Today’s Pearls of Wisdumb from Carey Roberts
For the first time since, well, ever, Carey Roberts has decided not to write about the vast female conspiracy to sap his precious bodily fluids and sell them to starving children. Instead, he turns his steely, incisive gaze upon the United Nations Correspondents’ Association:
Have you ever wondered why much of the daily media coverage about the United Nations reads more like a feel-good press release than a hard-hitting news story?
Sadly, no I haven’t. And just for the record, here are some of today’s feel-good headlines about the U.N.:
–“Main divisive issues before U.N. world summit.”
–“Fears grow of meltdown at ambitious UN summit”
–“Thirty years later, is UN significant? Outdated agency under fire.”
–“Slow Progress on U.N. Summit Document.”
Man, those one-world global elites must be absolutely ecstatic to have such glowing press coverage! It makes me want to pledge allegience to the New World Order by singeing my testicles with a burning American flag!
The answer is easy ? just pay a visit to the website of the United Nations Correspondents Association, the UNCA. [http://www.unca.com/mst_pgs/main1.htm] There you’ll see a gaggle of reporters grinning ear-to-ear, hob-nobbing with none other than UN secretary general Kofi Annan.
Yeah, it’s not like White House correspondents would ever do anything like that with President Bush:
Bush’s Secret Dinner — With the Press
By Dan Froomkin
Friday, August 26, 2005About 50 members of the White House press corps accepted President Bush’s invitation last night to come over to his house in Crawford, eat his food, drink his booze, hang around the pool and schmooze with him — while promising not to tell anyone what he said afterward.
OK Carey, let’s see what else the nitrogen bubbles in your brain are telling you today:
Thirty years ago UNESCO unveiled its New World Information Order, a scheme that entailed a press code and government-controlled licensing system for reporters. Soon journalists around the world were up in arms. Eventually UNESCO dropped the Orwellian idea. [www.answers.com/topic/united-nations-educational-scientific-and-cultural-organization]
But the spirit of the New World Information Order lives on. It’s alive and well at the UN Correspondents Association. Case in point: the Oil-for-Food scandal.
News of the imbroglio began to leak out in April 2004 with a General Accounting Office report and an expos? by Claudia Rosett in the Wall Street Journal. [www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/cRosett/?id=110005011] Despite credible allegations that Saddam Hussein had diverted billions of dollars under the noses of the UN auditors, the UNCA members chose to look the other way.
I decided to test Carey’s hypothesis by looking up some of the reporters listed in the UNCA’s member directory and checking whether they’d reported on the Oil-for-Food scandal. Here’s a quick survey of what I found:
–“Inside the Oil-for-Food Scandal w/ Eric Shawn” (FOX News)
–“Oil-for-Food Investigator Raps Annan” by By Nick Wadhams and Edith Lederer (Associated Press)
–“Oil Probe Faults Annan Over Son” by Phil Hirschkorn, Liz Neisloss and Richard Roth (CNN)
–“Oil-for-food scandal engulfs Annan again” by Shawn McCarthy (The Globe and Mail)
Carey, being a fish in a barrel is one thing, but could you at least try swimming around a bit before getting taken out? It makes the whole exercise a lot more enjoyable.
But wait! You didn’t really think Carey could go a whole column without a jibe at radical feminists, did you?
Beginning Wednesday the UN will be hosting its Summit on the Millennium Development Goals ? MDGs for short. As this article goes to press, radical feminists are poised to seize control of the Summit and force the delegates to endorse abortion on demand as a recognized right under international law.
I’m picturing a bunch of Patty Hearst-lookalikes storming into the General Assembly and chopping off John Bolton’s hands with their bionic steel vaginas. As this blog post goes to press, I’m laughing myself silly just thinking about it.
I love their powder blue helicopters.
much nicer than that PNAC black.
I live in part of the Country where there are still billboards claiming that fluoridization is a commie plot and that one world government is nigh.
I live in part of the Country where there are still billboards claiming that fluoridization is a commie plot and that one world government is nigh.
Can you get me pictures??? 🙂
Next time I’m driving through Winkleman, Arizona I’ll bring my camera.
I guess that billboard blogging is what wingnuts did before the interwebs.I also have distinct memories of my Dad inviting in the door-to-door John Birchers for a laugh at their expense. They scared the hell out of me.
That’s nothing, we still have highways named after Jesse Helms.
mmm… radical feminists are poised OK, is it just me, or is such language waaaay too hot for boytoy Carey?
That’s nothing, we still have highways named after Jesse Helms.
Pshaw… my county is way the wingnuttiest of all. We started the whole ‘stickers in science books that say evolution is only a theory’ thing, we were boycotted by the Atlanta Olympics for passing laws officially condemning homosexuality and holding Klan rallies. The city I live in has a law *requiring* all homes to have fire arms (forget the right to bear arms- here you don’t even have the right to NOT bear arms). Hmm, what else… Oh, Newt Gingrich.
washingtonpost.com
On Iraq, Short Memories
By Robert Kagan
Monday, September 12, 2005; A19
If you read even respectable journals these days, including this one, you would think that no more than six or seven people ever supported going to war in Iraq. A recent piece in The Post’s Style section suggested that the war was an “idea” that President Bush “dusted off” five years after Bill Kristol and I came up with it in the Weekly Standard.
That’s not the way I recall it. I recall support for removing Saddam Hussein by force being pretty widespread from the late 1990s through the spring of 2003, among Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, as well as neoconservatives. We all had the same information, and we got it from the same sources. I certainly had never based my judgment on American intelligence, faulty or otherwise, much less on the intelligence produced by the Bush administration before the war. I don’t think anyone else did either. I had formed my impressions during the 1990s entirely on the basis of what I regarded as two fairly reliable sources: the U.N. weapons inspectors, led first by Rolf Ekeus and then by Richard Butler; and senior Clinton administration officials, especially President Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, William Cohen and Al Gore.
I recall being particularly affected by the book Butler published in 2000, “The Greatest Threat: Iraq, Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the Growing Crisis of Global Security,” in which the chief U.N. inspector, after years of chasing around Iraq, wrote with utter certainty that Hussein had weapons and was engaged in a massive effort to conceal them from the world. “This is Saddam Hussein’s regime,” Butler wrote: “cruel, lying, intimidating, and determined to retain weapons of mass destruction.”
A big turning point for me was the confrontation between Hussein and the Clinton administration that began in 1997 and ended in the bombing of Iraq at the end of 1998. The crisis began when Hussein blocked U.N. inspectors’ access to a huge number of suspect sites (I’m still wondering why he did that if he had nothing to hide). The Clinton administration responded by launching a campaign to prepare the nation for war. I remember listening to Albright compare Hussein to Hitler and warn that if not stopped, “he could in fact somehow use his weapons of mass destruction” or “could kind of become the salesman for weapons of mass destruction.” I remember Cohen appearing on television with a five-pound bag of sugar and explaining that that amount of anthrax “would destroy at least half the population” of Washington, D.C. Even as late as September 2002, Gore gave a speech insisting that Hussein “has stored away secret supplies of biological weapons and chemical weapons throughout his country.”
In his second term Clinton and his top advisers concluded that Hussein’s continued rule was dangerous, if not intolerable. Albright called explicitly for his ouster as a precondition for lifting sanctions. And it was in the midst of that big confrontation, in December 1997, that Kristol and I argued what the Clinton administration was already arguing: that containment was no longer an adequate policy for dealing with Saddam Hussein. In January 1998 I joined several others in a letter to the president insisting that “the only acceptable strategy” was one that eliminated “the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction.” That meant “a willingness to undertake military action” and eventually “removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power.” The signatories included Francis Fukuyama, Richard Armitage and Robert Zoellick.
About a year later, the Senate passed a resolution, co-sponsored by Joseph Lieberman and John McCain, providing $100 million for the forcible overthrow of Hussein. It passed with 98 votes. On Sept. 20, 2001, I signed a letter to President Bush in which we endorsed then-Secretary of State Colin Powell’s statement that Hussein was “one of the leading terrorists on the face of the Earth.” We argued that “any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq.” That letter, too, was signed by Fukuyama, Eliot Cohen, Stephen Solarz, Martin Peretz and many others.
I recall broad bipartisan support for removing Hussein right up to the eve of the war. In March 2003, just before the invasion, I signed a letter in support of the war along with a number of former Clinton officials, including deputy national security adviser James Steinberg, ambassador Peter Galbraith, ambassador Dennis Ross, ambassador Martin Indyk, Ivo Daalder, Ronald Asmus and ambassador Robert Gelbard.
I recall a column on this page by my colleague Richard Cohen on March 11, 2003, shortly before the invasion. He argued that “in the run-up to this war, the Bush administration has slipped, stumbled and fallen on its face. It has advanced untenable, unproven arguments. It has oscillated from disarmament to regime change to bringing democracy to the Arab world. It has linked Hussein with al Qaeda when no such link has been established. It has warned of an imminent Iraqi nuclear program when, it seems, that’s not the case. And it has managed, in a tour de force of inept diplomacy, to alienate much of the world, including some of our traditional allies.”
Despite all that, however, and despite acknowledging that “war is bad — very, very bad,” Cohen argued that it was necessary to go to war anyway. “[S]ometimes peace is no better, especially if all it does is postpone a worse war,” and that “is what would happen if the United States now pulled back. . . . Hussein would wait us out. . . . If, at the moment, he does not have nuclear weapons, it’s not for lack of trying. He had such a program once and he will have one again — just as soon as the world loses interest and the pressure on him is relaxed.” In the meantime, Cohen wrote, Hussein would “stay in power — a thug in control of a crucial Middle Eastern nation. He will remain what he is, a despot who runs a criminal regime. He will continue to oppress and murder his own people . . . and resume support of terrorism abroad. He is who he is. He deserves no second chance.” I agreed with that judgment then. I still do today.
It’s interesting to watch people rewrite history, even their own. My father recently recalled for me a line from Thucydides, which Pericles delivered to the Athenians in the difficult second year of the three-decade war with Sparta. “I am the same man and do not alter, it is you who change, since in fact you took my advice while unhurt, and waited for misfortune to repent of it.”
Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund, writes a monthly column for The Post. A version of this article appears in the Weekly Standard.
Gee God*, those people that believed all of that baloney sure are toolz. Is that what you are trying to get us to see? Too bad you didn’t bother to show them the light. I along with a sizeable minority in the US and a sizeable majority of the world’s population never supported this war. And you know what? We were right and they were wrong. And you know what else God? Bush and the rest of the Cobags in his administration manufatctured the atmosphere that led us to war. They intentionally manipulated public opinion through lies and propoganda for no noble purpose. The blood of hundreds of thousands is on their hands. For what? Nothing. This ain’t a rewrite this is the truth. YOU HAVE HEARD THE WORD!*Marie
Shorter Richard Kagan: I’m not saying I’m wrong or apologizing or nothing but if I was wrong then a whole bunch of other people were wrong too.
I love their powder blue helicopters.
much nicer than that PNAC black.
mdhatter, I love you more than is possibly legal.
I’ve been trying to explain the damned difference between the blue and the black helicopters for years. How can we expect the nutjobs to respect us if we can’t even get *that* basic fact right?
Actually, Marie, the majority of those of us who were opposed to this stupid, ill-planned fiasco of a war all along are more than capable of identifying the fools who have lept onto the “I was against it even when I was for it” bandwagon.
They’re still fools, they still helped make this possible, and we still hold them accountable.
The difference is, we hold them *less* accountable than we hold you assholes who *still* support the war, despite all evidence and rationality suggesting you are delusional to the point of requiring heavy medication and isolation from society.
BTW, idiots masquerading as the Christian God make me even gladder he’s not my deity. I’d hate to think I was inadvertantly supporting the bullshit you’re posting lately.
So Marie posts as God? Wait, there was a word for that…let me think…what was it…
Oh, yeah: Blasphemy.
That’ll get her cruxifiction if she gets caught, maybe just a stoning if she has a good lawyer.
The current murmur of many pro-war people outside America is “And it would have worked perfectly, if it hadn’t been for Dumbya.”
At the end of 2004, Bush’s approval rating in the UK was about 10%. God* knows what it is now.
* Not Marie. The one with the beard.
GregH,
Fluoridization *is* a commie plot. Everyone knows that free market dentistry is one of the four pillars of capitalism. It’s why I refuse to floss.
Do you live in Phoenix? I think I’ve been through Winkelman. Is it right in the geographic center of the middle-of-fucking-nowhere?
Phoenix? No thank God*, I live in Tucson. Winkleman is SE of Phoenix pretty much in the middle of nowhere. Since copper mining went bust it’s a pretty sad little place.*Not Marie the One with infinite wisdom and compassion.
D. Sidhe, in another thread, you called me your hero. Here you say you love mdhatter more than is legal. Don’t you think you might be spreading your affections a bit too thin?
As for Kagan, who asks why Saddam would have blocked inspectors unless he had WMDs… I recall there was some indication shortly after the fall of Baghdad that Saddam may have been fooled by his own people telling him what he wanted to hear. Wouldn’t surprise me if he thought he was hiding something even if he wasn’t.
And Kagan’s historical reminiscence doesn’t change the facts that (a) the Bush administration used false and misleading claims and insinuations in the wake of the tragedy of 9/11 to get support for a war that was illegal under international law, including the UN Charter; and (b) the Bush administration went into this illegal war without anything like an adequate plan. As I understand their view, we would rout Saddam’s forces in nanoseconds, the Iraqis would greet us as liberators, democracy would take root and flourish in Iraq and then the rest of the Middle East, and George W. Bush would get the Nobel Peace Prize. Though we did make pretty short work of the regular forces and toppled Saddam from power, we managed to saddle ourselves with an increasingly violent and destructive insurgency, a body count in the thousands, a “democratic” house of cards, a terrible reputation outside our own borders and best of all, no end in sight for the Global War/Struggle On/Against Terror/Violent Extremism. Democracy certainly doesn’t appear to be so much flourishing in the Mideast, either. In addition, as we have seen in New Orleans, our preparedness for emergencies of the caliber we are told the terrorists want to bring to our shores is, for lack of a better word, for shit.
(Oh, and the DHS trumpeting about how there have been no terrorist attacks on U.S. soil since 9/11 makes me laugh. I haven’t seen any elephants in my backyard since I bought that anti-elephant spray from the guy with the slicked-back hair, either. It must be working!)
D. Sidhe, in another thread, you called me your hero. Here you say you love mdhatter more than is legal. Don’t you think you might be spreading your affections a bit too thin?
Of course not, Dan. I am a slut. Unfortunately, I’m currently a slut in a monogamous-by-circumstances relationship. I’ve got plenty of love to share around.
Anyway, there’s a difference between being my hero and being someone I love to the point of illegality and being someone I repeatedly ask to bear my children. And then there’s Doghouse Riley, whose blog I am stalking, and to whom I will mail pressed butterflies and bad poetry if he is ever foolish enough to give me his address. (Unlikely at best.)
And then there are people to whom I am probably, as Moe once put it, a well-wisher, in that I do not wish them any specific harm.
Frankly, I see a lot of fucking idiocy in the course of a day. It’s brought me to the conclusion that moments of sparkling wit and brilliant insight must be applauded and encouraged wherever they manage to take hold and flourish in the cold, packed, impoverished clay of a country that, while demanding someone keep them safe, voted twice for a drunk driver, once over an actual decorated combat veteran.
“nigh” the bbillboard actually use the word “nigh”???
Robert Kagan needs to hear this: “I knew Pericles, and you, sir, are no Pericles.”
I can’t believe you bought anti-elephant spray. Everyone knows that stuff comes in a powder.
Every time Carey Roberts writes a column, the elephants win.
I’m picturing a bunch of Patty Hearst-lookalikes storming into the General Assembly and chopping off John Bolton’s hands with their bionic steel vaginas.
Add a talking monkey and cyborg-zombie-nazis, and that would make the greatest comic book ever!
Actually, on second thought, cyborg-zombie-nazis is overkill. I suggest having two groups; cyborg-nazis and zombie-nazis. And Hitler’s brain transplanted into the body of Wayne Newton, but that pretty much goes without saying.
Still, the most important aspect of the whole thing is the bionic-vaginas. No siree, can’t beat those bionic-vaginas.
I can’t believe you bought anti-elephant spray. Everyone knows that stuff comes in a powder.
Actually the new spray is better than the powder. All the powder does is attract a bunch of mice to scare the elephants away. I mean, that’s all well and good if you’ve got a bunch of lions with splinters in their paws, but just annoying without them. I think Pinko must be using the powder at his place.
“Nigh” is a perfectly valid word in the End Of The World camps. It’s likely the billboard uses the word “rue”, as well.
First “nigh”, now “rue.” (sjakes head) whatever happened to good old English words like “acoming” as in “the end is acoming, brothers and sisters.” or “ahear” as in “the end is almost ahear!”
I weep for my country………
Every time {Carey Roberts, Kaye Grogan, Peggy Noonan, Michelle M-M, George Will, Rich Lowry, Ann Coulter, Jonah Goldberg} writes a column, an elephant gets to poot.
Or…or…I ferget sometimes…is it the other way ’round?
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