Shot In The Dark - Politics and Current Events in Minnesota and Beyond

Saturday, April 19, 2003

More Inteview News - Second interview yesterday - oy vey.

I now have two positions for which I've interviewed, that I'd probably cut off an arm to get. The one with the very long interview from a few weeks ago, and the one yesterday.

I'd be happy to land an offer from either one.

Problem being, they're both taking at least another month to decide things here. Now, for the one I talked to yesterday, that's not too unreasonable - I only sent in a resume a week ago.

For the other? Well, I first applied at Christmas time. Patience is a virtue, but excessive virtue is a vice - didn't Oscar Wilde say that?

As far as Christmas presents go - I'm also torn between this, and one of these.

Decisions, decisions...
posted by Mitch Berg 4/19/2003 12:37:18 PM

Friday, April 18, 2003

5.8 for Artistic Impression, 5.1 for Technical - First interview was a phoner (switched from a face-to-face at almost the last minute). It'd be a cool gig, if I can land it. I'm the only UI Designer currentl in contention, which is good. They haven't decided if they want a UI designer, which isn't so good.

Interview this afternoon - for a gig I really really want. Actually, among the five positions currently in play, there are two that I think'd be pretty near perfect; the one where I had the 7:45 hour interview three weeks ago, and the one I'm interviewing for this afternoon. The first was with a small company that's in that "just right" space; they've gotten past the startup growing pains, but they haven't hit the "excessively mature" stage yet. And I'd be the only UI person on the staff, in a role that I'd just kill to have, sort of the pivot between Marketing and Engineering, with a lot of responsibility for making sure that not only does the product kick ass, but that the company's whole message screams "Easy to use!". In short, everything I want out of a fulltime, permanent gig.

The second would be a nice counterpoint to that; working with a "consulting" company, jobbed out on project teams to different client companies. I'd combine everything I like about freelancing (getting to change locations and co-workers and projects periodically, learning new stuff constantly) with everything that appeals to me as a single father with a ton of bills to pay (health insurance, a steady check, even when I'm not on a project).

I got a new lead yesterday, by the way. But...

...ugh. It's with a big local corporation, through a local "Technical Staffing" company (think Temp firm for geeks). The "recruiter" was a guy who never got off the speaker phone and with whom I've never spoken when he didnt sound like he was guzzling potato chips - his mouth always sounds full. The "Account Manager" was worse - a woman who never, not once, let me finish a sentence. It's not like I ramble, especially not in job-interview-ish setting. I'm pretty loquacious in normal conversation, but I've been accused of being almost excessively to-the-point in business settings - a former boss said "meetings with you are like military briefings", which I took as a compliment. When I schedule a one-hour meeting, I usually wrap it up within 40 minutes.

So I try not to waste time - but being interrupted really harshes my mellow.

Then, the Accountmanagerette started lowballing the salary; one of her first comments after we started talking jing was "you DO know that the average technical professional has taken a $5-to-40-thousand-dollar pay cut, right?" Duuuuuh.

Which begs a question, all you people who work with Fortune 500 HR departments; it's perfectly understandable to lowball salaries when the economy is tight. But then, when the market opens up and salaries boom, like they did in the mid-eighties and late nineties, why do you act so perplexed when your IT department evaporates like a regiment of Republican Guards?

Anyway - gotta get ready for the next interview. Best wishes/prayers/karmic vibes gratefully accepted!
posted by Mitch Berg 4/18/2003 11:26:02 AM

Big Day - Two job interviews today, and plans later. Might be a light blog day today, but if so I'll catch up tomorrow. Plenty to write about!
posted by Mitch Berg 4/18/2003 08:25:30 AM

Return of the King? - Abu Dhabi TV (via CNN) is currently showing footage supposedly showing Saddam Hussein standing amid a crowd of Iraqis, allegedly taken on April 9 - the same day the Marines were pulling down the statues.

The Abu Dhabi TV spokesman is claiming the footage was shot in a highly Sunni (and upscale) neighborhood, "Al Habamiyah" (spelling), where "he'd feel very safe". His son Qusay, his secretary Omar Hassan, and a number of other identifiable Ba'ath party officials are also shown in the footage, according to the spokesman.

UPDATE: It's interesting, listening to the CNN anchors questioning the Abu Dhabian. They're rolling some authentic tape taken on April 5, showing Hussein in front of a small crowd. There were oil clouds in the background. On the alleged April 9 footage, the sky is clear.

UPDATE AGAIN: I'm going to suspend my disbelief for a moment. The Abu Dhabi guy made a few good points: this is supposedly taken in a Sunni district, the sort of place that he'd spent a lot of money and time garnering support. Also, he noted that the Coalition controlled only a fairly small part of Baghdad proper at the time the video was supposedly shot.

UPDATE 3: CNN is now interviewing Ken Pollack of the Brookings Institute. "It reinforces the sense that Saddam stayed in Baghdad", Pollack says, citing the extensive tunnel network under Baghdad.

As to why the Iraqis waited nine days to release this tape to Al Jazeera: "He recogizes he's in very serious shape. It may be he realizes his best bet is to go underground and try to build some resistance".

He also acknowledges that "there are a lot of Iraqis that want to see Saddam not only dead, but eviscerated", that his paranoia has to be in high gear.

UPDATE 4: If I hear the phrase "hiding in plain sight" again, I'm going to chunder.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/18/2003 07:38:05 AM

The Only Story They Have is Fear Itself - Yesterday, Fraters Libertas beat me to working over a particularly craven Strib editorial. The editorial focused on the non-specific fears of a bunch of vaguely uneasy Minnesotans, and concluded that oofda, are we afraid.

The Fraters' conclusion was great:
I remember the night of 9/11 trying to fall asleep and instead of the usual steady drone of commercial airliners, hearing the sound of F-16's flying combat air patrols over Minneapolis. Now THAT is fear. The heart palpating, forehead sweating, rats gnawing at your intestines kind of fear that burrows into your soul and shakes you to the core.

Today I still worry but I no longer fear.
Great stuff.

But the Strib's still at it. Today, the Strib is trying to cobble together a broad anti-war consensus from among the 20% who actually oppose it.
One of Vietnam's great lessons was the importance of coherent public support, not only for the war itself but for the reasons behind it. Once the domino-theory rationale began to break down, so did support for continued bloodshed -- especially as the fighting, over time, produced no clear result.
They got it half right.

We found that without a clear goal and means of waging it, it was impossible to win a war. Fighting a war without aiming to win is not only pointless, it's suicidal. Men don't risk their lives for "Fortress DMZ", for pacification, for "Search and Destroy". They'll risk their lives when "The only way home is Berlin/Hanoi/Baghdad".

