We are beginning to think anew, and act anew, but it is not enough. I have commented before on the uselessness and foolishness of the current Vietnam debate in America's campaign

New Intelligence. We are so close to creating the best intelligence organization in the world. The Senate asked CIA to leave; Plames, retired operation officers(moveon.org), WMD leaks, and all out attacks on the government of the United States(dems?). CIA 'screamed union' and would not leave. They should not be allowed to re-apply at the New Intelligence. They are not wanted.

Kerry's UN vote won't make much difference whether or not the CIA exists.

Joe,

Very well said.

As for "Marcus Tacitus", I've enjoyed reading his posts so far. I am not sure I understand everything he talks about and I broke out "the BIG dictionary" a couple of times, but his ideas are invigorating.

I've just posted a lengthy blog entry along the same lines on From Watergate to Rathergate comparing the presidential elections of 1972 and 2004. Kerry, the DNC, and the old media seem stuck in 1972 mode, obsessed with Vietnam and Watergate. The difference this time is that the major media are 100% with the challenger. I suspect we're headed for another landslide unless the Dems get serious about 2004 issues immediately. It's probably too late, and the leadership is constitutionally incapable.

The Vietnam War and Watergate marked a definitive loss of credibility by the military and U.S. gov't. The current war(s) are doing the same for the major media.

Joe,

I'm getting sick and tired of hearing people whine about how boring, irrelevant, and/or outdated the Vietnam issue is. It is not just some boomer culture-war issue that is best left buried. As a Gen-Xer, I had the wonderful opportunity to grow up and attend school with "boat people" thanks to the immoral and treasonous acts of people like John Kerry. I say wonderful because they were the fortunate ones who managed to survive the killing fields, reeducation camps, and oceanic flights that killed several million of their relatives and countrymen when we abandoned southeast Asia.

Nor is this some irrelevant issue from my "distant" past. The city I live in is dealing with the fallout of Kerry's slanderous and inhumane advocacy even now.

The reason Kerry's Vietnam history is relevant today is because it is a prime example of the American left's longstanding tradition of embracing our enemies and pursuing near-genocidal foreign polices in an effort to prove how much more "enlightened" they are than their "warmongering" political opponents to the right.

From the failed policy of containment (before anyone utters a word in its defense vs. "rollback," I want them to add up how many people were enslaved and killed by communist regimes between 1945 and 1989), to the Vietnam war protests, to the opposition of (both) our efforts in Iraq, the left has been on the wrong side of the war debate every single time.

Given their commitment to "education," you would think the left might actually learn something from its repeated mistakes at some point. Instead, we hear repeated calls to whitewash the past and ignore what happened during Vietnam because it was "a long time ago," without even so much as a mea culpa from bastards like Kerry.

Fuck that.

Indirectly, the Rather forgery and other affairs are about a timely issue.

The Bush Gang look like geniuses, comparatively speaking, because criticism of their actions has mostly come from people like Tony Blair, politely and behind closed doors (rightly), or from people who are in denial about there being a global war on terror, or who want to see the Americans humbled, not victorious and invigorated. There is no need to take such foolish, dishonest and/or malicious public criticisms seriously.

There has not been much of a loyal public opposition. "Joe-mentum" went nowhere. The Bush Doctrine is prevailing, along with a lot of disturbing slackness in its prosecution (e.g. Fallujah) because there is no other serious proposal on the table and there is no political need for the government to do any better.

(This is also true in Australia. Our war effort for now is barely token, but since the only alternative offered is cut-and-run, Howard is allowed to be our strong man on security.)

When Russia joined the war (in my opinion as a co-belligerent and not as an ally), Vlad Putin started making criticisms of the way the Americans, some of which were unfair and just typical Russian and/or ex-KGB paranoia, but others which had people on the right nodding their heads. Vlad had a point.

Why hadn't anything been done about these issues before? Why did it seem mid-level State Department officials could run their own war, not effectively or to Russia's liking? Because the strings of supervision had gone slack. Because there was no real challenge. What are people going to do, elect Senator Flip-Flop, and have four years of Vietnam flashbacks instead of a functioning government? I don't think so.

This is not trivial. With Iran going nuclear and North Korea either nuclear or going nuclear, drift and slackness are very, very dangerous. And I would just like to see our side win better. Fallujah is a sore.

