Month: August 2004

politics as war

: With the president descending to the most shameless sort of attack politics to save his presidency, there’s an understandable desire on the part of Democrats to reopen every political vulnerability he has that has yet to be fully explored or dissected: his failure to show up for military service in the Texas Air National Guard, personal indiscretions from his ‘lost years’, insider deals from the various failed companies…. To pick up on the military language that is now so ubiquitous, I think Democrats need to open up on all fronts.

Talking Points Memo:

With the president descending to the most shameless sort of attack politics to save his presidency, there’s an understandable desire on the part of Democrats to reopen every political vulnerability he has that has yet to be fully explored or dissected: his failure to show up for military service in the Texas Air National Guard, personal indiscretions from his ‘lost years’, insider deals from the various failed companies. All of it.

I have no argument with any of this. I think it makes perfect sense. To pick up on the military language that is now so ubiquitous, I think Democrats need to open up on all fronts.

As noted later in the piece, this just gets into a tit-for-tat campaign and doesn’t do anything to undermine the president’s claims that he deserves another four years. Kerry’s commendations were based on his willingness to attack ambushers in Vietnam, but he’s not the commander of a small combat unit anymore. Now he’s the general of his own army and and needs to take the fight to his opposite number and ignore the “irregulars” and militia fighters who operate on his opponent’s behalf.

Sheesh, speaking of ubiquitous military language . . . .

My Lai not an isolated occurence, or Kerry wasn’t lying

Elite unit savaged civilians in Vietnam: Since the war ended, the American public has been fed a dose of movies fictionalizing the excesses of U.S. units in Vietnam, such as Apocalypse Now and Platoon…. The atrocities took place over seven months, leaving an untold number dead – possibly several hundred civilians, former soldiers and villagers now say.

Elite unit savaged civilians in Vietnam:

Since the war ended, the American public has been fed a dose of movies fictionalizing the excesses of U.S. units in Vietnam, such as Apocalypse Now and Platoon. But in reality, most war-crime cases focused on a single event, like the My Lai massacre.

The Tiger Force case is different. The atrocities took place over seven months, leaving an untold number dead – possibly several hundred civilians, former soldiers and villagers now say.

One medic said he counted 120 unarmed villagers killed in one month.

For decades, the case has remained buried in the archives of the government – not even known to America’s most recognized historians of the war.

Until now.

The Blade won a Pulitzer Prize for the story, if that means anything. I don’t know if it does, since official military records seem to be worthless these days.

I’ve glanced at the stories in the Blade: really just verification and detail of what most people should know to be true. And it’s not there weren’t cases of this in earlier wars.

Early in the Korean War, villagers said, American soldiers machine-gunned hundreds of helpless civilians under a railroad bridge in the South Korean countryside.

When the families spoke out, seeking redress, they met only rejection and denial, from the U.S. military and their own government in Seoul. Now a dozen ex-GIs have spoken, too, and support their story with haunting memories from a “forgotten” war.

American veterans of the Korean War say that in late July 1950, in the conflict’s first desperate weeks, U.S. troops killed a large number of South Korean refugees, many of them women and children, trapped beneath a bridge at a hamlet called No Gun Ri.

In interviews with The Associated Press, ex-GIs speak of 100 or 200 or “hundreds” dead. The Koreans, whose claim for compensation was rejected last year, say 300 were killed at the bridge and 100 in a preceding air attack.

quote of the day (and some laffs)

: Just what do they serve at the White House cafeteria that so many previously reputable people are willing to sacrifice themselves to protect this contemptible little man?

Brad DeLong:

Just what do they serve at the White House cafeteria that so many previously reputable people are willing to sacrifice themselves to protect this contemptible little man?

Continue reading “quote of the day (and some laffs)”

why serve your country?

: It has struck me lately what a terrible indictment of the military these charges are and how once again the Republicans have absolutely no limits in terms of how fully they are willing to trash the American institutions they allegedly love in order to win…. : Today Bob Dole suggested that one or more of John Kerry’s Purple Hearts may have been fraudulent in some way because they were for “superficial wounds.”

Why would you bother if you know your reputation will be shredded by the same people you served with?

A thorough debunking of all the Swift Boat liars’ claims, with the following commentary:

It has struck me lately what a terrible indictment of the military these charges are and how once again the Republicans have absolutely no limits in terms of how fully they are willing to trash the American institutions they allegedly love in order to win. What these people are saying is that the US Navy awarded some of its highest medals for bravery to a coward. The many officers who signed those glowing fitness reports and awarded those citations are either liars or they are incompetent. The word of his shipmates, even the man whose life he saved, are worth nothing. You can’t believe military documentary evidence.
[ . . . ]
For puny, partisan reasons they are accusing the military of widespread corruption — merely to excuse the behavior of their less than stellar candidate.

And then we have this:

Today [retired Senator] Bob Dole [R-ViagraKansas] suggested that one or more of John Kerry’s Purple Hearts may have been fraudulent in some way because they were for “superficial wounds.”

As Josh Marshall points out, Dole knows better than that. Whatever respect he might have deserved as a Senator, as a veteran is gone.

lingering (final?) MovableType to WordPress migration stuff

I hadn’t ever done anything with the old MT archive files, so they were getting increasingly stale and I noticed they were still coming up in my traffic reports (does anyone need to see a page with several hundred posts included in it? This is one of the weaknesses of MT or at least something one would need to figure out to work around.)

