Alarming News: I like Morgan Freeberg. A lot.
American Digest: And I like this from "The Blog That Nobody Reads", because it is -- mostly -- about me. What can I say? I'm on an ego trip today. It won't last.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: We were following a trackback and thinking "hmmm... this is a bloody excellent post!", and then we realized that it was just part III of, well, three...Damn. I wish I'd written those.
Anti-Idiotarian Rottweiler: ...I just remembered that I found a new blog a short while ago, House of Eratosthenes, that I really like. I like his common sense approach and his curiosity when it comes to why people believe what they believe rather than just what they believe.
Brutally Honest: Morgan Freeberg is brilliant.
Dr. Melissa Clouthier: Morgan Freeberg at House of Eratosthenes (pftthats a mouthful) honors big boned women in skimpy clothing. The picture there is priceless--keep scrolling down.
Exile in Portales: Via Gerard: Morgan Freeberg, a guy with a lot to say. And he speaks The Truth...and it's fascinating stuff. Worth a read, or three. Or six.
Just Muttering: Two nice pieces at House of Eratosthenes, one about a perhaps unintended effect of the Enron mess, and one on the Gore-y environ-movie.
Mein Blogovault: Make "the Blog that No One Reads" one of your daily reads.
The Virginian: I know this post will offend some people, but the author makes some good points.
Poetic Justice: Cletus! Ah gots a laiv one fer yew...
On The WMD
Great column in the Wall Street Journal, an editorial by Sen. Santorum and Congressman Hoekstra. Now, you get their side of what’s been happening.
Saddam’s WMD
Why is our intelligence community holding back?
BY PETER HOEKSTRA AND RICK SANTORUM
Monday, June 26, 2006 12:01 a.m. EDTOn Wednesday, at our request, the director of national intelligence declassified six “key points” from a National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC) report on the recovery of chemical munitions in Iraq. The summary was only a small snapshot of the entire report, but even so, it brings new information to the American people. “Since 2003,” the summary states, “Coalition forces have recovered approximately 500 weapons munitions which contain degraded mustard or sarin nerve agent,” which remains “hazardous and potentially lethal.” So there are WMDs in Iraq, and they could kill Americans there or all over the world. [emphasis mine]
What’s that now? Saddam had no WMD? Saddam was not a threat to us?
Facts, it turns out, are stubborn things, just like John Adams said.
Like any chronicling with some good lean meat, this one packages some new questions in with the answers we’ve been wanting. We have been lied to, for years, and the lies have been allowed to run, roam, blossom and bloom, helping many of the enemies of America. Those would be Al Qaeda; Saddam’s old regime which has nothing to do with Al Qaeda (oopsie, though, maybe we should re-think that too); other regimes chomping at the bit to develop their own WMD programs, and curious to see what we would do about it; and Democrats.
Our enemies have been helped by bad intelligence. Not intelligence from out in the field being disseminated to the classified community, but intelligence from within the classified community, being leaked to the declassified community-at-large. The “facts,” as we had been getting them, are just plain false. Santorum and Hoekstra are to be congratulated for cluing us in on what’s going on — but at the same time, we’re owed a better explanation than this…
The president is the ultimate classifier and declassifier of information, but the entire matter has now been so politicized that, in practice, he is often paralyzed. If he were to order the declassification of a document pointing to the existence of WMDs in Iraq, he would be instantly accused of “cherry picking” and “politicizing intelligence.” He may therefore not be inclined to act.
In practice, then, the intelligence community decides what the American public and its elected officials can know and when they will learn it. Sometimes those decisions are made by top officials, while on other occasions they are made by unnamed bureaucrats with friends in the media. People who leak the existence of sensitive intelligence programs like the terrorist surveillance program or financial tracking programs to either damage the administration or help al Qaeda, or perhaps both, are using the release or withholding of documents to advance their political desires, even as they accuse others of manipulating intelligence.
We believe that the decisions of when and what Americans can know about issues of national security should not be made by unelected, unnamed and unaccountable people.
Like Adams said, facts are stubborn things. They determine everything, in the sense that an opinion formed on a “fact” that isn’t true, ends up being an invalid opinion. Such an opinion has a shot at leading to a strategy for success, in the same way a hunk of toast has a shot at landing on your rug butter-side up. Americans need good facts, not bullshit-facts. That holds true whether said Americans are cleared to work in the classified community, or not.
Let me put it more succinctly, using the half-dozen words of boilerplate always guaranteed to get attention: Our government has lied to us. A Republican government, Republican in theory, has been telling lies to get Republicans thrown out and to get more Democrats elected.
I would like an investigation into that. Why is an American government, all three branches of which are supposed to be somehow unfairly controlled by Republicans Americans, working overtime to get itself toppled and sold out to Democrats the Enemy? Oh that seems so harsh, but what is there to contradict it? Democrats have had two solid years to tell us what they’d do to protect us, and they’ve give us butkus except some kind of nonsense about “global test” and “respected around the world.” They don’t want to protect us, they want us ignoring national security entirely so we can quibble about medical benefits for old people. Now, it emerges that when most of us can figure this out, and make sure Democrats don’t run anything, they still get to decide what we are allowed to know.
If things have become so politicized that the President can’t bring the truth out even when its continued concealment is career suicide for him and everyone upon whom he relies, and this continued concealment doesn’t appear to be protecting the safety of anyone, then what hope do we have?
Who is running this government, anyway, if it isn’t the President and it isn’t anyone whose interests are aligned with his? I got an idea. When the highest levels of our government are not working overtime to get that very government toppled, maybe they could spare a little bit of that midnight-oil for finding us an answer.
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