micah holmquist's irregular thoughts and links

Welcome to the musings and notes of a Cadillac, Michigan based writer named Micah Holmquist, who is bothered by his own sarcasm.

Please send him email at micahth@chartermi.net.

Holmquist's full archives are listed here.

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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)

Aljazeera.Net English
AlterNet (War on Iraq)
Alternative Press Review
Always Low Prices -- Always
Another Irani online
antiwar.com (blog)
Asia Times Online
Axis of Logic
Baghdad Burning (riverbend)
BBC News
blogdex.net ("track this weblog")
bobanddavid.com
BuzzFlash
The Christian Science Monitor (Daily Update)
Common Dreams
Cryptome
Cursor
Daily Rotten
DefenseLINK
Democracy Now
The Drudge Report
Eat the Press (Harry Shearer, The Huffington Post)
Empire Notes (Rahul Mahajan)
frontpagemag.com (HorowitzWatch)
globalsecurity.org
greenandwhite.com
Guardian Unlimited
Haaretz
The Independent
Information Clearing House
Informed Comment (Juan Cole)
Iranians for Peace

Iraq Dispatches (Dahr Jamail)
Iraqi Democrats Against Occupation
Iraq Occupation and Resistance Report (Psychoanalysts for Peace and Justice)
MetaFilter
MLive
Mr. Show and Other Comedy
The Narco News Bulletin (blog)
NEWSMAKINGNEWS
The New York Times
Occupation Watch
Political Theory Daily Review
Press Action
Project Syndicate
Raed in the Middle (Raed Jarrar)
random-abstract.com
Reuters
Salon
The Simpsons Archive
Simpsons Collector Sector
Slate
Sploid
Technorati ("search for mth.blogspot.com")
thi3rdeye
United States Central Command
U.S. Embassy Baghdad, Iraq
venezuelanalysis.com
War Report (Project on Defense Alternatives)
The Washington Post
Wildfire (Jo Wilding)
wood s lot
www.mnftiu.cc (David Rees)

Blogs that for one reason or another Holmquist would like to read on at least something of a regular basis (always in development)

Thivai Abhor
As'ad AbuKhalil
Ken Adrian
Christopher Allbritton
Alli
Douglas Anders
Mark W. Anderson
Aziz Ansari
Atomic Archive
Bagatellen
James Benjamin
Elton Beard
Charlie Bertsch
alister black
Blame India Watch
Blixa
Blog Left: Critical Interventions Warblog / war blog
Igor Boog
Martin Butler
Chris Campbell
James M. Capozzola
Avedon Carol
Elaine Cassel
cats blog
Jeff Chang
Margaret Cho
Citizens Of Upright Moral Character
Louis CK
Les Dabney
Dack
Natalie Davis
Scoobie Davis
The Day Job
Jodi Dean
Dominic Duval
Steve Earle
Eli
Daniel Ellsberg
Tom Engelhardt
Lisa English
Faramin
Barbara Flaska
Brian Flemming
Joe Foster
Yoshie Furuhashi
Al Giordano
Glovefox
Rob Goodspeed
Grand Puba
Guardian Unlimited Weblog
Pete Guither
The Hairy Eyeball
Ray Hanania
Mark Hand
harveypekar.com
Hector Rottweiller Jr's Web Log Jim Henley Arvin Hill Hit & Run (Reason) Hugo Clark Humphrey Indri The Iraqi Agora Dru Oja Jay Jeff Lynne d Johnson Dallas Jones Julia Kane Blues Benjamin Kepple Ken Layne Phil Leggiere Brian Linse Adam Magazine Majority Report Radio Marc Maron Josh Marshall Jeralyn Merritt J.R. Mooneyham Michael Scott Moore Bob Morris Bob Mould Mr. Show and Tell Muslims For Nader/Camejo David Neiwert NewPages Weblog Aimee Nezhukumatathil Sean O'Brien Patton Oswalt The Panda's Thumb Randy Paul Rodger A. Payne Ian Penman politx Neal Pollack Greg Proops Pro-War.com Pure Polemics Seyed Razavi Rayne Simon Reynolds richardpryor.com Clay Richards Mike Rogers Yuval Rubinstein
Steven Rubio
Saragon Noah Shachtman Court Schuett The Simpsons Archive Amardeep Singh Sam Smith Soundbitten Jack Sparks Ian Spiers Morgan Spurlock Stand Down: The Left-Right Blog Opposing an Invasion of Iraq Aaron Stark Morgaine Swann Tapped (The American Prospect) tex Matthew Tobey Annie Tomlin Tom Tomorrow The University Without Condition Jesse Walker Warblogger Watch Diane Warth The Watchful Babbler The Weblog we have brains Matt Welch
Alex Whalen
Jon Wiener
Lizz Winstead
James Wolcott
Wooster Collective
Mickey Z

Monday, October 04, 2004
 
The rambles of your humble blogger with a cold

My latest Press Action piece has a pretty self-explanatory title, "Afghans, Iraqis and Other Non-Americans Exist for Our Amusement Was the Debate's Real Message."

