Rhetoric

"Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production. [more]

"The Bush administration has told a federally funded conference on LGBT suicide to remove the words 'gay,' 'lesbian,' 'bisexual' and 'transgender' from its material. [...] 'It is incredible, the venom from these people,' said spokesperson Mark Weber who added that the name change was 'only a suggestion'. / But, when pressed by the Post about how strong a suggestion it was, Weber replied: 'Well, they do need to consider their funding source.'" [more]

"Then, one day, some focus group showed that people, particularly older people, react negatively to any connection between Social Security and the word private. For some reason, people like the sound of 'personal accounts' better than they do 'private accounts.' / So the Republicans, with their fabulous ability to march in lockstep, all about-faced and started referring to the privatization of Social Security as 'personal accounts.' This is the new political correctness." [more]

"A revolutionary antiwar movement should be well aware of its ability to create a real state of exception, that is an exception to the exception of global civil war." [more]

"The 'war on terrorism' the United States is babbling about can never coexist with genuine democracy. In the places where the United States wages the 'war on terrorism,' the democratic freedom and rights of the people are repressed and obliterated and the sovereignty of countries and nations is violated without any exception." [more]

December 6, 2004, marked the centennial of one of the landmark statements in U.S. foreign policy: Theodore Roosevelt’s so-called “Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine.” It was here, and not in the post-9/11 speeches of George W. Bush, that we first heard the rationalization for a pre-emptive imperialism coming from the White House. [more]

What is less understood is that all of the great empires in history have been characterized by a decline of reason and an increase in super-naturalist faith, combined with a belief in the empire with the emperor holding God’s “mandate” on earth. [more]

"The word on the street that the resistance was mostly out of Falluja prior to this battle is verified by the Iraqi Minister of Defense himself. The fire had begun to spread long before the current onslaught of Falluja." [more]

"The first assault on Fallujah was a military failure. This time, the resistance is stronger, better-armed, and better-organized; to 'win,' the U.S. military will have to pull out all the stops." [more]

"There's a repulsive asymmetry of war here: not the much remarked upon asymmetry of the few thousand insurgents holed up in Falluja vastly outnumbered by the US, but the asymmetry of information. In an age of instant communication, we will have to wait months, if not years, to hear of what happens inside Falluja in the next few days." [more]

Many Americans, like the citizens of dominant nations of the past, believe that their way of life is superior and should be shared with other peoples—often at gunpoint. [more]

Over the years, according to the New York Times, the U.S. government has spent a whopping $130 billion on missile defense but still has no genuinely effective system to fulfill Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars fantasy. The desire on the right to deify Reagan and preserve his legacy has made support for missile defense a litmus test issue—even though it has little to do with national security. [more]

The President himself—at one time he not only had declined an invitation to answer the Commission’s questions but had opposed the Commission’s creation—praised the work as “very constructive,” and he and the Vice President commenced citing it in speeches; so did John Kerry. By mid-August, 630,000 copies, priced to move at $10, had been sold. [more]

"Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan is 20 years old or more. He believes the Palestinian problem can be solved by a Palestinian enclave in Gaza and three or four enclaves in the West Bank that will leave Israel in control of half of the West Bank." [more]

In his statement upon release of the commission’s report, Thomas Kean, the commission’s chairman, incorrectly opined that the terrorists hate America and its policies. Even al Qaeda does not hate America per se... [more]

Although the U.S. military believes that the “center of gravity” in the continuing Iraq War is the “hearts and minds” of the Iraqi people, the Iraqi insurgents believe, as did the North Vietnamese almost 40 years ago, that the center of gravity lies with the hearts and minds of the American people. [more]

Two parallels between our Revolution and today’s insurgency in Iraq come to mind. One, based in myth, would lead its advocates to folly, while the other deserves serious consideration. [more]

Paul Bremer, the outgoing proconsul, patted himself and his Bush administration employers on the back by bragging that there was “no question the liberation of Iraq was a great and noble thing.” Unfortunately, Iraqis are not feeling so liberated and have not been fooled by the faux handover of governance. [more]

All of the Bush administration’s quibbling about the definition of the word “relationship” is as ridiculous as President Clinton’s hair-splitting over the definition of the word “is” during the Monica Lewinsky scandal. [more]

