Peeve Farm

g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets

  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.

On My Blog Menu:

InstaPundit
USS Clueless
James Lileks
Little Green Footballs
As the Apple Turns
Entropicana
Cold Fury
Capitalist Lion
Red Letter Day
Eric S. Raymond
Tal G in Jerusalem
Secular Islam
Aziz Poonawalla
Corsair the Rational Pirate
.clue

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10/6/2003 -  10/8/2003
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11/18/2002 - 11/24/2002
11/11/2002 - 11/17/2002
11/4/2002 - 11/10/2002
10/28/2002 -  11/3/2002
10/21/2002 - 10/27/2002
10/14/2002 - 10/20/2002
10/7/2002 - 10/13/2002
9/30/2002 -  10/6/2002
9/23/2002 -  9/29/2002
9/16/2002 -  9/22/2002
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8/26/2002 -   9/1/2002
8/19/2002 -  8/25/2002
8/12/2002 -  8/18/2002
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7/29/2002 -   8/4/2002
7/22/2002 -  7/28/2002
7/15/2002 -  7/21/2002
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4/29/2002 -   5/5/2002
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3/18/2002 -  3/24/2002
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1/28/2002 -   2/3/2002
1/21/2002 -  1/27/2002
1/14/2002 -  1/20/2002
  1/7/2002 -  1/13/2002
12/31/2001 -   1/6/2002
12/24/2001 - 12/30/2001
12/17/2001 - 12/23/2001

Saturday, October 12, 2002
13:15 - Trade it all in for what's in the box	(top)
I almost hope that after we invade and take over Iraq, we don't find any weapons of mass destruction. ...Why? Well, because then the US government would have a chance to prove its commitment to principle, and hopefully shut up a few of the loathsome voices that have been more and more strident lately, who appear to be operating on the assumption that Bush is a bigger propagandist and liar to the American people than Saddam, Goebbels, and Stalin put together. See, because if Gen. Franks pulls up to the Presidential Palaces and finds nothing-- no VX tanks, no locked-down biolabs, no nuke bunkers-- he'll then have to report back to Washington that he found nothing. And then Bush will have to tell the UN and the American People (provided the major networks don't pre-empt his speech to show The King of Queens and Buffy) that they found nothing. It would be a crow-eating speech. But you know, something tells me that if that steaming plate of jackdaw were served to him, he would chow down. One of the first and hardest-to-dispel claims leveled against an "evil" and "propagandistic" government is that they'll twist the truth to reflect their agenda at every opportunity. And when things go right for them, or even when things go wrong, they'll lie as much as they have to in order to justify the actions they took. If we go into Iraq and find nothing, and we report that we found nothing, how will the proponents of the propaganda-reality theory have a leg to stand on? Because why on earth would a self-interested government report that its assumptions were wrong-- even if that were the truth? If I were Bush, I might be considering reporting not having found any WMD's, even if we did find some. (Not that I think they'd take it that far just to prove a point.) Of course, that would uncover a different set of problems. Okay, they'd say-- so our leaders aren't propagandistic liars. But they were still wrong! We still went into Iraq based on an assumption on whose positive outcome we gambled our entire international standing, and it turned out we were flat wrong, and a lot of people died unnecessarily. Hah! Vindication for the anti-war people! I toldja so! For that sake, I hope they do find something concrete, and I hope it does turn out that this invasion is (was? will be? wioll haven be?) necessary for all the reasons we've been saying it is. And for what it's worth, I do think that's what's going to happen. We'll probably find plenty, and we'll report what we find. We won't inflate the numbers, either, whether of bombs or gas canisters or civilian casualties. Whatever happens, we're not going to mince words. We're not going to play games. Because if there's one thing that this administration appears to find laudable, it's the pursuit of principle, and the desire to do the right thing. Screw politics. Just because we all get our news through our computer screens in this day and age and we all get to pretend we're authoritative pundits whose opinions are binding on reality doesn't mean that all wars are trumped-up publicity stunts designed to drip soma into the unwitting sheepulace's veins. Sometimes these things are real. Sometimes our obligations are what they seem. I'm sure that will all be proved in very short order, whether it's by a series of well-executed military maneuvers and sweeping social engineering changes in the next few years that will result in a fresh crop of movies like Three Kings in about five years, or a sudden huge outbreak of smallpox in DC. Either way. I hope we're not too late to ensure that it's the former.