Quote of the day: “Conveniently, the creation of a comprehensive peace and a Palestinian state is not scheduled to happen until 2005 – the year after the next presidential election. Of greater risk to Mr. Bush is the possibility of being seen as doing too little to fight terrorism, or failing to lift Iraq out of chaos. That is why Mr. Bush flew off tonight to Doha, Qatar, the home of the United States Central Command, which ran the Iraq war and created the opening through which the president ran today. But it is unlikely he will show up a few hundred miles north in Iraq, aides say. That would risk highlighting the darker side of his image in this region: the empire builder.” (David E. Sanger, the final paragraph of his analysis, Middle East Mediator: Big New Test for Bush, the New York Times,)
Quote of yesterday taken back: The Guardian posted a “correction” today on its piece about Paul Wolfowitz’s oil comments in Singapore (evidently too eagerly translated from a German report). The correction says in full:
:
“A report which was posted on our website on June 4 under the heading ‘Wolfowitz: Iraq war was about oil’ misconstrued remarks made by the US deputy defence secretary, Paul Wolfowitz, making it appear that he had said that oil was the main reason for going to war in Iraq. He did not say that. He said, according to the Department of Defence website, ‘The … difference between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that I believe is a major point of leverage whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq.’ The sense was clearly that the US had no economic options by means of which to achieve its objectives, not that the economic value of the oil motivated the war. The report appeared only on the website and has now been removed.”
Too bad, I so much preferred what Wolfowitz didn’t say. Matt Blivens in his Daily Outrage weblog at the Nation magazine website latched onto the urge of people like myself to take Wolfowitz at his worst and ran amusingly with it. In the process, he also makes a strong point about Wolfowitz’s vision of what is to be done in our post-Iraq-War world. (Small hint: Prepare to take out North Korea.):
Wolfowitz, like Orwell, Quisling and Mudd, is a last name seemingly destined to enter the English language. Both fans and critics of the deputy defense secretary have referred to him as Wolfowitz of Arabia. Maureen Dowd, the New York Times columnist, wonders if claims that Iran and North Korea have scary nuclear problems will now be dismissed internationally as ‘crying Wolfowitz’. And then there’s Wolfowitz as a state of being: ‘to not know when to shut up; to be oblivious to how one sounds to others.’
You’ve no doubt heard the remarks by Paul Wolfowitz that the U.S. government had many motivations for invading Iraq, but settled on emphasizing the danger of weapons of mass destruction out of ‘bureaucratic’ reasons. Perhaps you’ve also heard Wolfowitz’s comments about how war was the option of choice because Iraq ‘swims on a sea of oil.’…
To read more Blivens click here
Sticking with the Nation, who better to report on Iraq than columnist Naomi Klein straight from Argentina where she witnessed our last success in collapsing a nation. Hers is a devastating account of “Iraq’s one-man IMF,” Paul Bremer. She offers a vivid sense of what it means to defeat and then privatize a prostrate country. (And let’s remember, every day Iraq simmers American soldiers die. An American was killed and five wounded in Fallujah today, while two more of our soldiers were evidently gunned down, though not killed, in front of a bank in Baghdad. This is low-level indeed, except for the kin and friends of the dead and wounded, but it is a reminder of what it means to garrison a conquered and angry world.)
Too bad, I so much preferred what Wolfowitz didn’t say. Matt Blivens in his Daily Outrage weblog at the Nation magazine website latched onto the urge of people like myself to take Wolfowitz at his worst and ran amusingly with it. In the process, he also makes a strong point about Wolfowitz’s vision of what is to be done in our post-Iraq-War world. (Small hint: Prepare to take out North Korea.):
Wolfowitz, like Orwell, Quisling and Mudd, is a last name seemingly destined to enter the English language. Both fans and critics of the deputy defense secretary have referred to him as Wolfowitz of Arabia. Maureen Dowd, the New York Times columnist, wonders if claims that Iran and North Korea have scary nuclear problems will now be dismissed internationally as ‘crying Wolfowitz’. And then there’s Wolfowitz as a state of being: ‘to not know when to shut up; to be oblivious to how one sounds to others.’
