Saturday, September 30, 2006
Authoritarians Losing Control
Dissent endangers our troops. This has been a recurring theme in the GOP’s message, from the president counseling us against the dangers of “irresponsible debate” to Representative J.D. Hayworth on Monday telling us that things like the New York Times’ story and the public discussion are “putting lives in danger.” The Paper of Record is a favorite target of the right, and their antics are nothing new. Nixon famously threatened the New York Times, and Reagan threatened to prosecute any paper that published “national security information,” whatever that means. Don Rumsfeld has recently said that terrorists are “manipulating” the media.
You will find this language bouncing all around the right wing, and it’s difficult not to broad-brush them as all saying the same things. Rep. Steve King (R-IA) called the torture at Abu Ghraib “hazing” and maintained that Iraq was safer than Washington, D.C.
Tony Snow continues to try and put a happy face on the NIE, but it is not very convincing. He is joined by the entire phalanx of right-wing commentators on the radio, who uniformly defended the NIE on their radio shows with a typical display of selective quotations and amazing mischaracterizations. Michael Medved had to stop himself as he almost said that there’s nothing in the NIE that indicates the terrorists in Iraq are gaining strength, instead pulling back and retreating into generalized talking points lacking in concrete references to the NIE. The actual text of the NIE put the lie to several statements the administration has issued recently, and the tone of the text was pessimistic regarding how quickly terrorism is spreading and how Iraq has become a “cause” for jihadists. Some have pointed out that Iraq has made our war against terrorism harder, including Larry Johnson, who cites the State Department’s statistics in pointing out the exponential increase in terror attacks after the invasion of Iraq.
The latest NIE on Iraq was completed long ago, but it seems (according to White House advisor Fran Townsend) that it won’t be declassified until well after the elections, in January of next year, of course.
All the debate about the NIE passes over the fact that Iraqis have wanted us out of their country for over a year now. Yet another poll of Iraqis has been released, the third in the last year or so. It says what the other two also said: over 70% of Iraqis want the US out within a year, and 79% maintain that US forces are having a negative influence in Iraq. This poll, of course, will be ignored like the previous two.
Another reason why the improving US economy isn’t benefiting a lot of workers.
Philip Slater has a good article at the Huffington Post. So does Cliff Schecter, who surveys some of the evidence of just how committed republicans were to fighting terrorism when Bill Clinton was in office.
Sadly enough, many democrats seem to support the “compromise” bill that will rewrite the War Crimes Act. This is disgraceful.
# posted by BitterHarvest @ 2:41 PM 
