Short-bus journalism (Part IV)

Clinton, touting his autobiography and his achievements, on 60 Minutes, 21 June 2004:

“The fact that we were able to have 22 million jobs, and record home ownership, and lower interest rates of the people actually had the ability to do more things than ever before,” says Mr. Clinton.

Reuters, groping for any blunt instrument with which to bash GW Bush, 23 June 2004:

A rise in U.S. urban minority homeownership has been accompanied by an even greater surge in the number of people straining to pay for their homes, the Fannie Mae Foundation said on Wednesday.

"Hundreds of thousands of urban minorities are struggling to sustain homeownership," the study said.

Homeowners stretching to pay for their homes are at greater risk of foreclosure and of spoiling their chances of borrowing in the future, according to the study, "A Tale of Two Cities: Growing Affordability Problems Amidst Rising Homeownership for Urban Minorities."

The study, by Fannie Mae Foundation researcher Patrick Simmons, comes as Democrats criticize Bush administration housing policies, saying they have emphasized homeownership gains while letting rental subsidy programs wither. Administration officials cite minority homeownership gains over the past four years as a central accomplishment of recent housing policies.

It would be impossible to make this stuff up and be believed. Impossible.

Memo dump, Part II

Question: What changes to Pentagon unlawful-combatant interrogation policy are the American people insisting upon? Better yet: What changes do Nancy Pelosi and Tom Daschle insist are necessary? Anything?

Here's one big thing that is bugging me about this document dump, which was spurred by a torrent of criticism and unbridled allegations: Now anybody and everybody knows flat out without a doubt what the Americans will and will not do to you if you're a captured terrorist. Specifically, now the terrorists themselves are doubly assured that if they are captured, the Americans will do nothing to harm them. Is it more likely or less likely now that we will get lifesaving intelligence information out of these criminals? Will the world of the near future be more safe or less safe owing to the carping and kvetching of political critics who really ought to know better?

So have the Administration's detractors improved the moral stance of the United States by their efforts? Seeing as how the documents demonstrate that Administration policy is already more kid-glove than most Americans had probably thought, I don't anticipate policy moving even further toward being nice to the terrorists. The upshot is that we've created a pseudo-scandal that results in no appreciable policy change but potentially impedes our ability to discover and prevent murderous terrorist operations. Pardon me if I don't appluad.

Memo dump, Part I

"Rumsfeld OK'd harsh treatment" declares Wednesday's USA Today front-page headline. Let us together explore the supposed pit of pain and despair that the SecDef instituted. Of course, to do so requires actually reading the documents that Rumsfeld signed. Fortunately for you, your blogging host is not above reading DoD documents, and can relate the following Pentagon-approved atrocities:

• Incentive / removal of incentive. So the interrogators are authorized to reward a detainee and later remove rewards. Sounds like my employer.
  
• Techniques of deception, like lying to a detainee or misleading the detainee as to the identity of his interrogator. Saw that on Law and Order.
  
• Use of faked documents or files, which is just another deception technique intended to get a detainee talking.
  
• Yelling at detainees. Sounds like my employer. Again. Where's USA Today when I need them?
  
• Multiple interrogators. Means both Kelly and Sipowicz can go in to talk with Ahmed about how he came to be driving the car full of explosives toward the water treatment plant. Are you trembling with indignation yet?
  
• Sleep adjustment. This includes switching a detainee's day-night cycle, but sleep deprivation is still not allowed.
  
• Isolation, for up to 30 days. If I were in detention with a bunch of terrorists, I'd specifically ask for this one.
  
• Stress positions, (e.g. standing) for a maximum of four hours. Someone needs to look into the inhumane treatment of our nation's retail pharmacists.
  
• Changing diet, e.g. hot food to MRE's. Which is to say, you can bump a detainee down to what we feed our soldiers.
  
• Forced grooming (e.g. can compel prisoner to bathe or shave). Again, as a detainee I'd probably demand this one as well.
  
• Use of a hood during transportation and questioning. Unpleasant, but "harsh?"
  
• Exploiting fear, e.g. threatening with dogs [rescinded April 2003].
  
• Removal of clothing [rescinded April 2003].

In the memos there is an entire additional category of techniques that Rumsfeld denied to interrogators. So the USA Today headline editor could have more plausibly written "Rumsfeld rejected harsh treatment," but I guess that tack doesn't jibe with the prevailing prejudices these days.

