Straying Thoughts

Interesting Stops Along The Way

A couple of places that I found interesting this morning:

Hugh Hewitt has an excellent rundown of the Rathergate controversy.

Ann Althouse has a review of Kerry's first interview in over a month. She pronounces it a "puff interview", the reporter asking no hard questions. She also mentions a site, The Global Language Monitor that tracks that way certain phrases or words, like "girlie men" labeling President Bush, move through the media. It looks like an interesting site; I'd assume that the "hot" words and phrases move in and out of favor much faster than they used to.

Fun

Go here for an interesting interview from Iraq.
Via Media Crapola.

Hypothetical? Are You Serious?

In today's New York All The News That Fits Our Agenda Times, Kerry talks about terrorism and the election.

In response to a question, Mr. Kerry said he has given no thought to the possibility of a terrorist attack taking place in the midst of the presidential campaign. "I don't think about it; I can't control it," he said.

He at first declined to say whether he thought the nation should be prepared to postpone the election if there is an attack, which is what took place with the New York City mayoral primary that was scheduled for Sept. 11, 2001, saying it was hypothetical question. But reminded that such a proposal was being discussed in Washington last week, he said he would strongly oppose any such move.

First he can't think about it, then he considers it a hypothetical question, although we have been attacked and there actually was an election scheduled that day, the NYC mayoral primary, then he's strongly opposed to postponing the election under those circumstances. I'm opposed to postponing the election under these circumstances, also; the difference is that I actually thought about it.

This is another instance where Kerry and the Democrats display their indifference to national security. He can't be bothered to think about it, then he throws out an opinion. When Sandy Berger gets caught putting documents down his pants or in his socks or under his garter belt, the Democrats rev up the old spin machine. Clinton thinks it's funny because, well, that's just Sandy. Before you could say "Lewinsky", the pundit seats were being filled by those old familiar faces singing those old familiar tunes. "Well, you have to ask yourself, who leaked it and why now?" No, actually, I don't have to ask myself that. What I have to ask myself is: Should any party that treats the security of the country as a joke be taken seriously in a presidential election?

Update Just One Minute has a good post on this issue. Check out the post below this one, too: a bungled piece of writing at the NYT.

The Catered Protest

Michele points to an article in the New York Times (All the news that fits our agenda) concerning protesters who feel that their actions during the Republican convention should be subsidized by the City of New York. It's a great example of the sense of entitlement that seems to be growing like mildew on a damp towel. Read her comments, also, and check out the original story. You can really hear a tone of exasperation in the city officials' statements. "We're not in the business of providing lunches or sound systems or transportation for permitted events," said Edward Skyler, the mayor's press secretary.

Having the right to speak and to protest doesn't mean others are obligated to support you in any way. It also doesn't relieve you of the obligation to obey the law and to respect the rights of others. And keep your big puppets out of my face.

Here's One Option...

if you want to protest the Sandy Berger affair.

Trousergate

Sandy Berger, formerly Clinton's NSA adviser and cuurently adviser to John Kerry, took "classified documents from the National Archives" , according to the Washington Post.
Berger's lawyer claims the removal was inadvertant and the subsequent disposal of the documents was also inadvertent. Read Captain's Quarters discussion of classified documents to see why this was unlikely. Berger is familiar with classified documents and had to know what he had. Also, Berger apparently put the documents in his pants rather than in a briefcase or leather portfolio he was carrying.

I recommend the Winona Ryder defense. First, he says he put the documents in his pants, intending to pay for them when he left the archive, but then he forgot. Later, he tells how he was studying up for a role for his next movie.

Update
According to Fox News :

Berger and his lawyer said Monday night he knowingly removed the handwritten notes by placing them in his jacket, pants and socks, and also inadvertently took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio.

His socks? Clearly, he knew he was doing something he shouldn't be doing.