Why has it come to this? I think it has a lot to do with the culturally dominant left, and especially the left-leaning main stream media. They influence everything heavily in our system of democracy, but they've ceased engaging with the real world. Instead, they pick favourites and push fantasies, and they have no respect for journalistic ethics, truth, or even ultimate fear of losing their own good names by doing so. (I accept the PowerLine "media suicide bomber" notion.) As long as this persists, the proper functioning of our democracy will be impeded, and that translates to lethargy in our policies.

It's the right time to take on the main stream media and its dishonest reporting. If we can get a functioning media, then maybe we can have some better debates and more urgency in consequence.

There's not much else that can realistically be attempted till after the elections anyway. The main steam media is doing its part to make sure of that, which is why it needs to be hammered.

After the elections, it won't be time to address the main stream media any more, because it will be possible to attend to much more important things.

Marcus Tacitus complains that neither the Republicans nor the Democrats are comfortable waging a war of ideas in the world. That’s half right. The alliance which supports the spread of Democracy and Liberty to address the “root causes” of terror splits both parties. If someone had told me four years ago that I’d be adding my voice to a choir which included Christopher Hitches and George W. Bush, I’d have thought them mad. Perhaps the problem is not that too few have changed their thinking, but that too many have, too quickly, and the rest of the country suffers from mental whiplash just watching their peers.

There is a broad consensus among those who advocate for the strategy of freedom, even as there is constructive disagreement about tactics. Among the opposition, mired in the twentieth century, the alliance is one of convenience: some who believe our freedom is a phenomena too precious to risk “foreign entanglements”, some who believe genuine self determination of other peoples is incompatible with freedom, some who believe that freedom itself is a lie.

Which leads us back to the issue of sacrifice and total mobilization. Rathergate has show that blogs don’t just write about the world, they speed up the cycle. This is critical. The twentieth century was about a hundred and fifty years of history stuffed in a hundred year bag. We have another hundred years of history in front of us, on a twenty year deadline. In the words of Warren Zevon: I’ll sleep when I’m dead.

Joe, it's not a culture war or idea war in the US, it's a Moral Superiority War.

Look at how the PC Leftists, always, always, always assume they have the moral high ground. On military matters, the Leftis position comes from Vietnam, directly from Vietnam, it does NOT discuss commies, it does NOT discuss genocide or Cambodia.

The "Vietnam wound" is based on a moral evaluation to the 1971 question: stay in or leave Vietnam?
Fight, die, kill, AND kill some innocents -- or leave, get Peace (and accept genocide).
The Left says Peace (and genocide) is morally superior.
The PC press is a pimp for this moral position.

The USA failed, morally, when we left Vietnam. Our nation needs to face our moral failure, accept it, forgive it, forgive ourselves -- and learn from it.

Neither we nor anybody else knows how to do a good job at democratic nation building. We have to start learning. We're doing some in Iraq & Afghanistan.

The War on Terror ends -- in a World Without Dictators.

The Left, especially, does not understand that 'peace' is not the absence of conflict.

It is the absence of THREAT.

I have no problem with the Swift Vets attacking Kerry for his postwar record. Others will attack Bush. That's politics, and it's actually pretty tame by American historical standards ("Red Pepper" 1950 Democratic primaries, anyone?).

CHOICES & ISSUES

Here's my point: What the media and the candidates choose to do in that environment, and the context in which they choose to set these debates, matters.

You want to have a debate about the Left's Moral Superiority foundations, and make the point that Kerry's past policies have led to weakness, betrayal and death? Fine. But there are people out there trying to kill YOU. Right now. Wouldn't it be nice to make THAT the focus? Your points re: Vietnam should be a subtext of a debate, instead of an endless preoccupation unto itself.

The future of Iraq - is Kerry's 4-year pulout plan as the path to another Saigon & boat people episode, triggered by rhetoric similar to that used by the Democratic Party and its allies today? Valid debate. And by the way, just what IS America's policy toward Iran. Is there one? George, anyone? Anyone? That looks like an important debate, even if Vietnam doesn't apply.

There's a solid argument for having the Moral Superiority debate - but it's secondary, not primary.

That kind of approach would certainly be a lot more effective at eliciting respect and attention from people who may not share your (and my) convictions or burning interest in the Left's historical record. If you haven't set it into a context that affects people right now and explains why they should care, it all just looks like mud.

