The Legislative Branch has no oversight responsibility over the White House.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by warch

I was also around for Nixon's fall and pardon....granted a young thing yet....but this adminstration's constellation of unprecedented power consolidation, manipulation and strategery- from signing statements, to political favors, to secret tapping, to torture, to haliburton, to abramoff, to plame, to misinformation and press manipulation, mismanagement, to secret prisons, to message leakage, to justice firing, to CIA tinkering and executive privilege... is making the break-in and Nixon taped arrogance look like the junior varsity. Many of the same crooks all grown up.

It may seem I am bashing Bush, but I am merely paying attention.

I guess we just have to disagree, no problem there. But you certainly seem smarter than to lump all of the problems and events listed above to be "Bush's Fault"?

[xoxoxoBruce]

Then Who's fault is it? The buck stops at the top. The one that sets the precedent, the one that controls his administration. If you say he doesn't control his administration, then that's another failure that's his fault.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by tw

I don't see strong condemnation of Gonzales. In that thread, I see Ashcroft resigns, Gonzales is selected, and Gonzales justified torture. Then the discussion goes into length about whether torture and 'enemy combatants' is justified. Eventually Powell resigns. Where is all this condemnation of Gonzales? One that approaches a strong condemnation is a post from glatt.

And me. And Beestie.

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

Then Who's fault is it? The buck stops at the top. The one that sets the precedent, the one that controls his administration. If you say he doesn't control his administration, then that's another failure that's his fault.

And that is the beat of the mantra of the Left. I don't view the interdependent and complicated relationships of national and international politics in a such a simplistic manner. If it simplifies things for you by all means use "Bush's Fault" as your mantra. Many problems which surfaced in this administrations tenure have festered for more than 7 years including the events on 9/11/01. Congress carries much of the burden for current events either through action or non-action. Individuals in the administration carry responsibility for events, just because the worked for Bush does not mean "Bush did it!". The actions of a few misfit soldiers does not mean the General in charge did it, condoned it, or approved it. I am not absolving Bush of anything. He is an idiot. But he is not always responsible for the idiots under him. Persecute him in the annals of public opinion if it makes you feel better but it does not mean any of the problems are going to go away.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

And me. And Beestie.

The Cellar is more than a handful of fingers. This silence is overwhelming. So many posters. So few viciously condemn a man who openly advocates torture, wire tapping without judicial review, firing US Attorneys to promote Republican extremists - and repeatedly lie about it. Where is this widespread defamation for a man with so much anti-American morals as to publicly advocate torture and to suspend habeas corpus to promote torture?

Crickets....

[tw]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

The actions of a few misfit soldiers does not mean the General in charge did it, condoned it, or approved it.

Just like in Nam when the president openly lied, then massacres and other criminal actions by US soldiers increased - became far more common than is publicly acknowledged. Let's just leave it to many peers who acknowledge actions by 'fellow soldiers'. It was widespread because the president was a liar. So much a liar that mail TO the troops was censored.

[Happy Monkey]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

And that is the beat of the mantra of the Left. I don't view the interdependent and complicated relationships of national and international politics in a such a simplistic manner.

No need to simplify. It's Bush's fault and the fault of everyone else involved. It's not coincidence that Bush hired so many bad apples. He intended to spoil the barrel.

Heck, most of the things on warch's list aren't even denied by the administration anymore. They intend it to be the way things are done.

[tw]

Originally Posted by bluesdave

tw, just out of interest, do Americans listen to any of the NPR radio stations, or watch Jim Lehrer on PBS? Sometimes I think that we get better coverage of US politics than you guys do.

NPR and PBS (Jim Lehrer) advocate presenting facts and statements from all sides. But that is only part of it. Another is to provide more than superficial (executive) summaries. For example, we took a same story from two newspapers. The first from a tabloid. Then after a conclusion was reached, we had the same story from a serious newspaper. Second story was provided with details - longer report. Everyone then had a 180 degree different conclusion.

It’s not just 'balanced' that is required. In depth is also essential.

