberal myself, and I agree the standard is more often than not a worthless peice of shite….but in this particular case, irrespective of the context, Clinton and Daschle and others said much of what is now being said in the Repub. camp. What the article didn’t point out is that the Repubs balked at Clinton and his Congressional lackeys’ attempts, while they now applaud W’s same efforts.
And its just my take, but Clinton didn’t call out war in the SOU because 1) he didn’t have an attack on American soil like W has and 2) Clinton’s foreign policy, as much as I loved everything else about him, was useless. “They did what? Fire a missile in there, at an aspirin factory…..and…moving on, what’s for lunch?”
OK, I’ll stop. I *do* have work to do today at some point.
Jon–
Dig on B. Deutch. Some of the best commentary I’ve seen on the war so far, and in cartoon form, no less.
http://www.zmag.org/cartoons/by_artist.cfm?artist=10
Apologies to B, whose name I horribly mispelled. It’s actually “Deutsch.”
Iraq didn’t mount an attack on American soil. W may “have” such an attack, but that doesn’t automatically justify (come on, it’s not like karma) carrying out a campaign of violence himself. Linking the war on Iraq to Osama or 9/11 is a fruitless, unconvincing and hollow effort. Honestly, compared to that, the WMD argument is compelling.
My question is, if Saddam is so anti-American, why do I always see him wearing suits and his army in western style uniforms? How come he’s building weapons that WE developed? Come on, how much more hypocritical can you get?
As a note, Canada.com is a pretty right-leaning enterprise, part of Asper Media Empire up here. For the most part, their coverage is pretty pro-Bush. The Globe & Mail (http://www.globeandmail.ca), which used to be our righty news, is now more centrist. For wacky, lefty news sources up here, I recommend http://www.rabble.ca. Not mainstream, by any means, but interesting none the less.
our government doesn’t tell the un anything because the un is a bigger joke than our government.
and i am neither a supporter of george bush nor the war in iraq, but i don’t blame him solely. bush is a politician, he is just following what reportedly 74 percent of the population wants. we are a country of warmongers, not a country led by a warmonger.
That’s the ticket, Blurb! Remember, if all us Whos yell our ass off at once, the monkeys may hear our squeak and keep us out of that bubbling oil…
1. the left doesn’ t automatically reject anything that appears right; that is a false argument meant to undermine valid ideological differences that is propagated by rags like the weekly standard;
2. sorry about chomsky, but his anti-corporate rantings, while entertaining and libertarian, have made him a darling of the conspiracy-theory left;
3. and DO NOT EVER BELIEVE a poll. i do these for a living. the only polls that make it to the press are so hopelessly skewed and massaged as to be all but useless. believe me, they are a pile of crap, and often done by pollsters that are criminally negligent in weighting and adjusting the real numbers. i can write a poll that will prove 80% of the country thinks bush should invade canada.
now there’s an idea…
Here’s a better idea: He should stop being a jackass.
“How Bush and his junta succeeded in deflecting America’s anger from bin Laden to Saddam Hussein is one of the great public relations conjuring tricks in history.” -
John le Carre, British spy novelist, in an op-ed article on U.S. foreign policy
1. The American public has not been presented with hard evidence that links Hussein with bin Laden.
2. The American public, nor the UN Security Council has not been presented with hard evidence proving the existence of weapons of mass destuction in Iraq.
3. George Dubyah is playing on the sentiments of a nation pained by tragedy to achieve his own personal goals of attacking Iraq.
4. I live near a Marine Base and while the soliders I’ve spoken to say they believe that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction they say that a war with Iraq will be very ugly for both sides. They also disagree with Bush not letting the UN proceed according to protocol.
We are, my friends, totally fucked.
Well said, Mr. Blurbomat. Very well said.
Is there spin coming from Washington? You bet your bippy. Is there just as strong spin coming from Baghdad? Of course there is. I believe that Iraq stopped its nuclear and biological weapons programs just like I believe that US oil interests play no role whatsoever in Washington’s desire for a regime change.
None of what I just wrote is news to anyone. Neither are the facts: the people of Iraq live under the rule of a regime which has a proven history of summary executions, unkept promises of amnesty, ethnic cleansing by use of chemical weapon and unequal human rights for its citizens based on ethnicity, religion and tribe. Further, this regime has had a nuclear weapons program since the mid 1980s, and had it not been for an unauthorized (by the international community) Israeli raid, would most likely have a nuclear weapon at this time.
So what’s the answer? UN sanctions have proven useless. I agree that invasion would stir up an even larger hornets nest. We’ve heard all the arguments why the solutions of the past 10 years (war, sanction, covert assasination attempts) have proven useless. So what do we try now?
Enough armchair politics. Let’s start making real suggestions.
Saddam, leave Iraq – I invite you to go in with the missus and me in buying a 4-story browstone in Brooklyn (simply unafforadable on our measly salary.)
Tell you what, you can have the top two floors. How are you with kids? We’ll have a little one in three months.
NYC is a tough city, but I’m sure you can handle it.
huh-huh, jimmy said “vituperative.” huh-huh.
This artical isvery interesting. The other natural resouce we all need
the link
href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/31/opinion/31PELL.html
War is coming now or it’s coming later. Bad things are inevitable. Take bad now or unthinkable later.
Political hoober joobers who think you sound really cool, you suck.
Greetings from Ireland.
I’d just like to say that this war is an absolute disgrace. It is all being played out like a reality TV show on the box, and it is warping our percerption of the plain and simple truth. This is a ‘my gun is bigger than your gun’ showdown. And GWs problem is that he thinks everybody is a potential threat. So much so that he is killing the Iraqi children out of self intrest. The threat of terrorism is only going to increase a hundred times over because of the deeper wedge the US administration is forming with the Arab world. Its about time we all realise that reality copies fiction. All the “Terrorist” movies that the Hollywood producers churned out for the latter half of the last century are gonna come back and bite ye on the ass. You can’t declare war on a country because you don’t agree with their ways, or that you believe it is a ‘rogue state’ that breeds terrorism. Take a look in you own back yard first. The increasing distrust of the American government is not a new thing, and indeed its not the only government to be mistrusted. But on the global stage, America’s “stuff and thing” (material desires) are seen as tacky and cheap. Economics is NOT the be all and end all in this world, it is however the trump card that is played to separate the world according to wealth and America as the economic imperialist power who hunts down ’slave’ labour in poorer “unfree” countries………