Violence is the cause, its reach vast. Eighty percent of Iraqis report attacks nearby — car bombs, snipers, kidnappings, armed forces fighting each other or abusing civilians. It's worst by far in the capital of
“Lies, damned lies, and statistics.” To that please add: American opinion polls. Or rather, opinion polls conducted by Americans.
Here’s an interesting contrast…from the ABC News article:
METHODOLOGY — This poll for ABC News, USA Today, the BBC and ARD was conducted Feb. 25-
And from The Times (
ORB interviewed a nationally representative sample of 5,019 Iraqi adults between February 10-22. The margin of error was +/- 1.4%. (Italics in original text)
Could it be the “oversamples” in Anbar province and
Just sayin’.
Kinda sorta related to the above: Michael Barone, writing in Real Clear Politics:
"They always blame
In their assessment of what is going on in the world, they seem to start off with a default assumption that we are in the wrong. The "we" can take different forms: the
Where does this default assumption come from? And why is it so prevalent among our affluent educated class (which, after all, would seem to overlap considerably with the people being complained about?). It comes, I think, from our schools and, especially, from our colleges and universities. The first are staffed by liberals long accustomed to see America as full of problems needing solving; the latter have been packed full of the people cultural critic Roger Kimball calls "tenured radicals," people who see this country and its people as the source of all evil in the world.
It’s a good essay, but in the end, it doesn’t tell you anything you don’t already know, in your heart of hearts. We’re not perfect, this is true. But, at the same time, one gets profoundly tired—sick to death, even—of the “Bash
Good news on the Algore front from John Fund at the WSJ:
The media are finally catching up with Al Gore. Criticism of his anti-global-warming franchise and his personal environmental record has gone beyond ankle-biting bloggers. It's now coming from the New York Times and the Nashville Tennessean, his hometown paper that put his birth, as a senator's son, on its front page back in 1948, and where a young Al Gore Jr. worked for five years as a journalist.
Last Tuesday, the Times reported that several eminent scientists "argue that some of Mr. Gore's central points [on global warming] are exaggerated and erroneous." The Tenessean reported yesterday that Mr. Gore received $570,000 in royalties from the owners of zinc mines who held mineral leases on his farm. The mines, which closed in 2003 but are scheduled to reopen under a new operator later this year, "emitted thousands of pounds of toxic substances and several times, the water discharged from the mines into nearby rivers had levels of toxins above what was legal."
[and, the last paragraph]
Mr. Gore has called the campaign to combat global warming a "moral imperative." But Mr. Gore faces another imperative: to square his sales pitches with the facts and his personal lifestyle to more align with what he advocates that others practice. "Are you ready to change the way you live?" asks Mr. Gore's film. It's time people ask Mr. Gore "Are you ready to change the way you live, as well as the way you lecture the rest of us?"
Read the whole thing…
In the spirit of “equal time,” I give you the link to Shaun Mullen’s “Vietnam, Iraq & A Tale of Two Marches”
I am attending the march as an aspiring journalist who will file a story for my college newspaper. But I would be lying if I didn’t say my heart is with the protesters and my opposition to the Vietnam War is driven in part by the possibility that I’ll be drafted once my student deferment ends. (It did. I was. But my subsequent travels in
I have had more than my fill of war and pestilence over four decades as a veteran, reporter and editor. I bleed red, white and blue for my country but do not abide being lied to by its leaders whether it is
The piece is well written and is an interesting contrast between then and now. Draw your own conclusions; I’ve drawn mine.
And…on the other hand, Gerard writes an essay much more in tune with my feelings and attitude about this anniversary:
Four years in. An inch of time. Four years in and the foolish and credulous among us yearn to get out. Their feelings require it. The power of their Holy Gospel of "Imagine" compels them. Their overflowing pools of compassion for the enslavers of women, the killers of homosexuals, the beheaders of reporters, and the incinerators of men and women working quietly at their desks, rise and flood their minds until their eyes flow with crocodile tears while their mouths emit slogans made of cardboard. They believe the world is run on wishes and that they will always have three more.
Like savages shambling about some campfire where all there is to eat are a few singed tubers, they paint their faces with the tatterdemalion symbols of a summer long sent down to riot with the worms. They clasp hands and sing songs whose lyrics are ash. "We shall... over... come." Overcome what, overcome who? Overcome their nation? Is that their dream? It is the lifelong dream of those that lead them that much is certain.
Four years in and we see these old rotting rituals trotted out in the streets like some pagan procession of idols and shibboleths, like some furred and feathered fetish shaken against the sky by hunkering witch-doctors, to hold back the dark, to frighten off the evil spirits and graven images that trouble the sleep of the dreamers.
Four years into the most gentle war ever fought, a war fought on the cheap at every level, a war fought to avoid civilian harm rather than maximize it. Picnic on the grass at
He has a way with words, that man. It’s a good thing envy isn’t fatal. Well, it’s not fatal around El Casa Móvil De Pennington, anyway. Perhaps I should say I suffer from “excess admiration.”
Yeah, that’s it.
{Sigh} Overall, not a very good day. At least my readings haven’t provided a good beginning to the day. I’m going to work to make it better…
Today’s Pic: Spring, seven years ago. Or, one might could call April in
YrHmblScrb in the statuary garden of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
April 7, 2000.
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