That is the key lesson we - especially our government's military and civilian leadership - learned from Vietnam.
Public approval is no less important now, especially if Iraq is to be part of a broader, longer project aimed at keeping terrorism from our shores. On these matters, the public holds contradictory views that the Bush administration, now flush with victory, should heed.

Americans overwhelmingly consider the war a success. The latest New York Times poll found 79 percent approval for the president's handling of Iraq. Within that number, however, lies a good deal of ambivalence and skepticism.
"A Good Deal...?"

I'd like to see them substantiate that.
What was the reason for the war again? Was it to find exotic weapons? To liberate the Iraqi people? To avenge the terrorist attacks of 2001?
Depose a tyrant?

Why is "All of the above" not an option?
And what comes next? Most Americans now expect military intervention in Korea, Syria or Iran -- actions they say they'd oppose.
Where are "most Americans" getting their information?
Despite success in Iraq and enthusiasm for President Bush, most say they're against his policy of preemptive attacks against nations considered possible threats.
"Hi, Mr. John Q. Public? This is Traceee from Polls R Us. We're taking a poll. We'd like to ask you a question; Which do you prefer: One, Peace, or two, launching immense shock and awe attacks on foreign government that disagree with our government. No, there is no "Three".

I'd love to see how the pollsters phrase that question.

This next bit is either an editorial error or a sly bit of disinformation:
Moreover, they feel strongly, just as they did before the war, that any future interventions should be done as part of an international coalition. Two-thirds say that the United Nations should take the lead in rebuilding Iraq.
Catch that? 2/3 of the people want the UN involved in reconstruction in Iraq - so that means they want the UN, as ineffective and worthless as they are, involved in any future actions against terrorists?
Actually, ambivalence is an authentic human emotion not well measured by public opinion polling. These various layers of nuance will likely spill out at thousands of family gatherings this holiday weekend, just as they did last week in New York Times interviews with scores of Americans. Those conversations revealed both elation and anxiety over Iraq -- often within the same person.
These conversations were then edited by humans with their own views on the war and the Administration.
"We have definitely sent a John Wayne message to the world," said a California man. "We're the good guys. We're the big guns in town. We'll tell you how it is going to be. But do we have the ability to build relationships? We're great with bullets and bombs, but this is the new war, and we haven't figured out how to fight it."
You know the rule on the internet, that says whenever Hitler is evoked in a discussion, the discussion is effectively over (in terms of rational discourse)?

I say we expand the rule to include invocations of "John Wayne" by liberals, Europeans, or the media.

And I'd say we figured out how to fight the war pretty well, so far.
Writing in the New Yorker, Hendrik Hertzberg offered much-needed clarity. It's best to see Iraq not as a war, he wrote, but as one battle (like Midway or the Bulge) within a larger enterprise, the aim of which is "not to overthrow the Iraqi regime [but] to minimize the chances for another Sept. 11. The success of what might more properly be called the Battle of Iraq must ultimately be measured by whether it brings us closer to that larger aim or leaves us farther away from it."
My vote says "Closer", so far. But nobody asked me.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/18/2003 07:34:04 AM

Thursday, April 17, 2003

The Sound of One Clue Dropping - The LA Weekly's Marc Cooper has been a frequent subject in this blog; he's sort of like the City Pages' Steve Perry with more tan than talent.

The boy's outdone himself. His current column, on Castro's judicial murder of three hijackers last week, earns Kerri-Strug-like scores in logical gymnastics.

He starts off...well, like Steve Perry with a tan:
Have you ever imagined what it would be like living in a society where, say, a John Ashcroft would be unrestrained by the niceties of constitutional law? Where draconian enforcement of a Patriot Act includes long prison terms for alleged thought crimes? Where, in the name of fighting �terrorism,� nonviolent prisoners are summarily executed after being denied even the trappings of due process?
"Have we ever imagined...?" Hell, I read The Gulag Archipelago; I needn't imagine anything.

Apparently, neither need Mr. Cooper:
Imagine no more. Just read the latest news reports, I�m sorry to say, coming not out of Guant�namo but out of Havana.
"He's sorry" to break the news to his left-wing audience - Castro's a murdering tyrant!

One wonders; does this mean that this is news to Mr. Cooper? Or does Mr. Cooper honestly think it's news to the LA Weekly's audience?
Last Friday, three men were lined up at dawn and executed by a Cuban firing squad after being convicted of �grave acts of terrorism,� according to a statement read on state television. Their executions came a mere nine days after they had surrendered in a failed attempt to hijack a Havana ferryboat to Florida. Their trial was, of course, secret. Even the Cuban state isn�t shameless enough to open to public scrutiny such a degrading and chilling sham � a capital trial that allows no serious defense. And both Cuba�s Supreme Tribunal and its governing Council of State, headed by Fidel Castro, immediately rubber-stamped the death sentences. I suppose when you don�t have a real trial, you don�t need any real appeals.
You think so?
These are the New Socialist Men that Che Guevara so glowingly evoked in his essay of the same title 40 years ago? This is a society superior to savage capitalism?
Not only are "these" indeed those men, but some of us on the right have been saying it for forty years.
The state murders in Cuba only punctuate what has been an equally sordid season of broader repression. A month ago, as the war in Iraq was breaking out, Cuban police arrested nearly 80 dissidents on charges of receiving money from and collaborating with U.S. diplomats to undermine Cuba�s government.
I suppose, if you look at this the right way, that this is good news; someone on the left has the balls to yell "the Emperor has new clothes"; finally, after all these years, someone in the "alternative" press is looking past Cuba's "Free health care" to actually call Castro's regime out.

Here's the money quote - or I guess since we're talking Cuba it's a "five year plan quote":
Some friends of mine urged me not to write this column, arguing that at a time when U.S. troops are occupying Iraq, this would only �play into the hands of the right.� That is, of course, ridiculous. There are many enemies of freedom in the world, and � no � not all of them live in Washington.
Gracious of him, isn't it?
The actions taken by Fidel Castro this past month, precisely in this moment of American belligerence, are guaranteed to only please the ultraright. They help confirm my longtime suspicion that Castro lives in mortal fear that his most powerful tool of social control, the U.S. embargo, will one day be lifted.
"The actions will only please the ultraright".

That's right - Castro is really in league with the right. Fascinating what you learn reading the Weekly, no?

Cooper ends by quoting from a letter - and yet another online petition - from a Leo Casey, a leftie union activist, that heats my bile red-hot:
�By its actions, the Cuban state declares that it is not a government of the left . . .[no, the left could never spawn a Castro...] but just one more dictatorship, concerned with maintaining its monopoly of power above all else.�
Shades of Reagan, huh?

