|
Definitions 
Q: Why is it so hard to reason with a "born again" Bush supporter?
A: Because they are polemicists.
Polemic - 1. A controversy or argument, esp. one that is a refutation of or an attack upon a specified opinion or doctrine. 2. Polemics. a. The art or practice of argumentation or controversy. b. The practice of theological controversy to refute errors of doctrine. 3. Polemicist. A person engaged in or inclined to controversy, argument, or refutation.
In other words, people who engage in polemics are immune to fact, reason or common sense. A polemicist defends indefensible doctrine or faith. Or, in the case of the disingenuous, argument for arguments sake.
Life in the Green Zone
Email of the day Andrew Sullivan
More great news from Baghdad:
From: "Baghdad, USConsul"
To: "Baghdad, USConsul"
Subject: Warden Message
Date: Wed, 6 Oct 2004 14:36:13 +0000
Warden Message - Increased Security Awareness within the International Zone
On October 5, 2004, at approximately 1 pm, U.S. Embassy security personnel discovered an Improvised Explosive Device (IED) at the Green Zone Café. A U.S. Military Explosive Ordnance Detachment safely disarmed the IED.
American citizens living or working in the International Zone are strongly encouraged to take the following security precautions:
* Limit non-essential movement within the International Zone, especially at night.
* Travel in groups of two or more.
* Carry several means of communication.
* Avoid the Green Zone Café, the Chinese Restaurants, the Lone Star restaurant and Vendor Alley.
* Conduct physical fitness training within a compound perimeter.
* Notify office personnel or friends of your travel plans in the International Zone.
**** Conduct a thorough search of your vehicle prior to entering it.
Consular Section
US Embassy Baghdad
Apart from being unable to maintain security even within the Green Zone, "we're making progress in Iraq," as the vice president said last night.
Wow.
Inner Circle No More? by Tamara Lipper and Michael Hirsh
(...)
...the outing of Bremer's remarks could not have come at a worse time for the administration. The Post report came just five days after Democratic nominee John Kerry roughed up Bush over Iraq in the campaign's first debate, and the day of the vice-presidential debate.
At the heart of the controversy is a still-unresolved dispute over who was mainly responsible for one of the biggest mistakes of Bremer's 15-month tenure in Iraq, one that is commonly ascribed to him. This was the decision in May 2003 to reverse the efforts of Bremer's predecessor, retired Lt. Gen. Jay Garner, to put the ragged elements of the Iraqi Army to work. After Bremer formally disbanded the army, some disaffected soldiers were believed to have joined the insurgency, which still rages.
Administration officials said today that this decision was made on the ground in Iraq, rather than in Washington. Before the war, the plan was to get rid of Iraqi Army officers but use regular troops for security and reconstruction after Saddam's ouster. But Bremer "flipped that around," said a White House official. He added that Bremer and his deputy, Walt Slocombe, made the decision by themselves.
But Bremer and Garner have previously indicated the decision was made in Washington. According to one official who attended a meeting that Bremer had with his staff upon his arrival in Baghdad in mid-May of 2003, Bremer was warned he would cause chaos by demobilizing the army. The CIA station chief told him, "That's another 350,000 Iraqis you're pissing off, and they've got guns." According to one source who was at the meeting, Garner then asked if they could discuss the matter further in a smaller meeting. Garner then said: "Before you announce this thing let's do all the pros and cons of this, because we are going to have a hell of a lot of problems with it. There are a hell of a lot more cons than there are pros. Let's line them all up then get on the phone to [Defense Secretary Donald] Rumsfeld." Bremer replied: "I don't have any choice. I have to do this." Garner then protested further, but Bremer cut him off. "The president told me that de-Baathification comes before the immediate needs of the Iraqi people." [emphasis added]
When NEWSWEEK put this account to Bremer in a tape-recorded interview at the Pentagon at the end of September of last year, he did not dispute it. A former official with Bremer's Coalition Provisional Authority also told NEWSWEEK on Wednesday that "he did this with the full knowledge of the administration." [more]
(link via Political Animal)
Curious minds want to know
Is He a Dope? Los Angeles Times Editorial
Although neither group likes to say so, some Americans who support President Bush and many who don't support him have concluded over four years that he may not be very bright. This suspicion was not allayed by Bush's answers in the first presidential debate a week ago.
(...)
The issue might better be described as one of mental laziness.
