A fascinating article over at ABC News that I found via Tom Tomorrow. I'm still digesting it, not only because it verifies a lot of my concerns, but because it's one of the least flag-waving articles I've seen come out of mainstream American media. Here's a few initial thoughs.

No, Iraq wasn't about weapons of mass destruction. It wasn't about oil. But it was about the war on terrorism. As Former CIA Director James Woolsey said, "I don't think you should go to war to set examples or send messages." I agree with that.

Here's another interesting quote:

"We were not lying," said one official. "But it was just a matter of emphasis."

Huh. I guess it all depends on what your definition of "is" is.

I want to see if this gets any cable news channel play, i.e., CNN, NBC, or FOX. Doubt it.

Congress wants big business to start dipping into your overtime. What is so hard for Republicans to understand that to empower the country, to have to empower the majority of the population to drive the market, not the rich elite? Trickle-down economics makes sense theoretically, but the problem is -- it never trickles down.

According to Think Secret, an Apple news site, Al Gore made a good joke at Apple's recent Board of Directors meeting:

An inquiry about proposal one, re-electing the board of directors, asked if there really was any choice at all in the re-election of the board, since Apple's shareholder notice notes "The six nominees for director receiving the highest number of affirmative votes of the shares entitled to be voted for them shall be elected as directors." There were a total of six nominees. Heinen said that people did have the option of not voting. Jobs then commented that he received 83% of the votes to be re-elected, the highest second to Al Gore who received over 90%. Gore added, "Does it matter who has the most votes?" which sent the crowd into laughter.

If you've read this site before -- let's face it, you haven't -- you know that I think the most significant change to our geopolitical environment that should and probably will happen in the next 20 years is switching from oil to hydrogen. Iceland has the right idea -- switch government vehicles to hydrogen, work out the kinks there, then when that technology has paid for itself, the people will be convinced. As Ghandi said, "You must be the change you wish to see in the world." Want hydrogen powered vehicles, Mr. President? Start using them.

North Korea's nuclear capability is this big!

Now that Pyongyang is admitting to having nuclear weapons and the US still can't find WMDs in Iraq (and Hans Blix is calling foul), do we not look like a bunch of jackasses now? I don't think the Iraq war was about stealing oil (having control of the second largest oil reserve to put pressure on Saudi Arabia -- now that makes sense). If it really was, however, about weapons of mass destruction, then gay-porn-star loving King George has more explaining to do than to just let Colin Powell say it's a "diplomatic issue." No, it's a crazy-guy-with-his-finger-on-a-red-button issue, and that makes me feel far less safe than Saddam Hussein ever did.

Oh, wait. It was about liberating an oppressed people. I'll let The Onion satirize that:

Tortured Ugandan Political Prisoner Wishes Uganda Had Oil

KAMPALA, UGANDA—A day after having his hands amputated by soldiers backing President Yoweri Museveni's brutal regime, Ugandan political prisoner Otobo Ankole expressed regret Monday over Uganda's lack of oil reserves. "I dream of the U.S. one day fighting for the liberation of the oppressed Ugandan people," said Ankole as he nursed his bloody stumps. "But, alas, our number-one natural resource is sugar cane." Ankole, whose wife, parents, and five children were among the 4,000 slaughtered in Uganda's ethnic killings of 2002, then bowed his head and said a prayer for petroleum.

I've long said that the US has claimed what I see as the one legitimate reason for invading Iraq: ousting a brutal dictator. We've done it for Germany and Serbia (and in Serbia, we were defending the lives of Muslims), so we should free the people of Iraq, right? However, my opposition to the war was and still is because of the irony -- liberate Iraq? Who's going to liberate us? If the Bush administration can't do it here, then why should we trust them to do it overseas?

Well, yet again, Tom Tomorrow hits the nail on the head far more eloquently than I can. If you don't read his blog, start, dammit.

The Official Howard Dean Weblog

I'm closing the poll. Only seven people voted. Three people said they'd visit once a week, one person said they'd visit daily -- four people who like the idea. Two people voted that they liked this blog just the way it is. One person voted "Other" but posted no comments. I'm assuming that one person thinks this site sucks. I don't blame them.

The simple matter is that only seven people voted over the course of a few months. That sucks.

I have plans for this domain name, but it'll take a while, so in the meantime, you're stuck with this. At the very least, expect a redesign in the coming weeks. (This inline frame crap makes it impossible for Google to search the site.)

My observation for the day -- why is it that when a middle-class white girl is kidnapped or a middle-class white woman is killed, it makes national headlines? Not to debase the plight of the Smart family or Laci Peterson's family, but the media's classism is showing.