Berger served as Clinton's national security adviser for all of the president's second term and most recently has been informally advising Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry. Clinton asked Berger last year to review and select the administration documents that would be turned over to the Sept. 11 commission.

Also, according to Fox, what he took were early drafts and now those early versions don't exist and were not seen by the 9/11 panel.

The annoying, interesting, troubling thing is that he'll be given the benefit of a doubt by the media, whereas Condoleezza Rice wouldn't. The press may investigate, but they tend to take statements by fellow liberals at face value, while those by conservatives, especially those in the administration, are presented with skepticism.
Update2
I just got to thinking how carefully constructed Berger's lawyer's statement was (of course, that's why you pay lawyers). He can't deny that he knowingly took stuff; apparently, employees saw him stuffing papers into his pants and socks. According to an e-mail that Jonah Goldberg received, walking out with notes that don't contain details from the classified material might be considered a lesser violation. The actual classified material was supposedly in a leather portfolio. It could be argued that this places the responsibility for the classified material leaving the facility on the security personnel, because they should have looked in his portfolio.

Update3
Will Collier at VodkaPundit has a good, concise post on Trousergate and classified documents.
See also Instapundit with a bunch of links, many of them pertaining to the media coverage, lack of it, or spinning of it.

The plain fact is that we cannot rely on main-stream media coverage to tell us what's going on, and in a time of war, this is disgraceful. Of course, in much of the media's eyes, we're not at war. There may be people dying, but it's not a war war. Or it's the administration's war. Or it's just a metaphor. They either can't be bothered to cover it because it doesn't fit their agenda, or their bias slants the coverage and they're too dishonest or dumb to admit they're biased, or they're too interested in covering the "election as horse-race" to ask serious questions. What documents did Berger remove? What could be in those documents that would cause him to risk any future in a (God let's hope not) Kerry administration? Does this affect the validity of conclusions drawn by the 9/11 commission, which was already of dubious value, considering some of the partisan hacks sitting on it? Does this affect the security of the country?

The mainstream media mafia will close ranks. They'll talk about the timing of the leak. Or did he stuff notes into his socks or just his pants? Does he wear boxers or briefs?

Let's Put On A Show

Something has to be done about about this constant oppression and censorship and unfairly criticising of rich, pampered celebrities. It's un-American to treat rich, powerful, famous people so disgracefully.

Whoopi's been fired for making fun of the President's name. I mean, come on folks, she's out there, she's on the edge, she's pushing the envelope. I mean, making fun of the guy's name--comic genius.
And according to Elton John , pop singers are being oppressed. The Dixie Chicks have made millions rather than the multi-millions that is rightfully theirs.
Courtney Love has been driven insane by the Bush administration; true, she was a skanky heroin addict for much of the 90's, but somehow the President has made it worse. She does seem to be getting arrested more frequently.
And now, Linda Ronstadt has been thrown out of the casino where she was performing because people were offended that she decided to turn the concert into a political rally for Michael Moore.

Well, just who do Americans think they are to interfere with the rights of celebrities to say anything they want with no consequences? Celebrities are wise old souls who risk everything just to sing a song or tell a little joke or rant how stupid Americans are and ordinary, middle-class Americans have no right to raise their voices in dissent. I mean dissent is patriotic, but not that kind of dissent, the other kind of dissent, where you insult people who protect your freedom with their lives. That takes courage--the dissenting, I mean, not the protecting because the soldiers are really just victims of the administration and don't understand the big picture, which is very nuancey and shades of gray-ish, except that Bush is wrong and evil and he lied--there's no doubt about that.
Where was I going with this?
Oh, yeah, so I was thinking that we should have a benefit concert for all the celebrities who've been imprisoned, well, I don't think any have actually been put in real prisons, but many of them have been harshly criticised and that's like a mental prison, sort of; I mean it really messes with your self-esteem. And some of them have lost money and that's just wrong. I mean people should not be allowed to not buy something because they don't like the person who made it, because that stifles dissent, the good dissent, not the bad. And if celebrities aren't free to feel superior to the rest of us, is any of us really, truly free?
So, anyway, what do you think of the concert idea?

