“UPI ought to be embarassed now that Helen Thomas has said that George Bush is the worst president in American history.” — Sean Hannity, on his radio show, a few minutes ago, apparently unaware that Helen Thomas resigned from UPI when the Moonies bought it in 2000.
Ken Layne had some free advice for Salon recently. I’m especially with him on this:
Next, I’d get rid of all the right-leaning columnists. It’s pointless to pretend you’re all things to all people when you’re clearly a left-leaning San Francisco site for left-leaning yuppies. If that’s the readership, embrace it. Return to the partisan days of the Clinton impeachment. Make fun of Dubya. Profile Jackson Browne or whoever.
Well, maybe not Jackson Browne — and I think Salon has been an important critic of Dubya — but you get the basic idea. Salon is a left/liberal site, which needs the loyalty of its core audience right now more than ever. Clicking through the ad or coughing over the subscription money only to be confronted with Andrew Sullivan’s Liberal Idiocy of the Week column is the online equivalent of a sucker punch.
What’s the old quote? A liberal is someone who’s so fair-minded, he won’t take his own side in an argument?
(As always, I encourage you to share your thoughts about Salon withSalon, rather than me.)
The general who commanded U.S. forces in the 1991 Gulf War says he hasn’t seen enough evidence to convince him that his old comrades Dick Cheney, Colin Powell and Paul Wolfowitz are correct in moving toward a new war now. He thinks U.N. inspections are still the proper course to follow. He’s worried about the cockiness of the U.S. war plan, and even more by the potential human and financial costs of occupying Iraq.
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“The thought of Saddam Hussein with a sophisticated nuclear capability is a frightening thought, okay?” he says. “Now, having said that, I don’t know what intelligence the U.S. government has. And before I can just stand up and say, ‘Beyond a shadow of a doubt, we need to invade Iraq,’ I guess I would like to have better information.”
He hasn’t seen that yet, and so — in sharp contrast to the Bush administration — he supports letting the U.N. weapons inspectors drive the timetable: “I think it is very important for us to wait and see what the inspectors come up with, and hopefully they come up with something conclusive.”
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“The Rumsfeld thing . . . that’s what comes up,” when he calls old Army friends in the Pentagon, he says.
“When he makes his comments, it appears that he disregards the Army,” Schwarzkopf says. “He gives the perception when he’s on TV that he is the guy driving the train and everybody else better fall in line behind him — or else.”
That dismissive posture bothers Schwarzkopf because he thinks Rumsfeld and the people around him lack the background to make sound military judgments by themselves. He prefers the way Cheney operated during the Gulf War. “He didn’t put himself in the position of being the decision-maker as far as tactics were concerned, as far as troop deployments, as far as missions were concerned.”
Rumsfeld, by contrast, worries him. “It’s scary, okay?” he says. “Let’s face it: There are guys at the Pentagon who have been involved in operational planning for their entire lives, okay? . . . And for this wisdom, acquired during many operations, wars, schools, for that just to be ignored, and in its place have somebody who doesn’t have any of that training, is of concern.”
When you read about the evils of Saddam’s regime, it all almost begins to make sense. Maybe they’re right, you think. Maybe the Iraqi people really will be grateful to have been liberated from this repressive, murderous, torturous regime.
The US intends to shatter Iraq “physically, emotionally and psychologically” by raining down on its people as many as 800 cruise missiles in two days.
The Pentagon battle plan aims not only to crush Iraqi troops, but also wipe out power and water supplies in the capital, Baghdad.
It is based on a strategy known as “Shock and Awe”, conceived at the National Defense University in Washington, in which between 300 and 400 cruise missiles would fall on Iraq each day for two consecutive days. It would be more than twice the number of missiles launched during the entire 40 days of the 1991 GulfWar.
“There will not be a safe place in Baghdad,” a Pentagon official told America’s CBS News after a briefing on the plan. “The sheer size of this has never been seen before, never been contemplated before.”
And then you come to your senses.
If this is true, and not just some kind of planted Psyop story designed to freak out the Iraqis — well, fuck us all. Does even the most bloodthirsty warblogger honestly imagine that the Iraqi people are going to be grateful, if they even manage to survive a two day blitz of 300-400 cruise missiles?
