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Terror Watch: The Hunt for WMD Continues
Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R. – Mich.) demanded in recent weeks that US intelligence agencies continue to look for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. He might be another voice in the crowd, but unfortunately he is the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee. The intelligence officials who report to his committee say there is nothing new to discover.
We have been in Iraq for three years now. The UN weapons inspectors found nothing in the years preceding our invasion of Iraq, and since the invasion nothing of any significance has been found. Yet Rep. Hoekstra wants to devote hundreds more man hours to continue looking for these phantom WMDs.
To be fair, some old chemical weapons have been found. Recently 300 old chemical shells were found, and there were 500 sarin shells found earlier. All of these shells, though, dated back to before the 1991 Persian Gulf War. They were in such bad condition they couldn’t have conceiveably been used for any destructive purpose.
Saddam Hussein did not possess WMDs before President Bush decided to invade Iraq. He apparently had no plans to revive his program. The WMDs that justified the invasion did not exist. We went to war over phantom chemicals.
Hoekstra insists that “there are continuing threats from the materials that are or may still be in Iraq.” The thing is, though, Hoekstra has said he wants the intelligence agencies “to more fully pursue a complete investigation of what existed in Iraq before the war.” BEFORE the war? Why? It’s beating such a dead horse! They don’t exist, and even if they do, they are in such poor shape they can’t be used! Why waste the manpower and money to continue this wild goose chase? Is he that desperate to somehow vindicate the White House? Even the White House has backed off on its claims of WMDs.
Jamal Ware, a spokesman for Hoekstra, asserts that Hoekstra’s main concern is that all munitions dumps and sites that could still pose a hazard to U.S. soldiers be found. “Any effort that chairman Hoekstra has made in this area has been aimed at insuring the safety of our troops overseas,” he said. So it’s not to make the Iraqi people more secure. It’s to make our soldiers more secure. But the alleged WMDs don’t pose a threat to our people!
There are those in the U.S. intelligence community who see Hoekstra’s demands as a waste of time. One source Hoekstra claimed for proof of the existence of the WMDs was Georges Sada, a former Iraqi Air Force general who claimed in a book that chemical weapons were flown from Iraq to Syria prior to the U.S. invasion. Sada has admitted he never actually saw any of the weapons, but his allegations were prominently featured on Fox News.
The bottom line is that more than three years into the war, the mission is not accomplished and is unlikely ever to be accomplished. There are better and more productive things to spend our intelligence resources on than a search for ghosts.
‘Just a Comma’ on National Punctuation Day
According to the Carpetbagger Report, which can be accessed on the Think Progress website, this afternoon on CNN’s Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, George W. Bush practically said that all the sectarian violence in Iraq is irrelevant. When history views what is going on in Iraq now, Bush claims it will be seen as “just a comma.”
Is it just me, or does anyone else think he needs to go back to primary school and learn punctuation?
This is what was said:
BLITZER: Let’s move on and talk a little bit about Iraq. Because this is a huge, huge issue, as you know, for the American public, a lot of concern that perhaps they are on the verge of a civil war, if not already a civil war…. We see these horrible bodies showing up, tortured, mutilation. The Shia and the Sunni, the Iranians apparently having a negative role. Of course, al Qaeda in Iraq is still operating.
BUSH: Yes, you see — you see it on TV, and that’s the power of an enemy that is willing to kill innocent people. But there’s also an unbelievable will and resiliency by the Iraqi people…. Admittedly, it seems like a decade ago. I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is — my point is, there’s a strong will for democracy.
Presumably, our Ivy League-educated Miscommunicator in Chief meant that all the mutilations, the suicide bombs, the beheadings, as well as all the senseless murder of civilian men, women, and children in the marketplaces and at mosques, will be only a footnote in Iraqi history. That would make more sense, anyway.
I find it extremely hard to believe that what is happening in Iraq right now will be reduced to some kind of punctuation mark – a squiggle that doesn’t even mention it. Heck, I’ll go out on a limb and admit that I believe that it will even merit considerably more than a footnote! The Boston Tea Party merits more than a footnote, after all, and it had all the hallmarks of a fraternity prank, the likes of which I’m sure our esteemed chief executive was familiar with at Yale. If dumping a cargo of tea into Boston Harbor is part of the legend of American democracy, surely the mutilations and murders of thousands of people over a period of a few months will be part of the legend of Iraqi democracy.
How could we have re-elected this idiot? How could this fool ever have been elected president in the first place? Oh, yeah. I forgot. He wasn’t.
Perhaps Bush decided to make this comment because today is National Punctuation Day. No kidding. It really is.
