Category Archives: War

The Worst has Become the ‘Best’

Democrats, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Iraq, Neoconservatism, The Zeitgeist, War

I watched Wonkette (or is it “Wonkette Emerita”) on Joe Scarborough. Unlike Tucker and Olbermann (good for them), he seems intent on parading airheads on his show (the segment “Hollyweird” comes to mind). Chris Matthews also invited this woman on his show to roll the words off her tongue, as she does with such affectation. In any case, she called Jim Webb a pumpkin head. The dictionary says that’s “a slow or dim-witted person.” Webb is nothing of the sort. When I first began writing about Iraq on WND.com, Webb e-mailed me in approval a few times, sending his editorials along. You have to be a complete wombat (“Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time”) like Wonkette to call Webb slow. A thought I recently shared with an interlocutor popped into my mind:

When I was young, the world was more merit based. It made more sense then. I could still be the best in the class. Now, the worst has become the best. Standards have been inverted. Nothing makes sense (except that one has to stick to one’s principles and be true to the truth). The awakening came when I first got to Canada and attended some course. A woman opened up her mouth to speak, and I thought, “Shame, she’s retarded.” Later it transpired she had degrees from McGill and other Ivy-league schools. I was in for an education. The woman wasn’t Wonkette, but came close…

The Worst has Become the 'Best'

Democrats, Human Accomplishment, Intelligence, Iraq, Neoconservatism, The Zeitgeist, War

I watched Wonkette (or is it “Wonkette Emerita”) on Joe Scarborough. Unlike Tucker and Olbermann (good for them), he seems intent on parading airheads on his show (the segment “Hollyweird” comes to mind). Chris Matthews also invited this woman on his show to roll the words off her tongue, as she does with such affectation. In any case, she called Jim Webb a pumpkin head. The dictionary says that’s “a slow or dim-witted person.” Webb is nothing of the sort. When I first began writing about Iraq on WND.com, Webb e-mailed me in approval a few times, sending his editorials along. You have to be a complete wombat (“Waste Of Money, Brains, And Time”) like Wonkette to call Webb slow. A thought I recently shared with an interlocutor popped into my mind:

When I was young, the world was more merit based. It made more sense then. I could still be the best in the class. Now, the worst has become the best. Standards have been inverted. Nothing makes sense (except that one has to stick to one’s principles and be true to the truth). The awakening came when I first got to Canada and attended some course. A woman opened up her mouth to speak, and I thought, “Shame, she’s retarded.” Later it transpired she had degrees from McGill and other Ivy-league schools. I was in for an education. The woman wasn’t Wonkette, but came close…

Letter of the Week: War Powers by John Danforth

War

John Danforth responds to “A Republic, if You Can Keep It…”:

The Constitution of the United States of America has become just a decoration in some museum in Washington DC. Its words are platitudes, phrases to be used whenever the ACLU wants to sound scholarly. The populace has been government schooled in studious avoidance of the subject; ignorance of the constitution is fashionable, and this extends to members of congress.

I saw a snippet of an interview with our President the other day. I saw him say that he didn’t question the patriotism of those who opposed this latest bill, but he just sees things differently. He said, in his view, that we are at war, and they don’t see it that way.

This is where the equivocation comes in. We are at war, but not really. Just like other “Wars” we have been in, but weren’t really. I can dredge up from my rusty memory that the constitution explicitly says that congress has the power to declare war, and that the president is commander in chief of the armed forces. Although newer laws and bills have been passed, whereby congress gave assent to the use of force, still, we are NOT at war (at least not legally).

If we are not in a state of war, the U.S. government has no business trying to assert war-time emergency powers (which ought to be limited as well.) The Founding Fathers knew of the dangers of perpetual mini-wars. I believe that is why they tried to prevent them with the wording in our constitution. The threat of real war is intended to be something that our enemies and our citizenry will consider very seriously and very cautiously.

Just as with the commerce clause and amendments to the constitution, if the distinctions drawn by the authors of it can be fuzzed out of our ‘six-pack and ball game’ consciousness, then the fact that we are ‘sort of’ at war can allow the government to ‘sort of’ erode the foundations of our rights, and then only the ACLU will ‘sort of’ argue against the portions of a bill that don’t fit with their socialist agenda.

The attack on rational epistemology that started so long ago and has resulted in the United States adopting many of the planks of the Communist Manifesto–has now begun to bear real rotten fruit. We can justify the constitutionality of virtually anything, especially if the Supreme Court says so.

Pass me the laughing gas, I need another hit. I’m feeling like I don’t fit in around here.

—John Danforth

Updated: Rotten Reporting Again (About Those 650 Thou Dead in Iraq)

Iraq, Journalism, Media, The Zeitgeist, War

The Associates Press (via Rational Report) reports that:

A “controversial new study contends that nearly 655,000 Iraqis have died in the three-year-old conflict in Iraq—more than 10 times higher than other independent estimates of the toll.”

Dubya and his Oh-What-A-Wonderful-War contingent dispute these figures. And so they should.

The latest Lancet report has never claimed 655,000 civilian deaths total, but rather that, “An estimated 655,000 more Iraqis have died as a consequence of the March 2003 military invasion of Iraq than would have been expected in a non-conflict situation.”

What we have here, once again, is rotten reporting. When the first Lancet report appeared two year ago, mainstream press also fudged the facts. I think I was the only writer who made the necessary distinctions. I explained:

“In the final days of Saddam’s reign of terror, i.e., in the 15 months preceding the invasion, the primary causes of death in Iraq were natural: heart attack, stroke and chronic illness. Since Iraq became another neocon object lesson, the primary cause of death has been violence, according to the report.
Since March 2003, Iraqis have suffered from an excess of deaths, if you will. As Dr. Les Roberts, author of the study, told BBC News, ‘About 100,000 excess deaths, or more, have happened since the 2003 invasion of Iraq.’
According to the study, “The relative risk, the risk of deaths from any cause was two-and-a-half times higher for Iraqi civilians after the 2003 invasion than in the preceding 15 months. But ‘the risk of death by violence for civilians in Iraq is now 58 times higher than before the U.S.-led invasion.”

Update: My thanks to Bob Murphy and Sean Mercer for demanding further clarification: My point is non-ideological; I’d simply like to see accurate reporting. The 650,000 figure would include deaths due to a greater incidence of heart attacks, cancer, strokes, stress and displacement-related deaths, deaths associated with a lack of health care and potable water, etc. Thus, silly journalists build doubt into the report because they give the impression that this many people died directly because of the war. Rather, the figure represents both direct and indirect casualties of the invasion, which is why it’s believable.

It goes without saying that the report is a criminal indictment of the invasion. If not for the invasion, the leading cause of death in Iraqi would still be natural, as it was during Saddam’s suzerainty.