Bloodless Coup

Greetings Bro,
Just wanted to help you with a little fact checking...
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/26/iraq.explosives/index.html
This article describes how the explosives were not there when the 101st arrived at the site in April 2003, so they weren't exactly smuggled out from under our noses. They just weren't there when we got there. It does make me wonder how if explosives like these that could be used in conjunction with WMDs haven't been found even though they were there before the war, maybe there are other WMDs that were there before the war and haven't been found.

And I loved your sentence:
"Oh, and by the way, these weapons could be smuggled out of Iraq and used against US-oriented targets elsewhere - or even in the manufacture of an atomic bomb."
So, are you agreeing that since Iraq had weapons like these, this wasn't the "wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place," after all?

Welcome back bro - Of course it was the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time. My point here is that one doesn't invade a country and PRESTO you get all its goodies. This kind of foreign policy leaves open all kinds of possibilities for stuff to get smuggled stolen lost slip away to an unknown set of bad guys etc. It's a sort of failed state problem - when you take away all the authority structures and you can't magically create new ones ... shit happens.

Did you read the article you link to?

"But NBC reporter Lai Ling Jew told the network's cable arm, MSNBC, that the 24-hour visit by elements of the 101st Airborne Division was "more of a pit stop." U.S. troops did not conduct a detailed search of the compound nor did they try to prevent looting, she said." [And it should be noted that the latest NBC reporting on this questions whether or not these troops were even actually in the area of the bunkers in question]

Hmmm. So how do we know if they were there or not? And what were we doing not searching comprehensively if, as the article states, this was one of the 10 famous sites known for weapons stockpiles.

Plus, NBC reporter or David Kay - who do you think knows more about this issue? I'm going with Kay - and he says they went missing after we took over. And as Josh Marshall notes (and there is tons of stuff on this on his site that's worth looking at - it's really a must, so go look) a CBS reporter has the commander of the first US troops in the area on the record saying they didn't look for this stuff or secure it - he says he didn't have enough troops to do that.

Bro,
You may defer to Kay, but why didn't the last Democratic President defer to Duelfer:

"Duelfer also said U.N. weapons inspectors recommended in 1995 that the high explosives be destroyed because of their potential use in a nuclear weapons program.

The International Atomic Energy Agency instead ordered the explosives stored in sealed bunkers 30 miles south of the Iraqi capital. The last time the IAEA verified that the bunkers were still sealed was in March of last year, about a month before the first U.S. troops moved into the complex as they pushed toward Baghdad."
http://cbsnewyork.com/topstories/topstories_story_301083936.html

We wouldn't be in this mess at all if a Democratic President hadn't sought to pass a "global test," but you want to elect another one.

As far as the previous article goes, look further:

"Although small-scale looting was possible, they [Pentagon officials] scoffed at the idea that the large number of heavy trucks required to transport the 380 tons of missing explosives could have been moved into the facility unnoticed during that time."

Well, gee - when you've got a period of months to take stuff out gradually you don't need to do it in giant convoys.

And who the fuck cares what Clinton did? He's not on the ballot. [and on a side note - what authority does the president of the US have over the IAEA? (presuming we don't control the areas they are interested in - we didn't then, though supposedly we did last year when this stuff went missing which much more clearly makes it this president's responsibility)].

Clinton's not on the ballot. Bush is. He's president. This war is his baby and he fucked it up. The list of priorities his administration set allowed this stuff to get lost. And he sent us into war without enough troops to secure the place.

And did you even watch the debate? "Global test" was obviously just a phrase Kerry came up with on the spot to say that we should be able to explain actions to the world at large holding our head high - you know, like we did in the Declaration of Independence. Was that document such a bad thing?

Bro,
They didn't have months to loot the explosives, they had six days:
"News reports during the conflict indicated that troops from the U.S. 3rd Infantry Division entered the Al Qaqaa site on April 4, 2003, finding thousands of boxes of white powder that preliminary tests determined was an explosive. The 101st Airborne Division troops arrived six days later."

