Maureen Dowd (NYT) on Cindy....

[speedoo]

"the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute"

Every now and then, Dowd writes something really, really good. Highly recommended.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/10/opinion/10dowd.html

[Scout1071]

1. I usually enjoy reading Maureen and she's a great guest

on Bill Maher.

[Catamount]

13. Yes I first became aware of her writings on Bill Maher...

and immediately liked her attitude toward the *, where she was also pushing a biting memoir of the whole * family
Thank god I missed all her Clinton bashing,--when did that happen?
I think this particular article was pretty good, considering she's part of the msm.

[rodeodance]

22. Dowd is Back--yeah. I still have a chip on my shoulder regarding her

comments about Kerry during the campaign--but hey--time to lose those chips. glad she is back!!

[firefox]

2. Insidious is the word

She slips this in as if it is fact that Iran is sending bombs to Iraq and sophisticated bombs at that. What is the definition of an unsophisticated bomb?

Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged yesterday that sophisticated bombs were streaming over the border from Iran to Iraq.

in·sid·i·ous (n-sd-s) adj.

1. Working or spreading harmfully in a subtle or stealthy manner: insidious rumors

[Postman]

8. If so, no proof of Iranian gov't involvement...

did the US gov't aid Timothy McVeigh in providing him the weapons to blow up the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City?

[Gabi Hayes]

12. THIS is the key point of the editorial....thanks for saving me

the time wasted on the rest

wake up.....Iran, here we come

too bad she doesn't come here, or she'd be able to write an entire column on just what a load of phase II-Eternal War this latest bit of propaganda from the Cheney/Rumsfeld wing of the WH

Ms. Dowd, meet Juan Cole, why don't you?

jesus frickin CHRIST

[firefox]

27. Neocons can trade puppets

Iran does not need to be mentioned in a thousand words on Cindy Sheehan, but good old Dowd feeds the echo chamber on Iraq. Puppets can be sacrificed, but Israel and the US need to attack Iran.

[Trevelyan]