Does this man think through his beliefs before they harden into unwavering principles? Is he open to countervailing evidence? Does he test his beliefs against new evidence and outside argument? Does his understanding of a subject go any deeper than the minimum amount needed for public display? Is he intellectually curious? Does he try to reconcile his beliefs on one subject with his beliefs on another?
It's bad if a president is incapable of the abstract thought necessary for these mental exercises. If he is capable and isn't even trying, that's worse. It becomes a question of character. When a president sends thousands of young Americans to kill and die halfway around the world, thinking about it as hard and as honestly as possible is the least he can do.
Bush's Iraq policy is full of contradictions, often rehearsed on this page and elsewhere. But so is Kerry's. It isn't routine political mendacity that makes many people -- many more than will admit it -- wonder about Bush's mental engagement. It is a combination of things: his stumbling inarticulateness, the efforts his advisors make to protect him from unscripted exposure, his extreme reluctance to rethink anything.
Does it matter? Yes, it matters. There are those who say that Reagan's mental laziness was actually a plus. It prevented a lot of competing signals from causing static on the lines, and kept his principles clear. We do not buy that. We state boldly that thinking hard is a good thing, not a bad thing, even in a president. If that sounds snooty, so be it. And maybe George W. Bush will reassure us by his performance Friday night that he is thinking as hard as he should about the issues the president will face in the next four years. Especially the issues resulting from his own failure to think hard during the last four. [more
Crying wolf again! Or, putting the new campaign strategy in place.
U.S. Alerts Schools About Terror Threat by The Associated Press
The Education Department has advised school leaders nationwide to watch for people spying on their buildings or buses to help detect any possibility of terrorism like the deadly school siege in Russia.
The warning follows an analysis by the FBI and the Homeland Security Department of the siege that killed nearly 340 people, many of them students, in the city of Beslan last month.
"The horror of this attack may have created significant anxiety in our own country among parents, students, faculty staff and other community members," Deputy Education Secretary Eugene Hickok said in a letter to schools and education groups.
The safety advice is based on lessons learned from the Russia incident. But there is "no specific information indicating that there is a terrorist threat to any schools or universities in the United States," [emphasis added] Hickok said. (But Bush needs a boost in the polls [snide comment added])
Federal law enforcement officials also have encouraged local police to stay in contact with school officials and have encouraged reporting of suspicious activities, the letter says.
In particular, schools were told to watch for activities that may be legitimate on their own -- but may suggest a heightened terrorist threat if many of them occur. [more]
Bush's new campaign strategy
What is the new strategy? Running on his record? Being open and honest on the issues facing the country? Offering a revised plan for the Iraq War and the War on Terror based on what he and his administration have learned from their mistakes? No, "The strategy is aimed at stoking public fears about terrorism, raising new concerns about Kerry's ability to protect Americans and reinforcing Bush's image as the steady anti-terrorism candidate, aides said."
Bush: Kerry Would 'Weaken' US by Jim VandeHei
(...)
Bush ignored the report released on Wednesday showing that Iraq possessed neither stockpiles of biological or chemical weapons nor an active program to produce nuclear weapons at the time of the invasion. Instead, he sharply criticized Kerry as a decades-long opponent of forceful U.S military action who lacks the will to finish the job in Iraq and to destroy al Qaeda and other terrorist groups.
(...)
[In a] strongly worded speech, which indicted Kerry as a "tax-and-spend liberal," was timed to deflect criticism of Bush's Iraq policy from such key sources as former Iraq administrator L. Paul Bremer, the U.S. weapons inspector and the State Department. A Bush adviser said the president hopes to change the dynamics of the race with more biting attacks on Kerry's record and trustworthiness and on what Bush charges is Kerry's reluctance to use U.S. military force to defeat terrorism. The strategy is aimed at stoking public fears about terrorism, raising new concerns about Kerry's ability to protect Americans and reinforcing Bush's image as the steady anti-terrorism candidate, aides said. [emphasis added] [more]
Support the troops
Breaking Their Silence by Elizabeth Mehren
In Love Plaza, about 75 people mingled in bright sunshine, chatting noisily while one speaker after another droned on at a campaign rally. Vendors hawked T-shirts, and children frolicked in a fountain opposite ornate City Hall.
Then Celeste Zappala stepped onstage. Standing between columns of red, white and blue balloons, she held up the Purple Heart awarded posthumously to her oldest son. The plaza fell silent.
In calm, measured tones, Zappala talked about her opposition to the war in Iraq. She spoke with pride and tenderness about her son, Sherwood Baker, who was killed in April in Baghdad.
