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Once more, with feeling
Yet another column about the criminals in DC. (Dem Criminals?) I remain disgusted. I talked to a friend the other night, who is an apologist for this administration. Or do you call them apologists when they see nothing to apologize for? He admits that W just wanted an excuse to invade Iraq, though at the time all I heard was "WMDs! WMDs!" (The sky is falling, the sky is falling!) Now, however, the war is justified because of the terrible things Saddam was doing to the Iraquis. Which to my mind were terrible, but no worse than countless other examples, many still continuing.
Anyway, I find it interesting that this column is from the Christian Science Monitor, which is hardly a left-wing rag. Unless someone forgot to tell me? Wouldn't it be lovely if something were actually DONE to the leakers? As if.
The same friend called the Clinton administration the "most corrupt" in his memory. I wonder... if there was really so much corruption, why weren't there lots and lots of indictments? Like there were during, oh, say, the Reagan administration. But no, we're supposed to kick Clinton out of office because he can't keep his dick in his pants, which is the only thing they ever proved him guilty of. Personally, I thitnk screwing 'em on the Oval Office desk would be better than concocting excuses to start a war that has mainly served to turn half the world against us. Or perhaps I should say, even more against us. As a nation, we haven't gained a damn thing, and we've cost a hell of a lot of lives. Shameful.
Edit: From a NY Times opinion by Frank Rich (who always says it better than I can):
This case is about Iraq, not Niger. The real victims are the American people, not the Wilsons. The real culprit - the big enchilada, to borrow a 1973 John Ehrlichman phrase from the Nixon tapes - is not Mr. Rove but the gang that sent American sons and daughters to war on trumped-up grounds and in so doing diverted finite resources, human and otherwise, from fighting the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. That's why the stakes are so high: this scandal is about the unmasking of an ill-conceived war, not the unmasking of a C.I.A. operative who posed for Vanity Fair.
Anyway, I find it interesting that this column is from the Christian Science Monitor, which is hardly a left-wing rag. Unless someone forgot to tell me? Wouldn't it be lovely if something were actually DONE to the leakers? As if.
The same friend called the Clinton administration the "most corrupt" in his memory. I wonder... if there was really so much corruption, why weren't there lots and lots of indictments? Like there were during, oh, say, the Reagan administration. But no, we're supposed to kick Clinton out of office because he can't keep his dick in his pants, which is the only thing they ever proved him guilty of. Personally, I thitnk screwing 'em on the Oval Office desk would be better than concocting excuses to start a war that has mainly served to turn half the world against us. Or perhaps I should say, even more against us. As a nation, we haven't gained a damn thing, and we've cost a hell of a lot of lives. Shameful.
Edit: From a NY Times opinion by Frank Rich (who always says it better than I can):
This case is about Iraq, not Niger. The real victims are the American people, not the Wilsons. The real culprit - the big enchilada, to borrow a 1973 John Ehrlichman phrase from the Nixon tapes - is not Mr. Rove but the gang that sent American sons and daughters to war on trumped-up grounds and in so doing diverted finite resources, human and otherwise, from fighting the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. That's why the stakes are so high: this scandal is about the unmasking of an ill-conceived war, not the unmasking of a C.I.A. operative who posed for Vanity Fair.
no subject
On the subject of Saddam's bad dealings: The most-cited example I've heard is "He used chemical weapons on his own people." The funny thing is, we gave him those chemical weapons in the 1980s to fight the Iranians. And the people he used them on were the Kurds and Shia we told "Hey, go overthrow his government, we'll help you." Of course, we didn't help them, and they got slaughtered, and gassed, by shells reading "Made in USA". Who was responsible for all this? Reagan and Bush I. People say Bush-lite invaded Iraq to "avenge his father". I think he did it to destroy the evidence. But that's just me.
And, yes, the systematic rape and torture of prisoners, especially of the political variety, was a horrible, horrible thing. But as you say, there's worse going on elsewhere that we're willfully ignoring (mostly, I suspect, because it's generally Africans doing it).
I remember when we started Abu Graib back up, Bush said, "This used to be a facility of torture, but it will stand as a symbol of justice" or something like that. Christ almighty.