Some giants who did this were Walter Cronkite (CBS), Peter Jennings (ABC), and Ted Koppel (ABC). A news service that was completely gutted when Tisch(?) decided to increase profits rather than improve the product. As a result, Dan Rather had few if any good journalists. Another that is still doing good stuff is Charlie Rose (PBS) whose reports every night this week (and next) are chock full of facts - the details. That stuff costs money if obtained on the net.

Curious is what happened to two ABC News journalists who did good and balanced reporting - Chris Wallace and Jeff Greenfield. Both went to Fox News. Neither reports anything like what they did for ABC which demonstrates how much top management makes that happen. Both Wallace and Greenfield report so completely one sided that I would not recognize them without their byline (names).

I got curious recently about one month after the Walter Reed scandal were repeatedly front page news. Randomly asked 20 and 30 year olds what they knew about Walter Reed. None even knew what Walter Reed was. Then I asked if they know about wounded American soldiers lying in hospital beds even in their own urine. Some literally got indignant because they should not know about this - insisting because they don't watch news.

Zero for 29 is the number of 20 and 30 year olds that knew zero about the news. My surprise was how some were indignant when I asked about soldiers lying in their urine. It explains why so many believe myths about illegal immigrants creating crime waves and living on welfare - as one might expect from those who only read tabloids. It explains why so many are so silent about "Mission Accomplished" and Gonzales. So many don't even hear 22 minutes of network news since Entertainment Tonight (Hollywood gossip and Britney's underwear?) apparently has more interest. As one foolishly said, "The news is so depressing." (She said it without a Valley Girl accent.)

Getting both balanced and in depth news domestically is not easy especially with the loss of both Peter Jennings and Ted Koppel's Nightline. I cannot say enough about what Charlie Rose is doing both this past week and next.

Originally Posted by uryoces

tw, you have a particular slant on things, a bit left-leaning. It sounds like you are reading from someone's political playbook. I like to think I have a centered world view, but my view's pragmatic tendencies lean to the right. Hell I'm the guy that gets his war coverage from Comedy central's "Daily Show with John Stewart".

What I'm saying is that you don't have a privileged view, no matter how many times you bring up the Pentagon Papers. You've got a lot of great knowledge on subjects political, and I spend a great deal of time Googling the facts you bring to bear, but a lot of what you are stating is opinion.

Repeatedly heard is a significant number who get their news from "Daily Show" - a comedy show. Well time is a definer. uryoces posted that back in Mar 2003 back when I was suggesting things like an Iraqi insurgency, looting of the Iraqi museums (they lost 60% of their treasures and are still missing most of it), BBC reporter who found town after town unsafe to keep asking questions (people who welcomed liberation?), Al Qaeda not allies with Saddam, Saddam's missiles did not violate UN limitations, and how Saudis may have been inadvertently financing Al Qaeda. This stuff reported back in Mar 2003 by responsible news sources has proven accurate. That's why responsible and balanced news sources are so essential.

Is everything George doing wrong? No. For example, he wants to lift some ridiculous restrictions on immigration. But when it comes to big things such as what is killing American soldiers, he is wrong more times than anyone has fingers and toes; because decisions are based totally in political agendas. One information source that is 100% suspect everytime? George Jr government whose job is to spin rather than solve.

Let's demonstrate what responsible news sources are currently noting. About 2 million Iraqis have fled the country due to a country made so unsafe by Americans. Another 1.8 million that cannot leave may be hiding out in extreme regions of the country. These people need help. But Americans - even in the Green Zone - can only impede such help. Why? Help would acknowledge facts that are contrary to George Jr spin. Administration would have to admit Iraq has never been worse. So 3.8 million Iraqis are abandoned with the US even impeding UN assistance. Official US spin is that these massive refugee numbers do not exist. How many news sources bother to report such fundamental details? But it again demonstrates the contempt that this administration has for people due to their political agendas.

[bluesdave]

Thanks tw (I mean that).

