Wow, I've been quiet for awhile. We'll chalk it up principally to the fact that I was rather ill for over a week. Then there's the fact that though there's been such depressing news lately, it's been covered to death by everyone else and I just didn't see the point of going 'Me, too!' over and over again.
But I must re-emerge to present the June 'Disassembler of the Month' award to Ken 'No, I'm not gay! Seriously. I'm not! Shut up! SHUT UP! Lalalalala I can't hear you!' Mehlman, esteemed chairman of the Republican National Committee. Howard Dean may get all sorts of ire for bluntly stating the truth, but apparently Ken Mehlman gets none at all in the SCLM for lying.
You've probably all seen/heard/read about it in the alternative media outlet of your choice, but from MSNBC.com's transcript of June 5's Meet the Press (and if you get the time, do read the whole thing -- what a hoot he is!):
MR. RUSSERT: Let me turn to the now-famous Downing Street memo. This was a memo, July 23, 2002, from the head of British intelligence to Prime Minister Blair; in effect, notes taken from a briefing that was given to Prime Minister Blair after the head of British intelligence came back from a trip to Washington. It says this: "[The head of British Intelligence] reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, though military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
This is July of 2002. We didn't invade until March of 2003. And the prime minister of Great Britain is being told by the head of his intelligence that he went to Washington and believes that a decision had already been made and that the administration was fixing or manipulating the intelligence to support the policy.
MR. MEHLMAN: Tim, that report has been discredited by everyone else who's looked at it since then. Whether it's the 911 Commission, whether it's the Senate, whoever's looked at this has said there was no effort to change the intelligence at all. The fact is that the intelligence of this country, the intelligence of Britain, the intelligence of the United Nations, the intelligence all over the world said that there were weapons of mass destruction present in Iraq. We knew that Saddam Hussein had used weapons of mass destruction before. We still know that there was a weapons of mass destruction program. He was evading the sanctions, and he had plans to reconstitute the program. We also knew that Saddam Hussein had uniquely invaded his neighbors, had uniquely supported terrorists and we all know today that we are safer because he's been removed from power.
So I believe that that individual report not only has been discredited but that the overall reasons for removing Saddam Hussein were broader than that, they were correct, and we're now safer and certainly the people of Iraq are safer now that Saddam Hussein has been removed from power.
MR. RUSSERT: (vewwy quietly -- Chris) I don't believe that the authenticity of this report has been discredited.
So not only does he outright lie, in that not only has no one disputed the authenticity of the memo but the 9/11 Commission and the Senate didn't even know of the memo until we did, but he also falls back on the old saw of 'we're safer, Iraq's safer, everybody's dancing a jig in a field of flowers since we overthrew Saddam.'
I mean, seriously, even if I were to grant that that's true (which I don't, for the record), it would be a bit like, oh, say, someone dropping a few bombs on the Northwest Valley here in the Phoenix area, after which half the population rushes to the person's defense saying, "Look how much smoother the traffic is from Surprise into downtown now! If he hadn't bombed that part of town into oblivion we'd still have nonstop traffic jams at rush hour. Do you want that?'
The benefit isn't the point (though it's certainly cause for debate in itself), you morons. It's the cost. How many dead people is enough? How many is too many? Is there such a thing as too many dead Iraqis? I earnestly hope there's a special place in Hell for Christians who crow endlessly about the 'Culture of Life(tm)' but turn a blind eye to the mass-murder of thousands, tens of thousands, perhaps even hundreds of thousands of innocents because they live in another part of the world and (mostly) practice a different faith.
I know I repeatedly go off on this whole death tangent, but it sickens me that no one seems to care. I mean, even a lot of the anti-war crowd only mentions this as an afterthought. A lie is horrible. Profiteering and stealing are horrible. Blithely ignoring the Constitution is reprehensible. And all of these things are important, and I can yell about them with the best of y'all.
But dead is dead folks. Each person has a story, the way you have a story. Each person has plans, dreams, hopes, family, friends, love, hate, creativity, work, play, fun, happiness, anguish, fear, courage, lust and all the other things that make a human life what it is. When it goes, it goes away for good, and no one, and I mean no one has the right to decide for them when it does so.
So all the young Americans who've died as a result of this Big Lie, who will never see their new wives or husbands, or children or parents again are victims of murder. And all of the hundreds of thousands of people whose lives intertwined theirs are, by extension, also victims. And all of the thousands, tens of thousands, of Iraqis, who've died as a result of this Big Lie, are victims of murder. And the millions of people whose lives intertwined with theirs are also victims by extension. These are unfathomable numbers. The human brian cannot, perhaps by design, understand the magnitude of such loss and such sorrow.
That the Iraqis now rise in anger doesn't surprise me. What does surprise me is that, with some notable exceptions, the Americans touched by this mass murder sit quietly, after expressing their grief in quiet and socially acceptable ways, slap the magnetic 'Support the Troops' ribbons on the back of their SUVs and find meaning in the suffering by standing fully upright behind the War Criminal in chief and parroting his poisonous lies.
They shoud be channeling their anger into the immediate, lawful and unequivocal overthrow of the murderous war profiteers who've hijacked what used to be, and could again one day be, the greatest country on earth.
Since my radical college days, I've gradually tempered my total opposition to armed conflict because invariably nearly everyone I know, no matter how sympathetic in principle, would search for examples of a justified war just to see me squirm intellectually and try to argue my way out of their straw box. I got tired of it.
But you know what? I'm done with appeasement. Organized murder, whether you call it war or genocide, is a monstrous evil that has no place in humanity if we're ever to develop beyond savages with a god complex. And these unevolved creatures with the blackness of death and the heavy pain of amoral greed in their hearts need to be locked away in cages for the good of the human family.
*phew*
Catharsis! And before anyone makes any comments on this post, understand that any arguments about my anti-war stance, or exceptions you can find to the rule, or criticisms about how it's 'utopian' or 'unrealistic' will either be ignored or deleted. I have good points to make in support of my position, but I'm tired of offering them up to people who seriously have no interest in listening and just feel like taking my stuff apart.
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