From Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo:
A true testament to our political discourse. From WaPo: “The shift is subtle, but Republican lawmakers acknowledge that it is no longer tenable to say the news media are ignoring the good news in Iraq and painting an unfair picture of the war.”
If the GOP is turning then….
It is truly telling that the refusal by the Knicks front office to overpay for a player is the best news we’ve had about the team in a very long time.
From Bob Herbert:
The United States had complete command of the moral and ethical high ground in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. Most of the world was with us.
For some reason, the Bush administration deliberately abandoned those heights to pursue policies that were not just morally questionable, but reprehensible. Administration officials have fought like tigers to retain the right to torture. They have imprisoned people willy-nilly, without regard to whether they had actually committed offenses against the United States. They set up a system of kangaroo courts at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that was such an affront to the idea of justice that it should have sent shudders of shame down the spines of decent Americans.
And the president wants to keep it that way. Even with the recent Supreme Court ruling that the administration is not above the law and must abide by treaties, we are still faced with the prospect that the administration will ignore the ruling and/or the Congress will rubberstamp the Bush approach.
More from Herbert:
That rumbling you hear is the sound of the founding fathers spinning in their graves. Incredibly, under the trials originally authorized by President Bush, prosecutors would have been allowed to introduce evidence obtained through torture and other forms of coercion. The Bush administration didn’t just leave the moral and ethical high ground. It sped away with great enthusiasm.
Here is a report worth reading from Salon that I think avoids the stereotyping and side-taking that the mainstream outlets have fallen into. The thing that strikes me is that there was deliberate provaction of Israel, but that the response has been out of proportion to the initial provocation and that it plays into the hands of Hezbollah (see previous post).
What also strikes me is how, as with 9/11, the neo-cons are ready to use the Lebanon crisis for their own ends. As with 9/11, when they used the terror attack on the United States to start a war in Iraq, they are now taking the crisis in Lebanon and using it as a pretext for an assault on Iran. I can only hope that there are cooler and wiser heads out there this time around.
My friend Maggi Hill is playing a gig Friday at 9 p.m. at the Sotto in Princeton. Thought I’d give her a plug — she puts on quite a show and is worth seeing. (Photo is one I took at the Lambertville Shadfest several years ago.)
Hank Kalet 