THE MEDIA

We do have a problem with our major media, once that has been discussed extensively here (including this post). Yes, key segments of the press are taking sides in the election - but that isn't the full extent of the media's problems. Read Totten's link (one of the "shame" hyperlinks), and you find that he and his wife also see the media exhibiting equally poor coverage in other areas beyond politics.

Like Bush's implementation of the war, that situation survives only because serious competition has been sparse. That situation is being eroded from various directions, and structural changes are coming.

The media aren't the only ones.

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

Read Between Hope and Fear closely. He is not saying that the Republicans are uncomfortable waging a war of ideas. He's saying they're uncomfortable with sacrifice and total mobilization.

Admittedly, the Republican party has actively shied away from even discussing these things in a sense that goes beyond the need to accept casualties while pursuing the war. My belief that this is a big and costly mistake continues to grow.

Look at the clock re: Iran, and the very real possibility of failure there - and with it, the probably failure of nuclear non-proliferation generally. Why? because the military capacity needed to deal with Iran wasn't created during the 3 year interval following 9/11. And why not? The GOP didn't push to start that process and seriosuly expand America's forces after 9/11, when the time and support were there.

That, to me, is a huge failure of vision.

This reluctance to talk consistently of sacrifice and mobilization has cost us again in the growing belief by many independents (and some on the right as well) that the Republican Party is talking about a real war (vs. a Cold War), but not really pursuing one with the kind of seriousness that would match that description. Public understanding for deficits et. al. might be much higher if it did. And the fact that American public trust on the war issue is as close as it is (remember, it was a 30 point gap once), strikes me as a self inflicted wound for the most part.

As the comments above note, the only thing giving Bush's choices a pass in these areas is the fact that the Democratic Party has totally abdicated the field as a serious player. We won't see a reckoning in 2004. But choices have consequences, and odds are that the reckoning will eventually come.

If it does, and if many of the comfortable certitudes of the 1980s start to come under the same kind of attack that the Democrats' underlying 1960s certitudes are facing now, I expect the GOP to be every bit as irrational and spiteful as the Democrats are being now. Few things are as threatening as a challenge to one's unspoken certitudes.

But all our current certitudes are likely to be challenged, strongly, before this period of human history ends.

To re-think our times? American officialdom is off to do that, even if they are like a herd of turtles (the CIA soap-opera!). And I’m afraid that CBS, Dan Rather and the other dinosaurs of the established media are part of that officialdom.

They can seek some trust looking at dear Old Europe; they are even worse off. France’s vagaries, alas, are the symptom, not the cause, of a civilization that is afraid of rationally and courageously looking around at reality and at itself.

American elites at a given moment wanted to believe that we could live peacefully, just watching grass grow and reading New Age self-help booklets. French elites (I live in France and sometimes it is like gulping a gallon of LSD for breakfast), along with the entire retro-leftist (beautiful Spanish expression) gang are still trying to talk the legs off an iron pot and convince themselves that, well, they are not at war.

Re-think we must, but this time around it looks like it is the “distributed intelligence” who’s got to paint the barn. Established media increasingly look like a theme-park. Jurassic? Blogs anyone?

Joe - to me it comes down to the Left entrenched in Education and the Press. SOme of your complaints about the Republicans might disappear with a more balanced press. Like James, we see the costs of the Leftist Fifth COlumn everywhere if we have eyes to look. Rathergate MIGHT help, but if someone had had the courage to send Hanoi Jane to the electric chair 30 years ago, it would have been even better. We can't do that now (although here being up for 100 women of the century sucks big time) so John Kerry is all we have left to crucify. Until we cleanse ourselves, we won't be ready to deal with jihadis, NKs etc.

Oscar

”Joe - to me it comes down to the Left entrenched in Education and the Press.”

The Left entrenched in Education? You lost me. Please explain.

This battle must be fought right now for any number of reasons. Every politico worth his salt knows that an attack unanswered is a charge acknowledged. Bush has done a pretty good job of keeping out of the fray, he has had that luxury because CBS and the Kerry campaign has managed to yank open the aligators mouth and walk in without any encouragement at all. Kerry is running perhaps the worst campaign in modern history, and the slide is on the verge of a rout. This compulsive need to run back to the Vietnam era at every turn has to have Karl Rove in stitches. I gotta think that tendency is in imminent danger of jumping the shark into parody. The fact that Kerry hasnt held a news conference or talked to a reporter in over a month is simply dumbfounding. Probably unparallelled, certainly disasterous. I think we are approaching critical mass with the public and MSM here. The 'Kerry is Dukakis' meme combined with possible Nixonian dirty trixters in his campaign plus a complicit CBS news may well be too much for the media to resist. If it happens it will be like a landslide. Steven Den Beste once gave an example of how penguins go swimming, they gather around and jostle until one or two fall in (likely to get eaten by a predator) then the rest all follow at once. Look for that moment.

