I’m Not Going to Do This Every Day

As they say, dying=easy; comedy=hard, and that’s certainly been the case over at 23/6, the new Huffpost humor site; it’s been mostly miss on the hit/miss meter so far. Still, this (h/t Andrew Romano) is really nice:

Welcome to the Internets, former Newsweek Intern.

Two interesting bits in today’s papers to give one pause:

From the Washington Post:

Dragonfly or Insect Spy? Scientists at Work on Robobugs

Which is of course creepy–what, are you going to have to carry around a bug zapper now every time you want to have a little privacy outdoors–but also a little reassuring, because, after all, our government doesn’t spy on its citizens.

Oh.

Fred Kaplan has his usual good thoughts on Iraq, this time asking the obvious question: If we’re spending $500 billion a year on our military budget NOT COUNTING the billions we’re wasting in Iraq and Afghanistan, what are we getting for our money?

Mike Hirsh has a very nice piece about Blackwater, Bush, and the no-accountability presidency.

And Tony Karon continues his brilliant thoughts about the U.S. and Iran

Tony Karon, who’s got a blogful of smart postings about the Bush Administration’s adventures in Iraq, outdoes himself with this really nice assessment of the media’s role in the runup to the Iraq War, and the parallels he sees today in making the case for attacking Iran:

Imagine, for a moment, that U.S. troops invading Iraq had, as they neared Baghdad, been fired on by an artillery unit using shells filled VX nerve gas — an attack that would have lasted minutes before a U.S. aircrew had taken out the battery, and may have brought a horrible death to a handful of American soldiers. Imagine, further, that the conquering troops had later discovered two warehouses full of VX and mustard gas shells. And later, that inspectors in a science lab had discovered a refrigerator full of Botulinum toxin or even anthrax.

The Administration and its allies in the punditocracy would have “proved” their case for war, and the media would have hailed President Bush as the kind of Churchillian visionary that he imagines himself to be. And goodness knows what new adventures the Pentagon ideologues would have immediately begun planning.

Now, ask yourself, had the above scenario unfolded and the “case for war” (on the terms accepted by the media and the Democrats) been proven, would Iraq look any different today? Would it be any less of a bloodbath; any less of a quagmire for U.S. troops; any less of a geopolitical disaster; any less of a drain on U.S. blood and treasure? Would the U.S. mainland or U.S. interests and allies worldwide be any safer today? In short, would the Iraq invasion seem any less of a catastrophic strategic blunder had the U.S. discovered some caches of unconventional weapons in Iraq?

The answer to all of those questions is obviously no.

And it’s from that point that we must begin our discussion on Iran, and the media’s role in preparing the American public for another disastrous war of choice. The “necessity” in the American public mind to go to war in Iraq was established through the mass media — a failure for which there has been precious little accounting. But that failure runs far deeper than is typically acknowledged even by critics: It was not simply a case of the media failing to properly and critically interrogate the spurious claims by the Administration of Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction capability. Sure, even the likes of France and Germany suspected that Saddam may, in fact, have still had a few piles of chemical munitions left over from the Iran-Iraq war. The point, however, is that they did not see these as justifying a war. They recognized from the outset that invading Iraq would cause more problems than it would solve.

The more important failure of the U.S. media, then, is its failure to question the basic proposition that if Iraq had, indeed, had unconventional weapons, then an invasion and occupation of that country was a wise and prudent course of action.

There’s more:

The very idea that there are certain categories of weapons that draw down a red mist over rational discussion of geopolitical options is an exceedingly dangerous one — that should be one of the key lessons drawn from Iraq. And that’s exactly what’s being cooked up over Iran, too.

The very same crew of neocons and liberal hawks and the Israeli political establishment and its allies in Washington, are goading America to attack Iran. They insist Iran is going hell for leather to acquire nuclear weapons, and allowing it to do so represents a mortal threat to the West, Arab moderates and Israel. And just when a convenient excuse was needed for the U.S. failure in Iraq and Afghanistan, wouldn’t you know it, it’s those darn Iranians “interfering”. Don’t even think about discussing, what, are you Neville Chamberlain or something? Don’t you know it’s 1938 all over again?

Really, it’s one the smarter things you’ll read on the topic. What are thinking? Check it out now.

Two things stand out about “The Black Sites,” Jane  Mayer’s excellent piece in this week’s New Yorker (a note to my lazier readers: Gawker has a funnier, dumber and shorter version) peeking inside the CIA’s secret interrogation program, particularly through the experience of 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Mohammed: 1) Comparing this piece to Mark Bowden’s Atlantic Monthly story, “The Dark Art of Interrogation” says a lot about how we’ve changed over the last four years. In Bowden’s 2003 story, which is fascinating, complete and to my mind by far the best thing published in an American magazine on the subject, the conclusion is that torture is most likely going on, and that it’s a necessary evil; for instance, here:

The Bush Administration has adopted exactly the right posture on the matter. Candor and consistency are not always public virtues. Torture is a crime against humanity, but coercion is an issue that is rightly handled with a wink, or even a touch of hypocrisy; it should be banned but also quietly practiced. Those who protest coercive methods will exaggerate their horrors, which is good: it generates a useful climate of fear. It is wise of the President to reiterate U.S. support for international agreements banning torture, and it is wise for American interrogators to employ whatever coercive methods work. It is also smart not to discuss the matter with anyone.

This isn’t to say that Bowden would be a supporter of all the administration has done to provide legal cover for torture. But, writing six months before Abu Ghraib, there’s much more of a willingness to accept these methods if they produce results (and Bowden is, to be fair, properly skeptical about the effectiveness of many of these things) than Mayer, writing four years later, shows.

2) One of the most interesting bits in the New Yorker story isn’t about what torture does to others; it’s what torture does to us:

The former officer said that the C.I.A. kept a doctor standing by during interrogations. He insisted that the method was safe and effective, but said that it could cause lasting psychic damage to the interrogators. During interrogations, the former agency official said, officers worked in teams, watching each other behind two-way mirrors. Even with this group support, the friend said, Mohammed’s interrogator “has horrible nightmares.” He went on, “When you cross over that line of darkness, it’s hard to come back. You lose your soul. You can do your best to justify it, but it’s well outside the norm. You can’t go to that dark a place without it changing you.” He said of his friend, “He’s a good guy. It really haunts him. You are inflicting something really evil and horrible on somebody.”

And that, in a way, is one of the biggest legacy of Gitmo, of Abu Ghraib, of a regime of secret rendition flights, of a denial of  habeas corpus: We are all of us going to that dark place, without really thinking about how it will change who we are.

Well, that didn’t take long.

The SF Chronicle gets all breathless talking about this video for Barack Obama, a play on Apple’s best-TV-spot-ever “1984″ commercial:

The Chronicle sees this as a watershed:

It may be the most stunning and creative attack ad yet for a 2008 presidential candidate — one experts say could represent a watershed moment in 21st century media and political advertising.

But I’m not so sure. For me, the ad is a little to heavy-handed, and mostly because it’s simply too long: At 74 sec, it’s 16 seconds longer than the original piece. That’s just enough time to go from “Oh, look: Hillary as IBM, and Obama as the plucky Mac. That’s clever” to “Alright, already. I get it. What else is on?” Which is, I think, not quite what they’re going for.

And the original is still better:

A big reason that I don’t yet weigh 300 lbs. is that I have traditionally only had Girl Scout cookies once I year. I could eat a box of Thin Mints every day. So I’m understandably excited about this.

(Yes, I know that this has probably been there for years. It’s new to me, OK?)

And, in a mostly unrelated story, a fun video from the Conan show: