Arrogance

Republicans are starting to line up against Donald Rumsfeld's comments made in response to a soldier's question about the lack of armor on vehicles destined for Iraq. ".... "you go to war with the Army you have, not the Army you might want or wish to have."

Where was the planning? Where was the strategy? Why is this guy still our DOD Secretary?

It reflects the arrogance of the administration, from the top, about our ability to successfully wage a war without cause. Or for that manner, without a clear plan for the aftermath. At the same time, our armed service personnel, especially the ones in harm's way, are scrounging through scrap heaps for bits of metal and bullet-proof glass to attach to their vehicles in an attempt to avoid getting killed.

Here's a thought. Since all the top brass in the administration are too old to serve, they should send instead a few top aides, let's say those 20-40 years old, to stand and participate side by side with our troops who are most involved in the fight against the insurgents in Iraq. Assuming they survive a 6 months to a year deployment, they can report back to their bosses just how safe it is and how we're winning the peace.

post election....

A month since the election, and Washington State still really doesn't have a governor. Well, we do, but with only 42 more votes than the runner up (with ~2.8 million votes cast, after the first and mandatory machine recount), the hand recount is now proceeding and should be completed before Christmas. Of course, if this re-recount changes the results, will we have another one?

I wish we could recount the national election. But, all conspiracy theories aside, the results are what we have to live with for the next four years. It's not that I think the country cannot survive the administration. It will. In my lifetime we survived Viet Nam, Nixon and Watergate, Reagan's trickle down economics and 14% interest rates, Clinton's lying and affairs, and 9/11. We'll survive the loss of US prestige in the world, and we'll survive the war(s) we've become embroiled in. We'll even, eventually, get by the fact that besides going to war in Iraq for false reasons, in doing so we've created even more potential terrorists with a deep and all encompassing hatred of our country, and who only want to kill Americans and to damage our country physically and economically.

What's really been bothering me though, is that while the country will survive, so many in our armed services will not. How long can even the half of the country that supports our involvement in Iraq continue to do so without a clear reason? Will we end up slowly backing out, an exit strategy that we make up as we go? Will this end up being our next mini Viet Nam?

moving day, again

I'm moving all the entries to a different server space. I decided I want to be somewhat anonymous in these postings. Not that anybody's actually reading them, but they do pop up on google under my name and I'd rather be free to say what I want to, including anything I might want to say about my job, my employer (a science-based agency of the US Government), or whatever. In doing so, I'm not even going to try to have separate blogs for science, computer musings, or even those old posts that were really about my personal life. It will all go here. No rhyme or reason, no major theme.

Whatever.

OK, the Diddy Factor wasn't

Two weeks post election and it's still hard to believe. Fellow government workers, scientists and administrators alike, find it hard to believe. Life will go on though.

I was really surprised though by the fact that the effort to register new voters (especially those with cell phones instead of land lines, and who should be underrepresented in public opinion polls), did not have a bigger impact on the outcome (see this post).

I'll let Cringely apologize and say why. See "Bob Don't Know Diddy".

Election hangover

I'm still a little hung over from the election--it's a feeling of vague depression. But there it is. The Republican party managed to not only win the electoral college vote but also gain an overall majority of the popular vote.

Of course, they did it by dividing the country, or at least more so than it was. Blue in the West, North Central and North East. Red in the Middle and South, including the swing states of Ohio and Florida. Just enough for the new Republican mandate. Division over faith and morality.

The definition of the Republcan, Evangelical Morality is simple. No on personal choice (abortion rights), no on gay marriage or even civil unions. This new Morality does not extend to lying to the American public about WMD in Iraq in order to finish Daddy's war, nor does it extend to deals with the Saudis. It doesn't even extend to the extension of large tax breaks to the very rich and big corporations at the expense of the lower and middle class, the tax breaks that are driving up the nation's deficit to record levels.

When will the Republican's biggest constituency not counting Big Business, that is white, less educated males in the lower to middle income tax bracket, wake up to the fact that they are not better off in this climate? Good jobs are being outsourced out of the country in the quest to increase profits, replaced by minimum wage service jobs (do you want to supersize those fries?). Maybe they won't and will remain satisfied with the extra $200 bucks here and there and the idea that Big Government is being reduced (it's not, not by a long shot).

