Teleologic Blog: American History Archives

June 10, 2008

Amazing Lack of Lies by Bush Administration about Iraq

Despite very strongly worded attacks, the bottom line is that the recent Congressional inquiry into the Bush Administration's public arguments in favor of a "war resolution" find that what they said was what the best available intelligence (pre-war) said. No lies.

Now its true that much of we thought was true turned out to be wrong but this is hardly the fault of the Bush Administration. Saddam was good at lying to everyone around him and many, many people honestly thought Saddam really did have chemical, biological, even nuclear weapons ready and waiting in the event of an attack. But the Bush administration did not lie about what they knew.

--- From the Washington Post by Fred Hiatt, June 9 2008 ---
Search the Internet for "Bush Lied" products, and you will find sites that offer more than a thousand designs. The basic "Bush Lied, People Died" bumper sticker is only the beginning.

Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, set out to provide the official foundation for what has become not only a thriving business but, more important, an article of faith among millions of Americans. And in releasing a committee report Thursday, he claimed to have accomplished his mission, though he did not use the L-word.

"In making the case for war, the administration repeatedly presented intelligence as fact when it was unsubstantiated, contradicted or even nonexistent," he said.

There's no question that the administration, and particularly Vice President Cheney, spoke with too much certainty at times and failed to anticipate or prepare the American people for the enormous undertaking in Iraq.

But dive into Rockefeller's report, in search of where exactly President Bush lied about what his intelligence agencies were telling him about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein, and you may be surprised by what you find.

On Iraq's nuclear weapons program? The president's statements "were generally substantiated by intelligence community estimates."

On biological weapons, production capability and those infamous mobile laboratories? The president's statements "were substantiated by intelligence information."

On chemical weapons, then? "Substantiated by intelligence information."

On weapons of mass destruction overall (a separate section of the intelligence committee report)? "Generally substantiated by intelligence information." Delivery vehicles such as ballistic missiles? "Generally substantiated by available intelligence." Unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to deliver WMDs? "Generally substantiated by intelligence information."

As you read through the report, you begin to think maybe you've mistakenly picked up the minority dissent. But, no, this is the Rockefeller indictment. So, you think, the smoking gun must appear in the section on Bush's claims about Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to terrorism.

But statements regarding Iraq's support for terrorist groups other than al-Qaeda "were substantiated by intelligence information." Statements that Iraq provided safe haven for Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and other terrorists with ties to al-Qaeda "were substantiated by the intelligence assessments," and statements regarding Iraq's contacts with al-Qaeda "were substantiated by intelligence information." The report is left to complain about "implications" and statements that "left the impression" that those contacts led to substantive Iraqi cooperation.

In the report's final section, the committee takes issue with Bush's statements about Saddam Hussein's intentions and what the future might have held. But was that really a question of misrepresenting intelligence, or was it a question of judgment that politicians are expected to make?

After all, it was not Bush, but Rockefeller, who said in October 2002: "There has been some debate over how 'imminent' a threat Iraq poses. I do believe Iraq poses an imminent threat. I also believe after September 11, that question is increasingly outdated. . . . To insist on further evidence could put some of our fellow Americans at risk. Can we afford to take that chance? I do not think we can."

Rockefeller was reminded of that statement by the committee's vice chairman, Sen. Christopher S. Bond (R-Mo.), who with three other Republican senators filed a minority dissent that includes many other such statements from Democratic senators who had access to the intelligence reports that Bush read. The dissenters assert that they were cut out of the report's preparation, allowing for a great deal of skewing and partisanship, but that even so, "the reports essentially validate what we have been saying all along: that policymakers' statements were substantiated by the intelligence."

Why does it matter, at this late date? The Rockefeller report will not cause a spike in "Bush Lied" mug sales, and the Bond dissent will not lead anyone to scrape the "Bush Lied" bumper sticker off his or her car.

But the phony "Bush lied" story line distracts from the biggest prewar failure: the fact that so much of the intelligence upon which Bush and Rockefeller and everyone else relied turned out to be tragically, catastrophically wrong.