You’ve no doubt heard the remarks by Paul Wolfowitz that the U.S. government had many motivations for invading Iraq, but settled on emphasizing the danger of weapons of mass destruction out of ‘bureaucratic’ reasons. Perhaps you’ve also heard Wolfowitz’s comments about how war was the option of choice because Iraq ‘swims on a sea of oil.’…
To read more Blivens click here
Sticking with the Nation, who better to report on Iraq than columnist Naomi Klein straight from Argentina where she witnessed our last success in collapsing a nation. Hers is a devastating account of “Iraq’s one-man IMF,” Paul Bremer. She offers a vivid sense of what it means to defeat and then privatize a prostrate country. (And let’s remember, every day Iraq simmers American soldiers die. An American was killed and five wounded in Fallujah today, while two more of our soldiers were evidently gunned down, though not killed, in front of a bank in Baghdad. This is low-level indeed, except for the kin and friends of the dead and wounded, but it is a reminder of what it means to garrison a conquered and angry world.)
Downsizing in Disguise
By Naomi Klein
The Nation
June 23, 2003The streets of Baghdad are a swamp of crime and uncollected garbage. Battered local businesses are going bankrupt, unable to compete with cheap imports. Unemployment is soaring and thousands of laid-off state workers are protesting in the streets.
In other words, Iraq looks like every other country that has undergone rapid-fire “structural adjustments” prescribed by Washington, from Russia’s infamous “shock therapy” in the early 1990s to Argentina’s disastrous “surgery without anesthetic.” Except that Iraq’s “reconstruction” makes those wrenching reforms look like spa treatments.
Paul Bremer, the US-appointed governor of Iraq, has already proved something of a flop in the democracy department in his few weeks there, nixing plans for Iraqis to select their own interim government in favor of his own handpicked team of advisers. But Bremer has proved to have something of a gift when it comes to rolling out the red carpet for US multinationals.
Finally, those gosh-darn missing weapons of mass destruction that can’t be found won’t leave us – or this administration — alone. Little about them that couldn’t have been known before the war is being revealed now, but, explain it as you will, in the media and Congress the issue has legs (or, if you find that a mixed metaphor, then you figure out what, imagistically speaking, wmd has). Just to see Congressmen talking about something substantial and critical is startling enough!
Ruth Rosen sums it all up for us in her San Francisco Chronicle column today, while in a passionate week-old piece, Joan Chittister of the National Catholic Reporter offers her take on the subject of governmental lying — with a splendid reminder of what struck many Americans as important only a few years back: “If Bill Clinton’s definition of ‘is’ matters, surely this matters.” (By the way, the piece was pointed out to me by a considerate reader. I thank all of you who have directed me places I wouldn’t have thought to go.) Tom
Weapons of mass deception
By Ruth Rosen
The San Francisco Chronicle
June 5, 2003The Bush administration faces a growing credibility gap that may turn into one of the most serious political scandals in our nation’s history. Watergate may one day seem minor-league by comparison.
What I’m about to describe is not a conspiracy. It is the story of a group of men determined to implement a long-held vision.
In 1997, years before George W. Bush entered office, Donald H. Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz founded the Project for the New American Century, a neo- conservative think tank. As part of their larger published vision for “Rebuilding America’s Defenses,” they repeatedly lobbied for “regime change” in Iraq in order to extend America’s influence in the Middle East.
Shortly after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, they began to build a case for invading Iraq. Many people, puzzled and confused, asked: What on earth does Iraq have to do with al Qaeda?
Is there anything left that matters?
By Joan Chittister, OSB
National Catholic Reporter
May 27, 2003This is what I don’t understand: All of a sudden nothing seems to matter.
First, they said they wanted Bin Laden “dead or alive.” But they didn’t get him. So now they tell us that it doesn’t matter. Our mission is greater than one man.
Then they said they wanted Saddam Hussein, “dead or alive.” He’s apparently alive but we haven’t got him yet, either. However, President Bush told reporters recently, “It doesn’t matter. Our mission is greater than one man.”
Finally, they told us that we were invading Iraq to destroy their weapons of mass destruction. Now they say those weapons probably don’t exist. Maybe never existed. Apparently that doesn’t matter either.
Except that it does matter.
I know we’re not supposed to say that. I know it’s called “unpatriotic.” But it’s also called honesty. And dishonesty matters.