Rowhouse Logic - Breathtaking Inanity

From the Financial Times, Bill Clinton discusses Gitmo:

” I ask all Americans and all free people always to think about this, when you ask yourself, ‘Should we do this or not?’ Because you can always say, if I put the clamps down harder I’ll be more secure - on any issue.

Here’s the question you should ask yourself, ‘If we do this thing, whatever it is, will it change the fundamental character of my country?’ If the answer is yes, you’ve already given the terrorists a profound victory, so at all costs we should try to say ‘No. We will not do anything that changes the fundamental character of our country.”

If you are interested, there is quite a bit more on the subject in the interview. I would certainly like it if he was a little stronger on this, and I fear that the fundamental character he refers has already changed forever.

It looks as though the Senator from MBNA is planning a second run. There are lot of things I can tolerate out of somebody seeking the Democratic nomination for president, I’m not so sure shafting the middle class and poor is one of them.

My wife took the day off from work today, so I borrowed her car to take myself to work. I’ll tell you what, driving to work really made me feel like a good, wholesome, young Republican. A member of society in solid standing with a job and a car. None of this socialized mass transit BS for me. No, sir. Sadly, a friend decided to rain on my parade and remind me that a good young Republican would have a valid drivers license, something I most definitely lack. Ah, well.

If you still aren’t up to speed on the Downing Street Memo, have a look at this article in the Village Voice. It’s very short and not very detailed, but it highlights many of the key points and you can read it in under 2 minutes.

I’d love to know what on earth this is all about. If anybody can explain the logic, I’ll gladly give them a jelly bean or two.

Matt is live blogging the Conyers Hearing. Go have a look.

Some more from the live chat with Michael Smith:

The attitude they have taken is just flat wrong, to borrow an expression from the White House spokesman on the Downing St Memo.

It is one thing for the New York Times or the Washington Post to say that we were being told that the intelligence was being fixed by sources inside the CIA or Pentagon or the NSC and quite another to have documentary confirmation in the form of the minutes of a key meeting with the Prime Minister’s office. Think of it this way, all the key players were there. This was the equivalent of an NSC meeting, with the President, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, Condi Rice, George Tenet, and Tommy Franks all there. They say the evidence against Saddam Hussein is thin, the Brits think regime change is illegal under international law so we are going to have to go to the UN to get an ultimatum, not as a way of averting war but as an excuse to make the war legal, and oh by the way we arent preparing for what happens after and no-one has the faintest idea what Iraq will be like after a war. Not reportable, are you kidding me?

On the lack of preparation:

I am very pro-defence you’re right. All right-thinking people should be. Saddam Hussein might not have been the threat he was painted but there are plenty out there who would be given the chance. As the 9/11 commission showed, America let its defences drop and got caught with a sucker punch. That shows the need to keep up your defences.

We in Europe rely too often on America to bail us out, even if occasionally you come a bit late to the party! Defence budgets are repeatedly cut over here with the armed forces being asked to do more and more. As some of you may have guessed by now before I became a journalist, I served in the army. That makes me all the more angry when people fight wars they dont need to and kill people who dont need to be killed, not least because it is never the politicians who get killed it is the ordinary soldiers.

Bin Laden is a legitimate target, Iraq, even an Iraq led by Saddam Hussein, was not. This was an illegal war but the most criminal part of it all was the lazy, arrogant way they went into it. (British tanks crossing the start lines, in a war being fought about WMD, did not even have any chemical or biological filters fitted because the Ministry of Defence failed to buy them in time.)

Just look at all those memos again, dont look for fixed intelligence, dont look for illegality. Just look at the lack of preparation, look how right all those experts who said it would all turn out badly were and then wonder how many British and American soldiers died because those politicians were too arrogant to take the advice of the experts.

