In retrospect, the most hilarious thing about the lead up to the Iraq War has to be the 12,000 page document Iraq was forced to turn over to the UN accounting for all its Weapons of Mass Destruction. When Iraq handed the report over on December 7, 2003 stating they had none, their failure to “come clean” became one of the most cited reasons for military action.

Let me put it another way: Iraq was found guilty for saying it was innocent. Now that it’s looking more and more like the most accurate pre-war assessment was given by France and Germany, well, you start to see the irony. What exactly did Hussein not “come clean” about in his report?

Let’s look at the two “holes” in that report the Administration chose to highlight at the time: “purchases of uranium in Africa” and “high-tech equipment that could be used in uranium enrichment.” That sounds eerily similar to the forged Nigerian documents and aluminum tubes we now know were useless to any fledgling nuclear program. So in these cases there was nothing for Iraq to declare.

The other prominent US complaint was that the report consisted mainly of old material, with little new added since 1991. Our inspections and interrogations of Iraqi scientists and leaders since the invasion has led us to the conclusion that WMD production was indeed halted around that time. So what “new” information was missing from this report? It’s starting to look more and more accurate all the time. (Not surprising since Hussein was willing to do anything at that point to stave off invasion – even telling the truth.)

Whether or not WMDs are ever actually found isn’t really the point -- although by now, it’s probably safe to say Hussein didn’t have the capability to launch chemical weapons at our troops within 45 minutes as British intelligence claimed. What’s troubling about this admission-of-innocence-as-proof-of-guilt standard Bush laid out for us is that no country could ever not meet our standards for invasion. I suspect Sweden would say the same thing about their WMD stock piles. Suspecting they’re lying is all the justification we’d need to move in. Don’t turn anything up? Well, we meant well. We did what we thought was right.

This isn’t to say Iraq is innocent. It’s just a matter of whether a country is entitled to some of the same due process we granted Charles Manson. Why not apply a few of the very rights and principles we claim to be spreading to the international stage?

UN inspections were definitely justified even upon threat of war – we obtained our search warrant – but we ought to have treated any country, no matter how suspicious, as innocent until proven guilty – or at least a damn step closer to proven than we appear to have been. We should have imposed a punishment more appropriate to the crime before rushing to enforce the international equivalent of the death penalty. There ought to be something about self-incrimination…

This isn’t about being nice to dictators. It’s about putting some semblance of a system in place that allows us to determine when war is justified beyond the whims of a not terribly world-wise leader. “Bush says so” obviously isn’t good enough. There are guidelines even he should follow. If human rights abuses are the standard, then let us impose them across the board. If that’s not enough reason, let us articulate what it is that makes Iraq different from Liberia. Otherwise, you see the result.

Will we have the resources to intervene when a country truly does represent an imminent threat? Forget international support -- can we muster American support for the next action now that our credibility has been shot? If we had put all this focus on the people who actually flew their airplanes into our buildings, would Osama bin Laden still be plotting his next attack in the mountains of Afghanistan?

In the end, the American system of justice is better -- not for Hussein, but for us. We should have a little more faith in it.

Suppose that Bush has previously admitted that he did not volunteer to go to Vietnam. Now Bush is saying that he has in fact volunteered in Vietnam and earned Three Purple Hearts. Which is true?

-Bush volunteered
-Bush did not volunteer
-Both

Cognitive dissonance is:

-The disparity between what one wants to be true and what one knows to be true
-A term of which I choose not to be familiar

Facts are:

-Whatever backs up my policy.
-To be dismissed due to their clear liberal agenda

Suppose that Iraq has broken out into civil war, which spreads and leads to totalitarian theocracies throughout the Middle East, and nuclear warheads bought from North Korea by our Pakistani and Saudi allies are launched, destroying every major city in the US. This is evidence of:

-The failure of Bush's War on Terror
-The insurgency is in its last throes.

What is more responsible for crime?

-Poverty
-Gays
-Planned Parenthood

Was the last person you beat up?:

-Gay
-Liberal
-A member of a minority group
-I'm not that particular about who I beat up

You have just been granted extraordinary new powers by the Patriot Act to track down terrorists. Do you use these powers to:

-Infiltrate terrorist cells
-Infiltrate anti-war groups
-Find out what if your neighbor's been checking out Harry Potter books at the library

After hurricane Katrina, you are put in charge of directing donations to the charity of your choice. Do you choose:

-The Red Cross
-A group used by televangelists to supply mining operations in Africa and enrich African tyrants

The Republican Party is in control of all three branches of government, and the news media. As the party of responsibility, who do you blame for _____?