It only took them forty years to figure this out?

Leave aside the attempted evasion of accountability - as if the left has been on to Castro's game all along, while the "ultraright" has been backing Castro sub rosa from the gitgo.

One step up, two steps back.

(Via Instapundit and Matt Welch)
posted by Mitch Berg 4/17/2003 08:41:15 PM

What He Said - Ya gotta be true to yourself. I think it was Shakespeare that said "feed your head". Wasn't it?

Anyway - Glenn Reynolds said something that resonates with me:
That's why I can't bring myself to go on a blog vacation, or to quit writing about the war the way James Lileks is doing, just now. I'd like to, in a way, because all of this is, well, tiring. But I think, as Kelly did, that a lot hinges on what's happening now.
He's right.

What's going on in the Middle East right now is going to affect the world my children grow up in, just the way Vietnam and the Yom Kippur war affect the world I'm in now.

And when you get right down to it, this blog is all about my observations about the world we're handing off to ~~my kids~~ our kids in about twenty years.

So pardon a few more warblog posts. Or, maybe, it's better now to call them justpeaceblog quotes.

Justpeaceblog. Probably won't take off like "Axis of Weasels", but it's mine, dammit.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/17/2003 04:22:57 PM

Things I Really Dislike - Apropos nothing:
Ed, Edd and Eddie. I mean, the Cartoon Network has lots and lots of shows that rub me the wrong way - CatDog, Cow and Chicken, IM Weasel, yadda yadda. But EE'nE is like rubbing salt in a cold sore, even just listening to it (when the kids are watching, two rooms over). Watching it (which I've only been able to manage for a couple of minutes) is worse. I'm no animation scholar, but it seems that in the post-"Ren and Stimpy" world of cartoons, animators thought they were making a wry, ironic comment on the plain, visually barren animation of the seventies and eighties with their overminimal, caffeine-drenched, seemingly (or even probably) intentionally-irritating style. With some cartoons, it's even fun; I like Home Movies, and the Tartakovsky 'toons like Dexter's Lab and Samurai Jack. But EE'nE adds an extra dimension - a snide-yet-overly-busy style that gives me, literally, a headache (on top of the one the atrocious voice-over gives me).
Recruiters who drag me out (inevitably to the western 'burbs) for an "interview" for a position that has absolutely no chance of getting funded.
Dead yeast
The West Wing, which I watched last night for the first time in probably a year. Yeah, I know - it's well-written. So was "Triumph of the Will". I don't care so much that it's slanted to the left; if a conservative show was so utterly marinated in self-righteousness and sanctimony, I'd be as quick to chunder.
That's pretty much it for today, though.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/17/2003 10:34:22 AM

Deal with the Devil? - I rip on Ellen Goodman a lot. She usually has it coming.

She actually has a fairly good piece in the Strib (and probably the Boston Glob) today, though, on the Eason Jordon flap.

She starts:
It isn't every day that a journalist kicks up a furor over the stories that he didn't report.

That's what happened when Eason Jordan, CNN's top news executive, celebrated the fall of Baghdad by telling prewar tales that never made it on the air. There was an Iraqi cameraman who'd been abducted and tortured. There was an aide to Saddam Hussein's son who had his front teeth ripped out with pliers.

These were, Jordan wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece, "awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff."
So far, so good. She notes the compromises that usually attend wartime journalism
Just a week before Jordan released "these stories bottled up inside me," someone asked a CNN spokeswoman why the network rarely showed injuries or blood or soldiers killed. She replied, "It's a news judgment where we would of course be mindful of the sensibilities of our viewers."

Isn't this also a deal with the devil, a decision to edit the hell out of war? Aren't we also jeopardizing lives by not telling the essence of war itself?
Fair enough. We don't report war in all its grisly truth in the US. European newspapers and news media tend to report more of it - but, given the overt (and honestly stated) political biases of European news media, the "honesty" will tend to have a political motive.

But for whatever reason, yes - we do censor blood and gore in American war reportage, for the most part. As Goodman notes:
I've been reading Chris Hedges' unflinching look at war and its correspondents, "War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning." Hedges is a sort of recovering war correspondent whose bylines stretched from El Salvador to the Persian Gulf War. He writes of war as "a drug, one I ingested for many years."

About himself and other war correspondents, he says that "the lie in war is almost always the lie of omission." Included on the list of omissions are the blunders of generals, the murders of civilians; "the horror of wounds are rarely disclosed."
Very true. For better or worse, that's how US media cover war, or at least combat.

Goodman continues - and surprises me just a bit in the process:
I am not a pacifist. I share Hedges' view: "The poison that is war does not free us from the ethics of responsibility. There are times when we must take this poison -- just as a person with cancer accepts chemotherapy to live."

But how do we know, really know, that war is a poison rather than a tasty elixir of patriotism and pride and triumph? The question is left behind on all battlefields by the stories that aren't told.
The point being that as a war corresondent (or an editor working with them), you leave things out, the things that are just too horrible to report to the folks back home. Fair enough.

But remember what the column is about. Despite its foray into the life and ethics of the war correspondent, the article started with a reference to Eason Jordan and CNN. And Jordan wasn't dropping the gory details of a firefight - a decision one makes in a moment and moves on, much like the firefight itself. He was relating a decision made in a boardroom among CNN executives over the course of more than a decade.

This isn't a war story that remains untold. It is a corporate compromise with ethics.

posted by Mitch Berg 4/17/2003 09:58:53 AM

Sunset - Senator Orrin Hatch is proposing to remove the sunset provisions from the Patriot Act.

The small-"l" libertarian in me is always fighting with the big-"C" Conservative about things like civil liberties in wartime. Both sides are adamant about liberty, but realize that all liberties involve compromises.

The Patriot Act gets a bad rap from some of those dogmatically opposed to everything President Bush does (Quick - how many times did Michael Moore even mention that the Patriot Act even had a sunset clause?) but there are some rather noxious provisions.

Especially if the sunset provisions are abolished. That's the key.

So you - we - need to get on the horn to our Congresspeople and stuff this idea back into the cave of misbegotten notions from whence it came.

So - email your Senators and Representatives. If you're from Minnesota, you can contact Senators Coleman or Dayton.

We - and that means liberals and conservatives - need to stop this.