And it trivializes a double dilemma that President Bill Clinton faced before Bush and that President Obama or McCain may well face after: when to act on a threat in the inevitable absence of perfect intelligence and how to mobilize popular support for such action, if deemed essential for national security, in a democracy that will always, and rightly, be reluctant.

For the next president, it may be Iran's nuclear program, or al-Qaeda sanctuaries in Pakistan, or, more likely, some potential horror that today no one even imagines. When that time comes, there will be plenty of warnings to heed from the Iraq experience, without the need to fictionalize more.

Very true. Presidents have to make decisions on the basis of available information, sometimes poor information. But there it is. Its a tough job and we live in an imperfect world. But can we please, please, please end this false assertion that the Bush administration lied about what they knew about Iraq? Please?

Posted by rakhier at 11:05 AM | Comments (0)

December 26, 2007

An attack on 4 myths of the Vietnam war

This was an interesting essay on 4 myths of the Vietnam war that have been strongly held by the "left wing" of the United States for 30 years now.

Who Owns the Vietnam War? (by A. Herman, Commentary Magazine, Dec 2007)

1. America’s cold-war obsession with Communist totalitarianism led it to intervene in an internal struggle in which no conceivable vital interest was at stake. - False. Ho was a die-hard Communist from the beginning. We had just as much stake in Vietnam not going Communist as we did in Korea. Same idea: containment.

2. In Vietnam we found ourselves confronting a powerful native insurgency in the form of the Vietcong, an indigenous guerrilla force. - False. The VC in South Vietnam were largely soldiers from the North. There was very little real support for the Communist government in South Vietnam. And what little support there was vanished in the face of their constant terror and brutality towards the people in the villages they took over.

3. The frustrations of fighting this losing battle wrecked the morale of American troops. - This is false. Compared to other wars U.S. soldiers in Vietnam behaved about the same as they did in other wars fought in the 20th century. They fought well, they treated the local population well, and they came home and lived (on average) pretty good lives.

4. Despite intensive bombing, and despite Richard Nixon’s 1970 invasion of Cambodia in an effort to wipe out enemy sanctuaries there, the American intervention was destined to fail. - False. We could have won the war, we could have supported the South Vietnamese government like we promised, and the consequences for our defeat were serious and world-wide. "After Vietnam it was “politically impossible for the U.S. government to undertake large-scale military intervention anywhere in the third world,” a fact of which Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries took ample advantage. Even during the war, new pro-Soviet regimes had emerged in the Congo (1968), Benin (1972), and Ethiopia and Guinea Bissau (1974). At war’s end and thereafter, the list grew to include, in 1975, Madagascar, Cape Verde, Mozambique, and Angola, then Afghanistan (1978) and Grenada and Nicaragua (1979)."

Nice essay.

Posted by rakhier at 12:29 AM | Comments (0)

July 22, 2006

A Letter which the New York Times should publish...

I wrote an impassioned “letter of apology” which I wish Arthur Sulzberger Jr. would deliver. As of now (July 22) it seems very unlikely that the New York Times is going to apologize. Sigh.

The following is my considered statement regarding the SWIFT news story which the New York Times published on June 25, 2006.

I am sorry.

A careful review by me of the story and the many thoughtful critiques of our decision to publish the story has convinced me that we, the New York Times, should not have published the story. Period.

The follow facts underlie my position on the SWIFT story.

Fact 1 – The SWIFT program was a secret program duly classified as such by the relevant government agency. We, in the media, do not have special constitutional powers to reveal secret programs.

Fact 2 – The SWIFT program was a legal program, as far as most experts in the field can tell. It violated no U.S. laws nor did it violate the U.S. Constitution.

Fact 3 – The SWIFT program was a successful and on-going intelligence program. We were told this by a number of experts, including the Secretary of the Treasury, and I see no reason to doubt them on this issue.

Conclusion: The New York Times, by publishing the details of an on-going secret, effective, and legal intelligence program helped the enemies of the United States and hurt the United States government. By publishing this story we put ourselves on the side of Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and other Islamic terrorist organizations.

