The Sky in my world is Blood Red Baby

Charles Cabbage-Mallet today:

This is not an isolated case. In fact the case is a perfect illustration of an utterly commonplace phenomenon: the mainstream media's obliviousness to its own liberal bias.

I do not attribute this to bad faith. I attribute it to (as Marx would say) false consciousness

Tut, tut...

Charles Cabbage-Mallet, May 2, 2003:

WASHINGTON--Before the Iraq war even began, the critics were predicting that Iraq was going to be the Bay of Pigs (plus ``Desert One, Beirut and Somalia,'' said the ever-hyperbolic Chris Matthews). A week into the war, we were told Iraq was Vietnam. Now after the war, they're telling us that Iraq is Iran--that Iraq's Shiite majority will turn it into another intolerant Islamic republic.

The critics were wrong every time. They are wrong again.

January 24, 2003

Since there is no turning back, and since the president is in any event committed to act, it is critical to act quickly. Delay will cost us every day.

Part of the reason is military. You cannot forever keep troops on alert, carriers on station, regional allies committed.

Part is geopolitical. Our distraction and delay on Iraq has emboldened enemies elsewhere. (And not just France.) The North Koreans have grown so brazen during this year of American hesitation that they have kicked out weapons inspectors, withdrawn from the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, threatened to resume missile testing and reopened their plutonium reprocessing plant at Yongbyon.

And there is a price to be paid at home. The country is in malaise, a combination of economic slowdown and psychic apprehension, a state of phony-war suspension as we await the inevitable conflict.

The window of legitimacy having closed, delay has no upside. There will be no talking our way out of the opposition of France, Germany and the others. The only tonic for that opposition will be an American victory that changes the landscape of the region.

January 10, 2003:

Chief U.N. inspector Hans Blix is neither strong nor determined. He was handpicked by France and Russia in 2000 for precisely that reason. (When it was suggested to an administration official that Blix was Inspector Clouseau, he protested that this was unfair: ``Clouseau was (BEG ITAL)trying to find stuff.'') Everyone knows that the only way to find weapons is to question Iraqi scientists under conditions of protective asylum outside Iraq. Yet Blix has contemptuously dismissed this option as running ``an abduction agency.''

Instead, he is running a farce. President Bush has been outspoken in expressing skepticism about the inspection process. But the president should not be out front taking the public relations hit for being openly skeptical. This is the job of the secretary of state. It is the job of the man who set up the Blix inspection game in the first place.

On Jan. 27, Blix will present his findings to the Security Council. They will be equivocal. He already told the Security Council on Thursday that he found no smoking gun. (Surprise!) Blix's report will call for endless more inspections and will be seized upon by defenders of the status quo on the Security Council to deny the legitimacy of American military action. It will then be Powell's duty to discount the Blix charade--to point out, for example, that Blix has not taken a single Iraqi scientist out of the country for interrogation free from Iraqi coercion--and to explain why America cannot be deterred by it.

November 15, 2002:

--Condoleezza Rice, Fox News Sunday, Nov. 10. Yes, but if Hans can't find something, we won't know Saddam didn't cooperate. Of course, there is no doubt that Saddam will cheat, but unless Hans comes through, we won't be able to prove it, certainly not to the satisfaction of France, Russia and Saddam's other lawyers on the U.N. Security Council. Then we will be back to where we began: having to choose to go it alone or back down for lack of international support.

For all of Rice's brave words, Security Council Resolution 1441 puts Hans Blix in the driver's seat. He will decide where and how Iraqi scientists are interrogated. The United States had wanted them taken out of the country and offered asylum, so they could speak freely. Weapons inspectors from the 1990s say that Iraqi scientists who talked to them disappeared. Rice nonetheless has appealed to the patriotism of Iraqi scientists in disclosing information. As long as the price of patriotism is certain death, however, no one is going to talk.

Blix is not very eager to take scientists out of the country. It is not even clear how eager he is to find anything. Blix is an international civil servant. Does he want to go home to Sweden as the man who blew the whistle that triggered the invasion of Iraq? (Perhaps the U.S. should offer (BEG ITAL)him asylum.)

Dr. Cabbage-Mallet continues to practice his arcane art of continuous and consistent error, without penalty or probation.