The world is like a big nightmare these weeks. If it had been in a movie you would have dismissed the plot. No goverment can really be that dumb. This dumb. I get angry and frustrated just thinking about it. I'm in disbelief reading the news and listening to NPR. Listening to news on the radio and reading BBCs makes me sick to the stomach. CNN's and indeed most other american mass media makes me sick to the stomach over the messenger as much as the stories.
Right now CNN writes "Time's up" on their front page. What would the answer be if Iraq demanded Bush to leave the White House? Exactly. It's so very backwards. If any one country attacked the US on 9/11 it was Saudi Arabia. Not Iraq. As I am sure you are well aware, there were no Iraqis on the planes. None. Zero. Zip.
On CNN they have weather forecasts graphics showing air planes flying in over Bagdadh with neat graphics of fires roaring. They call it "Showdown: Iraq" like declaring war is a sports match.
Who do the american administration think they are? Trying to bug the UN security council! I thought that was the kind of thing you did to your enemy. Does the Administration already realize that it's making an enemy of much of the rest of the world?
Did you see Are Fleischer being *laughed* out of the press briefing after trying to say that the U.S. isn't, wouldn't and couldn't try buying any votes for the war. If I owned a TV I would watch C-SPAN. The Onion has a hilarious article about a man who doesn't own a TV - just like me.
The old Read My Lips piece (RealPlayer required) is all too funny. No, it's not the movie of that name, but an excellent Bush/Blair duet from the guys at Atmo. I think they made it last year, but it's all too relevant now.
Caught on Film: The Bush Credibility Gap (not related to the attacks on Iraq). I wonder how Bush justifies his lies when he goes to bed. Matching the rhetoric with the reality is just scary.
Bush is acting as if divinely inspired. Hello?! Isn't that what we call the extremist muslims on? If Bush had studied just a little bit of history, he would know that being a colonial power doesn't work out very well.
Even Roger Ebert is writing about this: Praying is fine, but Bush should make up his own mind.
There are of course many theologies in the world, but the two involved here have different theories of prayer. Bush prays in the tradition of a dialogue with God, in which God hears Bush and Bush hears God. This is the tradition preached by the Rev. Billy Graham, who helped inspire Bush to become born again after Bush turned to him for help with alcoholism.The pope prays in a tradition where he asks God for the grace to make the right decision for himself, based on his own values and best effort. In this tradition, the pope has free will and the responsibility that comes with it. Free will must be absolute or it is not free. God is not a coach who allows the quarterback to make most of the decisions, but sometimes sends in a play from the sidelines.
Oh, and the CNN experts strike again (via Derek)
Meanwhile the security in US airports hits a new low (via Duncan who doesn't have an archive anymore, so I can't find his entry on it. I did find a related entry on 5 Year Old Girl As Terrorist Threat).
I've been trying to communicate how angry the war is making me, and just like you I can't seem to find the worlds. Senseless, reckless, immoral, wrong... ok, maybe a few words.
Yeah, I need to get the archives back. Maybe I'll be hacking on that while I try to ignore the helicopters flying over my head today covering the protests in downtown SF.
Thank God! Even in America and England there are still people at least trying to get some perspective on things. I'm just a plain old Belgian boy, and I was affraid of what I saw on CNN. At least here in Belgium you can see different points of view on regular television. The Belgian, the Dutch, the French, the English, the German, the American and several other news channels, each giving a slightly different perspective on thing. But CNN oh my *** ! Hate to say so, but that isn't news, that's pure and simple propaganda!
Nice to see there are some people willing to think for themselves though.
You also have to consider the fact that the US is fighting a war which has gone through the following stages of justification:
1) "The US is fighting to stop terrorism." Iraq hasn't done a single pro-terrorist thing against the US, (at least since the Gulf War). Among Arab nations, Iraq is probably the worst enemy of Al Queda, because of tough efforts to secularize the Islamic populace. Furthermore, Saudi Arabia, an "ally" of the US, represented the origins of the majority of the 9/11 hijackers. To top it all off, attacking (and occupying, and setting up a puppet government in) a country where the attacking country is the aggressor has, in every instance than I can remember involving the US, produced long-lasting ethnic hatred against the US. If Bob's father was killed by US bombs and now the US is occupying his country, is Bob more or less likely to engage in a suicide bombing against the US?
2) "The US is fighting to stop Iraq's ignoring of UN mandates regarding disarming." This is so ludicrous it's stupid. The US, in attacking Iraq and ignoring UN complaints, violates one of the fundamental UN rules that apply to members -- that a member shall not wage war except in self-defense. So the US is violating one of the foundational rules of the UN in order to enforce UN rules?
3) "The US is fighting to give Iraq's wealth back to its people." It's hard to argue with this one yet, since it depends on what the US does after the war. However, with Bush and Cheney running things (both magnates with scads of Big Oil ties), and with decades of the US screwing oil-exporting countries over as much as possible, I find it unlikely in the extreme that the Iraqi populace's needs will take precedence over the US's oil wants.