No story here, folks - move along, move along

I posted a comment on Artios this weekend that when one guy passes secrets, its espionage; when a group does it for more than a year, its policy. And it doesn't matter whether the policy is both unannounced and unconscionable.
Washington Monthly describes this as Iran-Contra II, and I wouldn't be surprised if this is true -- another secret foreign policy authorized and run by the Pentagon, outside the purview of the State Department.
It appears that there are even many of the same guys involved, again.
But we'll likely never know unless the democrats are elected -- or unless Washington Monthly keeps going -- because the FBI investigation is being shut down -- back to harassing demonstrators, I guess.
The excuse is that the media publicity made the investigation impossible to pursue -- Officials Say Publicity Derailed Secrets Inquiry Here's the key portion of the story:
"The disclosure of the inquiry late on Friday by CBS News revealed what had been for nearly a year a covert national security investigation conducted by the F.B.I., according to the officials, who said that news reports about the inquiry compromised important investigative steps, like the effort to follow the trail back to the Israelis. As a result, several areas of the case remain murky, the officials said. One main uncertainty is the legal status of Lawrence A. Franklin, the lower-level Pentagon policy analyst who the authorities believe passed the Israelis a draft presidential policy directive related to Iran. No arrest in the case is believed to be imminent, in part because prosecutors have not yet clearly established whether Mr. Franklin broke the law. But the officials said there was evidence that he turned the classified material over to officials at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group. Officials of the group are thought to have then passed the information to Israeli intelligence."
Excuse me -- they have had more than a year to "follow the trail back to the Israelis" -- if they haven't done it by now, its not going to happen. But its pretty damned convenient for the Bush campaign that the story is now being declared officially dead.
And actually, I think it IS all the media's fault for breaking the story -- not because this made the sources dry up, but because this alerted the Bush administration to the situation, thus resulting in immediate kibosh.
UPDATE: Hmmm -- Google News shows 1,400 stories about this spy scandal - its obviously struck quite a chord. So one story in the NYT may not be enough to shut it down after all. It may, in fact, just lead others to same speculation that I have made.

Turning sauce for the goose into sauce for the gander

Digby in Projection Politics presents a very interesting thesis:
Rove has developed a campaign of projection in which he tars his opponents with his own candidates' weaknesses and then attacks them. He attacks Kerry for phony heroism thirty years ago when just last year his own candidate had himself filmed in a little costume prancing around on an aircraft carrier pretending he'd won a war that had only begun. But, by tarring Kerry with using war as a PR stunt for his own personal gain, people can process the uncomfortable feelings they are experiencing about Iraq as not really being caused by Junior, but by his rival who is the real shallow opportunist who only pretends to be a man of proven leadership and experience.
He spent 70 million to get people to call Kerry a flip flopper when the truth is that the compassionate-conservative-uniter-not-divider has a very recent proven record of unprecedented ugly partisanship and ruthless bloodlust. He's mananged to convince a large number of Americans that Kerry is unprincipled when the fiscal conservative Bush has just spent the entire surplus and run up the deficit beyond our wildest imaginings just three years ago. That's a pretty good trick. He's projected Bush's weaknesses on to Kerry and then gone after them ruthlessly. It makes it very difficult to then turn the attack back on Bush because it's been co-opted.
Given this thesis, then, if Kerry were to do the same thing he would:
1. attack Bush's speaking style. Too difficult to understand, too accented, too many convoluted sentences and mispronounced words
2. attack Bush's appearance. Too short and slight, mouth too small, ears too big. Alfred E Neuman
3. attack Bush's "signature" accomplishments. Too many announcements without any action. Too many photo opportunities without any real commitment. Too much pandering to the base.
Actually, sounds like a plan to me.

Kerry has guts

Yahoo! News - Kerry Says He's in a 'Fighting Mood'
So Bush doesn't have the guts to go to the NAACP, but Kerry is speaking Wednesday to the American Legion. Some of the veterans will dis him, but I hope they listen. Kerry is the one who wants to support the vets.