Maybe this is the way for quite some time to come. Maybe it's time to see if these divisions can be "healed." I find it hard to beliveve that the period of healing after this bitter election will last one day after the start of the next Congressional session.

After all, they have a mandate.

This might be it....

It's really hard to believe but it looks like President Bush has been reelected.

We can only hope saner heads will prevail at all levels of government to pull us out of the morass we're in economically, politically, and foreign-policy wise.

It might be a very long four more years.

Election Day

This is it. The day that all of the advertisements have ended. The endless sound and video clips on the news that have assailed the senses have been completed.

It's also the day that we will likewise be assaulted with endless predictions, prognostications, and projections on the final outcome. Will it be truly known today who our next president will be? Or will it drag on like the 2000 election?

Four years ago at this time I was in Japan on a three week intergovernmental science exchange and tour, leaving just a couple of days before the election. We were in areas where news programs were unavailable in English for the large part. Since most of us also did not have ready access to the internet at that time, we relied on the occasional fax of CNN web pages that some of us received and would pass it around. It was a bit surreal. At the time we were all sure the outcome would be decided prio to our return in late November. Of course we all know how even that turned out to be a false hope.

Today, the direction of our country over the next four years, or even the over the next decade, will be decided. I truly fear that another win by the Bush administration will further degrade our economy (the deficit) and result in more terrorism not less. I fear that the current adminstration's policies will further degrade our environment through loosening of many of the barricades to exploitation that were in place prior to 2001. I fear that our deficit will continue to grow as more tax cuts are given to wealthy individuals and corporations, further burdening generations to come. I fear that corporations will continue their policies of outsourcing manufacturing, forcing many Americans to fill only service jobs at lower wages (although I guess companies like WalMart will benefit from this). I fear that there will be a continuation of the erosion of science through policies that have more basis in religious ferver than scientifically validated facts.

Simply put, this President has been a disaster but the Right doesn't want to admit it. He's too good for the big pockets that support him. But come on, he's not smart enough to be the President of the United States. He's a puppet. He can only put an intelligent sentence together if it's written down for him (OK, he's a good reader). I don't see how anyone who has seen Fahrenheit 9/11 can doubt this. It's time for GWB to go back to running oil companies into the ground. Of course, if he loses, how many "friends" will he have left? By then the family and all their supporters (the ones with both hands out) will focus on Jeb, the next annointed one.

Michael Moore's "Final Words" is a good read, particularly his plea to "To Decent Conservatives and Recovering Republicans." Of course, most of these folks won't read this, but maybe it will only take a small percentage to really tip the balance.

Will the next President be able to lessen the polarization in the population we have today? It will be very difficult to bring this country together by either candidate, but I feel the best chance lies with Kerry. He is intelligent, well spoken, thoughful, and empathetic. He doesn't smirk when discussing the deaths of our brave servicemen and women in Iraq. He has real plans and not the repeated "we will win the war on terror" without a clue as to how. He will not pander to our greatest fears. He will not lead by invoking fear.

Now we sit back and wait.

More politics and science

The Scientist has a thought provoking editorial on how ideological policies in the federal government affect science development in this country. It's not surprising that ideology impacts all facets of a society, but this particular administration seems to impart more of a conservative religous tone towards science policy. Stem cell research, and the blocking of federal, taxpayer dollars towards embryonic stem cell research, is a good paradigm for this policy and Bush's "compassionate conservative" theme. This theme includes the failure to embrace the science behind global warming (and anthropogenic [man-caused] climate change), to fully support AIDS research, or the view that resource utilization trumps environmental stewardship.

This president didn't have a mandate to do much of anything after the 2000 election. 9/11 gave him a mandate, based on people's fears, and the Republicans have run with it, affecting deeper change in our society than they would have been able to otherwise. They still manipulate the populace using fear of terrorism as a tactic. Yes, terrorism is real and yes, it has to be dealt with in a very permanent way to make us all safer. But I believe the threat of terrorism can be reduced without invading countries that did not pose a threat to the United States. So far, it seems all we've really done is create a new breed of terrorist with no end in sight.