On the questions over the word “fixed”:

There are number of people asking about fixed and its meaning. This is a real joke. I do not know anyone in the UK who took it to mean anything other than fixed as in fixed a race, fixed an election, fixed the intelligence. If you fix something, you make it the way you want it. The intelligence was fixed and as for the reports that said this was one British official. Pleeeaaassee! This was the head of MI6. How much authority do you want the man to have? He has just been to Washington, he has just talked to George Tenet. He said the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. That translates in clearer terms as the intelligence was being cooked to match what the administration wanted it to say to justify invading Iraq. Fixed means the same here as it does there. More leaks? I do hope so and the more Blair and Bush lie to try to get themselves off the hook the more likely it is that we will get more leaks.

Michael Smith (the author of the Sunday Times article on the Downing Street Memo):

It is highly damning and some of the self-serving nonsense from people who should know better in some, and it is now only some, of the US media is frankly depressing.

This is from a live chat on the Washington Post. Lot’s of good stuff, so go have a look.

Steve Soto:

If you consider torture legal and acceptable (even if innocent people are tortured), then Dear Leader’s main post-hoc justification of the Iraq invasion it itself illegal, because Saddam Hussein would have been doing something that was legal (in your eyes - for he was only torturing “his enemies”). So, if you have a problem with torture being highlighted and publicized, then maybe it’s time for you to become Saddam Hussein’s lawyer. That is a more appropriate role for those who seek to condone, ignore, minimize or support torture.

I wonder if there will be any takers?

“Well, there’s nothing vague about that at all, and it’s not at all intriguing. It’s highly depressing.”

- Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern on the Downing Street Memos.

With all due respect, and very little is due, that is not beer blogging. This is beer blogging.

Update: It looks as though somebody at pnionline had the sense to pull the awful link off of the post I was making fun of. The link was to what can only be described as the epitome of tasteless beer advertisements, featuring heavy doses of female anatomy and tasteless, crap humor. Now that the link has been pulled, my post makes no sense at all. Good.

Update II: Since this post has lost all worth, it seems as good a time as any to offer some personal advise. Please do keep in mind that this is advise drawn from my own life experience and not handed out casually or in ignorance. If you happen to find yourself browsing the packaged noodle soup isle of your local Asian supermarket, and you find yourself strangely drawn towards a package of pickled fish flavored rice noodle soup, think long and hard about your desire. I’m not saying you won’t like it, or that you won’t somehow grow as a person from eating it, as you may well succeed on both counts. I just think it’s good to use some caution in these situations. Consider yourself advised.

Update III: I Just noticed that the beer blogging archives look awful in Internet explorer because the pictures run right over the side bar. That’s pretty embarrassing, but all of those posts were created for a different system and imported to this one and, well, shit happens. If it looks really awful, and bothers you to the extreme, have a look using the Firefox browser and it will render properly. Sorry about the weird aesthetics, I’m working on a solution. As the site grows into more of a WordPress site, the bad aesthetics of the archives should fade a little.

Baltimore Sun:

Anyone who follows the news will not be surprised. A long list of whistleblowers, including former Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill and former National Security Council official Richard Clarke, have reported that the Bush administration was obsessed with regime change in Iraq from Day One and regarded 9/11 as an opportunity to put its plans into action. Removing Mr. Hussein was in the 2000 Republican Party platform. Bush administration misuse of intelligence has been well documented.

But the Downing Street minutes and other recently leaked documents illustrate that the intelligence was wrong by design. The documents show officials at the apex of the government of our closest ally confirming among themselves what were the darkest suspicions about the Iraq war among ordinary Americans.

The evidence suggests that Mr. Bush has lied to Congress and to the American people about the justifications for war. It includes a formal letter and report that he submitted to Congress within 48 hours of launching the invasion in which he explained the need for the war in terms that appear to have been intentionally falsified, not mistaken.

Lying to Congress is a felony. Either lying to Congress about the need to go to war is a high crime, or nothing is.