-The buck stops here.
-Michael Moore

A mother has lost three sons fighting the War on Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. She is a member of the National Guard and has been awarded numerous medals for valor. She lost all four limbs in a roadside bomb. She is a lifelong Republican and active member of the local Church of Christ and has voted for Bush twice. But she does not support the President's plan to privatize social security. Do you:

-Recognize that everyone is entitled to her opinion
-Set up an organization to smear her for running a sex slave operation for the UN

The war is going badly. Who’s to blame?

-Donald Rumsfeld

-Dick Cheney

-Cindy Sheehan

 

New Orleans has been in chaos for several days after the flooding. You see a picture on the news of a black man wading through the water with a loaf of bread and a bottle of water. What is the first thing that comes to mind?

-He is found the items in a local grocery store

-He looted the local Quickie Mart

-Get a job

 

A man is dead. A trail of blood leads to the President’s Bronco. Fingerprints matching the President are on the handle and steering wheel. A bloody glove is found in the front lawn of the White House, and blood and hair follicles are found on the President’s clothes, all matching the victim. Who is the prime suspect in this crime?

-A liberal

-The black man carrying bread and water in the photo

-OJ Simpson

 

They have a video tape of the President’s confession. On the tape, he says, “I killed the bastard, and I’m glad I did it.” In his confession, he admits to mugging for the police surveillance camera outside the victim’s home. Who do you suspect now?

-The liberal police department

-Dan Rather for doctoring the video

-The black man in the photo

 

Your mother is a witness to the crime. She’s willing to testify against the President in court. What do you think now?

-Still got to go with the black man in the photo

-Okay, this does look a little suspicious. Call Karl Rove.

-They got to you, too, mom!

 

That night, you are visited by your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who begs – no, pleads – with you to please, open your eyes and admit the facts in front of you or risk damning your soul to eternal hell fire! What is the first thing that comes to mind now?

-All right, all right, the bastard did it.

-Why isn’t the media looking into all the people Nancy Pelosi killed?

The people who stepped off the buses were not the ones I had seen on TV. They were poor, certainly, and uneducated but not dumb. Many were elderly, while others were handicapped and mentally ill, not having had medication for days. Most of the ones who could work had jobs, and most of the absent fathers were a result of being carried away by the surf. They all had stories to tell of the horrors they experienced at the Superdome. One white man said, through his few remaining yellow teeth, that he and his wife had experienced fifteen blissful years of marriage, and this was the first bad thing that had ever happened to them.

Some evacuees offered to help, saying, "You're here to help us, so we'll help you." A friend recounted an instance where a family gave up the chance to be on TV to find their missing relatives because they "had only been here two days", whereas another couple had been stranded for five.

These were people from the neighborhoods white people insist will result in your death if you step inside their borders, but I can honestly say, I would have no qualms about inviting any of them into my house.  In a situation like this, all those distinctions of class and race and education slip away. The volunteers were poor people and college students and five hundred dollar an hour lawyers who were picking up trash. Some were rich society wives who were talking about the flood over braised lamb shanks in expensive restaurants when they suddenly found themselves unable eat another bite until the evacuees had been fed. Many of the National Guardsmen had been to Afghanistan and Iraq, and found this to be far more disorganized. They were cool and disciplined, showing me that we are being well represented over there.

Everything was ugly and beautiful at the same time. I count the experience, as horrible as it was, as one of the high points of my life. The only indication that the experience might have been in any way traumatic came later, in watching the news accounts, the way certain segments of our population have been painting these people I had seen. 

When someone would suggest that these people stayed behind by choice, that they were in some way deserving of what they had undergone, my hear pounds.  I have not cried since I was ten, but my eyes start to tear. I have been frustrated by the news before, but this was something different, a kind of rage and frustration that can’t be contained. 

When my Republican friends explain that they wouldn't give money to "looters", or I read about the towns in Louisiana who turned the evacuees away because they didn't want to be the victim of riots, I can feel nothing but spite for how sensationalist news can lead to such misery. Why didn’t they walk? CNN asked. Yes, why didn’t these people walk to flee a storm moving faster than the speed limit, with an eye two marathons wide so that they could face a hundred-and-fifty mile winds on the open road? 