[TheMercenary]

Originally Posted by tw

The Cellar is more than a handful of fingers. This silence is overwhelming. So many posters. So few viciously condemn a man who openly advocates torture, wire tapping without judicial review, firing US Attorneys to promote Republican extremists - and repeatedly lie about it. Where is this widespread defamation for a man with so much anti-American morals as to publicly advocate torture and to suspend habeas corpus to promote torture?

Crickets....

"openly advocates torture"; really??? Where? please provide proof.

"wire tapping without judicial review"; Of phone calls from overseas, hell yea, good idea. Sorry if you were on the receiving end.

"firing US Attorneys to promote Republican extremists - and repeatedly lie about it"; Really where is the proof that Bush did any of this? Gonzales and Bush are not one in the same. Blame someone else cause I doubt you find a single shred of evidence leading back to Bush.

" to publicly advocate torture and to suspend habeas corpus to promote torture"; See first statement.

[TheMercenary]

Lost from the Baghdad museum: truth


David Aaronovitch
Tuesday June 10, 2003
The Guardian


Civilians inspect Torah scrolls stored in the vault of the National Museum in Baghdad

When, back in mid-April, the news first arrived of the looting at the Iraqi National Museum in Baghdad, words hardly failed anyone. No fewer than 170,000 items had, it was universally reported, been stolen or destroyed, representing a large proportion of Iraq's tangible culture. And it had all happened as some US troops stood by and watched, and others had guarded the oil ministry.
Professors wrote articles. Professor Michalowski of Michigan argued that this was "a tragedy that has no parallel in world history; it is as if the Uffizi, the Louvre, or all the museums of Washington DC had been wiped out in one fell swoop". Professor Zinab Bahrani from Columbia University claimed that, "By April 12 the entire museum had been looted," and added, "Blame must be placed with the Bush administration for a catastrophic destruction of culture unparalleled in modern history." From Edinburgh Professor Trevor Watkins lamented that, "The loss of Iraq's cultural heritage will go down in history - like the burning of the Library at Alexandria - and Britain and the US will be to blame." Others used phrases such as cultural genocide and compared the US in particular to the Mongol invaders of 13th-century Iraq.

Back in Baghdad there was anger. On April 14, Dr Donny George, the museum's director of research, was distraught. The museum had housed the leading collection of the continuous history of mankind, "And it's gone, and it's lost. If Marines had started [protecting the museum] before, none of this would have happened. It's too late. It's no use. It's no use."

A few weeks later - in London to address a meeting at the British Museum - George was interviewed for this newspaper by Neal Ascherson. George, said Ascherson, did not throw blame around, but did remark that most of the looters responsible for the damage were not educated.

On June 1, George was reported in the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag as reiterating that witnesses had seen US soldiers enter the museum on April 9, stay inside two hours and leave with some objects. When asked whether he believed that the US military and international art thieves had been acting in concert, George replied that a year earlier, at a meeting in a London restaurant, someone (unnamed) had told him that he couldn't wait till he could go inside the National Museum with US soldiers and give it a good pillage - ie, yes.

So, there's the picture: 100,000-plus priceless items looted either under the very noses of the Yanks, or by the Yanks themselves. And the only problem with it is that it's nonsense. It isn't true. It's made up. It's bollocks.

Not all of it, of course. There was some looting and damage to a small number of galleries and storerooms, and that is grievous enough. But over the past six weeks it has gradually become clear that most of the objects which had been on display in the museum galleries were removed before the war. Some of the most valuable went into bank vaults, where they were discovered last week. Eight thousand more have been found in 179 boxes hidden "in a secret vault". And several of the larger and most remarked items seem to have been spirited away long before the Americans arrived in Baghdad.

George is now quoted as saying that that items lost could represent "a small percentage" of the collection and blamed shoddy reporting for the exaggeration.

"There was a mistake," he said. "Someone asked us what is the number of pieces in the whole collection. We said over 170,000, and they took that as the number lost. Reporters came in and saw empty shelves and reached the conclusion that all was gone. But before the war we evacuated all of the small pieces and emptied the showcases except for fragile or heavy material that was difficult to move."

