"But the world isn't like that"

[MalignD at aol.com]

I've attempted (alas) to keep out of this, since, as was the case in the 
aftermath of the destruction of the Trade Center, the argument is being 
advanced in the most predictable and entrenched fashion, lapsing at last (and 
one can only wonder why it took so long) into strained and demagogic 
comparisons of Bush to Hitler.  

Scoop, again predictably, leads this charge, fulminating in his timeless 
prose (bloodthirsty bootlickers), and basing his argument on Google searches 
and (his trump card) the opinions of noted political scientist Thomas Pynchon 
as offered in his (to be generous) peculiar interview with the Japanese 
version of Playboy magazine, that oft-cited journal of scholarship and sense.

(And to note the noteworthy--Barbara, whomever she might be, asks us to 
vouchsafe her similar arguments based on her mother's removing the flag from 
her front porch.)

>From Scoop:

<<Each of those claims is well-documented, and accepted as fact -- except in 
the upside-down world of Bush & Co. propaganda spin, produced by people who 
will never get any closer to the battlefield than their TV screens.>>  

This from a man who does his "reporting" from in front of his computer (in 
the room of his house his wife and child are made to refer to as "the 
newsroom").

<<Try to marginalize the anti-war workers as you may, these facts finally 
seem to be getting through even to the American people who, increasingly, do 
not want Bush's war on Iraq.  Even mainstream corporate media organs can't 
ignore them any more.>>

He then offers, presumably as supporting and damning "facts":

"[...] First, US intelligence knew far more about al-Qa'ida and other Islamic 
terrorist organisations than governments acknowledged in the immediate 
aftermath of 11 September. As transpired from US Congressional hearings, the 
problems lay less in the provision of intelligence than in the capacity of 
the US government to process, evaluate and then act on what it knew."

This indicates no cover-up or spin, rather a breakdown in communication, a 
circumstance brought to light, notes the author, in Congress; that is, by 
those big business's toad-eaters, the very government Scoop is so ever eager 
to disparage.  ("Folow the money.")

"Second, the US signally failed to capitalise on the vast wave of solidarity 
that surged towards it after 11 September.  Its treatment of prisoners 
captured in Afghanistan, its seemingly cavalier attitude to civilian 
casualties, the enduring belligerence of its language and its high-handed 
attitude towards its allies resulted in a squandering of international 
goodwill."

None of this is factual.  It offers a dubious opinion (that the US failed to 
capitalize.  According to what measure?) and offers guesses as to what caused 
this assumed lack of capitalization.  Numerous commentators on the subject 
have predicted that if and when there is an incursion into Iraq, most of our 
allies will support it, as will, if only out of self-interest, many mideast 
regimes; that much of the hedging going on now is local political posturing, 
done for sundry reasons and for the benefit of varying constituencies.  Until 
such time as this support finally fails to transpire, talk of any lost 
solidarity is not fact but speculation.

"President Bush's warning after 11 September that 'all who are not with us 
are against us' now rings all too true."  

Say what?

<<But nothing has undermined the collective war on terrorism more than the 
way in which the Bush administration has caused it to mutate, before our 
eyes, into preparations for an old-style US-led war on Iraq. The US may not 
yet have given up on an international effort to combat terrorism – it has 
forces deployed in anti-terrorism operations in places as far apart as the 
Philippines, Georgia and Kuwait – but the thrust of its military and 
propaganda effort is now Iraq. The deadly terrorist attack in Bali, once 
described as the most peaceful place in the world, shows the folly of that 
approach." >>

This is gibberish.  It's hard to figure with any certainty what exactly is 
being said.  First the writer says that the war on terrorism has mutated into 
old-style war.  Then, in the next sentence, he notes that this is not the 
case, that the US appears to be carrying on an international battle against 
terrorism, that there are anti-terrorism forces in place throughout the 
world.  Then he says that the attack in Bali shows the "folly of that 
approach."  What approach?  The mutation?  The non-mutation?  And why folly?  
Does the writer assume that an "approach" is going to cause all terrorist 
acts to immediately cease?  In any case, American anti-terrorism efforts in 
Indonesia have been hamstrung by local political infighting among the 
government in place, the military, and the police, problems quite outside the 
immediate reach of any US policy. 

Back to you, Scoop.