Litany
Well, I had tried not commenting on the day to day thrashing about of this campaign. It makes it impossible to get any sort of feeling for the larger issues of the election for one thing (does this election have larger issues - do any of the candidates embody them if there are?). Having broke into the territory with that last post I might as well have at a few issues that have dug into me like so many political chiggers. A litany of minor observations:
Don Rumsfeld noted in Al Kamen's in the loop column (last item "mistaken identity") repeatedly saying 'Saddam Hussien' when he clearly meant 'Osama Bin Laden' there are a couple of possibilities here. First that he actually is confused like the bad acid wackjob he sometimes appears to be. Possibly they've never been able to tell the difference in this administration. For all they really know about the middle east the people on top of the sand are simply indistinguishable and in-the-way. Just maybe this is not really accidental but is quite deliberate. that he is going out in public and knowingly dissembling in order to actively deceive the American people, to lie further in pursuit of goals they could not attain through truth. Don Rumsfeld: opening school on Doc Goebbels. Congress has signed on
House Republicans and Democrats Unite in Linking Iraq with 9/11 even if Edwards has misgivings Edwards: Bush Implied Saddam-9/11 Link (AP)
I saw something - an oped type of thing the other day, part of the spate of articles in reaction to Kerry's new stump speeches. I caught a sentence where the writer challenged Kerry to come up with his own strategy to secure availability to middle east oil. [I just re-discovered where I read this: David Broders column Sunday Middle East Reality (washingtonpost.com)]
Are we all ready to finally admit that this really is about oil, to a large degree - in the interest of moving the national debate forward. Not about oil as it is today, cheap and relatively plentiful, but oil in 20 years when competition for it will mean the stability and wealth of the nations of the developed world, and the necks, literally, of leaders. The same leaders who, now, will not focus us on the choices that need to be made to move away from locked dependence on oil as our primary source of energy. The policies that allow/encourage the inroads of the 12 mpg SUV people-mover into the american automobile-fleet. Carry on campers, no comprehensive change need be made. Some stories like this NYT oped are willing to take Kerry head-on and look at the role energy concerns are playing in this election New York Times > The Big Issues: Looking for Energy in the Campaign.
The administration will still hide behind implausibles that wouldn't get past a sixth grader: Anybody who would suggest that we'd be there for the oil, I think doesn't understand the basic fundamental decision that the President had to make... If we were interested, for example, in oil, we would have stayed in Saudi Arabia. We didn't. Vice President and Mrs. Cheney's Remarks and Q&A in Sheboygan Falls It's not that we didn't, it is that we realized we couldn't with Al Qeada ascendant in the region. Paul Wolfowitz said this much and more over a year ago in Vanity Fair. The Saudis' indicated we had to leave, we needed to install what was considered necessary US military presence somewhere else in the region. Iraq as weakest of the problematic states, and contained by a failed, (or failing) policy of sanctions was the candidate. The Washington Post which has not really come to terms with this war and its own advocacy of it, can write on this subject and not mention oil once.
Mr. Kerry and Iraq. It's about regional quiescence, oil priced as we want it, pumped into our tankers, and the eradication of resistance. No real debate on whether it was right or truly necessary to our legitimate strategic interests was ever held.
Also on Monday I see this artifact on the Google News page "Where is Kerry's North Korea Policy." The link leads to this William Kristol article in the Weekly Standard:
Kerry's North Korea Non-policy. Kerrys' North Korea policy? And on the heels of a week-end when most of the international press were chasing a story on whether North Korea had just set off a nuclear bomb, how - poignantly ironic.
Over the week-end President Bush dropped by the Russian Embassy to sign a book of condolence
Bush makes condolence call at Russian Embassy
I have seen an equal measure of stories and opinion on how Mr. Putin is fighting the good fight, or how his struggle is like or is the same as ours BBC NEWS | 9/11 'twinned' with Beslan horror, and one telling how the Russians are pursuing a disastrous policy in Chechnya, a policy that he is using in the margins to escape from any excess of democracy or free press Russian terrorism prompts power grab. yet here no one seems to see his struggle as being at one with ours BBC NEWS | US 'concern' over Putin measures. Nor does it occur to us how others might see both these struggles.
Lastly, moving on to the purely ridiculous:
Robert Novak Believes in Revealing Confidential Sources, After All (Editor & Publisher)
Novak's thinking on these matters lacks clarity.
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