Sic Semper Tyrannis

Krauthammer, Hasan and the "Duck Rule"

""I cringe that he's a Muslim. . . . I think he's probably just a nut case," said Newsweek's Evan Thomas. Some were more adamant. Time's Joe Klein decried "odious attempts by Jewish extremists . . . to argue that the massacre perpetrated by Nidal Hasan was somehow a direct consequence of his Islamic beliefs." While none could match Klein's peculiar cherchez-le-juif motif, the popular story line was of an Army psychiatrist driven over the edge by terrible stories he had heard from soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

They suffered. He listened. He snapped.

Really? What about the doctors and nurses, the counselors and physical therapists at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who every day hear and live with the pain and the suffering of returning soldiers? How many of them then picked up a gun and shot 51 innocents?

And what about civilian psychiatrists -- not the Upper West Side therapist treating Woody Allen neurotics, but the thousands of doctors working with hospitalized psychotics -- who every day hear not just tales but cries of the most excruciating anguish, of the most unimaginable torment? How many of those doctors commit mass murder? "  Dr. Charles Krauthammer

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The "Cherchez le Juif "  bit is really clever. 

Krauthammer is not a favorite of many of the readers here, but the man's intellect is impressive in a town full of dullards. (Washington)

Common sense supports his position.  Both Occam's Razor and the "Duck Rule" as principles of analysis, when applied to the Hasan case point to the truth of Krauthammer's conclusion.  Sherlock's Rule?  Well, all alternative possibities have not yet been eliminated...

Nevertheless, there are cries of anguish from; the reverse hasbarim, the groupies besotted with the social sciences who insist that what you see is not what is important, and those who are terrified of being stricken, for a lack of PC orthodoxy, from the "A List" for dinner parties on the upper West Side or in Georgetown.

The list of categories protected by "the enlightened" grows ever longer.  Muslims, natives of Papua New Guinea, Gay People, Native Americans, the developmentally "challenged," what's next, Canadians?

On a different subject, sort of --  The fact that the Army wants to try Major Hasan MC by general court martial is intreresting in itself.  The generals have been reluctant to do this for quite a few decades now.  The generals are risk averse over many things.  One of them is the danger of bad publicity in the MSM for "drum head justice," etc.  The feeling must be that there would be more chance of this man escaping justice in a civilian court, "innocent by reason of insanity," etc. as Krauthammer says.  The Army wants a piece of this guy even if they have to carry him up the steps.  pl

"Mind War" Aquino and Vallely

I keep running into people who ought to know better but who think that this kind of thing is acceptable in a domestic US setting. pl

Download Mindwar

Download 2004-09-Strategic_Communication

"The Boredom of Jabber" Richard Sale

There has occurred a basic collapse of intellect on the 24 hour news channels and the Sunday morning talk shows: it’s there for all to see. The guest experts do not ever stray from the beaten path nor do they ever leave their established character portrayals or say anything insightful, original or unexpected. They use the topics,  not to inform or  provide helpful background that will place the item in a cultural or historical context, but merely as a pretext for self-display. The old idea of the analyst or reporter, who presented a set of events, acts, principles or policies while holding in check his own reaction and his views in abeyance has apparently gone for good. Today, the expert guest is the agent and promoter of one side of an issue, his or her purpose is not to explain the origin of the opinion, the principles involved, its successes or failures in history  but simply to wield some bludgeon of his or her  preferred personal set of values and view points  that is meant to intimidate or  confer on them the dominance of  superiority and shuts the door on further thought.

    This is not only deeply immoral, it is deeply useless. What we need is sound information and a better, wider  knowledge. “Where is the knowledge lost in information?” asked a wistful Eliot.

   On Sundays there is no knowledge, only noise. Week after week, Sunday after Sunday, we are presented with the same set of stuffed mannequins who week after week say basically the same things in the most untalented, stale and hackneyed language. And in spite of all the hours spent by us -- the credulous and expectant listeners  – at no time do we hear an actual idea or a  single reference to a first rate book on the subject under discussion or an unexpected insight or deft reference to an historical analogy or even a sharply imaged personal impression.

The  economist/philosopher Hayek says that dogmatists for democracy always say that discussion  is the main way by which people learn. The Sunday talk shows surely prove this to be completely wrong. Hayek denounces the flattery of the mob by saying that discussion   “.is not the main process by which people learn.” He adds, “Unless some people know more than the rest and are in a better position to convince the rest, there would be little progress in opinion.”

    To listen to discussions in this country is to have clear proof that the bulk of the people is always inert and unthinking. Advances do not come from the dreary mass of the majority mind.   It is always the most qualified among the minority who act in new and more thoughtful ways that end by helping the majority to be more intelligent. Hayek says that if the majority directed affairs, as they think they do, the result would be stagnation. He is right, and I would say that the dullness results because the majority thinks in unison and is hostile to anything it does not already know or has not already heard. Let the novel come near, and they bridle with hostile distrust.

   Exchanging opinion in America is not about acquainting oneself with  unfamiliar views; it’s about a yearning for power and dominance. It is about getting the better of those that don’t agree with you. Discussion in America is designed to humiliate, injure, chastise, ruin, discredit and destroy, not inform.

    This is increasingly sinister because the general public knows less and less about anything of real value, and it understands less and less of the subjects and topics worth knowing because knowledge is not the product of an urge to self-assertion, but of hard, incessant work.  Instead of knowledge, half-baked reckless opinion, driven by a completely undeserved sense of self importance and an irrepressible desire to be heard whether or not one deserves to be, has taken over. 

In America, opinion is the opium of the people. “To be able to sound off is proof that I exist. I blab, therefore I am.”

   It is truly a tragedy that such a great a country as ours harbors within it such a profound and ineradicable dislike of intelligence.

  

War Against the American People - McClellan Speaks

"...in a chapter titled "Selling the War," he alleges that the administration repeatedly shaded the truth and that Bush "managed the crisis in a way that almost guaranteed that the use of force would become the only feasible option."

"Over that summer of 2002," he writes, "top Bush aides had outlined a strategy for carefully orchestrating the coming campaign to aggressively sell the war. . . . In the permanent campaign era, it was all about manipulating sources of public opinion to the president's advantage."

McClellan, once a staunch defender of the war from the podium, comes to a stark conclusion, writing, "What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary." "  WAPO

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" "If I had served my God", the Cardinal said remorsefully, "as diligently as I did my king, He would not have given me over.." " (Wiki)

Change a couple of words and this probably will serve as an epitaph for Scott McClellan.  Perhaps if McClellan had had the welfare of his country closer to his heart than the idea of service to his emperor then fate might have been kinder to him.  Or perhaps not; duty is a hard thing.   "Duty is the most sublime word in the English language"   Apparently, McClellan has only recently developed a sense of duty that the epigramist would have understood.

McClellan's book will be believed by those who have known or suspected the truth of the massive and continuing propaganda campaigns waged by the Bushies and the Jacobin flatheads.  It will not be accepted by those who still believe that Saddam hid his nuclear program in a lake somewhere, or in Syria or maybe in Ruritania.  In the end his book will have little impact.  I hope it makes him a few dollars.  He will need them.  In Texas where the easily deceived seem legion, he will find it hard to go home again.

I recommend meditation in the Rothko Chapel in Houston as a kind of way station on his journey to the future.

The administration manipulated the "sources" of public opinion?  Really?  Can that be?  (irony alert)  The administration and its Ziocon allies systematically drove truth speakers out of the public square? Really?  Well, folks, the American people were stupid enough and gullible enough to have allowed that....  Are we to believe that the American people have become smarter and more discerning in the eternity of the last years?

The media?  Has the catastrophe of our foreign policy changed the media?  Let us see how much "play" McClellan's book receives.  pl

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/27/AR2008052703679.html?hpid=topnews

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardinal_Wolsey

http://www.rothkochapel.org/

"I will never surrender in Iraq! Never! Never!" McCain

"The George W Bush administration plans to launch an air strike against Iran within the next two months, an informed source tells Asia Times Online, echoing other reports that have surfaced in the media in the United States recently.

Two key US senators briefed on the attack planned to go public with their opposition to the move, according to the source, but their projected New York Times op-ed piece has yet to appear.

The source, a retired US career diplomat and former assistant secretary of state still active in the foreign affairs community, speaking anonymously, said last week that that the US plans an  air strike against the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The air strike would target the headquarters of the IRGC's elite Quds force. With an estimated strength of up to 90,000 fighters, the Quds' stated mission is to spread Iran's revolution of 1979 throughout the region.

Targets could include IRGC garrisons in southern and southwestern Iran, near the border with Iraq. US officials have repeatedly claimed Iran is aiding Iraqi insurgents. In January 2007, US forces raided the Iranian consulate general in Erbil, Iraq, arresting five staff members, including two Iranian diplomats it held until November. Last September, the US Senate approved a resolution by a vote of 76-22 urging President George W Bush to declare the IRGC a terrorist organization. Following this non-binding "sense of the senate" resolution, the White House declared sanctions against the Quds Force as a terrorist group in October. The Bush administration has also accused Iran of pursuing a nuclear weapons program, though most intelligence analysts say the program has been abandoned."   Asia Times

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McCain said today that "he will never surrender in Iraq!"  What the hell is he talking about?  Surrender to whom?  To Al-Qa'ida? (alkayda) They have been beaten to a pulp by the Sunni rising against them and Petraeus' new-old tactics.  McCain would have to find Al-Qa'ida before he could surrender to them and then everyone else in the country would have to go along with the idea.  This is unlikely.  Surrender to Muqtada al-Sadr?  Have I missed something?  "Mooky" is now the leading Shia factional leader in the country?  I guess you never know...  Maybe the Mahdi has anointed him.  Surrender to Maliki and actually let him run the country?  I have had a couple of people (American) say to me recently things that demonstrate a reflexive idea that we are going to "call the shots" in Iraq indefinitely.  Is that what McCain means?