Those skeptical of any prejudicial tilt might want to look up at the URL for the story's online version, which includes the phrase "rumsfeld-abuse." This in spite of the facts that (1) there is nothing I have found in the documents or in the news story connecting Rumsfeld to the "abuse scandal," and besides (2) the news story principally concerned Guantanamo detainees.

What a long road we've travelled in under three years. In the months following 9/11, Alan Dershowitz was granted numerous news forums to proclaim the inevitability of torture warrants, and now these same newspapers and network news outlets are raising hell about the Administration's endorsement of un-comfy chairs.

Is this made-up also?

From a CNN article:

[Bill Clinton] even expressed gratitude to his political enemies for bringing him and his wife closer together. And once the impeachment process was over, his banishment to the couch in a living room next to the bedroom ended, too, he said.

The couch? The couch?? A little reminder for folks who’ve been out of civics class for a long time: The President of the United States resides in the White House, a rather substantial structure with no fewer than 132 different rooms. Does Bill expect us to believe that he could not, or would not just find another actual bed to use somewhere? Okay - maybe they were all being rented out to big campaign donors - but failing that, couldn’t some flunky have scared up a folding cot that would store in a closet during the day?

Pardon my cynicism, but this strikes me as just another invented tale that Clinton finds useful for his new work of fiction.

Raised by bumper stickers

Non-sequitur bumper sticker of the week: "When Clinton lied, no-one died." What I notice in this bumper sticker, besides the implicit faith in the Bush myth, is the total historical amnesia. To wit: I don't recall anyone dropping dead from the Watergate break-in, and yet we are all pretty much agreed that what would have been the inevitable Nixon impeachment and removal was deserved. Suggestion to the sticker owner: unless you're a secret Nixon booster, reconsider your standards for presidential conduct.

A better bumper sticker, seen recently: "Still mad at Yoko."

Nifty mag

It's taken me a few years to realize something about American Scientist, a magazine I receive every other month. What struck me is that in every issue I learn something about a scientific topic that I thought I was up-to-date on, but in retrospect I was years (or decades) behind in my knowledge. So it has been great for keeping my broad science base from getting too stale.

For instance, the most recent issue has an article concerning plate tectonics. What do we remember about plate tectonics from high school science? Well, the big thing is that there are twenty or so different plates to the earth's crust floating around on the gooey magma deeper down, such that the continents move around relative to one another. A few hundred million years ago, all the continents had been jammed together into one big supercontinent ("Pangea") before splitting up. This all is still pretty much correct, says the magazine.

But what somehow had escaped my notice in the last twenty years were the discoveries that no fewer than six supercontinents have existed and broken apart through geological history. Going back in time from Pangea was Pannotia, Rodinia, Columbia (a.k.a. Nuna), Kenorland and Ur. I suppose that this shouldn’t be shocking – after all, why should continental breakup have only occurred in the last four percent of geologic time? I just hadn’t heard about this nor gave it any thought at all.

The big theoretical controversies now in this area concern exactly how this cycle proceeds. Do the continents spread apart, slow down, then reverse direction and slam back together? Or do they spread apart without stopping, and only slam back together when they’ve all reached the other side of the globe? Or is it some mix of the above? Catchy little article!

So where was Mohammed Atta?

The 9/11 Commission seems to think it has laid to rest the troublesome notion that Mohammed Atta may have met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague. Their big piece of new evidence discrediting that notion is the use of Atta's cell phone in Florida on April 6, 9, 10 and 11 -- while the supposed Prague meeting was April 8.

Just think about that a little bit though and you know that this is not slam-dunk evidence. Try to put yourself in Atta's shoes and suppose that you are going to Prague. You know that your American cell phone doesn't work in Europe. Furthermore, you have ongoing responsibility for holding together four terrorist cells spanning 18 other people in the United States. Do you think maybe, just possibly it would be advisable to leave your cellphone with your adjutant (Marwan al-Shehhi)? Seems preferable to leaving the phone unanswered for a week.

How will you pay for your plane tickets and your accommodations? Credit card? Of course not, that leaves a trail. You'll need cash. On April 4, a bank camera in Virginia recorded Atta withdrawing $8,000 from his account. Could be a coincidence, I know. Like how Czech intelligence's eyewitness reported seeing the Arab later identified as Mohammed Atta in Prague on April 8. Like how Atta's own visa application for a Czech visa identified him as a "Hamburg student," while a subsequent clandestine search of the Iraqi embassy in Prague discovered that the Iraqi intelligence officer's appointment book showed an April 8th meeting with a "Hamburg student." Remarkable coincidences, these. And don't forget that it has been positively determined that Atta was in Prague on two previous occasions in spring of 2000.