Tim Robbins Speech to the National Press Club

Nope, the war is not about oil. Not at all.

Please, no more made-in-the-USA monsters

Bush vetoed a possible war with Syria. Next week, talks begin with North Korea. Bizarre.

HOORAY!

Bill O'Reilly isn't completely a bad man. I truly think he goes over-the-top for ratings and to sell books. For example, he's for gay rights -- he's even for gay adoption -- but thinks gay pride parades are too much. (Source) Hate the sin, love the sinner, perhaps. After all, though, if many homosexuals didn't still think that, to a certain degree, the world shames them, then would we really need a gay pride parade? If African Americans were completely equal in the eyes of society, would we need a Black History Month?

So what are we to make of his slightly racist joke at a fundraiser for inner-city schoolchildren? Hard to say. After all, I've made jokes like that with my friends. Yes, I have. It doesn't mean I'm a racist. I'm mocking the existence of the sterotype, not heralding it as truth. The laugh is that people would actually think something so ridiculous, and I'm careful that the context is not misinterpreted. That O'Reilly was speaking at such a fundraiser (for a group to which he has donated $60,000) makes it unfortunate, but not reprehensible.

Unless, of course, I'm proven wrong like I was when I forgave Trent Lott. Boy, was I freaking wrong.

We should really be pissed off at Rep. Barbara Cubin for saying that the entire black community is on drugs. Representative Cubin, on behalf of all socially conscious, tolerant Americans from coast to coast, get fucked.

The president is getting an $80 billion package from congress to pay for the war. We knew that, but there is an added provision tacked on by congress that helps the airline industry. The provision allocates additional unemployment funds for laid-off airline employees and sets salary caps on airline executives to their 2002 levels. Granted, those salaries are still way high, but at least there is bipartisan support for short-term relief and allowing the market to push for the airline industry to return to profitablility instead of just bailing them out.

The war chest will not be handed over to the White House to spend willy-nilly, either. For the majority of the funding, Bush has to tell congress first before he spends it. Ain't checks and balances a bitch? (Giggle.)

While we're on the subject of the war budgets and corporations, here's a harrowing statistic. While Bush is getting $78.5 billion to pay for his lovely war, overseas corporate tax shelters are bilking the economy out of $70 billion in tax money every year. Another Arianna Huffingon pet cause (she's behind a lot of the SUVs Support Terrorism stuff), it couldn't have come at a better time. We need to point out this sort of hypocrisy before the post-war guzzling of oil and cum really kicks in.

However, will the networks report on it? Of course not. They're owned by corporations who are doing the same thing. (27% of Viacom's 960 subsidiaries are in overseas tax havens.)

We have to keep fighting, though, for what we believe in before the Department of Homeland Security, DARPA, and the Attorney General start to really Big Brother us.

So how is it that Peter Arnett can get fired for stating his opinion (not that I applaud Peter Arnett for his act of buffoonery) and Geraldo Rivera can be back on the job after committing an act of treason?

I think I figured it out. It isn't just a matter of Fox News being the Bush administration's media provider of constant analingus.

No, this is an issue of karma. After all, he opened Al Capone's vault on live TV and found nothing. He has to stay in Iraq so when the US military opens Saddam's vault of chemical and biological weapons and find nothing, the US military can blame it on Geraldo. Then, just for good measure, a white supremacist Marine will break Geraldo's nose with a chair.

How's that for a conspiracy theory?

In other news, the buzz today is that Apple may buy Universal Music. Good for them. Apple's been showing companies around the world how to operate a computer company since 1997 when Jobs retook his rightful place*. Perhaps now they can show the music industry how to profit with online music distribution.

Steve Jobs wants to turn his empire into Sony, it's obvious -- Apple, Pixar, and now Universal Music? C'mon. While Sony is fractured all over the place, however, Apple seems far more focused, with their digital hub concept. Sure it's only a rumor, but if Apple can pull this off, it's going to change the music industry. Jobs is good at changing industries for the better.

*Don't give me the Apple-has-only-3%-of-the-market crap. MAC OS X has a sliver of the market compared to Windows, but as a hardware manufacturer, they're doing fine. The top 10 US computer hardware manufacturers certainly includes Apple, and when you eliminate the big iron manufacturers (IBM, Cisco, Sun, Xerox, EMC) and Seagate, that leaves Apple in the top five companies that strictly focus on personal and small business computer manufacturers, and that's not bad.