(via Instapundit)
posted by Mitch Berg 4/17/2003 08:20:44 AM

To Do List - for Thursday, April 17:
Get a Job.
Figure out this @#$@#% Movable Type. I'm a software designer, so I'm hardly a complete software illiterate. And I was working with UNIX, oh, um, during Ronald Reagan's first term. It's not like the concept of configuring an application is totally foreign to me. But you'd think after all these years that someone in the world of open source software would figure out how to write installation instructions that weren't almost completely opaque to people who don't speak Klingon as a second language.
That job thing again. I have two interviews on Friday, unless plans change. They often do - each interview has been scheduled for at least two different times and places so far.
Teach Rachel Lucas a new imprecation. Don't get me wrong, I love Rachel's blog. But the standard term for anyone Rachel doesn't like is "Assclown". This is one of those terms that make me wonder if someone is a native speaker of English.

English has a long history of the imprecative contraction - but there are rules. All imprecative contractions are constructed like a good chinese dinner - take a word from List A, add a word from List B.
List 1: S___, P___, D___, F___, T__, D_u___, C__, S_u___, A_s, Sp___, W__, H___ or Semprini
List 2: -nozzle, -stick, -nugget, -poke, -face, -bag, -toes, -mantle, -jinsky or -monkey.
So if you see this, Rachel - keep up the good work, except for "Assclown". Work=good, "Assclown"=bad.
Get out of warblogger mode. Write about some good Minnesota politics.
Find some good Minnesota politics to write about. Oh, there's plenty of politics to write about - but the budget squabble is about as sexy as a slinky redhead sidling up to you in a nothing-to-the-imagination red cocktail dress and telling you that not only does she sell insurance, but she's also a Jehovah's Witness who has some literature she'd like to...

(Please don't construe that as a slap against JWs, OK? Honest. It was a slap against redheads that sell insurance).
That job thing again. Not to complain, but this is not only the longest I've been out of work in my life - this is longer than all my other out-of-work stretches since college, combined. I hate to use the "d" word lightly, but it is a tad depressing. I'm not someone who lies about gracefully - and indeed I'm not lying about at all. In three months, I can count my hours of daytime TV on one hand, and give you three fingers' change. I'm on the phone, or interviewing, or working on little freelance contracts, all. the. time. Gaaah. It's gotta end one of these days.

OK, I'm done now.
Work on lung power. I've been taking bagpipe lessons - indeed, if you've ever been interested in bagpipes or highland drumming, these people offer free lessons, and they're mighty good, plus you might meet me. Anyway, the other night I broke my reed, the one that came with my practice chanter. I bought a new one from the guy who supplies them. I cinched it in there, and started to play...

WHOAH! It was like trying to blow air between a couple of 1x8s - and oak ones, at that. My chanter, which used to sound like a calf trying to yodel "Drowsy Maggie", now sounded like an outboard motor trying to hum "Drowsy Maggie".

I blew harder, and it started to sound better - like a real chanter, even! And for about four times the lung power that I'd had to use before!

Anyway, it's all about practice. Whew.
Start planning my house-warming party. For October. Assuming I have a gig by then. Yes, I've lived here for ten years - but between having babies and changing jobs and getting divorced, I/we/I never actually wound up having a housewarming. I've been dying to.

Which, unfortunately, involves:
Cleaning the house. When I'm out of work, it'd be an understatement to say I concentrate on job hunting. It's pretty all-consuming. So the house is kind of a mess.
Make fewer lists.
That should tide me through today.

Oh, yeah:

11. Get some sleep. I've been up for hours, prepping for an interview. Gaaah.

That is all for now. Carry on.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/17/2003 05:58:19 AM

Wednesday, April 16, 2003

Lessons Learned - Compare and Contrast - Email correspondent Peter Jessen sent me this item from the Jerusalem Post (free registration required).

The article has a swiss bank full of money quotes. This one sort of sets the stage:
Since the fall of Baghdad last week, many Palestinians have joined the increasingly growing chorus of Arab writers, intellectuals, and politicians who argue that other Arab dictators should draw conclusions from his downfall.

The war in Iraq has bolstered Arab and Palestinian reformers who believe that the time has come for real change in the Arab world.

The change, they say, should begin by getting rid of the Arab despots and their corrupt regimes. In the words of one Palestinian analyst, "It's time for the Arab world to turn over the page of repression."
These quotes are not from people who are inherently friendly to the US!

Now - constrast the overall tenor of that piece with this one this one, by Julian Barnes in the Guardian:
Well, peacenik, are you happy now that peace is coming? No, because I don't think this war, as conceived and justified, was worth a child's finger. At least, are you happy that Saddam's rule is effectively over? Yes, of course, like everyone else. So, do you see some incompatibility here? Yes, but less than the incompatibilities in your position.

And in return, warnik, I have two questions for you. Do you honestly believe that the staggering bombardment of Iraq, televised live throughout the Arab world, has made Britain, America, and the home town of Torie Clarke, safer from the threat of terrorism? And if so, let me remind you of another statement by your war leader, Mr Blair. He told us, in full seriousness, that once Saddam was eliminated, it would be necessary to "deal with" North Korea. Are you getting hot for the next one - the humanitarian attack on Pyongyang?
Forget whether these people inhabit the same world we do. Ask whether the inhabit the same world as each other.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/16/2003 08:02:18 PM

"Failure" - I really have to stop warblogging...honest, I can do it any time...

But this one, from Curmudgeonly and Skeptical", made my day:
MEMO TO NANCY PELOSI:

A Failed Plan?

1. We took Iraq in less time than it took Janet Reno to take the Branch Davidian compound. That was a 51-day operation.

2. It took less time to find evidence of chemical weapons in Iraq than it took Hillary Clinton to find the Rose Law Firm billing records.

3. It took Teddy Kennedy longer to call the police after his Oldsmobile sunk at Chappaquiddick than it took the 3rd Infantry Division and the Marines to destroy the Medina Republican Guard.

4. We took Iraq in less time than it took to count the votes in Florida in the year 2000!

Nancy, you and other Democratic leaders sure have a strange concept of failure.
Indeed.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/16/2003 04:38:03 PM

State of Democrat Mind - Powerline cites a New York Times piece on the Democrats' outlook for '04 - according to the Democrats:
Yet as they watched Mr. Bush turn his sights to Syria, other party leaders expressed fresh concerns that the White House would not permit the election of 2004 to become a replay of 1992.

"The big difference is that the first gulf war ended," a prominent Democratic senator said. "This administration will never end the war. And because they never end the war, they will have an ongoing advantage. An open-ended war on terrorism that will never end and that keeps people constantly on edge. A never-ending military commitment in Iraq that might lead to other commitments beyond Iraq also keeps people focused on national security."
Simply amazing, isn't it? The war's not over - ergo, it's a Bush ploy. As Hindrocket from Powerline said:
We're not at war because we've been attacked and because determined, vicious enemies continue to wish us ill. No, we are at war because the "administration will never end it." This view is so perverse that the Democrats can only hope that most Americans--non-readers of the Times--have no idea what they really think.
And in that, hope springs eternal, I guess.