40. It is important to support Cindy but one reason she is holding her vigil

is not to hear more lies from bush or tea and sympathy but to try to get people who are beginning to see through bush's lies to open their minds to the truth and stop believing the Bush Cabal's slimy lies to discredit truth-tellers.

~~~~~~~~~~~
We now know that the war had started much earlier. Likewise, history will show that the US-led war with Iran will not have begun once a similar formal statement is offered by the Bush administration, but, rather, had already been under way since June 2005, when the CIA began its programme of MEK-executed terror bombings in Iran.

Scott Ritter is a former UN weapons inspector in Iraq, 1991-1998, and author of Iraq Confidential: The Untold Story of America's Intelligence Conspiracy, to be published by I B Tauris in October 2005.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0620-31.htm
http://currentera.com/

The US war with Iran has already begun
Scott Ritter who spent seven years (1991-98) as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq, is the author, with William Rivers Pitt, of War on Iraq (Conquest Books).
June 21, 2005

Sunday 19 June 2005 - Americans, along with the rest of the world, are starting to wake up to the uncomfortable fact that President George Bush not only lied to them about the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (the ostensible excuse for the March 2003 invasion and occupation of that country by US forces), but also
about the very process that led to war.

On 16 October 2002, President Bush told the American people that "I have not ordered the use of force. I hope that the use of force will not become necessary. We know now that this statement was itself a lie, that the president, by late August 2002, had, in fact, signed off on the 'execute' orders authorising the US military to begin active military operations inside Iraq, and that these orders were being implemented as early as September 2002, when the US Air Force, assisted by the British Royal Air Force, began expanding its bombardment of targets inside and outside the so-called no-fly zone in Iraq.

These operations were designed to degrade Iraqi air defence and command and control capabilities. They also paved the way for the insertion of US Special Operations units, who were conducting strategic reconnaissance, and later direct action, operations against specific targets inside Iraq, prior to the 19 March 2003 commencement of hostilities.

President Bush had signed a covert finding in late spring 2002, which authorised the CIA and US Special Operations forces to dispatch clandestine units into Iraq for the purpose of removing Saddam Hussein from power. The fact is that the Iraq war had begun by the beginning of summer 2002, if not earlier.

This timeline of events has ramifications that go beyond historical trivia or political investigation into the events of the past.
It represents a record of precedent on the part of the Bush administration which must be acknowledged when considering the ongoing events regarding US-Iran relations. As was the case with Iraq pre-March 2003, the Bush administration today speaks of "diplomacy" and a desire for a "peaceful" resolution to the Iranian question.

But the facts speak of another agenda, that of war and the forceful removal of the theocratic regime, currently wielding the reigns of power in Tehran. As with Iraq, the president has paved the way for the conditioning of the American public and an all-too-compliant media to accept at face value the merits of a regime change policy regarding Iran, linking the regime of the Mullah's to an "axis of evil" (together with the newly "liberated" Iraq and North Korea), and
speaking of the absolute requirement for the spread of "democracy" to the Iranian people.

"Liberation" and the spread of "democracy" have become none-too-subtle code words within the neo-conservative cabal that formulates and executes American foreign policy today for militarism and war.

By the intensity of the "liberation/democracy" rhetoric alone, Americans should be put on notice that Iran is well-fixed in the cross-hairs as the next target for the illegal policy of regime change being implemented by the Bush administration.

But Americans, and indeed much of the rest of the world, continue to be lulled into a false sense of complacency by the fact that overt conventional military operations have not yet commenced between the United States and Iran.

As such, many hold out the false hope that an extension of the current insanity in Iraq can be postponed or prevented in the case of Iran. But this is a fool's dream. The reality is that the US war with Iran has already begun. As we speak, American over flights of Iranian soil are taking place, using pilotless drones and other, more sophisticated, capabilities.The violation of a sovereign nation's airspace is an act of war in and of itself. But the war with Iran has gone far beyond the intelligence-gathering phase.

President Bush has taken advantage of the sweeping powers granted to him in the aftermath of 11 September 2001, to wage a global war against terror and to initiate several covert offensive operations inside Iran.The most visible of these is the CIA-backed actions recently undertaken by the Mujahadeen el-Khalq, or MEK, an Iranian opposition group, once run by Saddam Hussein's dreaded intelligence services, but now working exclusively for the CIA's Directorate of Operations.<more>

[enough]

28. Yes.

[Booster]

3. Yep, very good article. I wish I could make up my mind about

Maureen Dowd. She really is a terrific writer, and maybe what I would really like to see is "fire" in her belly. This is a must read article though, so today I like Maureen and will keep a very open mind about her.

[Name removed]

17. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Fridays Child]

4. She has reformed herself nicely since her Clinton bashing years...

...with only occasional lapses.