And "global test" is really Kerry's position:

"Kerry's belief in working with allies runs so deep that he has maintained that the loss of American life can be better justified if it occurs in the course of a mission with international support. In 1994, discussing the possibility of U.S. troops being killed in Bosnia, he said, 'If you mean dying in the course of the United Nations effort, yes, it is worth that. If you mean dying American troops unilaterally going in with some false presumption that we can affect the outcome, the answer is unequivocally no.'"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46225-2004Oct19.html?sub=AR

How can you invoke the Declaration of Independence as passing a global test when the founders of our country were isolationist, specifically George Washington:

""The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities."

And the author of the Declaration, Thomas Jefferson who advocated:
"peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isolationist

The IAEA "fucked it up" to borrow your parlance, but Kerry wants them to run the show.

My bad, bro, here's the cite for that first quote:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/10/26/iraq.explosives/index.html

I don't think the CNN report says what you think it says. I mean it states: "Pentagon officials acknowledged there was a window of about six weeks after the invasion of Iraq when the stockpile could have been stolen from the sprawling facility near Baghdad." That fits with when Kay says this could have happened - and he's studied weapons in Iraq as much as anyone.

The Kerry quote also makes a different point than what you argue it says - Kerry is saying that that couldn't have been done unilateraly, and if the US couldn't accomplish its goals unilaterally we shouldn't force our soldiers to die in a failed attempt. If however, as part of a larger effort we could succeed, the principles at issue call for acting with others in the international system to end the horrific brutality.

As to "the Founders" - 1) they were hardly all of one mind 2) there was a time in his career when Jefferson had no problem with entangling alliances and 3) the policy choices of a new, undeveloped country are not necessarily those a global superpower should use as an example.

oh, now the IAEA f*&cked it up? funny, i thought the iraqis did that, since, you know, it was their show, or at least was for the last few months, during which in the absence of anything more than voluminous circumstantial evidence including statements by the administration's own mouthpiece, the administration will insist such looting went on (overlooking for the moment that during the entire period in question tremendous resources have been dumped into air and satellite surveillance (an excellent article you should read in its entirety) of iraq far too comprehensive to have failed to observe the sort of operation necessary to move 380 tons of high explosive).

bremer's not talking; kay's not saying anything the bushies want to hear, and, most importantly, all of that deadly material is out in the ether, because, among other things, securing the oil fields was a higher priority.

not. enough. troops.

woefully. inadequate. planning.

as for your history lesson, the declaration didn't pass a global test in the republican-defiance-of-context bowdlerized sense, but it did make a clear and forceful statement of reasons for revolt. from that document alone, foreign nations sympathetic and un- understood the predicates for our action as well as understanding the long list of alternatives we had pursued in an effort to avoid armed conflict, to an extent that we were left with essentially no choice but to go to war. the run-up to the war in iraq offered the world no such clear predicates to explain our actions; and even to the extent its predicates, thin at the time, waved at justification, they were systematically undermined. it's as though after vanquishing the british, and establishing ourselves as a sovereign nation, it would have emerged that we had not, after all, been denied equal representation in the government that dared to tax us.

by the way, what the full text of your article from the Post plainly shows is that kerry is notoriously reluctant to use force, but that upon true (rather than rhetorical) exhaustion of diplomatic solutions, when faced with a legitimate threat, he absolutely is prepared to authorize the use of force, as he has in Panama, the Balkans, Haiti, and Iraq. moreover, he's prepared to listen to military advisors in the run up to deploying force (the absence of which from bush's run up to iraq no amount of prevarication will obfuscate (see shinseki, bremer, powell, et al.)). finally, he believes that when force is deployed victory is the only option, which is why we needn't fear that he'll pull us out of iraq before the situation there is stabilized. all in all, morris, the WaPo link provides an effective rebuttal of the proposition you cited it as supporting, as well as doing a pretty good job of showing that bush's attacks on kerry's putative "weakness" consist solely of self-serving distortions and canards.

