Day: December 24, 2005

Debating Iraq: Ritter Vs. Hitchens in Tarrytown

Jon Ponder

War lies: Bob Geiger at the Yellow Dog Blog was on hand when former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter debated the formerly liberal Christopher Hitchens about the war in Iraq. The event was held at the Tarrytown Music Hall near New York City and was moderated by talk-show host Jay Diamond. Based on Bob’s report, Ritter won the debate quite handily:

“[We] cannot solve Iraq until we get some answers about the war’s foundation. And, I’ll tell you right now, it’s the most corrupt foundation imaginable.”
— Scott Ritter

“I am as opposed to this war as strongly as one can possibly be against this war,” said Ritter firmly. “I cannot come up with one justification worthy of a single American life for why we’re in Iraq…”

Hitchens, the acerbic British author and Vanity Fair contributor is a self-described “proponent of the Iraq war,” and, while sometimes hard to pin down on his overall political views, clearly came to this event prepared to defend George W. Bush and the Iraq war.

“Another confrontation with Saddam Hussein was inevitable,” said Hitchens in defending the Iraq invasion. “Who should have determined the timing of that confrontation? Saddam Hussein? Or the U.S. and other democratic nations?”

When asked point-blank by the moderator whether Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had the credible capability of harming the U.S. at the time of the invasion, Hitchens, who was in no position to challenge Ritter’s expertise on the subject, stuck to vague GOP talking points.

“As long as Saddam Hussein was in power, it was not possible for the U.S. to ever relax,” Hitchens said.

Ritter, whose last role at the U.N. was as chief of the “Counter-Concealment Team,” fired back at Hitchens.

“The Iraq Survey Group, headed by David Kay, found [in post-invasion Iraq] that Iraq had destroyed the totality of its nuclear weapons program and confirmed what the CIA had already said about them having destroyed it as far back as the summer of 1991.”

In 2002, I spent an hour or so driving west from Palm Springs listening to Ritter making some of the same points about Iraq in a taped speech on Pacifica Radio. He introduced himself as a lifelong Republican who had voted for Bush in 2000, and then he proceeded to tear apart the Bushists’ phoney rationale for war.

That trip through the desert was a tipping point. Ritter confirmed what I suspected: We were being lied to about the reasons for war. I had supported ridding Afghanistan of the Taliban, but there was no way I could get behind a war that was being cooked up for obscure reasons by a failed Texas oilman and the former CEO of Halliburton, both of whom had axes to grind with Saddam that had nothing to do with national security.

Scott has been right about Iraq from the beginning, so I found this statement in the Yellow Dog’s report very telling:

Impeachment Goes Mainstream

Jon Ponder

Who’s scoffing now: As constant readers of these pages know, we have been advocating impeaching President Bush since before the fall of Iraq. (Shorter: The promotion of the war was either based on lies or the grossest case of official negligence and incompetence in the history of modern warfare. Either option represents a threat to our national security and urgently requires corrective measures – even more urgently than, say, punishing a president for lying about sex. )

“Impeachment would be about the power of Congress to set wiretapping rules by law, and it is about the obligation of the president to follow the rules in the Acts that he and his predecessors signed into law.”
— Barrons

Until recently, our clamor to impeach President Bush has been greeted with eye-rolling, nervous titters, groans and name calling – including being pegged as “liberal extremists” by an odd little troll.

What has changed regarding impeachment lately, of course, is the fact that Mr. Bush has openly admitted that he committed an impeachable offense. He chose to break a law that prevented him from spying on U.S. citizens, and not just once – Mr. Bush has confessed to violating the Foriegn Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) hundreds of times.

As a result, no less than Barrons magazine (via Echidne of the Snakes) is discussing the “I word” —

Willful disregard of a law is potentially an impeachable offense. It is at least as impeachable as having a sexual escapade under the Oval Office desk and lying about it later. The members of the House Judiciary Committee who staged the impeachment of President Clinton ought to be as outraged at this situation. They ought to investigate it, consider it carefully and report either a bill that would change the wiretap laws to suit the president or a bill of impeachment.

It is important to be clear that an impeachment case, if it comes to that, would not be about wiretapping, or about a possible Constitutional right not to be wiretapped. It would be about the power of Congress to set wiretapping rules by law, and it is about the obligation of the president to follow the rules in the Acts that he and his predecessors signed into law.

Bush Sees No Difference Between Real Crises And Political Problems

Jon Ponder

Up until now this president’s solution to everything has been to stare into the cameras, lie and keep on lying until such time as the political problem disappears. And now, unable to comprehend that while political crises may wilt in the face of such tactics, real crises do not, he and his team are responding to this first serious feet-to-the-fire Iraq emergency in the same way they always have — with a fusillade of silly, easily disprovable bullshit. Bush and his mouthpieces continue to try to obfuscate and cloud the issue of why we’re in Iraq, and they do so not only selectively but constantly, compulsively, like mental patients who can’t stop jacking off in public. They don’t know the difference between a real problem and a political problem, because to them, there is no difference. What could possibly be worse than bad poll numbers?

— Matt Taibi, Rolling Stone, via Firedoglake

Chris Matthews, ‘Misinformer of the Year’

Jon Ponder

I’m a long-time “Hardball” viewer, and after all these years, I’m still not sure what to think about Chris Matthews.

Before he got his own slot on MSNBC, Matthews was a center-left newspaper columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle. He moved to television just in time for the Clinton wars, when, like a lot of other DC Kool Kids – Maureen Dowd, Christopher Hitchens, Andrew Sullivan, to name a few – he apparently took the Clintons’ flaws and foibles as a personal betrayal.

Today, five years on, he is still mad at them – spittle flies anytime Hillary’s name comes up.

Matthews was idealistic in his youth. He joined the Peace Corps and was a speechwriter for Pres. Carter and a staff member for House Speaker Tip O’Neill. Now he treats his early resume as a liability. Like the class brainiac who plays dumb so he can hang out with the jocks, he over-compensates for his liberal past by toadying up to Republicans, and regularly spouts their propaganda and talking points as fact.

Making nice with rightwingers is a smart career move. He obviously sees himself as next in line to host NBC’s once-vaunted “Meet the Press” on Sunday mornings. The show’s reputation has been so compromised by Tim Russert – another journo with a liberal background who is overweaningly pliable to the right – that replacing Russert with Matthews would be, at best, a lateral move.

Whatever happens with MTP, Chris Matthews’ GOP butt-kissing has already won him at least one accolade. Media Matters, the left’s leading news-bias watchdog organization, has named him “Misinformer of the Year.” (Last year’s winner was Bill O’Reilly.)

There is a thorough list of his mis-statements at Media Matters, but here are Matthews’ recent statements about Dear Leader that could have been scripted by Karl Rove:

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