Re: unions

On Thu, 17 May 2007 14:32:42 -0700, Rob Perkins <rrperkin@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

On 5/17/07 11:43 AM, in article 758p43tiu6aq2ctpkr7hb5bm6jk7uu7a97@xxxxxxx,
"Josh Hill" <usereplyto@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

One of Bush's many mistakes, I think, is that he never made that
argument, never apologized to the world for the absence of WMD's.

Yeah. He's a little too stubborn and proud to apologize. That's hardly the
fault of just that President.

Clinton, on the other hand, seemed willing enough to apologize and explain,
which I think is good policy.

Even Johnson came to us with a heaveh heart, albeit it took far too
long for him to do so.

He
merely cracked an extraordinarily tasteless joke and tried to shift
the focus to the tyranny of Saddam and an Al Qaeda threat that wasn't
even there until he overthrew the Iraqi government.

He was talking "fight tyranny" before the invasion. Conservative
excuse-makers were also talking "multifaceted reasons to invade" before the
invasion. But the press never really reported all that in detail, any more
than they correctly depict the loyal opposition positions very well.

I remember reading in Woodward's account that the Administration
decided to focus on the WMD's because it was the one issue that
everyone agreed on. The point being that they did make it the focus of
their justification for going to war, even going so far as having
Collin Powell make a missiles-in-Cuba-like presentation to the UN. So
that's what they have to live with, because that's what the American
and world publics heard, and it's what made Congress agree to go to
war.

I know this, because I was listening to it all. I didn't become fed up with
Fox News until shortly after November 2004 when it seemed like the gloves
had come off and there was no more reason for them to pretend to anything
approaching balance in reporting.

(I still don't agree, by the way, that Fox is "GOP TV". It's _Fox_,
therefore "sensational and salacious TV" is the accurate label. Pitting
ideologues against each other and asking impertinent questions. The only
reason Republican shills are friendly is that they *think* it's GOP TV.)

Fox was specifically designed to appeal to the right, and its
newscasters have slipped up and let that not-very-secret-secret out of
the bag on a couple of occasions. If you've seen Murdoch's
publications, you know that that sort of biased coverage is one of his
hallmarks: the headlines on the New York Post, for example, often read
like editorials. Sadly, it looks like he may have an opportunity to do
the same thing to the Wall Street Journal, which has always had a
right-wing editorial page but independent news coverage. And, of
course, this is the man who turned the Times of London into a tabloid
(choke).

Furthermore, he convinced most of the American public through
misleading juxtapositions that Saddam had a role in 9/11.

Yup, he did done dat. Had to avenge his dad, is the theory of a relative of
mine.

Hey, that's my theory too.

So people here and in the world came to consider him a liar. And that
lends credence to those who put the worst possible construction on
events, e.g., claim that Bush fabricated evidence or lied about it
because he wanted to get his hands on Iraq's oil, build bases in the
region, or create an American Empire.

But that prompts the question[1] "If that were the reason to invade, why
don't we actually have any of Iraq's oil?

Because we screwed up and they aren't producing much?

Also, we already had bases in the
region, didn't we? And, don't we already have an American Empire by virtue
of all the land mass between our borders?"

Not to mention that with a few exceptions (e.g., our brief attempt to
snatch the Philippines), our policy has historically tended to be
anti-imperialistic. But that requires a knowledge of history, and
people in Europe and the Middle East don't know that. That's one of
the mistakes we keep making -- we made it in Vietnam, we made in Iraq.
We assume that people will see us as we see ourselves, but people tend
to see us as Europeans, and from the perspective of most of the world,
that means colonialists. And in the end, its perceptions that matter,
not history. Our flaws and mistakes notwithstanding, the fact that a
majority of people around the world think more highly of China than
the United States and consider the US as greater threat to peace than
North Korea is mind-bogglingly foolish. But that does us little good,
given that they /do/ see us that way. And it seems to me that the Bush
Administration and the radical right have been throwing gasoline on
the fire of that foolishness, though they aren't the only ones to
blame: hell, every time we refer to the President as "leader of the
free world," our popularity drops 10%.

--
Josh

"The conservative movement is founded on the simple tenet
that people have the right to live life as they please,
as long as they don't hurt anyone else in the process. . . .
The radical right has nearly ruined our party. Its members
do not care about the Constitution and they are the
ones making all the noise." - Barry Goldwater

.

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