Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution)
"Environmental activists have demanded a clean up of radioactive waste in villages surrounding Iraq's Tuwaitha nuclear plant as fears grow for local people's health," the BBC writes today. The whole story is worth reading.
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"Some say the war was justified even if WMD are not found nor their destruction explained, because the world is 'better off' without Saddam Hussein," George Will writes in Sunday's Washington Post. "Of course it is better off. But unless one is prepared to postulate a U.S. right, perhaps even a duty, to militarily dismantle any tyranny -- on to Burma? -- it is unacceptable to argue that Hussein's mass graves and torture chambers suffice as retrospective justifications for preemptive war."
While I agree with Will in principle, I think this is distortion of much of the "better off" argument, which says that removing Saddam was worth it because of the trouble he could potentially create so long as he was in office, which is different than just saying that war was justified as a means of improving the human rights situation in Iraq.
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"Most Americans would support the United States taking military action to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons despite growing public concern about the mounting number of U.S. military casualties in the aftermath of the war with Iraq, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll," Richard Morin and Claudia Deane write in today's Washington Post. "President Bush last week said the rest of the world should join the United States in declaring that it "will not tolerate" nuclear weapons in Iran -- a vow that most Americans appear willing to back with force. By 56 percent to 38 percent, the public endorsed the use of the military to block Iran from developing nuclear arms."
In a story from yesterday, the AP quotes U.S. House member and Democratic presidential candidate Dick Gephardt as saying, "When I'm president, we'll do executive orders to overcome any wrong thing the Supreme Court does tomorrow or any other day." Can you say disturbing? Nobody who is bothered by the authoritarin practices of the Bush Administration, or who was bothered by a similar and in some ways even more authoritarian practices of Team Clinton, should line up to support Gephardt. (Thanks to Court Schuett for alerting me to the quote.) posted by micah holmquist at 6/24/2003 06:29:00 PM