furthermore, the isolationism of the founders has no more to do with the import of the documents they had a hand in than did their ownership of slaves materially inform the modern understanding of "we the people." if we didn't care to entangle ourselves then, it might have had something to do with the fact that at the time we could feed our principal mode of transportation on our own domestic produce -- they didn't need to get their hay and oats from a politically unstable region half-way around the world. those quotations are wholly irrelevant, and you know it. that said, you continue to demonstrate your proficiency at diverting and obscuring, the only tools your administration has left, as evidenced by its scattered, inconsistent, and really rather embarrassing response to the utterly appropriate amplification Zarqawi and al-Qaa Qa revelations of the past week.

how long before the rats start jumping ship?

. . . which, in so many words, amounts to: welcome back morris. it just wasn't the same without you.

a propos, also note, in addition to the above points, this information about the systematic dismantling of weapons facilities, post-invasion, with a degree of care suggesting something other than "haphazard looting." note, the blogger quotes extensive, non-ellipsesed, passages from the "mainstream" USA Today and Sydney Morning Herald.

Smarter? More effective?
First, Kerry gets the amount wrong; it's 3 tons, not 377 tons:
"But the confidential IAEA documents obtained by ABC News show that on Jan. 14, 2003, the agency's inspectors recorded that just over three tons of RDX were stored at the facility — a considerable discrepancy from what the Iraqis reported.
The IAEA documents could mean that 138 tons of explosives were removed from the facility long before the United States launched "Operation Iraqi Freedom" in March 2003."
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/story?id=204304

Second, the Russians probably moved out any remaining explosives at the site according to John A. Shaw, the deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security:
"Mr. Shaw said foreign intelligence officials believe the Russians worked with Saddam's Mukhabarat intelligence service to separate out special weapons, including high explosives and other arms and related technology, from standard conventional arms spread out in some 200 arms depots.
The Russian weapons were then sent out of the country to Syria, and possibly Lebanon in Russian trucks, Mr. Shaw said.
Mr. Shaw said he believes that the withdrawal of Russian-made weapons and explosives from Iraq was part of plan by Saddam to set up a "redoubt" in Syria that could be used as a base for launching pro-Saddam insurgency operations in Iraq."
http://www.washingtontimes.com/national/20041028-122637-6257r.htm

Now, let's put this in Kerry's perspective. According to him, when Bush relied on fauly technology, he lied, he misled this country. So, I hope Kerry has the guts to own up to his own mistake in relying on faulty intelligence by coming out and admitting, "I lied! I misled this country!"
Or, to put this in Al Gore's parlance, "He betrayed this country! He played on our fears!"

Mo - Sometimes it's so hard to tell when you are being serious and when you are doing satire.

Btw - are you now saying that you think Bush DOES need to admit to misleading the country?

Oh, and I would like to think that Rudy Giuliani's rep would plummet back to where it deserves to be after these remarks blaming the US troops - http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2004_10/005007.php

True, Giuliani had one good day - a day in which he was infinitely more impressive than the president who couldn't be bothered to finish his photo-op (and am I the only person who remains stunned at how 9/11 didn't hurt Bush more politically? that still flabbergasts me), but there were loads of problems with his tenure as mayor, and we would probably do well to remember that.

Oh - this news report is interesting:

http://www.kstp.com/article/stories/S3723.html?cat=1

in order:

regarding the ABC News story, you ignore its resounding concluding paragraph:

Another Concern

The IAEA documents from January 2003 found no discrepancy in the amount of the more dangerous HMX explosives thought to be stored at Al-Qaqaa, but they do raise another disturbing possibility.

