A few members of the Antiwar.com staff attended the West 2005 Convention in San Diego, “the largest event on the West Coast for communications, electronics, intelligence, information systems, imaging, military weapon systems, aviation, shipbuilding, and more. ” Here’s a taste of what we found:
Stay tuned for more…government?
Now They’re After Putin (Part XII)
I was wondering how long it would take them to blame the death of Prime Minister Zurab Zhvania of Georgia — felled by an accidental gas leak — on the Russians. The answer — a matter of hours — is in today’s New York Times:
“The circumstances of his death nonetheless gave birth to rumors and conspiracy theories, despite the official version.
“A member of parliament, Alexander Shalamberidze, insinuated that his death was part of a plot orchestrated by “certain forces” in Russia that included the bombing of a police station in the city of Gori that killed 3 and wounded more than 20 earlier this week. His statement prompted a pointed protest from Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov.
“A backgammon board was lying open on a table near an Iranian-made gas heater. Portable gas or wood-burning heaters are common in Georgia, where central heating networks are scarce, even in the capital. The official Russian Information Agency reported that 45 Georgians had died of carbon monoxide poisoning in the last three years.
“Guram Donadze, a spokesman for the interior ministry, said the heater was installed two days ago and seemed to work properly. But it appeared that the room lacked proper ventilation. ‘There are many rumors, suspicions, various versions,’ he said in a telephone interview. ‘However, what actually happened was gas poisoning – nothing else.'”
You’d barely know there’s a war on from Reason magazine’s online commentary on the State of the Union speech: only Ron Paul devotes his remarks to foreign policy, and is, as usual, great on the subject. Bob Barr mentions the “war on terrorism” in the context of the regime’s subversion of civil liberties, and the rest of them — a narrow range of neocons and libertarian economists — have nada to say about it, except Michael Young, whose byline is fast becoming a byword for utter cluelessness:
“Will Bush in his second term stiffen his back and again insist on making Iraqi democracy (assuming that phantom comes alive) a linchpin for regional pluralism, helping undermine the Islamist militancy that caused 9/11? One must hope so, since otherwise the Iraqi adventure will have been a spectacular waste of life.”
Yeah, we sure wouldn’t want that to happen, now would we?
All I can say is thank the gods we have “libertarians” like Young around to tell us how and why we ought to expend human lives on foreign adventures. And it’s a good thing we’re “undermining” Islamic militancy by handing Iraq over to the tender graces of the militant Islamic electoral ticket dominated by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and the fundamentalist Dawa party — both backed by Iran.
Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Max “We Haven’t Suffered Enough Casualties” Boot hails “the edifying spectacle of Iraqis rising up to rule themselves” — a spectacle that becomes even more instructive as they rise up to rule each other.
Boy, I sure hope Bush makes with the democracy-building already — after all, everyone should have the right to vote their society into slavery. Otherwise the whole thing will have been a spectacular waste …
[In Eric Cartman‘s voice]
“Screw you guys, I’m invading Iran.”
There he goes again — “the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world.”
Charity begins at home.
They’re cheering the Chimp. They’re cheering themselves. They’re cheering the State and its glories.
Ugh.
