well, Cindy Sheehan used to suck, but she got over it when her first born was killed. Prior to that, and for a few months after, she did not go out and protest the war, and she regrets that.

So, in light of that, maybe you should grade on a curve. She went from sucking to non-sucking after her eyes were opened by a serious loss.

I don't think we are going to bomb Iran. But that still does not change the fact that this country has done serious evil around the world and killed millions since WW2 - and ruined the lives of hundreds of millions. It is beyond belief almost, and I am about to give up on America.

Arthur Silber, Seymour Hersh, and IOZ don't suck.

Arthur Silber doesn't suck.
Nor does Sy Hersh, or that dude behind TomDispatch.

I don't suck. I return wallets stuffed with cash (I've done it three times and just 2 days ago ran to return someone a bus pass they dropped when I'd love to have a free bus pass). I don't lie. I don't patronize or accept any of that in my personal life.

I keep trying to write a post about it but I think the best thing in the world would be for Iran to be handed nuclear weapons by Pakistan or Russia or whoever. Pakistan being the perfect example of why it's a good idea. Few, if any, countries are better resources for radical Islamic terrorists. Bin Laden is even hiding there. Will we do anything about it? Fuck no. Why the hell not? Easy. They have the bomb.

Iran having the bomb = no war with Iran.

PS: You do not suck. 30 years to learn right from wrong is miraculously quick given the prevailing state of Western culture. 76.3 years is not enough for most. And I love Arthur but to some degree he does suck. "Sky is falling" is just as bad as "Pollyanna" for the same basic reason. Neither is real and both get tuned out easily. Human life and civilization, such as it is, will not end for another 100 years of war. Not even a couple nuclear exchanges; dozens of nukes have been detonated above ground since 1945. Dirty water and politics will continue to kill more people. Not to detract, though. Everyone should be reading Arthur. He sees right to the core of things and dissects them thoroughly for his readership.

I don't know if I suck or not but I do call Nancy Pelosi @1-202-225-0100 and discuss IMPEACHMENT. FACE FACTS, the only way to stop this crowd is through IMPEACHMENT. WHO ELSE can you call to get that started except the Speaker of the House?

But we ARE nice, Jon! An EVIL empire would drop rods from space made of depleted uranium! Not tungsten!

On the other hand, isn't the symbol for tungsten "W"? Like, Dubya Bush? Uh-oh.

Arthur Silber doesn't suck.

Nor does Sy Hersh, or that dude behind TomDispatch.

That would be Tom, methinks.

Iran? The chatter isn't there yet.

But even if he did, it may be the only way to radicalize another 30% of the world. Or another 3% of the US.

No, sorry, Scott Ritter sucks too.

Akbar Ganji doesn't suck as much as most people.

Lists suck, including lists of things or persons that suck and lists of things or persons that don't suck.

Vaudeville does not suck. "Doctor, doctor, it hurts when I do that." "Don't do that."
We never learned. Not the fault of vaudeville.

Noam Chomsky

You need to follow my argument carefully.

Jon, you most definitely do NOT suck.

Which is why you DO suck.

In other words: I love you. Marry me. (Along the lines of Joe E. Brown, "nobody's perfect" and all that...)

xoxoxoxoxoxoxo

And Ashley: I have never said what you appear to think I have said, which gives rise to my suckiness in your view. Moreover, you appear to have little understanding of my methods or specific goals insofar as my political blogging is concerned.

So, NO PROPOSAL FOR YOU!

Noam Chomsky does not suck.

I, on the other hand, do, for all the reasons given above.

Hey, what are you talking about. How can anyone stop anything; whatever happens happens, that's all there is to it.

I've decided to quit blogging soon, after deciding that I, too, suck too much to keep parading my psyche via "personal writing" in public. And what's more, most will never know just how badly I suck: how I could've done things to possibly empower us all, except that I couldn't handle the potential stress and strain. But, like most, I've got my bag of anesthetics to get me by.

Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman, Howard Zinn, etc etc. Don't suck much. Me on the other hand? biggg time. But who cares about me anyways? Lots of other people suck too. But like father Tutu puts is so aptly: "You see, Bush, Bin Laden, Saddam Husein, they're all children of Goad (hey! that's how HE says it, ok?). And Goad must look down and think 'oh what a lot!'"
But you know who else sucks? People who make lists of other people they think really suck! :-p

My greatest personal shame has been my unwillingness to spread the message. Even something so simple as forwarding a petition via email. They wouldn't want to hear it, I say. It would annoy or inconvenience them, as if that were the most important thing.

Regarding John Caruso's post, He is right on Target. I am always amazed by the fact that Leftists almost consider this guy Raimondo as one of them. I think the only good thing about this guy is he opposes Bush Wars.
If the Left becomes powerful this man would be calling for Murdering leading leftists in America. He is like the rest of American Right. He is a deranged man.
When Noam Chomsky disagreed with Walt Mearsheimer paper this guy compared Chomsky and Hitchens to Hitler and Stalin. I wrote him if there's a Bartlett's for the Worst Quotations this one is the surest entry.The man is an Asshole. Just wait till he starts smearing Left wholesale as Traitors.

It also appears he can't even read properly.

"Going the Nicaraguan route wouldn't solve the problem, since Al Qaeda is about as likely to abide by the edicts of the International Court as the US government was in Central America. In spite of poor little Nicaragua "following all the right procedures," moans Chomsky, "the US simply would not adhere to it." So what makes Chomsky think Al Qaeda would adhere to the decisions of a UN tribunal?"

According to this idiot's logic a robber has to abide by a court's decision and Al Qaeda=US Superpower.
Imagine that, then No robber would ever be convicted in a court of law.

If you're telling me that Glenn Greenwald sucks then you suck big time. Also what about Hersh ?

My cats don't suck.

Rahul Mahajan doesn't suck. Shakespeare doesn't suck, though he never stuck his neck out politically. My poodle doesn't suck.

I'm with you on the Universe, though.

Well ... yes and no.

I don't suck, because I recognize the real reason behind the Iraq invasion; armistice enforcement.

Last week's discovery at the NY UNIMOVC headquarters of phosgene gas samples recovered from a suspected WMD site in 1996 proves to all with eyes to see that Saddam was, four years after he signed the Desert Storm armistice, still in posession of prohibited dual-use materials and still seeking to make weapons out of them.

Now let's review: Saddam was in the WMD business in 1996 and he declared the UN inspectors personna non grata in 1998, chucking them out of the nation in direct and specific violation of a great number of UN Security Council resolutions.

Does it comport with your understanding of human nature that Sadam would have chosen those years to quit fooling with WMD? If he was willing to risk discovery between 1991 and 1996, would he give up the illegal practices as soon as the search parties left?

And of course, in the 11,000 page report Saddam's government sent the UN during the final pre-invasion round of inspections, Iraq did not account for much of the WMD left to its care in 1991 and due for documented destruction.

In his report to the security council based on te final pre-invasion inspection round, Hans Blix makes note of this odd fact, along with the observation that Iraq's government had extensive records of every other thing that happened in that nation, but were unaccountably incapable of documenting the destruction of WMD stockpiles.

Blix went on to say, in the same report, that progress was being made, and he expressed no doubt that if given enough time, Saddam would finally come across with the goods.

But after 12 years of obfuscation, delay, cheat-and-retreat and plain and fancy lying, Saddam had not yet done so, and some of us found that a little remiss on his part.

Not to put too fine a point on it, since Saddam's intrasigence had lasted a dozen years, some of us thought it might go on forever.