The documents show IAEA inspectors looked at nine bunkers containing more than 194 tons of HMX at the facility. Although these bunkers were still under IAEA seal, the inspectors said the seals may be potentially ineffective because they had ventilation slats on the sides. These slats could be easily removed to remove the materials inside the bunkers without breaking the seals, the inspectors noted.

of course, the evident violability of the seals leaves open the possibility that the explosives were removed earlier, but that pales in comparison to your and the administration's silence on the question of how even two hundred tons of high explosive could be moved (presumably necessitating a minimum of twenty vehicles on a principal highway) without attracting the notice of the extensive surveillance we had of iraq long before the commencement of hostilities.

regarding the drudge-initiated the-russians-did-it hogwash, it's interesting that you're relying on a black-helicopter-level theory qua diversion (again) that even the administration wants no part of. from the financial times:

But in a further development, John Shaw, a deputy under-secretary of defence, suggested that “Russian units” had transported the explosives out of the country.

In an interview with the Financial Times, Mr Shaw said: “For nearly nine months my office has been aware of an elaborate scheme set up by Saddam Hussein to finance and disguise his weapons purchases through his international suppliers, principally the Russians and French. That network included. . . employing various Russian units on the eve of hostilities to orchestrate the collection of munitions and assure their transport out of Iraq via Syria.”

The Russian embassy in Washington rejected the claims as “nonsense”, saying there were no Russian military in the country at the time.

Mr Shaw, who heads the Pentagon’s international armament and technology trade directorate, has not provided evidence for his claims and the Pentagon distanced itself from his remarks.

“I am unaware of any particular information on that point,” said Larry Di Rita, Pentagon spokesman.

finally, even FOX hasn't, at last notice, picked up on the three tons claim, which even were it true would still mean that a total lack of post-invasion security, asiring due to a woeful shortage of troops and oil-driven priorities, led to the removal of enough explosives to bring down six thousand commercial airliners.

bush's response? kerry's disrespecting the competence of the troops. no, president bush, he has in fact shredded only one target time and again for its lies and malfeasance: you and your administration. that bush falls back on this ludicrous misrepresentation is despicable and betrays bush's utter lack of a reasonable basis on which to refute these obvious failings, as well as an ability to even acknowledge, let alone dignify with a reasoned response, the targeted legitimate criticism an ever-increasing number of parties are directing at his decisions.

Joshua,
If you want to focus on the 200 tons of explosives rather than the 400,000 tons that would still be in Saddam's hands if not for Bush (I know Kerry said last night this wasn't true, that he would have used the threat of force and that might have worked (though it didn't get Saddam out of Kuwait in 1991), that he would have gotten international support before going in, international support the French and Germans say he would never have gotten), if you want to focus on those 200 hundred tons, then refer to this story which says about 250 tons of plastic and other explosives were destroyed by our forces at that site:
"Maj. Austin Pearson, speaking at a press conference at the Pentagon, said his team removed 250 tons of TNT, plastic explosives, detonation cords, and white phosporous rounds on April 13, 2003 — 10 days after U.S. forces first reached the Al Qaqaa site."
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20041029/ap_on_re_mi_ea/us_iraq_weapons_27
And don't be fooled by your "non-partisan" media sources suggesting this material was not under an IAEA seal, that's not what he said. He clearly said he wasn't looking for that seal, that he didn't know if that seal was there or not, but your objective media sources aren't explaining it in that way, so you had to watch the interview to know that.

I don't see how with a straight face your candidate can argue how irresponsible Bush is for not securing all of these munitions when if Kerry was President, all 400,000 tons of it would still be in the hands of an Iraqi government that supported terrorists.

As to how it could have been removed, elint photos show trucks at the site even before US troops arrived there; it was on the news this morning, but the story's gone now, thankyou liberal media.

Wow, Joshua, thankyou in your response for making the point of how important alliances are to President Bush. We know the Russian were whitewashing their involvement with the Iraqis, but the President wants to keep Putin's support against N. Korea and Iran, so we're not making a big deal about it.
Yes, Joshua, I'm sure the Russians would admit to a cover up operation, that makes a lot of sense (for Armand's benefit, I'm not being serious).