Our executive editor, Bill Kellor, has tried on several occasions to justify his decision to publish the story. I simply do not follow his logic and I believe a grave error in judgement was made by him. As a result, Mr. Kellor has been fired from the New York Times and he will never work for us again in any capacity so long as I am the publisher.

The writers of the SWIFT story must share some responsibility for pushing the story and writing it. They are suspended from the paper for a period of at least six months. I am also committing this paper to reveal, if asked, the names and relevant information about the people in the U.S. Government who leaked the information about the SWIFT program to our reporters. What the leakers did was wrong, illegal, and immoral. A basic and necessary condition of working with official government secrets is not to reveal them. If the government wishes to begin a criminal investigation into the leaks, we will cooperate to the fullest extent possible.

Let me be very clear, the New York Times does not stand with Osama bin Laden. The Times rejects the notion of any moral equivalence between Al Qaeda and the United States of America. Al Qaeda is an evil, fascist ideology which we have seen revealed in its full barbarity when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan for three horrific years. The Taliban, when they ruled Afghanistan, murdered women for the supposed crime of trying to teach their daughters to read. The Taliban murdered men purely for the supposed crime of loving someone else who was also a man. The Taliban destroyed priceless historic artworks of other religions because they were the products of so-called infidels and consequently, of no value to the fascist Islamic government.

I reject everything the Taliban stood for, and by extension, everything that Al Qaeda represents. I and my newspaper freely announce that we stand with the United States Government. We know full well what life would be like if Al Qaeda or other fascist Islamic groups actually took power in this country. They would destroy everything which we hold dear and kill millions of people in the process. That can not happen. That must not happen. And we at this newspaper will no longer aid or support Al Qaeda by anything we do or publish.

Those people working for the New York Times that see the United States Government as an evil which is in any way comparable to Al Qaeda are encouraged to leave, now. The United States Government is not the enemy and I completely and utterly reject the notion that the current administration is at all comparable to the terrorist fascist murders who instigated 9/11.

Some people will say that I am knuckling under intense pressure in making this statement. Let me say that I have come under intense pressure which I find to be both deserved and just. We should never have let our emotions towards the Bush administration cloud our judgement so badly. We should not have let the pride in running an important newspaper lead us into an adversarial relationship with the government. We were not elected to run this country and we have not been given the authority to reveal secret intelligence programs just because we learned about them.

To my fellow Americans who, in overwhelming numbers, think that what we did was wrong I say again “I’m sorry”. I will do my best to make sure this does not happen again on my watch. See the associated article which details the organizational changes I am implementing to see that this gross error of judgement against the United States and in favor of the terrorists, does not happen again.

This newspaper is not an unbiased, trans-national, business, capable or interested in treating the United States and Al Qaeda as equally worthy of respect and analysis. The New York Times is an American newspaper, dedicated to the proposition that our country is indeed the shinning city on the hill, a light, an inspiration, and an example to the rest of the world. This newspaper is dedicated to the proposition that the United States, created with laws written by the people and for the people, should not perish from this earth.

God bless America.

July 4, 2006

As I said, I see no indication that the New York Times will wake up. Sad to see the moral erosion of a once great (and worthwhile) American business.

Posted by rakhier at 04:59 PM | Comments (0)

June 07, 2006

Too Much Praise, too Late...

This from Powerling Blog:

Professor David Gelernter of Yale University is a man of formidable learning with little patience for phonies. He has previously detected a tidal wave of phoniness in the celebration of "the greatest generation" by folks with a profile that eerily resembles mine: "Too much, too late."

As a remedy for the phoniness he detected, Professor Gelernter prescribed the teaching of our children the major battles of the war, the cruelty of the Japanese, the attitude of the intellectuals, and the memoirs and recollections of the veterans. Professor Gelernter failed to assign a paper topic for the course he has prescribed. I would assign an essay on the subject of sacrifice. Do we deserve the sacrifice made on our behalf? What we can do to become worthy of it? Is the disparity between those who sacrifice and those who reap the benefit too great to bridge?

The battle of Omaha Beach that occurred sixty-two years ago today of course represents only a small part of Operation Overlord and the other battles that occurred on the Normandy beaches. But the story of Omaha Beach is deserving of special recognition.