We tried letting a militaristic nation run by a mad dictator skirt the terms of an armistice back in the 1930s, and it didn't turn out well for anyone on the European subcontinent.

Santayana was right. We either learn from out mistakes or repeat them.

Einstein was also right: Insanity consists of doing the same thing over and over and expecting a new and different result each time.

By Einstein's definition, Blix's desire, in 2002, to continue using sanctions and inspection teams to hold Saddam to account represent a high order of irrationality.

And that's pretty sucky too.

That's why I left...now that London has overtaken NY as the financial center and Europe, the UK and Russian are doing rather fine, one might even assume with a sigh of relief that we're entering a post American world.

just a perception..
bay/paris

Arthur Silber will be very unhappy when he hears about this. He is an excellent dentist and fine member of the community. I understand his contributions to his alma mater (Cornell) and to the Israeli Red Cross are quite generous.
He'll be quite cross himself. And you know who's going to suffer when the dentist is irritable.

What's with the hating on antiwar.com and libertarians? Some liberals are sore that their heroes are in bed with Bush, but their cognitive dissonance won't let them blame the truly guilty. Instead they heap their sins on scapegoats.
By the way: Hitchens is a monster. He redeemed himself with liberals with his book length rant against religion. Let's ignore the fact that he supports W's GWOT because it's all about killing religious people ("Islamofascists").

reruns of mash suck. reruns of the black & white episodes of the andy griffith show don't suck. that's just my two cents.

yep, i suck out loud.

@Mark Dorroh:

I was wondering how long it would take someone to blame Saddam for the UN scare the other day.

Any adult should realize that an entity like a nation consists of millions of people doing individual things. I was genuinely surprised that no weapons were found because it was beyond my imagination that a nation could exist without a number of defensive and offensive programmes. My main disappointment was at the lack of throwdown weapons and the lack of framing.

Having said this, I was against the war because I felt that Iraq posed no direct threat to the US or to the world in general. Also, preemptive wars suck. As does torture; which observers could see would become rampant under the freeforall, everything allowed for sake of expediency battlefield conditions. Of course, when things go well, those things are brushed under.

Einstein was also right: Insanity consists of doing the same thing over and over and expecting a new and different result each time.

By Einstein's definition, Blix's desire, in 2002, to continue using sanctions and inspection teams to hold Saddam to account represent a high order of irrationality.

I wonder what Einstein though of that other quote:

No man ever steps into the same river twice.

Shorter Mark Dorroh:
We found Saddam's WMD, and they were in the UN headquarters in New York.

Paddy Chayefsky doesn't suck. Or maybe it should be he didn't suck.

OK, in an existential kind of way, he doesn't suck.

I'm happy to admit that I suck.

(And BTW, Mark Dorroh, even the most ardent war cheerleaders gave up on that WMD thing years ago. Jeeze dude, where you been? That sucks, for sure.)

William S. Burroughs does (or did) not suck, at least in the sense you put it.

Larry Craig sucks,or he would've had the cops not arrested him first.

Thanks Jon. I hate to...I don't know how to say this, so I'm just going to say it: I suck.

Last week's discovery at the NY UNIMOVC headquarters of phosgene gas samples recovered from a suspected WMD site in 1996 proves to all with eyes to see that Saddam was, four years after he signed the Desert Storm armistice, still in posession of prohibited dual-use materials and still seeking to make weapons out of them.

Of course some of us do bother to read farther down in the story.

Records indicated the material was from a 1996 excavation of the bombed-out research and development building at Iraq's main chemical weapons facility at Muthana, near Samarra. The entire facility was extensively bombed during the 1991 Gulf War

Thank you for playing.

"Last week's discovery at the NY UNIMOVC headquarters of phosgene gas samples recovered from a suspected WMD site in 1996 proves to all with eyes to see that Saddam was, four years after he signed the Desert Storm armistice, still in posession of prohibited dual-use materials and still seeking to make weapons out of them."

SADDAM WAS IN NEW YORK? Well, hell, the US military sucks for invading THE WRONG DAMN COUNTRY.

Nobody can do anything right anymore, I guess because they all suck.

Hell yes, Susan.
Georgie-Poo should have invaded the UN, which is what his core constituency wants anyway.
Why, if it weren't for the UN Security Council Colin Powell wouldn't have made an ass of himself in front of the entire world!
Dern those wily furriners!

but, Bourgeois Liberal, you KNOW Saddam brought it to New York, so he's responsible.

Daily Kos? Nothxbye.
FWIW, Chomsky's posted on antiwar.com today. And his stuff's been posted there before. So much for Raimondo hating Chomsky. Raimondo's never advocated killing leftists. You DNC spammers are going to have to make up more credible bullshit.

I think Colin Powell wanted to make a fool of himself - at least, that is what I thought when I read his book in August 2001.

I guess the book didn't get him there, and frankly, neither did the speech at the UN. I heard someone sprouting nonsense on NPR a couple of weeks back, and it turned out to be Colin Powell.

So, my conclusion, based on the available evidence, is that Colin Powell and Mark Dorroh want to be seen as fools, or else they would not try so hard.

What's the DNC?

Good to see that there are always clowns, Mark Durroh.

Seriously: we invaded Iraq because we've got some weapons he used to have in NY?!?

What's the verdict, folks: evil or stupid?

I think Colin Powell wanted to make a fool of himself

No, I think Powell--like Bush's current flunkey Petraeus--was a political general who thought that by playing along with Bushco he could somehow manage the situation.

He failed to realize that if Bush & Cheney are good at nothing else, they excel at turning people like Powell into complicit useful idiots.

Oh, for crying out loud.
Not NY, NEW JERSEY!
About 1 mile SE of where Jimmy (may he rest in peace) Hoffa is buried.
You walk there, and suddenly you feel all tingly.
Could be the MSG from the Chines take-out, but my bet it's from the WMD.

I read Silber's excellent post and saw myself in it. Boy do I suck. Our tactic has been to let the Republicans do what they want because they will fuck everything up and destroy themselves. We are seeing it happen and are enjoying it, aren't we? Lots of gloating over how Bush and Co. are so reviled. After so many dead and maimed Americans and Iraqis. Not to mention lunatics on the Supreme Court, fucking over the poor, Alberto Gonzalez, etc. I suck, you suck, we all suck.

Bud McSpud Says I(and those who criticize Raimondo) am a spammer from DNC, A Liberal etc. Idiocy should have a limit. I never said Raimondo advocated killing Leftists. This Bud should take basic English lessons. I said someone like Raimondo who is a fan of Joe McCarthy, who dishonestly criticizes Chomsky,who is a fan of Ann Coulter even in 2003, who has no problem with Indonesian Massacre of East Timorese,who ridicules Sandinistas and Chavez and others who stand up to US Capitalists can easily join others rightwingers in demonising and smashing Leftists if they become popular. It is possible unreliable assholes like Raimondo may even call for murdering leftists.
I have no problem with reading Antiwar.com, OK. Infact I read it sometimes.
It is touching how some leftists love Raimondo and Defend him at every turn. But Raimondo doesn't respond in kind. He smears and misrepresents Leftists whenever he likes.
It is truly absurd Bud is pointing about Chomsky being published by Antiwar.com.It doesn't prove anything, doesn't negate anything Raimondo wrote about Chomsky. Raimondo publishes anyone who agrees with his viewpoint on a given subject and then he goes to merrily misrepresent him when the person holds a different opinion on any subject.
It is Bud McSpud and other idiots who may be part of DNC. But then who cares about this idiot's ravings.

Look Bud McSpud, DNC types are the sorts of people who would like Raimondo: DNC means neoliberal.

Personally I don't see why people have this need to either love someone or hate someone. I like a lot of Raimondo's writing and analysis of US foreign policy; his cheerleading for markets, not so much... What's so hard about that?

You say that like it's a BAD thing.

Yes, I suck. But then, I'm gay. In fact, I'm like totally gay. I doubt very much that Noam Chomsky sucks, alas; about you, Mr. Schwarz, everybody you know (surely someof them suck), the antiwar movement (ditto), the liberal blogosphere (surely Arthur Silber sucks), Cindy Sheehan, and the universe, I lack sufficient data to say.

Sucking is good: it gives pleasure, both to the sucker and the suckee. Homophobic metaphors are bad. And one very tiresome trait of the liberal boy-culture blogosphere is its nervous, giggling homophobia.

Adventure Books had a few things to say about the idea of bombing Iran.

http://adventurebooks.newsvine.com/_news/2007/09/03/938020-the-madness-of-king-george-the-sequel

Desmond Tutu doesn't suck.

But you have to remember that in the greater scheme of things, all of us have some aspect of suckiness. We just have to learn how to overcome it. Which I haven't figured out how to do yet.

It's only a phonecall and could save the country from another bad move. Call Nancy Pelosi @ 1-202-225-0100 and discuss IMPEACHMENT.

On the John Caruso Post at September 3, 2007 02:45 PM.
True enough. I agree with what Caruso is saying.When someone criticizes Raimondo all he gets is catcalls from Leftists on how this is divisive to Antiwar Movement. They defend someone who can at the drop of the hat demonise Left in the most revolting terms. Infact he has shown this ability again and again. Raimondo is completely unreliable. That was the point I was making.His rants against "commies" is certainly nauseating.

It's Labor Day.
The destruction of America's unions sucked.
Where was everybody?
I hope the Global Market sucks everybody in and spits them out looking like Josef Goebbels.
Then we can have Totalen Kampf, with an Endsieg.

Since this thread has turned into something of a referendum on Raimondo, let me add my two cents.

First "Ajit" claims he never said Raimondo advocated killing leftists, then in the same post he/she writes "it is possible unreliable assholes like Raimondo may even call for murdering leftists." This is, to put it simply, bullshit. In 2002 he wrote a piece entitled "Turn Toward the Left," (http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=2334) arguing that the antiwar movement should give up on the authoritarian Right and look for allies on -- wait for it -- the Left. And not that I by any means endorse Raimondo's positions on every issue, but excuse me if I don't give a damn what his views are on social security or even immigration -- it seems to me his views on foreign policy are much more relevant considering he's, you know, a writer for Antiwar.com. And again, I don't care how "reliable" he is when it comes to accepting "leftist" gospel on things like worshipping at the cult of every power-hungry demagogue just because they speak out against American policy, i.e. Chavez. And as an aside, what is meant by the term "leftist?" Does that term exclusively represent centralizing would-be presidents-for-life like Chavez, or does it represent the anti-state, decentralized approach of the EZLN? It seems hypocritical to me for self-identified leftists to criticize Bush for centralizing power and abandoning the rule of law, while endorsing the same tactics when employed by a self-proclaimed leftist.

Anyway, when it comes to critiquing the War Party and apologists for the warfare state I have generally found Raimondo to be pretty spot on. And considering the state of the American Empire and the completely ineffectual opposition as engendered by the Democratic Party and supposed liberal activists -- as Mr. Schwarz has so ably demonstrated -- I'll continue to read Raimondo despite his imperfections.

Amen Charlie. It's seems some people here are more interested in being ideological demagogues then stopping a war. John Caruso asks "How many wars has Antiwar.com stopped?", How many has he stopped? How many wars has Noam Chomsky stopped? or the "Hollywood Left"?

Arundhati Roy doesn't suck.

The reason for all this suck? No one has yet to figure out what is money, and how money works.

Quit whining already, if you're intended on a solely pleasurably existence, go be a damn plant.

S'mores don't suck. They're melty, and sticky, and sweet. Everyone should have s'mores at least once. It really sucks that not everyone can have s'mores.

here's what i don't get

when we try to be rilly nasty about things / people we don't like, we say they suck.

and yet i wish i was sucking someone off right now.. . not larry craig, someone nice. or they were sucking me.

same with douchebags. they are not lovely things, yet serve a really nice purpose, clean vulvas a-a-and assholes are o.k. in my book!

everybody sucks. except me.

actually, getting upset at me(or whoever) rather than doing something constructive is a big part of the problem.

But what?

I wish I had a solution-- suffice to say I don't think either HRC or Obama constitute solutions, even if they're a few basis points less scummy than, say, Giuliani.

(well, Obama is, anyway.)

HERE'S A SOLUTION, call Nancy Pelosi @ 1-202-225-0100 and discuss IMPEACHMENT, perhaps
we can STOP A NEW WAR from happening in Iran, BEFORE it becomes a SERIOUS new problem.

Dude, we all get those bouts of loathing. I'm just suprised you had yours at 7 in the afternoon - mine usually come at about 2 or 3 in the morning when I'm trying to sleep. But you can't tell the world about them, because it'll only bring you reciprocal loathing and withering scorn. Just let it stew. Forget about it. Dismiss it as crankery, the momentary by-product of a bad mood or a low moment in the day or a weird bit of brain chemistry. If you make it the cornerstone of your worldview, you might as well go become an hero. (Whatever you do, don't get wasted to drive those thoughts away. That's a sure road to addiction.)

KevinD: I mentioned Antiwar.com being unable to stop wars as an exact analogy to this statement about the anti-war movement from Jon's original post: "If you can't stop the third war in six years...you should change your name from 'anti-war movement' to 'pro-sucking movement.'" The point was that if that's a criterion for sucking, then Antiwar.com sucks as much or more than the anti-war movement generally. Actually it was a bit odd for Jon to segment Antiwar.com from the larger anti-war movement, if you think about it.

Setting all of that aside, I said this purely for the sake of analogy, because I disagree strongly with Jon's implicit contention that a reasonable measure of success of the anti-war movement is whether or not it's able to stop wars. At least one crucial function of the anti-war movement is to let the victims of US violence know that there is not unanimity in this country, that there is a large segment of the US population that's bitterly opposed to the crimes our country commits, and to have a visible symbol of that opposition. It's especially important as a way of answering the extremists in their own societies who try to leverage that violence to justify their own, just as our own extremists do.

I'm not saying the anti-war movement doesn't suck; I think it does, for many reasons (the major one of which I've already mentioned). But I don't think the inability to stop war is one of them.

Jonathan's not going to stop fighting: there's too much good in him. I only wish I could do what he does.

probably if this universe sucks, there must be another universe that blows and we will all end up there, consciously or not. although i suck, and more than the sum of my sucking parts, i revel in being made of a star that sucked, yet here i am sucking in ways all my own — and sometime, there will be another being, made of me, who sucks for their own reasons, and i will finally be forgiven.

While we're on the subject... how many wars has anyone stopped? Is there a single example in all of human history of a government's war policy being derailed by popular opposition, prior to the onset of hostilities? (Vietnam war was brought to a swifter end by the anti-war movement, but it started and went on a long time before that happened.)