Lots of Random Thoughts (and remember, KERRY IS WINNING)

Both Blogger and my internet connection are working V-E-R-Y S-L-O-W-L-Y today, so though there is lots going on that I would like to link to, I can't. But here's a few random thoughts:
On the Electoral vote
For the duration, I have added an Electoral Vote Predictor website to my blog.
The frustration I have with national polls is that they do not recognize the reality of the electoral college vote -- it all may come down to a few thousand people in Nevada, for heaven's sake, so it doesn't matter whether extra tens of thousands in, say, New York support Kerry or extra tens of thousands in Texas support Bush. This site takes the state polls and interprets them to develop a projection of where the electoral votes will go.
I had the same frustration during the Canadian election, where the media kept interpreting the polls as predicting a Liberal or Conservative "victory" in a situation where the actual popular vote means nothing -- its the riding-by-riding vote which matters.
And by the way, KERRY IS WINNING.
Lost in Iraq
Following up on my earlier post today, the NYT is now saying that the US has "lost" western Iraq. They also question whether true national elections will be held in January. (My own prediction is that meaningful elections will never be held in Iraq.) The only feasible, reasonable plan for Iraq is Kerry's plan to get the UN in and the US troops out -- maybe, just maybe, this will become clearer once the American death toll passes the 1,000 mark in about two weeks.
And remember, KERRY IS WINNING.
Keep hammering the message - Kerry tells the truth
As I noted in a response on frogsdong's blog earlier today, there are many, many people who are paying very little attention to the play-by-play of the swift boat issue and a lot of the other election slanders, so they come away with erroneous impressions -- even the media who are supposed to be following all this are now getting mixed up about which swiftie did what when.
Therefore the impression gets left with these non-involved people that "Kerry is a liar". Given this reality, I think bloggers and commentators and DNC people appearing on talk shows should be urged to make their message very very clear, speaking in words of one syllable, hammering home a simple message -- "Kerry tells the truth. He is not a liar nor a coward. He knows what he wants to do as president and he has a good plan." Keep spreading the news that KERRY IS WINNING
I want to be a part of it, New York, New York
And finally, I don't understand why the democrats are so so worried about being "associated" with the protests in New York. First, the republicans will keep hammering the connection regardless of what the dems say. And for the most part, the protestors are right -- and there would be millions more people marching in New York this weekend if they could get there. The democrats should embrace them.
Remember, guys, KERRY IS WINNING. BUSH IS LOSING. That's the reality, regardless of what the talking heads are blathering on Fox. The people who are supporting Kerry and against Bush should be SUPPORTED, not denied.

Kerry tells the truth

and Bush does not. This column wraps it up: Yahoo! News - THE REAL ISSUE: BUSH IS INCOMPETENT

Still dying in Iraq

Because Najaf has been virtually the only fight in Iraq that American newspapers have been covering over the last couple of weeks -- they couldn't do more, of course, because they also had to cover a 35-year-old firefight in Vietnam -- it is likely that Americans will think that now that Iraq will be peaceful.
I think they will be disappointed -- by about mid-week, we'll be seeing stories asking how come Americans are still dying in Iraq. Check out Today in Iraq for the latest.
And already, its starting to sink in that Najaf was another American defeat.

Weird focus to election campaign

This is getting seriously weird -- read this exchange between Matthews and Pat Buchanan last night regarding Kerry's military record. Every single Navy document and every single personal statement FROM PEOPLE WHO WERE ACTUALLY THERE ON THE BOAT support Kerry's heroism during Vietnam.
But the right wing just will not believe it -- it's like they can not permit themselves to believe it. Not only do they think Kerry lied, they have turned him into the scum of the earth. Now, I don't think Reagan's supporters thought that Carter was a lying, evil scumbag; nor did Bob Dole's supporters think that Clinton was a lying sack of shit (at least, not until after he was elected). But the way the right wing is after Kerry, you would think that he was the most corrupt, evil being ever to inhabit the United States.
Here is the Hardball transcript last night, just part of it, showing how Buchanan is frothing. Then I have an excerpt from later in Hardball, where Matthews interviewed an actual veteran, former Republican congressman. Compare the tone and the content:

"BUCHANAN: . . . This is a tremendously emotional issue for me. I was involved in all that. [Buchanan never went to Vietnam, though you would think he had from the way he is talking.] And we‘re caught up in it. We‘re intoxicated with it. It is the hottest issue going. And you look at that poll out in California. Kerry now only gets 3 percent of Republicans.
This is driving Republicans back to Bush and it is bringing home some Reagan Democrats. There‘s about 15 or 20 percent. They are moving toward Bush. And this for some of us—I know
it may be a minority.
. . . MATTHEWS: Pat, is it character or courage that is pivoting these voters?
BUCHANAN: It is about truthfulness. It is about character. It is about courage.
It is about Vietnam. Did this guy come home and slime all these guys while you have got POWs in North Vietnam who are being tortured to say the things Kerry was saying for free? That‘s the outrage, Chris, that you‘re feeling and you‘re seeing from a lot of folks.
MATTHEWS: OK. I get you. It‘s not the medals. It is the testimony. Let‘s go to...
FINEMAN: Yes, I do think the testimony is the emotional thing here. I was talking to a
Republican strategist very close to the White House. I said, aren‘t you guys just sort of talking to yourselves about this thing, this whole swift boat thing? And he said, what‘s wrong with talking to yourself? That‘s what the aim is here. And that‘s what the effect has been. And in Ohio, where I have spent a lot of time, I know a diner out there on the highway in Canton in the swing county of Stark. Those guys and those women are talking about this issue. No question about
it.
MATTHEWS: So, in other words, Bush ain‘t no great shakes, but he is not no lying, medal-gabbing, rat fink, like this other guy is.
FINEMAN: Right. This is all about, as an independent or not, making Kerry unacceptable. That‘s what it is all about.
MATTHEWS: To change the focus of a reelection campaign from the usual focus on the
incumbent, Marie, to the challenger. Brilliant move.
COCCO: Well, if I were George Bush and I had 61 percent of the people in your poll saying that the economy is not getting better for the middle class, I would want to change the subject, too.
I think what Kerry has to do after all of this talk and chatter—every piece of allegation against him is disproved by the actual Naval records. I think what Kerry ought to do is say over
and over again, this isn‘t my story. This is the U.S. Navy‘s story.
MATTHEWS: Right.
COCCO: Mr. President, do you not believe the U.S. Navy?
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: I think the only way he is going to change this story is to say he‘s gay . . . Changing
the subject now is going to have to be a full McGreevey. "

And here is the section from later in the show, when Matthews interviews a Republican congressman who actually DID go to Vietnam. Like historian Sydney Karnow, McCloskey supports not only Kerry's service but also Kerry's testimony:

"MATTHEWS: . . . The controversy over John Kerry‘s service in Vietnam and his subsequent anti-war protests have stirred emotions on both sides of the debate, particularly with the Vietnam veterans themselves. Yesterday, I spoke with former Republican Congressman Pete McCloskey, a highly decorated Marine who served in Korea, earning the Navy Cross, a Silver Star and two Purple Hearts. He testified before Congress that Americans had committed war crimes in Vietnam. He also marched with John Kerry in the 1971 peace march. I started with Pete McCloskey by asking him why the Vietnam War is still an issue here in 2004.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
PETE MCCLOSKEY, FORMER U.S. CONGRESSMAN: Well, there is still a division between the
people who fought honorably there and are angry because they were criticized.But we were pursuing policies there that were war crimes. We were burning down villages that harbored terrorists or harbored Viet Cong. We had executed General Yodel (ph) after Nuremberg for doing that very thing. We knew it was a war crime, burning those villages down. Kerry had the guts to come back. He testified I think the same day as I did in front of Kennedy‘s or Fulbright‘s subcommittee about the same things. It wasn‘t about cutting off heads or arms. It was about
deliberately burning down villages in a war we were trying to (CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: But he did say in his testimony, we were people cutting off ears and cutting off heads.
MCCLOSKEY: Well, there were people that said that. And I...
MATTHEWS: He did, too.
MCCLOSKEY: Well, I‘ll tell you, we ran across General Patton‘s son, a colonel, who was
flying around in a helicopter collecting ears of Viet Cong, cutting off ears, shooting at them with his pistol out of a helicopter. But that was the exception. Most of the men served honorably. And Vietnam veterans ought to be treated better than most veterans, because they fought in a
war that was unpopular at a time. But I think these men have been so carried away by their anger over that testimony that he gave that I think they have forgotten the truth. The men that served with him knew him as a leader and as a war hero. I knew him as a principled, probably idealistic young man. It took courage to speak out in ‘71 against a war. We had Marines fighting over there. I had friends fighting over there. But the war was wrong. It‘s just like Iraq today. You can support the troops, but you don‘t necessarily need to support the policy that put them there or keeps them there.
MATTHEWS: Why are we arguing about one man‘s war record in terms of the medals he‘s won? What is that strategy about? Why are we doing that right now?
MCCLOSKEY: Well, the other guy...
MATTHEWS: You got a number of medals. You got the Navy Cross, which is a much higher distinction. Do people usually go back and question the Navy‘s decision in awarding these medals?
MCCLOSKEY: I‘ve never known a man to get a Silver Star that didn‘t earn it. A lot of people that earned them didn‘t get them, because there weren‘t people around to tell about them. But don‘t give the Silver Star lightly. That‘s a medal for heroism. And it‘s shameful that they‘ve made this attack, I think.
MATTHEWS: Because there‘s a foolproof system for awarding it?
MCCLOSKEY: It‘s not foolproof, but when a junior officer, an enlisted man got a Silver Star, it was earned. Sometimes, colonels and generals gave themselves. Lyndon Johnson I think had a Silver Star for flying over a Japanese island when he was in Congress. But, at that level,
a junior whose men respect him, he can‘t get a Bronze Star or Silver Star without their support.
MATTHEWS: Let me ask you about national policy.We‘re at war now in the country of Iraq. We are still fighting a war of resistance over there. And certainly in Najaf and places like that, we‘re facing local militia, lots of resistance still. We will probably lose by the Election Day, there‘s probably to count it, 1,000 people in combat, maybe 7,000 seriously wounded now.
Is that why this scab has been ripped off, that we‘re at war now and people question it just about 50/50 whether we should be there?
MCCLOSKEY: No. I‘m afraid it‘s because Bush joined the National Guard at a time when you joined the Guard only to avoid combat. Kerry volunteered for combat. That‘s the issue. And the issue is—it‘s a fair issue as to who can best lead this country. And my experience has been that the presidents who are most likely not to go to war are like Jack Kennedy and George Bush Sr., who were shot at when they were young. People that have been combat don‘t want to do it again unless they have to. The people that want to make war, prove their manhood and how tough they are
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Right. Is that what Cheney‘s up to?
MCCLOSKEY: I don‘t know. I liked Dick when I was in the House with him.
MATTHEWS: What happened to him and Rumsfeld? Why did they become—well, I always thought Cheney was a tough customer. When I worked on the Hill for Tip O‘Neill, I knew he was a tough customer politically, but the hard-nosed attitude about war, about not really being against war, what‘s that about? I always thought Rumsfeld was a moderate Republican. What happened to him?
MCCLOSKEY: I couldn‘t tell you. I like Don. Bob Dole is one of my favorite Republicans. We had marvelous Republican leadership. George Bush Sr. would not be doing what his son is doing today, in my judgment. He would not have gone to war without U.N. support. He wouldn‘t have gone to war unless he had to. And that‘s the way I think. In this election, where the choice is between a man who dodged combat, two men who dodged combat when they were young, against a man who volunteered for it, we‘re safer in the hands of the person who has been shot at . . . my old rifle company is outside Fallujah right now. And they‘re superb young Marines, well officered. The commanding general of the Marine division said don‘t hurt anybody you don‘t have to, marvelous kind of a humanitarian, but they‘re an occupying force. And I don‘t think we‘re going to be loved in Iraq or any country.
. . . MATTHEWS: . . . Do you think this election is going to turn on this war?
MCCLOSKEY: I don‘t know. I think it‘s so close.
MATTHEWS: Will it turn on John Kerry‘s war record?
MCCLOSKEY: I think he‘s been hurt by these attacks and I think the attacks were leveled because they knew it would hurt him. And I know how these guys feel.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: How come they‘re angrier at him, Pete, than they are at the guy who didn‘t serve, the president?
MCCLOSKEY: They‘re angry because they feel he betrayed their honorable service by coming back and testifying in front of the Senate of the war crimes. And we were committing war
crimes.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Did contribute—my sister-in-law e-mailed me the other day, said that he contributed, John Kerry, to the atmosphere for returning veterans, like my brother, who was a Naval officer in Vietnam, along the coast—he was in that same kind of coastal Naval
service. The way they were treated when they came back, that John Kerry contributed to that sort of spirit of blaming the soldiers for the war.
MCCLOSKEY: I don‘t think so. Kerry never sought to blame the soldiers. They were individuals or
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Well, they took it that way.
MCCLOSKEY: They shouldn‘t have. "

What will they do?

There comes a time when you have to choose.
The Log Cabin Republicans, the Republican Youth Majority, and the Republicans for Choice want to have it both ways -- they support the Republican Party, so they think the Republican Party should respect them.
Sorry -- ain't gonna happen.
Their "unity plank" was a valiant effort. But the Bush republicans have never listened to anyone's contrary opinion for the last four years, so why would they start now?
You know, in Canada, when provincial courts began giving gay couples the right to marry, it wasn't a frivolous or unreasonable ruling, nor was it judicial activism. The rulings were based firmly on the Canadian Charter of Rights, that gays should be treated equally. Then Chretien and Martin did what real leaders should do -- they took on the task of leading Canadians to accept the basic fairness of those rulings.
Bush could have done the same, he could have famed the issue not as a gay issue but as a rights issue.
He chose not to do that.

Now Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Pataki, and Dick Cheney have a choice to make -- are they going to speak to this convention, or not? Speaking to the convention means they are endorsing the RNC's extremist platform. So are they just 'girlie-men' who will pander to the religious right?

And millions of republicans have a choice to make, too.

Stunts

Great -- the democrats have finally learned how to pull a political stunt with good visuals which will get coverage particularly on TV news.
Sounds to me like they have read and understood Liberal Oasis:
If there's one lesson the Kerry campaign and the rest of us should take from this sorry Swift Boat Liar episode is how lame the media will be this election season. The inability to cut off media oxygen to people who are clearly discredited shows how the media hasn't learned any lessons following its vapid 2000 coverage and its embarrassing Iraq war coverage . . . OK, so the media sucks. Does that mean Kerry's doomed? No. It just means the campaign strategy has to take the media's lameness into account. When the media is almost nothing but a conduit for attacks, and when it levies almost no penalties to attackers, the guy who initiates attacks will get more media love. And it's a hell of a lot better to be regularly delivering attacks to the media, than regularly explaining away attacks. If Kerry tries to just drill messages about jobs, health care and Halliburton, he won't be able to. He'll just be knocked off message over and over. Unless he's applying pressure to Bush by spooling out his own attacks. (Of course, Kerry can distinguish himself by basing his attacks on facts and not distortions.)
Bring it on.

Its's not that difficult, folks

So Atrios points out that some news people are somewhat miffed that Kerry has chosen The Daily Show for an extended interview tonight. He won the TV Critics Association's award as the year's best news and information program, which WP critic Lisa de Moraes reported this way: "We think Stewart was given the TCA Award because his Comedy Central show was the only one early on to ask the tough questions about the decision to invade Iraq . . . Stewart was somewhat baffled by the award -- his show won a TCA award last year for best comedy program. In his taped acceptance speech, he pointed out that his newscast is "fake," "illegitimate" and "unprofessional." Stewart insisted it must be some sort of mistake and said that if his show had an actual fact-checking apparatus, like an real news program, they would check it out."
Actually, its not that difficult to run a professional TV news program -- just be knowledgeable about the background material, anticipate what your guests are likely to say, and be ready to challenge them if need be. Stewart actually does this with just about every guest he had on, even the softball TV-star/movie-star/author-of-the-week interviews. And his gang of "special correspondents" do it too.
And they demand truth, even when their stories are about gay penguins. Thus they invariably pinpoint any stupidities, inconsistencies, evasions and lies which they find in the news stories of the day. Just how hard it is to do that, these days?

More Abu Ghraib

I have tried to think of something clever or insightful to say about this, but I cannot. I guess it stands on its own.
This Washington Post story is truly disgusting --"MPs were using their animals to make juveniles -- as young as 15 years old -- urinate on themselves as part of a competition" and "military intelligence soldiers kept multiple detainees off the record books and hid them from international humanitarian organizations " and "at least one male detainee was sodomized by one of his captors at Abu Ghraib".

Still crazy after all these years

During the Vietnam war, I remember some people, particularly military types, promoting the idea that it was the war protestors who caused America's defeat.
Now, I am not a military historian, but I lived through this war and I do know that's ridiculous -- America could NEVER have won in Vietnam (the French couldn't win it, either). The idea that any combination of firepower and tactics could have defeated North Vietnam is like thinking that Napolean could ever have defeated Russia in the War of 1812, or that Japan could ever have defeated the United States in World War II (I'm sure a real military historian could think of many more apt and perhaps more accurate examples.) History has many examples of wars which could have gone either way -- Germany came incredibly close to taking over all of Europe before the US entered that war, for example -- but Vietnam isn't one of them.
But I have gone through the last 30 years thinking that this blame-the-protestors idea had been completely discredited as last self-serving gasp of an archaic military culture which had afterwards learned to face reality. In fact, it was the war protestors who saw, much sooner than the military, that the Vietnam War was both unwinnable and immoral. They saved thousands of American and Vietnamese lives by getting the war stopped before the military could adopt a desperate and despicable tactic like using an atomic bomb on Hanoi (and even doing that would not have "won" the war).
Seeing the anger emerging now about Kerry's war protests, however, makes me realize that the blame-the protestors revisionism may have been festering all these years, and now infecting a younger generation who don't know what really happened. And if this is so, then it must be addressed.
All the thousands and thousands of Americans who protested that war will need to open the wound again, to speak out again, just like William Rood has now done, to set the record straight and to educate their children and their grandchildren about what really happened over there and also in America.
Oh, that goddammed war.

Cheez Whiz Lovers for Truth

I wonder if a Canadian could form a new group, the Cheez Whiz Lovers for Truth (CWLT). We're going to blast George Bush for the outright lies he keeps telling to the American people.
Here's the proof -- a Philadelphia newspaper now reports that Bush likes his Philly Cheese Steak sandwich WITHOUT CHEEZ WHIZ, when he distinctly told a Pennsylvania group last week "This is the 32nd time I’ve been to your state of Pennsylvania, and, you all know the reason why, don’t you? It’s because I like my cheesesteaks Whiz With."
This bald-faced lie demonstrates Bush's unfitness to lead -- his base appetites are demonstrably unpleasant, unAmerican (though what else would you expect from an alcoholic Yale graduate) and then he lies about it, openly, without shame, just to curry favour with a group of defense-industry workers. And the implications may be even wider -- does he take Cheez Whiz on his broccoli? DOES HE EVEN EAT BROCCOLI? Or does he follow the same disgusting, unhealthy lifestyle as his father, that broccoli-denyer? Clearly, all this needs detailed examination by the major media.
The Columbia Journalism Review has already picked up on it, and Matthew Yglesias is promoting this cause. He writes "Can we all agree to talk about nothing besides why the president lies about cheese and why the media won't cover it for days and days and days until his campaign is finally forced to admit that, yes, the president of the United States is so desperate to be loved that he will lie about cheese and then we can all scream -- "see, he admitted it, he's a liar, a damn dirty cheese-eating liar!" I mean, really, who lies about cheese? Can you trust this man?"
And Americans thought the French were "cheese-eating surrender monkeys".
UPDATE: Cheez Whiz spelling corrected - sorry. I keep trying to spell it with a terminal E - how French is that?

Terrorism scares

Doug Saunders writes a terrific column in today's Globe. He asks "If we won the war on terror, would anyone tell us?"
He describes how terrified people are about terrorism, and for how little reason, as recent research has shown. ". . . terrorism (defined as attacks against civilians by non-state organizations) reached its peak in 1988, and has been on a more or less steady decline since then. . . . Even including those 4,000 deaths [from 9/11], 2001 had a lower terrorist death toll than 1998, or almost any year in the 1980s. If another attack on that scale were to occur later this year, we would still all be safer from terrorism than we have been for much of the past two decades. . . it's clear that the attention from media and governments is working: Terrorism has almost disappeared as a tactic. Former menaces such as Ireland's IRA or Spain's ETA or America's survivalists have been put out of business, through diplomacy or policing or both. The war on terrorism has succeeded.
But we're all scared. "
This rang a chord. Yesterday I was chatting with a co-worker who spent part of her summer holiday in New York. She was visiting family just outside the city during the most recent "orange alert" scare. I was on the verge of saying something about how stupid it was when she began to describe how frightened she and her family had all been, how closely they had been following the news, and how the family debated long and hard about whether she should even go into Manhattan at all -- they all had the impression that they risked imminent death with every minute in the city. In the end, I had the impression that she felt she was lucky to be alive to tell about the experience.
So, of course, I did not make any snarky remarks to her. But her story could have been an example for Saunder's column:
"What is dangerous about these times, in truth, is our fear: Much as hypochondriacs often worry themselves sick, our culture's mass delusion of imminent danger may actually be more damaging than terrorism or murder . . . It is a global version of a well-established municipal phenomenon, known for decades as the crime scare . . . For the past couple of years, [Toronto] newspapers have been filled with front-page stories about "Jamaican crime sprees" and deadly Vietnamese gangs, and TV newscasts have led nightly with endless details about grisly child abductions. It was not hard for many citizens, myself included, to become fearful . . . And then, three weeks ago, a news item appeared, for precisely one day, on the deep inside pages of most newspapers: The violent crime rate in Canada has fallen to its lowest point in 37 years. Canadians have not been this safe since 1967, and in no major city are people safer than in Toronto. There, your chances of being murdered have fallen to 1.9 in 100,000, making it one of the least dangerous cities in the world. . . . Police, ever mindful of budgets, encourage people to believe that . . . extremely rare incidents are part of a growing trend. The people of Toronto recently made the wise decision to sack their police chief, who among other things spent considerable energy trying to persuade people that menaces lurked on every corner. The reality, that violent crime had virtually been wiped out and that the city was probably over-policed, was an unmentionable budgetary taboo. We should consider doing the same for a good number of cabinet ministers, national-police chiefs, intelligence-agency heads and directors of homeland security around the world. They have learned the old crime-scare trick, and are playing it to the hilt, with help from glorified cop-shop hacks often known as national-security reporters. "

And the beat goes on

The press finally appears to be reaching the conclusion that all the emphasis on Vietnam is meant to divert attention away from what is happening in Iraq.
So what IS happening in Iraq? Most of the media are focusing only on the Najaf confrontation, as though the rest of the country is quiet. But Today in Iraq continues to document the chaos, now a year after the UN headquarters bombing.
Here is the list of mayhem and destruction for just the last two days, August 20 and 21 -
Two US Marines killed in fighting in al-Anbar province.
Two US soldiers killed, three wounded by roadside bomb ambush near Samarra.
Two Iraqis killed, four wounded in ambush of US convoy near Baquba.
Thirteen Iraqis killed, 107 wounded in fighting in Baghdad during last 24 hours.
Seventy-seven Iraqis killed, 70 wounded in fighting in Najaf during last 24 hours.
Heavy fighting reported in Kufa.
Dutch patrol ambushed in Samawah; two Iraqis killed.
US Army patrol ambushed near Khalis.
One Polish soldier killed, six wounded by car bomb near Hilla.
Pipeline sabotaged near Kirkuk. Pipeline sabotaged near Amarah.
One US soldier killed, two wounded in Baghdad RPG ambush.
Senior Iraqi police official assassinated near Ramadi.
Bulgarian troops shelled near Karbala.
Three Iraqi policemen killed in bombing at Nasiriyah police station.
Two Polish soldiers killed, five wounded in ambush near Hilla.
Two Iraqis killed, eleven wounded in two US air strikes in Fallujah.