Author: geoff

Many folks (especially pundits, Howard Dean, and right-wingers) seem to think that Kerry’s votes on Iraq mean that he cannot legitimately criticise Bush on the subject. I think that’s utter nonsense. Here’s one way he could answer those critics. I realise that this text may be a bit too strong — after all, only 20% of Americans actually believe that Bush lied, while another 35% think he merely “exaggerated”. Nevertheless what follows seems to me to be an entirely self-consistent position for Kerry to take:
“I voted to authorize the 2nd Gulf War because I believed the case that the Administration had presented, that Saddam Hussein represented a clear and present danger to the United States. The idea that the President, the Vice-President, the Secretary of State, the National Security Adviser, and the Secretary of Defense would mislead the Congress and the people over such a crucial matter was something that never even entered my head. What kind of man would undertake a pre-emptive and unilateral war, and would order American troops into battle, to kill and be killed, to slaughter Iraqi civilians, to destroy our standing among the United Nations, and to dramatically increase the likelihood of terrorism against ourselves and our allies, without incontrovertible evidence?
Yet, tragically, I was wrong. The President had no such evidence. His own Intelligence staff warned him of this. Whether you consider him guilty of deliberate lying or merely of exaggerated and wishful thinking, the fact is that the President did not tell us the truth. He misled us in order to persuade us to support an unjust war, a war unconnected to the tragedy of 9/11, and a war which, according to members of his own Cabinet, he had decided to fight as long ago as January, 2001. I trusted the President — we all did — and he abused that trust”

Over in London, the Observer has just run a story providing details of US and UK spying at the UN and how it was used to derail an attempt to delay military action against Iraq.
Now in the UK, the relevant ministers are certain to be asked whether they approved the spy operation (in which case their explanations/excuses will be eagerly awaited) or not (in which case the question is simply “who’s in charge?”). Either way, it’s more bad news for Blair.
But will any US media pick it up? Will Bush or Rumsfeld or Powell be asked to explain why America conducts covert operations against the representatives of sovereign nations at the UN? If not, why not?
The story is here.

On Saturday I received a slim, glossy package in the mail. It was from Macallan, and contained a DVD with a 17 minute film about the making of Macallan single malt Scotch. Quite apart from being interesting and educational, it got me thinking about 21st century marketing. A DVD is now a disposable piece of collateral material. Mmmmm….
So here’s a suggestion for George Soros, the “legendary investor and philanthropist” who’s pledged his fortune to get rid of George Bush. Fund the creation of a short video based on the devastating book The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill by Ron Suskind. It doesn’t have to be fancy: a few video clips, plus still shots (using the Ken Burns Effect from Apple’s iMovie, perhaps), with a voice-over narrated by a super-trustworthy voice. Morgan Freeman would be good. Slap it onto DVD and mail a copy to every household in the USA.

As we approach the release of the Hutton report, and with more and more officials publically voicing the opinion that there were no Iraqi WMDs, Tony Blair has retreated to the position that it’s all about his “integrity”. Screw integrity: here’s what I would ask Blair if I had the chance. “On February 26th 2003, you asked Parliament to support military action against Iraq. If you had known then what you know now – know for a fact, not believe or hope – would you still have asked for a vote to go to war? Yes or no.” It’s not such a hard question….

Driving into work this morning I was listening to the BBC World Service on WBUR, my local PBS radio station. In their response to Bush’s State of the Union speech yesterday , several Democrats had expressed anger that Bush’s policies had left the US isolated. In typical fashion, the BBC decided to follow this up and invited a couple of guests to discuss US isolation.
I didn’t catch the name of the first man, an academic with an Arabic name at something like the Institute for the Study of Democracy. The second guest was Tim Spangler from the UK chapter of Republicans Abroad International.
There was about about 10 minutes of discussion, during which Spangler basically cheered on Bush, and the academic pointed out some of the problems of using the term “war” for something as diffuse and open-ended as terrorism. (Clearly he’d never come across the US War on Drugs!)
Quite suddenly, Spangler startled me (and the interviewer, and many others, I should imagine) by interrupting a question about the root causes of terrorism, and declaring, flatly, “We know what causes terrorism. Terrorists cause terrorism. The way to stop terrorism is to hunt down the terrorists and stop them.” And though the other two tried to raise questions about political, sociological, and historical factors, Spangler wasn’t having any of it. “Terrorists cause terrorism” – case closed.
I wonder if Spangler realized how crass, naive, rude, and simplistic he sounded. Sadly, I doubt it – his uncritical, unsubtle, black-and-white language seemed to come straight from His Master’s Voice….