And you missed the point on the three tons claim; if your argument is that all but three tons were taken away before we got there, that's absolutely not true because the IAEA says that's what was there the last time they checked, before the war. And if your point is that we shouldn't have waited so long to go to war because we let a few hundred tons of explosives get away, isn't it better that we went to war when we did rather than wait longer for them to hide more explosives? And doesn't this completely invalidate the UN and IAEA who Kerry support because they chose not to destroy this material as was requested by Duelfer, because they thought it wasn't dangerous enough.

Bush's response was that Kerry didn't have all the facts, he was just cocked and ready to attack the troops and the military like he did after coming back from Vietnam. Well, to quote Eric Cartman, "Screw you, hippie!"

Any way you look at it, Kerry got his intelligence wrong which casts immense doubt on the argument that he would be so much a better planner than Bush. Kerry has the wrong motivation, the wrong planning, and the wrong instincts.

Morris - You write: "I don't see how with a straight face your candidate can argue how irresponsible Bush is for not securing all of these munitions when if Kerry was President, all 400,000 tons of it would still be in the hands of an Iraqi government that supported terrorists."

I suppose we should thank President Bush for getting rid of that pesky middle man, Saddam Hussein, eh? Now the teorrists have them themselves. And as you note, and the Washington Post covers on page 1 today - this is just a miniscule fraction of the MISSING explosvies.

But really Mo - In what universe does this make the president look good? I mean situation 1 was: a bad guy has stuff to blow stuff up with, but he's isolated and we know where lots of the stuff is. Situation 2 is: there are many bad guys, they have more weaponry than they used to have, we don't know who they are, who has what or where it is.

This is an improvement?

the three tons claim is ludicrous on its face, and though you're pressing it nobody -- not FOX, not your administration -- is with you except a handful of blowhards clinging to a story now two days out of date. but hey, shout it from the rooftops if you can hear yourself over the thump of the black helicopters circling overhead.

and speaking of black helicopters, as for the russkies, since bush might have motivation (on your expert conjecture) to avoid implicating them in some sort of covert plot that had them in a very closely monitored iraq trucking hundreds of tons of materiel through open desert from a closely monitored and massive weapons facility, obviously that makes it true. conspiracy until proven non-conspiracy. call it occam's baseball bat.

and oh russia is our ally? how many troops do they have on the ground? how many lives have they lost in the "Empire Strikes Back" reality show we have going on over in iraq? we're not implicating them because they're not implicated, end of (non-)story.

seriously, dude, you're making it easier and easier. there are righties out there that make solid arguments that i might disagree with but i have to respect; you should read them.

finally, while i'm not inclined to speculate what might have been had bush not been president, i'll indulge your whimsy briefly: if kerry had been president (an anachronistic heuristic, of course), we would have dedicated tens of thousands more troops to afghanistan, backed militarily and financially by a much larger coalition with full UN support, would have prosecuted the war against terrorists (instead of creating a target range and franchising recruiting offices for them in iraq while prosecuting a war against an enfeebled, delusional dictator who only posed a real threat to anyone outside his borders in the chasms of his mind), would probably have captured or killed bin-Laden by now, and would have had a nation beginning to emerge as a model democracy in the region, instead of a sham democracy largely run by the same people who ran it when al Qaeda enjoyed all but free rein -- which, in the final indignity, is financed more than ever by its opium crop (which, to be fair, is probably better for their economy than rampant tax cutting and corporate welfare have been for ours). furthermore, we would have been admired, or at least respected, by many nations in the developed world for our restraint, and would have had the flexibility to engage iran and north korea (and perhaps pakistan, if we'd freed ourselves of that "entangling alliance") more credibly in a genuine effort to address the terrorists that already were around, instead of having almost no allies (and i'm sorry, but "P.R." allies don't count, which means neither Uzbekistan nor any South East Asian island nation, among others, enjoy the privilege of being called "allies") in addressing the considerably greater number of terrorists we now must cope with.

and if my real candidate in 2000 -- gore -- had been president it's not beyond the realm of reason that 9/11 wouldn't have happened at all (though i think we were doomed to take one big hit one way or another before we figured out that the world wasn't all O.C. beaches and Coca-Cola). i mean, at least we know gore reads documents longer than 25 pages, doesn't vacation 40% of the time, and doesn't subordinate the nation's best interests to ivory tower ideology or a determination to enact a blanket policy of not-what-Clinton-did even to the extent it requires the disregard of intelligence auguring a grave danger to american security in the months leading up to one of the greater tragedies in american history.

then there's this from the only news service not to take the bush admin's original baghdad-or-bust WMD tripe hook, line, and sinker.

