Derek Scruggs

“Now, I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.”

Dick Cheney, March 16, 2003 on Meet the Press.

Five years later:

Iran leader’s Iraq visit eclipses US, Arab ties

BAGHDAD, March 2 (Reuters) – Pomp and ceremony greeted Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his arrival in Iraq on Sunday, the fanfare a stark contrast to the rushed and secretive visits of his bitter rival U.S. President George W. Bush.

Heckuva job, W.

I’m not a fan of Mitt Romney, but this is my candidate for simultaneously dumbest and most biased headline of the day:

Mike Huckabee Opts Not to Talk About Mitt Romney’s Mormon Faith

The only thing that can really destroy us is us. We shouldn’t do it to ourselves, and we shouldn’t use fear for political purposes—scaring people to death so they will vote for you, or scaring people to death so that we create a terror-industrial complex.

That would be Colin Powell .

Great comment at Slashdot that suggests an update to Godwin’s Law:

As a discussion addressing the topic of the Bush administration grows in size, the probability of comparing the Clinton administration activities to excuse Bush administration activities grows to one.

Given the explosive accusations by Anonio Taguba in Seymour Hersh’s story about the Abu Ghraib investigation, how come all the secondary coverage seems to be from overseas publications?

I didn’t see the debate last night (The election is 17 months away, can’t we just enjoy the summer?) But Andrew Sullivan did, and he believes he saw George Bush’s legacy on display:

He has decisively increased the religiosity of public debate – as well, of course, as its fatuousness. How can we “end poverty” in the next ten years, asked Jim Wallis? Umm: didn’t LBJ already try that? And, given the certainty and self-righteousness all around me, why not just end poverty, illness, and illegitimacy in the next ten months? Why not end tyranny as well, while we’re at it? (Oops: we just tried that. Never mind.) Jeez. Some people just keep putting boundaries on the power of God. When merged with government, what social ill can it not solve?

Fabulous.

Surely this means the times they are a changin’.

The invitation extended to Vice President Dick Cheney to be the commencement speaker at Brigham Young University has set off a rare, continuing protest at the Mormon university, one of the nation’s most conservative.

Over the last couple years I’ve written (I think) four letters to the editors of the Denver Post and Rocky Mountain News. Most recently I wrote one last week in response to this letter. Today they printed it. That makes three out of the four that have made it to publication. Woo hoo!

As an aside, I noticed that they recently started allowing people to post responses to the letters. An excellent idea since letters are so often edited for brevity.

Over three years ago, just before the start of the Iraq war, the Onion nailed it:

Is our arrogance and hubris so great that we actually believe that a U.S. provisional military regime will be welcomed with open arms by the Iraqi people? Democracy cannot possibly thrive under coercion. To take over a country and impose one’s own system of government without regard for the people of that country is the very antithesis of democracy. And it is doomed to fail.

The editorial wasn’t funny. Rather, it was the counterpoint that presciently captured the essence of the current debate: No it won’t (scroll down a little to see it).

I reluctantly supported the Iraq war because I believed the Bush administration’s claims that Iraq was an imminent threat. Shame on me for being too trusting.

I bring this up now because I was pissed about a letter from someone named Dave Petteys in this Sunday’s Denver Post. (Scroll down to “Intel Terror Report,” near the bottom.) He, like the rest of the Right, is trying to spin the National Intelligence Estimate that says the Iraq war has created more terrorists. In his letter he says:

The assertion that “fighting terrorism is what causes it” implies that ceasing to fight would cause terrorism to disappear. This is like saying pulling weeds in your garden is what causes them to grow.

That would be true if the Iraq war had actually been about fighting terrorism. We now know it wasn’t. The Onion obviously figured it out long before I did.

I wrote a letter back to the Denver Post challenging Pettey’s attempt to conflate Iraq with the War on Terrorism. They’ve printed my last two, so maybe this will be the trifecta.

Letter writer Dave Petteys (10/1/06) must be confused. He says that the Pentagon, who issued the National Intelligence Estimate, is wrong to say that “fighting terrorism is what causes it.” In a sense, Petteys is right; fighting terrorism doesn’t cause terrorism.

But that’s a non-sequitur because that’s not what the NIE says. Rather, it says that launching a war on false pretenses against an Arab state with no connections to Al Quaeda is a rallying cry for would-be terrorists worldwide, and there are now more of them than ever. Crucially, the terrorism infrastructure has become more robust because more sympathizers are willing to support them financially, with safe houses, at the polls (Palestinian Authority elections) etc.

We’ve seen this before. It happened in the 80’s after the Soviets invaded Afghanistan for similarly bogus reasons. And the Soviets used torture too. That worked out real well for them, eh? Just think if we could’ve used that $300 billion we’ve spent on the war actually fighting terrorism…

The simultaneously funniest and saddest part of this whole issue is that the Onion newspaper, a weekly satire tabloid popular on college campuses, predicted this state of affairs before the war in a mock editorial titled “This War Will Destabilize The Entire Mideast Region And Set Off A Global Shockwave Of Anti-Americanism.” ( See http://www.theonion.com/content/node/34144) The pro-war counterpoint was titled “No it won’t.” This nicely sums up the current debate. Too bad it took 2,700 American lives to get from there to here.

Today is my 38th birthday, but that’s not so important. This is:

Our dear Worldly Friends, 27 years passed form the Islamic revolution in Iran. It is 27 years now that the execution of homosexuals in Iran has been legal. It is 27 years now that women in Iran have been considered secondary citizens. It is 27 years now that the basic rights of students, workers, ethnic and religious minorities in Iran have been denied from them. It is 27 years now that in Iran oppositions and thinkers has been oppressed. For 27 years now the storm of censor has been affecting thinkers and intellectuals and our writers and journalists have been arrested, jailed or lost their right to publish their thoughts and ideas. Because of their ideas millions of Iranians left Iran and emigrate from their homeland. The Islamic Republic has isolated Iran and insulted our people’s intelligence, pride and honor. They have driven our country toward international crises, sanctions and war.  Despite all this it has been 27 years that the struggle for peace, freedom, human rights and equality continues. It has been 27 years that we have tried to form various social and political parties and different organizations in order to recognize the rights of minority and stand against execution of children and homosexuals.

(Emphasis added. More here.) The Iranian regime is odious, but it also IMO is what you should expect when fundamentalists come to power. Unable to cope with the reality that not all people people believe as they do, the attempt to eliminate them. 

I support gay marriage (or, if you prefer, civil unions) and hope whoever reads this will join me in voting against whatever variation of the Karl Rovian “get-out-the-base” anti-gay-marriage amendment might be on the ballot in your neck of the woods this November.