As seen on the Metro

ziggy on 2004-04-02T14:03:47

The US is quickly becoming two nations separated by a common government.

MoveOn.org now has this ad on a billboard on the platform in Union Station, and likely many more places as well. It's calling on Congress to censure the President, using the same "what did he know and when did he know it" attack that was made popular during the Iran/Contra affair.

Hm. If every sitting president must endure proceedings to be censured or impeached, will those proceedings lose whatever little symbolic meaning they have left?

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Confession

pudge on 2004-04-13T23:19:36

I confess to being unfair to Clinton in the 90s. I was not as bad as many, and even defended Clinton, but I was far too quick to judge him, and when I did judge him -- fairly or not -- my judgments were far too severe.

I always kinda felt this, but I didn't really realize how bad I was until I saw many of the people on "the other side" do the same thing to Bush. My only hope is that if Kerry does win, both sides will learn from their past, but oh how I doubt it. As for my part, I've spent a fair time defending Kerry from unfair attacks already (while still condemning many of his ideas). I can only fix me.

Re:Confession

pudge on 2004-04-14T01:04:17

I just read some of the ad, and it shouldn't astonish me, but it does. Especially this:

George Bush claimed that Iraq could not account for massive stockpiles of biological weapons,citing a prominent Iraqi defector who actually had contradicted Bush’s claim.

Uh, Hans Blix himself claimed this. Many times. It is a matter of fact that Iraq could not account for massive stockpiles of both biological and chemical weapons. Even in his March 2003 presentation, Blix said that Iraq had only provided the names of PEOPLE who had destroyed the proscribed weapons, not any evidence that they were actually destroyed.

Then the ad goes on to say Bush said Iraq had weapons despite a DIA report that no evidence existed that there were such weapons; the ad neglects the fact that the CIA said the weapons did exist. It implies the aluminum tubes could not have been used for the purpose the President said, but this isn't true, so they merely imply it instead of stating it. And then it brings up the yellowcake story: the CIA memos it describes had to do with one forged document, which the statement in the SOTU was not even based on (the British intelligence, which it was based on, was not based on the forged document).

I know, I shouldn't be surprised that they are telling falsehoods and half-truths. It's just annoying. The real story is, as usual, far more complex than they want you to think (where "they" is specific to the Democrats only in this particular instance :-).