3 Strikes and You're Out: The New York Times is "Wrong" Again

The Evening Standard | 4-17-03 | Mia T

[Mia T]

3 Strikes and You're Out:
The New York Times is "Wrong" Again

 

Horror: it is claimed the mass graves are near Saddam's Tharthar palace

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'Mass graves litter Iraq'

By Steve Boggan in Baghdad, Evening Standard

17 April 2003

An Iraqi colonel in the Iraqi internal security service today claims he has damning evidence directly linking Saddam Hussein to a series of horrific crimes against humanity.

 

	More on the war
	" Free newsflash " Galleries: War in pictures " Talk about rebuilding Iraq " Comment and opinion " War -in depth " Appeal: Help the victims of war " Video: Footage from Iraq

He has testified in chilling detail to witnessing thousands of innocent men, women and children being murdered by Saddam's henchmen and buried in mass desert graves.

United Nations investigators are set to launch an immediate investigation into the colonel's claims of Kurds and Shi'ite muslims being herded into the graves before being either shot or buried alive.

Other stories:
'Mass graves litter Iraq' UN considers lifting sanctions Virgin to fly in Iraq supplies France left out of 'stabilising' force Bush aide: I think Saddam's dead Our job is still only half done

Drawing comparisons with Nazi extermination of the Jews, the officer told the Evening Standard that Kurds were packed 200 at a time into trucks and driven to the Al Anbar desert west of Baghdad or desert areas near Tharthar, north-west of the capital. They had been told they were to be "relocated", but those who survived the journey were murdered.

Thousands of Shias, too, were buried in the same two areas, the colonel said. Tharthar, north-west of Baghdad, is where Saddam built a "green palace" with an artificial lake so he could go fishing.

The UN High Commission for Human Rights has numerous reports of unsolved disappearances of Kurds and Shias dating back 20 years. The officer, who wants to remain anonymous, has offered to help investigators and says other officers are prepared to come forward.

He sought no money for his testimony. "I saw thousands killed and buried in mass graves," he said. "Some were lined up and machine-gunned before being covered with sand. Others were just buried alive."

While there is no proof of these claims so far, they could justify Prime Minister Tony Blair and President George Bush's decision to wage war on Iraq. The colonel was a member of Al-Amn al-'Amm, the force responsible for policing political activity, from 1982 to 1999. The Standard has seen his service identification.

During the Eighties, he said, the Kurds of northern Iraq where slaughtered wholesale. "Saddam had a programme of telling villagers they were being relocated south," he said. "We would take trucks that would normally hold 12 to 15 people and put in 200 with no water or ventilation.

"Many would die on the way. Survivors were driven to Al Anbar or Tharthar and buried alive in vast holes dug in the ground. I saw thousands of people - men, women and children - die this way."

After the Shi'ite uprisings in the south following the first Gulf War, Saddam ordered his intelligence services, the Republican Guard and the Al-Amn al-'Amm to round up all Shia males between 20 and 40.

"We took thousands from Shia areas in Kerbala, Najaf, Basra, Mosul, Kut, Babylon and from Saddam City in Baghdad and they were bused into the desert. Then they were shot and buried.

"At one base in Muhaywir [in the northern part of the Al Anbar desert], I saw a line of men maybe 3km long. One officer would ask each man his name and before he could reply another would shoot him in the back of the head." The colonel also told of thousands of political executions. "We had permission to kill anyone," he said. "We had a thousand ways of killing and all were used."

People were killed for the slightest criticism of Saddam, or for making a joke. "We would take people to the police station and give them a drink laced with sodium fluoroacetate or thallium, poisons for killing rats. Then we would let them go. Later, they would die and no one knew it was us.

"Many officers hated Saddam and hated what we had to do. But if we refused, we and every member of our families would have been killed.

"Believe me, the British and Americans have done us a great service getting rid of Saddam."

Karim Jhezroaui, UN human-rights co-ordinator in Iraq, asked yesterday for details of the colonel's claims.