But talkradio wasn't a synonym for "Conservative" in 1992. There was no conservative blogosphere. CNN ruled the all-news airwaves without rival.

It's a tough row to hoe for the Dems these days.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/16/2003 04:13:37 PM

Tim Robbins - I heard bits and pieces of Tim Robbins' address to the National Press club yesterday.

Now, unlike a lot of conservatives and bloggers, I'll admit it; I've liked a few of Robbins' roles (and even a few of Susan Sarandon's). Bull Durham was a great movie. When you love the art and ignore the artist, then art and movies and music and books are a whole lot more rewarding.

But yeah, I detest Robbins and Sarandon's politics - that should be no surprise.

And listening to his appearance at the National Press Club yesterday, I was struck by an insatiable desire to fisk what he said.

How he said it was bad enough - in a clipped monotone that sounded like he was reading handwriting he couldn't quite make out.

But reading the text of the speech today - it's just too depressing. The same old stuff, over and over; the same anti-Bush cant, the same strawmen, the same unsupported assertions, the same crap. I can't go through with it.

Gaaaa. Maybe tomorrow.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/16/2003 03:20:03 PM

Sign O' The Times - Our success in Iraq is starting to get a lot of peoples' attention.

Not least of which is the Star/Tribune Editorial Board. Since Baghdad fell last week, they've had a sudden attack of common sense.
What's happening now between the United States and Syria is predictable and wise -- provided the proper skill is applied from Washington. The Bush administration is attempting to use what happened in Iraq as a lever to force a change in the behavior of Syrian strongman Bashar Assad and his regime.
It's funny that this surprises the Strib editorial board. Some of us benighted conservatives have been predicting this all along (and if my permalinks were working, right about here I'd link back to a few of my old posts on exactly this subject from last summer).

I think that in the days after 9/11, the Administration prioritized the states in the Middle East, and came up with a list looking a little like this:
Afghanistan: That's where Al Quaeda was hiding out. Take them out, find out a lot about their MO.
Iraq: Sits amid terror sponsors Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia, all of whom need attention. But Hussein had WMDs - an immediate threat. And Iraq's position is too strategic to pass up; controlling Iraq lets us
squeeze Iran - they're between two US-friendly states now, which is paying dividends for Iraqi moderates, as we saw yesterday
lean on Syria, which is now stuck between a US-controlled Iraq, a US-allied Israel, a US-friendly Turkey, a Lebanon that has been an endless money pit for three decades now, and the Meditarranean, which is a US/UK lake these days, and
let us pressure the Saudis to stanch their support for militant Wahabism without the politically unpalatable notion of sending tanks to Mecca.
They continue:
It wants Damascus to hand over Iraqi officials who apparently have found safe haven there. It wants the Syrians to stop supporting terrorism against Israel. It wants Syria to abandon the chemical programs that the CIA says it has. It wants Syria to play a more respectable and responsible role in the region.

The logic of applying that pressure is strong. Imagine how the stunning victory in Iraq looks from Damascus: In three weeks, a relatively small allied force totally defeated the Iraqi military and occupied the country. It did that despite qualms at home and almost universal condemnation abroad, despite being denied access to open a needed northern front through Turkey, despite horrific weather. In the process it lost very few of its own soldiers and kept the civilian death toll low. The victory means that Washington's voice will be listened to in Damascus -- especially with 300,000 U.S. troops just next door.
Nice to know the Star-Tribune can catch onto the blazingly obvious.

No, that was catty. A good chunk of the Strib's audience is used to getting their foreign policy information from the likes of Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore. A lot of this - realpolitik, for those of us who paid attention to history made before 1967 - is new to many Strib readers, and the editorial board is doing them a service, although it can't be going down easy.
This is America's neoconservative foreign policy on full display. It is more muscular and less inclined to work through a community of nations.
45 nations supported us. We spent at least eight months getting them on our side.

What's "less inclined?" The Administration spent more time working on getting multilateral cooperation this time than the Bush 41 administration did in 1991. George Senior didn't have to deal with Franco-German perfidy
It has a grand vision for the world that involves the United States aggressively taking on threats from rogue or failing states. It gives much of the world the willies, and that's partly its point.

There's a great deal to debate about that approach, but Americans should be careful whom they listen to, and that's not the hotheads on talk radio who just love to think this means America will arrogantly strut its stuff now. That's unlikely to happen.
Americans should be careful who they listen to, indeed. Most of the media are no better informed, or less in error, than the worst caricature right-wing talker (I'm thinking Michael Savage).
On Syria, for example, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, chief intellectual architect of the interventionist approach, recently said, "We'd like to see change in a lot of places, but it's going to come about by different means in different places. I think it's important . . . that we make it clear that the military is not the only instrument -- it isn't even necessarily the main instrument."
Whatever else I may say about the Strib, bravo to them for at least finding that quote. It says a lot.

A few convincing, and relatively cheap, victories like Afghanistan and Iraq, and you don't need to use military force for the rest of the problem. You'll see Syrians, Saudis, Iranians, Palestinians, Israelis...maybe even the EU, all thinking a lot more clearly.

Other influences also make military action against Syria unlikely. First, Iraq is going to require an intense American focus, including a military focus, for a long time. Two, the American economy is in bad shape, and voters are not happy with President Bush's handling of it. With the campaign for 2004 getting underway in earnest soon, the last thing Bush needs is further division and further economic damage from another war.
While I'd be the last to urge war, least of all for frivolous reasons, and I don't believe war with Syria is going to be necessary (Assad is no Hussein), I think the Strib is mistaken; the war didn't hurt the economy. The uncertainty and waiting and wondering that led up to it did. Speaking as a job hunter, things seem to have picked up a lot in my own little corner of the job market since the shooting started. Not that that's a justification for war - but the Strib has the causes and effects wrong, I think.
Finally, even the most hawkish Bush administration officials acknowledge that American relationships worldwide have taken a severe bruising over Iraq and might break completely if the United States now took on Syria. Even British Prime Minister Tony Blair wants the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to be the first order of business. Washington can't afford a break with Blair.
And the Strib is mistaken to separate Syria from the Palestinian/Israeli conflict.

