Our Liberal Media, Part II
At least our news magazines, which have staff that can reflect on seven days of news for each issue, and which are less burdened by the minutiae that can bog down newspapers, radio, and television, can look at the morass in Iraq from a reflective and historical bent.
The past week shows that major weekly news magazine investigated how the Bush administration is working with Saddam Hussein's old henchmen.
Sorry. That is not an American news magazine. It is a Canadian news magazine, Maclean's. I apologize for mixing it up with its American counterparts, one of which devoted its cover last week to the presidential candidates' spouses.
Labels: Bush, Iraqi "government", Stupid reporting tricks
Our Liberal Media, Part I
Last night, El Pais published Spanish translations of transcripts of george Bush and former Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar which reveal some of the duplicity behind the early war effort.
Bush tells Aznar that the United States will invade Iraq with or without a war resolution; he expects the war to cost $50 billion; and he effectively admits to strong-arm tactics against poor countries which were wavering in their diplomatic support.
In a country with an actually liberal media, the front pages of said media's newspapers would have at least some mention of these transcripts, perhaps a translation of them, or (may we speculate that the media's investigative reporters could actually investigate something as important as the call to war) the original version in English.
Labels: Aznar, Bush, El Pais, Stupid reporting tricks
Not Quite Disclosure
The Grey Lady has a good idea, but then misses the point completely.
The initial financial disclosure required of the presidential candidates is already shedding light on important questions of wherewithal looming beyond the glare of televised debate. As voters sort through the crowd, which includes 10 millionaires, they should find their finances useful in sizing up the contenders and whom and what they actually work for....
[Q]uestions about ... candidates' financial decisions—none necessarily nefarious—undoubtedly will arise. Several of the candidates are taking 45-day extensions before filing.
Even then, these election commission reports are more limited than the ultimate disclosure candidates should make by releasing their tax returns. This higher standard has been the tradition — though not a requirement—in past campaigns, but thus far only one of the major candidates, Senator Barack Obama, has released his return. Like other candidates who are senators, Hillary Clinton already files public financial reports in the Capitol. But these are not as definitive as tax returns, which should be part of real disclosure.
Barack and Michelle Obama had indeed released their complete 2006 federal tax return, including statements, but the current occupant of the Oval Office has issued for years tax returns so devoid of explanatory statements as to be well nigh useless.
Labels: Bush, Campaign finance, financial disclosure, Obama
Evil Weaponry
Remember how evil nuclear weapons were supposed to be? Here is George Bush from November 2001:
This is an evil man that we're dealing with, and I wouldn't put it past him to develop evil weapons to try to harm civilization as we know it.
It would be hard to expect the President of the United States to deem the vast arsenal under his command as evil, but one does wonder whether these weapons are evil only when certain people have them, because it is more and more apparent that our friends, despite myriad flaws, are immune from real criticism.
Take Pakistan, an erstwhile democracy that is in its eighth year of military coup. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists now estimates its nuclear arsenal at 60 weapons and counting.
Like other nations that have developed
nuclear weapons, Pakistan does not seem content with a first generation nuclear weapon that uses [highly-enriched uranium]; it has been pursuing plutonium-based designs for at least a decade....
preparing to increase and enhance
its nuclear forces in the coming years, especially if it attempts to match India's
ambitious plans to deploy a nuclear triad of aircraft and land- and sea-based missiles. It is difficult to estimate precisely how many nuclear weapons Pakistan has produced and what types they are, and it is equally troublesome to guess what its future plans might be....
In addition to the nuclear-capable aircraft that it currently has, Pakistan is developing ballistic and cruise missiles that will be perfect for deploying nuclear weapons in new and clearly beneficial ways. What friends of democracy we have in the Pakistani military, and clearly what forces for good they are.
Labels: Bush, Musharraf, nuclear weapons, Pakistan
Truth and Consequences
In the United States, too many pundits regard the thoroughly unpopular politician behind a disastrous war as somehow being popular.
In Israel, by contrast, the unpopular politician behind a war that was not quite so disastrous is indeed considered unpopular.
The young mixed with the old. But they all agreed on one thing - Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert must go.
In Tel Aviv's Rabin Square tens of thousands of Israelis gathered on Thursday night in a show of people power to maintain the pressure on the deeply unpopular Mr Olmert.
Even by Israeli standards, Mr Olmert has suffered a bruising few days in politics.
An interim report published on Monday into the government's handling of last summer's war in Lebanon heaped criticism upon the prime minister.
One key difference is that in Israel, when a government commission investigates the government, the commission is not packed with friends of the government who will bend over backwards to avoid criticizing it.
(Another difference, of course, is that in Israel, criticism of the Israeli government is considered to be both patriotic and rational. In the United States, criticism of the Israeli government is somehow almost always considered to be neither of those, and criticism of the American government is often considered to be at least unpatriotic.)
Labels: Bush, Israel, Olmert, United States, unpopularity