"We have many reports of Kurds and Shias being killed and details of many disappearances," he said. "We will cross-check these claims with the ones we already have."

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New York Times Chairman/Publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. admits to Brian Lamb:

• "Times dropped ball during Holocaust by failing to connect the dots"

• Times was able to endorse clinton by separating clinton's "policies" from "the man" [i.e., by failing to connect the dots!]

 

 

by Mia T, November 30, 2001

alpractice and/or malfeasance by "compartmentalization" redux...

It appears that The New York Times doesn't learn from its mistakes. Will it take The Times another 50 years to understand/admit that by having endorsed for reelection a "documentably dysfunctional" president with "delusions" -- its own words -- it must bear sizeable blame for the 9-11 horror and its aftermath ?

(Note, by the way, the irony of Sulzberger's carefully worded rationalization of the clinton endorsements, pointing to clinton "policies," not achievements, (perhaps understanding, at last, that clinton "achievements" -- when legal -- were more illusory than real--perhaps understanding, at last, that The Times' Faustian bargain was not such a good deal after all).).

If we assume that the clintons were the proximate cause of 9-11 --- a proposition not difficult to demonstrate-- it then follows that The New York Times must, indeed, bear sizeable blame for the 9-11 horror and its aftermath.

Yet More

CNNs of Commission, Rapist Demagogues and 9/11
 

by Mia T, 4/9/99, updated 4/19/03  

 

Sins of omission and commission are not circumscribable... and CNN's shameless revisionist efforts will not make them so.

the movie

Nothing demonstrates this principle of unboundedness better than the clinton rapes.

You will recall that the protectors of the impeached rapist rapidly became the protectors of marauding Milosevic rapist-guerrillas. Had the protectors of the impeached rapist denounced the Milosevic rapists, they would have thrown a monkey wrench into the Senate's show-trial deus ex machina of choice, willful ignorance. And so the rape of Albanian women by Milosevic thugs went virtually unreported... and unopposed.

 

This dynamic became especially clear when the protected. i.e, the rapist, became the protector. Whereas bill clinton took every opportunity to demagogue the Bosnia rapes, he never once mentioned the rapes that occurred in Kosovo. This seeming inconsistency evaporates when one realizes that during the intervening period clinton was fingered as the serial rapist of Juanita Broaddrick, 19-year-old Eileen Wellstone, an as-yet-unnamed, drugged 14-year-old, and others.

Analogous behavior by the rapist provides additional inferential evidence of this dynamic: clinton, the unabashed Balkanizer, had no problem denouncing Milosevic's Balkanizing. clinton, the brazen thug, had no problem denouncing Milosevic's thuggery. Yet clinton, the about-to-be-outed closet rapist, was mum on the Milosevic rapes.

 

 
--a senator to Henry Hyde

 

 

It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope.
We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth,
and listen to the song of that siren
till she transforms us into beasts.

Is this the part of wise men,
engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty?
Are we disposed to be the number of those
who, having eyes, see not,
and having ears, hear not,
the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation?
For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost,
I am willing to know the whole truth;
to know the worst, and to provide for it.
Patrick Henry
 

In a dark time, the eye begins to see.
Theodore Roethke 

But even as Clinton fails to grasp the scandal's metabolism
he understands all too well its most significant byproduct.
You can see it in his eyes.

 Once reflecting a Machiavellian confidence,
they now dart back and forth reflexively,
searching futilely for approval,
attempting desperately to dispel his own certain knowledge
that his moral authority is gone. . .
forever.
Mia T

 

 

 

Q ERTY6 (clinton was an utter failure)
DEATH BY MISREPORT: 4^TH-ESTATE MALFEASANCE AND 9/11

REALITY CHECK bump!

 

 

 

The Real Danger of a Fake President:

Post-9/11 Reconsideration of The Placebo President

by Mia T, 1.06.02  

 

 

In May, 1996, American diplomats were informed in a Sudanese government fax that Bin Laden was about to be expelled -- giving Washington another chance to seize him. The decision not to do so went to the very top of the White House, according to former administration sources.