Selective, selective, Joe. "Rathergate"? Pretty clever, defining last week's brouhaha as "Rathergate", as though it were a fait accompli that what CBS did was forgery, while at the same time bemoaning the time spent on these irrelevant issues, and not the actual issues in play that matter.

I agree with you on the issues in play, and the irrelevance of what is being focused on in the media. What could or could not be written on Selectric's in the 70's is arcana I have no interest in.

But it is dishonest to link so selectively, as if the "forgery" angle is decided. (If necessary, I can link to all of the "reasons" for believing in forgery being discredited, but I don't really care about this subject. They are easy to find however.)

"at the same time bemoaning the time spent on these irrelevant issues, and not the actual issues in play that matter."

This is the most shocking meme i've seen. It doesnt matter if the evidence is valid, its the conclusion the phoney evidence points to that is important. Dan Rather himself implied as much. That is the most insanely idiotic suggestion i can conceive of. If the document has been forged, the story surely isnt how Bush is reflected in their contents. The story is who faked the documents and why.

JC

”I agree with you on the issues in play, and the irrelevance of what is being focused on in the media. What could or could not be written on Selectric's in the 70's is arcana I have no interest in.”

A lot of us don’t have any interest in it. The problem is the MSM spouts this as the impetuous for deciding your vote. The MSM could just as easily say we aren’t reporting that now lets report on the issues. Foreign Policy , Economy, Health Care, etc. They don’t want to debate the issues they want a popularity contest (we’re the ones with hair). Give me a break.

JC,

I've looked at arguments pro and con. My judgment: this is very nearly a slam dunk re: forgery - and a poor one at that. The issues extend well beyond typefaces into timelines, military procedures, formats, and beyond. Testimony against includes a wide spectrum of experts, the memo writer's family, and recantation from the commander who supposedly "verified" the memo and is now found to have done no such thing.

I covered it like a fait accompli because at this point, that's what I believe to be true.

Indeed, the memos are so poor that I personally doubt the memos even come from a political campaign per popular rumour. Not even political campaign managers could pass off something so shoddy and expect it pass muster - and given the blowback danger if it didn't, it doesn't make sense to even try. But that is an open question with little evidence either way, so I guess we'll see.

Since, like you, I believe these issues to be a diversion from more important things, "in passing" is the only way I'll cover Rather's Folly for now. The only thing that would change my decision is if CBS' stupidity continues long enough that they pull a Nixon, and the ongoing cover up becomes so important that it rises nto the level of serious relevance.

Joe:

Indeed, the memos are so poor that I personally doubt the memos even come from a political campaign per popular rumour. Not even political campaign managers could pass off something so shoddy and expect it pass muster - and given the blowback danger if it didn't, it doesn't make sense to even try. But that is an open question with little evidence either way, so I guess we'll see.

Remember that thirty years ago a presidential re-election campaign burglarized the campaign offices of the opposing candidate. It's hard to overestimate how sleasy, shoddy, incompetent, or arrogant political campaign organizations can be.

Are the Republican’s really stuck in the ‘80s? If they are, is it really wrong? I’m not so sure this really captures the problem.

Try this instead: the current military posture is adequate to project force, but projecting force is no longer sufficient. What is necessary is to project security. Rumsfeld basically won the argument with regard to force projection, but has been behind the curve on security projection. Further, Rumsfeld and the rest of the administration have been late in recognizing and correcting this.

I think this failure is mainly due to ego and plain old stubbornness. Wishful thinking has also been cited and is hard to dismiss out of hand. But I’m not sure the issue of “willingness to ask for sacrifice” is really central.

The civilian economy is no longer fungible with the military economy, as it was in WWII. The US prevailed in the Cold War due to the strength of the civilian economy. The Republicans were right to emphasize prosperity in the 80’s and they are right to do so today. Why is it wrong to tell people to continue working and shopping? We didn’t pay for MX missiles with the money saved by rationing butter, and we won’t produce more Predator drones by converting car factories to their production.