[BrotherBuzz]

5. She always writes well..but this one is good!

<snip>

The president met with her family two months after Casey's death. Capturing W.'s awkwardness in traversing the line between somber and joking, and his love of generic labels, Ms. Sheehan said that W. had referred to her as "Mom" throughout the meeting, and given her the sense that he did not know who her son was.

The Bush team tried to discredit "Mom" by pointing reporters to an old article in which she sounded kinder to W. If only her husband were an undercover C.I.A. operative, the Bushies could out him. But even if they send out a squad of Swift Boat Moms for Truth, there will be a countering Falluja Moms for Truth.

It's amazing that the White House does not have the elementary shrewdness to have Mr. Bush simply walk down the driveway and hear the woman out, or invite her in for a cup of tea. But W., who has spent nearly 20 percent of his presidency at his ranch, is burrowed into his five-week vacation and two-hour daily workouts. He may be in great shape, but Iraq sure isn't.

It's hard to think of another president who lived in such meta-insulation. His rigidly controlled environment allows no chance encounters with anyone who disagrees. He never has to defend himself to anyone, and that is cognitively injurious. He's a populist who never meets people - an ordinary guy who clears brush, and brush is the only thing he talks to. Mr. Bush hails Texas as a place where he can return to his roots. But is he mixing it up there with anyone besides Vulcans,
Pioneers and Rangers?

W.'s idea of consolation was to dispatch Stephen Hadley, the national security adviser, to talk to Ms. Sheehan, underscoring the inhumane humanitarianism of his foreign policy. Mr. Hadley is just a suit, one of the hard-line Unsweet Neo Cons who helped hype America into this war.

<more>

[Poiuyt]

6. Wow...that is powerful stuff.

[TankLV]

38. Oh, it's really not that hard to think of another pResident who was as

insulated - does ronnie raygun ring a bell?

Who could forget his pathetic "I can't hear you" whenever he came and went with OUR helicopter.

[MarkTwain]

7. Damn. Even when she's decent....

... she still manages to irritate me.

However, this piece is without doubt one of the best I have read recently.

It puts a most eloquent bull's eye squarely on this cabal and its dim witted puppet from so many perspectives.

An absolutely beautiful work by Maureen.

[lildreamer316]

9. That's what I'm talkin' 'bout.

Simple. Concise. To the point. Unarguably true.
We need to frame that baby and post it up somwhere.

[Hamlette]

10. wow, she came back punching, great column n/t

[DeepModem Mom]

11. Thanks, Mo! nt

[Hailtothechimp]

14. Hittting 'em hard. Just what is needed.

Can't disagree with anything she says....

[Journeyman]

15. What an idiot Shrub is. Power isn't "the President"...

it is perception, and Ms. Dowd illustrates how precarious ShrubCo's position is these days -- "the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute" -- and that absolute moral authority may prove to have far greater power than Dumbya has ever imagined.

[kentuck]

16. MoDo is priceless when she comes up with these pearls...

She is enlightened. :)

[rodeodance]

26. and says WH shold be shrewd and Jr should walk out and listen to Cindy.

.....It's amazing that the White House does not have the elementary shrewdness to have Mr. Bush simply walk down the driveway and hear the woman out, or invite her in for a cup of tea. But W., who has spent nearly 20 percent of his presidency at his ranch, is burrowed into his five-week vacation and two-hour daily workouts. He may be in great shape, but Iraq sure isn't.

[NewJeffCT]

36. that was a great line

and would be great public relations for the White House if * came out to hear her out, even if she reamed him a new one... I'm sure the cameras would be far enough away to not get all the words.

But, they do lack shrewdness. I remember agreeing with George Will last year right before the beginning of the Democratic primaries when Dean seemed like a sure winner. He basically said that if Bush came out & apologized to the world for Iraq, said he was wrong on WMD and hoped to work with the rest of the world to rebuild Iraq, he would have taken the legs out from many Democrats, including Dean.

[ClayZ]

18. Great Article

Ablolute is a powerful word!

[EC]

19. And there it is...

"But his humanitarianism will remain inhumane as long as he fails to understand that the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute.

[Historic NY]

20. Its about time she wrote something decent about......

those opposed to * & company. The body count rises each day.

[rodeodance]

21. she argues it is getting harder for BushCo to hide. and she is right.

......It's getting harder for the president to hide from the human consequences of his actions and to control human sentiment about the war by pulling a curtain over the 1,835 troops killed in Iraq; the more than 13,000 wounded, many shorn of limbs; and the number of slain Iraqi civilians - perhaps 25,000, or perhaps double or triple that. More people with impeccable credentials are coming forward to serve as a countervailing moral authority to challenge Mr. Bush.

Paul Hackett, a Marine major who served in Iraq and criticized the president on his conduct of the war, narrowly lost last week when he ran for Congress as a Democrat in a Republican stronghold in Cincinnati. Newt Gingrich warned that the race should "serve as a wake-up call to Republicans" about 2006.

Selectively humane, Mr. Bush justified his Iraq war by stressing the 9/11 losses. He emphasized the humanity of the Iraqis who desire freedom when his W.M.D. rationale vaporized.

But his humanitarianism will remain inhumane as long as he fails to understand that the moral authority of parents who bury children killed in Iraq is absolute.

[rodeodance]

24. "countering Falluja Moms for Truth"---I did not know of this group.