How does the Commission explain any of this? Since we all apparently agree that at least Atta's year 2000 Prague trips occurred, could we at least get some explanation of just what he was doing there at that time that was so important? On these matters, however, the commission is silent.

Short-bus journalism (Part III)

The 9/11 Commission, in its "Statement No. 15," concludes with, "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States." Within hours, this was being broadcast over my radio as "no evidence of cooperation," period, with no elaboration.

Now, one can make the case that al Qaeda and the Mukhabarat never ever discussed specific operational matters before attacking American targets. I have my doubts, but I understand that there is a case to be made against that kind of cooperation. But the assertion that they did not cooperate at all is so extensively discredited by mountains of intelligence material that one must seriously doubt the competence of the reporters working the Washington beat. I mean, when American soldiers first drove into Baghdad they were practically tripping over al Qaeda retirees lounging in their Iraqi villas, for crying out loud. The coalition has hauled reams of documents out of Iraq's own ministries detailing meeting after meeting, contact after contact with the international jihadists. A year and a half of this stuff, and the reporters themselves haven't noticed?

While it is possible that a few ideologically-driven reporters are taking the opportunity to slightly misquote the Commission and be deliberately misleading, I think for the most part we are seeing simple incompetence.

Out of Abu Ghraib photos already?

Been awhile since any new batch of pictures leaked, but of course it's only a matter of time. Since it has become a given that American TV and newspapers will run any and all such pictures of American criminals mistreating Iraqi prisoners, I have to ask when it will become routine for our newspapers to show what the enemy does with our prisoners? And I'm not referring to the blindfolding and making them read statements -- I mean the butchering.

Wouldn't that be evenhanded? Wouldn't that be "fair?" I'm not even asking that the deeds of the enemies' renegades be shown -- I'm only asking to see what their so-called "soldiers" do openly, as a matter of routine practice. What is the motivation for covering that up? Are we not in the media age of the Aaron Brown standard, "You don't appreciate what happened... until you see it?" Well let's see it then, you sanctimonious bastards!

Of course this is not my sincere hope. My sincere hope would be for an actual, firm media standard applied equally to the coalition and the enemy. Under such standards, the nature of Islamofascism would be plain to all. But to persistently hype the illegal actions of perverts-in-uniform while burying the brutality of Arabs against westerners and each other demonstrates an utter lack of standards or worse: namely, the standard of seeking to undermine our willingness to combat barbarism.

A Farewell

"In this land of dreams, no victory is beyond our reach, no glory will ever be too great."

Ronald W. Reagan


"The American people saw their entire country in that one man."

George Will


"We in Britain, as in so many places around the world, owe him an everlasting debt."

Michael Howard


"He was our hero, he was our hometown boy made good."

Wanita Trader

First Christian Church

Dixon, IL


"In 1983, I was confined to an eight-by-ten-foot prison cell on the border of Siberia. My Soviet jailers gave me the privilege of reading the latest copy of Pravda. Splashed across the front page was a condemnation of President Ronald Reagan for having the temerity to call the Soviet Union an 'evil empire.' Tapping on walls and talking through toilets, word of Reagan's 'provocation' quickly spread throughout the prison. We dissidents were ecstatic. Finally, the leader of the free world had spoken the truth - a truth that burned inside the heart of each and every one of us."

Natan Sharansky


"Like all heroes, Ronald Reagan's greatness was an extension of his goodness and billions of people around the world owe their freedom to both. He will be missed, but his words and deeds belong to the ages now, where they will be loved and honored as long as men yearn to be free."

Senator Tom DeLay


"My wife and son and I had dinner by the river last night -- in a very peaceful grassy spot in a copse of trees -- and she told him all about the great President we used to have who saved the world. I sat there quietly smoking a cigar as a tribute to the man who made me believe in the future."

Anonymous


Yet it is not our part to master all the tides of the world, but to do what is in us for the succour of those years wherein we are set, uprooting the evil in the fields that we know, so that those who live after may have clean earth to till. What weather they shall have is not ours to rule.

