Adminstration plans Bin Laden Capture to coincide with Democratic National Convention

Now listen up: Read this National Review article, Pakistan For Bush and tell me again why you are going to vote for George Bush?

This should provide some context for why I think this administration will use any, I mean any, means neccessary to maintain power. That's right, they will even Pressure Pakistan to capture Osama Bin Laden before the election and preferrably, during the National Democratic Convention.

A veritable parade of US dignitaries have shuttled through Islamabad to deliver the message. Colin Powell, George Tenent, Cofer Black, Christina Rocca have all told Parvez to put up before november. From the article:

This public pressure would be appropriate, even laudable, had it not been accompanied by an unseemly private insistence that the Pakistanis deliver these high-value targets (HVTs) before Americans go to the polls in November. The Bush administration denies it has geared the war on terrorism to the electoral calendar. "Our attitude and actions have been the same since September 11 in terms of getting high-value targets off the street, and that doesn't change because of an election," says National Security Council spokesman Sean McCormack. But The New Republic has learned that Pakistani security officials have been told they must produce HVTs by the election. According to one source in Pakistan's powerful Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), "The Pakistani government is really desperate and wants to flush out bin Laden and his associates after the latest pressures from the U.S. administration to deliver before the [upcoming] U.S. elections."

Now you understand the warning I issue below? Pressuring Pakistan is a great idea. But let me tell you, any president that would wait two years pull out the stops to capture the person responsible for killing three thousand of our citizens in order to win an election deserves to be impeached.

It is the most cynical use of power imaginable. Do you get it all of you Bush voters? He waited two years to really try to capture Osama Bin Laden so he could use it as a campaign event. I really can't even imagine the level of personal corruption it takes to conceive and execute such a plan.

A post in which I raise the National Threat Level

Tom Ridge is on national TV, again, telling every man, woman and child in the United States something that, essentially, contains no information whatsoever.

Warnings are wonderful. I live by them. Here is a warning. It is an all purpose warning. It is a warning for all times, well, the next ten years at least. I am only going to say this once. It doesn't need to be repeated. Here it is:

Al Qaeda is planning to attack us.

I do not know how. I do not know when. I do not know where.

I have other warnings to give you, good, useful warnings. Don't let anyone say I didn't tell you so. I would like to put the nation on alert. I have received credible, verifiable evidence of the following:

You will get older.
A car is coming.
Bad people are in the world.
You will eventually blink.

Tommy Ridge aint got nuthin on me. I can warn with the best of them. Here is my best warning yet. It's good for the next 4 months:

The current administration will use the Homeland Security Advisory System to keep the war on terror front and center during the election season in order to dominate headlines. Their national terror alert warnings will roughly coincide with key Kerry campaign announcements. Note, please, the timing of this one: the day after Kerry picked Edwards as his running mate.

Look for something big around the Democratic National Convention.

Talk the talk, walk the walk

Three tidbits of news caught my eye today.

The first left me with the feeling of disquiet that comes from having discovering that I have a radically different view of reality than those who are eapparently in step with the mainstream. What I thought was obvious, and should be obvious, wasn't. The story, Iraq Insurgency Larger Than Thought, had me scratching my head. The administration always downplayed the size of the insurgency in Iraq. They maintained it was a disconnected, unorganized group of hangers on largely fueled by foreign fighters. It just didn't look that way to me. I figured they were just spinning for the sake of spiin. But now I wonder. I know, I know, I am in the cheap seats. But when you disband an army of 600,000 soldiers, doesn't it figure that some of them will go back and fight like crazy? It sounds like they guys at the top are still prone to telling themselves pretty bedtime fairytales about Iraqi love for the American Dream.

Witness the rash of car bombings and mortar attacks that are ramping up the casualty rate. Five more soldiers died today, 20 more were wounded. US Casualties are not going down.

The third story is what continues to evolve between the Isralies and the Palestinians. Today 7 Palestinians were killed during a clash With Israeli troops. I do not have a particularly nuanced view of this conflict. It just reminded me of a scene in The Control Room, Jehane Noujaim's brilliant documentary on Al Jazeera's coverage of the Iraq war, in which Lt. Josh Rushing ruminates on the American failure to connect the Israeli/Palestinian conflict with the war in Iraq.

Rushing's point? To the Arab on the street Israel and America are the same thing. The images of Arab death they see in Palestine are indistinguishable from the images of death they see in Iraq. The soldiers are the same. The weapons are the same. The helicopters looming over residential neighborhoods are the same. The rational and talking points are often the same. The money comes from the same account.

No matter who gets elected in November, it will behoove us all to examine our international problems as if we had walked a mile in our "enemies'" sandals. Otherwise, the unblinking cameras wielded by Al Jazeera will continue to brand US actions as one with the Israelis. We will continue to misinterpret the size and strength of insurgencies, and not just in Iraq. Most tragically perhaps, we will continue to act is if the power of our ideas should trump the pictures of our actions.

Moore fairness, less balance

From the print version of the Salt Lake City Tribune: (Thanks to Amy R)

Meanwhile: The Redstone 8 Cinemas at Kimball Junction placed a disclaimer under its "Fahrenheit 9/11" listings that stated: The playing of Fahrenheit 9/11 does not necessarily represent the views of ownership or management.