"There is no social entity called Iraq that benefited from some self-sacrifice it suffered for its own greater good, like a patient who voluntarily endures some pain to be better off than before. There were only individual human beings living in Iraq before the war, with their individual lives. Sacrificing the lives of some of them for the benefit of others killed them and benefited the others. Nothing more. Each of those Iraqis killed in the war was a separate person, and the unfinished life each of them lost was the only life he or she had, or would ever have. They clearly are not better off now that Saddam is gone from power." [more]

People who get their news by skimming the front page, or by watching TV, must be feeling confused by the sudden change in Mr. Bush's character. For more than two years after 9/11, he was a straight shooter, all moral clarity and righteousness... [more]

Last week, my own further enquiries about the book revealed something even more alarming. Not only is it the bible of neocon headbangers, but it is also the bible on Arab behaviour for the US military. [more]

Despite widespread ill-feeling about the abuse of prisoners by American forces and allegations of mistreatment by British troops, coalition forces will be protected from any legal action. [more]

"The tortures at Abu Ghraib have exposed to the world the utter moral bankruptcy of Bush's war. Far from being fought on behalf of Iraqi democracy, it is a war for U.S. supremacy in which racist dehumanization and brutalization of Arabs and Muslims play an absolutely central role." [more]

"The White House said the accurate figure for the Libyan mustard gas was 23.6 metric tons, or 26 short tons, not 50 tons. Moreover, the substance was found at different locations across Libya, not at a turkey farm. And observers did not find mustard gas on the farm at all, but rather unfilled chemical munitions, the White House acknowledged." [more]

"'The terrorist cell apparently planned to obtain contaminated blood from some Palestinian hospitals but they had not passed the preliminary stage in their preparations,' a spokeswoman for the Shin Bet security service said." [more]

"Americans love a good 'How To' book, and the Wall Street Journal has long touted this 446 page one, which details how 'from 1898 to 1934, the Marines fought a number of small wars, in the Philippines, Cuba, Honduras, China, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic.'" [more]

"It's possible...that even a stable fly, or something as tiny as an aphid, could be used to distribute deadly pathogens over a wide geographical area in a surprisingly rapid and efficient manner. Bugs as delivery systems for weapons of mass terror." [more]

"The Sudanese Government must immediately stop local militias from committing atrocities against the local population and must provide unrestricted access to humanitarian aid agencies. I condemn these atrocities, which are displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians, and I have expressed my views directly to President Bashir of Sudan." [more]

"The public interest law firm's president hopes the court decision in Buonanno's case will embolden other Christian workers to challenge similar company policies that contradict their religious beliefs, whether those involve war, abortion, homosexuality, or other issues." [more]

"The Saudis have steadily infiltrated American educational institutions, using vast infusions of money to turn the American educational system against US support for Israel and in favor of the Saudi vision of a global Muslim state in which not only Jews but Christians and all infidels will have subordinate status to the followers of the 'true faith.' At the same time they look to affect American policy in the Middle East and public opinion in the US in a way to aid their Wahhabist goals." [more]

"The ABC letter said Spain had until April 4 to end its support for the United States and withdraw its troops from Iraq and Afghanistan./ 'If these demands are not met, we will declare war on you and ... convert your country into an inferno and your blood will flow like rivers,' the letter said." [more]

"The United Jewish Communities, which is spearheading the effort to garner federal funds for high-risk non-profit organizations, is touting a plan to give the federal dollars directly to contractors, who would perform security upgrades at Jewish and other vulnerable sites. / 'By having the flow of money go from the federal government to the contractor, there no longer will be church-state concerns,' said Charles Konigsberg, vice president for public policy at UJC..." [more]

"The theology of the powers was in the spotlight today with the claim that "Spiritual forces” may have caused a projector to break down during one of the free screenings of The Passion Of The Christ laid on by a group of churches." [more]

"The only stone, it seems, the bureau hasn't been willing to turn over is its own investigation into the Oklahoma City bombing. Presumably, that's because the 1995 terrorist attack was the exclusive work of homegrown extremists Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Or was it?" [more]