Dennis Perrin talks about this post today. In his conclusion, there is the opening for a very long (and likely convoluted) discussion about power and those who own it and thus own the country.
He suggests its going to be a long struggle. True, but it can't start until Americans move at least somewhat away from the twin stars of celebrity (sports, movies, anything) and $$$$$ in their eyes. They want it too. And they won't understand how our blessed system works until half of them don't know if they will be able to go to Safeway tonight and buy their next meal.
I don't wish it on them, but what else will take those stars out of their Wall Street/Hollywood vision? Talk about injustice, distribution of wealth, fairness...lotsa luck. And when will "progressives" learn to talk to "folks?"
Harrington's "Other America?" They'd prefer some Oprah-sponsored formula for "succes" and you too can be a millionaire snake oil How you gonna get to their minds and guts?

Can we also stipulate that God/Allah sucks as well?

Ted wrote:
" ... My main disappointment was at the lack of throwdown weapons and the lack of framing ... I was against the war because I felt that Iraq posed no direct threat to the US or to the world in general. Also, preemptive wars suck. As does torture; which observers could see would become rampant under the freeforall, everything allowed for sake of expediency battlefield conditions. Of course, when things go well, those things are brushed under.

Mark wrote:

"Einstein was also right: Insanity consists of doing the same thing over and over and expecting a new and different result each time.
By Einstein's definition, Blix's desire, in 2002, to continue using sanctions and inspection teams to hold Saddam to account represent a high order of irrationality."

"I wonder what Einstein though of that other quote:

"No man ever steps into the same river twice."

Dear Ted:

Thanks for injecting a healthy dose of Hereclitus into the mix. He was right then, and Einstein proved his principle applied across the universe.

Now, in re. the WMD gas being found at the UN: It did not spontaneously generate in that file drawer. Rather, it was brought to the UN by UN WMD inspections officers. They found it in an Iraqi suspected WMD manufacturing plant in 1996.
So I'm not "blaming the UN" as one other threadmate has charged.

I am blaming Saddam for continuing to secretly hoard prohibited dual-use materials, especially phosgene. It killed thousands in WWI, and there was certainly, after his use of gas on Iranians and Kurds, no reason to believe he wouldn't gleefully use such weapons on anyone who got on his nerves.

Let me respectfully inquire: Does anyone on this thread believe that the terms of the 1991 Desert Storm Armistice should have ever been honored or enforced?

If not, then Iraq is a wretched NeoCon adventure.

If so, the invasion was made inevitable by the non-compliance, over 12 years, of Saddam's government.

Those are the clear alternatives.

Please throw down, one way or the other, so I can know whether there is any basis for consensus. We seem like fairly clever persons who already know what we disagree on ... now let's see how much we can agree on.

And thanks in advance.

Yers,
Larry "Boots" Dorfman,
A.K.A. "Yanker of Conventional Wisdom Chains Extrordinaire,"
Columbia College of Chicago Class of '74,
B.A., B.M.O.C., S.O.B., Q.E.D.

PS - I know rather a lot of police officers and other professional law enforcement agents and officers of the court, and throwdown weapons and framing are never acceptable, no matter how tempting the circumstances or how sure one is that "the dirtbag's guilty, so if we can't find evidence, we'll plant it."

Sorry to hear you were disappointed by the lack of such tactics during the hunt for WMD. I thought it was honorable of them to tell the truth.

But the sad fact is, truth is not always as highly valued as one might hope.

"(And BTW, Mark Dorroh, even the most ardent war cheerleaders gave up on that WMD thing years ago. Jeeze dude, where you been? That sucks, for sure.)"

Uh, gee. Since we supposedly ardent war cheerleaders gave up on that WMD thing years ago, I guess those samples must have indeed spontaneously generated in that drawer in New York.

I guess the UN inspection teams didn't really find them in a manufacturing plant in Iraq after all, no matter what the documentation says.

Sure. Phosgene gas is notorious for growing its own vials in locked file cabinets, everybody knows that.

The whole report was probably faked, like that Niger yellowcake deal Joe Wilson proved by sitting around for a weekend in Niger and drinking tea with government officials ... or that Dan Rather ran as his lead story during the 2004 elections even though most of his experts refused to vet it ... yeah, that's the ticket!

Hey, Ted's got his throwdown weapons evidence at last!

I repeat, truth is not as valued commodity as one might hope.

PS - The fact that the author of this bit of wisdom believes in his heart that existence sucks should set off a few warning buzzers, seems to me.
I mean, it's kinda the only game in town, unless you believe perception equals reality, in which case a whole array of non-existential options opens up.

It's the same old argument between Plato and Aristotle. We're either shadows on the cave wall or we're real, A is A, a thing is itself, no matter how many attractive dialectic reinterpretations one might make of it.

Those are the options, Campers. Do what you wish, but this aging media creep continues to believe that reality and existence will continue to be their dirty selves no matter how many fairy tales we may tell ourselves, no matter how convenient it might be to believe it's all an illusion with all real and percieved human ills susceptable to illusory remedies.

Does this clear up for anyone where I'm coming from?

Mark wrote: "Last week's discovery at the NY UNIMOVC headquarters of phosgene gas samples recovered from a suspected WMD site in 1996 proves to all with eyes to see that Saddam was, four years after he signed the Desert Storm armistice, still in posession of prohibited dual-use materials and still seeking to make weapons out of them."

Bourgeois Liberal wrote:
"Of course some of us do bother to read farther down in the story.

"Records indicated the material was from a 1996 excavation of the bombed-out research and development building at Iraq's main chemical weapons facility at Muthana, near Samarra. The entire facility was extensively bombed during the 1991 Gulf War

"Thank you for playing."

Dear B.L.:

You are entirely welcome. And thanks for the additional info. I read the story on CNN's web site, and apparently didn't read it all. Bad form, and you may consider me properly chastised for fudging my research.

My only question would be, if Saddam destroyed all his WMD left over from 1991 and if all his WMD production facilities were bombed out, why did he fail, for 12 years, to provide documented evidence of these facts? He was required to do so by UN Security Council resolutions and the terms of the armistice, yet he never did so, according to Chief Weapons Inspector Hans Blix.

Since the failure to either allow the 2002-2003 round of inspections to go forward unfettered and unannounced or to provide the records which had not been turned in for a dozen years was the proximate cause of the Security Council's (and the US Congress') vote to authorize the use of force, it seems Saddam would have been eager to turn over those records.

Unless they did not exist.

Did Saddam deliberately conceal evidence of compliance with the terms of armistice and the security council, knowing that the result could very well be the invasion of his nation and the end of his presidency?

From what I've learned of human nature over my decades of paying close attention, I'd find it hard to believe that any self-interested party would sabotage himself via such a blatantly self-destructive decision.

But who knows? Not I, not you, not the UN and certainly not CNN.

And by the way, these extremely silly jokes about the WMD being at the UN, not Iraq, are running a little thin. That is, unless you believe in the spontaneous generation of phosgene gas in locked file drawers.

Which means you also probably belive the moon landings were faked and TV wrestling is real.

Remember, it's all a big plot against you and yours! And be sure to vote based on that belief!

That voter motivation strategy worked real good for Hitler, who subsequently took care of all the conspirators in a no-nonsense fashion that still gets written up in history books.

Susan wrote:

"Colin Powell and Mark Dorroh want to be seen as fools, or else they would not try so hard."

Dear S.:

You clever rascal, you've devined my true purpose! I thought I could fool you guys, but now the Truth is Out There for all to see.

