I’m suffering from a fairly serious bout of “I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about” right now, but I promised myself I’d dip my toe back in the water today regardless. I’ll start with some personal shit. I learned yesterday that I’m either naive or have an alternate agenda.
I’m totally down with the alternate agenda thing because I didn’t think I was together enough to have a primary agenda. Just wait until my wife finds out I have an agenda. She’s a little under the weather right now, so I haven’t bothered her with the details, but she’s totally going to flip when she finds out. She’s been on my case to get an agenda for damn near fourteen years now. I may be a bit naive here, but I’m proud to be a part of a larger cause, even if I don’t have a clue what that cause is. Me and my unknown agenda will so totally fucking beat your sorry ass ideals into the ground and spit on the remains. Mark my words, you bastards, because my alternate agenda is on a warpath and your petty ideals are the crushed stone beneath my alternate agenda’s feet. I am blogger. Hear me roar.
As we all know, every blog post and blog comment holds great sway over the shape of the world to come. Every word written in this medium is precious. The nectar of the gods, or so I’ve heard.
Moving to another subject, a Senator representing my commonwealth very recently claimed that weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq. I will not speak of dogs. The following comes from a New York Times article I think shows great sympathy for the Bush administration.
More than a year after the White House, at considerable political cost, accepted the intelligence agencies’ verdict that Mr. Hussein destroyed his stockpiles in the 1990’s, these Americans have an unshakable faith that the weapons continue to exist.
The proponents include some members of Congress. Two Republicans, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and Senator Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania held a news conference on Wednesday to announce that, as Mr. Santorum put it, “We have found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”
American intelligence officials hastily scheduled a background briefing for the news media on Thursday to clarify that. Hoekstra and Mr. Santorum were referring to an Army report that described roughly 500 munitions containing “degraded” mustard or sarin gas, all manufactured before the 1991 gulf war and found scattered through Iraq since 2003.
Such shells had previously been reported and do not change the government conclusion, the officials said.
I doubt you would want to use the stuff in those shells as hand cream or shampoo, but they do not represent a danger worth however many lives will eventually be lost, destroyed, damaged or otherwise fucked up beyond all recognition by the time all is said and done with regards to our fine adventure in Iraq. Not even close. Not that forgotten and degraded shells left over from the war between Iran and Iraq had anything to do with it. If I recall correctly, we didn’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud. Right?
Cue Captain Ed:
Critics of the war may find themselves undercut by their continuing insistence that the WMD finds are insubstantial, either in quantity or threat. First, we know undoubtedly that they existed, and the unclassified amount, in the wrong hands, could have killed thousands. Second and more importantly, the classified portion of the intel report speaks to a larger context — and the only reason to keep that quiet would be to either avoid a threat or to avoid some diplomatic embarrassment.
Despite the lack of interest at most of the major media centers, this story is not over. We know more than we have already stated, and when the entire story comes out, those who built their war policy on the sands of “no-WMD, Bush-lied” may find themselves sinking quickly.
I hope that every pro war politician, regardless of party, echos Ed every single day from here until forever. I really do. Here’s a little more of the same from Allahpundit :
WMDs are just a gotcha at this point; take away their gotcha and they’ll shift to a moral calculus of “how many American soldiers’ lives are worth 500 shells?” Or 5,000 shells, or pick a number.
Indeed. You pick the numbers darling. Please keep up the good work and please try to get your favorite politicians to echo your thoughts every day of the week. Thanks I guess. For now, I’ll go back to not knowing what the fuck I’m talking about.
All things considered, any sane person must have an alternative agenda. Me, I’m a Matriot.
Hey, there’s a name for Ann Coulter Republicans– Hatriots! Possibly this has already been suggested a thousand times before?
I don’t have an agenda, but I do have a menu. English muffin, butter, jam, coffee.
You do have an alternate agenda this morning after all.
Dude, where’s the jazz?
I was looking for the Jazz, but I couldn’t find it. I think it’s hiding under the sofa.
the Jazz is there… it’s to the south, east, west and somewhat to the north
for our lackwit presnit, congresscritters and media. I blame the fact that the most compelling offering for education in the last 20 years was business administration, which is geared for totally bottom line thinking. No vision, no magic, no Darksyde illumination at all lurks in our hallowed institutions. There was a few brief moments of looking into a world that could be and those were promptly shut down for lack of funding.
So we now have a population that is totally incapable of seeing how thoroughly humans can be bamboozled while we are being thoroughly bamboozled!
We have a population that suppossedly looks to elect a presnit on the basis of whether or not they would feel comfortable having a beer with the dude!
We have a population that stuffs itself full of empty calories and empty news stories and feels no satiety!
Out of curiosity, how many here opposed the war because they believed Iraq had no WMD?
I figured they had them, but:
Well, I’m willing to say that I opposed the war because Iraq had no WMD. We knew before March 2003 because the UN inspectors told us so. The US, CIA included, had been telling the UN inspectors for years what they thought was there, and what the weapons inspectors should be looking for. Know what… they looked at all the allegations and found… nothing. The whole invasion thing was about US domestic politics and GWB doing a little bit of payback because there was some suggestion (don’t know how well-founded) that Saddam initiated an attempt on GHWB’s (the current Presnit’s dad) life.
In the run-up to the invasion the US tried to discredit the weapons inspectors (UNSCOM), but the reality was that they were a group of very professional international experts who did a serious job. There was no evidence of WMD and the US Government knew it. So did we.
I didn’t. So I guess I’m not part of “We.” I personally don’t know too many people who were part of “We.” But I am curious what other people knew/believed in the run up to the war and why they opposed it.
I opposed it from the start. I thought it was nothing more than a war motivated by crass political calculations. I didn’t think they had WMD, but I was willing to entertain the possibility and I didn’t think it justified preventative war. I still don’t. But WMD never had anything to do with it. If they did, we wouldn’t have pulled the inspectors out of the country. It was just crass politics.
I should also add that when I entertained the possibility, the six reasons you outlined are pretty much where my head was at.
Damn, you should have posted this on a weekday. Now that would have been some entertaining reading.
of the entity with more “WMD” than any nation on the planet accept the principle that the obtaining and possession of weapons is, like the principle of of self defense itself, a privilege that be granted or witheld only by a handful of rich men in Washington, it is to be hoped that all nations will obtain whatever is necessary in order to deter and defend their homelands from this barbaric entity that invades and occupies those homelands at will, destroying towns, and exterminating the inhabitants like the vermin the barbarians believe them to be.
The question the people of the world now ask is not which country has what weapons, but how can the US be contained, how can they prevent their own children from being seized and hauled off to the torture camps of the Americans.
While once it was customary to take great pains to separate opinion of US “government” and policies from the people, today it is understood that Americans support their warlords and their corporations, and are willing to die for them, commit atrocities for them, even sacrifice their own childrens’ future for them.
Yes, there are some Americans who would like to see advancement and modernization, but the existence of truly reform-minded Americans is not widely known, their message is not getting out, and this is unfortunate.
Even more unfortunate, the American underclass, especially the ethnic minorites who are so dramatically over-reprsented there, who are much more likely to be pro-reform than their more affluent brothers, have failed to form any sort of reform movement, with a message that could not be ignored, either by their countrymen or the world.