They say that the clear focus of American policy was to discourage the state sponsorship of terrorism. So persuading Khartoum to expel Bin Laden was in itself counted as a clear victory. The administration was "delighted".

Bin Laden took off from Khartoum on May 18 in a chartered C-130 plane with 150 of his followers, including his wives. He was bound for Jalalabad in eastern Afghanistan. On the way the plane refuelled in the Gulf state of Qatar, which has friendly relations with Washington, but he was allowed to proceed unhindered.

Barely a month later, on June 25, a 5,000lb truck bomb ripped apart the front of Khobar Towers, a US military housing complex in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. The explosion killed 19 American servicemen. Bin Laden was immediately suspected...

US missed three chances to seize Bin Laden

Just look around this chamber. We have members from virtually every racial, ethnic, and religious background. And America is stronger for it. But as we have seen, these differences all too often spark hatred and division, even here at home. . . This is not the American way. We must draw the line. Without delay, we must pass the Hate Crimes Prevention Act and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. And we should reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act.

bill clinton, State of Union Speech, January 27, 2000

 

"I'm sorry, but the president is one of the crudest men I have ever encountered in government service," says one female agent. "He has no respect for women."

Among the comments clinton made in presence of Secret Service agents:

. Frequent speculation on the oral sex skills of women the president saw or met in receiving lines;

. References to the size of a woman's breasts, legs or figure;

. Sexual jokes.

After the Monica Lewinsky story broke, however, clinton toned down his rhetoric and behavior in front of his Secret Service agents, but those who guarded the president say enough of them saw and heard things which could be damaging to clinton.

 

"It depends on who Ken Starr calls," says one ex-agent. "The people who are on the job today are not necessarily the ones who know the most."

Turnover In clinton's Secret Service Detail 'Highest That Anyone Can Remember'

 

In the months that follow, reporters drop the issue. Feminists say little or nothing. Rape crisis center workers acknowledge that Broaddrick's case, including her reluctance to come forward, is typical of victims of sexual assault. But they decline to speak against clinton. Some cite the federal funding they receive as a result of the Violence Against Women Act, which was signed into law by clinton.

Why does the press continue to ignore the Juanita Broaddrick story?

Richard Gere stunned fellow liberals Monday by suggesting that President Bush is doing a better job of fighting AIDS than President Bill Clinton did.

Introduced by Sharon Stone at a fund-raiser at Cipriani 42nd Street for the American Foundation for AIDS Research, the "Chicago" star hailed Bush for his State of the Union proposal to contribute $15 billion toward the AIDS battle in Africa and the Caribbean. Gere then addressed the track record of Bush's predecessor in the White House.

"I'm sorry, Sen. [Hillary] Clinton, but your husband did nothing about AIDS for eight years," Gere said.

GERE TAKES ON BILL, NY Daily News | 2/5/03

 

 

 

The Placebo President:

How a Rapist can be a Policy Feminist

 

placebo effect n.

A beneficial effect in a patient following a particular treatment that arises from the patient's expectations concerning the treatment rather than from the treatment itself.

 

Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

Sylvia Plath

 

The placebo effect immediately came to mind as I listened to Shelby Steele, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution,debunk the following pernicious spin intended to save clinton.

To wit: A proven felon and utter reprobate can remain president; clinton can be a failed human being but a good president.

The error in these statements arises, says Steele, from the belief that virtuousness is separate from personal responsibility so that one's virtuousness as an individual is determined by one's political positions on issues rather than on whether or not in one's personal life there is a consistency and a responsibility.

Steele's contention is that this compartmentalization, rather than being the amazing advantage the clintons would have us believe, in fact, spills toxicity into, corrupts, the culture.

If mere identification with good policies is what makes one virtuous then those policies become, what Steele calls, iconographic, that is to say they just represent virtuousness. They don't necessarily do virtuous things.