And then there is the matter of the IAEA's plaint today that Iran has not yet answered all its questions.  That's what it said, folks.  Read it.  This was immediately seized upon by McCain as proof that the Iranians are intent on bomb making.  Then that was followed quickly followed by a CNN lady anchor who asked Christiane Amanpour what the IAEA statement had said about Iranian INTENTIONS.  Sweet Jesus, save us from these people. Iranian intentions? 

Bush/Cheney will bombs things in Iran?  Well, why not?  At least that would be consistent with the stupidity of the rest of their reign.  Things have come to an interesting pass when Olmert appears to be a real statesman by comparison.  pl

Asia Times Online :: Middle East News, Iraq, Iran current affairs

Download IAEA_Iran_Report_May2008.pdf

They did not Drink the Koolaid?

"These records reveal a symbiotic relationship where the usual dividing lines between government and journalism have been obliterated.

Internal Pentagon documents repeatedly refer to the military analysts as “message force multipliers” or “surrogates” who could be counted on to deliver administration “themes and messages” to millions of Americans “in the form of their own opinions.”

Though many analysts are paid network consultants, making $500 to $1,000 per appearance, in Pentagon meetings they sometimes spoke as if they were operating behind enemy lines, interviews and transcripts show. Some offered the Pentagon tips on how to outmaneuver the networks, or as one analyst put it to Donald H. Rumsfeld, then the defense secretary, “the Chris Matthewses and the Wolf Blitzers of the world.” Some warned of planned stories or sent the Pentagon copies of their correspondence with network news executives. Many — although certainly not all — faithfully echoed talking points intended to counter critics.

“Good work,” Thomas G. McInerney, a retired Air Force general, consultant and Fox News analyst, wrote to the Pentagon after receiving fresh talking points in late 2006. “We will use it.”"  NY Times

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Yes, and those who did not "play ball" were systematically excluded from access by the Pentagon.  The MSM picked up those cues (presumably transmitted by the Administration) and stopped talking to many of the best people. 

I was invited to one briefing at the Pentagon.  At the meeting, many of those mentioned in this article were present.  The purpose of the meeting was to give Rumsfeld the chance to explain the Abu Ghraib mess.

I asked some awkward questions and was not invited again.  pl

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/20/washington/20generals.html?_r=2&hp=&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

The Newshour. Where is it going?

I told the Newshour some time ago that I was no longer interested, but I still watch.  What else is there to watch, "Battlestar Galactica?"  David Brooks is always amusing and his plug ugly Irish friend is so familiar that how could one pass up the chance to watch the two of them "duke" it out?   Shields' point tonight about the utter insignificance and emptiness of the gesture of wearing a piece of tin in the shape of the US flag struck me as "the real stuff."  People ask me at times why I don't wear one.  My answer?  "I gave at the office."  I don't fly a modern American flag at home either.  This is not a post office.  I fly flags with inscriptions like; "An appeal to heaven," or "Don't Tread On Me."

Tonight we had Robert Satloff, the intelligent and fervent Zionist director of AIPAC's thinktank, "The Washington Institute For Near East Policy" (WINEP) debate Mark Perry, who is something or other with the "Crisis Fora."  (forums?)  They squared off over the issue of whether or not former president Jimmy Carter (never one of my favorites) should talk to the Hamasniks.

Satloff's response was prophetically pre-ordained.  I won't go into it.  Perry professed to believe that Hamas's position is so nuanced that it should be explored.  Maybe so. 

My problem with discussions like this is that the participants are so compromised by sponsorship and ideology that their statements are meaningless.

In my opinion, Satloff is basically an Israeli with ties to the US.  Perry is a man whose leanings toward the Palestinians are so pronounced and unequivocal that his objectivity is as much in question as that of Satloff.  His sponsorship and that of his British colleague; Ramsbotham, Cruikshank or whatever is so deeply affected by partisan money that his words lack meaning.

Why doesn't the Newhour actually try to find some neutrals, instead of just matching up the usual talking heads? 