I hadn’t ever done anything with the old MT archive files, so they were getting increasingly stale and I noticed they were still coming up in my traffic reports (does anyone need to see a page with several hundred posts included in it? This is one of the weaknesses of MT or at least something one would need to figure out to work around.)

So herewith, all the wordpress specific redirect directives in my httpd.conf file:

Redirect /movabletype/archives/cat_observations.html “http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php?cat=2”
Redirect /movabletype/archives/cat_family_fun.html “http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php?cat=3”
Redirect /movabletype/archives/cat_it_could_be_called_work.html “http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php?cat=4”
Redirect /movabletype/archives/cat_obscure_pursuits.html “http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php?cat=5”
Redirect /movabletype/archives/cat_food.html “http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php?cat=6”
Redirect /movabletype/archives/cat_the_value_of_x.html “http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php?cat=7”
Redirect /movabletype/archives/cat_rated_x.html “http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php?cat=7”
Redirect /movabletype/archives/cat_books.html “http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php?cat=8”
Redirect /movabletype/archives/cat_analogdigital_conversion.html “http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php?cat=9”
Redirect /movabletype/archives/cat_blows_against_the_empire.html “http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php?cat=10”
Redirect /movabletype/archives/cat_a_learning_experience.html “http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php?cat=11”
Redirect /movabletype/archives/cat_i_dont_do_windows.html “http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php?cat=12”
Redirect /movabletype/archives/cat_two_wheels_good.html “http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php?cat=13”
Redirect /movabletype/archives/cat_i_am_not_a_lawyer.html “http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php?cat=14”
Redirect /movabletype/archives/cat_darwin_on_olde_worlde_hardware_a_howto.html “http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php?cat=15”
Redirect /movabletype/archives/cat_darwin_on_olde_worlde_hardware_a_howto.html “http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php?cat=15”
Redirect /movabletype/archives/cat_music.html “http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php?cat=16”
Redirect /movabletype/archives/cat_2004_us_election.html “http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php?cat=17”
Redirect /movabletype/archives/cat_movabletype_30.html “http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php?cat=18”
Redirect /movabletype/archives/cat_wordpress.html “http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php?cat=19”
Redirect /movabletype/index.xml “http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/wp-rss2.php”
Redirect /movabletype/index.rdf “http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/wp-rss2.php”
Redirect /movabletype/atom.xml “http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/wp-atom.php”
Redirect /movabletype/index-full.xml “http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/wp-rss2.php”
Redirect /movabletype/index.html “http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/index.php”
Redirect /wordpress/styles-site.css “http://paulbeard.org/wordpress/wp-layout.css”

ecto 2 observations

I have fooled around with ecto 2 for a couple of days now and I like it just fine.

I have fooled around with ecto 2 for a couple of days now and I like it just fine. The interface is completely different but somehow familiar.

The only gotchas I have found had to do with posting times and image uploading. For some reason, I couldn’t get posts to publish as they were posted: there was a 7 hour (difference from GMT) offset, so they were scheduled to publish 7 hours hence. I ripped out the whole install (suspecting I had perhaps not removed ecto 1’s various config data properly) and reconfigured it. After that, everything worked just fine.

Image uploading in WordPress now works, but that was never ecto’s fault: it was a missing feature in WordPress, but just last week I found a patch to address that and it works like a champ. The only thing I haven’t figured out is how to control the size of the thumbnail that gets generated. I knew where that was in the original ecto, but I’m not finding it now . . .

So far, so good. It’s solid and featureful without being bloated.

the web of lies, unraveled

So here’s a nice infographic of how the Swift Boat Liars (somehow, I don’t think it’s libellous to call them that) are related to the Bush Imperial Court.

So here’s a nice infographic of how the Swift Boat Liars (somehow, I don’t think it’s libellous to call them that) are related to the Bush Imperial Court.

20040820swift_graph.gif

Somehow, the notion that these various operatives aren’t on good enough terms with the president that he couldn’t call them off (rather than making empty speeches against section 527 organizations) doesn’t wash.

Another of Kerry’s brothers in arms speaks out

Rood, who commanded one of three swift boats during the Feb. 281969 mission, acknowledged in his first-person account that there could always be errors in recollection, especially with the passage of more than three decades. His Bronze Star citation, he said, misidentifies the river where the main action occurred. That mistake, he said, is a “cautionary note for those trying to piece it all together. There’s no final authority on something that happened so long ago—not the documents and not even the strained recollections of those of us who were there…. “While they mean to hurt Kerry, what they’re saying impugns others who are not in the public eye.”

Rood, who commanded one of three swift boats during the Feb. 28, 1969 mission, acknowledged in his first-person account that there could always be errors in recollection, especially with the passage of more than three decades. His Bronze Star citation, he said, misidentifies the river where the main action occurred.

That mistake, he said, is a “cautionary note for those trying to piece it all together. There’s no final authority on something that happened so long ago—not the documents and not even the strained recollections of those of us who were there.

“But I know that what some people are saying now is wrong,” Rood wrote. “While they mean to hurt Kerry, what they’re saying impugns others who are not in the public eye.”

My father-in-law earned three Purple Hearts in the Pacific: I have nothing but contempt for anyone who challenges the validity of combat decorations or citations.

So where are Bush’s messmates? Who flew with him? Who serviced his jet? Who trained him?