Sunday, May 16, 2004

Posted here Sunday, May 16, 2004 at 3:43:45 PM     From www.talkingpointsmemo.org this morning. This seems like good language to understand many aspects of the Bush administration. In other words, methods approved for use against the worst and most dangerous terrorists spread -- like ink through tissue paper -- to other military theaters that were, at best, only tangentially related to the war on terror. And this, I think we can say, is tied to the boundless, undefined and ever-expanding definition which the administration has given to the war on terror. ********

Posted here Sunday, May 16, 2004 at 11:59:42 AM     This is good background on the emergence of a powerful america and its mix with ideology. The American Marxism. Paraphrase, An infallible dialectic of history led us here.. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,1217956,00.html A 'new America' was said to have emerged, but it would be better to say an old one found new empowerment. It was recently described by former US ambassador to France Felix Rohatyn as 'more radical and more committed than ever to the need for unchallenged military dominance. It is more individualistic than Europe, more religious, conservative and patriotic ... [These factors] will influence everything America does from now on, both in its foreign and its domestic policies.' This is undoubtedly true, but this 'new' America amazingly resembles the isolationist and xenophobic America between 1920 and 1941. What is new is that it has become the most heavily-armed nation on Earth and believes it is, and should remain, number one. ********

Posted here Sunday, May 16, 2004 at 10:56:45 AM     This very interesting chart graphic from the NYT on polling data in Iraq, along with other important numbers. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/16/opinion/16OHAN.html   ********

Posted here Sunday, May 16, 2004 at 10:35:16 AM     The parallel between the prison problem and culture of the Geneva accords has its parallel in the hard won culture of nuclear constraint. Both have been undermined by the Bush administration. Bush is fundamentally (pub) a primitive, and chose his associates to not upstage him, men of limited vision, animistic intelligence, and not part of the emerging world civilization. They have taken the US down a road that fundamentally soured the long built up semi-positive admiration for American openness and "progress." The question for historians will be, was it in the cards anyway, or was Bush a key choice point?  If so we then have to look back at Reagan's administration being the training place for many of the current neo-con group. We might need to look back further: Nixon, Goldwater, the rot under the cold war. I think of the difference between Teddy Roosevelt and guns, and Olmstead and the parks, and the American craftsman movement of "domestic architecture for a democratic America." Could we have opted for a more domestic vision? Or did business logic (tech plus capital) drive the whole process with a deep inevitableness? ********

Posted here Sunday, May 16, 2004 at 9:53:20 AM     What does it mean that the New Yorker has become the major venue for persepctive on Iraq? THE GRAY ZONE by SEYMOUR M. HERSH How a secret Pentagon program came to Abu Ghraib. Issue of 2004-05-24 Posted 2004-05-15 The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror. ********