One letter to the editor in The Park Record asked if the lack of disclaimers meant the ownership does agree with the views of "White Chicks" and "DodgeBall."

In other Fahrenheit 9/11 commentary, Neil Gabler makes a good point in today's LA Times. He thinks that Moore's Ax Falls on a Derelict Media Too. He simply asks the question, Do we sacrifice and obscure truth in the interest of balance?

Paul Krugman made this point much earlier in an first in a column, then in an interview with Terrance Mcnally, of Alternet. Krugman says:

So rather than really try to report things objectively, they settle for being even-handed, which is not the same thing. One of my lines in a column -- in which a number of people thought I was insulting them personally -- was that if Bush said the earth was flat, the mainstream media would have stories with the headline: "Shape of the Earth -- Views Differ." Then they'd quote some Democrats saying that it was round.

As you read and evaluate "news" in the coming months, it will be particularly important to recognize this trend in the media. Each seem to be more fearful of accusations of bias than they are of getting the facts straight. The facts may be there, but it will be up to you to carefully verify them with an open mind. If there is an accusation, for example that Kerry voted to raise taxes 350 times, the media will report the accusation and not whether or not he actually did make those votes. He didn't by the way. I checked. Moore, with his factually accurate but unbalanced movie, has kicked open the door for the media to start being a little less balanced to both sides, which might result in a little more fairness.

Gay Marriage - I reluctantly weigh in

Gay marriage. I have studiously avoided this topic for two reasons. I don't want to give additional ink to a wedge issue and I frankly don't understand the fervor with which people oppose the idea. Even when Minnesota narrowly escaped having to vote on the issue, I wrote nothing. But yesterday, as the AP reported, 500,000 people signed a petition in Michigan demanding the state constitution be amended to ban Gay Marriage. Who are these people?? And what are they thinking?? It is a mystery to me.

In all probability, there is no resolution to this issue. I do not think people will change their minds about Gay Marriage. Most Americans do not believe it should be legal for two people of the same sex to marry. However, according to this USA Today poll, 61% of people 18-29 believe it should be legal. In the 30 - 49 age group, that number shrinks to 37% who approve of gay marriage.

Given these facts, here is what will happen: In twenty years or so, enough of the people who really hate the idea of gay marriage will be dead. The people who don't object to the idea will be in the majority, and it will become legal. All bets are off if the rapture happens in the interim.

We could save ourselves a lot of time and useless shouting in the wind if we used our noggins to think this through for a couple of ticks.

As far as I can tell, the roots of the issue rest in an individual's definition of the origin of sexual preference. Either you believe that being gay is a matter of choice or you believe that it is genetic. In the first case, a person wakes up one day and says, "self, thou shall be gay today and evermore" and gayness ensues. In the second case, the gay person is born gay, and, well, gayness ensues.

Both cases pose serious challenges to thinking Americans.

If a person is born gay, why should we punish them for the way they come out of the womb? We do not punish other people for the way they come out of the womb. There is some evidence that some people are born gay. Does anybody really dispute this? I think there is at least one person alive in the US right now who was, irrefutably, born gay. How can we deny this person the right to marry, which is the natural enactment of the human desire for love and family? How can we really consider ostracizing that person in our national or state constitutions?

If a person chooses to be gay, who are we to say he or she does not have the right to form a loving relationship wtih whomever they so choose? What does it matter to me whether my neighbor marries a man, a woman, or neither. I am neither robbed nor injured by it. If we deprive citizens of this choice, then what is the meaning of liberty? If my neighbor marries a man or woman or nobody, how does it affect me? To outlaw a relationship between two human beings is the antithesis of good government. True conservatives should rebel against government grabbing this power. Believe me folks, you don't want the government in your bedrooms. If I am wrong about this, I want to know. Someone please tell me.

The only legitimate argument against gay marriage is that it may be in direct contradiction to the principles of one's religion. It is legitimate because it is irrefutable. Unfortunately, it is unconstitutional to make a law regarding religion in this country. Religious arguments are disallowed in policy discussions in the United States. Fortunately, praise the Lord, we have the right to practice our religion in any way we choose. We can ban or support gay marriages to our heart's content within the context of our churches.

It would be a really bad idea to allow the Republican party to hold sway on this issue. Not only is it terrible policy and a frightening expansion of government power, it's also a lot of work to amend the constituion. I don't want my kids to have to undo this forty years down the road, when all the people who voted for it are dead.

Strange dreams

This is interesting:

The New York Times is alleging that CIA Failed to Disclose Iraqi Scientist Details. Evidently, the CIA knew that Iraq had abandoned it's programs to develop unconventional weapons. It just didn't clue in George.

If that's true (and that's a kind of a big if) then this war is the result of the union of some of the strangest series of coincidences in history. I mean, imagine for a second if a leader with primo Oedipal motivation gets teamed up with lots of ultra-sharp, uber-hawkish underlings and an intelligence agency that won't tell him what's what. Throw in a world-shaking calamity like 9/11 and waddaya get? America off on a wingnut and a prayer.