Lies and the lying liars who tell them

I’ve decided I’m not going to listen to the president’s sales pitch for yet another war with a Muslim country that poses no threat to us after hearing his secretary of state angrily lie, “We are not talking about going to war!”

If this administration is going to deem cyber attacks an act of war and then declare that cruise missile strikes are not, it’s not worthy of trust.

Syria bombing: so urgent, we can't upset Congressional holiday

The Obama administration's position on the situation in Syria can be summed up as follows: it's an *URGENT* moral imperative that we bomb Syria in order to (insert one of: punish Assad/protect civilians/send a message/keep our word/effectuate regime change). That's why it's going to wait a week and a half until Congress gets around to reconvening rather than bother them on their long holiday weekend.

Why are chemical weapons deaths worse than conventional weapons deaths?

Discussion topic: the UN estimates that approximately 100,000 people have been killed during the Syrian civil war (not all by Assad’s forces) with conventional weapons over the course of a few years. There has been no serious discussion of a response by external military powers in that time period.

Yet a single attack of chemical weapons that kills a small fraction of that number of people “necessitates” a global (ie: western) military response, we are told.

So why is it that the 1400 deaths caused by chemical weapons is more “morally repugnant,” to use Sec. of State Kerry’s phrase, than the 100,000 deaths that preceded it by conventional weapons?

If the answer is some piece of paper called a treaty, then the follow up question is why does that piece of paper value chemical weapons deaths more? Why does it view those deaths as more of a threat when, by any objective measurement, conventional weapons cause far more deaths and are much more of a threat to international stability?

The administration's criminal war against American values (pt. 1224)

I was pleased to read that Congress has apologized to a Canadian citizen who was kidnaped by US officials and shipped off to Syria where he was tortured.

The process is known as extraordinary rendition, which is a euphemism for simple kidnaping. Yes, kidnaping, the same tactic employed by terrorists themselves. For US officials themselves to use this is nothing less than a disgrace.

That American officials would ship their alleged terrorist suspect off to a country that the US government itself calls a state sponsor of terror is mind boggling, even by the Bush administration's incoherent standards of rational reasoning.

Maher Arar was released from the Syrian prison without charge. A Canadian government inquiry also cleared him of any involvement in terorrism.

But not after he spent 10 months in a Syrian jail where he says he was "beaten with an electrical cable and threatened with a metal chair, the tyre and electric shocks," which is no surprise since the US government itself says that Syria tortures and even kills its prisoners.

He inexplicably remains on the US government's watchlist... even after being cleared of wrongdoing by his torturers!

Just click your heels and say "they hate us because we're free."

It's yet another example of how the Bush administration repeated and criminal betrayal of American values undermines its very claims of being on the side of freedom.

But at least Congress had the basic decency to apologize for the administration's affront to liberty and humanity. Or at least this particular one.


Update: This editorial in The Washington Post reminds readers how the president's belief in freedom is a bit more waffling than his apologists would have you believe.

Israel's attack on Syria

Adirondack Musing reports on something the mainstream media in this country seems to have missed: Israel's military attack against Syria. So reports both The Washington Post and the Rupert Murdoch-owned Times of London.

The Post speculates that it might have been a dry run for an attack against Iran.

You'd think the broadcast media might be able to cut a minute or so of their OJ Simpson coverage to report on this serious event, but their only responsibility as corporate conglomerates is to 'give people what they want.'