9/11 Takes to Comics – Seriously
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This goes in the category of disbelief. Or does it?
The 9/11 Commission Report was long-winded and confusing. It was written in words not every eighth grader understood easily. It didn’t have colorful pictures. So a couple of guys with some experience in the genre adapted it to the comic book format.
At first, I was not very accepting of this idea. As I have sat here thinking about it, though, I am warming to the notion. Not all “graphic novels” are comic. Take, for example, V for Vendetta. Nothing humorous there, was there? Even Batman and Superman weren’t funny. Entertaining, yes. Gripping and compelling, yes. But not exactly newsworthy stuff.
Hang on, though. The guys who did the graphic adaptation of the 9/11 Commission Report had experience working on sweet little funnies like Richie Rich and Casper (the friendly ghost, not Weinberger). They didn’t have experience working on non-fiction, or even serious graphic fiction.
The idea is to put the commission’s report into language and context that any quasi-literate American can understand. That’s a laudable idea. Any words in balloons are direct quotes from the commission’s report, claim the authors. That, too, is laudable. The authors researched the report beyond the language of the report itself, which is certainly a good reporting practice.
Now, suppose ABC had shown similar attention to facts when it created its “docudrama” that aired on either side of the president’s speech Monday night?
It says a lot when comic books are more socially responsible than a major television news network.
Gaining Respect for (gulp) Condoleezza
Lawyers and G.O.P. Chiefs Resist Proposal on Tribunal – New York Times
Selected portions of this astounding article:
“The Bush administration’s proposal to bring leading terrorism suspects before military tribunals met stiff resistance Thursday from key Republicans and top military lawyers who said some provisions would not withstand legal scrutiny or do enough to repair the nation’s tarnished reputation internationally….
“The administration officials, who agreed to discuss internal administration deliberations in exchange for anonymity, said the decision to transfer high-level terror suspects from Central Intelligence Agency prisons to military custody had been the result of months of secret debate at the highest levels of government.
“The officials said the change had been most vigorously championed by the State Department, under Condoleezza Rice, against some resistance from a range of officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, who had defended the status quo, in which high-level leaders of Al Qaeda, including the man identified as the mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks, have been held in secret C.I.A custody.
“Brig, Gen. James C. Walker, the top uniformed lawyer for the Marines, said that no civilized country should deny a defendant the right to see the evidence against him and that the United States ‘should not be the first.’
“Maj. Gen. Scott C. Black, the judge advocate general of the Army, made the same point, and Rear Adm. Bruce E. MacDonald, the judge advocate general of the Navy, said military law provided rules for using classified evidence, whereby a judge could prepare an unclassified version of the evidence to share with the jury and the accused and his lawyer.
Senate Republicans said the proposal to deny the accused the right to see classified evidence was one of the main points of contention remaining between them and the administration.
‘It would be unacceptable, legally, in my opinion, to give someone the death penalty in a trial where they never heard the evidence against them,’ said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who has played a key role in the drafting of alternative legislation as a member of the Armed Services Committee and a military judge. ‘”Trust us, you’re guilty, we’re going to execute you, but we can’t tell you why”? That’s not going to pass muster; that’s not necessary.”
I may have to rethink my total disgust with absolutely every member of the Bush administration. This NYT article tells us that Condi actually opposes holding suspected terrorists in secret CIA prisons. She apparently even wants to give them a trial before they are executed. Yes, a member of the Bush administration thinks perhaps due process should at least be given a nod with respect to these people.
The article says she and Cheney have been in conflict over this subject. Anyone in the administration who stands up to Cheney has my attention, if not my respect. That man scares the hell out of me. W observed the same vice presidential plan as his father – pick one that would be a much worse president and guarantee no one will opt for assassination.
How should our government prosecute someone when the evidence against them is classified? The Bush administration would simply say that the defendant shouldn’t know the classified evidence against him, but should be convicted anyway. This violates the Confrontation Clause in the US Constitution, which provides that a criminal defendant should be fully apprised of the evidence against him and be able to confront the witnesses presenting that evidence.
The Confrontation Clause is part of the Bill of Rights, those first ten Amendments to the Constitution that address the basic rights and freedoms that all people should have. This is where we find the freedom of speech and religion, the right to be secure in our homes against government intrusion, the right of states to organize militias, the criminal defendant’s right to a lawyer, the right to associate with whomever we wish.
Why was this included in the Bill of Rights? We should keep in mind that the framers of our constitution were considered criminals themselves at one point in their lives: immediately before and during the revolutionary war. In crafting the constitution there were months of heated debate and argument about wehat to include and how it should be include d. The framers carefully worded each phrase so as to lay a foundation for a free society.