Yes, taxes and spending are substantive issues here. But the argument for fiscal responsibility (and criticism of profligate spending) would hold regardless. By all means let’s advocate for more fiscal responsibility – but why promote sacrifice as an end in itself, as if the emphasis on prosperity is misplaced? "Sacrifice" as some kind of badge of seriousness, strikes me as, well, unserious.

What an interesting idea, lewy14. Can you expand on this notion of projecting security?

My own feeling BTW is that the single largest error of the Bush Administration was the "go back to working and shopping" advice. It may have been pragmatically correct but it did not convey the proper level of shared experience. More like "break it up, nothing to see here".

It looks frighteningly as though Mr. Bush has been making the same decisions post 9/11 as Mr. Johnson did in the 60's and, possibly, for the same reasons. Prosecute the war without mobilizing the public. Interfere in the military conduct of the conflict. Don't allow an outright victory.

But the stakes are much, much higher than they were in Viet Nam and Mr. Bush's only comfort may be that the Democrats have fielded an incompetent candidate.

"What an interesting idea, lewy14. Can you expand on this notion of projecting security?"

Very interesting thought. Please expound if possible, i like where you're going.

"Projecting security" is how Thomas Barnett has been talking about the U.S. Military.

He says that we are exporting a product to the world, and being repaid by other nations' willingness to carry our debt.

Can you expand on this notion of projecting security?

Sure, I can try. Basically, consider it an extension of the “combined forces” military doctrine, but extended over time as well as space. It’s no longer sufficient to defeat the enemy army; you have to provide security for the people afterwards.

“Nation building” doesn’t quite equate to projecting security, because it entails a lot of other things – but security is a necessary precondition for building (or rebuilding) a nation. “Peacekeeping” doesn’t quite equate either, as there are (and will be) violent insurgencies to deal with – post “major combat operations”, but before order is truly restored. “Peacekeepers” don’t deal well with these situations (especially the U.N. variety).

It should be clear by now that it takes fewer personnel to win the war than it does to win the peace. The military is working on reducing this number even further with the “Land Warrior” technologies and other cool stuff. Yes, by all means lets do this. But let’s say we could invade Iran with 50K troops – would that be sufficient? I seriously doubt it.

I don’t see how we can escape the conclusion that we need to be able to mobilize relatively a relatively large number of people, with the right mix of skills, for long term deployments. This is where the “projection” comes in. Confidence is also part of security, and so we need to demonstrate resolve and patience in the face of difficulty, or the forces which attempt to project insecurity will be able to wait us out. "Resolve" is a kind of force multiplier here.

That’s how I see it offhand.

praktike, I may have borrowed a term from Barnett, if so it was inadvertent. The meaning I'm after is a bit finer grained.

lewy14

”Are the Republican’s really stuck in the ‘80s? If they are, is it really wrong? I’m not so sure this really captures the problem.”

huh?

Maybe I missed something here but as I understand it the issue is not living in 60’s / 70’s / 80’s / 90’s concerning the war in Iraq or the WoT. The issue of living or reliving those years relates to re-election / election of the candidates, their character and their behavioral attributes.

Both camps agree the WoT / war in Iraq can not be fought under the guise of policies developed or used during those years. If anyone is associating those years with the current situation it is the populace and MSM at large not the candidates or their parties.

I think you're channeling Barnett more than you realize, lewy. No shame in that -- he's a smart guy. It sounds like you're just putting the leviathian/sysadmin concept into different words.

“Nation building” doesn’t quite equate to projecting security, because it entails a lot of other things – but security is a necessary precondition for building (or rebuilding) a nation.

As we've seen, though, the concept of a "precondition" isn't quite black and white. I think nation-building and security go hand in hand. Take the Sadr City sewer example -- those guys might be running around setting IEDs if they weren't digging ditches for pay. So you have to get going on multiple tracks at once and aggressively show the benefits of cooperation. That's the same approach the military is now taking in Tikrit and Samarra, and it may well work.

Lewy, very impressive. I'm going to have to give that some serious thought. I think it may intersect well with an idea i have on an alternative form of standoff warfare when we wont/cant project the required level of security. Its essentially denial of civilization, and it is similar to what accidentally happened in Bosnia. The beauty is that it is entirely scaleable, ranging from unclaimed pinpoint strikes on facilities made to appear plausibly as accidents, to full scale denial of service attacks to turn the lights out indefinately. Low casualties, high stress. Unfortunately a nuclear option basically trumps this idea which is another great reason to keep nukes away from everyone we possibly can, at nearly any cost.