.............The Bush team tried to discredit "Mom" by pointing reporters to an old article in which she sounded kinder to W. If only her husband were an undercover C.I.A. operative, the Bushies could out him. But even if they send out a squad of Swift Boat Moms for Truth, there will be a countering Falluja Moms for Truth........

[TankLV]

37. It's been OVER 2,000 dead for a few days now.

Might want to change the reference:

OVER 2,000 DEAD.

[Swamp Rat]

23. Bernie Ward is talking about Cindy right now. n/t

[rodeodance]

25. I wrote her a big thanks--Here is her email address from the article.

E-mail: [e-mail]

[BrotherBuzz]

43. and he also read the piece by Maureen Dowd!

One sentence, I heard him read one sentence from the editorial and recognized it. Brother Bernie is good, but thanks to DU, I'm even ahead of him. :)

[leftchick]

29. Damn, MoDo is smoking here....

<snip>

The president met with her family two months after Casey's death. Capturing W.'s awkwardness in traversing the line between somber and joking, and his love of generic labels, Ms. Sheehan said that W. had referred to her as "Mom" throughout the meeting, and given her the sense that he did not know who her son was.

The Bush team tried to discredit "Mom" by pointing reporters to an old article in which she sounded kinder to W. If only her husband were an undercover C.I.A. operative, the Bushies could out him. But even if they send out a squad of Swift Boat Moms for Truth, there will be a countering Falluja Moms for Truth.

It's amazing that the White House does not have the elementary shrewdness to have Mr. Bush simply walk down the driveway and hear the woman out, or invite her in for a cup of tea. But W., who has spent nearly 20 percent of his presidency at his ranch, is burrowed into his five-week vacation and two-hour daily workouts. He may be in great shape, but Iraq sure isn't.

It's hard to think of another president who lived in such meta-insulation. His rigidly controlled environment allows no chance encounters with anyone who disagrees. He never has to defend himself to anyone, and that is cognitively injurious. He's a populist who never meets people - an ordinary guy who clears brush, and brush is the only thing he talks to. Mr. Bush hails Texas as a place where he can return to his roots. But is he mixing it up there with anyone besides Vulcans, Pioneers and Rangers?

[UTUSN]

30. Don sL-IMUS Made It Sound She Was Attacking Cindy

She managed to get HACKETT in there and slam Shrub a couple of times to boot.

[il_lilac]

31. great article

we need more of these

[Bumblebee]

32. Check out the published letters in today's NYT

There are 6 re Cindy at the top of the section, one from a hired GOP gun who just went to Iraq, but the rest are absolutely great!

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/10/opinion/l10iraq.html?

I think it's safe to say -- but knock on wood! -- that the story is back and obviously generating lots of response.

[il_lilac]

41. thanks

guess i better send my own letter to the editor!

[kliljedahl]

33. I'm in love with Maureen Dowd

I'm glad she's back, looking forward to the book.


Keith’s Barbeque Central

[KnaveRupe]

34. Mo Do's best piece...

...since she likened Jimmy/Jeff Gannon/Guckert to the Barberini Faun.



I loves me some Maureen Dowd!

[Corgigal]

35. All she needed to write

Is that President Clinton would have invited her in to talk. He wasn't fearful of the citizens.

would have been a nice touch.

[Trevelyan]

39. Dowd is a good writer but I also suspect her of covert disinformation.

By the end of this very well-written article seeming to slam bush, I had forgotten the clenching feeling of her "off-hand" mention of "Iran supplying bombs to Iraq". There is no reason for that quote from Rumsfeld to be in an article on Cindy.

The New York Times came out for Kerry in editorials but at the same time were printing doctored anti-Kerry photos like the one with camera underneath Kerry's face and arms making him look grotesque, his arm outstretched to shake the hands of American citizens (and the hands were the only thing visible on the left hand side but there was a huge dark space in the middle and the person analyzing it said it was to covertly show that Kerry was far from the voters.

A little bit later I went to Kerry's blog and someone was complaining that although the NYT was supposedly for Kerry they had printed a picture showing the opposite and don't know if it was this one or another but be cautious and alert when you read anything by the NYT including Dowd who is good but who wrote against Kerry's earth toned clothes as if it mattered and has been a "flip-flopper" too many times to be taken in by her.

I'm glad to see anti-Bush truth articles in NYT but think it is wise to remain alert, don't know if I would have remembered the Iran remark by the end since it was so good at telling the truth about bush hypocrisy, so thank you Firefox for being alert.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

No War In Iran Petition

To: United Nations General Assembly

We, the undersigned, urge you, the members and officers of the United Nations General Assembly, to pass a resolution against and to use all of your diplomatic and political powers to prevent an attack on the sovereign nation of Iran by the United States of America and/or her allies.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

http://www.petitiononline.com/NWinIran/petition.html

[mom cat]

42. Cindy, Mick Jagger and the NFL.....What a hoot....Do we have traction!

[jurassicpork]

44. Maureen's my fave columnist

...and she's generally more accurate and informative than a lot of so-called investigative bylines. Read her BUSHWORLD; it's the FEAR AND LOATHING... of this generation. I'm in the middle of it now. I think she's been my biggesat influence as a blogger, moreso than the late HST.

Welcome back, Maureen. You were very missed.

JP
http://jurassicpork.blogspot.com