Op-Ed
It’s time for U.S. citizens to demand that President George W. Bush’s cabinet invoke Section 4 of the 25th Amendment and remove him from office. By a majority vote of the cabinet and the Vice President, transmitted in writing to both the Speaker of the House and the President Pro Tempore of the Senate, the President may be declared “unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office.” Increasingly, journalists are willing to admit that the cognitively-impaired President may indeed be mentally ill.
What would drive a President who lost an election by over half a million votes to attack the arch-enemy of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, rather than to pursue the 9-11 terrorists in the Al Qaeda network? What would cause a President to ignore his generals, his own intelligence agencies, the major religious leaders of the world and the vast majority of the world’s people in pursuing an unnecessary and destabilizing war that is likely to plunge the world into chaos for the next hundred years?
What would drive a President who lost an election by over half a million votes to attack the arch-enemy of Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, rather than to pursue the 9-11 terrorists in the Al Qaeda network? What would cause a President to ignore his generals, his own intelligence agencies, the major religious leaders of the world and the vast majority of the world’s people in pursuing an unnecessary and destabilizing war that is likely to plunge the world into chaos for the next hundred years?
Freep Heroes: Germany and France
The Freep chooses to honor the governments of Germany and France who refused to sanction the Bush administration's war-mongering imperialist dreams in the Middle East. Drunken frat-boy foreign policy, fermented by what psychologists call "dry-drunk" syndrome, was slowed down and possibly halted by the heroic resistance of the French and German people. It's one thing for traditional enemies like China and Russia to resist the United States. It's a new and positive development when our closest European allies refuse to accept the folly and lies of the Washington warmongers.
The Free Press Salutes:
The folks at Victorian's Midnight Cafe
We know Victoria's secret -- she's a peacenik! Spontaneous organic grassroots organizing put more than hundred peace activists into the streets at the February Gallery Hop. The people at Victorian's have created a unique liberated zone where poets, musicians and activists express their views and keep this country truly free. Avoid the corporate chains and the acid reflux brought on by Starbucks. Instead, give Connie Harris a call and sign up for social justice.
The Freep chooses to honor the governments of Germany and France who refused to sanction the Bush administration's war-mongering imperialist dreams in the Middle East. Drunken frat-boy foreign policy, fermented by what psychologists call "dry-drunk" syndrome, was slowed down and possibly halted by the heroic resistance of the French and German people. It's one thing for traditional enemies like China and Russia to resist the United States. It's a new and positive development when our closest European allies refuse to accept the folly and lies of the Washington warmongers.
The Free Press Salutes:
The folks at Victorian's Midnight Cafe
We know Victoria's secret -- she's a peacenik! Spontaneous organic grassroots organizing put more than hundred peace activists into the streets at the February Gallery Hop. The people at Victorian's have created a unique liberated zone where poets, musicians and activists express their views and keep this country truly free. Avoid the corporate chains and the acid reflux brought on by Starbucks. Instead, give Connie Harris a call and sign up for social justice.
As the possibility of a U.S. invasion turns into the reality of
massive carnage, the war on Iraq cannot avoid confronting Americans with
a tacit expectation that rarely gets media scrutiny. In a word:
obedience.
When a country -- particularly "a democracy" -- goes to war, the passive consent of the governed lubricates the machinery of slaughter. Silence is a key form of cooperation, but the war-making system does not insist on quietude or agreement. Mere passivity or self-restraint will suffice to keep the missiles flying, the bombs exploding and the faraway people dying.
On the home front, beliefs are of scant importance. Antiwar sentiment is necessary but insufficient to halt a war. Much more is needed than expressions of dissent that stay within the customary bounds.
Daily media speculation about the starting date for all-out war on Iraq has contributed to widespread passivity -- a kind of spectator relationship to military actions being implemented in our names.
When a country -- particularly "a democracy" -- goes to war, the passive consent of the governed lubricates the machinery of slaughter. Silence is a key form of cooperation, but the war-making system does not insist on quietude or agreement. Mere passivity or self-restraint will suffice to keep the missiles flying, the bombs exploding and the faraway people dying.