Sometimes the cure really is worse than the disease.
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And then there’s Nicholas Kristoff’s level-headed cost-benefit analysis in this morning’s New York Times (registration required — get over it):
The starting point to justify an invasion, it seems to me, has to be an affirmative answer to the question: Will we be safer if we invade?
The real answer is that we don’t know. But it’s quite plausible that an invasion will increase the danger to us, not lessen it. As a C.I.A. assessment said last October: “Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks [in the U.S.]. Should Saddam conclude that a U.S.-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions.” It added that Saddam might order attacks with weapons of mass destruction as “his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him.”
Frankly, it seems a bad idea to sacrifice our troops’ lives — along with billions of dollars — in a way that may add to our vulnerability.
I don’t know if Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction (though attacking Iraq is certainly one way to find out for sure). But I don’t doubt for a moment that there are plenty of people who would like to see a reprise of 9/11, and who will view this as a terrific opportunity to make that happen. The pro-war types seem to be thinking of the Attack on Iraq as an exciting new reality series they’ve been looking forward to — but as a resident of the City Most Likely to be Destroyed by a Suitcase Bomb at any Moment, I have this nagging feeling that I may end up on the wrong side of the television screen…
The cartoon is supposed to go up on their site on Tuesdays, but I don’t know exactly when. If you can’t wait, you’ve always got the choice to click through Salon’s ads. I know it’s a pain, but try to remember: Salon isn’t bankrolled by Bill Gates, and they don’t have a print edition whose advertising and subscriptions support their online version. They’re simply trying to figure out how to stay afloat.
If those ads make you so angry that you’re never going to read Salon again, etc., etc., well — I agree, they’re sort of a nuisance. But what you’re also telling me, of course, is that my work isn’t worth an extra ten seconds of your time.
You can imagine the depth of my sympathy.
(Those of you who do consider the cartoon worth the trouble have my sincere and heartfelt thanks — as do the majority of you who have, as requested, sent your thoughts on this subject to Salon, rather than to me.)
Update: some people actually prefer the new policy.
The new Salon policy is great! Watch one little commercial — and you get a free day pass to all of Salon Premium!
You should be pointing out what a sweet deal this is, not bemoaning it and scaring off the commercial-phobic.
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Clicked through Salon’s ads yesterday *took like 5 seconds* I actually prefer it cuz now I have access to all their stuff. Which means I can be even less productive!! Thanks!
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People can always pay the $30 premium and not deal with Salon’s ads at all. I did it. It didn’t hurt too much. It’s like pledging to NPR, only it’s cheaper and Nina Totenberg doesn’t give you a guilt trip twice a year. Seems a small price to pay for the diverse spread of views, not to mention the excellent selection of comics.
I’m not affiliated with them at all and I’m no Daddy Warbucks. I just think halfway decent alternative press is worthy of a $30 investment.
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It pains me to see you have to defend (probably not the correct term, but you get my point) Salon’s movement toward a “commercials-first, content-later” format in order for them to maintain and grow cashflow in these online advertising-averse times.
Clearly, people who complain about such efforts by content-based sites are either (1) not business people or (2) the type of people who complain about the schmutz on the premium-grade nozzle while filling up their BMW 745is — as in, too cheap to pay for full-serve and too self-centered to even reflect on the ridiculousness of their moans.
Salon helps pay YOUR bills — remind them of that. So too does the patchwork of alternatives and weeklies that carry your work in print. All of these outlets — independent, each one — require remuneration for their efforts. Until we become a complete police state (in about 6 months or so), we still live in a vestige of capitalism. These morons need to remember that every time they blow $4.50 on fucking coffee at Starbucks.
Ignore ‘em — or better yet, shame ‘em. Eventually, shame gets to everyone. (spoken like a true lapsed catholic!)
This is a well-worth-your-time, first-person account of the Washington rally (and the media numbers game) by Matt Taibbi of The Beast, which is apparently the successor to Taibbi’s legendary Moscow weekly, the eXile. I’m not going to excerpt it, it’s long and it’s all good, just go read it. (Also via August.)
