State of denial: Abugrabbed in Washington (TomDispatch)

[pinto]

http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=1460

Quote of the day: "At a meeting I attended with European diplomats to discuss reconstruction, a Rumsfeld protégé asserted that 'Ahmed Chalabi is like the prophet Muhammad. At first, people doubted him but they came to realize the wisdom of his ways.'" (From a piece written for the Christian Science Monitor by David Phillips, "architect and facilitator" of the "democratic principles working group" from the State Department's The Future of Iraq project, which was shoved aside by the Pentagon during the war. Pentagon's postwar fiasco coming full-circle?)

Abugrabbed

There has already been much analysis of the President's lackluster Iraq speech, the first in a promised set of six. Okay, okay, Elisabeth Bumiller on the front page of the New York Times did refer to him as "confident and calm throughout," but if this had been the pilot show for anyone else's six-part miniseries, the TV execs would have pulled the plug on the spot. (As it is, by speech six, he may be lucky to get a midnight slot on CSPAN.) The speech itself was largely boilerplate Iraq-yak from this President, all of whose talks are unidirectional and so filled with "progress" toward the "future." (If this were the Vietnam era, his tunnel would have a blazing sun at its end.)


<more>

http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=1460

[Miss Authoritiva]

1. "History's what done me in"

The passive voice is the correct voice for diplomacy: it helps to blur the distinctions between actor and acted upon. But Bush's use of the passive voice undercuts what he presumably wants to project: that he's the actor, not the acted upon.

"In the last 32 months, history has placed great demands on our country and events have come quickly… History is moving and it will tend toward hope or tend toward tragedy."

True, the passive voice absolves Bush of responsibility, but it also strips him of control. And why would the leader of the world's lone superpower want to risk appearing as having no control?

[struggle4progress]

2. Loved the link to "Magical History Tour"

http://politics.slate.msn.com/id/2101011/

I'm afraid * really is demented :scared: