Wednesday, June 23, 2004
The draft story no one wants to mention | The real 2003 terrorist attack numbers | Rumsfeld OK'd torture? | Destroying Fahrenheit 9/11
A couple weeks old now but still worth reading, Newsweek's "The Wars Through Arab Eyes"
Last year's invasion of Iraq and toppling of Saddam Hussein were supposed to bring prosperity and stability to the Middle East. "The road to Jerusalem," the mantra went, led through Baghdad. Neoconservatives and other hawks within the Bush administration expected that the United States would win respect in the Arab world through a massive show of force, and that Israel would be more comfortable making peace with the Palestinians once Saddam was gone. Instead, the region now seems to be growing more violent—and America's image in the Arab world has been badly tarnished. "Not only have we validated and emboldened our enemies, but we have shamed our friends," says an embittered U.S. State Department official. "Arab moderates who trusted our ideals feel betrayed and abandoned."Full story here.
Many U.S. officials fear that the Iraqi and Israeli conflicts will spiral downward together. "I'm just watching as this administration spins off into some alternative reality where Sharon is a man of peace, where rising insurgency [in Iraq] is a sign we are winning, where we bring back Saddam's generals to quell the anger of people we liberated from Saddam," says one veteran diplomat. "The true casualty of this war of choice is American credibility—not just the credibility of our intelligence... but the credibility of our values, our principles."
"The U.S. government restated its 2003 accounting of terrorist attacks Tuesday, reporting a sharp increase in the number of significant attacks and more than doubling its initial count of those killed. 'Significant attacks' at 21-year high, revised data shows...." from "U.S. raises figures for 2003 terrorist attacks." (CNN.com)
Inspired by this O-Dub post, I did some googling and came up with only one credible news source covering the story about new military draft legislation currently going though Congress right now... in England: Draft dilemma -- They are going to reintroduce the draft in the US. But it's such a vote loser, no one wants to mention it. (Guardian UK)
Steven Levy on The Trouble With E-Ballots. Pay attention to this story because Presidential Election 2004 could be stolen just as easily as the 2000 one was with these machines. (Newsweek)
Is Rumsfeld about to take the fall on the Prison Torture scandal? (Chicago Tribune, subscription req'd)
And I guess I can give Paul Wolfowitz some credit for kind of admitting that the Bush administration had made some mistakes in Iraq which is more than Bush himself seems able to do. (New York Times)
Would Bush have been able to convince Congress and the US public of his case for going to war in Iraq if the media had been half as aggressive in questioning it as they have been in trying to tear apart Michael Moore's new movie Fahrenheit 9/11 opening (limited) today?
- Christopher Hitchens on The lies of Michael Moore in "Unfairenheit 9/11." (Slate)
- Moore's movie will make waves. But it's a fine line between fact and fanaticism. Deconstructing 'Fahrenheit 9/11.' (Newsweek)
- For all its clever slickness, Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" does not stack up to such brilliant but evil art as Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda films for Hitler. But it is art in the sense that any piece of effective political propaganda can be taken as art. WTF?! (New York Post)
Don't believe me? Then would you believe 48 Nobel Prize winners that Bush is bad news and needs to be voted out in November? (Chicago Tribune, subscription req'd)
Finally, hear Bush's soaring eloquence as performed by The George W Bush singers.