Facing its most chronic shortage in oil stocks for 27 years, the US has this month turned to an unlikely source of help - Iraq.
Weeks before a prospective invasion of Iraq, the oil-rich state has doubled its exports of oil to America, helping US refineries cope with a debilitating strike in Venezuela.
After the loss of 1.5 million barrels per day of Venezuelan production in December the oil price rocketed, and the scarcity of reserves threatened to do permanent damage to the US oil refinery and transport infrastructure. To keep the pipelines flowing, President Bush stopped adding to the 700m barrel strategic reserve.
But ultimately oil giants such as Chevron, Exxon, BP and Shell saved the day by doubling imports from Iraq from 0.5m barrels in November to over 1m barrels per day to solve the problem. Essentially, US importers diverted 0.5m barrels of Iraqi oil per day heading for Europe and Asia to save the American oil infrastructure.
The trade, though bizarre given current Pentagon plans to launch around 300 cruise missiles a day on Iraq, is legal under the terms of UN’s oil for food programme.
But for opponents of war, it shows the unspoken aim of military action in Iraq, which has the world’s second largest proven reserves - some 112 billion barrels, and at least another 100bn of unproven reserves, according to the US Department of Energy. Iraqi oil is comparatively simple to extract - less than $1 per barrel, compared with $6 a barrel in Russia. Soon, US and British forces could be securing the source of that oil as a priority in the war strategy. The Iraqi fields south of Basra produce prized ’sweet crudes’ that are simpler to refine.
As noted below, if attending an anti-war rally organized by ANSWER means that you support their hidden agenda, then certainly writing for the Washington Times makes you objectively pro-Moonie. Andrew Sullivan, for instance, takes a regular paycheck from the man who once referred to America as “Satan’s Harvest.” Talk about “depraved” (to use one of Andrew’s favorite words)…
The vast majority of demonstrators arguably had no idea who even organized the rally. But no political commentator can plausibly plead ignorance when it comes to the Reverend Moon.
The point is, guilt by association is a slippery slope. (And spare me the Trent Lott comparisons — that’s guilt by deliberate affiliation, which is a whole different can of worms.)
And as Katha Pollitt noted a few months ago, communists were prominent in the civil rights movement. Would the world be a better place today if there had been right wing bloggers on the case, trying to discredit Dr. King and the March on Washington because of it?
Well, no, it would not.
Atrios is on this, of course, as is David Neiwert. As for me, I’m probably not going to be blogging much for a day or two, for all the usual reasons.
If you need a reality check after reading Bill Keller’s biliously worshipful profile of our glorious leader in today’s New York Times Magazine, I’d recommend this piece by Robert Reich in the current American Prospect:
A midterm USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll had Bush’s job approval rating falling to 58 percent, dropping below 60 percent for the first time since the September 11 attacks. Under these circumstances, any other president would be in danger of losing his job. But Rove has convinced the press, and therefore the American public, that this presidency is nearly invincible. He has done it with an ingenious blend of chicanery and obfuscation, aided by the Democrats’ utter incapability of devising a coherent message in response.
For all the talk about how the protesters were “supporting ANSWER” why do my friends on the other side never worry too much about supporting the theocratic aims of Reverend Moon and the Unification Church? The latter owns an influential Washington daily newspaper, much beloved in all conservative circles, and has published and presumably paid ANSWER-bashers Glenn Reynolds, Jonah Goldberg, Andrew Sullivan, etc. Unlike the former, who have no political influence and presumably minimal financial backing, Moon is a billionaire who donates oodles to many other right wing causes and organizations. While anti-war protesters were accused of supporting Stalinism and coddling dictators simply for showing up to an anti-war protest sponsored in part by a pathetic shell of an organization, many of our favorite conservatives actually work for a powerful wealthy man who has used his vast financial resources to push his frightening political agenda.
On May 1, 1997, Moon told a group of followers that “the country that represents Satan’s harvest is America.” [ Unification News, June 1997] In other sermons, he has vowed that his victorious movement will “digest” any American who tries to maintain his or her individuality. He especially has criticized American women who must “negate yourself 100 percent” to be a receptacle for the male seed.