I think if any of the framers were alive today to see how much government intrusion there is in our daily lives, they would be shocked senseless.
But back to the issue of confrontation: When one is accused of a crime and subject to losing his liberty or his life becauseof the accusations, he must know what the evidence is and he must be given a lawyer so that he can do his best to effectively counter it. His liberty is on the line. His life may be on the line. The Bush administration would have us support keeping the terrorist suspects in custody as well as the prisoners of war held at Guantanamo Bay, just because the administration doesn’t want to explain what the evidence is.
This is the same administration that insisted Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, remember? And it says, just like when it justified going to war in Iraq, “we have good evidence, but we’re not going to tell you what it is.”
The chief executive of the United States government should support the constitution enthusiastically and without exception. This administration has sought ways around it and other laws at every turn. It diminishes my respect for the government.
Government Report: Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq
In a nutshell, even though “Mission Accomplished” happened years ago, the violence is much worse. Aren’t we proud of what we did for that country? The people are so much better off! You only stop the killing by having a stable government in place. And didn’t we do a good job of making sure their government was stable?
I’ll be the first to agree that Saddam Hussein was and probably still is evil incarnate on a par with Stalin and Hitler and Vlad the Impaler. Obviously something or someone needed to stop him and his heinous offspring from their reign of terror. But that is what revolutions are for. Now we and our allies are mired in a situation that is repidly deteriorating into a much larger mess with as many people being murdered daily as Saddam himself managed. Are we really improving things?
I admit to selfish motivation. There is someone in Iraq right now who I very desperately want to come home as soon as possible in one piece.
Here’s a link to the report, dated August 29:
Immigration Disaster
Several of my friends have posted blogs about illegal aliens lately. A couple have referred to the invasion from the south, referring to the staggering number of illegal immigrants crossing the border from Mexico. It has prompted me to contemplate the issue more fully than I have in the past.
I have come to the inescapable conclusion that many believe we are being invaded by a vast horde that was never invited here, never applied through legal channels to come here, and which we have neither the infrastructure nor the economy to support.
I want to make it perfectly clear that I have no objection whatsoever to legal immigration. Congress should, in my opinion, make better immigration policies that pave a pathway to integration and citizenship. But in the face of the mind-boggling numbers of illegal immigrants, reducing the number of foreign-born people coming legally to the U.S. would seem only to punish those who go about things the proper way and reward those who do not. Congress needs to focus on the “invasion” from the south more than it needs to worry about the people who are doing things the right way. It needs to prioritize according to the severity of the crisis. What is happening in California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas is just that: a crisis. But it’s a crisis in which the United States is complicit and which it could handle much better.
I’ve seen lots of irritation over Spanish language options at banks, telephone service calls, and government offices. Why is this option even necessary? Here’s why: “nearly 50 million Americans spoke a language other than English at home in 2004—nearly one-fifth of all U.S. residents age 5 or older.”
Holy Hablamos Español, Batman.
With the current estimated levels of immigrants – legal and extra-legal – coming across the Río Grande, the number of non-English speaking homes is increasing rapidly. Population growth by immigration outpaces the rate at which we are replacing our U.S.-born population.
The government estimates that in 2005, there were “between 11.5 million and 12 million unauthorized immigrants and 10.5 million legal immigrants.” That’s right. There were at least one million more illegal immigrants in this country than legal immigrants. These numbers do not take into consideration naturalized citizens.
What’s even more staggering is that Hispanics account for almost one-half of the U.S. population growth overall. Now, to be fair, only about 60% of the non-legal immigrants are Mexican, so it’s not like we can just blame Mexico. Another 20% are from other Latin American countries. Eighty percent of the illegal aliens in this country are Spanish-speaking. Sí, Dear Reader, español se habla aquí, y se habla mucho.
Our infrastructure cannot keep up with the explosive growth due to immigration at these levels. In the video I’ve embedded below, we are told that in order to keep up with the population growth due considerably to uncontrolled illegal immigration, a new school will have to be built every single day from now until the end of time. That doesn’t even take into consideration the financial burden such population growth places on cities where these immigrants settle. Housing, food, transportation, the environment, road building, social services, child welfare, care of the elderly, daycare, water consumption, sewage treatment, garbage removal and disposal – the list goes on and on.
The National Guard and the Reserves are now being redirected to help with border patrol when they aren’t being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. Deployment of these forces, which was infrequent before the 1990s, is available for all who want to go and required of many who don’t.
But are any of these wars worth fighting?