If clinton's semantic parsing strips meaning from our words, clinton's iconographic policies strip meaning from our society, systematically deconstructing our society as a democracy. . .

I would take Shelby Steele's thesis one step further. I maintain that iconographic policy functions like a placebo, producing a real, physiological and social effects.

The placebo effect is, after all, the brain's triumph over reality. Expectation alone can produce powerful physiological results. The placebo effect was, at one time, an evolutionary advantage: act now, think later

bill clinton is the paradigmatic Placebo President. Placebo is Latin for "I shall please." And please he does doling out sham treatments, iconographs, with abandon. To please, to placate, to numb, to deflect. Ultimately to showcase his imagined virtue. Or to confute his genuine vice.

clinton will dispense sugar pills (or bombs) at the drop of a high-heeled shoe... or at the hint of high treason...

clinton's charlatanry mimics that of primitive medicine. Through the 1940s, doctors had little effective medicine to offer so they deliberately attempted to induce the placebo response.

The efficaciousness of today's medicines does not diminish the power of the placebo. A recent review of placebo-controlled studies found that placebos and genuine treatments are often equally effective. If you expect to get better, you will.

Which brings me back to the original question: Can clinton be a failed human being but a good president?

Clearly he cannot. These two propositions are mutually exclusive. clinton's fundamental failure is a complete lack of integrity. He has violated his covenant with the American people.

Because clinton has destroyed his moral authority as a leader, he can no longer function even as a quack; the placebo effect is gone.

And so the Placebo President must now go, too.

 

 

 

Epilogue

September 11 changed a lot of things for me, Bill [O'Reilly]. I will say this, before September 11, I was definitely mildly myopic in terms of my political agenda. If you were Democrat you were probably right, and if you were a Republican you were probably wrong. Everything changed for me that day...

My entire worldview changed. If you would have told me September 9 that I would have been at the world series game filming George Bush throwing out the first pitch with my 6-year-old son crying, I never would have believed you, but I was. Because my whole worldview changed.

ROSIE O'DONNELL

 

[Mia T]

THE CLINTONS--AMERICA'S BIGGEST BLUNDER
Hear Bush 41 Warn Us--October 19, 1992*

CNN's favorite general, Wesley Clark, has also been heard to opine that our troops are getting bogged down in Iraq. His competence to judge American generals is questionable since his command was limited to working for NATO. We prefer to hear from American generals. Clark's contribution to international relations consisted of mistakenly bombing the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. In his zeal to prevent troop casualties, he ordered pilots to fly at such high altitudes that the pilots complained that they were being forced to incur unnecessary civilian casualties.

The enemy within

 

hear

*Thanx to Cloud William for text and audio

 

LEHRER: President Bush, your closing statement, sir.

PRESIDENT BUSH: Three weeks from now--two weeks from tomorrow, America goes to the polls and you're going to have to decide who you want to lead this country ...

On foreign affairs, some think it's irrelevant. I believe it's not. We're living in an interconnected world...And if a crisis comes up, ask who has the judgment and the experience and, yes, the character to make the right decision?

And, lastly, the other night on character Governor Clinton said it's not the character of the president but the character of the presidency. I couldn't disagree more. Horace Greeley said the only thing that endures is character. And I think it was Justice Black who talked about great nations, like great men, must keep their word.

And so the question is, who will safeguard this nation, who will safeguard our people and our children? I need your support, I ask for your support. And may God bless the United States of America.

(Applause)

 

 

play tape

[Puppage]

[Mia T]

CNNs of Commission
Either they are obsolete… or civilization is Q ERTY8 ^BUMP!

url-linked images of shame
copyright Mia T 2003.

[Illbay]

Yeah, but how many strikes does that make?

[Freedom'sWorthIt]

bump

[Mia T]

[Miss Marple]

The New York Times, like Clinton, takes repeated mulligans.

[Mia T]

You're right, of course...

I was using "3" metaphorically. ;)

[Mia T]

 Mulligan bump!

"Clinton's sports love, as everyone knows, was running -- he told me himself that he ran 25-30 miles a week..."

