01/14/2004: 
Fraud & Conspiracy
Bush's Pet Projects, aka the US Government, aka Journalistic NewSpeak
Last week, Paul O'Neill charged that the invasion of Iraq was planned well in advance of September 11, 2001 (but has since backtracked, in light of overwhelming evidence that, yes, it was planned in advance of 9/11, well into the Clinton Administration.) But one of the key terms used to describe O'Neill's original claims was that it was one of Bush's "pet projects".
Another one of Bush's "pet projects", the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository project, originated almost twenty-five years ago, with the last major action on it being a vote in the US Senate in 2002 to approve the development of the repository. Yet according to AP writer H. Josef Hebert, Yucca Mountain is characterized as yet another nasty environment destroying scheme cooked up by the Bush junta:
Attorneys for Nevada and an environmental group asked a three-judge panel to reject the Bush administration's plan for storing highly radioactive waste at Yucca Mountain in the Nevada desert unless it can be shown protective radiation standards can be met at least 300,000 years into the future, when some of the isotopes are most dangerous. (emphasis mine)
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Now, I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist (Jim Lileks sums up my thoughts on the "liberal media" rather well) but I do think there's a difference between calling the No Child Left Behind Act a Bush "pet project" and that for a congressional solution 25 years in the making. This ranks right up there with Reuters calling "one man's terrorist, another man's freedom fighter". Recalling the all-too-prescient idea of George Orwell's "NewSpeak", the Miami Herald had an excellent piece, in explaining their editorial policy on the matter, on just how important it is that language be clear, concise, and free of political slant:It's Herald policy to use the most neutral language available in a given situation. We, too, label those who fight for a cause as militants. But unlike some of our colleagues, we see a line where a militant becomes a terrorist and we don't shy away from the latter word. When a suicide bomber blows up a bus carrying innocent civilians, it's an act of terrorism, not militancy.
Does this mean that we've taken the Israeli side in the war of words? Hardly. When Israeli soldiers track down and kill a Palestinian leader, The Herald is likely to characterize the action as an assassination, just as the Palestinians do. The Israeli government favors the term ``targeted killing.''
Again, what matters is that the words fit the action, not a particular side.
2 Annotations Submitted
Thursday the 15th of January, santo26 noted:
Speaking of Paul O' Neill and long- term American policy brings us back to Saddam as well. Just as Yucca Mountain is a long- term thing being brought to completion in Bush's term, so is doing something with Saddam. The stupid kids who are going to go to these protests now are going are fiercely hating Bush for all the wrong reasons. They probably can't even remember Bill Clinton and Newt Gingrich, let alone Desert Shield, the escorting the Kuwaiti Tankers in the Persian Gulf, the Iran- Iraq War and gassing the Kurds, the Iran Hostage Crisis, and the Ayatollah Khomeni, who was Iran's answer to toppling the CIA puppet the Shah and President Jimmy Carter's support of Saddam's regime in 1979. And if you want to go into the 1970s, you have to get into the covert shit that Saddam and George Bush did in the CIA days.
I hated President Reagan after Iran- Contra, Bush the whole time, Clinton until the Buddhists handed Al Gore the bag of money at the temple, Bush the whole time, until I realized that it doesn't matter who's President. Yucca Mountain, Saddam, going to the Moon and Mars, these things will get done by hard- working Americans while the most attractive actortician performs the symbolic " I feel your pain " duties.
The media, as the unofficial electors in the Electoral College, manages to be as inoffensive as possible, the fly on the wall that is also the arbiter of taste. Was it cool to hate the President in 1996? No. Is it cool to hate the President now? Yes. Why?
Thursday the 15th of January, rafuzo noted:
I don't buy the notion that "we created Saddam", or at least we supported him. It doesn't even pass the sniff test when you consider that most of his weapons were of Soviet origin: T-72 tanks, AK-47 assault weapons, SCUD missiles. But if it does pass the sniff test with you, here's some more evidence.