It's been in Syria's best interest for the past 35 years to sabotage any potential settlement - and they have. Repeatedly. They have played their part in refusing to absorb refugees from the '67 war; three generations of Palestinians have grown up in camps largely due to Arab (especially Syrian) intransigence. The Palestinians were worth more to the Syrians as a disaffected minority, a foetid malarial swamp of anger and disenfranchisement, than as people who'd settled and found peace.

Leaning on Syria will help bring and end to the killing - indeed, there are signs it is already.
Notwithstanding the success in Iraq, there clearly are limits on American power. The White House appears to recognize that. It seems to be jawboning Syria in an effort to effect change there without arms. If it works, it will be a victory every bit as important as the victory over Saddam Hussein
Indeed.

They say nothing succeeds like success. The victory in Iraq has caused a lot of people to see more clearly; people in Damascus, Teheran, Gaza, Tel Aviv...

...even a few at the Star/Tribune offices in downtown Minneapolis. Could you have imagined such an editorial before the events of this past month?

Me either.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/16/2003 09:49:00 AM

Tuesday, April 15, 2003

Life Update - Enjoying a rare evening off from the kids. Going to read a book and go to bed.

Bagpipe lessons are going well, thanks! Finally got most of "Drowsy Maggie" down, and I can really kick tush on "Scots Wa Hae Wi' Wallace Bled". Next trimester, I get to learn "Scotland The Brave", I'm told. Hopefully, I get a decent tax refund next year, so I can actually buy pipes. Of course, I actually have to earn money to get it refunded, don't I?

Job interviews Thursday and Friday, for a couple of companies I think I'd really like to work for. A third interview probably in two weeks at another local company that I'd also love to land at - but they're taking their sweet time. I applied for the job at Christmas time, had a phone screening in early February, a first phone interview in mid-March, the storied 7 hour 45 minute interview at the end of March, and probably looking at a third interview by the end of the month if I'm lucky. Gaaaaa.

Anyway - I'll have a bigger posting day tomorrow. It's a brave new world, and I'll be grabbing my piece of it!

See you then.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/15/2003 08:42:04 PM

Deep Breath - Let's start at the top:

It's been a busy 48 hours, not only in Iraq, but worldwide.

Remember the barbering about the Bush Administration's alleged diplomatic incompetence?

1) North Korea, after six months of sabre-rattling, has dropped most of its demands; it will engage in talks with its neighbors and the US, and its nuke program IS on the table.

2) Prominent Iranian "conservative" theocrats, including former president Rafsanjani, are proposing trying to normalize relations with the US and Egypt - something they'd soundly rejected in the past year or so. This could include a referendum - opening the decision to the "Iranian Street", which by most accounts has lost its stomach for fundamentalism, radicalism and anti-Americanism.

3) The new Palestinian Prime Minister has nominated a mostly reformist cabinet, removing or demoting many Arafat-linked hardliners. Arafat is, of course opposing the cabinet - but this story has just begun.

4) In the meantime, Ariel Sharon is offering to give up key settlements in areas that had been off the table so far. More after the link:

Now, this sort of talk is absolutely unthinkable from a "conservative" like Ariel Sharon. The man was elected on a three-item platform:
Safety from terrorists,
safety from terrorists,
safety from terrorists.
Yet here he is, a week after the liberation of Baghdad, offering to give up a big chunk of his nation's anti-terrorist buffer zone...why?

Who provided the sanctuary, financing, weapons and training for the terrorists that have plagued Israel? Syria, Iran and Iraq (and the Saudis, but most of that money funnelled through the other three).

The Syrians are denying any complicity with Hussein, of course. But they're being very circumspect about it, so far.

Pure speculation: The Syrians, trying like mad to avoid problems with the US *and* save face in the Arab World, are operating through back-channels to ensure Israel and the US that the reign of terror, as far as they're concerned, is over.

What do I base this on? Nothing. This is speculation. However - see how many terrorist attacks Israel sustains in the next six months. See whether Arafat's faction in the Palestininan Authority holds water in the next few months. See whether the contingencies for the administration's Roadmap are met.

Look at the developments - and while I grant that they are all preliminary, they are all significant. They illuminate a very important point - actually, for purposes of this mailing list, two of them.

The hawks were right. War with Iraq is already showing signs of immense *potential* political dividends; leadership in Palestine, North Korea, Iran and Israel are all making the kinds of noises we (and the "world community") have been trying to coax out of them all along.
For purposes of argument: Rumors of Bush Administration diplomatic incompetence may have been greatly exaggerated. If we can follow up on the dividends from the war in Iraq, it *could* be one of the great diplomatic coups of all time.
Of course, we won't know anything about this for a long time. But I'm optimisitic, for a change.

(Some via Filibuster)
posted by Mitch Berg 4/15/2003 09:57:01 AM

Readjustment Blues - The Pentagon reports that a C-130 is en route from Doha, Qatar to Tikrit with a load of 300-pound altos.

The war is not over, but the Pentagon is feeling confident enough to say the "major fighting is over".
Just out of the infantry this morning,
I had to pay my dues across the sea.
No one back in boot camp ever warned me
what the readjustment blues would do to me.

"Welcome to Havana", said the pilot.
�We must have made a wrong turn on the way.
Let's buy some cigars and keep it quiet,
if they don't know we're here we'll get away."
I think it was a Tom Paxton song - I remember learning the chords and words when I was a kid, learning the guitar.

118 American dead so far - 29 fewer in four weeks than died in four days in the first Gulf War. Each one a personal, human tragedy, to be sure - my prayers, for what they're worth, are with each of them, and the 30 Brits who died as well.

They died to free 26 million people - at least, give them a chance at freedeom, and God save them if they blow this one. The mission for which they died dragged Kim Jong-Il back to the negotiation table, his nuke program on the table. While the Syrians are still making some defiant noises, there must be something going on behind the scenes that prompts Ariel Sharon to concede on the settlements; Israel never compromises on safety. Something is making them feel safe enough to deal away this buffer zone. Maybe - perhaps - we'll know in the next few weeks, if the waves of Syrian (and Iraqi) supported suicide bombers dry up, if our action, and our sacrifice, affected Israel's war on terror.

If you read around the media, and especially the blogosphere, there's a palpable sense of readjustment; "what's next?" combined with the realization that the tension of the past year is relaxing. It feels like the world - and the blogosphere, and my humble blog for that matter - are all taking the sort of deep breath you take when your kids have just trashed a room. "Gaaaa. Gotta clean this up now - and while I'm at it, maybe rearrange it, to boot". The intensity of war is replaced by the endless, niggling adminstrative challenges of hard-won peace; we've made the collar, now we have to fill out the arrest report.