EX-CLINTON AIDE: DC Renaissance Hotel's Sports Bar is Deification of Bush, Anti-Clinton

Given clinton's FDR ruse a few years back, the utter absurdity (if not the irony) of clinton as athlete-hero should not be lost in the Weiner whining...

And whatever happened to the golf-as-sports-love, anyway?

On clinton Crookedness:
Mulligans, Peyronie's Disease and The First Rapist

 

by Mia T

 

 

He made more of a fuss over a minor knee injury than FDR ever did about polio.

The Weekly Standard, Ask Not. . .

 

Now, as regards the wretched Cheapside brat,

And turmoil his concupiscence begat,

Methinks MacJeff's crook'd feelpolitik, the lasix death, his solipsistic sex

Thou must put in cold blood'd cardiovascular context.

 

The brain deviseth laws for the blood,

but the brain 'tself is ne'er understood.

The King's crook'dness flows from limp circulation.

Methinks the solution is swift amputation.

Mia T, On Neutered and Neutering
Mia T and Edward Zehr (EZ)

 

 

Lame FDR Impression

 

The evaluation of the treatments for Peyronie's disease is difficult; the natural history is such that the plaque may resolve spontaneously. As recently as 1973, no treatment had been evaluated in a controlled clinical study.

 

Francois de LaPeyronie (1678-1747) notwithstanding, the origin of the eponym is vague and the disease remains an enigma. To this day, the treatment can be difficult. It is not surprising that so many treatments have been tried and so much dogma written.

 

Indeed, in 1903, William Johnson Walsham, the famous surgeon from St Bartholomew's Hospital in London, and author of the standard surgical text book of the day, wrote; "... if treatment of the plaque with iodides is unsuccessful ... or if the induration progresses ... then the whole penis must be promptly amputated." Would that Dr. Walsham had treated The First Rapist.

 

As we shall see, in a bizarre twist of knee--not fate--bill clinton seems to have suffered penile surgery, nonetheless.

 

Note:

 

•Peyronie's disease occurs most frequently in middle-aged men, less frequently in older men and infrequently in younger men who have more elastic tissues.

 

•The acquired penile curvature of Peyronie's disease can result from certain sexual practices.

 

•Correction of congenital penile curvature -- or acquired penile curvature secondary to Peyronie's disease -- can be accomplished through a number of simple surgical techniques and medical treatments.

 

•Correction is difficult to detect but it is possible when done by an expert who is specifically looking for it.

 

•When the surgery is performed, the urologist's standard recommendation is that the patient USE CRUTCHES AND LATER A CANE to avoid irritating the area, which begs the following question:

 

Was bill clinton the first U.S. President in history to obstruct justice by penile surgery?

 

The First Rapist clearly understood that Jones v. clinton was on the docket.

Being the most brilliant president ever, he must have figured out that any confirmation of the crookedness alleged by Jones would surely do him in.

 

The documented serial shredder and reflexive obstructor of justice would have, doubtless, thought nothing of a little evidentiary nip here and tuck there.

 

But how to explain the time out for the surgery and the post-op crutches?

 

Eureka! (Or we should say "Fore!"?) A knee injury--actual or feigned--would (if you'll pardon the expression) turn the trick.

NOTE: I would normally favor the former option--a real knee injury, as it would require one less doctor to be in on the felony obstruction (i.e., the urologist and not the orthopedic surgeon); but in this case we are dealing with a quintessential coward (one who is as cowardly about physical harm to himself as he is cavalier about physical harm to others--witness the rapes and the bombings), so I will have to go with the latter option, a feigned bum knee... Unless...unless the penile surgery was done "in-house" on an "outpatient" basis, i.e.,unless the penile surgery in fact preceded "the accident," and the urologist was instructed to give The First Rapist's knee the requisite whack while the coward was under anesthesia.