On the home front, beliefs are of scant importance. Antiwar sentiment is necessary but insufficient to halt a war. Much more is needed than expressions of dissent that stay within the customary bounds.
Daily media speculation about the starting date for all-out war on Iraq has contributed to widespread passivity -- a kind of spectator relationship to military actions being implemented in our names.
AUSTIN, Texas -- OK, sign me up for the Bush program. I'm aboard. Who else can we insult, offend, bribe, blackmail, threaten, intimidate, wiretap or otherwise infuriate?
Getting the Canadians, who are famous for their phlegm, seriously mad at us took real work. Our latest ploy in that direction was to contemptuously reject their compromise that had a few more days' delay in it than the British-U.S. version. Then, when our version didn't fly, we decided on a few more days' delay ourselves -- without, of course, the contempt.
Then, to add to the festivities of "Let's Tick Off the Next-Door Neighbors Week," we started leaning on Vicente Fox of Mexico. Our ambassador to Mexico, Tony Garza, said: "Will American attitudes be placated by half-steps or three-quarter steps? I kind of doubt it." An unnamed American "diplomat" was quoted as saying it could "stir up feelings" here if Mexico voted against us, and does Mexico "want to stir the fires of jingoism during a war?"
Then, to add to the festivities of "Let's Tick Off the Next-Door Neighbors Week," we started leaning on Vicente Fox of Mexico. Our ambassador to Mexico, Tony Garza, said: "Will American attitudes be placated by half-steps or three-quarter steps? I kind of doubt it." An unnamed American "diplomat" was quoted as saying it could "stir up feelings" here if Mexico voted against us, and does Mexico "want to stir the fires of jingoism during a war?"
AUSTIN, Texas -- After every military engagement, the Pentagon conducts a review to discover what they did right, what they did wrong, what worked and what didn't. It is an admirable tradition and one that needs to be copied by the profession of journalism.
According to a poll conducted by The New York Times and CBS, 42 percent of Americans believe Saddam Hussein of Iraq was personally responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center, something that has never even been claimed by the Bush administration. According to a poll conducted by ABC, 55 percent believes Saddam Hussein gives direct support to Al Qaeda, a claim that has been made by the administration but for which no evidence has ever been presented. President Bush has lately modified the claim to "Al Qaeda-type" organizations. This is how well journalism has done its job in the months leading up to this war. A disgraceful performance.
Ambrose Bierce, the 19th century cynic, once observed that war is God's way of teaching Americans geography. Going to war with the people in such a state, not of ignorance but of misinformation, is truly terrifying.
According to a poll conducted by The New York Times and CBS, 42 percent of Americans believe Saddam Hussein of Iraq was personally responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center, something that has never even been claimed by the Bush administration. According to a poll conducted by ABC, 55 percent believes Saddam Hussein gives direct support to Al Qaeda, a claim that has been made by the administration but for which no evidence has ever been presented. President Bush has lately modified the claim to "Al Qaeda-type" organizations. This is how well journalism has done its job in the months leading up to this war. A disgraceful performance.
Ambrose Bierce, the 19th century cynic, once observed that war is God's way of teaching Americans geography. Going to war with the people in such a state, not of ignorance but of misinformation, is truly terrifying.
Three days after a British newspaper revealed a memo about U.S.
spying on U.N. Security Council delegations, I asked Daniel Ellsberg to
assess the importance of the story. "This leak," he replied, "is more
timely and potentially more important than the Pentagon Papers."
The key word is "timely." Publication of the secret Pentagon Papers in 1971, made possible by Ellsberg's heroic decision to leak those documents, came after the Vietnam War had already been underway for many years. But with all-out war on Iraq still in the future, the leak about spying at the United Nations could erode the Bush administration's already slim chances of getting a war resolution through the Security Council.
The key word is "timely." Publication of the secret Pentagon Papers in 1971, made possible by Ellsberg's heroic decision to leak those documents, came after the Vietnam War had already been underway for many years. But with all-out war on Iraq still in the future, the leak about spying at the United Nations could erode the Bush administration's already slim chances of getting a war resolution through the Security Council.