One needs to be realistic about the results of these things: World War One didn't end all wars; the fall of the Wall didn't end conflict; the "New World Order" George HW Bush declared after the liberation of Kuwait wasn't much different than the old one. New orders don't change old habits, or the human condition.

But, with any luck, there are three people on this world who are right now telling their flunkies to cool it with the dynamite vests; to consider getting out of the Nuke business; to think about moderating their mullocracy.

Worth it? We'll know soon enough. And a great enterprise, in any case.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/15/2003 03:24:10 AM

The Incredible Shrinking DNC - Jay Reding's back, with a vengeance.

He asks a question that I've been chewing on for a while now; what's the DNC's sprint for the left going to do for them?
The left has used the vilification of the President as a crutch for their own lack of vision. It is the same weakness which sent the Democratic Party into a tailspin in 2002, and unless someone can emerge from the Democratic pack with real leadership potential in 2004, the DNC is set for a repeat of that election. Of course, that's difficult to do when one's party has been hijacked by the extremist and reactionary left of Tom Daschle and Nancy Pelosi.

Anthony Downs once wrote a book called An Economic Theory of Democracy. It is quite possibly one of the most important books of modern political science ever written. What Downs finds is that the electorate lies along a rough bell curve in terms of political ideology. In short, the party that can best capture the center will win the election.

The Democrats aren't even trying for the center.

Their class-warfare rhetoric couldn't support them during a time of economic turmoil. What possibly makes DNC strategists think it will work when the economy is on an upswing post-Enron and post-Iraq?
If the "eat the rich" mentality didn't float 'em last November, when will it?

To me, the key question is, where is the Democrat base? Who is it? Is it the working union stiff, teacher, government employee? If so, are they really represented by the Nancy Pelosis and Howard Deans of the party?

I'm seeing 1972 parallels here. In '72, the Democrats were hijacked by the anti-war left, and nominated George McGovern. Nixon clobbered them; the union lunchboxes deserted McGovern in droves.

There's a strong current in the Democrat party to follow the same path today; a hard tack to the left, to "solidify the base" that is ever more removed from the population at large, maybe to retake the 3-4% they lost to the Greens in '00.

This will be a huge topic as we move into election season.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/15/2003 02:29:41 AM

Monday, April 14, 2003

Betrayal, Redux - The big question, as far as I'm concerned, about the revelations of the media's sitting on stories of Hussein's brutality is this: Were they pushed, or did they jump?

Victor Davis Hanson, in the National Review, digs into the Eason Jordan op-ed and the sickness underlying it:
...craziness often takes hold of our own elites and media in the midst of perhaps the most brilliantly executed plan in modern American military history. Rather than inquiring how an entire country was overrun in a little over three weeks at a cost of not more than a few hundred casualties, reporters instead wail at the televised scenes of a day of looting and lawlessness.

Instead I had been expecting at least some interviews about bridges not blown due to the rapidity of the advance. Could someone tell us how special forces saved the oil fields? How Seals prevented the dreaded oil slicks? Whose courage and sacrifice saved the dams? And how so few missiles were launched? Exactly why and how did the Republican Guard cave?

In short, would any reporter demonstrate a smidgeon of curiosity � other than condemning a plan they scarcely understood � about the mechanics of the furious battle for Iraq?
Indeed, such coverage is conspicuous by its absence.

In its place? Public Relations. That was, in effect, what it was - uncritical parroting of the Ba'ath party line.
It is impossible to calibrate how such Iraqi manipulation of American news accounts affected domestic morale, if not providing comfort for those Baathists who wished to discourage popular uprisings of long-suffering Iraqis.

There is something profoundly amoral about this. A newsman who interviewed a state killer at his convenience [Dan Rather] later revisits a now liberated city and complains of the disorder there. A journalist who paid bribe money to fascists and whose dispatches aired from Baghdad in wartime only because the Baathist party felt that they served their own terrorist purposes is disturbed about the chaos of liberation. Now is the time for CNN, NPR, and other news organizations to state publicly what their relationships were in ensuring their reporters� presence in wartime Iraq � and to explain their policies about bribing state officials, allowing censorship of their news releases, and keeping quiet about atrocities to ensure access.

In general, the media has now gone from the hysteria of the Armageddon of Afghanistan to the quagmire of Iraq to the looting in Baghdad � the only constant is slanted coverage, mistaken analysis, and the absence of any contriteness about being in error and in error in such a manner that reflected so poorly upon themselves and damaged the country at large at a time of war. It is as if only further bad news could serve as a sort of catharsis that might at least cleanse them of any unease about being so wrong so predictably and so often.

In the weeks that follow, the media, not the military, will be shown to be in need of introspection and vast reform.
When the government, or the military, or big business is rotten or corrupt, it's the "free press" that's supposed to check and balance them.

So who checks and balances the press?
posted by Mitch Berg 4/14/2003 11:13:09 PM

It's Baaaaaack - Democrat affilated hate site Democrats.com is rerunning an oldie but goodie: the photo supposedly debunking last week's scene in the
Bagh where the large Hussein statue was toppled:

This is conspiracy-mongering at its most craven. Odd, isn't it, that not a single reporter - even dedicated anti-war, anti-Bushites like Robert Fisk never noted any of these things, even as they were at the scene.

Democrats.com . Send 'em some tinfoil. They'll need it.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/14/2003 06:07:08 PM

Bam - There It Is - While I was out yesterday, Tikrit fell. "Saddam's Hardcore" didn't even put up a token resistance, other than the occasional sniper.

Today, the Pentagon says the major fighting is over, although sporadic and sometimes intense fights can be expected while mopping up.

And a twelve-year-old institution, the No-Fly Zone, has been rendered obsolete nearly overnight:
With little public notice, the last two American aircraft based at Incirlik, Turkey, flew home Saturday to Shaw Air Force Base, S.C., ending 12 years of enforcing a flight-interdiction zone over northern Iraq.

About 45 U.S. and British planes were based at Incirlik; they did not participate in the war against Iraq because Turkey would not permit it. With the fall of the Saddam Hussein government, the need for ``no-fly'' zones over northern and southern Iraq had disappeared, officials said.
Three carrier battlegroups (one British) are coming home. The First Cavalry Division's orders to move to the Gulf were rescinded today. Rumors have it that the Third Infantry will come home soon.

Behold the quagmire.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/14/2003 05:53:04 PM

Hawks Like Us - Instapundit posts a (currently non-functioning) link to "The Filibuster", asking "maybe the hawks were right?"

We note that we're seeing:
(1) A high-profile Iranian conservative [calling] for a reexamination of Iran's relationship with Israel.
(2) North Korea may enter multilateral talks -- the kind that the Bush administration has demanded -- about its nuclear program.
More importantly, they'll enter those talks with their nuke program on the table; their intransigence on that issue is apparently ended.