New to Bored?: Eschaton. Whoever Atrios is, he has a lot of time to read a lot of news. I read his blog every day and often find fodder for my own blog. It's about time I gave him a freaking link.

A few other changes to Bored?: Removed eDay -- I noticed that it hadn't been updated in two-and-a-half years. Also, I've replaced MacOS Rumors with Mac Rumors, which has more info and less conjecture, though it's still all gossip. By this time next year, I'll finally be plopping down the scratch for a Powerbook, and hopefully by then they'll have 970s in the 15" models. Just want to know when I should be ready to drain the bank account.

Cost of War. It's costing all of this money to liberate the Iraqis. Who's going to liberate us?

I'm not opposed to everything in the Patriot Act. For example, with technology as it is today with cell phones and Blackberry pagers, a properly obtained wiretap warrant should apply to the suspect, not a specific phone number. The caveat in that sentence is "properly obtained." The issue with the Patriot Act is that the definition of who is a suspected terrorist is far too broad. (If you haven't, read about my search by the Chicago Police.) The ability to detain a suspected terrorists without charges, subjecting them to secret military tribunals, and withholding evidence for national security reasons thereby denying any possibility of a fair trial -- that's 1984 shit.

These are extrodinary times, however, and if you aren't a terrorist, a little search by the cops, a peek at your library records, and a few days in jail without charges are nothing more than a minor inconvience. In fact, the Patriot Act even has a "sunset" clause that retires the expanded law enforcement actions at the end of 2005.

Of course, 1984 was almost 20 years ago, and we have a lot of catching up to do. Therefore, Republicans are now kicking around the possibility of making the Patriot Act permanent. And let's not forget Patriot Act II (the sequel is always worse than the original).

How's a little police state going to hurt you if you're a law abiding citizen? Well, what if you disagree with the President, the Secretary of Defense, or Fox News? Let's say you know somebody who knows somebody who purchased pot. The government says buying pot supports terrorism (which, by the way, is horsepuckey -- pot is grown domestically or smuggled from Mexico or Canada; terrorist groups deal in cocaine and heroin). The more broadly we allow the government to define "suspected terrorist," the chance of you being harassed for knowing somebody who knows somebody increase dramatically.

Write your congresspersons and tell them to oppose making the Patriot Act permanent and to oppose any further attacks on the Bill of Rights.

This is why I'm against war. And we're supposed to be liberating these people?

I spoke too soon. So did the US military. "Smoking gun" WMD site in Iraq turns out to contain pesticide

As much as I try to avoid Fox News, this article features an interesting quote:

"American soldiers who reached the New Presidential Palace used the toilets, rifled through documents in the bombed-out compound and helped themselves to ashtrays, pillows, gold-painted Arab glassware and other souvenirs."

Perhaps I'm grasping at straws here, but wouldn't giving Iraq back to the Iraqi people include glassware, the value of which could no doubt feed an Iraqi family for a month or more?

Weren't we supposed to be liberating the Afghans, too? That doesn't seem to be working out too well.

U.S. troops find possible terror training camp

"U.S. Army commanders say they have discovered more than a dozen barrels of chemicals in an agricultural facility 30 miles northeast of here that have tested positive as blister and nerve agents."

Though the US and members of our country's executive staff still stand to profit personally from this war, and though this war has been planned since the late 1990s and 9/11 provided the excuse, and though it is hypocritical to go after Hussein in the name of liberating the people of Iraq when American freedoms are being increasingly repressed, much of my conjecture has now been proven wrong.

Yes, Iraq has chemical weapons. Of course, I'd like to know where they got those weapons -- the US? France? Russia?

Yes, Iraq is harboring terrorists. Some are even claiming that this training camp is where the 9/11 hijackers learned their tricks, though NewsMax.com makes Fox News look like The Guardian, so I wouldn't trust them. However, the initial assertion that terrorists train there is true.

I erred on the side of peace. I still feel comfortable with that choice. I still wish there were a peaceful solution to all of this. Lots of Iraqi civilians, the same people we are there to liberate, have been killed. Though the reported number of civilian casualties differs depending on which side of the political spectrum, it is safe to say that nearly 1,000 innocent Afghan civilians have died as a result of American attacks. When this "War on Terrorism" is all said and done, America and its coalition of the bribed will have killed more innocent civilians than were killed on 9/11. Mark my words.

Plus, the US still seems all too eager to profit from this war.

And, for God's sake, a tax cut will not help the poor.

I still have a lot to be angry about. There are still a lot of issues to which I can take this administration to task. Two assertions that I thought were lies, however, have turned out to be true. I'm not too proud to admit that I was wrong.