You may find it interesting to consider the great Western tradition of the Holy Fool, a person who appears very foolish to his contemporaries but is rehabilitated by history. On that list are Gallileo, Louis Pasteur, Harry Truman, Ayn Rand, Kurt Vonnegut, Lenny Bruce, Margret Sanger, Oliver Hill and a host of other people I and Chairman Powell are proud to be associated with.

Y'all sensible people keep on believing what you already believe ... it's easier than confronting a foolish, clownish person such as I and actually addressing his arguments (which most of you have done rather well).

Remember, if you don't already believe it, it can't be true! Or, to put it another way, "Two legs bad! Four legs good!"

Yers,
Eric Blair

Dusty59 wrote:

"William S. Burroughs does (or did) not suck, at least in the sense you put it."

I could get you a different opinion from some of his friends who watched him shoot his wife dead while drunkedly attempting to shoot a liquor glass of her head, ala William Tell, in Mexico City.

But it's all relative isn't it? I mean, the bitch was strung out on bennies and booze, so she was probably better off dead, right?

So maybe Burroughs didn't suck after all ... at least when not in a Denver airport men's room.

But his prose sure reeked.

Delia wrote:

"Desmond Tutu doesn't suck.

But you have to remember that in the greater scheme of things, all of us have some aspect of suckiness. We just have to learn how to overcome it. Which I haven't figured out how to do yet."

Dear D.:

Me neither. And thank you for injecting a note of rationality into this odd little thread.

Yer Unindicted Co-Conspirator,
Mark Dorroh

Lo wrote:

"S'mores don't suck. They're melty, and sticky, and sweet. Everyone should have s'mores at least once. It really sucks that not everyone can have s'mores."

Dear L.:

Yet another dose of extreme sanity! I think you and Delia and I should start the "Third Way, Desmond Tutu and S'mores Don't Suck Movement."

It might calm down the serial haters of both sides to chat with Bishop Tutu while eating s'mores.

Just a thought.

Yers,
Mark Dorroh

01d55 wrote:

"While we're on the subject... how many wars has anyone stopped? Is there a single example in all of human history of a government's war policy being derailed by popular opposition, prior to the onset of hostilities?

Yeah, actually, I saw a "where are they now" feature on former Yippees in which the late Jerry Rubin opined, "How can people say we accomplished nothing? We ended two presidencies and a war. That sounds pretty substantial to me."*

01d55 added: "(Vietnam war was brought to a swifter end by the anti-war movement, but it started and went on a long time before that happened.)"

The general public didn't turn against the war until the policies of Kennedy (who looked the other way while President Diem and his vice president were murdered in what was supposed to be a bloodless coup) and Johnson, who famously said "I'll be damned if I'll be the first US president to lose a war," and was willing to back it up with the deployment to the field of operations of half a million US military personnel.

Nixon, for all his failings, was the first US president in eight years to reduce US presence there, and only because Jerry and his pals had finally caught the ear of Mr. and Mrs. American Citizen, whose kid was about to be shipped off to Saigon.

Yer pathetic, Pollyana pal,
Mark

*A year or so later, Rubin walked out in front of a New York cab and got himself killed. Brother Huey got snuffed in a coke deal gone wrong, Jerry Rubin hanged himself and Mark Hayden had a brief, disasterous marriage to Jane Fonda ... so maybe there's a price to being effective in pursuit of good government and the end of wars.

Honest, Jon, this is why I gave up on you about a year ago.

You can measure your masturbation by the number who masturbate along with you. There remains hardly anyone who competently disagrees with you...and that was the beginning of your downfall.

The world, the people in it, the U.S. policy...why do you think these things are different than business as usual? Why do you expect them to be different? Because you were sold a pile of crap in your youth by people who wanted to exploit you--people who were not part of the big machine? Of course. Welcome to the maelstrom. Welcome to murder for money.

Why don't you grow up? Because you believe that real maturity begins with the denial of the reality that depresses the shit out of you every day? Or perhaps you don't see it as denial. Perhaps you think it is some kind of higher standard. Get high enough and its just pie...you know?

You have written a hundred brilliant posts exposing the corruption of the government. Does it not occur that the government was designed to be corrupt? Does it not occur that this is the only sort of design that actually governs? That if your aspirations were to fruit, and the government you desire came about, it would be destroyed within weeks by a government that destroys?

Are you not merely hanging on to something fanciful like a crutch? Are you not providing space for hundreds of others with the same crutch? Is this not merely crying in beer?

There is more to life than that.

AMERICA HAS MORE phosgene than anybody in the world so I fail to see why one would worry about Saddam. (Hell, he probably bought it from US).

I suck for too many reasons to count.

My dogs don't suck. Luckily for them, my wife & I together are able to not suck enough to provide them a good home. At least until the rest of the world figures out how bad America sucks & pre-emptively nuke the USA back to the stone age.

Dorroh: "Did Saddam deliberately conceal evidence of compliance with the terms of armistice and the security council, knowing that the result could very well be the invasion of his nation and the end of his presidency?

"From what I've learned of human nature over my decades of paying close attention, I'd find it hard to believe that any self-interested party would sabotage himself via such a blatantly self-destructive decision."

The illusion of military strength can be very appealing. If you're unfamiliar with the history of ruses in warfare, I suggest you starting cracking the books.

But then again, it's not like Saddam Hussein was the type of man who had based his rule on intimidation.

He had to present, to his neighbors and subjects, the image of strength. It's relatively easy to see that. Perhaps in the future, you should try to think half as cleverly as you try to write. I'd suggest you look at your ideology. You base the above assumption on the premise that a Middle Eastern dictator would concern himself, above all, with American perception. It's common to you conservatives, even the effete ones like you.

You base the above assumption on the premise that a Middle Eastern dictator would concern himself, above all, with American perception

Gee, all this time I thought everything was about us!

Of course, Saddam may have thought he didn't need to provide documentation since, after all, UN inspectors had poked around in the bombed-out rubble of his poison gas factory, gathered samples, etc.. What more documentation was in fact necessary?

while it has been pointed out in comments above, and it isn't exactly germane to the auto-suck nature of this particular discourse, it is nonetheless true that if you put enough kagans in one room you will create a level of suction so high as to possibly destroy us all.

literally.

After a careful reading of this thread I've reached the conclusion that self-loathing is overrated.

Hmmm...I don't think Naomi Klein sucks.

"You may find it interesting to consider the great Western tradition of the Holy Fool, a person who appears very foolish to his contemporaries but is rehabilitated by history."

OH DEAR GOD, THAT WAS FUNNY!!

Hey, Mark Dorroh, here's something you should know: bush and his entire administration knew there were no wmds in Iraq, because they would not have risked sending US troops in there if there was.

and the clinton administration knew also.

oh, and saddam publicly stated on TV that he had no such weapons in 2002 and 2003.

Ajit wrote, "When Noam Chomsky disagreed with Walt Mearsheimer paper this guy compared Chomsky and Hitchens to Hitler and Stalin."

Yeah, sure...even though antiwar.com prominently linked to a Chomsky article a couple days ago.

William S. Burroughs did, by his own account, suck. I don't know if he spat or swallowed, though.

Do I suck? Hm. "I" is a fictional construct my mind presents as a point of reference that likes to pretend to be my whole self. That does suck in several ways.

Dorroh: "Did Saddam deliberately conceal evidence of compliance with the terms of armistice and the security council, knowing that the result could very well be the invasion of his nation and the end of his presidency?

"From what I've learned of human nature over my decades of paying close attention, I'd find it hard to believe that any self-interested party would sabotage himself via such a blatantly self-destructive decision."

