Shaphan

Briton(s) for Palin (and, er, McCain)

I may be in a minority of one here but, if so, I doubt it will last.  I am energized and enthused by McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin for Veep.  Best. Veep. Pick. Ever.  Go, Sarah!

As a Brit, I have no vote but do have a stake.  It affects Britons who’s in the White House for that 3am call.  I don’t care what party they belong to – I want them to have sound judgement.  Our soldiers’ lives, indeed our national security, depend upon it.

I was for Barack Obama before I was against him.  In 2002 he seemed like an interesting newcomer.  He lost my trust in ‘03 when it became clear to me that he would do or say anything to achieve the presidency and had no underlying principles apart from that ambition.  By ‘04 I was Obamaed out and skipped his address to the Convention.  I’ve kept an open mind, since then, waiting for him to win me over, but he’s only ever reinforced my opinion of him. 

I was against Hillary before I was for her, but my fear of Obama’s psychological flaws turned me into a raving Clintonite.  I loved it that somebody was standing up to him and landing a few blows.  Had she won the nomination, she’d be ten or fifteen points ahead of McCain by now, I reckon. 

Has the Veep-choosing part of the electoral process ever been more important in a US election than in this one?  Eight years of a Cheney administration is one reason, McCain’s age another, and then there’re those Obama supporters who fear their man will be assassinated.  Given that, the candidates’ Veep choice was the acid test of their fitness for the highest office in the human world. 

Obama blew it big-time when he chose Joe Biden to be his Veep.  Worst. Ever.  It sent out all the wrong messages.  No audacity, no hope.  It said – I’m inexperienced, a terrible judge of people and also politically inept.  

I never rated McCain highly and feared he was too reckless to be president.  His choice of Sarah Palin has won me over to him.  When I watched live on the Net her first public introduction in Ohio, I was bowled over.  And when she gave an appreciative tribute to Geraldine Ferraro and, especially warmly it seemed, to HRC, I was ecstatic.  The Queen was dead - long live the Queen!

Hillary was only pretending to be what Sarah Palin is.  I enjoyed Hillary’s act but much prefer the real thing.  If there were to be any 3am calls, couldn’t we let John sleep and divert them to the Palin household instead?

Oh Bummer: Obama

Barack Obama, who today confirmed his candidacy for the '08 presidential election, has seduced Britain's media luvvies but his charms remain lost on me.  The BBC treats him as if he was the coming Messiah, as predicted by Slate's Timothy Noah.  (Note to Noah: how about Obama as the Twelfth Imam?)  I've been wary of Obama since '04 when he advocated bombing Iran to prevent it acquiring nukes.  This was his rationale:

"In light of the fact that we're now in Iraq, with all the problems in terms of perceptions about America that have been created, us launching some missile strikes into Iran is not the optimal position for us to be in," he said.

"On the other hand, having a radical Muslim theocracy in possession of nuclear weapons is worse.  So I guess my instinct would be to err on not having those weapons in the possession of the ruling clerics of Iran. ...  And I hope it doesn't get to that point.  But realistically, as I watch how this thing has evolved, I'd be surprised if Iran blinked at this point." [Chicago Tribune]

But the concept of 'theocracy' is a total fantasy.  There is no nation, not even the United States nor Iran, whereover God is the ruler.  All governments are anthropocracies. To launch a pre-emptive strike against Iran, not because it possessed nukes but because it was a theocracy that might soon possess nukes, is an irrational policy proposal that would be of disastrous consequence if followed.  (Note to Noah: Obama as the Antichrist?)  (Note to self: nor do democracies exist - once the demos become the government, they aren't the demos anymore.  'Theocracies' and 'democracies' are both illusions.)

But Barry Obama seems to have a thing about 'theocracies', even though they don't exist.  He's been quoted as saying:

"Alongside my own deep personal faith, I am a follower, as well, of our civic religion," he says.  "I am a big believer in the separation of church and state [sic*].  I am a big believer in our constitutional structure.  I mean, I'm a law professor at the University of Chicago teaching constitutional law.

"I am a great admirer of our founding charter and its resolve to prevent theocracies from forming and its resolve to prevent disruptive strains of fundamentalism from taking root in this country."

