'Rumsfeld's latest pronouncements have included... ...an attack on our reporting of the Abu Ghraib tortures. "Consider for a moment the vast quantity of column inches and hours of television devoted to the detainee abuse [sic] at Abu Ghraib. Compare that to the volume of coverage and condemnation associated with, say, the discovery of Saddam Hussein's mass graves, which were filled with hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis."
Let's expose this whopping lie. We were exposing Saddam's vile regime, especially his use of gas, as long ago as 1983. I was refused a visa to Iraq by Saddam's satraps for exposing their vile tortures at - Abu Ghraib. And what was Donald Rumsfeld doing? Visiting Baghdad, grovelling before Saddam, to whom he did not mention the murders and mass graves, which he knew about, and pleading with the Beast of Baghdad to reopen the US embassy in Iraq.
With the usual press courtiers in tow, Rumsfeld has no problems, witness George Melloan's recent interview with the Beast of Washington in his Boeing 737: "He generously spares me time for a chat about defence strategy. Bright sunlight streams in and lights his face ... Sitting across from him at a desk high above the clouds, one wonders if the ability of this modern Jove to call down lightning on transgressors will be equal to the tasks ahead."'The Independent
And...
'What is it about Ohio and Florida? There's always trouble brewing. As we know, they've got lots of problems with their voting machines, lots of dead white people who vote and lots of living black people who aren't allowed to. But now they have something else in common: the irrational-- and probably insincere-- fear of gay adoption.
Coincidence? No, rather, as USA Today managed to observe between colorful pie charts, "the second front in the culture wars that began in 2004." These closely divided states barely handed W. the election in 2000 and 2004, and it was in large part due to the gay marriage issue on the ballot, which got the faithful out of their trailers and into the polls. This election year, however, they've got a new tactic-- stop the gays from helping unwanted children.'The Huffington Post
Can we infer from this that the Republican's tactics in the mid-term elections will be a familiar mix of dishonest jingoism and gay-bashing? Will it work, or is it just desperation? Do you think Rumsfeld might like being described as 'Jove'? How scary is that thought?