J.R.R. Tolkien

LOTR (Bk. V, Ch. 9, p. 190)


"When the Lord calls me home, I will leave with the greatest love for this country of ours and eternal optimism for its future."

Ronald W. Reagan

5 November 1994

For it is the doom of men, that they forget

"Those who have long enjoyed such privileges as we enjoy forget in time that men have died to win them."

Franklin D. Roosevelt

27 Nov 1941


"Gentlemen, I am hardening to this enterprise."

Winston Churchill

St. Paul’s School, Kensington

15 May 1944


"He either fears his fate too much,
Or his desserts are small,
Who fears to put it to the touch,
To gain or lose it all."

Montrose's Toast


"We want this war over with. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it. The quicker they get whipped, the quicker we can go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo. And when we get to Berlin, I am personally going to shoot that paper-hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler."

Lieutenant General George S. Patton

5 June 1944


"I have full confidence in your courage, devotion to duty and skill in battle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory! Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this great and noble undertaking."

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Supreme Allied Commander

5 June 1944


"No, we’ll start the war from right here."

Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr.

Utah Beach

6 June 1944

(on being notified that his division had landed in the wrong sector)


"URGENT. Sir, it is at times difficult to admit one is wrong, but I have the great pleasure of doing so on this occasion. Casualties are dramatically below my estimates. I congratulate you on your command decision, and apologize for adding to the Supreme Commander's worries."

Air Marshal Sir Trafford Leigh-Mallory

6 June 1944


"We will always remember. We will always be proud. We will always be prepared, so that we may always be free."

Ronald W. Reagan

Normandy

6 June 1984

Bake sale evolution

There has been quite a lot of commentary on Al Gore's fiery (some would call it crazy) speech of 26 May. I want to mention one little anecdote Gore employs to criticize the administration:

"Luckily, there was a high level of competence on the part of our soldiers even though they were denied the tools and the numbers they needed for their mission. What a disgrace that their families have to hold bake sales to buy discarded Kevlar vests to stuff into the floorboards of the Humvees! Bake sales for body armor."

Notice that Gore isn't claiming the soldiers don't have body armor to wear. It's a vehicular armor issue. I'm not really surprised that Kevlar vests-as-floorboards are not standard military issue yet, but that's beside my point. No, I merely want it noted that Gore was speaking to a MoveOn-affiliated crowd, a constituency that historically has not exhibited staunch support of profligate military spending. So the complaint rings a bit hollow. In fact, doesn't the following lament sound at all familiar?

"It will be a great day when our schools get all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber."

Poster

New York

1983

That this should actually come true in some small way and the political left professes outrage at it; well, it strikes me as decidedly odd.

The end of a crazy month

May has finally ended, but the rain has not. My particular locale received nearly eleven inches of rain during the calendar month of May, which is a rate which reaches into the low end of "rainforest" range. The most maddening thing about it all has been the near-uniform distribution of the rainfall across the entire month, making the rare breaks into "Gotta mow the grass NOW" emergencies. And on several occasions I got rained out by sudden, unexpected storm cells before even completing half the lawn. Maddening!

Citation machine & seat belts

A warning: This is a "slice of life" post, lacking an overarching theme or message!

A nearby community that shall remain nameless has a remarkable speed trap which they employ at intervals, but with remorseless efficiency. It's on a section of four lane highway that runs across a shallow bowl of terrain with about a mile and a half from one edge of the bowl to the other. Slashing across at the low point of the highway is an overpass, from which the officer with the radar gun shoots his prey. Now obviously the officer on the overpass has no way to come down and intercept a speeder himself -- hence the queue of three cruisers concealed behind the slight curve on the far side of the overpass. It's all painfully obvious when approaching from the north, but almost undetectable from the south, toward which the radar is pointed.

The local police force in question had this trap going on Memorial Day, in concert with what must have been at least a statewide campaign to promote seat belt usage. Countless radio and television commercials have been warning about seat belt enforcement for most of May. Interestingly, while Wisconsin is one of those states that can ticket you for not wearing the belt, the offense is considered "secondary," meaning you (supposedly) cannot be pulled over and cited solely for a seat belt offense.

Someone carefully listening to the cautionary scenarios depicted in the radio commercials will note that in every case, even though the scenarios are fictional, the offending driver has been pulled over for something else and then the seat belt citation is added like a garnish. So while the ads are clearly aimed at badgering folk into buckling up, they are remaining faithful to the actual state of Wisconsin's laws.