Lennonist* responded:

"The illusion of military strength can be very appealing. If you're unfamiliar with the history of ruses in warfare, I suggest you starting cracking the books.

"But then again, it's not like Saddam Hussein was the type of man who had based his rule on intimidation.

"He had to present, to his neighbors and subjects, the image of strength. It's relatively easy to see that. Perhaps in the future, you should try to think half as cleverly as you try to write. I'd suggest you look at your ideology. You base the above assumption on the premise that a Middle Eastern dictator would concern himself, above all, with American perception. It's common to you conservatives, even the effete ones like you."

Dear L.:

Let's take your points one at a time, but backwards (see, even an effete conservative such as I can think in reverse if it makes the quality of real communication better ... here, I'll be addressibng the Silly Issues first, then get to the Serious Issues).

"Effete?" Well, I've got a feminine streak a mile wide (big Nurturer Type, quick to forgive, hard to rile, disinclined to judge others, wants every little bitty buddy to be happy all the time, etc.), and perhaps that's what you're confusing that set of "feminine" qualities with similar but smarmier "effete" ones. If so, I can only admire the range and depth of your perspicacity. It's used to generate flawed conclusions, but speaking empirically, you're real sensitive, dude.

I'm sorry if you find my writing style too clever by half. I am a great admirer of snappy dialogue, and that perhaps puts me into some sort of Smartass College Freshman Mode when I respond to opinions.**

Now, about Saddam needing to project strength in his very troubled region of the planet: Right on! And there's the rub! Even if he had scuttled - albeit in lieu of documentation required by the Desert Storm armistice terms - every bit of WMD, he believed in his heart that he wouldn't be able to properly defend his nation from an invasion by, oh say, Iran, without the threat of WMD.

Since Saddam killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000,000 Arabs, Persians and Moslems in the prosecution of his war of aggression against Iran (many of them with poison gas, including an entire village of Iraqi Kurds he suspected of being Sunni-friendly), he probably had good reason to fear the Sunnis across the Gulf.

I heard on NPR, in 2003, that Saddam went so far as to bluff his own military commanders in the field. Generals who were debriefed after the invasion said they had been told "You guys don't have any WMD, but don't worry, the Iraqi armies on both sides of you do, so you can call 'em in if there's an emergency."

Since NPR is not much of a water-carrier for the Bush administration, I figure this story was probably true.

The problem with Saddam obfuscating the UN inspection teams in 2002 was, he told them the WMD had all been destroyed, but didn't allow unfettered, unannounced inspections and never provided documentation … which had been required since 1992.

So his tough-guy stance with potential enemies - claiming to have WMD he didn't really have - cost him the use-of-force vote in the UN and US Congress.

You know what they say about lying … you always have to tell more lies to get away with it, and eventually everyone finds out anyway. Saddam lied his way into a corner which his French and Russian Petrodollar Pals were unable to get him out of in 2002-2003, and he paid the price.

And in regard to military history, you are right I'm not as well-read as I should be. But let me share a little tidbit from a book on the US Revolution. This is on my blog, under "Broken Politics? I Think Not." I think it is a tale for the ages.

(continued)

* "If yer still carrying pictures of Chairman Mao/ you ain't gonna make it with anyone anyhow."
John Lennon, 1968

** For the record, my wife and I both took a pop IQ test in Esquire magazine a few years ago, and both of us scored "Smartass College Freshman," so I guess that test's author created a pretty good measuring stick for ideologically-inclined punks like me. Oh well, if you're too smart, no one can understand you anyway, and the damage I've done over the years to the Central Thinking Plant via alcohol, drugs, stress and hitting my head repeatedly on a wall whenever I'm confused (which is a lot of the time) is probably the only thing that keeps me in touch with the rest of the kids.

Alexis S,
and that view, artfully constructed and reinforced by the right to disempower the populace, is exactly why Republicans r in ur philosophy wastin ur votes. It sucks.

Oh, and why hate on Limpertardians? They only composed a significant voting block for Bush and work hard to discourage the creation of any viable alternative. I mean give them a break! They think porn's OK and don't burn Beatles albums (much). And they hate popular government. Really hate it. More than they like porn. Not privately owned government, though, because that is COMPLETELY different and makes cool stuff, including porn.

(continued)

" ... throughout the Revolutionary War, Washington was constantly assailed, slandered and attacked behind his back by members of his own general staff, all of whom wanted his job ... and none of whom (with the probable exception of Benedict Arnold, who was a Washington loyalist before military politics drove him into the arms of the enemy) was even vaguely qualified to do it as well as Mrs. Washington's little boy, George.

"One of the chief anti-Washington conspirators, General Charles Lee, was so convinced the Continentals and militia soldiers of Washington's army could never stand and deliver against British regiments, he retreated halfway back to camp when he stumbled upon a smaller force of Redcoats at Monmouth Courthouse. Washington had to personally stop the ill-advised retreat, reposition his guys and then fight the battle defensively when he could have had a decisive victory.

"Had General Lee had only done as he was ordered, things might have gone far better for the Continentals on that day. Lee himself rode his horse all the way to the next town, many miles distant, then claimed he had engaged in an orderly retreat for tactical reasons. He was, blessedly, cashiered after the near-debacle.

"Another conspirator in the anti-Washington cabal was Horatio Gates, a semi-competent commander who lucked out and accepted Burgoyne's surrender after Burgoyne's own hubris and poor logistical planning - plus the harassment his troops suffered at the hands of Hudson Valley militia units - had already substantially defeated the Lobsterbacks."

Anyway, Washington won the war and was happy to leave the presidency when his second term was up -despite public perception of his lack of strategic and tactical skills in war and the danger such a popular C in C presented when put into public office.

Funny how things get judged anew from historical perspectives, ain't it?

B.L. wrote:

"Of course, Saddam may have thought he didn't need to provide documentation since, after all, UN inspectors had poked around in the bombed-out rubble of his poison gas factory, gathered samples, etc.. What more documentation was in fact necessary?"

Saddam's perception of what he was required by the UN to do was not in accordance with that of the UN. So whether or not he thought he needed to provide documentation on the destruction of WMD or not, he promised to do so when his government signed the Desert Storm armistice.

You see, the problem with the idea that "Perception = Reality" is, different people have different perceptions. And it often puts people at loggerheads with their own interests and the interests of peace.

This seems a prime example.

The next time you get a traffic ticket, decide for yourself whether you "need" to comply with the law or not. Then, if you get chucked into jail on a capias after your failure to show up in court or send in your fine, you can call the UN and claim to be the victim of an illegal act by the US government.

Hey, Saddam did it, and it worked out real good for him! Except of course his infraction was not a traffic ticket; it was the terms of armistice he was forced to sign after he prosecuted a war of agression and an incredibly brutal seven month occupation of a small neighbor state in 1990-01.

I don't think giving entire nations a 'bye on such activities will ever militate in the interests of peace. But what do I know? I'm an effete conservative, and we're all queer for sticking to the letter and spirit of the law, even international law.

Go figure.

Yer effete pal,
Mark

september 5 wrote:

"Hey, Mark Dorroh, here's something you should know: bush and his entire administration knew there were no wmds in Iraq, because they would not have risked sending US troops in there if there was.

"and the clinton administration knew also.

"oh, and saddam publicly stated on TV that he had no such weapons in 2002 and 2003."

