“How could any pilot shoot a missile into a 2 meter-wide exhaust port, let alone a pilot with no formal training, whose only claim to fame was his ability to ‘bullseye womprats’ on Tatooine? This shot, according to one pilot, would be ‘impossible, even for a computer.’ Yet, according to additional evidence, the pilot who allegedly fired the missile turned off his targeting computer when he was supposedly firing the shot that destroyed the Death Star. Why have these discrepancies never been investigated, let alone explained?” By way of Triptych Cryptic, Uncomfortable Questions: Was the Death Star Attack an Inside Job? True, it’s not as devastatingly on point as The Onion‘s recent Bush Refuses to Set Timetable for Withdrawal of Head from White House Banister (“I am going to finish what I set out to accomplish here, no matter how unpopular my decision may be, or how much my head hurts while stuck between these immovable stairway posts.“) Still, decently amusing nonetheless…I was sold on it by the pic of Palpatine reading My Pet Bantha.
Category: War on Terror
Are You on the List?
“The bar for inclusion is low, and once someone is on the list, it is virtually impossible to get off it. At any stage, the process can lead to ‘horror stories’ of mixed-up names and unconfirmed information, Travers acknowledged.” The WP plunges into the rising TIDE (Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment), a.k.a. the terrorist watch list that has quadrupled in size over the past four years. (And, here I thought we were winning the war on terror.) “Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) said last year that his wife had been delayed repeatedly while airlines queried whether Catherine Stevens was the watch-listed Cat Stevens.“
The GOP’s Finest.
“It was a running joke that some of the new faces were 25- to 32-year-old males asking, ‘First name, last name?'” A front-page story in today’s NYT discloses that the NYPD spied on possible RNC protesters for over a year before the 2004 convention, including several unlikely candidates — such as Billionaires for Bush — for anything other than lawful political protest. “‘The police have no authority to spy on lawful political activity, and this wide-ranging N.Y.P.D. program was wrong and illegal,’ Mr. Dunn [of the ACLU] said. ‘In the coming weeks, the city will be required to disclose to us many more details about its preconvention surveillance of groups and activists, and many will be shocked by the breadth of the Police Department’s political surveillance operation.’”
Commission Accomplished.
Upholding a Democratic promise from the 2006 elections, the Senate passes long-overdue legislation to implement the 9/11 commission suggestions. “In a sign of how far the politics of homeland security have shifted since the Democrats seized Congress, senators voted 60 to 38 — with 10 Republicans and no Democrats crossing ranks — to force a fresh national security confrontation with President Bush, who has threatened to veto the bill over a provision to expand the labor rights of 45,000 airport screeners.“
The Ghost of J. Edgar.
“‘We concluded that many of the problems we identified constituted serious misuse of the FBI’s national security letter authorities,’ Inspector General Glenn A. Fine said in the report.” A Justice Department audit finds the FBI has been systematically misusing NSA letters to procure personal information without a court order, prompting a mea culpa from director Robert Mueller and the prospect of possible hearings into the matter. “‘It appears that the administration has used these powers without even the most basic regard for privacy of innocent Americans,’ [Sen. Dick] Durbin said in a statement.“
Karl’s Truman Show.
The wheels may have come off the Bush bandwagon several months ago, but that’s not stopping Karl Rove from trying to finesse Dubya’s place in the history books. And, like his boss, Karl seems to be attempting the Truman route: “In the West Wing interview, Rove adopted a longer view, citing the policy of containment of the Soviet Union, adopted by Truman in the 1940s and then embraced by a succession of presidents despite initial misgivings, as reason to believe history may offer a kinder assessment of the durability of Bush policies and institutional changes.” Hmm. When it comes to the war on terror, somehow I doubt dropping the ball in Afghanistan to prosecute a badly-bungled war of choice in Iraq is going to look any better to future generations. Just a hunch.
War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning.
“Faust’s interpretation helps explain the way the US responded to the 9-11 terrorist attacks with a war on Iraq. ‘Even a war against an enemy who had no relationship to September 11’s terrorist acts would do,’ she notes. People supported war not just because of the rational arguments offered by the White House, but also ‘because the nation required the sense of meaning, intention, and goal-directedness, the lure of efficacy that war promises.’ It was especially necessary to restore a sense of control after the terrorism of 9-11 had ‘obliterated’ it. The US, she concludes, ‘needed the sense of agency that operates within the structure of narrative provided by war.’” In the pages of The Nation, Jon Wiener evaluates new Harvard president Drew Gilpin Faust’s work on war mania.
Scattered without the Eye.
“‘Times have changed. I don’t want to be someone who they say is too stubborn to change too,’ said Rep. Rodney Alexander (R-La.), whose 92 percent conservative rating did not stop him from voting with Democrats on the homeland security and minimum-wage bills.” The delightful success of the 100 Hours thus far deserves its own post, one which I hope to get to before that time elapses. But, in the meantime, I must say, it’s nice to watch the House GOP finally crack into pieces, and to discover that many rank-and-file Republicans seemed more than eager to break from the right-wing extremism of Boss DeLay’s leadership. Come on board, you won’t hurt the horse!
Power Mad.
“In some sense, the president is now as much a prisoner of Guantanamo as the detainees…The endgame in the war on terror isn’t holding the line against terrorists. It’s holding the line on hard-fought claims to absolutely limitless presidential authority.” Slate‘s Dahlia Lithwick discerns the method in Dubya’s madness on the civil liberties front: “expanding executive power, for its own sake.“
Musical Chairs for Team Dubya.
In not-unrelated news, the Dubya White House shuffles its deck to make ready for divided government, replacing failed Supreme Court bid Harriet Miers as White House counsel (likely in favor of someone more aggressive, so as to counter Dem subpoenas), kicking national intelligence director Nicholas Negroponte over to State (to be replaced by Vice Admiral Mike McConnell), appointing Thomas D’Agostino as new nuclear chief (the old one, Linton Brooks, seems to have been of the “Brownie” school of management), putting Iraq ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad in John Bolton’s former position at the UN (his job goes to Ryan Crocker), and overhauling their top military team in Iraq. As the WP‘s Dan Froomkin reads the tea leaves, “I see a possible theme: A purge of the unbelievers.”