Jason Leopold reveals that the Office of Special Plans (OSP), which “probe[d] links between Iraq and the terrorist organization al-Qaeda and whether the country was stockpiling a cache of weapons of mass destruction,” also advised the President to include the uranium claim in his State of the Union speech. “Staffed mainly by ideological amateurs,” the OSP,
The Romance of Empire
If you have not read Thomas de Zengotita’s essay “The Romance of Empire” in the July issue of Harper’s, check it out. Truly subversive. (Sorry, not available online.) Also great articles by Paul William Roberts and Peter (The Good) Hitchens– enough to get you kicked out of the bookstore if you try to “visually shoplift” it all in one sitting.
The Road to Hell…
New to Antiwar.com: ‘The Road to Hell is Paved With Good Intentions’: Jason Leopold:
- Saddam Hussein was an evil dictator who repressed, murdered and tortured his own people. That and that alone was a good enough reason enough to go to war, according to Bush and his cabal of neoconservatives.
But that’s only true if Iraq proved to be an “imminent” threat. As the old saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Bush may have meant well, but he lied and lied and lied.
Oldie but goodie
How They Lie: Journalism and the Art of Fiction: Justin Raimondo:
- The growing tendency of so much of the “news” – especially international reporting – to be pure fiction designed to arouse emotions rather than impart information, is a development that may not be recent, but certainly it has gotten more brazen. I don’t know whether that represents a growing carelessness on the part of the War Party, or else an assumption that their readers have been so dumbed down that it hardly matters.
40 Years Ago This Week
Headline from July 17, 1963:
U.S. Spies Discover What Lies Beneath Russian Nesting Dolls; ‘It’s More Dolls,’ Says CIA Director
From The Onion, of course. (scroll down)
Even if it bankrupts us
Think we need to eliminate that pesky $455 billion deficit? It’s not as important as invading third world nations, liberating oppressed foreigners and ridding the world of evil-doers, says the administration:
- “Restoring a balanced budget is an important priority for this administration,” White House budget director Joshua Bolten told reporters. “But a balanced budget is not a higher priority than winning the global war on terror, protecting the American homeland, or restoring economic growth and job creation.”
I don’t know how the gov’t expects to achieve the latter two by running record deficits, while giving more money to failing intelligence bureaucracies may exacerbate their inefficiencies. Someone once said: War is the health of the….