***

Speaking of the debate, Bush has gotten a lot of play out of mocking Kerry's "global test" remark, but those cheering Bush for standing up for American whatever always seem to not point out this part of Bush's justification for invading Iraq:

...I went to the United Nations. I didn't need anybody to tell me to go to the United Nations. I decided to go there myself.

And I went there hoping that, once and for all, the free world would act in concert to get Saddam Hussein to listen to our demands. They passed the resolution that said, "Disclose, disarm, or face serious consequences." I believe, when an international body speaks, it must mean what it says.

So one of the reasons for invading Iraq was to back up the word of an international body called the United Nations Security Council. Some sort of test presumably was at work.

Actually it is more likely that Bush doesn't really mean what he said and it just part of the plethora of justifications that they have used.

Yesterday, on CNN's Late Edition, host Wolf Blitzer and Condoleezza Rice wer involved in the following exchange:

BLITZER: Let's talk about some of the things that the president said at the debate because some of them seem to be a little bit sloppy, got repetitive, as you well know.

But listen to this one excerpt of what he said briefly about Abdul Qadeer Khan, the former Pakistani nuclear scientist who helped create the Pakistani bomb, and obviously that no longer exists. But listen to what the president said.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The A.Q. Khan network has been brought to justice.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

BLITZER: To justice? The guy has been -- Khan has been freed. He's been pardoned by President Musharraf. And none of his associates have been brought to justice.

RICE: Well, his associates are in the process of being brought to justice. BSA Tahir (ph) is in custody. Several other members are in custody.

BLITZER: But Khan himself lives in a villa. And the IAEA would like to question him, and the Pakistani government doesn't even allow that to happen.

RICE: I think we all know that A.Q. Khan was a particular kind of figure in Pakistani lore, a national hero. And Musharraf has dealt with what is a very difficult situation about A.Q. Khan, by making certain that he's out of business, making certain that he loses the kinds of privileges that he had to travel and the like.

The important thing is that the A.Q. Khan network is out of business. And people are being brought to justice.

BLITZER: But the president would have been better saying the A.Q. Khan network has been rolled up or stopped. But brought to justice is a specific phrase...

RICE: They've both been brought to -- they've both been rolled up, and they're being brought to justice. A number of countries are pursuing prosecutions...

BLITZER: Against Khan?

RICE: ... against the A.Q. Khan network -- people like his chief operating officer, BSA Tahir (ph). South Africa is pursuing prosecutions. Europeans are pursuing...

BLITZER: But not A.Q. Khan specifically.

RICE: A.Q. Khan, in a sense, has been brought to justice because he is out of the business that he loved most.

BLITZER: All right. So you don't want to say that was sloppy wording?

RICE: Wolf, A.Q. Khan...

BLITZER: It's hard to say the president had sloppy wording.

RICE: A.Q. Khan is out of business and he is out of the business that he loved most. And if you don't think that his national humiliation is justice for what he did, I think it is. He's nationally humiliated.

Rice isn't expected to use the same reasoning when it comes to say Saddam Hussein, for reasons relating to the fact that she didn't really mean what she said here.

On the "global test" issue, Rice said a lot, including:

...I don't know how you pass a global test, given that, by the way, you couldn't even get consensus on the fact that, after Saddam Hussein had defied the international community for all of those years, that it was time to do something.
This would be a lot more interesting if Team Bush had ever showed a need to do something in Iraq.

Oh, but I forget, this, like just about everything else coming from Team Bush, because it served an immediate need.

On a related note, John Hawkins asks today, "If America's troops trust George Bush to fight the war on terrorism, shouldn't you?

No, because I can make up my own opinion about the "war on terrorism" and because I seriously question the critical thinking ability and/or use of critical thinking of any person who signs up to be part of the U.S. military.