(3) Palestinian Authority Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas has picked a reformist cabinet. (Arafat, the power-hungry jerk, has rejected it.)
It'll be interesting to see how the Syrian deflation will affect Arafat. "Similar to China jerking Kim Jong-Il's chain" is my guess

(4) Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, ally and champion of settlement builders, may uproot his West Bank base "faster than people think."
Let's add: the Syrians are denying fast, but very tactfully. I'd suspect it's a good time to short-sell Hamas stock.

Pyongyang, Damascus, Teheren, Tel Aviv and all the other usual suspects are talking the right talk now.

Nothing succeeds like success.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/14/2003 05:20:35 PM

The Last 24 Hours - It starts as a fisking "of a headline" in the Guardian - but blog Buzz Machine sums up a pretty incredible, if underreported, 24 hours in this conflict:
he Guardian's daily update tries to make it look as if we're losing. Getaloada the headline:

Small successes outweighed
Confusion, looting and tension about Syria overshadow the few achievements of this war

It's bad when you can fisk a headline.
Well, let's see. We took Tikrit, the last major city in Iraq. Saddam is in control of nothing. I would say that is the mark of victory.
Our POWs were free. Let's say that again: Our POWs were free.
The buses are running again in Baghdad as even al-Jazeera admits that order is returning.
Syria is not answering our scolds with taunts; it is acting like a dog that's under control.
And we have arranged a meeting of Iraqi leaders this week to start creating Iraq's first democratic government.
And all that happened in the last 24 hours. Looks like a pretty damned good day to me.
A damned fine day indeed.

One wonders what the likes of the Guardian really expect.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/14/2003 04:57:25 PM

Busy Day - Lots going on. I'll post this evening.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/14/2003 01:14:00 PM

The Public Has A Right To Know - I mentioned yesterday that I've been baking the vast majority of the bread my family eats since I've been job-hunting. Someone wrote asking if I used the loaves of frozen pre-mixed bread, used a bread machine, or made it from scratch.

Oddly, I do it all from scratch. I've always wanted to learn, and it's cheaper. As in, very very cheap.

I have two loaves of whole wheat cooling on the kitchen table right now. Mmmmmm!
posted by Mitch Berg 4/14/2003 11:08:58 AM

Sunday, April 13, 2003

Your Name - Misha at the Rottweiler draws our attention to Tom Bennet, who has this classic letter in the SFGate - an ultraleft website:
Editor -- To the "Not in My Name" geniuses, the Hollywood posers, communists and anarchists posturing as "peace protesters": Iraq is on its way to being free; and just as you requested, it's not in your name. So, for the hundreds of children released from prison where they were held for not joining Saddam Hussein's army, that was not in your name. For the exposure of the torture chambers where Hussein and his henchmen killed and raped, that was not in your name. For the hundreds of Iraqis who will not die this year for speaking out against their brutal regime, that was not in your name. For the oil fields that will be turned into wealth and prosperity for the people of Iraq, that was not in your name. For the Iraqi citizens wildly cheering their glimpse of freedom as the statue of Hussein was toppled in Baghdad, that especially was not in your name.
In all of your names, as it happens, is this: a desire to prolong Hussein's regime; a sense of preening moral equivalence that believes that liberating Iraq was the same as or worse than 9/11; blood of the unacknowledge innocents on your hands.

(Via Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler)
posted by Mitch Berg 4/13/2003 06:24:27 PM

Barbara Billingsley Award - I have bought exactly one loaf of commercially-baked bread in the past two months. I have been baking my own. It's usually tasty and inexpensive.

Usually.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/13/2003 06:19:11 PM

Delayed Blogification - So Instapundit isn't blogging much today, Fraters Libertas are talking hockey (which only takes away time for telecasting baseball, in my book), Jay Reding seems to be taking a long weekend and dealing with server trouble, Plain Layne seems to be offline for some reason, it's a weekend so there's no Lileks or Sullivan, and I've read the last week of Jeff Fecke's last week or two pretty much from cover to cover...

Maybe I should go outside, huh?
posted by Mitch Berg 4/13/2003 03:01:02 PM

Jordan and Iraq - I've gotten a few emails from people discussing Eason Jordan's revelations that CNN sat on details of Hussein's brutality. I have to say, I've learned a bit, to the point where I've changed my mind.

My initital reaction was "wow - that had to have been a tough call'.

Today, I'm a lot less sympathetic. If, as Jordan says, they were unable to really report - to get at the truth under the conditions to which they were subjected by the Hussein regime - then why report at all?

When one is hamstrung from reporting the story, doesn't one cease to be a news organization, and become a de facto PR operation?

Rich Noyes of the Media Research Center says:
Rich Noyes, director of research at the conservative Media Research Center, said that "Jordan now admits that CNN kept many of Saddam's secrets.
"Have other networks also censored their own tales of Saddam's evil?" he asked.
"If accurate reporting from Iraq was impossible, why was access to this dictatorship so important in the first place? And what truths about the thugs who run other totalitarian states � like North Korea, Cuba and Syria � are fearful and/or access-hungry reporters hiding from the American public?" Mr. Noyes said.
. There are many questions that need to be answered. As Sean Hannity (whom I normally can't stand to listen to) asked last night, does anyone honestly think that CNN would have held off running the story even one day had Hussein's regime been idenfied with the political right?

And the big question - what did the other networks, and the newspapers and wire services, know? When did they know it?

And will this change any of the major media's priorities? The New Republic asks in this editorial:
We think that's an excellent question. But the thought that occurs to us as we read Eason's op-ed is: Well, then why the hell did CNN's Baghdad bureau chief, Jane Arraf, write us a scathing letter accusing TNR's Franklin Foer of "cross[ing] over into fiction" when his piece, "Air War," chronicled the extent to which CNN's (and other networks') desire to appease the Iraqi regime was distorting its news coverage. "I'm not sure why anyone would go through the process of obtaining the Iraqi visas Foer describes," Arraf wrote, "other than to fuel dinner-party stories about the horrors of getting into Iraq or to rack up frequent guest points at the InterContinental Hotel." Come to think of it, we're not sure either.
The day that CNN decided to compromise on the truth in this story - as tough as the call no doubt was - was a dark day for American journalism.
posted by Mitch Berg 4/13/2003 02:52:05 PM

Berg's Law of Liberal Iraq Commentary:

In attacking the reasons for war, no liberal commentator is capable of addressing more than one of the justifications at a time; to do so would introduce a context in which their argument can not survive