sox win, russia retaliates
now playing: janis ian, "in the winter"
oddly, i thought that the world would feel like a different place the morning after a red sox world series win. oddly, the only things i saw thus far this morning that struck me as a potential glitch in the matrix were a couple of people walking in the street in areas where there were sidewalks (one was walking his dog and probably thought that the likelihood of getting away with not scooping was greater in the street than on the sidewalk...the other woman looked as though she was sleepwalking - certainly dressed as such), and a late 80's red chevy cavalier with no hubcaps and a doctors for bush sticker in the back window. now, even if you play one on tv, you should be driving something nicer than that piece of shit....
and ya know, i was fine - i watched the final out, i watched the celebrating afterward, the interviews...and i was ok until that goddamn nike commercial came on - the one that showed the two kids in the bleachers at fenway park in 1918, and showed the years scrolling away at the bottom of the screen as the two boys grew to teenagers, then to adulthood, and then aging as the clock scrolled towards 2004.
then i got a little...how would mike myers say it? verklempt?
in all seriousness, i feel as though i gave up my right to rejoice when i wrote them off after game three of the yankees series - and honestly, i think a door closed in my chest when i wrote that, because none of what happened afterward affected me the way it would've had this all happened a year ago - but i couldn't be more happy for them. this should've happened a year ago, quite frankly, and i'm glad it happened before this particular team flies to the four winds and dissolves.
and i can't help but paraphrase evan dando a bit and say out loud that it's a shame about nomar.
well, with that little bleep on the cosmic radar easing past us, there's only the matter of next tuesday before life begins to return to some vague sense of normalcy...and boy, are things starting to get out of hand.
i haven't said a great deal about the Al-QaQaa situation, because there are so many on the right side of this window who are staying on top of this story in a much more diligent fashion than i could right now...and, whether delusional or not, i tend to operate under the assumption that those of you curious enough to dig a little deeper are either already aware of what's going on, or you may already be visiting some of those sites and don't need me to repeat what's been said.
today, though, there's a new twist to the story. first, though, let's go ahead and recap a bit:
late last week, it was published in the nelson report that 380 tons of high grade explosives were missing from a monitored munitions dump in iraq. they were under the watch of the IAEA until days before the US invasion, at which time the IAEA notified the invading forces of the situation at the facility, what was there, et cetera. however, from the time the IAEA left until after US troops began marching towards baghdad, the facility was unguarded. the facility was visited twice by US forces after the invasion, but no attempt was ever made to re-secure the facility...and now, after over a year of looting, the facility has somehow been relieved of enough explosives to, according to experts on the types of material that was there, re-create the oklahoma city murrah building catastrophe thousands of times over.
what this means, in effect, is that we essentially created a scenario that allowed for arming hundreds of "insurgents" (i've talked about how i feel about that word before...are you an insurgent if you're defending your home against an invading force?) with enough explosives to rig IED's and car bombs for as far down the road as i care to look.
this isn't the only instance of this that's been documented, either - there have been others as well.
now, the right is parroting all the usual rhetoric - this is an obvious left-wing conspiracy to bring down the president by bringing this up now, that the weapons were already gone when we got there...that one, of course, is my personal favorite. think about that for a minute.
either we're calling the IAEA liars, or you'd have to accept the frayed logic that someone was able to spirit away 380 tons of explosives in the middle of an invasion by occupying forces without anyone noticing. that, of course, makes us look mighty fuckin' efficient.
now, first of all, in the age of satellite recon in which we live, there's just no way in hell that could've happened without a blip going off on the radar somewhere. secondly, that period was probably the most intense flyover period of the entire war. no one saw anything suspicious?
now, as this story has aged during the course of the week, many things are coming to light. first of all, some of the commanders on the ground and others who were there in a reporting capacity are stepping forward and saying that the ordinance was definitely there a month after baghdad fell:
"There wasn't a search. The mission that the brigade had was to get to Baghdad. That was more of a pit stop there for us. And, you know, the searching, I mean certainly some of the soldiers head off on their own, looked through the bunkers just to look at the vast amount of ordnance lying around. But as far as we could tell, there was no move to secure the weapons, nothing to keep looters away."
so, as the theory that the ordinance was already looted before we invaded begins to lose credibility, now comes the ever popular wingnut conspiracy theory that the new york times and cbs are in cahoots with the IAEA to bring bush down...and the fact that anyone is even saying that says a lot more about them than anything else.
today, though, the bar is being raised. apparently, russia is concerned that some of the ordinance may have found its way into the hands of separatists in his neck of the woods and would like to see UN inspectors return to find them.
of course, that may not be necessary - as an iraqi group is already claiming to have them in their posession.
now, i know what i'm thinking at this point...what does rudy guliani think about all this?