Interesting essay suggestion. Why can't I think of questions like that?

Posted by rakhier at 01:08 PM | Comments (0)

November 28, 2005

Michael Barone talks about GM...

Michael Barone writes about GM and how the expectations of the 1950s played out over the next 55 years. Worth the read. The whole essay is in the extended section.

Once Upon a Time in America
Why GM and the UAW's postwar economic vision failed.

BY MICHAEL BARONE - Wall Street Journal
Sunday, November 27, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST

The end, or the beginning of the end, of a familiar and comfortable world: That's how General Motors' announcement last week of massive layoffs and plant closings, following the bankruptcy of Delphi last month, strikes one who grew up in the Detroit area in the two decades immediately after World War II. In that world, it was easy to imagine you were at the center of the economy. Detroit was then the fifth-largest metropolitan area, the home of the Big Three auto companies and the United Auto Workers--national institutions of the greatest importance. The news media followed the negotiations between the UAW and the Big Three company it picked as a target every few years, and it was assumed that the wages and benefits agreed to would set a pattern for the whole economy.

And a very good economy it seemed to be. Left behind were the Depression and the anxious years of World War II. The UAW was able to negotiate big hourly pay increases and generous medical and pension benefits as well. With no effective competition, the Big Three could pass along the cost of UAW contracts to consumers who seemed willing to pay more for dramatically restyled and heavily advertised cars. General Motors' president, Harlow Curtice, was Time's Man of the Year for 1955. This was a recognition not just of an individual (I wonder how able an executive Curtice was) but of a system; Time might have honored UAW's longtime president, Walter Reuther.

The success of the Big Three and the UAW seemed a fit symbol of America's postwar economic dynamism. In fact, this was an economy characterized not by dynamism but by stasis, to use Virginia Postrel's term in "The Future and Its Enemies." New Deal legislation had been designed not for economic growth but for protection from the downward spiral of deflation. Those laws, not least by encouraging unions, strove to prop up wages and prices and to provide security to workers and existing firms. Keynesian economics was employed to flatten out the business cycle as much as possible and to reduce unemployment.

By the mid-1960s, it was generally agreed that this system worked and would continue indefinitely. The Big Three could always make money by rolling out the big cars families needed to go up north each summer. As John Kenneth Galbraith then argued, auto makers could induce consumers to buy as many cars as they wanted to sell by clever advertising. UAW workers could always look forward to ever-increasing wages and benefits. The big demand in the 1970 contract negotiations was retirement for auto workers in their early 50s. The confrontational labor-management politics of the 1940s and 1950s was replaced by consensus, as Henry Ford II joined Reuther in endorsing LBJ in 1964.

Reuther, a man of great energy and ability, wanted to use the UAW as an entering wedge to transform America into a Scandinavian-style welfare state. His contracts would set the pattern for national wages; the union movement would expand into new industries and unionize most of the economy; growth would enable workers to enjoy not only high wages, but job security, medical benefits, generous pensions. They would be protected against competition by large corporations. Reuther employed a Scandinavian architect to build Solidarity House, the union's headquarters on the Detroit River, and Black Lake, its educational center in northern Michigan. Reuther, like Marx, and like so many other social democrats, envisioned workers devoting their increasing leisure hours to pursuing the culture that seemed so inaccessible to workers earlier in the century.

The problem was that the default character of the economy, after the shocks of depression and war, turned out to be not stasis but dynamism. Private-sector unionization peaked in the mid-1950s; employment in unionized firms grew less than in nonunion firms. Union leaders believed that Section 14(b) of the Taft-Hartley Act, which allowed state right-to-work laws, was preventing unionization in the South, the Great Plains and much of the West. But the attempt to repeal 14(b) was one of the few defeats for LBJ's Democrats in the 1965-66 Congress.