The worst story, the one that still gives me nightmares, is the one about the boy who was arrested for stealing a bus that brought dozens of people to safety. It brought flashbacks of a renegade bus that arrived while I was there. I had met those people. The driver could have stolen a Ferrari. He didn’t have to take anyone with him, yet he had. Why had he driven to the Astrodome if he had no intention of handing it over? When I read that, all the goodwill and faith I gained that night is transformed into hatred and disillusionment, my optimism turns into despair.

Always these stories have a specific purpose: to shut down empathy so that we won't demand action or accountability. They are told because we are a charitable nation, and if these people aren't rapists and murders and looters, then what they are is suffering, and suffering would demand attention that wasn't given. The fact that it wasn't given would demand that someone be taken to task.

When Barbara Bush -- who's home town stands to gain billions from the disaster - frets about how these people might want to stay, the same situation that brought out the best in us becomes a catalyst for the worst. The moment we came together becomes another reason to divide.

I think of the black man who said his distrust of white people disappeared after being welcomed by our city with open arms, and of the gratitude on the faces of the people who had found themselves among volunteers who did not cast them away, as so many others clearly had.

The ugly and the beautiful. The beautiful came unwashed and packed on stolen buses. The ugly wears suits in front of TV cameras as they spread interested parties’ viciousness in exchange for access. They lounge by the pool of their River Oaks mansions, sealing government contracts to rebuild New Orleans as they worry about protecting their neighborhood’s white tint.

I no longer know if I’m an optimist or a pessimist.  I come away from this whole experience knowing only one thing for sure: this nation is rotting from the head. Our nation is suffering because of the incompetence of elected officials, our millionaire talking heads and clueless military planners.

Our nation’s hope lies at the bottom, with our National Guardsmen, our volunteers, and disaster relief teams tasked with cleaning up the consequences of the elite’s greed and negligence. It lies with the people who, God willing, still don’t have access to TVs, and have not yet realized the humanity they experienced is not shared by all.

There are many things in this universe that can not be explained by sheer random chance. Intelligent Design has already shown how certain things in nature could not have simply happened. Could something as complex as an eye have happened on its own? Such marvels can only be explained by the existence of an underlying intelligence.

But we at the ID of ID take things a step further. We do not shy away from asking the tough questions about the intelligence behind the intelligence. Could something as great and marvelous as the designer of the universe come about simply by chance?

Certainly not! Something as complex and marvelous as that must have some intelligence behind it. We must have a theory to explain his existence - the ID of ID.

We demand that our theories be taught along side those of ID. There are many weaknesses in the theory of ID that the Discovery Institute would like to keep you from knowing. We feel both sides should be given equal time.

In the Earth centered theory, there is the idea that journalists are independent watchdogs of government who dig to find the truth and hold their leaders accountable.  Adherents to this theory believe journalists use their brains to come to their own conclusions based largely on facts, and all slip-ups aside, are ultimately there to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted, or at least get good ratings.

A conversation with people who fall into this camp usually goes like this:

Why does the media so often frame their stories in the White House’s favor?

They suck up to power.

Why didn’t they suck up to power when the Democrats were in control under Clinton?

His scandals had sex in them. Sex sells.

Why didn’t the media do a story on the White House’s clearance of a male prostitute or make a bigger deal of Christian Republicans having no problem with porn stars attending one of their fundraisers?

Those stories weren’t important.

Then why did it take so long to report the Downing Street Memos or the fact that Karl Rove is the number one suspect in a case involving treason?

The media doesn’t rush to judgment. They want to have all the facts.

Then why did they run with the Swift Boat nonsense?

It’s easy to understand. All of Bush’s scandals are too complicated for the average person to get.

And so it goes.

Epicycle upon epicycle gets added to our Earth centered theory of the media universe to explain how, all evidence to the contrary, journalists are all well-meaning blokes who are trapped by the rigors of journalistic convention or at the mercy of bottom-line editors. 

I think it’s time for our own media Copernicus to finally come up with a theory that better adheres to Occam’s Razor. Try this:

Why does the media so often frame their stories in the White House’s favor?

The media is conservative.

Why didn’t they suck up to power when the Democrats were in control with Clinton?

The media is conservative.

Why didn’t the media do a story on the White House’s clearance of a male prostitute, or make a bigger deal of Christian Republicans having no problem with porn stars attending one of their fundraisers?

The media is conservative.

Why did it take so long to report the Downing Street Memos or the fact that Karl Rove is the number one suspect in a case involving treason?

The media is conservative.

Why did they run with the Swift Boat Vet nonsense?

The media is conservative.

That’s much simpler. I can already hear the objections now.  Deep down, the media really is there as the Fifth Estate and takes their responsibilities seriously, although the realities don’t always allow them to do their jobs as they should. I’ve met reporters and I know their heart’s in the right place. If you could see their souls, you’d know they mean well.

In the end, this is really just an existential argument. It doesn’t really matter if the media is made up of dopes or fiends any more than it matters whether Bush lied or actually believed Iraq had WMD, or lied because he thought Iraq had WMD. The problem is that the words coming out of Bush’s mouth rarely turn out to be true.  We don’t judge people based on what they think because that is unknowable. We judge them by what they do.

Look at what the media does, and there’s only one conclusion: The media is conservative. If not in spirit, then certainly in practice.

 

After weeks of flagging poll numbers for Bush -- and a media who ignored them -- we get this mysterious story from the LA Times  gleefully cheering "After Flagging Support, a Second Wind for Bush".

One would think that after no stories about Bush's slog, a story of Bush's "second wind" might include a poll. But the only polls cited were taken before the London attacks -- you know, the one statistic in all that time where Bush's positive numbers were actually a few percentage points bigger than his negatives: Bush's handling of the War on Terror. Based on that statistic alone, and numerous quotes from pollsters who have no poll to give us to back up their claims, Bush is "surging" because of his strength on Terror.

I wonder: If there is a "bounce" as they're predicting, will it indeed be due to Bush's reputation as a strong leader? Or the media's framing of the situation that way before they have any qualitative evidence to back them up? 

 

The media is not your friend. It is your enemy. 

I have read with interest the Cleveland Plain Dealer's admission that it is spiking two stories of "profound importance" due to the fact that the documents were leaked illegally. The point of this is to illustrate the supposed chilling effect of having Judith Miller in jail.

Well, I have a simple solution: have your contacts leak the documents to me. I am a freelance writer who has done stories for the Houston Press, Houston Chronicle, Tucson Citizen, Skeptic, Dissent and others. Having worked as an editor at a New Times publication, I have contacts at our sister publication the Cleveland Scene who I'm sure would have an interest in publishing something like this. (For a lengthier resume, go here.)

If no publication is brave enough to run this story, I will publish the story online free of charge. I have no problem donating my time on something of this importance, and I will gladly accept the legal risks involved.

Fellow journalists far braver than me are risking their lives in Iraq, Afghanistan and Africa to inform the public, and your contacts are obviously willing to take great risks to their career to get the information out. One need only muster a fraction of that courage to publish this story. Since you won't be running this story, you have to take no risk at all in passing along the information to me.  You clearly think this is something your readers should know. if you're unable to inform them, give it to someone who will.

So you're for the war. What are you willing to do to win? Is that yellow ribbon on your car just an empty gesture? Maybe this isn't the life or death struggle for freedom you make it out to be? Who's gutless? Who's spineless? Who's not willing to do what it takes?

This is the first line of attack I've seen that completely deflates all the conservative strengths: their resoluteness, their black-and-white clarity of the justness of this war, their willingness to do whatever it takes to win. It shows them to be cowards and hypocrites. It shows that regardless of their rosey scenarios, Iraq is not someplace they want to be. It says there is one thing they won't do to win: personally sacrifice. And it shows they don't think this war is worth giving their lives for, so how can it be worth yours?

Suddenly, we see the Republicans and their war for what they are. 

Yet again, Friedman is forced to admit our predicaments four months too late and attacks the people who raised them four months too early, as he makes excuses for the ones who would rather not ever talk about our predicament at all. Yet again he props up the ones who got us here as he vilifies the ones who warned him from the beginning that this is where he'd end up if he didn't change course. "Onward!" Bush screams and onward Friedman goes, waxing about how there's still time to turn around, if only we'd listen to him and not those of us on shore.

Like I said, I can't blame him. No doubt he's considering his place in history, and looking back at the naivete of his past columns, no doubt he has glimpsed the uncomfortable fact that things have played out exactly as his harshest critics had warned him they would.

Here's this critic's next prediction: Bush won't do anything to increase the number of soldiers in Iraq. It would cost him politically, and Bush will never do anything that costs him politically, even when a war is at stake. He would rather let our army hemmorrage and bleed than risk alienating his base. That's right, Tom. Bush would rather we lose. And you're going to help him.

Don't say we didn't warn you -- again. Can't wait to hear the insults you throw at us when you're forced to admit it. 

Back in the day I was an economics major at Texas A&M. The only professor I had for multiple classes was Morgan Reynolds. I had him for at least two classes and maybe three. I remember he was a major free-market guy, really into the whole conservative thing. But after I graduated I thought no more of him, except that he's one of maybe three professors whose names I can still remember after 20 years.