Cowardly Rapist in Africa

Either scenario is consistent with The First Rapist's convenient "accident" at the estate of pro golfer, Greg Norman where, you may recall, Mulligan Man injured his "knee," required emergent surgery on said "knee" FORE!thwith...and used crutches and then a cane for an extended period post-op.

The happy couple:"Mission Accomplished"

Hauling First Rapist-cum-apocalyptic kneepad onto Air Force One

 

Despite milking the wheelchair bit for all it was worth--or perhaps because of it--bill clinton emerged post-op more Larry Flynt

 

 

than FDR.

 

 

proving the propostition, confirmed by the democrat debacle of '02, that maladroit, clintonian use of props and poses often backfires.

 

The clintons' fundamental error: They are too arrogant and dim-witted to understand that the demagogic process in this fiberoptic age isn't about counting spun heads; it's about not discounting circumambient brains.

running clintons...

by Mia T, 2.16.03

WASHINGTON, Feb. 14 /U.S. Newswire/ -- Ex-Clinton political aide Bob Weiner is slamming the D.C. downtown Renaissance Hotel's new presidential photo sports bar as a ''deification of Bush, anti-Clinton, and thereby partisan.''

...Weiner said, ''I saw an entrance corridor of four dramatic George W. Bush photos, another Bush photo on a wall, and one Clinton photo -- buried in a corner inside the actual bar, of him playing pool. To me, and to several hotel employees with whom I spoke, the Bush photos were disproportionate considering that Clinton is our most recent and an eight-year president. The one Clinton photo denigrates the spirit of enthusiastic leadership he conveyed, and the photos of everyone else -- including Reagan and Bush I both riding horses over fences show vitality and high adventure.''

 "Clinton's sports love, as everyone knows, was running -- he told me himself that he ran 25-30 miles a week..."

EX-CLINTON AIDE: DC Renaissance Hotel's Sports Bar is Deification of Bush, Anti-Clinton

Bob Weiner, ex-clinton political aide and current coconspirator in the CLINTON-WAS-AN-UTTER-FAILURE Containment Team Scheme, may not be far off as to clinton mileage.

Pasty thighs and piano legs notwithstanding, both clintons always were, and are to this day, reflexive--some would even say perpetual--runners.

See them run...

Watch the clintons

• run on ad nauseam
• run a'fowl' of the law
• run with the enemy
• run guns and other contraband
• run down friend and foe alike
• run away with everything in sight
• run in place
• run short
• run scared
• run on empty
• run from responsibility
• run our country into the ground

..while Dubya runs rings around them both...

[Freedom'sWorthIt]

Oh my!

[Mia T]

this animation doesn't loop, so if you have a fast connection, you will miss the home run! (reload image to see)

[YaYa123]

Love your "mulligan" analogy added to Mia's magic.

The NYT's reputation is shot, whether their honchos admit it or not. I mean, really, of the 60+ % of Americans who support President Bush, do any of them give a hoot what the NYT has to write....about anything?

The NYT is living off it's legacy, as Bill and Hillary struggle to rewrite theirs. Gossips chide both Clintons for being so tardy turning in their books. I'm thinking their ghost writers finished long ago, but when damning new revelations pop up, they have to keep adding new CYA chapters. Those books gonna weigh more than Hillary's thighs!

[Miss Marple]

LOL! You are right! It seems like every month a new revelation is causing consternation in the Clinton camp.

Maybe this is the "smoke 'em out and get 'em on the run" strategery!

[aristeides]

'Buried alive in a concrete grave' .

[hattend]

Hey Mia T, What's the story behind this picture?

Is he yelling or doing an "ooooh ya!, baby!!"?

[MHGinTN]

You are a marvel! Keep it rolling, Mia. Someday Aemrica will awaken, and when we do, the bent one will be thoroughly shamed (he'll never be ashamed, though his very existence is a shame).

[bmwcyle]

bttt

[firewalk]

Good morning/afternoon Mia

[Howlin]

My husband said that there is a great story about Clinton and golf in the "March Madness" issue of Sports Illustrated.

Anybody have it? It's not online.