The Big Three auto firms--and the UAW--would soon face competition from foreign firms and an unforeseen demand for cars not large enough to take the family up north every summer. Attempts to wall themselves off from foreign competition either failed legislatively or produced perverse results. Faced with domestic-content laws, Japanese and European firms built large plants in the U.S. with nonunion work forces. That has left the Big Three and their spinoffs, like Delphi, with redundant work forces and huge legacy costs in the form of generous pensions and open-ended retiree health benefits.

Union-driven legacy costs have already forced many steel companies and airlines into bankruptcy, with pension obligations fobbed off on the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. The Big Three auto companies might as well do the same. At least there aren't that many big unionized private industries left to fall. Besides, taxpayers and politicians angry at costs imposed by unions--particularly in the public sector--can always change the rules and reduce unions' bargaining leverage. Just as the economic marketplace eventually reduced the power of the old industrial unions, the political marketplace could, in time, reduce the power of the "post-industrial" unions.

The attempt to protect workers from all risk has turned out to be very risky indeed, since in a dynamic economy large corporations are subject to competition from firms with lower costs. In the auto industry the result is significant pain for those who relied on the Big Three and the UAW; but the result is also a vastly faster growing economy and many more opportunities than provided by the European welfare states.

A broader result has also been the consolidation of a more demotic, market-based culture. On the Michigan freeways going up north, the big attractions are not the UAW's cultural haven of Black Lake but Indian casinos and outlet malls, places where people throng to win sudden riches or to take advantage of low prices on brand-name goods. The attempt, made when the economy seemed static, to promise security and leisure and restrained good taste, has failed. We remain, as we have been in most of our history, a nation of hustlers (as historian Walter A. McDougall so strikingly put it)--a people who strive mightily to get ahead and advance their interests, enjoying the sometimes vulgar opportunities a dynamic economy provides.

Posted by rakhier at 04:08 PM | Comments (0)

Instapundit Finds Iraq is a Reverse Vietnam...

Glenn Reynolds has figured out that Iraq in 2005 is a reverse Vietnam. "I said that the Plame scandal was a reverse-Watergate, with the press, not the White House, keeping the important secrets about what happened. But looking at the transcript, I see that Iraq is also a reverse Vietnam..."

Glenn's point is the the press is systematically distorting the picture coming out of Iraq and focusing entirely on the negative - troops killed, Iraqi's murdered - while ignoring all the good which is happening.

I would agree with this analysis. The more you know about what is happening from reports by people who are actually there, the better the war seems to be going.

Posted by rakhier at 04:02 PM | Comments (0)

November 05, 2005

What the heck was George Tenet doing in 2003?

This essay by a former member of the CIA is a must read. He has two questions for former CIA head George Tenet:

1. Why did the CIA, under your direction, treat the Vice President’s query about Iraqi efforts to purchase yellowcake in Niger so casually?

2. When Joe Wilson started blabbing in public about his CIA mission to Niger – and lying about what he reported to the CIA upon his return – why didn’t you say something rather than allow the President’s credibility to be shredded?

As the writer points out "a direct query from any of the four or five top Administration officials took precedence over everything else. After all, they were our primary customers" - those four being the President, the Vice President, Sec. of State, Sec of Defence. So what the heck was George Tenet doing when V.P. Cheney asked for confirmation of a rumor that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from some African country in the last 5 years?

Posted by rakhier at 10:21 PM | Comments (0)

September 20, 2005

Mark Helprin's Critique of the U.S. War

Helprin, one of my favorite modern authors, has a devestating critique of the current American war. This long post in Chester's Blog contains a number of selections from Helprin's recent essays. His most recent essay is called Let Us Count the Ways To Win the War on Terrorism. Here he talks about what America could do if it wanted to:

In the Second World War, we spent as much as 38.5% of GNP (in 1945), and at the peak had twelve million soldiers under arms, almost 10% of the population. This is a far cry from the situation now. Were we to replicate the same levels of effort, we would be spending not $400 billion but $4.235 trillion. We would not have 2.7 million in uniform (including reserves), but 30 million. I am not advocating any such thing. As pressing as our needs may be, we are not engaged in war against a major power, and the intensity of engagement in World War II is far and above what is necessary. I point it out to show what we can do, and what actually we have done, if we concert our will, especially because during World War II it was much more difficult to apportion 29% of the nation's output to defense (the average for the period 1942-1946) than it would be now, because we have so much more wealth per capita than we did then, coming out of the Depression. To relinquish almost a full third of income is much harder for a nation with barely enough to get by than it is for one that lives in an age of material excess.

