] Stop and think, if in 2001, or in 2000, or in 1999, we
] had gone to war in Afghanistan to deal with Osama bin
] Laden, and we had tried to say it's because he's planning
] to kill 3,000 people in New York, people would have said,
] you don't have any proof of that," he said.
]
] "I think the lesson of Sept. 11 is that you can't wait
] until prrof after the fact.

Paul Wolfowitz on pre-crime

] "When Iraq broadcast photos of dead American soldiers,
] the U.S. considered that against human rights," Jordanian
] political analyst Sahar al-Qassem said. "So, why are they
] violating that now by showing such inhumane pictures?"

I strongly agree with this position. Although I am sympathetic to the position that hiding the public from the realities of war has as much to do with desensitizing them as it does with respecting the families of the dead, if we are to take the position that it is morally inappropriate to show pictures like this, and we absolutely have taken this position, then to turn around and do so is an abomination. We are obviously violating our own moral platitudes. I am extremely disappointed.

Don't be fooled by explanations that there are "strategic" reasons for this; that people in Iraq need evidence that the "tyrants have been deposed." The Iraqi military had "strategic" reasons for showing the pictures that they showed: that people in Iraq need evidence that American soldiers can be defeated. The POINT of a moral platitude is that it overshadows strategic interests.

If they wanted to prove that these men were dead they could have found another way. Publish the dental xrays. It would be just as open to scepticism as these pictures have been.

Yesterday, if speaking honestly, I'd have told you I was on the fence about the administration. I don't like the way they've been going about things, but I understand the strategy, and it does appear to be working, and you have to give them credit for that.

However, this kind of blatent moral hyprocracy is beyond the pale. If you don't stand behind your own moral platitudes, then what IS it that separates you from the terrorists? Nothing at all.

I'm going to vote for the most promising opposing candidate in the election.

U.S. violates is own moral platitude

] The new commander of U.S. forces in Iraq labeled the
] conflict there a guerrilla war for the first time
] yesterday, and said replacement troops to be sent there
] should expect year-long deployments of the type used
] during the Vietnam War.

See my post from two weeks ago on the matter.

Newsday.com - Iraqi Conflict a Guerrilla War

] In a new dispute over interpreting intelligence data, the
] CIA and other agencies objected vigorously to a Bush
] administration assessment of the threat of Syria's
] weapons of mass destruction that was to be presented
] Tuesday on Capitol Hill.

CIA Bitch Slaps White House on Syria Intel

] Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has nearly doubled the
] estimated military costs in Iraq to $3.9 billion a month.

Rumsfeld doubles Iraq cost estimate - The Washington Times: United Press International

abaddon wrote:
] more comentary on the Jose Padilla saga, this one is a
] puletser (yeah yeah i dont spell) prize winning jurnalist
] chastising the media for not giving any coverage to the
] Padilla case...
]
] when exactly did the we all deside the government didnt need
] checks and balances any more...

Hrm, they have since released information that provides reasonable doubt that he might have been travelling to Afghanistan to join Al'Q. Its plausable enough to warrant detaining him and trying him.

Having said that, it is critical that these things be done out in the open. The public pressure on this is the reason they had to go public. Hopefully this will serve as a lesson in the future to those whose family members may be detained without reason. The Internet is your friend. Get as many eyes on the situation as possible. You now have the power to do that.

RE: no-one cares about civil liberties or reason 1502-B why i hate people

Thats Iraq, and Afghanistan, but who's keeping score? (Well, besides Fox News.)

With parties in the streets of Baghdad and the comment today from Iraq's UN ambassador that "its over," it appears that regardless of what you think about whats happening, it appears to be happening exactly according to plan.

Look for NK to quitely chill out over the course of a few months.
Look for at least a few countries to pursue domestic Al'Q cells with renewed vigor.

Elonka wrote:
] It would probably be worth clarifying this point for
] Memestreams, too, especially since we routinely quote other
] people's webpages word for word. Where's the dividing line
] between "fair use" quoting of someone else's page, and
] "plagiarizing" it?

This is a very important question, and also an very hard one to answer.

Basically:

What MemeStreams users are doing right which the Agonist is not is that they always link the articles they are taking information from.

I think that you shouldn't quote too much text. If you are responding to an article, then you need to quote the content you are referring to, but in the case where you are merely recommending, you should quote enough text to show the reader what they are getting on the other side of the link, but not enough text to allow the reader to get all of the information without following the link. I think that 99% of the time, MemeStreams users do this well.

There may be cases where things are over the line here. Its obviously impossible for me to police it completely. For the most part it hasn't been a problem. No one has ever complained about being linked from MemeStreams and users seem to do the right thing almost all of the time.

RE: Wired News: Noted War Blogger Cops to Copying

] Kelley's insightful window on the details of the war
] brought him increasing readership (118,000 page views on
] a recent day) and acclaim, including interviews in the
] The New York Times and on NBC's Nightly News, Newsweek
] Online and National Public Radio.
]
] The only problem: Much of his material was plagiarized --
] lifted word-for-word from a paid news service put out by
] Austin, Texas, commercial intelligence company Stratfor.

He should attribute everything. That is the key. Unfortunately, he is still posting unattributed entries.

Wired News: Noted War Blogger Cops to Copying

] In no uncertain terms, the president affirmed that “the
] world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic
] values,” not least because “free nations do not breed the
] ideologies of murder.” The president invoked the examples
] of American-led democratization in post-World War ii
] Germany and Japan, and he pointedly rejected the claim
] that Arab nations are incapable of sustaining democracy.
] What the president did not say, yet gently and
] ambiguously implied, was that so deep a cultural change
] would require America to occupy Iraq in force and manage
] its affairs for years to come.
]
] Could such a venture in democratic imperialism be
] harmonized with our liberal principles? Even if so, would
] it work? Is it possible to bring liberalism to a society
] so long at odds with the values of the West?
]
] All of these questions were posed and answered, both in
] theory and in practice, during Britain’s imperial rule of
] India. Three great British thinkers, Edmund Burke, James
] Mill, and John Stuart Mill, not only philosophized about
] liberal imperialism; they lived it.

This is long, and yet way too short...

Democratic Imperialism: A Blueprint by Stanley Kurtz - Policy Review, No. 118