Server Acceleration Sickness (SARS)

My host server has been extremely slow the past few days. I apologize. They are replacing a disk and are in the process of synching it. Hopefully, in a few hours, this page will be functioning correctly again.

I still have major questions regarding the nuclear site left unguarded for days, that I questioned, perhaps too cynically, here. After reading the Liberal Oasis Sunday Talkshow Breakdown, I find the same concerns, but no-one is asking the question. Liberal Oasis asks:

What no host asked Rummy (or Gen. Tommy Franks, who appeared on three shows) is if they're worried about Al Qaeda snatching up WMD during the chaos? And if so, what is being done to prevent it?

Ray has a story that reminds me of some current players. ( Mon April 14) Mr. Yankamacheney came from great stock apparently. Admitted Killer, George W. Yankamacheney, Allowed to Go Free That's it..say his name outloud, and then go read about his adventures.

I want to point to two articles in particular, that have made an impact, one on me, and the other, if only transitory impact, on an avowed conservative aquaintance.
Robert Parry's insightful Bush's Alderaan put my thoughts into overload, and has me questioning whether I even want to stick around and fight. So much has been lost. Is it retrievable? I find myself wishing that I had taken a job offered a few months ago, for a two week contract in Ottawa. I feel so alone when I read:

Yet the apparent enthusiasm of the American people for the war in Iraq – and their lightly considered acquiescence to this crossover to imperial power – have sent a chilling message to the rest of the world. That message is that the American people and their increasingly enfeebled democratic process will not serve as a check on George W. Bush.

...Bush has orchestrated a fundamental change in the historic American spirit. Since the days of the Revolutionary War, Americans have rooted for the underdog. But now, apparently by wide majorities, the American people are cheering as U.S. troops mow down Iraqi soldiers today like British imperial forces used modern rifles to cut down Zulu tribesmen fighting with spears a century ago.

This change in spirit has been picked up in recent polls, as Americans show little regard for international law – except when it’s needed to protect U.S. POWs – and care little about the deaths of Iraqis. Many respondents saw no problem in the possibility that Bush had misled the nation in justifying the war.

When Democracy Failed: The Warnings of History by Thom Hartmann, begins leading the reader where he knows he's going, but the journey is incredible. My right-wing aquaintance wrote back.."Oh Christ! Some people will go to any lengths to prove a point. It would take me 50 years to find all that!" The parallel of two men is persuasive.
Here's a small example:

The 70th anniversary wasn't noticed in the United States, and was barely reported in the corporate media. But the Germans remembered well that fateful day seventy years ago - February 27, 1933. They commemorated the anniversary by joining in demonstrations for peace that mobilized citizens all across the world.
It started when the government, in the midst of a worldwide economic crisis, received reports of an imminent terrorist attack. A foreign ideologue had launched feeble attacks on a few famous buildings, but the media largely ignored his relatively small efforts. The intelligence services knew, however, that the odds were he would eventually succeed. (Historians are still arguing whether or not rogue elements in the intelligence service helped the terrorist; the most recent research implies they did not.)

But the warnings of investigators were ignored at the highest levels, in part because the government was distracted; the man who claimed to be the nation's leader had not been elected by a majority vote and the majority of citizens claimed he had no right to the powers he coveted. He was a simpleton, some said, a cartoon character of a man who saw things in black-and-white terms and didn't have the intellect to understand the subtleties of running a nation in a complex and internationalist world. His coarse use of language - reflecting his political roots in a southernmost state - and his simplistic and often-inflammatory nationalistic rhetoric offended the aristocrats, foreign leaders, and the well-educated elite in the government and media. And, as a young man, he'd joined a secret society with an occult-sounding name and bizarre initiation rituals that involved skulls and human bones.

posted by Cyndy | link | | |
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