Nowhere in America's 'founding charter' is there a reference to theocracies or the like - was Obama referring to tyrannies?  And he taught constitutional law?  He's full of bullshit, like the rest of us.  He's not the Messiah; he's just a naughty boy.

p.s.  Am I the only loon connecting Barack Obama's name with the creepy 'Dr Brian O'Blivion' in Cronenberg's Videodrome?  [Yes - ed.], which also had a baddie called 'Barry Convex'.  President Barry O'Blivion, anyone?  I mean, have you ever seen him the flesh, except via the New Flesh of the video-screen?

*  It's to Obama's credit that he recognizes that America is a religion; but it's to his discredit that he believes in it and in its dogma that religion and politics are separable.  If the founders had managed to separate the two, the American civic religion would not have arisen.

Bunker mentality

“The real rulers in Washington are invisible to exercise power from behind the scenes”

~ Felix Frankfurter [US Supreme Court Justice, 1939-62 - Wikip.]

"After 9/11, The Washington Post reported that President Bush had set up a shadow government of about 100 senior civilian managers to live and work outside Washington on a rotating basis to ensure the continuity of national security.  Since then, a program once focused on presidential succession and civilian control of U.S. nuclear weapons has been expanded to encompass the entire government."

~ Washington Post (2006.06.02)

"On Monday, June 19 [2006], about 4,000 government workers representing more than 50 federal agencies from the State Department to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission will say goodbye to their families and set off for dozens of classified emergency facilities stretching from the Maryland and Virginia suburbs to the foothills of the Alleghenies.  They will take to the bunkers in an "evacuation" that my sources describe as the largest "continuity of government" exercise ever conducted, a drill intended to prepare the U.S. government for an event even more catastrophic than the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks."

~ ibid.

"Former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has left the Pentagon, but not the Defense Department.  On Jan. 4 [2007], Mr. Rumsfeld opened a government-provided transition office in Arlington and has seven Pentagon-paid staffers working for him, a Pentagon official said.  The Pentagon lists Mr. Rumsfeld as a "nonpaid consultant," a status he needs in order to review secret and top-secret documents, the official said."

~ Washington Times (2007.01.25]

Treason and Plot?

[On the news-ticker on the BBC news website, it reads: "Reports say that nine US soldiers have died in violence in Iraq.  More soon."  Which about sums it up.]

Is the Bush administration manipulating the timing of Saddam Hussein's trial so as to help the GOP hold on to Congress?  So reckons Tom Englehardt, writing in The Nation (November Surprise?).  The trial-judge's verdict has been delayed until November 5th, and the mid-term elections are just two days later.  Englehardt was tipped off to this possibility by a law professor called Scott Horton, who has worked in Baghdad.  In correspondence with Englehardt, Horton wrote:

"For sure.  That November 5 date is designed to show some progress in Iraq.  This is the last full news-cycle day in the US before the elections.  It'll be Monday.  And the American public will see Saddam condemned to death and see it as a positive thing.

"When you look at polling figures," Horton said," there have been three significant spike points.  One was the date on which Saddam was captured.  The second was the purple fingers election.  The third was Zarqawi being killed.  Based on those three, it's easy to project that they will get a mild bump out of this.

Could this explain why Bush and Rove are reportedly so confident about the outcome of the mid-terms, despite the pundits and polls?   

The phrase 'sentenced to death' always makes me laugh - we are all sentenced to death.  Killing someone before they're due is murder, whether it be judicially sanctioned or not.  It does not help that Saddam is not even getting a fair trial.  The proceedings are a showbiz production, a psyop operation, aimed at the US electorate and it'll probably be effective.

I'm reminded that the American political system is deeply Lockean and that John Locke's theory of government was founded on murder.

POLITICAL POWER, then, I take to be a RIGHT of making laws with penalties of death, and consequently all less penalties, for the regulating and preserving of property, and of employing the force of the community, in the execution of such laws, and in the defence of the common-wealth from foreign injury; and all this only for the public good. [Chapter 1, Sec 3, Second Treatise]

The unnecessary phrase, 'with penalties of death', fundamentally ties-in the practice of judicial homicide, i.e. murder, with the nature of political power.  Locke's political vision still permeates US political thinking, and this, IMO, partly accounts for the survival of judicial homicide in the American legal system.  It's not just a Republican thing; when Clinton ran for president, he had executed a prisoner in Arkansas to bolster his law and order credentials.  Rhetorical question - is it as easy for Bush and Rove to manipulate the minds of the American people as it is for Kim Jong Il to control those of the North Koreans?

What PDB stands for

I thought, you thought, we all thought that the letters PDB stood for 'President's Daily Brief', or 'Presidential Daily Briefing', or something like that.  Well, I was watching Tony Snow's White House press briefing today, as one does, and he expanded PDB to "Presidential Decision Brief". 

Q  But, Tony -- and this is my last question -- I understand you keep talking about the Clinton administration, but let's talk about August 6, 2001, this administration, this PDB.  Let's talk about why it was not placed at a high level. Why not?

MR. SNOW:  It's a presidential decision brief, for heaven's sake, it goes before the President.  What higher level do you have?

I thought it might be a slip of the tongue but Googled it nevertheless [here].  I found only two pages - first, chapter 2 of a risible anti-Iran 'book', and, second, a recruitment notice from the Defense Intelligence Agency (or was it from SAIC?).  The extract Google found was this:

Find Senior Intelligence Writer jobs at Dice.com

Our candidates will assist senior DIA analyst in writing reports, articles, or other papers as required up to the standard of a Presidential Decision Brief. ...

And, when I accessed the webpage less than an hour ago, those words were in the advertisement (as they had to be, for me to have found the page).  But, now, they have disappeared from the text.

Title: Senior Intelligence Writer

Skills: Writer, analyst, Program Manager, Manager

Date: 10-1-2006

Location: Arlington, VA Area code: 703 Tax term: FULLTIME Pay rate: Competitive Length: FULLTIME Position ID: 66413 Dice ID: saicbot

Job description: The Space and Geospatial Intelligence Business Unit has a current opening for two Senior Intelligence writers to support the Counter Narco Trafficking Division of DIA.  These are full time positions and are located in Crystal City.  We do not envision much travel with these positions. We require candidates who have written for the Presidential Daily Brief.  They will write for the Brief and also assist senior DIA analyst in writing reports, articles, or other papers as required.  A background in Counter Narcotics Intelligence is desired but not required.  Our successful candidates will have a minimum of a Bachelors Degree although graduate education is highly desired. Also desired is graduation from a Senior Intelligence Community writing course.  These candidates must have at least eight years experience in the National Intelligence Community at the Senior Military (O-5/O-6, GS-14/15/SES, or Senior contracting position) and must demonstrate their ability to write by sharing examples of their writing.  The successful candidate will interview with the SAIC Program Manager and with Senior Staff at DIA.  The candidates must have unsurpassed ability to communicate clearly and concisely in oral and written English.

That they would scrub the phrase 'Presidential Decision Brief' so soon after Tony Snow's words went public leads me to wonder if we weren't all wrong about what PDBs were.  And, if so, if the August 6th, 2001, PDB, titled 'Bin Laden determined to strike in US', required a decision from the president, what decision did he make?

Is Fox News' CEO a Scientologist?

[Paragraphs coloured red were added later to the original text.]

Probably not, but, if this is a hoax, it's well done. I normally don't like passing on single-sourced, unsubstantiated rumours but, as Fox News and Scientology are about as low as humanity can sink, I'll make an exception in this case.  I found this via a thread on the Rigorous Intuition discussion board.

The full text is copied below the fold.  For those interested in Scientology, it's worth reading in toto.  It presents itself as a whistleblowing from a high-level Scientologist in LA.  Here's the relevant extract (the whole post is much longer)  [my emphases]:

Does that mean Tom Cruise knows Dianetics is a lie?  Yes.  Although I have no idea how that effects him personally.  It hits us all differently.  I’ve seen but not met Katie Holmes around the PAC base.  She’s a level III, which means she doesn’t know that everything her soul-mate teaches her is a lie.  We all lie, it’s part of the job.  It’s part of the plan.  There have been a total of 86 Level VII’s over the span of Scientology, and not a one before me has betrayed us upon learning the lie of it all.  That’s how careful the level VIII’s, how intelligent they are in choosing their pupils.  We learn, we accept, and for one reason or another we stay.

When we learn that Auditing does nothing.  That treating mentally or physically ill people with Audits instead of proper medication, essentially killing them, has been our doing.  We stay.

When we learn that the term Thetan is used synonymously with “sucker” in countless ploys to scam helpless people of all types from their money.  We stay.

When we learn that we actively ruin peoples lives for the sake of keeping our religion in a popular light, not for any greater good, but for the sake of keeping secret a lie.  We stay.

We sue, prosecute, frame, intimidate, and even kill any journalist, politician, businessman, or individual who gets in our way.  We have records for these things, and I have read them all.

I still do these things.  I still perform Audits.  Although for the sake of my family we have proper health care.  I’ll be damned before I see my son take an Audit and some bullshit vitamins to treat his diabetes instead of insulin.  But for everyone else, their fate is not my concern.

I’ve met some of our lawyers, all deeply intelligent and amoral people.  They are our foundation, and they know it.  Some of them aren’t even members, but they’re so good that we can’t afford to let them go.  They know our secrets, our big secret, but we pay them enough to have them take it to the grave.  Most of them don’t care.

There is one level VIII per major facility and 2 in the PAC base.  I know them both intimately, as I have spent the majority of the past 3 years under their close supervision.  One man is Roger Eugene Ailes, the president of Fox News.  The other is Dick Ackerman, representative of California’s 33rd district.  I don’t see Roger as often, he’s a very busy man.  Dick I’ve spend the most time with.

It then goes on to make lurid claims about Roger Ailes' sexual predilections.  There are many reasons to disbelieve this account.  For example, how come Ailes and Ackerman have not been exposed before?  How would Ailes find time to supervise this guy at the PAC Base in LA, when he works full-time on the East Coast?  It would appear to be just a clever attempt to smear Roger Ailes, Fox News, Dick Ackerman and Scientology.  And, according to a discussion at  Digg.com, it may just have been an exercise in creative writing.  Those commentators also point out that his desire for anonymity is betrayed by the personal information he reveals about himself.

That there are several countervailing reasons to give the testimony credence may also be attributed to the clever creativity of its author - I don't know.  For instance, the author is convincingly knowledgeable about Scientology, its organization and modus operandi.  I have never been a Scientologist but I know, from study and personal experience, that much of what he writes is true.  In answer to the above commentators, the reason he chooses anonymity is to protect his family, not himself.

For the sake of my family I will not give my real name.  If not for them, I wouldn’t care.  I will never go back, and their retribution for me spreading this document will be swift and decisive.  They will know I betrayed them, and they act on that notion.  But they are benevolent enough to not touch my family, so long as I am not linked to this article.

Dick Ackerman is a California state senator from Orange County - he's currently the Minority Leader (which is sort of like being leader of the opposition in the Lords).  The only Scientological connection I can find to him is that back in '04 he, along with many others, opposed Proposition 63, which put 1% on tax to pay for psychiatric help for California's myriad mental illness sufferers.  Two organizations that opposed Prop. 63 were the Church of Scientology (via Freedom magazine and the CCHR) and Citizens for a Healthy California.  On the latter, according to the California Health Care Foundation,

Opponents have formed their own organization, Citizens for a Healthy California.  It bills itself as a “coalition whose membership spans the state, and includes local businesses, taxpayers, medical specialists, civil servants, elected representatives, citizens’ groups, and many others that simply want to see proven, affordable solutions for the problems we face — not just more taxes.”

Spokesman David Yow won’t specify exactly who these people are.  But the Citizens for a Healthy California Web site charges:  “The bureaucratic allies of Steinberg have a narrow-minded approach to treating illness, and do not produce the results they claim.  Medically, their approaches fill people with drugs, but do not give them a cure.  Politically, they define ‘mental illness’ so broadly as to include nearly everybody.  And scientifically, their methods are incomplete, and leave out of the equation the physical and environmental factors that impact a person’s health and well-being.”

These are charges often leveled by the Citizens Commission on Human Rights, a Los Angeles-based “independent body to investigate and expose psychiatric violations of human rights.”  It was established by the Church of Scientology.  Requests for comment by the CCHR have gone unanswered.

Matsonian Group, LLC, a Sacramento communications company, is managing the opposition to Proposition 63.  “This is the wrong time for the wrong measure,” summarizes Yow, Matsonian’s director of political affairs.  The tax surcharge is “such a shaky, volatile source, the people who’re supposed to benefit can’t count on the plan working too far into the future.  The measure is actually going to end up hurting the status of mental health and other social programs.”

The Matsonian Group is a Scientology business.  According to its website,

Matson Breakey is the editor and production director for The Voice.  In addition, Matson is involved in the following groups and organizations:

United States Navy Reserves -  Yes 2 Kollege -Community Mental Health Education & Research Project - American Heart Association -  Heart Ball - Citizens for a Healthy California - Citizens for Social Reform - Wind Youth Service -  Sacramento Stars - Criminon Criminal Rehabilitation - Scientology Volunteer Ministers  [my emph's]

The three groups in bold are definitely Scientological, the one italicized probably is.  I don't know about the others.  Another page has this:

In 1993 Matson Breakey returned to his hometown of Sacramento from establishing the first Mission of the Church of Scientology in Ikebukuro, Japan.  He immediately formed Matson Breakey Associates, as his freelance operation (...)

Anyway, so Scientology actively opposed Prop. 63 via several front groups, and Dick Ackerman put his name to that campaign.  It ain't enough to convict.  That Senator Dick shares his surname with L Ron Hubbard's first literary agent, Forrest J Ackerman, and that the two Ackermans were born 26 years apart in the LA region, while true, is likely to be purely coincidental.

As for Roger Ailes, all I can find are mostly thematic resemblances between his work and Scientology.

-  Sloganwise, Fox News is truly 'Fair and Balanced', just as Scientology is truly the 'Bridge to Total Freedom'.

-  Ailes hired CNN's Greta Van Susteren, whose life, and her husband's, has long been handled by Scientology.

-  Ailes' political consultancy was called Ailes Communications;  he's written about how to communicate effectively;  and the subject is basic to Scientology's methods.  Almost the first thing a neophyte does is to practise 'communications exercises', and Communication forms one-third of the Hubbard's ARC Triangle (along with Affinity and Reality).

-  Political consultants on presidential campaigns need to be ruthless and willing-and-able to manipulate the minds of many.  Fox CEOs, and there has only been one, require exactly the same talents.  Scientology teaches people those skills - an OT VIII would have them in abundance.

-  He behaves like a follower of L Ron Hubbard's methods.  For example, Lee Atwater said of Ailes that he had "two speeds - attack and destroy".  Bill O'Reilly allegedly said of him:

If you cross Fox News Channel, it's not just me, it's Roger Ailes who will go after you.  I'm the street guy out front making loud noises about the issues, but Ailes operates behind the scenes, strategizes and makes things happen so that one day BAM!  The person gets what's coming to them but never sees it coming. Look at Al Franken, one day he's going to get a knock on his door and life as he's known it will change forever.  That day will happen, trust me. [The Smoking Gun]

How Ailes operates is how Scientology operates.  None of which is nearly enough to convict. Perhaps it's irresponsible of me to be publicizing this author's posting, when others have judged it a fraud.  But, having read the whole thing yesterday,  I felt it should be as widely known as possible, if only so that others may debunk it. 

Below the fold is the full, anonymous text.

Leave Margaret Hassan out of it, please

President Bush has a new speech, which he's regurgitated four times in the past five weeks. It's the one about America's - nay, humanity's - enemy being Islamic radicalism, aka 'Islamofascism'.  But four times now he has mis-named Margaret Hassan as a victim of Islamic radicals, alongside Daniel Pearl and Nicholas Berg. (Link)

6 October 2005

Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that innocent individuals can be sacrificed to serve a political vision.  And this explains their cold-blooded contempt for human life.  We've seen it in the murders of Daniel Pearl, Nicholas Berg, and Margaret Hassan, and many others.

25 October 2005
Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that innocent individuals can be sacrificed to serve a political vision.  And this explains their cold-blooded contempt for human life.  We've seen it in the murders of Daniel Pearl, Nicholas Berg, and Margaret Hassan, and many, many others.

28 October 2005
Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that innocent individuals can be sacrificed to serve a political vision.  And this explains their cold-blooded contempt for human life.  We have seen it in the murders of Daniel Pearl, Nicholas Berg, and Margaret Hassan, and many others.

11 November 2005
Like the ideology of communism, our new enemy teaches that innocent individuals can be sacrificed to serve a political vision.  And this explains their cold-blooded contempt for human life.  We have seen it in the murders of Daniel Pearl and Nicholas Berg and Margaret Hassan and many others.

(Do Bush's speechwriters believe that if you repeat something often enough, people will believe it, even if it's not true?)  Pearl and Berg were murdered by Islamist fighters, but whether they can be termed 'innocent individuals' is debatable.  But Margaret Hassan, unlike Nick Berg, was not captured or killed by Zarqawi's group, although the Americans and Alawi's government tried to blame it on Zarqawi.  Her kidnap (and presumed murder) bore none of Zarqawi's hallmarks, nor of Islamists in general.  In fact, Zarqawi released a statement calling for her to be released, and he would have done, had the gang who had taken her handed her over to him (Link).  Bush should stop abusing the memory of Margaret Hassan by lying about her death. 

Dreaming of John Roberts

Here's weird. On the night John G Roberts Jr was sworn in as the new SCOTUS chief justice, I dreamt he had been sworn in as president. The next day, I told myself that the reason I so dreamt was because, in the confirmation hearings, I remember thinking that Roberts seemed to have all the attributes of a consummate politician who could easily reach the very top. Despite it being just a dream, I checked the US constitution to see if serving on the Supreme Court barred one from serving in Congress or the executive branch - no mention of it. Now I read this Newsweek article by Eleanor Clift from two weeks ago, and I'm wondering what's going on.

Roberts has led such a charmed life that heading the Supreme Court may not be the end of the road for him. Sid Davis, former Washington bureau chief for NBC news, has a recurring dream that Roberts will become president someday. This is the scenario: Roberts looks like William Holden, a Hollywood leading man when Ronald Reagan was still a B actor. A son of privilege with a Kennedyesque family, he recalls the heady days of Camelot. He’s a man of great intellect, and in about 10 years time, maybe longer, he’ll be bored with the high court, and a Republican Party starved for charisma will draft him to run for president. “I’ve been floating the idea and people think I’m nuts, but I don’t think I’m nuts,” says Davis. It wouldn’t be the first time a Supreme Court justice stepped down to run for president. Charles Evans Hughes resigned as associate justice in 1916 to become the Republican Party’s candidate against Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Hughes lost the election but went on to serve as secretary of State under Republican Presidents Harding and Coolidge. President Herbert Hoover sent him back to the Supreme Court in 1930, this time as chief justice, where he led the opposition to FDR’s New Deal.

If Sid Davis has had recurring dreams about Roberts as president, and I had one, maybe there are more of us out there, glimpsing the future as we sleep.

If Roberts intends moving from SCOTUS to POTUS, how could he possibly make judgements without one eye on the ultimate prize? Wouldn't that take politicizing the bench to a whole new level?

Objective intelligence?

John Negroponte has been nominated by GW Bush to be the US's first Director of National Intelligence.  My initial reaction was generally positive (given some of the other possibilities) - the choice was a surprise yet made a lot of sense; he'll surely coast through the confirmation process; he's patently very able; he's half-European and born in London, and seems affected by it; and, above all else, he's not Porter Goss.  But then he went up to the microphone to respond to the president's introduction, and my spirits sank.

Providing timely and objective national intelligence to you, the Congress, the departments and agencies, and to our uniformed military services is a critical national task -- critical to our international posture, critical to the prevention of international terrorism, and critical to our homeland security.

'Objective intelligence' is an ideal that is unachievable in the real world.  The most the president's daily intelligence briefer ought aspire to is to present intelligence as objectively as is humanly possible.  The president and his advisers then need to receive it as objectively as they can, and not try to read into it whatever they subjectively might want it to contain.  When people believe that intelligence is objective, they stop being scientific about intelligence and don't take into account human fallibility.  I hope John Negroponte understands this or else he's a bad pick..

Condi isn't reality-based.

I don't get it - Condi goes before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is challenged by Barbara Boxer about her veracity, responds with at least one untruth, and gets confirmed.  Towards the end of her testimony, in response to the no-WMD-in-Iraq problem, she said:

But it wasn't just weapons of mass destruction.  He was also a place -- his territory was a place where terrorists were welcomed, where he paid suicide bombers to bomb Israel, where he had used Scuds against Israel in the past, and so we knew what his intentions were in the region, where he had attacked his neighbors before and, in fact, tried to annex Kuwait, where we'd gone to war against him twice in the past.

But Saddam did not pay "suicide bombers to bomb Israel" - he compensated their families after the Israelis had demolished their homes, which is categorically different.  And to say Saddam welcomed terrorists in Iraq is vastly stretching the truth.  And has the US really "gone to war against him twice in the past."?  I remember the Gulf War but not the other one to which she's referring.  Thus, Condi has a tenuous grasp on reality and an on-off relationship with the truth - yet the Senate has approved of her nomination.  I just don't get it.