"Sherwood was a patriot," Zappala said. "He was brave and faithful and loyal. He believed in America, and he believed in democracy. And I made an oath to him not to be quiet, not to be cynical in my grief."
Before her son left for Iraq early this year, Zappala, 57, joined a group of military families that supports the troops but opposes the war. Today, Military Families Speak Out has more than 1,700 member families across the country who participate in protests, appear on radio and television and confront public officials. By telling stories about their loved ones, they hope to sway hearts and minds and help bring an end to the war.
At Love Plaza, after Zappala finished a 15-minute speech that left many in the audience wiping their eyes, an Army veteran from the Vietnam era approached her.
"For those of us who have been in the service, I wish more parents would speak out," said Steve McCarter of Glenside, Pa. "This shows that not everyone connected to the military is united behind this war." [more]
Things are going great in Afghanistan
Beaten Afghan Brides by Nicholas D. Kristof
Kabul, Afghanistan
I had an inspiration about where Osama bin Laden might be hiding. But when I visited the women's detention center in Kabul, there was no sign of him.
I did meet Ellaha, a bold 19-year-old prisoner who startled me by greeting me in English. (Like many Afghans, she uses only one name.) She had been attending college as a refugee in Iran when her family pulled her out, alarmed that education might corrupt a young lady's morals.
Her family returned to Afghanistan, and she found work in a U.S. construction company, where her bosses were so impressed that they began arranging a scholarship for her to go to Canada to study.
That horrified her family because the patriarchs had decided that she would marry her cousin. "I didn't agree to marry him," she told me through an interpreter, "because he is not educated and I don't like his job - he is a butcher. Plus, he's three years younger than me."
"When it was almost time for me to go to Canada, and I was asking about flights," she added, "they tied me up and locked me in a room. It was in my uncle's house. My father said, 'O.K., beat her.' I'd never been beaten like that in all my life. My uncle and cousins were all beating me. ... They broke my head, and I was bleeding."
Ms. Ellaha's younger sister, who had been pledged to another cousin, was facing the same treatment. After a week of being tied up, the two sisters agreed to marry their cousins.
"So we went home," Ms. Ellaha added, "and escaped."
The two sisters moved into a cheap guesthouse as they prepared to flee Afghanistan. But their family learned where they were hiding, and the police came to arrest them.
On what charge?
"It's because their lives were in danger," said Rana, the head of the detention center. Ms. Ellaha agrees that her family was pretty close to killing her. The sister is apparently back home, but I was not allowed to interview her.
The police subjected Ms. Ellaha to a mandatory virginity test. Fortunately, her hymen was intact, or she would have faced a prison sentence.
Now she worries that she will be released into her family's custody and then forced to marry her cousin. If that happens, she told me, "I will kill myself."
The entire jail is a kaleidoscope of woe. It's been two years since President Bush declared that in Afghanistan, "Today, women are free." But that's news to the inmates. [more]
Fact check
Cheney's Claims in V.P. Debate and New Bush-Cheney Medical Malpractice Ad Continue Campaign of Deception and Distortion: Government Data and Studies Show Bush-Cheney Claims About Insurance Rates and Access to Doctors Have No Foundation
Statements made by Vice President Dick Cheney in his debate with Sen. John Edwards last night as well as the new Bush-Cheney TV ad alleging that there¹s a "crisis in women's access to healthcare" caused by Democrats blocking "legal reform[s] to stop the frivolous lawsuits" is an exercise in deception and distortion according to a Public Citizen analysis of Cheney's statements and the ad.
"We recognize that some doctors in some states have suffered from large premium increases over the past two years," said Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen. "But those rate hikes were caused by a sour economy that resulted in investment losses or lower than expected earnings from stocks and bonds the principal way insurance companies make money. It had nothing to do with lawsuits and the legal system. Limiting patients' legal rights, as President Bush and Vice President Cheney seek to do, will have no affect on insurance rates and will only harm the most severely injured victims of medical malpractice a second time." [read the detailed analysis of Bush/Cheney lies]
This just about sums it up
Endgame by Atrios
It's pretty apparent that the Bush-Cheney endgame, borne of desperation, involves 28 more days of an expensive lie campaign. I just watched an ad, approved by Jr., which was implying that John Kerry was trying to tax married people.
This election is going to come down to whether truth or fiction prevails. In the last election, fiction did. Let's hope we, and our media, do better this time.
|