"The president was cautious the president was prudent the president did what a commander in chief should do. No matter how you try to blame it on the president the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?"
well, why didn't they just point that out in the first place? it's the TROOPS' fault! i shoulda known! i shoulda known the minute dubya started trying to say that by criticizing bush's bungling of the situation, he was really criticizing the troops. now it all makes perfect fucking sense to me!
maybe they should've gotten rudy to just flip 'em the bird?
the fact is, this story isn't going to go away anytime soon...and at some point, bush and the droids at fox news will have to agree on a story and stick to it. unfortunately, whatever they might come up with will almost certainly be debunked by what's already been reported.
thankfully, josh marshall has crawled up their asses and pitched a tent, and will probably be staying a while...so we'll be able to keep up with what's going on.
oddly, i thought that the world would feel like a different place the morning after a red sox world series win. oddly, the only things i saw thus far this morning that struck me as a potential glitch in the matrix were a couple of people walking in the street in areas where there were sidewalks (one was walking his dog and probably thought that the likelihood of getting away with not scooping was greater in the street than on the sidewalk...the other woman looked as though she was sleepwalking - certainly dressed as such), and a late 80's red chevy cavalier with no hubcaps and a doctors for bush sticker in the back window. now, even if you play one on tv, you should be driving something nicer than that piece of shit....
and ya know, i was fine - i watched the final out, i watched the celebrating afterward, the interviews...and i was ok until that goddamn nike commercial came on - the one that showed the two kids in the bleachers at fenway park in 1918, and showed the years scrolling away at the bottom of the screen as the two boys grew to teenagers, then to adulthood, and then aging as the clock scrolled towards 2004.
then i got a little...how would mike myers say it? verklempt?
in all seriousness, i feel as though i gave up my right to rejoice when i wrote them off after game three of the yankees series - and honestly, i think a door closed in my chest when i wrote that, because none of what happened afterward affected me the way it would've had this all happened a year ago - but i couldn't be more happy for them. this should've happened a year ago, quite frankly, and i'm glad it happened before this particular team flies to the four winds and dissolves.
and i can't help but paraphrase evan dando a bit and say out loud that it's a shame about nomar.
well, with that little bleep on the cosmic radar easing past us, there's only the matter of next tuesday before life begins to return to some vague sense of normalcy...and boy, are things starting to get out of hand.
i haven't said a great deal about the Al-QaQaa situation, because there are so many on the right side of this window who are staying on top of this story in a much more diligent fashion than i could right now...and, whether delusional or not, i tend to operate under the assumption that those of you curious enough to dig a little deeper are either already aware of what's going on, or you may already be visiting some of those sites and don't need me to repeat what's been said.
today, though, there's a new twist to the story. first, though, let's go ahead and recap a bit:
late last week, it was published in the nelson report that 380 tons of high grade explosives were missing from a monitored munitions dump in iraq. they were under the watch of the IAEA until days before the US invasion, at which time the IAEA notified the invading forces of the situation at the facility, what was there, et cetera. however, from the time the IAEA left until after US troops began marching towards baghdad, the facility was unguarded. the facility was visited twice by US forces after the invasion, but no attempt was ever made to re-secure the facility...and now, after over a year of looting, the facility has somehow been relieved of enough explosives to, according to experts on the types of material that was there, re-create the oklahoma city murrah building catastrophe thousands of times over.
what this means, in effect, is that we essentially created a scenario that allowed for arming hundreds of "insurgents" (i've talked about how i feel about that word before...are you an insurgent if you're defending your home against an invading force?) with enough explosives to rig IED's and car bombs for as far down the road as i care to look.
this isn't the only instance of this that's been documented, either - there have been others as well.
now, the right is parroting all the usual rhetoric - this is an obvious left-wing conspiracy to bring down the president by bringing this up now, that the weapons were already gone when we got there...that one, of course, is my personal favorite. think about that for a minute.
either we're calling the IAEA liars, or you'd have to accept the frayed logic that someone was able to spirit away 380 tons of explosives in the middle of an invasion by occupying forces without anyone noticing. that, of course, makes us look mighty fuckin' efficient.
now, first of all, in the age of satellite recon in which we live, there's just no way in hell that could've happened without a blip going off on the radar somewhere. secondly, that period was probably the most intense flyover period of the entire war. no one saw anything suspicious?
now, as this story has aged during the course of the week, many things are coming to light. first of all, some of the commanders on the ground and others who were there in a reporting capacity are stepping forward and saying that the ordinance was definitely there a month after baghdad fell:
"There wasn't a search. The mission that the brigade had was to get to Baghdad. That was more of a pit stop there for us. And, you know, the searching, I mean certainly some of the soldiers head off on their own, looked through the bunkers just to look at the vast amount of ordnance lying around. But as far as we could tell, there was no move to secure the weapons, nothing to keep looters away."
so, as the theory that the ordinance was already looted before we invaded begins to lose credibility, now comes the ever popular wingnut conspiracy theory that the new york times and cbs are in cahoots with the IAEA to bring bush down...and the fact that anyone is even saying that says a lot more about them than anything else.
today, though, the bar is being raised. apparently, russia is concerned that some of the ordinance may have found its way into the hands of separatists in his neck of the woods and would like to see UN inspectors return to find them.
of course, that may not be necessary - as an iraqi group is already claiming to have them in their posession.
now, i know what i'm thinking at this point...what does rudy guliani think about all this?
"The president was cautious the president was prudent the president did what a commander in chief should do. No matter how you try to blame it on the president the actual responsibility for it really would be for the troops that were there. Did they search carefully enough? Didn't they search carefully enough?"
well, why didn't they just point that out in the first place? it's the TROOPS' fault! i shoulda known! i shoulda known the minute dubya started trying to say that by criticizing bush's bungling of the situation, he was really criticizing the troops. now it all makes perfect fucking sense to me!
maybe they should've gotten rudy to just flip 'em the bird?
the fact is, this story isn't going to go away anytime soon...and at some point, bush and the droids at fox news will have to agree on a story and stick to it. unfortunately, whatever they might come up with will almost certainly be debunked by what's already been reported.
thankfully, josh marshall has crawled up their asses and pitched a tent, and will probably be staying a while...so we'll be able to keep up with what's going on.
posted by tom at 11:39
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