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1.03.2004
ABCNews' Unending Quagmire
Who's winning the war-- ABCNews or the facts? ABCNews continues making bold-but-risky advances, but they continue taking unacceptable levels of casualties from the large and growing army of undauntable facts constantly harassing them, sniping their reporters and sabotaging their psyops efforts.
ABCNews takes a big but difficult to defend position here. They attack the notion that Saddam's capture was militarily significant and assail the idea that the war in Iraq is winnable: The likelihood exists that the resistance could intensify in a way similar to what occurred after the killing of Hussein's sons in July. Far from being a turning point for the better, their deaths plunged Iraq deeper into the throes of violent upheaval and turmoil. ABCNews boldly proclaims a new plan of action. Well, not "new." It's the same plan they've been pimping for, oh, the last two years: We have to deputize America to Europe and the UN, and become the grunts and cannon-fodder for the wise decisions made by our intellectual and cultural betters across the Atlantic Ocean. In ABCNews' view -- and in the view of most American liberals and Europeans -- we live in a Planet of the Apes type world, with the UN as the Orang-Utans, the Europeans as the Chimps, and the brutish, stupid, violent Americans as the Gorillas, happily carrying out the orders given to us by our superiors, content to yield all decision-making to our more highly-evolved cousins. But the "facts" are pummelling the ABCNews salient. Is it true that their is a "likelihood" of increased Iraqi resistance due to Saddam's capture? From Yahoo News... MOSUL, Iraq - A dozen former leaders of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)'s Baath Party have handed in weapons caches in northern Iraq (news - web sites) to curry favor with the U.S. military and claim a role in a new Iraqi leadership, the commander of the Army's 101st Airborne Division said. "They're coming to us, saying they want to be part of the new Iraq," Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus said Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press. "It has slowly sunk in that Saddam isn't coming back." It's sinking in among the B'aathist hardliners, but apparently it's not even begun to penetrate the perpetually, and pompously, furrowed brow of Peter Jennings.
Another Al Qaeda Drug Boat Siezed
US forces have seized a ship loaded with 1.3 tons of hasish in the Persian Gulf. The proceeds from drug sales would have financed Al Qaeda terrorist operations.
Yeah, it's really crazy for the Bush administration to make the linkage between drugs and terrorism. One thing you've got to say for potheads-- despite their frequently addled thinking, they sure know how to prioritize. They have a list of the most important issues facing society, and easy access to pharmacological luxury goods (i.e., mind-altering drugs) top that list by a wide margin. They focus on access to pharmacological luxury goods like a laser-beam, to the exclusion of virtually all else. They will let nothing at all -- certainly not these trivial effluvia we call "facts" -- in any way harsh their mellow. Yes, yes, I know: Oil is linked to terrorism, too. But here's the difference: I admit that linkage. I do not scream at the top of my lungs that no such link exists, as the Pharmacological Luxury Goods Entitlement brigade does with drugs. And I simply point out that while the entire global economy depends on petroleum, drugs are, in fact, luxury goods, and as such unnecessary. That doesn't mean they have no value-- they have no value to me personally, but I admit there are a lot of folks out there to whom their VERY valuable indeed. (Too valuable, in most cases.) But they are, yes, unnecessary, just as tobacco is unnecessary. You would freeze to death in the winter, and most likely starve to death during all other seasons, without petroleum to heat your homes or provide a cheap and plentiful energy source for transporting food throughout the world. In fact, without oil, you wouldn't have cheap luxury pharmaceuticals, either. I can't see Western civilization coming to an end because the supply of high-quality hashish is interrupted. But an end to the flow of oil would plunge the entire advanced-economy world into a instant economic depression. So continue nattering on, hash, coke, and heroin users. You are funding worldwide terrorism -- actual murders, actual human deaths -- in order to fulfil a rather decadent need for luxury pharmaceuticals.
FoxNews Breaking: Senate-side of DC Capitol Building evacuated due to possible bioweapon detection
Probably nothing at all. Vigilance is important. So is staying calm.
Bush Plans to Slow Growth of Government
Well, plans are one thing. Actually doing is another. But for what it's worth, Bush plans to trim domestic spending beginning 2005.
How much is Bush to be blamed for the runaway spending? Obviously, he should be blamed to one degree or another; he is, after all, the man who ultimately signs the appropriations bills. The man who occasionally threatens a veto, but never actually follows through on the threat. I have to say, though, that it might just be possible that, given the one-vote majority in the Senate, Bush is partly held hostage by the first-priority need to actually govern. With such a razor-thin working majority, perhaps recalcitrant senators are able to extract more spending for local pork than they'd otherwise be able to-- and their pork provokes other Senators to get their pork, etc. Bush has to get the budget under control. It is non-negotiable. Hopefully, he'll have three or four more Republican senators in 2005 and he'll be able to negotiate lower spending. If he does not, he will go down in history as the man who blew up the budget and really did threaten America's future prosperity.
A Question of Character: The D&D Guide to the Democratic Presidential Candidates [LINK MOVED]
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