We can only hope that 11/2/04 reverses the ideology in power. The election of John Kerry will go a long ways towards reversing some of the extreme conservative changes and corresponding inroads on personal freedoms, as well has removing religion-based restrictions on science in this country. It will also remove the use of fear as a method to further a political agenda.

NY Times Endorses Kerry for President

I hadn't seen this earlier but the NY Times has endorsed John Kerry for President in an October 17 editorial. I think it's the most comprehensive and cogent list of arguments why the Bush Presidency has been nothing short of disasterous for the country and why Kerry has the ability and wherewithal to be a very effective and strong Commander-In-Chief. The Bush economic policies of tax cuts and more tax cuts (mostly for the wealthy and large corporations), combined with tremendous increases in spending and the war in Iraq, has made our country vulnerable.

Spending on education is down, Homeland security is not even close, civil liberties have been degraded, the American military is stretched to the breaking point, science is underfunded and abused, and the environment is being raped. This has truly been four years of ineffecutual leadership. People appointed to power like Cheney, Ashcroft, Rumsfeld, Wolfewitz are ideologues of the worst order, with agendas that only pay lip service to American values of truth, freedom, and civil liberties.

The tight Presidential race could be decided by....!

With all the daily polls on the 2004 Presidential election, it gets really hard to pay attention to their results. Each poll uses slightly different questions, sampling size, etc., to make their predictions on who's ahead, what population demographic supports which candidate, and so on. However there's one growing segment of the US population that will not be included in any poll, and that's those who use cell phones as their primary form of telecommunication. And who are the most likely to fit this demographic? Young people, newly registered voters. Presumably many of these (e.g., college students) are more likely to be a little more liberal in their thinking, to be more against the war in Iraq, and to be more educated and pro-active in social and environmental issues. Robert Cringely discusses this in his latest I, Cringely column --he calls this the Diddy Factor, the reason which is made clear in his essay.

Now, couple the Diddy Factor with the extensive voter registration drives targeted at first time voters this year (see Rock the Vote or Democracy for America to name a few). The hope (at least by me) is that the number of pro-Kerry voters are continually being under counted in the various polls. With predictions of an election as close as the disputed 2000 one (where Democrat Al Gore won the popular vote but lost the Electoral College), a strong turnout by the cell phone crowd could/should lead to a John Kerry win over George Bush.

Heads in the sand

On NPR's Talk of the Nation program today (oh yes, that bastion of left-leaning liberal media biase) there was a story about a study that shows that the majority of Republicans and Bush Supporters still think Iraq has (had) WMD (audio story link). The study, carried out by the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), shows that the majority of Bush supporters had WMD and or a major program to develop WMD that was supported by al Qaeda. Not too surprisingly, the majority of Kerry supporters believe the opposite. And again not surprisingly, supporters of both candidates agreed that the US should not have gone to war without definite proof that such a program or actual WMD existed in Iraq in the first place.

But this is where it gets interesting. Even after the Duelfer report (CIA) to Congress that says Iraq did not have a viable WMD program, the majority of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq did, and in fact, perceive that the 9/11 Commission actually concluded the exact opposite! Bush supporters want to believe that the US went to war for justifiable reasons and want to believe the Administration. However, what do they do if the facts and what the President says doesn't agree? In a quote from the PIPA director Steven Kull:

"To support the president and to accept that he took the US to war based on mistaken assumptions likely creates substantial cognitive dissonance, and leads Bush supporters to suppress awareness of unsettling information about prewar Iraq."

In other words, they're soooo confused!

The complete report (go here) is well worth reading.

Flip Flop or Spin?

I'm not sure that I can remember a nastier presidential election race. Or one that's as full of untruth, innuendo, and falsehood.