If the Sixties are dead, then surely the Eighties are not far behind in the funerary procession. The Reagan years ensconced in the American psyche the notion that we can be strong on defense while frolicking on the beach at home.

I was specifically attempting to argue against this position with respect to material sacrifice. IMHO “frolicking on the beach” is not only defensible, it’s essential in this war.

And yet the briefest study of past wars always reveals huge sociopolitical and cultural transformations that equally overtake opposing sides regardless of who the victor and vanquished are. We have yet to admit that we are on the threshold to an unknown destiny.

My previous comment was directed at USMC .

lewy14

” I agree that neither party has yet acknowledged that we will be changed by this trial, or offered a vision of where that change will lead.”

On that I disagree I for one don’t doubt the future will be different than the past. I’ll accept your analysis concerning frolicking on the beach because ultimately that is what we want to keep among a host of many other things. The vision is status quo plus.

Now maybe I’m breaking this down to the very basics but personally I think people are reading too much into the basics (ie complicating a fart) simply because they can.

praktike: I think nation-building and security go hand in hand. True, there are feedback loops, as your Sadr city example demonstrates.

Mark Buehner: Heh, a DoC attack... or "projection of insecurity... yeah, this would definitly be a "plan B"... I hope it never comes to that.

USMC - "The Left in Education" refers to the well documented bias towards the left among tenured college professors, as well as the even more left leaning teacher's unions. As an English socialist whose name I have forgotten said: You didn't defeat us, and as long as we have access to the students, you never will.

Oscar
Thanks now it makes more sense to me. You are not talking about education and the press in general. You are talking about the strangle hold the left and their views have on education and the press. (IE The espousing of their views while subjugating or silencing all others to the back seat)

Joe,

Okay, you are entitled to your opinion. However, clearly there are a lot of people with more expertise than you or I, that disagree. Here's one typewriter refutation, at the least:

An expert speaks

I think you may have jumped too soon, based on your political preferences.

For myself, I'm still agnostic.

For other points, there are now additonal documents, independent of CBS, held by USA Today, and US News and World Report. And you can't really count the Hodge refutation, as it is pretty qualified.

So, for all other who are reading this, judge for yourself before believing in "Rathergate".

But, agree with Joe that it REALLY doesn't matter, in regards to what we need to do NOW, for the country and the world, going forward.

JC,

1) if you check out that link, the author is every bit as partisan towards the Dems as the "wingnuts" being refuted supposedly are towards the GOP. Hardly an unbiased "expert" source.

2) The compelling thing to me is: while I'm willing to concede it might have been possible to create documents that looked like that back in the early '70s, it is coincidental beyond the point of reason that ALL of them would just happen to match up exactly with re-done memos typed into Word, using default settings, thirty years later -- to the point that even the line wraps occur in the exact same spots. Let's be real here -- the odds of that happening are astromically low. All attempts at "expert" bafflegarb aside, for that reason alone the documents are obviously forgeries.

3) I agree, the whole thing is a side issue anyway. What a sad election -- fought over idiocy like this.

I'm not sure about "Rathergate"/"the Rather forgery" (!) -- aren't you too quick? -- forgery seems far from proven, yet your just go ahead with these "audacious" qualifications as if it were an established fact:

The X Files Of Lt. Bush
By AMANDA RIPLEY

"[...] Some insist it would have been nearly impossible for a 1970s-era typewriter to produce the memos because of the letter spacing in the documents and the use of a raised and compact th symbol. But Bill Glennon, a technology consultant in New York City who worked for IBM repairing typewriters from 1973 to 1985, says those experts "are full of crap. They just don't know." Glennon says there were IBM machines capable of producing the spacing, and a customized key -- the likes of which he says were not unusual -- could have created the superscript th. [...]

"Experts disagree about whether the papers could have been produced on a 1970s-era typewriter:

"1 TYPEFACE
The shape is similar to Times New Roman, which is popular on today's computer. CBS counters that the font was first available in the 1930s

"2 SPACING
The words have proportional spacing; some letters take up more space than others across the line. Some typewriters had this feature in the early 1970s

"3 SUPER-SCRIPT
Experts say only customized typewriters had a key for the small th. Other typewritten Bush records show a similar -- but not identical -- feature

"4 SIGNATURE
CBS insists that Lieut. Colonel Jerry Killian's signature matches those on other documents, proving authenticity"

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040920-695873-2,00.html

Joe, that first quote was to the target.

