Politics: J'accuse!

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
If you make one more post on this topic w/o answering my post you are intellectually dishonest. I hope not.

He already asserted that the popular media have been covering the war in a supportive manner. I think that issue is settled.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by SlaveNoMore
As I was saying to someone this weekend in a Berkeley coffeehouse - I still think Rummy steps down after the handover date

I think he still has the confidence of Bush and Cheney, and they don't want to take the political hit that would result. Not least of which would be the congressional hearings to pick a new Secretary of Defense.

Or did you mean when Bush hands over the government to Kerry?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
If you make one more post on this topic w/o answering my post you are intellectually dishonest. I hope not.

Inattentiveness is not dishonesty -- I'm outnumbered here just now, and apparently missed your post. Please repeat it.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Or did you mean when Bush hands over the government to Kerry?

I don't often allude to inside information here, but I'll slip this once and tell you all that, if Kerry wins, he's definitely replacing Rumsfeld.

(ETA: Please don't repeat this around. Few know about it, and I could be traced.)

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Not Me
Ty, in court named individuals testify under penalty of perjury as to those matters of which they have personal knowledge. Compare that to an unnamed source saying senior officials in the DoD removed safeguards in interrogation practices that then resulted in abuse.

JFC, stop the "your sources suck" game. Political discourse does not require courtroom-style evidence.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Not Me Mandating that women cover their heads with scarves is an act of misogynism in my book.

And yet mandating that women cover their TITS! is not? Cultural relativism is fun when we pretend it's objective truth.

[Hank Chinaski]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
JFC, stop the "your sources suck" game. Political discourse does not require courtroom-style evidence.

You argue like a fag.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by Not Me
Mandating that women cover their heads with scarves is an act of misogynism in my book.

So, is GWB a member of a misogynistic religion, or merely a hypocrite for not demanding Laura cover her damn head?

I also believe that a religion is sexist if women are not allowed to be spiritual leaders of the same rank as men.

Careful. A lot of the GOP leadership is Southern Baptist Convention.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
He already asserted that the popular media have been covering the war in a supportive manner. I think that issue is settled.

The press moves in a pack, and they will ignore one side of a story for long stretches and then all jump on it at once. We've had this discussion before. It's very hard to see the elephant at once, and what it looks like up close depends on where you are standing. Lately, your side is holding the bag, and that's no fun. Please recall what the coverage was like before and during the invasion.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
You argue like a fag.

Speaking of which, it's been a couple of days now, and my marriage hasn't suffered yet from what's been happening in Massachusetts.

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Atticus Grinch
So, is GWB a member of a misogynistic religion, or merely a hypocrite for not demanding Laura cover her damn head?



Careful. A lot of the GOP leadership is Southern Baptist Convention.

Curious. Are you asserting that Islam is equivalent to Christianity in its treatment of women?

[bilmore]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Please recall what the coverage was like before and during the invasion.

You mean, when the pack varied between "France is gonna be pissed!", and "boy, is France pissed!"?

[Gattigap]

Friends,

I have a confession to make. Driving home last night, on my latte-sipping, French-speaking, sissified radio station, Terry Gross interviewed Bill Kristol.

I hadn't heard Kristol speak before, and -- Bilmore, Club, Hank -- I actually liked him. I don't agree with his approach but found him articulate and capable of maintaining a coherent argument. Links to audio are on npr.org, but I don't think there's a transcript. In earlier versions of this post, I tried to summarize portions of it, but realized that it sounded like familiar paths that have been well-trod on this board, so I'll spare you the pablum.

The one point I will make, though, is that for someone who got his OWN WAR named after him (at least colloquially), he's awfully pissed at Bush for how they've tried to do this on the cheap, and then fucked it up by futzing around during the occupation and allowin the insurgents to organize to the extent that we've got daily car bombs at the gates to the Green Zone.

His other point, with which I agree, is that this is a conflict that we CAN'T permit ourselves to really lose (and here he's defining "lose" as a Vietnam-like withdrawal). Bush, Kerry, whoever, is most likely going to be stuck there for several more years, because withdrawing will (a) create a cesspool of jihadists in Iraq, which is unacceptable, and (b) the impression that this creates of a weakened superpower will make others in the world feel less comfortable, now that the big kid on the playground doesn't appear to have control over all the sand. It would encourage places like Turkey, S. Korea, Japan, and others who depend on the US umbrella to keep things calm in various regions of the world to think long and hard about whether this is still true, and if they conclude it's not, it'll encourage an accelerated arms race, including nuclear proliferation.

None of this is groundbreaking news, of course, but it's a bit depressing to reconsider.

Now that I've tried to spread that to the board, my work here is done! Carrry on.

Gattigap

eta: More from Kristol can be found here. -- T.S.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally posted by bilmore
You mean, when the pack varied between "France is gonna be pissed!", and "boy, is France pissed!"?

I thought you guys liked that spin.

eta: I noticed this from Yglesias when I went to TAPPED to get the Kristol cite above.

• [W]e can have the media bias argument all we want, but it's simply undeniable that a huge number of people -- in the media, in the think tanks, in the government, and on the street -- who were, at one time or another, generally supportive of Bush's Iraq policy have now come to the conclusion that it's failing. There's no getting around that fact. And it's implication is clear -- the coverage of the war indicates that the policy is failing because the policy is failing, not because the press is out to get the president. To make this strategy work, you need some new facts, not a new press corps.

[Atticus Grinch]

Originally posted by bilmore
Curious. Are you asserting that Islam is equivalent to Christianity in its treatment of women?

No, I'm saying fundamentalist Islam is equivalent to fundamentalist Christianity in its treatment of women. As for the views of moderate Islam, you might need to look outside Saudi Arabia to find it, but majority Muslim nations have elected more female heads fo state than the U.S. has.