Joshua,
The 3 tons claim came from ABC, not from Fox, so are you trying to say ABC is conservatively biased? Did you forget the Halperin memo, the part where he talks about how ABC doesn't have to reflexively give equal coverage to both sides when Halperin thinks one side (John Kerry) is right?

Listen, Occum, you think that whatever evidence favors Kerry is true, otherwise you'd see that Kerry rushed to judgment BEFORE he had all the facts. Even Holbrook said Kerry didn't have the facts, but it didn't stop him from making charges and running ads the IAEA memo from ABC says are blatantly false. If you applied your cynicism half as much to the New York Crimes as you do to George Bush, you'd support the President as I do.

You don't mind if I trust an undersecretary of defense for international technology security over someone who may know slightly less about the situation; you're the one who talks about all the satellite intelligence, who do you think has access to that, you or he?

I took your advice and went to some other conservative writers I admire, and guess what quote I found, from John Kerry in 1991?
"I have no doubt, I've never had any doubt--and I've said this publicly--about our ability to be successful in Afghanistan. We are and we will be. The larger issue, John, is what happens afterwards. How do we now turn attention ultimately to Saddam Hussein? How do we deal with the larger Muslim world? What is our foreign policy going to be to drain the swamp of terrorism on a global basis? [Emphasis added]"
http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/004/835wicnq.asp

What happened to Mr. Iraq is a diversion from the war on terrorism; what happened to Mr. wrong war, wrong time, wrong place? Face it, your man is a political opportunist. I don't mean to spoil your Kerry wet dream, but this is reality.

You've got nerve to insult the President for not showing up, when your supporting Edwards (Senator Gone) and Kerry, who's shown up to less than a third of the intelligence hearings in the nineties and missed 64% of votes last year, even more this year:
"Yesterday, Mr. Romney's administration trotted out Lieutenant Governor Kerry Healy to call on Mr. Kerry to resign his Senate seat because of his poor attendance record. Mr. Kerry missed 64% of Senate votes last year and has missed 87% so far this year, including important votes on funding Iraq's reconstruction and cleaning up nuclear waste. Mr. Kerry responded that he's been busy fighting the good fight to restore "responsible leadership" to the country and that Massachusetts' voters would benefit from his "proposals," though he was fuzzy on why this required Massachusetts to go under-represented in the Senate for the duration."
http://www.opinionjournal.com/politicaldiary/?id=110005254

This leaves me wondering what Kerry's big proposals were, anything as big as protecting dolphins or government holidays like his other great senatorial masterpieces?

as for the three tons thing, are you still on this? nobody else is. the abc story was still up on saturday, but hadn't been updated since 10/27. in a steadily developing story, the fact that they haven't changed a word in that story in four days suggests that they've stopped pursuing it. you'd be wise to do the same.

regarding attendance, in case you hadn't noticed, the GOP has been doing everything in its power to render democrat representatives and senators wholly irrelevant. no, seriously guys, show up so we can make you completely impotent and exclude you from virtually every important process engaged in by this body.

as for the times, neither pundit nor paper has a whit of control over my vote, and while a new direction for my cynicism might lead me to vote for badnarik or nader, no direction from anyone, and frankly probably not even a gun to my head, could lead me to vote for bush. i knew he would be incompetent back in 2000 when i watched a minority of this country pull the lever for a man who was quite blatantly proud of his lack of sophistication and intellectual curiosity (not to mention his utter lack of qualifications for the job), and he has not disappointed me in the slightest. he's every bit the bible-thumping idealogue i feared then, and then some; 9/11 only made it easier for him to lead this country down the garden path, but he would have found a way no matter what.