He says the current U.S. Forces in Iraq are not doing what they should be doing, namely acting as a threat to the other Arab government to find and supress the terrorists in their countries:

the 140,000 American troops struggling to pacify Iraq would be a much more effective instrument were they remounted, re-formed, and re-instilled with the mission for which they were forged into an army—to win battles against other armies. Working from the existing network of developed bases in northern Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, reinforced until doubled in number, safe from demoralizing attrition, able to exercise and train, supported fully by air and sea power, they would be equidistant from Damascus, Riyadh, and Baghdad, each of which they could reach en masse and despite opposition in two or three days to bring down any regime that did not suppress the terrorism in its purview. These capitals are the center of gravity of the Middle East and, perforce, of the terrorist enterprise. To control the center without continuous occupation of populated areas would confer immense direct, strategical, and psychological advantage, and would as well provide a secure base for dealing with enemy migration to outlying areas, an established pattern that will recur.

Here is his proposed strategy for dealing with Iran:

But were the open and bleeding flank in Iraq closed, the center safely held, and the American military properly supplied, rebuilt, and rejuvenated, the sure way to strip Iran of its nuclear potential would be clear: issuance of an ultimatum stating that we will not allow a terrorist state, the legislature of which chants like a robot for our demise, to possess nuclear weapons; clearing the Gulf of Iranian naval and coastal defense forces; cutting corridors across Iran free of effective anti-aircraft capability; surging carriers to the Gulf and expeditionary air forces to Saudi Arabia; readying long-range heavy bombers in this country and Guam; setting up an unparalleled search and rescue capability. If then our conditions were unmet, we could destroy every nuclear, ballistic-missile, military research, and military technical facility in Iran, with the promise that were the prohibited activities to resume and/or relocate we would destroy completely the economic infrastructure of the country, something we could do in a matter of days and refresh indefinitely, with nary a boot on the ground. That is the large-scale option, necessary only if for some reason the destruction of Iran's nuclear facilities could not, as is likely, be accomplished by stealth bombers and cruise missiles. The almost complete paralysis of its economy, should it be called for, could be achieved with the same instruments plus naval gunfire and blockade.

This is a workable plan and its one I agree with. Iran can not be allowed to develop nuclear weapons. Period.

Needless to say, Helprin's ideas are not being followed. Will the U.S. win anyways? Or will we be struck with a far more serious terrorist attack?

Posted by rakhier at 12:26 PM | Comments (0)

September 07, 2005

No New Oil Refineries Built in 30 Years in the US... NIMBY

According to this essay, no new oil refineries have been built in the US since 1976. 30 years. We have 149 remaining active refineries and that is not enough.

NIMBY and environmentalist action has prevented all activity on this front for a very long time. There hasn't been a new nuclear power plant built for almost as long.

Posted by rakhier at 08:41 AM | Comments (0)

September 01, 2005

Rebuilding New Orleans...

This essay from City Journel questions if the city of New Orleans can be rebuilt. It is, sad to say, a poorly run city with a crime rate 10 times the national average and a nearly useless civil administration.

This writer talks about why New Orleans had no back-up for its levee system:

Regarding the levee system in New Orleans, one cannot truly understand how lucky the city was just have the system that was in place without understanding the truly Byzantine structure of New Orleans politics, which requires separate governing boards for each levee that is built.

Rather one agency that is in charge of flood prevention, there are scores. Building in redundancies would have required more boards, which would have lessened the political power of those on the existing boards. I seriously doubt that even now, after this catastrophe, that we in Louisiana will see this system change because the structure is mandated by the Louisiana Constitution. Any change requires not just statewide approval, but must also be approved by a majority of voter in Orleans Parish. Given how many local politicians whose fiefdoms would disappear, that will not happen, and so we will see this disaster occur again."

