AJ Strata has a lesson on reading comprehension and the lack thereof in the media. What the just-released Senate intelligence committee partial report actually says as opposed to the way the media and politicians are spinning it to say is very interesting.
Now I know why journalists get their stories so wrong so often - they lack basic reading comprehension skills. With all the hoopla about the Senate Intelligence report supposedly saying there were no ties between Saddam and Terrorists (despite Iraq documents which log the training of thousands of terrorists, and notes reqarding meetings with Al Qaeda) it might behoove people to read them for themselves (WMD here, Terrorists here). One thing people should know is the terrorist related volume is NOT definitive or conclusive. Why? Well I’ll let the report speak for itself (from the WMD volume):
Go over and read the rest.
It seems that Jim Webb, running for the Senate in Virginia against George Allen, is planning to use video footage of Ronald Reagan praising him during a speech. Nancy Reagan is absolutely furious and has demanded that the footage not be used.
Nancy Reagan has ordered Democratic Senate candidate Jim Webb, a former Reagan White House military aide, NOT to use video of her husband praising Webb in an upcoming campaign ad.
A three-paragraph letter from the former first lady's office says the use of footage of President Reagan is "neither authorized nor appropriate."
An ad Webb intends to begin televising Monday features Reagan praising Webb, then an assistant secretary of defense, during the 1985 U.S. Naval Academy commencement ceremony.
Ed Meese says the ad is possibly illegal. I'm not up on the use of video under copyright law, so it would be interesting to see who exactly controls the likeness of a former president of the US. But that would only be of marginal interest to the real issue here. Dishonesty. Webb served only ten months in the Reagan administration then openly criticized both Reagan and Reagan's policies.
It is very dishonest for Webb to use that footage and extremely disrespectful of the wishes of Reagan's family.
UPDATE: The WaPo indicates the Reagan library asks campagns not to do this sort of things rather often.
The Reuters headline says it all: "Political turmoil engulfs U.S. as September 11 nears". The article's defining sentence is really this:
President George W. Bush scheduled a prime-time speech on the fifth anniversary of September 11 on Monday amid acrimonious election-year debate over whether America is safer and who is to blame for the attacks. (Emphasis added)
That is the problem here, I think. The whole ruckus by Democrats to change a television documentary is an attempt to make sure Bill Clinton's failures against terrorism are not shown for what they are - failures. The intelligence failures that have plagued the CIA for decades have become politicized to an absurd level and politicians want to lay the entire blame at the feet of the sitting president for purely partisan reasons. The Republicans want to paint the Democrats as weak on terrorism and national defense. A task made ridiculously easy by the Democrats, who prove daily that they are just that. The Democrats want to paint the Republicans - and the president in particular - as misleading the country into war, completely neglecting their own long held beliefs about Saddam. Completely neglecting the long history of failures at the CIA under numerous administrations.
Everybody wants to lay the blame on the other party. The world sees the US "in turmoil". In a time when there are troops on the ground this is the image we project to the world. Our enemies see the turmoil and grow bolder each day. We show disarray to the world. We do so at our own peril.
The blame for the attacks lies with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda. They know that, they just released another tape bragging about it. Unfortunately, it does not appear we can see that ourselves.
NASA is readying Atlantis for one last attempt to launch before the window closes. If the shuttle does not go today, it will be several weeks or more before another opportunity.
NASA stopped Friday's launch try only 45 minutes before its scheduled launch. This time it was a faulty fuel tank sensor — the same glitch that thwarted two previous missions. The launch delay cost NASA $616,000.
The shuttle's external fuel tanks were filled as scheduled in about 3 hours Saturday morning, exhibiting no problems with any sensor. Weather continued to look favorable, with only a 20 percent chance of storms interfering.
"Hi Mom," astronaut Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper said, waving to a television camera as she and her five crew mates finished dressing in their orange flightsuits. They were they driven to the launch pad in a specially equipped van.
From the space station 220 miles above Earth, astronaut Jeff Williams inquired how launch preparations were going.
"Hopefully, we'll have some visitors heading on their way to you before long," Mission Control in Houston told him.
Atlantis, which was supposed to launch on its 11-day mission on Aug. 27, has been kept earthbound by a lightning strike to the launch pad, Tropical Storm Ernesto, a glitch with a 30-year-old motor in an electricity-generating fuel cell, and finally the fuel tank sensor error. Originally the mission was scheduled for May 2003 but was first postponed by the 2003 Columbia accident.
This has been pretty bumpy, hasn't it?
Blogosphere, Media, Politics, War | Gaius Saturday, 9 September , 2006 | 
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