Dear s.:

So Clinton, when the UN inspection teams were thrown out of Iraq in 1998, bombed that "baby food factory," even though he knew it was a baby food factory? Good gravy! The perfidy of the man!

In a column I wrote at the time, I was busy chastising Republicans for saying the cruise missile strikes in Iraq were Clinton's "wag the dog" strategy to deflect public interest from his sexual predator stories, which were, at the time, legion.

Silly me! Those Republicans were right; Clinton was risking lives and blowing up a baby food factory in Iraq, just to keep our minds off Paula and Monica and that crew of harpies!

The mind boggles.

Speaking of military history, does anyone on this thread remember the 2003 NPR story in which it was stated that American intelligence services saved Iraqi lives by using satellite phone technology for a psy-op?

It worked like a charm. First the NSA got the personal phone numbers of many Iraqi field commanders of conscripts (not the Republican Guard commanders, their guys were actually eager to fight and die for good old Saddam). Then they called 'em up and told them if they did not attack us on our way to Baghdad, we had no fight with them. Most complied, and as a result, the difference between Iraqis killed in 1990-91 and in 2003 is substantial. You can feel free to look up the estimates on your own, but I'm thinking something in the neighborhood of 200,000 - 300,000 lives of Iraqi Line Doggies, troops who were only there in the front lines because Saddam would cut off an ear if they dared desert.

Pretty classy for a bunch of aging spooks with advanced electronic gear, eh wot? And I'm sure the international community appreciates our taking the time and trouble to save all those Iraqi lives .... NOT!

Yer buddy,
Mark Dorroh

* And, in the fullness of time, have turned out to be largely true.

September5 wrote:

"OH DEAR GOD, THAT WAS FUNNY!!"

Dear S.:

I'm so glad I can still engender light-hearted merriment among the young. Thank you, and bless you my child.

Yer eternal buddy,
Mark

Sept.5 wrote:

"Do I suck? Hm. "I" is a fictional construct my mind presents as a point of reference that likes to pretend to be my whole self. That does suck in several ways."

Dear S.:

Aw, don't be so hard on yourself. I feel certain you have numerous, non-sucky qualities. The fact that you can even think the above thought and write it down indicates a high degree of non-suckiness, honest.

Yer buddy,
Mark Dorroh

Mr Dorroh,
The comment was not critical of my self, just the limits of "I". It applies to your and everyone else's "I", too. Don't worry about it. Really, I mean it. Don't be ingratiating.

My, you can talk a bit while saying nothing. Thanks for acknowledging my point about military ruses. You originally asked why Saddam would threaten and not hold WMDs. I answered. Then you turned around and made as if to say "Of course he was lying!" But the thing is that your words aren't as nimble as the basic thoughts you're expressing. No matter what, the war was right, you were right, and so on. No matter the facts, no matter the revelations, you're rooted to one spot.

So keep playing that if it works, but don't get distracted. The WMD debate, even if you want to indulge it, is merely secondary to this crime against humanity, this war that was supposed to be so easy, this occupation that seems to have been largely unplanned. Whether or not the weapons were there, intelligence about the difficulties of an occupation were suppressed or simply ignored. Either incompetent or dishonest.

I'm not sure why you quote Lennon on that one. Everyone knows, that as a free spirit, he disdained the statists and mobs alike. We leftists tend to be like that. As far as Lennon's own political views, I prefer this one:

"In England, there are only two things to be. Basically you are either for the Labor movement or for the Psuedo-bowel movement. Either you become a lovely Archie Bunker if you are in the class I am in, or you become an instinctive democrat, which I was. That meant I think people should get their false teeth and their health looked after, all the rest of it. But apart from that, I worked for money and I wanted to be rich. So what the hell -- if that's a paradox, then I'm an instinctive democrat. But I am not anything. What I used to be is guilty about money. That's why I lost it, either by giving it away or by allowing myself to be screwed by so-called managers."

But let's end with your words. This was the moment I realized you were a clown, Mr. Dorroh.

"Since Saddam killed somewhere in the neighborhood of 1,000,000 Arabs, Persians and Moslems in the prosecution of his war of aggression against Iran (many of them with poison gas, including an entire village of Iraqi Kurds he suspected of being Sunni-friendly), he probably had good reason to fear the Sunnis across the Gulf."

Nevermind the "Arabs, Persians, and Moslems" spoken of in the same breath--his wars against particular Arabs, Persians in general, and again, particular Moslems were quite distinct. What I love is the Iraqi Kurds being suspected of Sunni loyalties. Yeah, that's what he killed them for. Do you even understand the nature of allegiance in the Middle East? Even if I were to forgive you and assume you meant "Shiite-friendly," that would suggest that Kurds' ties to Persia were religious in nature, and not cultural.

God, I'm sick of dealing with people who don't even try to understand the region. And no, that's not limited to Republicans, effete or otherwise. The only difference is that most idiot Republicans are proud of their ignorance, whereas most Democrats are unaware of theirs.

As I said--crack the books. Or read the god-damned news.

Oh well...

Chemical 'WMD' found at U.N. may be little more than cleaner

BY ALISON GENDAR
DAILY NEWS POLICE BUREAU CHIEF

Wednesday, September 5th 2007, 4:00 AM

Fooled again.
Chemicals discovered in the United Nations' Manhattan offices - feared to be a toxic agent produced by Saddam Hussein's regime a decade ago - may be nothing worse than a cleaning solvent, sources said yesterday.

Preliminary tests show the substance, which was found Aug. 24, was not the potentially fatal phosgene, sources said.

"It's not phosgene, and it tested negative for all other chemical warfare agents. It's not dangerous, and it's not what they thought they had," a law enforcement source said.

UN officials discovered the chemical in a canister sealed in an unmarked plastic bag as they closed a weapons inspection agency on E. 48th St., a block from UN headquarters.

By Aug. 29, UN officials said they traced the material using inventory sheets. They believed it was a chemical warfare agent seized by UN inspectors in 1996 from Iraq's chemical weapons facility near Samarra.

UN officials couldn't account for why a potentially lethal chemical sat in Manhattan for 10 years undetected.

"The first round of tests indicate some kind of solvent," another law enforcement source said. "I guess we should be grateful it's not potentially fatal, but it just reveals another layer of mistakes."

UN spokesman Farhan Haq said he could not comment until final tests were complete.

Haq said the UN was poised to name a three-member panel to review the incident, examining how the samples were collected, stored and how they may have been misidentified.

"Honest, Jon, this is why I gave up on you about a year ago."
Jon! You aren't as good as you used to be! You've made it!
http://www.salon.com/comics/knig/2007/08/22/knig/

See also the comments at Salon to Tom Tomorrow's cartoons for the last five years or so.

Since NPR is not much of a water-carrier for the Bush administration, I figure this story was probably true.

ROFLMFAO

Sept.5 wrote:

"Don't be ingratiating."

OK. I'll be terminally snotty like the other eggregiously misinformed persons on this thread.

Or not. I find it interesting that negative comments and personal attacks are so rife on threads such as these.

My own approach to civilized debate with intelligent adults is to disagree, when necessary, without being disagreeable. Accordingly, I concede points when proven wrong (see "bombed-out Iraqi WMD facility") and when I see a particularly amusing, thoughtful or enlightened thought, I tend to celebrate it.

Sorry if this offends you ... but I'm not likely to change my MO anytime soon, as it has become a habit I don't particularly care to break.

Or to put it another way, once an ingratiating, effete, conservative creep, always an ingratiating, effete, conservative creep, right?

