Wednesday, January 28, 2004

Tony Blair "Cleared" Well, the Hutton report is out today, and in a surprise decision, Lord Hutton has laid the blame for the death of David Kelly squarely on the BBC's shoulders; the head of the BBC has already resigned, and Tony Blair is demanding an apology from the organization. Now, I say "surprise decision" only because most Americans probably aren't aware that "special inquiries" held by British lords tend to be every bit as fair and even-handed as the Cincinnati police searching a black man's car at 2 in the morning. Similar inquiries have produced the surprising "findings" that the British government never colluded with Loyalist death squads in Northern Ireland, for example. Now, the question is, does this let Tony the Poodle off the hook? No. The inquiry was only about the government's responsibility in the death of weapons expert Dr. David Kelly, not about Kelly's charges that the Prime Minister's office had deliberately produced fraudulent evidence to support its claim that Saddam Hussein had WMD. Furthermore, the inquiry certainly didn't include that very troublesome point: Whether or not Saddam had what Tony Blair claims he had. Remember that Blair has vowed to resign if it turns out that Saddam didn't have the WMD that the war was predicated on; now, with both George Bush and Dick Cheney essentially saying that there never were any WMD, it will be worth watching to see if Blair makes good on his promise. The danger here is getting sidetracked by Kelly's death, which is essentially beside the point - it's like saying the most important lesson of Watergate is that it's against the law to commit burglary. The real issue here is the substance of Kelly's charges, which boil down to whether or not the Prime Minister of Great Britain willfully misled his country into a brutal and illegal war. -Consider Arms 2:28:36 PM    comment []

7-11 Is Proclaiming A "Low Carb Revolution." Do You Want To Take Your Dietary Advice From 7-11? In a blow to carnivorous Atkins freaks everywhere, a new study suggests that eating lots of carbs with little fat can help a person lose weight, without cutting calories and without exercise. Cover Your Head And Protect Your Neck Today is the day that France will officially vote on the anti-hijab law that would ban all "conspicuous displays of faith" from public schools and public buildings. This Newsday article highlights a young Muslim girl in Paris who is being forced into a position that many young people in France will soon be faced with: to chose between keeping the observance of her faith or going to college. I'm sure that the Sikh boy who drops out of high school will feel the religious tolerance underlying the law, just as the Muslim girl who has her headscarf removed at a prefecture will feel its feminist liberation. In more awesome French news, the French are leading the noble charge to re-allow the sale of weapons to China. Great. Cock-Blockers of Truth The White House and Republican Congressional leaders are digging in for a fight to keep the 9-11 Commission from extending their deadline to July, an extension they claim to need because of the uncooperative antics of the White House. Why would the White House want to stonewall an investigation into the worst attacks on American soil? Because the facts that will come out will be embarrassing to the administration and intelligence agencies and Bush wants these bombshells to explode as far away from his re-election campaign as possible. Use Your "Joementum" To Fight Against Candy And Comic Books Claiming that his campaign was picking up "Joementum," Connecticut's video game-hating embarrassment Senator Joseph Lieberman felt confident that despite a beating in Iowa, his campaign for the Democratic nod would pick up steam in New Hampshire. He placed a painful fifth. Hopefully the watered-down Republican will make his feeble attempts at cock-blocking the other Democratic candidates from a more appropriate place, the sidelines. P.S. Has anyone else noticed that when asked about Joe Lieberman, every politician and pundit immediately states that Lieberman is "a good, decent man"? It reminds me of the ugly girl in high school who had no chance of getting a date to the prom but whose friends militantly referred to her as "nice" and "sweet". You Fear The Half-Man Half-Pig Green Underwear Creature! You Fear The Half-Man Half-Pig Green Underwear Creature! Police in Jakarta had to reassure residents there that the two suspects in a separate rape and robbery in Bakasi were on trial in a District Court and not a half-man half-pig green underwear creature as many suspected. It's reassuring to know that at least we in the US are a 21st century kind of stupid. Last Minute Eaten Crow President Bush declined to repeat his claims that Saddam Hussein's supposed WMDs (now sneakily referred to as "illicit weapons") would be found in Iraq yesterday. He insisted that the war in Iraq was still justified because Saddam was "a grave and gathering threat to America and the world" even though it's hard to be such a threat if you don't have the weapons or capacity to be one. And in a major shift for one of the biggest supporters of the war in Iraq, Dick Cheney left open the question as to whether or not Saddam had the chemical, biological and "reconstituted" nuclear weapons Cheney claimed he did. "There's still work to be done to ascertain exactly what's there, and I am not prepared to make a final judgment until they have completed their work." However this plays out, it is bad news for Bush and Destro. If they didn't outright lie to the world to engage in an unprovoked war that has killed over 500 Americans, they at the very least willingly went along with horribly incomplete and shoddy intelligence. The chickens are coming home to roost. -The Sikh Geek 11:55:32 AM    comment []

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