seriously, morris, i'd vote for you before i'd vote for him, because at least with you i can't be absolutely positive that you're going to make horrendous decisions for the wrong reasons based on erroneous beliefs and in stark defiance of all reason. with bush i know; i've always known; and he's never going to change.

i dwell on this because i resent your suggestion that i vote in lockstep with anyone or -thing but my own conscience. i've poked a lot of fun at you, but i've never suggested you're not independently arriving at the only vote you think it necessary to cast.

and anyway, a propos the bin laden tape etc., really a propos all of this, as of now the die is cast. we'll just have to see who made his case best, and who shows up tomorrow.

Joshua,
That a news agency doesn't need to change a word of a story is evidence of its truth, that nothing's come up to contradict the story.

Are you serious? Do you really think if a state elects someone to represent them, that they shouldn't even bother to show up if they're in the minority? Even if you think this is a sound argument while Bush has been in office, the democrats controlled the executive branch and enough of the legislative branch during eight years of the nineties that they could have forced compromise throughout Clinton's term, yet during this time Kerry showed up to only a third of the intelligence committee meetings. Kerry's not irrelevant because of Bush, he's irrelevant because he's a no show.

You suggest Bush is illegitimate because he was elected by a minority of this country. If Kerry were to be elected by such a minority, are you going to hold his illegitimacy to an equal standard?

It's funny you bring up sophistication. Tell me, at what finishing school did Teresa learn to say "shove it," "scumbags"? If you meant sophistry, I would agree that Mr. Nuance has the edge there.

Since this will be my last post before the election votes are in, I would mention that although we all have our strong feelings and thoughts about who will do this better, I pray that our hopes rather than our fears are realized. We are all Americans, and I hope we can come together under that flag to support a leader who finds the strength and wisdom to protect all of humanity.

we're all in this boat together; i couldn't agree more.

what teresa does is of no interest to me because she's not a candidate for anything; nothing she's done is nearly so uncivil as what cheney, an elected official, did on the senate floor in any event.

finally, i didn't say bush was "illegitimate," although bush v. gore was a travesty that certainly cast a pall over his presidency. even so, i'm willing to grant that he won the office legitimately for argument's sake. i'm just not willing to let people pretend that he looked like anything but the class clown blowing spitballs at the chalk board all along; that's exactly what he looked like, and americans got exactly what they deserved: the idiot they were foolish enough to vote for in such numbers that the united states supreme court had anything to do with the outcome whatsoever (which is why the legitimacy of the election is an intellectual curiosity, but a secondary concern to me).

anyway, 1100 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of iraqis later, and here we are, watching a healthy at-large osama sanguinely mock our government, living in an economy that's continuing to stumble in a country where we enjoy only a diminishing percentage of the constitutional protections that ought to be among the core entitlements of american citizenship.

can't say we weren't warned, but everyone only gets one vote, except for african americans in swing states; they get about 0.85 votes, give or take.

anyway, we're all friends. just acrimonious, belief-baiting friends. at least until wednesday. i hope nothing prevents you from voting for bush, morris. sincerely. as i'm sure you hope nothing keeps any eligible voter from pulling the lever (or impregnating a chad) for kerry, nader, badnarik, or petroukas (or by write-in for ZZ Top, as one woman told This American Life she intended to do).

by the way, morris, regarding your ongoing problem with the times, here's this detailed post (and you're a fan of spinsanity, no?) quantifying what looks to me like a marginally pro-bush bias on three crucial stretch-run topics. i'd be happy if the major media were biased and competent; one can always compensate for predictably partisan views. on the other hand, plain old sloppiness makes it impossible for consumers to derive any sense from what they watch read; one can't compensate for straight-up misinformation or crucially incomplete reporting.