I Hate What You Just Said

So polls show that “white voters” think that Barack Obama is a “risky” choice for president. The real risk we face right now is that a McCain presidency will be far too much like a third Bush term (I just shuddered writing those words), and that American militarism could spin further out of control (right, Condi?)

Max Bergmann explains why Oily McWar is the real risk:

The big concern with a McCain presidency – a concern which I am surprised has not been vocalized more fully – is that the U.S. will lurch from crisis to crisis, confrontation to confrontation, whether it be with Iran, North Korea, Russia, Syria, Saudi Arabia, etc. The danger is that McCain’s pundit-like rhetoric will entrap the U.S. in descending spiral of foreign policy brinksmanship. Just think about the very likely scenario of McCain giving Iran/Russia a rhetorical ultimatum and Iran/Russia ignoring it. Now we are stuck - either we lose face by not following through on our threats or we follow through and go to war. We can’t afford such a reckless approach after the last eight years. For the next eight we need a president not a pundit.

Speaking as a white guy (seriously - I’m mad white), I think it is time for “white voters” to grow up and realize that the best candidate for president isn’t just the guy who seems the most militaristic. Or the whitest.

Me likey.

So when you’re on the ropes and its time to come out fighting, the political handbook states: “attack a nonexistent constituency that you can tie to your opponent.”  On the McCain report, Michael Goldfarb writes that McCain didn’t lift any lines from Solzhenitsyn as he simultaneously waxed Georgian and prisoner-of-war, what are you talking about?  The real issue is this:

It may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman’s memory of war from the comfort of mom’s basement, but most Americans have the humility and gratitude to respect and learn from the memories of men who suffered on behalf of others.

The McCain Report

Wargaming nerds in black, tight fitting t-shirts take that!   Don’t hate Obama because his Charisma score makes him a more powerful orc slayer than you.  You can forget my vote in November Mr. McCain.  Oh, and mom, can you bring down some more lemonade–make that hateorade– for me and the boys?

Washington Post on Bin Laden’s driver, Salim Hamdan:

Hamdan’s sentence of 5 1/2 years, which amounts to five more months in U.S. custody, was far lighter than some Pentagon officials had expected. Prosecutors had asked for a sentence of at least 30 years, and now officials are preparing for the possibility of having to set him free or hold him indefinitely as an “enemy combatant.”

Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said it has always been the Defense Department’s position that detainees could be held as enemy combatants even after acquittal at military commissions or after serving a prison sentence. “That’s always been on our minds in terms of a scenario we could face,” he said. “He will serve his time for the conviction and then he will still be an enemy combatant, and as an enemy combatant the process for potential transfer or release will apply.”

This is interesting.

Remember Robert Richer? He’s the CIA’s former Deputy Chief of Clandestine Operations who told reporter Ron Suskind that the White House faked a document designed to draw us into war with Iraq.

Curiously, the White House is now issuing statements “on his behalf” and he is backing off his claims. To counter, Suskind has released the transcripts of his interviews with Richer, which are pretty damning.

Raw Story has more.

Dear Congress, MSM, Blogosphere, and all Fellow Human Beings:

Please, please, please, please don’t let this story fade away until we know for sure whether it is true.

And if it is true, please, please, please, please don’t let them get away with it. They have already gotten away with so much. Surely this would have to be the final straw, no?

A new book by the author Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein.

Suskind writes in “The Way of the World,” to be published Tuesday, that the alleged forgery – adamantly denied by the White House – was designed to portray a false link between Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war.

The author also claims that the Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official “that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.”

P.S. - as I am writing this post, the big headline on CNN.com is “‘Astonishing’ gorilla find reported.”

John McCain says he knows “how to win wars.”  And, heck - I guess that would be a rather handy thing to know if you plan on fighting wars.

From The Trail:

“I know how to win wars. I know how to win wars,” McCain told the audience at a town hall in Albuquerque. “And if I’m elected President, I will turn around the war in Afghanistan, just as we have turned around the war in Iraq, with a comprehensive strategy for victory, I know how to do that.”

OK.  I just want to know how he knows this.  How did he learn how to win wars?  I think it’s a good question.

Is it from his service in the Vietnam War?  Because we didn’t win that one.

In the situation room

There was a toy world

And a flight costume

and a picture of–

It’s Goodnight Bush!  Sweet Dreams…

[Updated Below]

I believe it was Emerson who wrote that “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.”

Yesterday, our nation’s media showed why they think Emerson is full of shit.

The truth, according to the Washington Press Corps(e), is that politicians show that they are big-minded and serious by never, EVER, changing their views–no matter what.

In a press conference Barack Obama stated that he would continue to “refine” his policy about Iraq as he traveled to the embattled country and met with our commanders on the ground.

How is a reporter supposed to respond when a politician uses a word like “refine” in a sentence? By doing the only thing you know how to do, of course: manufacture fake controversies.

Take the AP story, for instance, which was titled “Obama opens door to altering his Iraq policy”:

Democrat Barack Obama opened the door Thursday to altering his plan to bring U.S. troops home from Iraq in 16 months based on what he hears from military commanders during his upcoming trip there.

