Hitching A Ride 'Round the Blogs
Thanks to
the Duchess for leading me to this beauty:
Center For American Progress:
100 Mistakes for the President to Choose From
Anonymoses led me to a couple of articles I wanted to share with you. The first is by Joseph Wilson titled
The Cult That's Running the Country .
....as of this writing, the senior administration officials who took it upon themselves to protect a political agenda by exposing a national security asset are still in place. They still occupy positions of trust; they continue to hold full national security clearances. The breach of trust between the administration and its clandestine service will not be healed until they are exposed and appropriately punished.
That no real outrage has been expressed by either the president or Republicans in Congress raises the question of whether our secrets are safe in this administration's hands. By the end of February 2004, efforts to launch congressional inquiries had been voted down in three House committees. Henry Hyde, Republican chairman of the International Relations panel, claimed, "It would be irresponsible for the committee to ... jeopardize an ongoing criminal investigation." On the contrary, according to congressional sources of mine, Republicans, pressured by the White House, have simply refused to exercise oversight responsibility on this national security matter.
....At a time when all experts on national security agree that we need to strengthen our ability to collect human intelligence, the unwillingness of some to seriously address this act of betrayal is surely damaging that effort.
But as with all cover-ups, such as Watergate and Iran-Contra, the revelation of the whole truth in this matter will likely be a long time coming, and have repercussions none of us can anticipate.
The second article is from a speech given by William Rivers Pitt on the Kent State campus at a ceremony to mark the 34th anniversary of the Kent State Shootings. It's titled
"Tin Soldiers and We are Coming":
The truth is that it is all too convenient to use tricks of language to blame Iraqi 'terrorist insurgents' for the deaths of all those Americans. Trade places with them, however, and face an invading army commanded by leaders whose goals and motives are fully criminal, face an invading army that would kill and torture and humiliate, and think about what you would do. Language is a funny thing. It can be used to reveal, and to disguise. Even today, 34 years later, you can find a similar argument right here. Were the people shot down here insurgents? Were they terrorists? Were they patriots?
.... We have gathered here today to mourn the loss and celebrate the lives of those who fell here 34 years ago. This is sacred ground. 34 years ago, some very ordinary Americans rose up to strike a blow against a disastrous war, and the price paid for this decision to speak up and speak out was fearful and mortal. The wheel has rolled, and has come around once more.
....We must rise again on this sacred ground, we must enter again into the valley of the shadow of death, and we must fear no evil, because this must be stopped, and we must be the ones to stop it. Patriots once marched here, and must march here again. We. Must. Learn.
This is your wake up call, Mr. Bush. Your 15 minutes are just about over. Tin soldiers and we are coming.
I was reading
Desolation Row and caught a ride (via link) to Akim at
Empty Days. He's morally clear, I believe, in his thinking that we are taught, from the time we're children, "to believe [our nation] is superior to everybody else" and now we're told we're "fighting some rabid terrorists that are not even human", so why are we
surprised when some GIs get "confused and start treating everybody as subhuman scum"? I think it runs along the same thinking of my own
when I first learned about the photos. It also goes along with Marie Cocco's thinking in her latest column titled "
Prison debacle shouldn't surprise us".
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