Thank you.

Does anybody know a quick way to get stats to compare homicide statistics in the U.S. v. in Iraq - i.e., our 1,000 who died for something honorable v. our usual crime. I think our auto statistics come out about 1,000 every 10 days or so.

Thanks if you do. And, Joe, thanks again.

Sorry, Joe.

Not.Gonna.Happen. Not now, not anytime soon.

As evidence, I hold forth public discourse over the past three years. The Twin Towers were still burning when folks on the left (e.g. ANSWER) got together to figure out how to best help* the terrorists, and since then, an ever-increasing and depressingly large number of influential democrats have been drinking the left's poisionous Kool-Aid. With the MSM as partisan as it is, it's been doling out the same Kool-Aid everywhere.

Just a week or so ago, the D's got friggin' John Glenn to come out and do the BushHitler thing, and hardly anybody noticed because everyone's used to that kind of talk from the D's.

All of these comments are very stimulating, particularly those of lewy14. Thanks to all of you for expounding on what I wrote in Between Hope and Fear.

For the moment I don't have much to add, but I will be digesting all of this for a little while. It will probably rear its head back on my blog in due course. Thanks Joe for the nice reference on your great blog.

TACITUS

http://betweenhopeandfear.blogspot.com/

Peggie

The most recently completed (2002) annual FBI crime stats are here - http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/cius_02/pdf/2sectiontwo.pdf

The 2002 per capita murder rate was 5.5 per 100,000.

The US troop strength is about 150,000, so the 1,000 death toll amounts to ~667 per 100,000.

The auto fatality rates for 2003 were about 15 per 100,000 people (from here http://www-fars.nhtsa.dot.gov/)

War is simply much more dangerous than civilian life, and more people are going to die in one way than the other. If you're trying to infer that this is a relatively low US casualty conflict, perhaps a better metric for comparison might be to compare Iraq's first year losses to the first day of the invasion of Normandy in WWII (~6500 US military casualties, 10000 total allied casualties). Historically speaking, current losses are very low (I doubt we've passed the first hour's casualties of DDay in Iraq yet). That isn't, of course, to minimize the tragic loss of any one individual.

That said, I've spoken with a number of otherwise intelligent people recently who don't even beleive we're currently at war, a level of denial re: 9/11 and Bin Laden's '94 jihad declaration I find truly shocking.

I blogged this (comparing death rates) a while ago here ...

A.L.

I am about to prove that George Bush flew an F-16 in the National Guard in 1971.

"1 TYPEFACE
The shape is similar to Times New Roman, which is popular on today's computer. CBS counters that the font was first available in the 1930s"

1. ENGINE
Then engine is similar to the General Electric F110-GE-100/129. It has an intake, and an exhaust. It is located at the rear of the plane. Jet engines were first developed by the Nazis in the 1940s.

"2 SPACING
The words have proportional spacing; some letters take up more space than others across the line. Some typewriters had this feature in the early 1970s"

2 PERFORMANCE
Bush's jet flew at a maximum speed of over 800 MPH. Chuck Yeager first broke the sound barrier in 1947... 25 years before Bush flew. Think about it.

"3 SUPER-SCRIPT
Experts say only customized typewriters had a key for the small th. Other typewritten Bush records show a similar -- but not identical -- feature"

3.PAINFULLY OBVIOUS
Bush's jet had 2 wings, a tail assembly, and an engine. Other jets of the era did as well. An F-16 had, you guessed it, 2 wings, a tail assembly, and an engine. A spokeperson from General Dynamics confirms this.

"4 SIGNATURE
CBS insists that Lieut. Colonel Jerry Killian's signature matches those on other documents, proving authenticity"

4.PAINT JOB
Air Force experts confirm F-16s were painted with pictures of rectangular boxes containing red and white stripes on either side of a blue circle containing a white star. Just like in this picture http://www.wpafb.af.mil/museum/research/fighter/f102.htm

Case closed.

Ever seen the cartoon "Dexter's Laboratory"? There's an episode involving time travel during which Dexter the boy genius exclaims, "The future!? I looooove the future!"