Through the proxies of the Republican National Committee, blatantly false charges that purport to describe how Kerry's valor during his Viet Nam service was not how it has been described in the supporting documents for his purple hearts, and his bronze and silver stars for bravery. No real evidence was ever supplied. Unfortunately there are people out there that buy this crap. The Republicans and Bush stay on the attack by characterizing everything that Kerry says as promoting terrorism, or changing his mind, or not being strong enough for America. Cheney spouts off that if Kerry is elected, America will surely be attacked by terrorists (this is the same well-reasoned Vice President who recently so eloquently told a US Senator, in public, to go fuck himself!). While Kerry has been having to spend precious campaign time defending himself against these lies, he's finally been able to start fighting back.

The one I like the best over the past week is when Kerry describes the President as living in his own little world of positive spin. According to the President and his advisors, going to war means never having to say you're sorry.

Bush criticizes Kerry for voting to invade Iraq and then changing his mind. Kerry points out that he voted (along with most of the House and Senate) to give the President the authority to go to war as a last resort. As a last resort!!. When you think about this carefully, the vote was the same as a union voting to grant their representatives a strike authorization during a labor negotiation. It strengthens the hand of the one(s) in authority in the negotiation--if the union negotiators can't reach a resolution, they are authorized to call the strike. In the case of the congressional authorization for invading Iraq was only given in the event that all reasonable solutions had been examined, including the completion of the U.N. weapons inspections. This doesn't even take into account that the vote to authorize the President to go to war was based on faulty intelligence combined with a rush to create a rationale for the invasion. Bush says he would do the exact same thing again. Kerry says he would have made very sure that the rationale for going to war was beyond reproach. Gee, if that's a flip flop, then I'm flopping.

I bought the whole "Iraq was dangerous because of WMD and this must not be allowed" argument. So did most of America. Looking back, where was Sadaam going to go? He wasn't a danger to the U.S. He was bottled up. Economic sanctions were allowing him to line his pockets yet everyone knew this couldn't go on forever. Eventually, some pissed off Iraqi (and there were millions) would have finally gotten to him. Was putting him in jail worth the price we've paid, and are continuing to pay. this doesn't even inlcude the price paid by the millions of Iraqi people caught in the crossfire of militants and their continued terrorism against both Iraqis and the coalition forces. Again, where are the WMD? Why are we in this quagmire?

Bush says he would do it again. So much for learning from your mistakes. In the mind of Bush, to admit otherwise shows a lack of strength. And as I write this, on the TV news two more American soldiers are being reported as killed. I want their sacrifice to mean something. But it has to mean more than the what's being given us.

Attack Dogs

As with probably 99.9% of all bloggers, I pretty much have come to the realization I don't have a lot to say that would interest the idle reader. However, after opening up the Blogger app tonight, I remembered I had saved a quote that I had wanted to use.

Right now it's the night after the end of the Republican Party National Convention. As with all such conventions, there was much chest thumping for achievements, real and imagined. And there were a considerable number of attacks on the character, intelligence, and leadership abilities of the Democratic challenger, John Kerry. Maybe it's a matter of perception; since I support Kerry's candidacy, but the attacks seem to have become extremely personal, bordering on the outright nasty.

I'm not naieve--I know that the people running the Democratic Party campaign aren't above such nastiness. But at this point in time, and maybe it's because the RNC really believes they are vulnerable, all semblence of decency seems to have gone out the window. The attacks range from lies and innuendo about Kerry's very real and heroic Viet Nam service record (even my Dad has fallen for the "Swift Boat" bullshit) to the truly personal snide remarks about Kerry's wife.

So I end this with the following quote from the Kerry nomination acceptance speach. Yes, it's a little personal as well, and I can understand if it makes a staunch Republican a little hot. However, these statements are truly based in fact, a point that an honest person will have trouble denying.

I will be a commander in chief who will never mislead us into war. I will have a vice president who will not conduct secret meetings with polluters to rewrite our environmental laws. I will have a Secretary of Defense who will listen to the best advice of our military leaders. And I will appoint an Attorney General who actually upholds the Constitution of the United States.
John Kerry, during his acceptance speech as the Democratic National Party nominee for President of the United States, July 29, 2004

I suspect the next few months will truly bring out the best in America.