There is good reason to question, as Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert has done, whether all of New Orleans should be rebuilt the way it used to be. "There are "some real tough questions to ask," Mr. Hastert said in an interview on Wednesday with The Daily Herald of Arlington, Ill. "How do you go about rebuilding this city? What precautions do you take?".

For a starting point, how is this: no rebuilding in places that are under sea level? And yes, this is a big problem.

Posted by rakhier at 05:36 PM | Comments (0)

2005 - An Historic Year

The year 2005 just entered the history books - because of the flooding of New Orleans by the huricane Katrina.

This is a natural disaster on the scale of the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco. Almost 100 years later another large American city is rendered uninhabitable by a natural disaster and the effects on the city will be felt for decades to come. The Wikipedia article is a remarkable and up-to-date source of information on the subject. Anyone who doubts the value of the Wikipedia should end them now.

Comments: first, this is a major tragedy for the hundreds of thousands of people who used to live in New Orleans. The majority of houses in the city are flooded and thus, destroyed. With 80% of the city under water, this really does mean 80% of the housing (if not more) will have to be torn down.

Most of the multi-story buildings are located on what passes for high ground in the area and have not suffered from flooding. You can see an elevation map of New Orleans here. The historic tourist destinations (i.e. the French Quarter) are built on the high ground as well. But the vast residential areas are sunk.

The future of the city.

The gamble which was made 90 years ago to drain large sections of swamp near the old city and keep the water out with huge pumps (mostly of work of A. Baldwin Wood) has proved to be a bad bet. What were the odds of a powerful hurricane hitting New Orleans? Over a 100 year period, at least two major hurricanes have passed over New Orleans.

Several factors worked together to make this disaster. 1) Over the 90 years of pumping, the city has sunk deeper below sea level as ground water has been taken out. New Orleans is not built on bed rock. 2) Marshlands down river of the city have been shrinking for decades, due in part to levees which keep the silt from flowing into the Gulf. 3) The Gulf of Mexico frequently has hurricanes pass into and over it.

Note: I don't have a solution. While the simplest choice would be to abandon New Orleans and relocate the town, that isn't going to happen. Bigger, stronger levees and dikes? Emergency water control systems on Lake Pontchartrain like what was installed in London and in Venice?

My prediction is that New Orleans will rebuild. While many people will give up on the city and move out forever, many more will stay and new people will come to the city, drawn by cheap houses and jobs. The hope is that in the next decades the city and state will come up with better solutions to the problem of keeping the water out of New Orleans the next time a Class 4 or 5 hurricane passes over The Big Easy.

Update
This is a dire essay which predicts at least 40,000 deaths. The writer also argues that nine cities have been destroyed: New Orleans, population 1.2 million, Slidell, pop. 26,000, Bay St. Louis/Waveland pop. 12,000, Long Beach, pop. 17,000, Gulfport, pop. 71,000, Biloxi, pop. 50,000, Ocean Springs, pop. 17,000, Psacagoula/Moss Point/Gautier, pop. 42,000, and Mobile, pop. 198,000.

Is Mobile destroyed? Moss Point? Biloxi?

Further Update

The writer is unduly alarmist. Mobile is not destroyed and the death toll outside New Orleans is not likely to go over 500. I have no idea what the death toll will be inside New Orleans though.

Posted by rakhier at 08:55 AM | Comments (0)

August 23, 2005

Hollywood: Its now a badge of honor to hate America...

This is from an essay by a Hollywood script writer who is both an observent Jew and a Republican. He attacks Hollywood today.

Look at Hollywood now. Sean Penn goes to Iraq and apologizes for American war crimes. Hollywood’s patron saint is Michael Moore, its liturgy his package of lies, the movie “Fahrenheit 9/11.” When this film had its Hollywood premiere, the red carpet was choked with stars just dying to make an anti-Bush statement. We’re talking about movie stars who know basically nothing about politics. To call them fools would be generous. I have spent time with too many of these people, and believe me, if you’re not talking about how beautiful or how talented they are, the conversation sort of just dies.