The Washington Post’s headline was “Obama Softens on Iraq Withdrawal Timeline”

And Mike Allen, of The Politico:

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) on Thursday backed off his firm promise to withdraw combat forces from Iraq immediately and instead said he could “refine” his plan after his trip to Baghdad later this month. [. . .]

Obama later said at a second news conference he still intends to stick to the timeline.

Nice work, Mike, you hack. Really going out of your way to construct a “flip-flopper” narrative.

Refining something, to our nation’s media, apparently means something akin to “reject,” “alter,” or “change.” But not according to the dictionary. There I find that “refine” can mean the following:

• S: (v) polish, refine, fine-tune, down (improve or perfect by pruning or polishing) “refine one’s style of writing”
• S: (v) complicate, refine, rarify, elaborate (make more complex, intricate, or richer) “refine a design or pattern”
• S: (v) refine (treat or prepare so as to put in a usable condition) “refine paper stock”; “refine pig iron”; “refine oil”
• S: (v) refine, rectify (reduce to a fine, unmixed, or pure state; separate from extraneous matter or cleanse from impurities) “refine sugar”
• S: (v) refine (attenuate or reduce in vigor, strength, or validity by polishing or purifying) “many valuable nutrients are refined out of the foods in our modern diet”
• S: (v) refine (make more precise or increase the discriminatory powers of) “refine a method of analysis”; “refine the constant in the equation”

Two points about all this.

First, I think that this dust-up is absurd solely on the basis of the language Obama used. To “refine” something does not mean to fundamentally “alter” or “change” it. If anything, refining something suggests a process whereby something becomes more concentrated, more itself — free from impurities or mistakes. Essentially, Obama is saying that he wants to end the war better.

Secondly, this event is evidence of the pathetic “gotcha” school of journalism where the objective is to expose a candidate as a “flip-flopper.”  God knows there is plenty of self-serving equivocation, waffling, and politically expedient reversal going on in Washington. And these things should be exposed for what they are. But we must also acknowledge that a “change of mind” based on the consultation of authorities and the study of new evidence is actually an indication of a sane, healthy intellect–not a suggestion of duplicity or dishonesty.

To our journalists and the preposterous commentator clowns who construct our media narratives, only a “flip-flopper” would state that they intend to thoughtfully consider evidence and take great care when making decisions about things like war and the lives of soldiers. And a “flip-flopper” is incapable of being a good president.

I suppose this means that the platonic ideal of the American president is someone like George Bush who gets an idea in his head and stubbornly refuses to alter course regardless of facts, evidence, objective data, polls, and the opinions of learned professionals. That kind of consistency takes character. And integrity. Better to be ruled by your “gut” than by your mind.

Way to go, media elites!

UPDATE I:

Not to be outdone, NPR issues this ingenious statement:

Democrat Barack Obama says he is not shifting his policy on troop withdrawals from Iraq, just hours after he said he was open to “refining” his policy.

Oh, snap! NPR, you just busted Obama wearing five pairs of flip-flops! Previously, Obama said he was committed to ending the war, but now he’s completely “refined” his policy and will probably keep our soldiers there for 100 years. McCain wins!

“Open to ‘refining’ his policy” is the equivalent of saying that Barack Obama is “open to perfecting his policy” on Iraq. Shock! Gasp!

One of the more popular statements on this issue (judged by Google) was penned by this budding philologist:

Does Barack Obama’s “Refine” Mean the Same Thing As Evolving, or Flip Flopping?

Refine, evolve, changes his mind…..they all mean the same thing…..Flip Flopping.

Can’t you just hear the rustle of the Cheetos bag?

UPDATE II:

This MSNBC write-up is pretty fair.

Some completely unbelievable news from today’s New York Times. The entire harsh interrogation torture regime used at Guantanamo Bay was plagiarized from Red Scare-era documents detailing Communist Chinese interrogation techniques:

The military trainers who came to Guantánamo Bay in December 2002 based an entire interrogation class on a chart showing the effects of “coercive management techniques” for possible use on prisoners, including “sleep deprivation,” “prolonged constraint,” and “exposure.”

What the trainers did not say, and may not have known, was that their chart had been copied verbatim from a 1957 Air Force study of Chinese Communist techniques used during the Korean War to obtain confessions, many of them false, from American prisoners.

The recycled chart is the latest and most vivid evidence of the way Communist interrogation methods that the United States long described as torture became the basis for interrogations both by the military at the base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and by the Central Intelligence Agency. [. . .]

The 1957 article from which the chart was copied was entitled “Communist Attempts to Elicit False Confessions From Air Force Prisoners of War” and written by Alfred D. Biderman, a sociologist then working for the Air Force, who died in 2003. Mr. Biderman had interviewed American prisoners returning from North Korea, some of whom had been filmed by their Chinese interrogators confessing to germ warfare and other atrocities.

The article further explains that the “only change made in the chart presented at Guantánamo was to drop its original title: ‘Communist Coercive Methods for Eliciting Individual Compliance.’”

American Torture.™  Made in China.

As the article is quick to reveal, the position of the US at the time was that the described Chinese practices were torture. Further, it was also clear at the time that such practices do not produce actionable intelligence; rather, they elicit promiscuous confession. In the end, torture does nothing but create an endless, self-justifying loop of hysteria and paranoia.

Perhaps it is time for someone to tell this president “You’ve done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?”