February 5, 2003 -- Powell insists to the UN regarding Saddam Hussein's WMD: "There can be no doubt that Saddam Hussein has biological weapons and the capability to produce more -- many more. . . . These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence."

April 2, 2004 -- Powell changes his tune: "it appears not to be the case that it was that solid. . . . I'm not the intelligence community, but I probed and I made sure, as I said in my presentation, these are multi-sourced. . . ." But of course, they were multi-sourced facts, not multi-sourced assertions.

See, even if they were wrong, they were wrong facts -- not wrong assertions. Fortunately, our nation has never been willing to let this kind of wretched lying go unpunished. I have faith that anyone who used to support Bush before he lied about the need to send our children to die in Iraq will withdraw their support and demand that he be held accountable for his deceptions and war crimes.

Not In Our Name has a good collection of quotes from the HalliBush Wars, Inc. from the past two years.

* affirmation = French for "assertion"

Mutilation Footage as Political Propaganda

The LA Times ran an interesting story about the decisions made by news agencies this week about the footage of the violence in Falluja.

"War is a horrible thing. It is about killing," ABC News "Nightline" Executive Producer Leroy Sievers said in an unusual message to the program's e-mail subscribers discussing the issues posed by Wednesday's killings. "If we try to avoid showing pictures of bodies, if we make it too clean, then maybe we make it too easy to go to war again." . . .

The decisions could have a political impact. While showing the images could erode support for the war, not showing them could have an opposite effect.

Tom Rosenstiel, director of the Washington-based Project for Excellence in Journalism, said that networks' "sanitization of war may have helped the administration prosecute the war" a year ago.

I found a photo of the bodies dangling from the bridge when I first posted on it (see below), but I decided not to post it here for a variety of reasons, which I won't go into. Suffice to say that the web provides ample opportunities for us to see the footage if we're really committed.

Ted Rall did a good comic recently about the killings.

Random


Look -- it's sitar master Ravi Shankar and his wife Sukanya, petting a goat! (Happy, now, D?)

What, you think just because I live in Madison that I know anything more about the woman who faked her own abduction? I'm just as clueless as you are. She comes from Rockford -- maybe they can help. What she did is really messed up -- wasting $70,000 and giving people a reason to doubt the next woman who claims abduction. She needs therapy -- she should go to India and pet goats with Ravi Shankar.

This is not for the faint of heart: Discover the secrets of the Magic 8 Ball. If this gets you all worked up, maybe you should calm down by looking once again at Ravi shankar petting the goat.


Hooray for 15-year-old Natalie Young, whose determination to proclaim, via t-shirt, that Barbie is a lesbian, has led to a settlement with the district which guarantees students the right to wear shirts with controversial slogans. (Insert joke here about Young people representing the future of the country.)

TimeWaster™

Thanks to Garrett for The Exorcist in 30 Seconds, as performed by cartoon bunnies.

Today I'm listening to: Emergency Broadcast Network!