It is, I kid you not, a badge of honor in Hollywood to hate America. These airheads who have amassed millions through the free market economy constantly spout nonsense about the need for a Scandinavian style socialist government. They don’t even know that the Scandinavian countries are economic basket cases. I’m not making this up. They actually cruise Sunset Strip in their Bentleys and accuse Republicans of being greedy.

Clearly, when Hollywood refuses to make films which identify "the bad guys" as Moslem fanatics, something has gone wrong. And something has gone wrong. The center of the liberal mind is no longer rational. Instead they live in a world which denies reality and asserts, time after time, that it is America which is evil and every one else who attacks us who is good.

Posted by rakhier at 02:49 PM | Comments (0)

July 14, 2005

Is there a relationship between a set of fake documents?

JunkYardBlog describes a possible linkage between 2 sets of fake documents. First, the forged intel documents that purported to prove Iraqi interest in fissile nuclear materials from African sources. Second, the fake documents Bill Burkett furnished to CBS 60 Minutes that appeared to prove that then Lt. George W. Bush violated a direct order from a superior officer when he was in the Texas Air National Guard. I don't see these as related but still...

Posted by rakhier at 06:26 AM | Comments (0)

May 12, 2005

Chester interview Dr. Bacevich on the new Militarism in the US

Interesting interview with former Colonel Bacevich on the growing militarism in the US. Read it here.

On the other hand, here is the best response in a comment by Subsunk

My God, we spent 9 months preparing the country politically for war in Iraq, and over 4 weeks to retaliate in Afghanistan with the press and Congress baying for blood after 9/11. Hitler spent less than 2 weeks mobilizing for the Polish invasion.

In my opinion, our civilian leadership is less militarisitic than Britain (Falklands war), Argentina (Falklands), Israel, Any Middle Eastern country, including Saudi Arabia, Russia, or a host of other minor players who fight amongst themselves without any Western press attention whatsoever. Even France sent troops to Africa without discussing things with the US very loudly.

War is an evil thing. Mobilizing the full might of the US through draft/full mobilization or whatever means you use is like loading your 16 inch cannons to kill a mosquito. Way overkill. And it is a position the country cannot stand if we aren't going to target the mobilized against an enemy. So after 9/11, with say 6 million military personnel drafted and mobilized, where do you want them sent, and how do you want to pay for it? I'm sure sending 4 million men to Afghanistan would have been much less useful, and certainly more costly money and timewise than using 200 special forces operators and 100 or so aircraft to eliminate the equivalent of the Light Brigade in Afghanistan.

MSgtMac is correct when he says the Bottom Up Review gutted us and left us where we are today with the reserve call ups we have. I observed my Joint Staff colleagues tie themselves in knots trying to find a way to justify spending only what we were going to get and making the mission fit that budget.

So far we have used an appropriate amount of force (at least the correct order of magnitude) at the appropriate times (after 12 years of lying and cheating by Saddam, someone finally made the cur obey, and Iran and N Korea have been given their warnings over the last 2 years and are still getting slack). If we were truly too militaristic in our outlook, then our military would be used everyday to handle the little problems. Mr Bacevich clearly thinks diplomacy, including talking and offering economic incentives, should be all that is needed to change our enemies behavior. As if that has ever worked in human history where the adversary is motivated by pure power, ego or religious zeal.

Our people are too militaristic? Then --- Bully for them!!!! And shame on you who think they don't deserve our adoration and respect.

Subsunk is right. We have a military, we are the only country in the world able to interven in any country. That we choose to do so now, while we didn't (often) in the past is more a reflection of our power than some sense of "rah-rah-lets-go-kill-some-foreigners". Remember: if we don't send our forces to do something in Kosovo, Iraq, Afghanistan... no one else will. 100 years ago that wasn't true. We didn't have to lift a finger, the British would take care of stuff. 200 years ago we couldn't do anything beyond our borders, we lacked the power.

Posted by rakhier at 11:04 AM | Comments (0)

April 11, 2005

History News Network.

This is a group blog which tracks news stories and essays which have some connection to the general idea of history.

History News Network

Occasionally interesting...

Posted by rakhier at 12:29 PM | Comments (0)