Then this week he suddenly turns up on the Internets. Turns out ol' Dr. Reynolds has been busy over the last few years.  He was the chief economist at the Labor Department during the first reign of George II and was also the director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis.  That's a right-wing think tank funded by Scaife, et. al. and the people behind mysocialsecurity.org, now renamed TeamNCPA.

Nothing to write home about so far, just another Aggie economics professor burrowed into the right-wing machine just like Phil Gramm, Wendy Gramm, and Jim Miller.

But then he starts telling people that the government, not terrorists, blew up the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.  He wrote a long column called Why Did the Trade Center Skyscrapers Collapse over at lewrockwell.com.  Since all of Dr. Reynolds's bio information mentions that he's a Professor Emeritus at A&M, the university president has issued a statement clarifying that his views do not speak for the university.  That URL may go away sometime soon, so I have reproduced it below:

The following is a statement from Texas A&M University regarding recent news reports about the collapse of the World Trade Center on 9-11.

Dr. Morgan Reynolds is retired from Texas A&M University, but holds the title of Professor Emeritus - an honorary title bestowed upon select tenured faculty, who have retired with ten or more years of service.  Additionally, contrary to some written reports, while some faculty emeriti are allocated office space at Texas A&M, Dr. Reynolds does not have office space on the Texas A&M campus.  Any statements made by Dr. Reynolds are in his capacity as a private citizen and do not represent the views of Texas A&M University.  Below is a statement released yesterday by Dr. Robert M. Gates, President of Texas A&M University:

"The American people know what they saw with their own eyes on September 11, 2001.  To suggeest any kind of government conspiracy in the events of that day goes beyond the pale."

WE are not afraid to talk about this war. We have done everything to ensure it was a success. We warned Bush to bring more soldiers. We warned him to have a plan for an insurgency. We warned him not to turn his attention from the people who attacked us. We ARE talking about it. We have been talking about it from the beginning TRYING to make this a success, PRAYING we can turn this thing around. Time after time, from WMD to Mission Accomplished, Bush and his cheerleaders (i.e. Friedman) have been proven wrong about this war, and we have been proven right. And then we are accused of wanting failure?

You want to hear us talk about Iraq? Stop shutting us out of your paper! You ignore our pleas, then accuse us of keeping silent? Have you no sense of decency at all?

Make no mistake about it, if our men and women end up dying in vein, their blood is on your hands, not ours. Let us know when YOU'RE ready to talk about this war.

If journalists are sucking up to power, why did we eviscerate Clinton and Congress when Dems were in control? If we're only after money, why, did Disney refuse to distribute the biggest grossing documentary of all time (F911) in favor of a flag-waving Hallmark ad no one's heard of? If it's ratings, why did MSNBC cancel their top rated show (Donahue) because it wasn't appropriately pro-war?

No matter what explanation liberals come up with to justify the media's behavior, none of them explain why these scenarios are only in force when they screw liberals and/or forward the Republican agenda. It seems as though the left has fallen victim to the spin, too, and deep down wants to believe the media is one of them.

I could tell you plenty of reasons why this isn't true. I could tell you about the AP reporter I sat next to when we were covering an event for Lloyd Bentson who wouldn't shut up about what a great President Tom DeLay would be. I could tell you about the marketing folks I overheard talking about how great the local daily's new editor was for "purging the paper of all the liberals". Or I could tell you about the PBS station where I worked where they hired a recent graduate from one of the conservative Gannon/Guckert schools of journalism and how he explained to me without shame about how they trained promising young evangelicals like himself to get jobs at various media outlets around the country so they could undermine the "pro-gay anti-Christian agenda from the inside."

Then again it might be more illustrative to talk about the editors who love to hire these shills because their propoganda will balance out the timid reporting of the remaining left-of-center folks who do their best to emulate their right wing counterparts, partly to demonstrate their objectivity but mostly because they correctly assume it's part of the job description.

I've seen the surveys where reporters proclaim to be independents or Democrats. There are still some around, but unlike their evangelical counterparts who are benefiting from ideological affirmative action, these reporters are a closeted, frightened bunch who have to defend every deviation from the White House script because it will play into their liberal image.

So is the media conservative? In the end it's an existential question. We can only judge them by their results. Whether our journalists are right wing pundits or non-Republicans who are pretending to be, the end result is the same. The media is conservative, if not in spirit then in practice.