Wow. (Via Susie)

I’m pleased to announce that the spam commenters have returned to Rowhouse Logic. They took a few weeks off, but the new publishing platform is like a can of rotten tuna to a stray dog and they are back in force. In the spirit of the late Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, they would like to offer you all the pills, porn and poker you can handle, and at great prices too . Who am I to complain? I encourage all behavior, so if you happen to run across a stray comment offering you a great price on Dexedrine or online gambling featuring naked bodies, in the gender of your choice, by all means, jump on the opportunity. Good vice only comes around once or twice in a lifetime and you should be sure to take advantage when it does. I’m cetain that whatever they’re selling is legit and fraud free, because if somebody takes the time to put it down in writing, you can pretty sure it’s true.

Anyway, I’m going to keep posting very lightly while I get everything sorted out. I think that a few quick links a day to other websites is going to be about it for the next few weeks. Not that I’ve ever been very prolific, but I think that in order to get everything straight, I do still need to step back from this for a bit. Thanks to everyone who sent me kind emails last week — I can’t tell you how much it meant.

I’ve been working over a couple of Harvard kids, who live around the corner from me, in order to get them to write some nice juicy, Ivy-caliber content over the summer. The effort isn’t going at all well so far, but I’ll keep trying. Something to look forward to perhaps. We’ll see.

If nothing of what I’ve said makes a bit of sense, consider yourself lucky. Have a nice night.

This post by Charles on Young Philly Politics is really quite timely. I have a feeling we’ll be talking quite a bit about ward leaders in the coming months. Charles’ straightforward discussion of the topic is a good starting point. Go have a peak.

Andrea Mitchell discovers the Downing Street Memo (Via Susie). Matt discovers that Scott McClellan is a tool and tears him a brand new, shiny orifice. As always, I recommend you read your McClellan like this. As I noted last night, Chris Bowers has discovered that there may be a problem with the ward system in Philadelphia and he’d like to do something about it. If I recall correctly, ACM has a pretty good solution.

I’ll get into this more heavily when I can get a minute, but I really want everybody to go have a look at this post by Chris Bowers. The young man is on fire, and I couldn’t be happier. Here’s a just little:

This is a city where the terms Blue Dogs, Progressives, New Democrats and DLC do not mean anything. We simply have never entered that modern era of politics. This is, instead, a throwback to the worst forms of corrupt political machines of the early part of the twentieth century that worked to basically rig elections on behalf of a powerful and unaccountable elite. For the Philadelphia Democratic Party, ideology means nothing. Instead, it is purely about power, and no matter what they say, the leaders of the Philadelphia Democratic Party are not taking any steps toward internal reform.

Amen brother. Go read the whole thing, it’s well worth the trip.

Six new classified British memos have been leaked. Liberal Avenger has the links and Shakespeare’s Sister has some early analysis from After Downing Street. The Raw Story has a nice timeline which ties together some of the details from the memos and has an extensive set of links.

This is getting ugly. From the Times Online:

The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier.

The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair’s inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was “necessary to create the conditions� which would make it legal.

This was required because, even if ministers decided Britain should not take part in an invasion, the American military would be using British bases. This would automatically make Britain complicit in any illegal US action.

You can read the newly leaked memo here. Via Shakespeare’s Sister.

Ok, so the switch to WordPress is mostly done. I don’t have the look of the site where I would like it, but it’s a start. Obviously I’ll be making a number changes over the coming weeks and days. I made the change for a number of reasons, but mostly just because I needed one. Hopefully having a new environment to play with will help put some of the negativity I was dealing with last week behind me. We’ll see. By the way, the new RSS feed is http://rowhouselogic.com/feed/. The old feed still exists but won’t be updated

I need to do some major site maintenance, so things may be a little weirder than normal today.

[Update] That didn’t go so well. Anyway, I’m probably going to make a switch over to the WordPress package in the near future because I’ve really become frustrated with some of Movable Type’s issues. I have some issues with WordPress as well, but it’s dynamic publishing features are quite a bit more flexible than what’s available to me now. I’m getting sick of 15 minute site rebuilds that usually crash half way through.

Now that was an exciting post, wasn’t it?