AUSTIN -- Texas, Our Texas, all hail the mighty state! Gov. Goodhair Perry has promised to use $10 million of state money to help map the bovine genome, the genetic code of a cow, a project to be carried out at Baylor and Texas A&M. Through a bureaucratic fubar, the Texas Department of Health failed to spend $12.5 million of the money it had budgeted to take care of the most desperately ill poor children in this state. Children with cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, spina bifida and heart problems were put on a waiting list -- 1,400 of them -- because the department thought the program was about to go broke.
As Clay Robison of the Houston Chronicle pointed out in a fine column, this should have been a no-brainer. Great, we've got 12.5 more than we thought we had for desperately ill children. Hurray!
As Clay Robison of the Houston Chronicle pointed out in a fine column, this should have been a no-brainer. Great, we've got 12.5 more than we thought we had for desperately ill children. Hurray!
Only in Columbus. A thoughtful peace resolution is put forth by Columbus City Councilperson Charleta Tavares -- and if she hadn't withdrawn it for lack of support on Monday, February 24 -- Columbus would have joined 109 other U.S. cities advocating a peaceful diplomatic solution to the Bush administration's planned slaughter of up to 700,000 Iraqis.
Chicago passed the resolution 54-1, Cleveland had no problem, but in Columbus, WTVN radio, offering all-the-Bush-propaganda-all-the-time, instigated a letter writing campaign to City Council against the resolution. Tavares called it the most ìuncivil" letters ever to flood into Council chambers. The opposition took their cue from the so-called ìpreppie rioters" who aided the Bush family in stealing the 2000 presidential election using threats, intimidation and outright violence to halt the vote count in Florida.
Chicago passed the resolution 54-1, Cleveland had no problem, but in Columbus, WTVN radio, offering all-the-Bush-propaganda-all-the-time, instigated a letter writing campaign to City Council against the resolution. Tavares called it the most ìuncivil" letters ever to flood into Council chambers. The opposition took their cue from the so-called ìpreppie rioters" who aided the Bush family in stealing the 2000 presidential election using threats, intimidation and outright violence to halt the vote count in Florida.
AUSTIN, Texas -- As we wend our weary way toward war, dragging the Turks -- whose price will be our betrayal of the Kurds (fourth time we've double-crossed Kurds, counting Henry Kissinger's triple-cross only once) -- it reminds me of the end of a bad election. Don't believe anything until it's over.
Now is the time we get Iraqi soldiers tossing Kuwaiti babies from incubators and other mind-boggling myths presented as reality. The Guardian is reporting this morning that the United States is wiretapping foreign delegations to the U.N. Security Council, and the worst thing about it is that no one is surprised.
Now is the time we get Iraqi soldiers tossing Kuwaiti babies from incubators and other mind-boggling myths presented as reality. The Guardian is reporting this morning that the United States is wiretapping foreign delegations to the U.N. Security Council, and the worst thing about it is that no one is surprised.
You gotta hand it to America's mass media: When war hangs in
the balance, they sure know how to bury a story.
After devoting thousands of network hours and oceans of ink to stories about "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, major U.S. news outlets did little but yawn in the days after the latest Newsweek published an exclusive report on the subject -- a piece headlined "The Defector's Secrets."
It's hard to imagine how any journalist on the war beat could read the article's lead without doing a double take: "Hussein Kamel, the highest-ranking Iraqi official ever to defect from Saddam Hussein's inner circle, told CIA and British intelligence officers and U.N. inspectors in the summer of 1995 that after the Gulf War, Iraq destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons stocks and the missiles to deliver them."
After devoting thousands of network hours and oceans of ink to stories about "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq, major U.S. news outlets did little but yawn in the days after the latest Newsweek published an exclusive report on the subject -- a piece headlined "The Defector's Secrets."
It's hard to imagine how any journalist on the war beat could read the article's lead without doing a double take: "Hussein Kamel, the highest-ranking Iraqi official ever to defect from Saddam Hussein's inner circle, told CIA and British intelligence officers and U.N. inspectors in the summer of 1995 that after the Gulf War, Iraq destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons stocks and the missiles to deliver them."