Friday, June 25, 2004

Quote Wrap, June 26

TAPPER: Is it not also legitimate to question whether, however, you are doing the same thing you're accusing the U.S. government of doing? You fault Saddam Hussein for being a brutal dictator back in the '80s when the United States was allied with Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war, yet when it comes to the part of the movie where you discuss going to war in Iraq in 2003, that's not a part of the movie you talk about how brutal Saddam Hussein was.

MOORE: Because people like you and this network and other networks over and over and over again told us that. Look, we all get it. We all know that. I'm just trying to present another side of the story. Why don't you think that's a good idea to have a filmmaker out there presenting a point of view and a side of the story that really wasn't well represented in our mainstream media?

Michael Moore turning nasty on ABC News correspondent Jake Tapper, who asks remarkably good hardball questions. [For a TV guy, I mean.] Moore is Saddam's Leni Reifstahl, but with less filmmaking skill.

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Right after 9/11, some of us thought it was impossible for leftist critics to undermine a war against fascists who were sexist, fundamentalist, homophobic, racist, ethnocentric, intolerant of diversity, mass murderers of Kurds and Arabs, and who had the blood of 3,000 Americans on their hands. We were dead wrong. In fact, they did just that. Abu Ghraib is on the front pages daily. Stories of thousands of American soldiers in combat against terrorist killers from the Hindu Kush to Fallujah do not merit the D section. Senator Kennedy's two years of insane outbursts should have earned him formal censure rather than a commemoration from the Democratic establishment.

What a litany of distractions! Words — preemption," "unilateralism," "hegemony," — whiz by and lose all meaning. Names — "Halliburton," "Chalabi," "INC" — become little more than red meat. Vocabulary is turned upside down: "Contractors," who at great risk restore power and water to the poor, are now little more than "profiteers" and "opportunists"; killers are not even "terrorists" but mere "militants." "Neo-cons" are wild-eyed extremists; "realists" are no longer cynics — inclined to let thousands die abroad unless the chaos interrupts transit of oil or food — but rather "sober" and "circumspect," and more likely Kerry supporters.

Victor Davis Hanson on "Year Three: Where do we stand in this disorienting war?"

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This afternoon I logged on to the CNN website and their major headline read "92 Iraqis killed". After reading the news report, I logged on to Al-Jazerah's website and guess what their major headline was? "3 American soldiers killed". This is what they ONLY care about, to see America fail. In fact, it is not just Al Jazerah, I am beginning to believe that the majority of Arabs/Muslims feel indifferent towards Iraqi deaths as long as the US sinks deeper in their perceived "Iraq quagmire". They don't give a dead rat's ass about Iraqis being killed on a daily basis by suicide bombings and arbitrary shooting. Their passion of "Arab/Muslim brotherhood" only explodes when few Iraqi civilians are accidentally killed by US forces. I am outraged at such hypocrisy and lies.

Big Pharaoh scores again