Alternate Entries

Friday, January 16, 2004

Al Gore has given a set of very impressive speeches sponsored by Moveon.org. The latest, given yesterday, is a sobering look at the state of the global environment. The text of the speech and accompanying figures or, if you have broadband, a streaming presentation of the speech itself, can be found here. Gore comes on about 10 minutes in. It's not a pretty picture, but it's very, very compelling.

posted by jeev | 10:04 AM |

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

Josh Marshall:

Number of days between Novak column outing Valerie Plame and announcement of investigation: 74 days.

Number of days between O'Neill 60 Minutes interview and announcement of investigation: 1 day.

Having the administration reveal itself as a gaggle of hypocritical goons ... priceless.

Have I mentioned how often I find Marshall's approach, uh, delectable?

posted by jeev | 4:37 PM |

Tuesday, January 13, 2004

Want to know more about the guys ruining our country? A couple of them have written a book. David Frum and Richard Perle have just published An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror. From Mitchiko Kakatuni's review in today's New York Times:

The title of this new book by David Frum and Richard Perle, "An End to Evil: How to Win the War on Terror," says it all. It captures the authors' absolutist, Manichaean language and worldview; their cocky know-it-all tone; their swaggering insinuation that they know "how to win the war on terror" and that readers, the Bush administration and the rest of the world had better listen to them.

And how do these two nimrods solve the sort of knotty problems that have, uh, be-deviled humanity since the beginning of time? Here's a sample:

But these points tend to be drowned out by their triumphalist boasts ("the United States has become the greatest of all great powers in world history"), their macho posturing and their willful, flame-throwing language. "There is no middle way for Americans," they write in the opening chapter. "It is victory or holocaust. This book is a manual for victory."

Discussing rulers like Fidel Castro and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, they declare that "when it is in our power and our interest, we should toss dictators aside with no more compunction than a police sharpshooter feels when he downs a hostage-taker." Of the United Nations, another one of their nemeses, they write, "The U.N. regularly broadcasts a spectacle as dishonest and morally deadening as a Stalinist show trial, a televised ritual of condemnation that inflames hatreds and sustains quarrels that might otherwise fade away."

You know, this is sounding more and more like another "greatest of all great powers", the Athens Thucydides wrote of in The Peloponnesian War. From the Rex Warner translation, the Athenians trying to "convince" the neutral Melians to submit to Athenian authority:

Instead we recommend that you should try to get what it is possible for you to get, taking into consideration what we both really do think; since you know as well as we do that, when these matters are discussed by practical people, the standard of justice depends on the equality of power to compel and that in fact the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.

The Melians refusing, the Athenians killed every Melian man of military age and put their wives and children into slavery. So Athens won, right? Nope. In a few short years, it was arrogant and over-reaching Athens that was in ruins.

posted by jeev | 9:29 AM |

For those of you (like me) who didn't catch Paul O'Neill's (O'Neill was Secretary of the Treasury until he expressed doubts about yet another round of tax cuts) recent appearance on 60 Minutes, here're some highlights from CBSnews.com (there are also video clips):

"From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go," says O'Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was topic "A" 10 days after the inauguration - eight months before Sept. 11.

"From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime," says Suskind. "Day one, these things were laid and sealed."

As treasury secretary, O'Neill was a permanent member of the National Security Council. He says in the book he was surprised at the meeting that questions such as "Why Saddam?" and "Why now?" were never asked.

"It was all about finding a way to do it. That was the tone of it. The president saying 'Go find me a way to do this,'" says O'Neill. "For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap."

posted by jeev | 8:55 AM |

In his Salon column this week, Joe Conason points out some useful things:

When President Bush inspires us onward and upward to Mars this week, his political calculations may be more earthly. Expanding space exploration is a wonderful aspiration for America and humanity -- and also quite promising for the Houston economy, the national aerospace industry, and one company in particular that has long pondered exploration of the red planet: Halliburton.

Yes, the firm once headed by Vice President Dick Cheney -- fabled beneficiary of no-bid multibillion-dollar military contracts and high-priced provider of Kuwaiti oil -- is determined to drill on Mars and the moon. Surely this scheme has nothing to do with the Bush space initiative. But somehow, no matter what worthy motivations lie behind the president's policies, he and Cheney always appear to be shilling for their corporate clientele.

(Consider former Treasury Secretary Paul O' Neill's revelations about early Iraq war planning, which included a March 2001 memo -- titled "Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts" -- that mapped out potential post-Saddam petroleum exploration.)

posted by jeev | 8:47 AM |

Sunday, January 11, 2004

Hands up, now, who's surprised:

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill contends the United States began laying the groundwork for an invasion of Iraq just days after President Bush took office in January 2001 -- more than two years before the start of the U.S.-led war that ousted Saddam Hussein.

The answer to every question isn't 9/11. From the AP via Salon.

posted by jeev | 7:34 PM |