Not me.  Go find someone new or watch the Newshour decline into insignificance when Jim leaves.  A Georgetown socialite like Judy Woodruff as anchor is not going to "cut it."  pl

"Iraqi Forces vs. The Extremists"

When Joe Lieberman corrected McCain's "senior moment" in Jordan, he had McCain say that the Iranians were training "extremists," not "alkaydah" (sic).  The two of them and Graham had just come from Iraq, so I guess Joe had gotten the word there that the baddies (Jeish al-mahdi) were going to be referred to as "extremists."   McCain just couldn't keep it straight.  Hmmm.  The enemy is who?  Say it again...

It is clear that US policy is to back Maliki/Dawa/ISCI/Badr Corps (Iraqi Forces) against Moqtada al-Sadr and his "army" of "shirtless ones."  Fine.  Why not?  I guess the US has no choice but to back someone.

I suppose that the powers that be will shift the Main Supply Route (MSR) to the west (Nasiriyah) if the Basra area becomes too obstructed.

My problem with the present course of events is the ruthlessness of the propaganda campaign being successfully waged by the Bush Administration.   The president has succeeded in "framing" the discussion in such a way that Maliki and his assembly of Badr Corps militias are represented as being the equivalent of George Washington suppressing the Whiskey Rebellion.  The noble Maliki is portrayed as motivated by a selfless desire for "national" unity.  The MSM has re-transmitted that idea without serious question.

In fact he is merely acting on behalf of an emerging alignment of pro-Iranian forces in Iraq that have successfully pulled the wool over American eyes.

You may have noticed that no Kurdish units of the "Iraqi Forces" have been brought down from the north for this "fandango."  You may also have noticed that our Concerned Local Citizens/Sons of Iraq (read Sunni tribal Arab auxiliaries) are not involved.  Show me some engaged units in this that are not Shia.

They don't seem to fight so well, these "Iraqi Forces " at Basra.  We have spent a lot of time and money on these people.  They are not making much progress at Basra.  I used to know Montagnard Special Commando Unit troops who fought better than this, but, then, they were well led by some wonderful Special Forces sergeants and junior officers.

That brings up the inevitability of heavy US involvement in this suppression of the "Whiskey Rebellion."  It's just a matter of time.

McCain must fear that terribly.  pl

http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1726132,00.html

Zuckerman on Iranian Intentions

Sunday mornings I devote to watching the newsy talkies.  Sad, but necessary.  The terriers get me up by 0730 anyway.  Good coffee helps to bolster spirits for the experience.  One of the weeklies that I watch is the McLaughlin thing.  In spite of the yelling and rudeness, the views of some of these people are worth knowing, if only for the influence they have and the money they spread around among the merely "officed."

Mort Zuckerman is one such.  A billionaire press baron on the model of Beaverbrook or the "dirty digger," (a British epithet), Zuckerman never misses a chance to push his world wide agenda.

Today, he said (if I heard right) that the mere possession by Iran of a cascading centrifuge setup for uranium enrichment is "proof" of Iranian intention to produce nuclear weapons.

Now, I am no "nucular" engineer, but if I read the available materials right, it is necessary to enrich uranium somewhat to produce fuel for nuclear electricity plants.  A further enrichment is necessary to produce weapons grade enriched uranium. 

Iran claims that it wants nuclear generated electricity.  There is a plausible case for that.  Iran has a lot of gas and oil deposits, but they are not infinite and they are pretty much the country's only economic resource other than caviar, carpets and pistachio nuts.  The Iranians say they want to exchange the petroleum for foreign exchange rather than burn it for electricity.

The IAEA says that they have not found proof of Iranian progress toward nuclear weapons.

Mortimer Zuckerman thinks otherwise.

Does this sound like the Iraq farce to anyone but me?  pl

Friedman and Brooks- Inhabitants of a Flat Earth

By that I mean that they live in a specialized world of their own imagination in which the needs of; career, editorial boards, producers, and vapid news program hosts are the stuff of dreams come and gone.

Friedman wrote a book called "Flat Earth" (or something like that) in which he posited the idea that all of mankind is being ironed flat by the steamroller of globalization.  (metaphor - somewhat mixed).  In the Friedmanean dictum below he writes that the Arab sheikhs of Iraq are the answer. I am here to tell you folks that if there are people on earth who do not inhabit Friedman's "flat earth," they are Arab sheikhs.  they are the upholders of traditional and particularist life.  They are the guardians of 'urf (tribal law).  Those are the very characteristics that have made them rise in rebellon against Al-Qa'ida.  You think it was our money?  Yes, they like money?  They need money.  Their people need money.  How many of us do not like money?

Brooks?  He is one of the "most scholars," etc. whom he bashes in his piece.  I guess the wind has blown the other way now.

The New York Times pays these men to write this tripe?   pl

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/09/04/opinion/04brooks.html?th&emc=th

http://select.nytimes.com/2007/08/29/opinion/29friedman.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fThomas%20L%20Friedman