I wish I had as much time on my hands as Atrios:

For the record, I've never doubted that Saddam probably has some sort of chemical weapons. Heck, I can brew up some nasty stuff with common household cleaning agents. The issue is whether or not he had "weapons of mass destruction" in the genuine sense - that is, weapons which could kill an immense number of people, quickly, from a distance. At this point, the US could find an ammonia bottle sitting next a bleach bottle and the media will praise Jeebus that Bush had the sense to protect us from that extraordinary danger. But, serious people...know that most chemical weapons aren't very good at killing a lot of people, quickly, from a distance. Our cruise missiles more fit the definition than do most of the nasty substances they might find (such as Ricin).

As much as I like this quote, it just adds to what I said Wednesday. On both sides of the fence, it's nothing but conjecture. Any event that occurs can be twisted in the way you want it twisted.

For me, it's all about trust. If I trust Bush to liberate the oppressed people of Iraq and to give $15 billion to Africa to combat AIDS, then you'd think that same person would have the compassion and understanding to make crooked CEOs accountable for stealing the pensions of their employees or reform taxes in such a way that it doesn't just benefit weathly or not detain people who haven't been charged with a crime indefinitely. It doesn't add up.

Hell, he took office underhandedly and is quoted as saying God sent him to fight these wars. We've fought countries whose leaders have pulled the same shiznit.

So whether you believe that we need to be in Iraq waging this war to protect our safety, liberate the Iraqis, or whatever, it still doesn't add up. I'm not expecting the president to be perfect. I'm just expecting him to be consistent because it makes everything he does look duplicitous. I can't trust him because he has given the American people no reason to trust him, and that alone is reason enough to be opposed to this war.

Now I'm conflicted.

I still don't think the US will find a stockpile of nerve gas or botulism -- they destroyed them all or hid them in another country, maybe? -- but the finds they are making are definitely suspect.

If this site where they found the atropine, the documents, and the centralite was searched by the weapons inspectors, why didn't they call out the Iraqi government on this stuff?

Like I said, I'm conflicted.

I forwarded this hypothetical conversation to a friend of mine who is in support of our military action in Kuwait. He responded, claiming that he despises Platonic dialectic and that it doesn't give prudence to the opposing viewpoint. He accused it of exhibiting "moral relativism."

Isn't any debate about whether or not war is justified moral relativism? Isn't war always a decision about goals and what is worth sacrificing for them? To chide nearly any debate about sociopolitical issues for being morally relative is like chiding cookies for being baked in an oven. The whole point of a debate concerning the sacrifice of lives, innocent or otherwise, for the sake of resources and/or global security is to debate the moral implications of such actions. He argues for the war using what facts he has at his disposal because he feels the military action is morally justified. I argue against it because I feel that it is morally reprehensible, and the link above brings up just about every reason why I feel that way. Is it morally relative? God damn right.

Every argument has a counterargument in a situation where as lowly, middle-class civilians, we don't have all the answers. The only evidence any of us have to argue for or against the war is circumstantial or heresay; we can only go on what we read, hear, and hypothesize. We take the side Fox News* or Michael Moore tells us to take. It's not exercising free speech as much as it is exercising the right to repeat what pundits and politicians tell us to repeat.

Even if I didn't voraciously devour as much news and political thought from every side as I can, though, I'd still take the side that does not kill civilians, place Americans in danger of more acts of terrorism, and spend billions of dollars that could be better spent promoting peace.

*Sidenote: My father told me the other night that Fox News was the only "fair and balanced" news out there. Not only did he quote their slogan in brainwashed fashion, but he made me feel like I was adopted.

IRAQ-O-METER

I agree that the altered version is a better composition, but I applaud the LA Times for firing the photographer. But it also begs the question -- how often is this happening (outside of the Weekly World News, of course) without readers or even editors knowing?

In theory, Jennifer Gratz is right. Affirmative Action, however, has done a great deal to bring African Americans and other races into the fold of American society. The opportunities for Americans should be spread as evenly as possible. Jennifer Gratz may complain that she didn't get in because she's white, but she can go complain about that at a country club that doesn't admit black people. The simple fact of the matter is, though Gratz lost this one opportunity, she's had more opportunities in this world simply because she's white.

The frightening thing, though, is that the Supreme Court may agree with Gratz. Let's hope they don't. (And I'm not wasting my prayers on Scalia, probably the scarriest man in the Federal government today next to Rumsfeld.)

In other news, since when did all of my liberal, government-questioning friends become such fascists? Just an open question.