This indictment of world journalism has caused some surprise to those who listened to George and others speak at the British Museum meeting. One art historian, Dr Tom Flynn, now speaks of his "great bewilderment". "Donny George himself had ample opportunity to clarify to the best of [his] knowledge the extent of the looting and the likely number of missing objects," says Flynn. "Is it not a little strange that quite so many journalists went away with the wrong impression, while Mr George made little or not attempt to clarify the context of the figure of 170,000 which he repeated with such regularity and gusto before, during, and after that meeting." To Flynn it is also odd that George didn't seem to know that pieces had been taken into hiding or evacuated. "There is a queasy subtext here if you bother to seek it out," he suggests.

On Sunday night, in a remarkable programme on BBC2, the architectural historian Dan Cruikshank both sought and found. Cruikshank had been to the museum in Baghdad, had inspected the collection, the storerooms, the outbuildings, and had interviewed people who had been present around the time of the looting, including George and some US troops. And Cruikshank was present when, for the first time, US personnel along with Iraqi museum staff broke into the storerooms.

One, which had clearly been used as a sniper point by Ba'ath forces, had also been looted of its best items, although they had been stacked in a far corner. The room had been opened with a key. Another storeroom looked as though the looters had just departed with broken artefacts all over the floor. But this, Cruikshank learned, was the way it had been left by the museum staff. No wonder, he told the viewers - the staff hadn't wanted anyone inside this room. Overall, he concluded, most of the serious looting "was an inside job".

Cruikshank also tackled George directly on events leading up to the looting. The Americans had said that the museum was a substantial point of Iraqi resistance, and this explained their reticence in occupying it. Not true, said George, a few militia-men had fired from the grounds and that was all. This, as Cruikshank heavily implied, was a lie. Not only were there firing positions in the grounds, but at the back of the museum there was a room that seemed to have been used as a military command post. And it was hardly credible that senior staff at the museum would not have known that. Cruikshank's closing thought was to wonder whether the museum's senior staff - all Ba'ath party appointees - could safely be left in post.

Furious, I conclude two things from all this. The first is the credulousness of many western academics and others who cannot conceive that a plausible and intelligent fellow-professional might have been an apparatchiks of a fascist regime and a propagandist for his own past. The second is that - these days - you cannot say anything too bad about the Yanks and not be believed.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,,974193,00.html

[TheMercenary]

More facts on the Iraqi looting which dispell TW's statement that 60% of the artifacts were looted:

http://www.culturekiosque.com/art/ne...dadmuseum.html

I could go on but it is pretty clear that the number of 60% is total BS.

[Undertoad]

In May 03 I posted a NY Times story that thoroughly debunked the museum looting but it didn't suit tw's imagination of events so he ignored it.

[tw]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

In May 03 I posted a NY Times story that thoroughly debunked the museum looting but it didn't suit tw's imagination of events so he ignored it.

I ignored what was not true. Museum has recently summarized its situation. They lost about 60% of their treasures. Of that, only 20% have been recovered. But back then, UT was posting anything to deny realities in Iraq - even the looting. Rumsfeld was denying looting. Amazed me back in 2003 were the number of otherwise responsible people who believed outright Rumsfeld lies.

That museum looting was massive in direct contradiction to what UT believes. They lost about 60% which numbers tens of thousands of artifacts. But Rumsfeld said looting did not exist. Therefore it must have been true? If Rumsfeld said it, then it is probably a lie until proven otherwise.

Iraqi curators believe they will never find most of what was looted (but is still there according to UT). Facts posted about looting then are still accurate today. Why did I cite that museum looting from 2003? Because the BBC reported on it again last night – complete with numbers.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by TheMercenary

snip~ But he is not always responsible for the idiots under him.

The fuck he's not. He picked 'em and he's most certainly responsible for their and the rest of his administrations actions. Especially when this shit becomes public knowlege and he does nothing about it.

If a few soldiers go nuts the General is most definitely responsible and if he does not correct the situation, he's going down.... especially if he tries to keep it a secret. That football player that got fragged by his own men is the perfect example of Generals going down.......4, IIRC.