Saturday, 31 May, 2003Pernicious conflationLooking back over my various entries regarding the Iraqi WMD issue, I realise that I have come very close to walking into the trap laid by those opposed to the war, or at least come so close that it would be difficult for an onlooker to tell the difference. The trap in question is the conflation of the issue whether, and the extent to which, the various members of the Bush administration (notably Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, Fleischer and Bush himself) overstated the case against Iraq, notably regarding the stockpiles of bioweapons and CW agents possessed by Iraq, on the one hand, and the validity of the case against Iraq as distinct from these overstatements on the other. posted 2024 Z-8 [more..] Friday, 30 May, 2003Fisk contagionBill Herbert over at has an interesting observation on a piece in the Independent which purports to quote US Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz as saying in an interview to be published in an upcoming issue of Vanity Fair that the administration focused on the WMD justification "because it was the one reason everyone could agree on." Based on these purported quotes, the article's author, David Usborne goes on to state: The comments suggest that, even for the US administration, the logic that was presented for going to war may have been an empty shell.The only problem, as Bill adroitly demonstrates by means of the interview transcript, is that Sam Tanenhaus, who wrote the article for Vanity Fair, has taken some liberties in reflecting Wolfowitz' exact words, and Usborne didn't bother to corroborate this. I would have thought there were enough people saying the wrong things in the administration that soi-disant journalists wouldn't have to rig their words to make a point; compounding the error on the Independent's is the fact that the article in question came under the heading of "news," as opposed to "opinion." Not that I think it's permissible to misquote people in opinion pieces either, but it's indicative of how deep the Independent has sunk. Alas, I have little doubt this will become another tidbit to be circulated around à la Maureen Dowd's "quote" of president Bush. After all, they read it on the internet, so it must be true. posted 1917 Z-8 [link] Quote of the Week This week's Economist contains the leader "Secret weapons", with the sub-headline "Did George Bush and Tony Blair wage war under false pretences?" The line I loved was the following: One of the main problems with the evidence concerning Mr Hussein's WMD was always that it was both boring and complicated. Many of those who opposed the war never bothered to acquaint themselves with it; many who now allege that the proof was cooked up in London and Washington have forgotten it.The Economist tends to run leaders relating to actual articles, and while the leader is premium content, the article "Casus or casuistry?" is not. To be perfectly honest, the article doesn't tell anyone much that is actually new, but is sums the whole "where are the WMDs?" situation up nicely. posted 1259 Z-8 [link] Thursday, 29 May, 2003Guantanamo revisitedSo the latest developments regarding the Camp Delta detention facility at Guantanamo Bay appear to be that the US DoD is thinking about installing one or more courtrooms for use by military tribunals, possibly a permanent prison, and possibly an execution chamber as well. Okay, the fact that the US government is at last considering actually charging and trying the detainees, rather than holding them in the deep-freeze indefinitely, is an improvement of sorts. However, of all the possible options, this is the most dubious. For starters, it perpetuates the existence of the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay, which a recent leader in The Economist described as "symbolis[ing] a legal limbo into which no law-abiding society should ever willingly stray." I've commented on GTMO before (here and, in passing, here), and these current plans are not illegal, but they're certainly not what one expects from an administration that purports to serve justice and uphold the rule of law. posted 0147 Z-8 [more..] |
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