I don't.
When I think about how this ordeal will change us, I can't get very far because we are at such a pivotal point in the Iraq war, the opening battle in a new era. If we cut and run, which to me is the most likely sorry-ass scenario, the United States will have lost so much credibility I feel panicky just thinking about it. And I think it will take something like fifty years for the stink to wear off. Although I could see it taking even longer.

If we stay and succeed in getting the ball rolling in Iraq, it's still going to be chaotic and bloody in Iraq for a long time. If, as many hope, this leads to other populations in the ME deciding they want democracy and a reformation of the Muslim religion (oh, is that all?), can anyone imagine what the ME will look like for the next 100 years? Bloody. Therefore, under the best of circumstances, accomplishments in Iraq will be questioned and weighed against the costs for a long time. If we succeed in Iraq, I don't think we will go country to country, as some have proposed. I think we will return to a more isolationist position to try to pay for all of this.

80s: The future is so bright, I've got to wear shades.

Now: The future is so dark, I need night vision goggles, along with some duct tape and plastic sheeting.

"If we stay and succeed in getting the ball rolling in Iraq, it's still going to be chaotic and bloody in Iraq for a long time. If, as many hope, this leads to other populations in the ME deciding they want democracy and a reformation of the Muslim religion (oh, is that all?), can anyone imagine what the ME will look like for the next 100 years? Bloody"

So pretty much like the last 10,000 years. If we've learned any lesson, history doesnt take time outs. Sometimes it takes a breath before the plunge.

Mark, I don't think I get what you mean.

Alice

”When I think about how this ordeal will change us, I can't get very far because we are at such a pivotal point in the Iraq war, the opening battle in a new era. If we cut and run, which to me is the most likely sorry-ass scenario, the United States will have lost so much credibility I feel panicky just thinking about it. And I think it will take something like fifty years for the stink to wear off. Although I could see it taking even longer.” (emphasis mine)

Here’s what I’m really interested about because you make a point that everyone seems to keep coming back to of which I don’t know what the basis for the argument is.

US credibility. What did we have, when did we have it, how long have we had it and finally when did we lose it. IE Credibility as compared to what. Now if you have a yard stick you can measure our credibility with I’d like to know what it is.

"Okay, you are entitled to your opinion. However, clearly there are a lot of people with more expertise than you or I, that disagree. Here's one typewriter refutation, at the least:

JC he is not an expert on typewriters, he may be an expert on commercial printing, but they are two different things. He tries to cover up his weak argument with an appeal to authority and lots of ad hominems. From the link JC pointed to:

“If you are measuring a photocopy of an original document, the measurements can be off by half a point or more.”

This is irrelevant, a photocopy will change the scaling, it will not change the ratios. He then attempts to make a claim that is mathematically flawed based on the scaling.

“The "kerning" and letter spacing you think you see may or may not exist on the original document.

Nonsense, the only thing changed is the scale, all spacing will maintain a constant ratio. He follows with this as proof:

“I know this because I learned it from my old film patching days. If all I had to work with was a photocopy, my patch wouldn't match.”

Of course it wouldn’t, it would need to be scaled back to the original dimensions. His argument is non sequitur. He fails to address the fact that a document created in Word overlays the forged documents quite well. When the documents are scaled to the same size all the ratios, letters size, letter spacing, line spacing ect., match up. He goes on about the Selectrics which were mono type spacing, another non sequitur. Then this which makes no logical sense at all:

“I've collected a few books published and printed in the 19th century. I promise you it is possible to recreate the pages of those books digitally.”

Well duh! The fact we can reproduce, with today’s technology, something from the past proves we can duplicate something from the past.

USMC: I'm not sure I'm smart enough to answer your excellent questions. I guess this is what it means to me: If we promise a people or a nation money, do we get it to them? How much of the funds promised for the rebuilding of Iraq have actually made it there? In general, the same goes for keeping promises regarding protection, alliances, treaties, pursuing criminals cooperatively, etc. Some of these things are more concrete, like providing funds in a timely manner. Some are more complex, like alliances, which can be both supported and undermined in all kinds of subtle ways. And of course we have to decide whether we want to be held to a higher standard or to the same standard as other nations. Frankly I go back and forth on that one.

Clearly there are governments we trust more than others, right? Why? I think because some come through for us and play less dirty than others. I guess that's what I mean by 'credibility'. If a government joins us in an endeavor, can they show their people credible, recent evidence that shows that we will follow through?

That's my stab.