| |
 |
Monday, September 25, 2006 |
Jamie Reidy: Punctuation Plus. Leave it to a Yale University history major to use a punctuation metaphor in describing the death, destruction and destabilization in Iraq.
English teachers consider the comma to be the punctuation mark with which people have the most trouble. I think President Bush would agree.
Yesterday, CNN aired an interview in which the president explained to Wolf Blitzer, "I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is -- my point is, there's a strong will for democracy. ... The unity government is functioning."
I'm not going to jump all over the Commander in Chief for implying that the deaths of 2600 American troops and Allah knows how many Iraqis will be viewed merely as an historical hiccup. Rather, I am focused on other important issues raised by W's uncanny ability to be on the money off the cuff.
How big, in historical terms, is a comma? I mean, we've got "Fly in the ointment" which is trumped by "Bump in the road" which seems less significant than "Blip on the radar screen," but I don't know where "comma" falls in the pecking order.
I'm not even sure how the comma stacks up amongst its brothers-in-punctuation. Obviously, the semicolon sits at the bottom of the hierarchy; after all, it's half of a colon. As award winning author Cormac McCarthy has demonstrated time and again, quotation marks are no longer necessary. Next comes the dash, which has a lot of flair, but little oomph - I mean, who uses dashes anymore outside of phone numbers? The easily-niched colon is followed by the under appreciated apostrophe (possession is 9/10th of the law, don't forget). And then there were three. Although there's nothing like a well-placed ! to drive home a point, the question mark gets the Vice President slot due to its much more frequent usage. In this time of uncertainty, I'm giving the top spot to the always dependable, never misconstrued period.
Since the President is so comfortable peppering conversation with punctuation points, I wonder if he has embraced the use of emoticons in cyberspace. For instance, did he email Mike Brown last September ' ) (wink)? Maybe he uses l-<> (puckered for a kiss) to sign emails to Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice.
And what about acronyms? Does Dubya hit Tony Snow with an LOL after a particularly jocular press conference? Perhaps the President responds to criticisms of his policies with NBIF (No Basis In Fact). Surely, he is not familiar with ITRW (In The Real World).
President Bush assures us that future historians will depict the Iraq Era as a "comma" in the pages of history. At this point, he should hope those texts don't designate his two terms in office with an *
What would the asterisk indicate?
 [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed]
6:42:40 PM 
|
|
Brent Budowsky: National Intelligence Estimate: Because Of Iraq, Bush Is Losing The War.
There should be a national outcry and national demand that the Senate
Intelligence Committee immediately release the full text of its latest
report, now being covered up until after the election, about whether and
when false
statements were made by Administration
officials regarding pre-war Iraq intelligence.
Every Republican Senator now running for reelection should be challenged
in their
hometown newspapers and in public meetings, and should be opposed in
November if they support the continued cover-up in light of this latest
bombshell from the National Intelligence Estimate.
Every Republican running for reelection in the House should be defeated
unless they publicly demand that the truth, the whole truth, and nothing
but the truth be told to the American people NOW, by both Intelligence
Committees.
The enormous implication of the National Intelligence Estimate recently
leaked boils down to this: because of the extreme and deadly
consequences of the Iraq War,
President Bush is losing the war against terror.
It is the consensus opinion of our intelligence services that because of
the Iraq war, the danger from terrorism has risen during the Bush years
and the world and our communities are less safe.
It is the consensus opinion of our intelligence services that because of
the Iraq War, the number of terrorists has increased during the Bush
years.
It is the consensus opinion of our intelligence services that because of
the Iraq War, the increasing number of terrorists during the Bush years
will be harder than ever to catch, because they are springing up
spontaneously, in smaller groups in more locations. resulting in large
measure from world-wide outrage and popular discontent toward the failed
policies.
And: before Congress votes on torture again,
there should be full public release and public hearings about the
whether our intelligence community believes that torture practices, Abu
Ghraib and Guantanamo increase the
number of terrorists and the dangers which, I propose, in fact, they do.
It does not matter that the Bush Administration spends hundreds of
millions of dollars on public relations and psy-war, when every day
major stories on world-wide television anger large majorities of world
opinion, and overwhelming
majorities of young men and women throughout the Middle East, who were
not born as terrorists and have no natural reason to support the
terrorist cause.
It does no service to our security or the truth that the President gives
two weeks of major speeches claiming, falsely, that his Iraq war makes
us more safe, when he knew, that his own intelligence assessment says
the literal exact opposite; that his policy in Iraq creates more
terrorists and more dangers.
What is happening now, ladies and gentlemen, is that on a wide range of
issues tied to the grave mistakes of this war there is enormous,
widespread disagreement from our military commanders about the direction
and course of this policy, and from our intelligence leaders and
personnel, who flat-out believe that this war is hurting our security,
our country, and our war against terrorism.
In our America, it is the truth that sets us free.
It is high time, and long overdue, that our government tell the truth to
our people, and the truth is, that this policy has made our country less
safe, less secure, less strong, less respected in the world, and that
the greatest winners in this war are the terrorist recruiters and the
politicians in Washington who try to exploit a war, for political gain,
that hurts our troops, and as suggested by our intelligence services,
helps our enemy.
 [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed]
6:09:29 PM
|
|
Jayne Lyn Stahl: Cojones and "Conservative Hit Jobs!". In what has been described as a "combative interview" on "Fox News Sunday," former president, Bill Clinton, who, as you may recall, was impeached for having oral sex in the Oval Office, was cross-examined by anchor Chris Wallace about why he didn't launch a preemptive strike against Osama bin Laden. (AP) The former president recounted how he went after bin Laden to the fullest extent possible, trying to "kill him," as well as how the same folks who condemned his actions then are stepping up to the plate to attempt a "conservative hit job" now.
One can only say "amen, Mr. Cllinton." What a troubling statement about our national priorities, and ethos, that we impeach a president for a sexual contretemps while a sitting president gets to turn the military into an assembly line of bungled misadventures while hiding behind a flagrant misreading of the Second Amendment, all but shredded the First and Fourth Amendments, and has turned foreign policy into a simple, and deadly acronym, "CYA -- cover your ass."
Anyone who thinks Bill Clinton doesn't have the cajones to speak up needs corrective
lenses. Happily, the former president defended himself against Chris Wallace's assertions that he was incompetent with regard to stopping Al Qaeda. Hello, anybody home? Which American leader has demonstrated competency with respect to diffusing Al Qaeda? Wallace's suggestions are equally ironic, and absurd, in light of the fact that Bill Clinton was the first president, on record, After all, to talk about the danger posed by paramilitary groups, as well as to attempt to make inroads towards preventing their proliferation. About the only thing this administration has been adept at exposing is how occupation of a conceptually neutral, if nefarious, state like Iraq can pose a clear and present danger to world peace for now, and possibly centuries to come.
Instead of putting a former president on the defensive with regard to the "handling" of bin Laden, how about holding the current president accountable for his mishandling of the hunt for the world's greatest terrorist, as well as for his exceptional deployment of weapons of "mass distraction." Make no mistake, Iran is at least as irrelevant to the "war on terror" as Iraq. This administration's jihad for global domination, whether it can be described as diabolical or otherwise, is at least as transparent as a Fox reporter's efforts to pin the blame for global insurgency, and insurrection, on a previous president.
  [The Huffington Post | Full Blog Feed]
5:57:14 PM
|
|
© Copyright 2006 Patricia Thurston.
|
|
|
|
|