All you need is love,
Larry "Boots" Dorfman,
Warrior Poet,
Yanker Extrordinaire of Conventional Wisdom Chains,
Columbia College Class of '74,
B.A., B.M.O.C., S.O.B. Q.E.D.
(AKA Mark Dorroh ... I have many names)

Lennonist wrote:

"God, I'm sick of dealing with people who don't even try to understand the region. As I said--crack the books. Or read the god-damned news."

Well, now, let's see how well I know the region.

At a public appearance two years ago in Petersburg Virginia, Winston Churchill's grandson, also named Winston Churchill, introduced himself as "the man whose grandfather invented Iraq."

He was not being hyperbolic. Churchill, as FO Secretary after WWI, did indeed cobble together Iraq (and Yugoslavia, with approxiamtely the same unhappy results down the road) out of remnants of the Ottoman Empire. His intent, as with all king-hell colonialists of his day, was to amalgamate tribes who had hated each other for centuries (the Sunni-Shi'it conflict goes back to the death of the Prophet, with both sides calling one another apostate and in league with Dark, Non-Moslem forces). This worked to the colonialist's advantage by making it highly unlikely the tribes would get along with one another long enough to displace the colonial government, which was paid off, according to Churchill II, by bribing the most heavily-armed local princes and shahs.

Therefore, the disintegration by sectarian violence of the faux state of Iraq was just a matter of time. As with the death of Tito from natural causes or the mini-revolutions in former Soviet Republics after the Wall fell, the toppling of Saddam's dictatorship allowed long-standing agendas to finally be prosecuted to their fullest.

So modern Iraq, from an historical and regional perspective, looks a lot more like Kosovo than it does the American Southwest, stolen from the Spanish Crown during our Manifest Destiny days.

The Iraqis were champing at the bit for 30 years to kill each other off anyway, and had Saddam died of natural causes the result would have been pretty much the same, only without Coalition casualties ... until the UN sent in peacekeepers, who might or might not be respected by both sides. Peacekeepers are sometimes attacked by both sides, and the blue berets are not always honored in the breech ...

So, historically, from what I've learned from the Churchill family, plus my reading on the life of Churchill grandpere (the first two, finished volumes of Bill Manchester's bio on Winnie), colonialism and warfare (Dr. Paul Kennedy's "Rise and Fall of the Great Powers," Barbara Tuchman's "Guns of September," etc., etc.) I've come to believe Santayana was dead right.

So was John Lennon, whom we all revere. Perhaps in the spirit of the late, great folk philosopher/artist, we should all be nicer to one another, not call names, curse or otherwise behave as if our threadmates were intellecutally lazy and irresponsible, off their chum, off their meds, in the pay of a Vast, Dark Conspiracy of Left or Right, or otherwise impaired in their ability to have their own rational opinions, based on their own reading of history and human nature.

Otherwise, if I'm such a damn fool who never reads any history, why would you waste time arguing with me? You're welcome to quit responding to my comments, although I'll miss ya, Pal. Your spirit soars, even as your worldview gets toted off to the dustbin of history.

A is A. Deal with it, Sparky.

Yer buddy,
Mark

PS - Sorry about the "Sunni-friendly" confusion. Dyslexia is such an inconvenient learning disability, especially when dealing with eagle-eyed critics such as yourself.

You've now caught me in two misstatements, or, as you would no doubt call them, "intentional lies."

You win on points, Sparky!

But history is still on my side. Sorry.

Now, in regard to Lennon's musings about poverty, wealth and human reactions to them, he was, as was usual, terrifically cogent and totally honest. Also, this entire statement is essentially an endorsement of a Libertarian Conservative attitude, so I find nothing in it to criticize.

For a little extracurricular Lennon fun, check out my blog at http://noisyvoicedofreason.blogspot.com/2006/03/john-paul-george-ringo-and-jesus.html.

In it, you'll find out what Peter Fonda was really talking about at the California party when John Lennon overheard him say, "I know what it's like to be dead."

You'll also see a rollicking comparison between the record and Beatle-wig burnings occassioned by Lennon's remark about the Beatles being more popular than Christ vs. the riots, deaths and property destruction which occurred when a Danish rag published a bunch of cartoons which, according to some, denigrated the Prophet.

Rock on, Superstar!
Mark

Grendelkhan wrote:

True facts. But the violent deaths which do occur in far-away places get reported on far more comprehensively than in days of yore, and as we all know, to some, perception is reality.

Thanks for the comment. We need more like it, rooted in fact and a lot less wild-eyed than some on this thread.

Yer buddy,
Mark Dorroh

Bourgeois Liberal wrote:
"Of course some of us do bother to read farther down in the story. Records indicated the material was from a 1996 excavation of the bombed-out research and development building at Iraq's main chemical weapons facility at Muthana, near Samarra. The entire facility was extensively bombed during the 1991 Gulf War

"Thank you for playing."

Please steer me to your source for the assertion that the facility was bombed in the first Gulf War. I can't seem to find a time-reference in any of the copy from CNN, the New York Times or the Washington Post. Seems as if that facility had been bombed out in Operation Desert Storm, they would have mentioned it, no?

So maybe the Samarra suspected WMD plant was bombed out in 2003 (we were doing rather a lot of that in those halcyon days), and was fully functional in 1996.

Please, apprise us of your source for the "bombed-out in 1991" characterization of the Samarra plant. I just know The Truth is Out There, and I'm utterly devoted to finding it and exposing it to the light of day.

Yer contrarian cousin,
Winkles the Clown

One of my many, clever critics wrote:

"My, you can talk a bit while saying nothing. Thanks for acknowledging my point about military ruses. You originally asked why Saddam would threaten and not hold WMDs. I answered. Then you turned around and made as if to say "Of course he was lying!"

Well, he was. And that was at the root of the problem. He promised to honor the armstice terms, which included a promise to tell the truth, and he was obligated under international law to honor the UN Security Council resolutions, which included stipulations that he tell the truth.

Then, like so many persons under pressure, he lied his head off because he was afraid to tell the conflicting truths to anyone: to the UN, he would say "No WMD," while planting rumor after rumor, even among his field commanders, that he had WMD.

Saddam died, people died.

It happens.

Long Live Bozo The Ideologue!
"Winkles"

Say, Mark Dorroh, did you give Nancy Pelosi a call @ 1-202-225-0100 and discuss IMPEACHMENT?

Please, apprise us of your source for the "bombed-out in 1991" characterization of the Samarra plant. I just know The Truth is Out There, and I'm utterly devoted to finding it and exposing it to the light of day.

Here ya go...

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/gulflink/removed/950719aj.htm

Please, apprise us of your source for the "bombed-out in 1991" characterization of the Samarra plant. I just know The Truth is Out There, and I'm utterly devoted to finding it and exposing it to the light of day.

Here ya go...

http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/iraq/gulflink/removed/950719aj.htm

I suck because I could have done more. But I don't suck because I could have done less.

You use the power you have.

Antiwar does not suck.
Justin Raimondo does not suck
Sy Hersh does not suck
Chomsky does not suck
Cindy Sheehan does not suck
Cynthia Mckinney does not suck
Art does not suck

Hillary and Bill do suck
Barack Obama does suck
Colin Powell does suck
Contualeeza Rice sucks big time
All the red states suck
"conservative" democrats suck

Cheney he can do f**k himself he sucks
Bush sucks!
And finally

James Woolcot does not suck..

Noam Chomsky does suck. Really, really hard. And swallows.

Jon -
Excellent post. Call me.