The digital age

Is it a new age in war reporting? Not that different perhaps, except maybe with the rapidity that information, whether it be text, photos, or video can be posted to the web from almost anywhere in the world. Paul Andrews published a piece in today's Seattle Times entitled "Digital Age reveals war's brutal details". In the column, Andrews discusses how the administration, particularly Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, failed to see how visual proof of the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq would inflame world wide public sentiment far more than any written report. Rumsfeld is supposed to have said (and I paraphrase) that he had no idea how powerful the pictures could be. They seemed so much worse than the report he'd had since January. I sometimes wonder if this is just another example of the conceit continuously exhibited by members of the Bush Administration, or is it just that they're naive?

Now Seymour Hersh reports (in the New Yorker) that the intimidating and degrading treatment of prisoners in the War on Terror became policy after 9/11. Of course this is being denied, but I suspect that it will be shown that harsher interrogation methods became the norm, sanctioned all the way up the Defense and Justice lines of responsibility. The privates, specialists, and sargents all caught in the photos will take the brunt of it. They're in the pictures (how dumb was that?!), and soldiers,while required to follow orders justly, also have the responsibility to not carry out illegal orders. But they will argue that these methods of "softening up" of prisoners to make them more amenable to interrogation was acceptable practice.

One thing is obvioius. There needs to be accountability all the way up the chain of command, all the way to Rumsfeld. Yet the President and VP say that Rumsfeld is doing a great job. Rumsfeld flies to Iraq and tells troops at a rally that he doesn't read the newspapers anymore, insinuating that news organizations aren't presenting the truth, and gets a big cheer.

The conceit of power. Americans deserve more than that.

thoughts of color

This past week I spent three days in Washington DC to attend a NOAA workshop on OHH at our headquarters in Silver Spring MD. I ended up getting a room at a hotel located almost due south from the capital dome, but with Interstate 395 in between. I could see the dome from my room, albeit with several industrial type buildings and the freeway in the foreground. As usual, getting around was not difficult because of the Metro system (including from the airport), although after arriving I did get off at a train station that was much farther from the hotel than I thought, and it took me quite a bit longer trekking through some rather seedy looking territory to get there.

While the meeting went well, and I got a chance to sightsee a little on my last day, that's actually not the reason I'm writing this. The point is more that I was in a largely black part of DC and it was clear that the neighborhood was a little rough. The plexiglass shield protecting the wait staff at a Taco Bell and a local gas station attest to that. It did tend to make me feel a little more vulnerable than usual. This made me wonder. Did I feel this way because of any real physical danger? Probably not, at least no more so than some parts of downtown Seattle. Being a white liberal, I would like to think that I would have no feelings of discomfort around people of color. But I have to admit, getting on a crowded subway train when you're the only white person, does feel different. I think this is where many of us may begin to understand what racism and prejudice feels like. I don't mean to suggest that I experienced this in any overt way. But I certainly felt what it means to be a minority.

After a day of this, I really felt more relaxed. Of course I was still wary. Not because of color. It still was a rough neighborhood.

Update for April

There's still almost two weeks left in April and now the US military death toll in Iraq is up to 100 for the month. There's not much else to say except that the insurgency shows little in the way of a decrease in intensity.

Failure is an option

I was planning to write this on Monday (April 12th) when US combat deaths in Iraq had reached 73 for the month of April. Today I hear it's over 90.

9-11, or at least the conditions and security breakdowns that lead to 9-11, was no-one's fault. Wait, make that the other guy's fault. Oh, what possibly could we have done differently?!

Exit strategy?

The past couple of weeks, the situation in Iraq has worsened, and (pardon my grammer) is getting worser. Besides the various "insurgents" taking the fight directly to American and other coalition troops, inflicting significant casulties, there is growing evidence that both Sunni and Shiite factions are joining together in the uprising against American occupation.

In this light, I couldn't let pass by a Maureen Dowd editorial in the NY Times, that quoted SecDef Rumsfeld saying the following:

"We're trying to explain how things are going, and they are going as they are going. Some things are going well and some things obviously are not going well. You're going to have good days and bad days." [On the road to democracy, this] "is one moment, and there will be other moments. And there will be good moments and there will be less good moments."

Granted Dowd's firmly on the "other" side of the political aisle. However I can't understand why anyone would think such a pithy analysis can be simply accepted by the public.

Come on, tell it like it is. It's becoming hard for me to believe that anyone can say they know how this is going to turn out in the end. Personally, I think we all should be getting very worried.

High level pissing match

This was the week that Richard A. Clarke, the President's former anti-terrorism advisor (more specifically, the National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection, and Counter-terrorism under both Clinton and Bush), came out with a new tell-all book entitled "Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror". The main premise (paraphrasing others because I have not read it) is that President Bush and his staff were overly focused on Iraq from the time they took office, way before 9/11. He claims that his warnings (and those of many others) about the dangers of Al Qaeda were routinely downplayed because of the preoccupation with Iraq. He wasn't sure that the National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice, even knew who/what Al Qaeda was after taking office with the President. After the terrorist attacks on 9/11, he was essentially ordered to find the link between Iraq and Saddam Hussein, and Al Qaeda. Not finding one, he was told to look harder. It seems clear from the accounts of Clarke and of former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill that President Bush was focused on taking out Saddam even before taking office.

Not surprisingly, the personal attacks on Clarke from the administration and other Republican luminaries has been fast and furious. Clarke has definitely struck a nerve with this book. Whatever and whomever you believe, it does make for good entertainment.

Now the campaign begins...

John Kerry all but wrapped up the Democratic nomination by almost sweeping Super Tuesday's primaries last Tuesday. It's been expected for several weeks now, but even before the end of Tuesday, Republican attack ads started. Not that Democrats haven't been doing the same thing (but they're just right).

Pres. Bush and his Dept. of Labor are planning to reclassify mostly minimum wage fast food jobs as manufacturing jobs. that would show a nice bump in the stats for jobs in the manufacturing sector. I know that fast food sometimes tastes like it's made out of wood, but this might be going a little far.

I saw one of the new Bush commercials tonight. The one that uses the images of 9/11. Even before seeing it and only hearing it on the radio, I thought this was disgusting. Tonight I saw it...if I had had a loved family member or a friend lost in that attack, I would be disgusted over the blatant usage of this tragedy for political gain. As it is, while I'm not surprised that the RNC would sink to such a level, I'm sure this is only the tip of the iceberg.

Watch out for the stampede of attack ads.

The color of orange...

I've been meaning to write this since last weekend's Washington State Democratic Caucus.

As we all gathered at the precinct table (one of dozens in a crowded high school gym), I noticed a woman with a Bush/Cheney button, but didn't want to stare too closely at it. I remarked to my wife that maybe she was really a Bush supporter who was there to vote for the least likely candidate to beat Bush (no party registration is required in this state). However later I just had to ask her what it said and got a better look.

The caption read "They look good in orange don't they?" -- and both were dressed in orange prison uniforms. I wish I could find one of these!

Here it comes

It didn't take long for Republican leaders to start taking pot shots at the Democratic nominee front runner John Kerry. From CNN today, Ken Mehlman, Bush's campaign manager, discussed a comment attributed to last April, where he said that that regime change was needed not only in Iraq but also in Washington. This was just days before the U.S. invaded Iraq.

"While our troops were at risk in Iraq, John Kerry compared the commander in chief to Saddam Hussein, calling for regime change in the United States," Mehlman said.

Hmm, it still sounds like a good idea to me.

Very presidential

It's time to start paying attention to the Democratic Party primaries. After Iowa and New Hampshire, John Kerry's the front runner, and I have to admit, I am starting to lean towards him as my preferred candidate. Howard Dean's a smart guy, but he appears to be flaming out. Of the rest, I'd only really feel comfortable with Gen. (ret) Wesley Clark and maybe Joe Lieberman. Whoever it is, I surely hope he can run a strong race against the best president money can buy. The latest information about how the war in Iraq was planned (preordained?) before and by Bush's election should be disturbing to everyone. And still no WMD!