the tinyblog

Usually I don't point to much writing on the web about Iraq, because most writing I encounter is just too heavily weighted one way or the other, or just doesn't approach the complexity of opinions and feelings I have about the administration/war/wmd. This article on rc3.org daily, however does a good job of stating about how I feel.

The operative part is:

I think that for most people who have opposed President Bush and his agenda from the beginning, there's at least a side of them that wants to see him fail. To leave office in humiliation. Only there's a huge problem with that, because he's gambling with our future, and he's gambling with the future of those people in Iraq who never asked for what they're dealing with today. So much as I detest what he's done and how he's gone about it, I have to hope every day for President Bush to succeed, for our sake and for the sake of the everyday Iraqi. It's not a very fun place to be.

And while I'm going there, I also really appreciated this recent New Yorker article about The Ownership Society. If you don't want to read the whole article, the important passage is here:

Generally, we want people to reap the benefits of their own successes and pay a price for their failures. But Social Security and Medicare are designed to protect people from things they have little control over�risk of illness, risk of macroeconomic change, risk of industrial obsolescence. To manage that kind of risk, you have to do it collectively. What�s more, as the political scientist Jacob Hacker has pointed out, Americans� everyday lives are considerably riskier than they used to be. Jobs are less secure. Health-care costs are increasingly difficult to plan for. And the pace of technological change�which can lay waste to entire industries almost overnight�is faster than ever. So now may not be the best time to undermine the few programs that provide people with some protection against bad decisions and bad luck.

And last but not least...I actually almost mailed this article about Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the UN to Graumagus of Frizzen Sparks, because he focused so deeply on Annan's culpability in the food-for-oil scandal. The article actually mentions the role neocon bloggers played in the whole Kofi Annan scandal.

The important passage:

Listening to the cable pundits, you would never suspect that there is no proof at this point that Annan, or indeed anyone else at the UN, did anything wrong. Charges of corruption against UN official Benon Sevan are suspect at best, given that they come via Ahmad Chalabi, who was also the source of the discredited information about Iraq's illusory weapons, as well as the assurances that Iraqis would greet US and British forces as liberators. Nor is there any evidence that Annan used his influence to give Cotecna, a company that employed his son, the job of monitoring contracts under the oil-for-food program, and no proof that Cotecna did anything illegal or corrupt.

I'm always looking for articles that handle modern issues in an intelligent way, and rarely find them, either from the right or the left. So I think these articles are important reading for left or right wingers.