Anyone Connecting These Dots? Part III

Annie Jacobsen has posted a follow-up to her story Terror In The Skies, Again .

It contains some additional information and talks about the role political correctness may play in these events. She also has statements from pilots indicating that they believe terrorists are probing the airlines for weaknesses.

Via Powerline .

Consequences Are So Inconvenient

Another story that's all over the blogosphere, see here and here . The original story is in the NYT. A woman, Amy Richards, who went off the pill became pregnant with triplets and decided to have a "reduction" to get rid of 2 of them because she didn't want to have to change her lifestyle, something babies have been known to do.

My immediate response was, I cannot have triplets. I was not married; I lived in a five-story walk-up in the East Village; I worked freelance; and I would have to go on bed rest in March. I lecture at colleges, and my biggest months are March and April. I would have to give up my main income for the rest of the year. There was a part of me that was sure I could work around that. But it was a matter of, Do I want to?

Not only would I have to be on bed rest at 20 weeks, I wouldn't be able to fly after 15. I was already at eight weeks. When I found out about the triplets, I felt like: It's not the back of a pickup at 16, but now I'm going to have to move to Staten Island. I'll never leave my house because I'll have to care for these children. I'll have to start shopping only at Costco and buying big jars of mayonnaise. Even in my moments of thinking about having three, I don't think that deep down I was ever considering it.

Abortion is one of those things that I've struggled with. Most of my life I've been pro-choice; I've felt that in the case of rape or incest or the health of the mother, the woman should have the option to end the pregnancy. But I've always had problems with the idea of getting rid of the baby because it's inconvenient, especially in this day, when women have access to reliable birth control. She was on the pill but she went off because it made her "moody". She has the ability that women in previous times didn't of controlling her fertility, but it became inconvenient. She became pregnant, but 3 would have been inconvenient. She wants the perogatives of adulthood without the responsibilities. Funny, but nowhere in the story is the word "adoption" mentioned.

Michele includes a quote from a friend of Amy's, Jennifer Baumgarten:

If abortion were connected to actual women--people like my friend Amy Richards, who had an abortion at 18 and a selective reduction last year when she found she was pregnant with triplets, or Nancy Flynn, who was a single mom finishing her BA at Cornell when she had an abortion and who told me she would "never have been able to have the rich life I've had and help my son as much as I have if I'd been the single mother of two children"--perhaps the mounting restrictions wouldn't pass so handily.

Jennifer seems to be wrong; the more people see of people like Amy (a self-centered, shallow, irresponsible snob), the more they come to question abortion without restrictions. Amy is not a sympathetic figure.

More and more people seem to be insisting on rights but no responsibilities, actions without consequences. Whoopi Goldberg says some outrageous things at a Democratic fundraiser and the Slimfast company fires her as a spokesperson. Her response:

America's heart and soul is freedom of expression without fear of reprisal," she said in a statement.

The government took no action against her; that would be censorship. It was the company that hired her that decided she was no longer an asset. She thinks there's a law that says companies have to keep spokespeople who damage their image with consumers?

The fact that I am no longer the spokesman for SlimFast makes me sad, but not as sad as someone trying to punish me for exercising my right as an American to speak my mind.

People get "punished" for speaking their minds all the time. DJs get fired for being obscene. Jimmy "the Greek" and Al Campanis got fired for making what were considered racist remarks. Trent Lott lost his leadership position in the Senate for praising Strom Thurmond, an old-time segregationist. The Constitution says that government may not infringe on your right to free speech. It never said there would be no consequences.

Actions have consequences. Slimfast didn't want the consequences for Whoopi Goldberg's actions, so they fired her. Amy Richards was able to evade the consequences of her actions, but the babies she aborted weren't. One seems fair. The other doesn't.

How Much Information Is Enough?

Reading the Terror In The Skies, Again article and the various reactions to it around the Web ( here , here , and here), I think the important question to ask, if not answer because I'm not sure of the answer: When do you know enough to act? This also relates to the decision to invade Iraq. When do you stop gathering information or intelligence and start acting on the information that you have?

Ideally, you want to gather enough information so that you are certain there is a clear threat but you want to act before the threat occurs. But how much is enough? You want enough information to support the action that you're going to take. What does that mean?

Consider the situation on the airplane in Ms Jacobsen's article. Reading the article and assuming the facts are more or less as she says, I think I would have wanted the flight crew to take more action than they did. There were frightened passengers and the flight attendents & crew were also very concerned. Many people on the plane felt the 14 Syrian were behaving suspiciously. Now that's no reason to duct tape them to their seats or send them to Gitmo, but it would have made sense for the captain to announce that, for security reasons, everyone should remain in their seats and not congregate in the aisles or outside of the bathrooms. The flight attendents could then periodically examine the bathrooms for signs of suspicious activity. I think the very fact both passengers and flight crew were concerned was reason enough to take this small step. If you're taking a small step that doesn't single out anyone in particular, you don't need certainty or proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

Now let's look at the situation leading up to the Iraq war. Ignoring the semi-hysterical, irrational He Lied! He Lied! contingent, the intelligence developed before the war was that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. He had programs and he had stockpiles. That's what we thought, that's what the British thought, that's what the French thought, that's what the UN thought. That's what John Kerry thought before he didn't think that; it's what Al Gore thought before he lost his mind. We also thought that Saddam had links to Al Qaeda and other terrorists. And Saddam was behaving in a suspicious manner; through 17 resolutions and 12 years, he still failed to cooperate fully with inspections; the onus was on him to demonstrate that he didn't have weapons or programs and he failed.

It seems to me clear that we had to act. The French wanted to wait; did they want to wait for more evidence or because they didn't want to endanger their oil contracts with Saddam? The UN wanted to wait; were they waiting for more evidence or were they afraid of jeopardizing their proceeds, both legitimate and illegitimate, from the Oil-for-Food program?

Other people wanted to wait because war is a bad thing. Yes, it is, but so are the things that happen when you refuse to go to war. Mass graves, torture, children's prisons, support to terrorists. And a lot of the bad things that these people predicted would happen did not happen. Thousands of refugees fleeing Iraq, massive civilian casualtlies, use of chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons. (You know, the ones he didn't have. These are the same things they predicted in Afghanistan. And they'll make the same predictions the next time we act and the media will never call them on it). Some people take the position that you cannot act unless you can guarantee that nothing bad is going to happen: there must be no civilian casualties, no friendly-fire incidents, no mis-behavior by any troops. These are impossible demands, of course, and they're meant to be; the people who raise them are simply trying to prevent action and they wash their hands of the consequences of that inaction.

Continuing to go through the cycle of Resolution, Failed Inspection, New Resolution, New Failed Inspection was insane and the leaders who argued for it betrayed their responsibilities. After 12 years and 17 resolutions, did we owe Saddam another benefit of a doubt? And should the President have taken the risk that nothing was going to happen? For what event or sign should he have waited? Another round of Resolution and Failed Inspection? Some of intelligence may have been bad (although the infamous "trying to buy uranium from Africa" story is starting to look better), but how long do you wait?

We know what the consequences of not waiting are: a small war (as wars go, this was a small one, which isn't the same as being unimportant), 800+ allied dead, civilian casualties, a mass-murdering, terror-supporting dictator out of power, a popular civilian government that has the potential of becoming the first democratic Arab regime in that region.

It seems to me that many of the critics of the President fall into 2 camps: those who would never be satisfied with any amount of evidence, who felt we simply should never act; and those who criticise him for acting and who also would have criticised him for not acting if anything had happened.

How do you know when you have enough information?