Things That I Don’t Get

Apparently the Senate Indian Affairs Committee is holding a hearing today because members of the Native American community are upset Navy Seals gave Osama bin Laden the codename “Geronimo”:

The use of the code name Geronimo to refer to Osama bin Laden has generated a fair amount of controversy. Mere days after the iconic phrase, “Geronimo EKIA” (Geronimo, Enemy Killed In Action) Congress is even saying that it will look into the matter, calling the name “inappropriate” and “devastating.”

To be fair, almost any name chosen for Osama would generate this kind of indignation. Bin Laden by any other name might smell as sweet, but call him a rose, and the flower lobby would be out in force. Call him Romeo, and the Anti-Shakespearean-Character Defamation League would be hooting and hollering and carrying on. Yes, Geronimo was a conscious choice, perhaps because the Native American leader was famously elusive, and there’s a hostile history there. Geronimo wasn’t even his original name. (That would be Goyahkla, “One Who Yawns.”) But say what you will about the history of wildly misappropriated terms for Native Americans — Washington Redskins, anyone? — the objection boils down to the fact that a code name for Osama that referenced anything with any redeeming qualities whatever would be drawing fire from some quarter.

I don’t know about that but I will say any group complaining about this is not going to find a lot of sympathy. Native Americans have plenty of legitimate complaints, and making an issue out of this trivializes everything else, if you ask me.

But hey, the Senate committee is having a hearing so what the hell do I know. But it seems like there would be better ways of making your point. Am I missing something here?

Sore Losers Much?

Republicans never passed up an opportunity to grandstand before: waving purple fingers after the 2005 Iraqi elections and renaming French fries “Freedom Fries” in the House cafeteria come to mind. Oh, and then there was that whole "flying in to rescue Terri Schiavo" thing.

But honoring the military that took out Osama bin Laden is apparently a bridge too far:

House Republicans say they have no plans to follow the Senate in passing a resolution honoring the military mission that killed Osama bin Laden.

The decision by GOP leaders follows new rules they enacted in January scrapping the tradition of congratulatory measures, which they complained clogged up the House floor.

Oh that’s just so convenient, isn’t it? Can you imagine if President Bush (or, God forbid, a President McCain) had got bin Laden? There’d be parades down Pennsylvania Avenue, resolutions and Medals of Honor, “Mission Accomplished” banners, you name it -- "new rules" be damned.

Well, suck on it, assholes.

Here’s a photo that’s been going around the internet the past few days, which just cracked me up. I think it aptly depicts why Republicans are so pissed off:

Unity

I’m still half asleep and haven’t quite formulated my thoughts but I wanted to share something from last night’s Nashville Predators game.

When an announcement was made midway through the game congratulating the Navy Seals "for the events this week," the arena went nuts, cheering and clapping and shouting. Earlier in the game there was a gag on the Megatron featuring our team mascot intercut with scenes from "Top Gun" and bin Laden's face in gun sights; again, the arena went nuts. People waved the American flag and chanted "USA! USA!", which I've never seen before at one of our hockey games. Of course, we played the Vancouver Canucks but still, we’ve played Canadian teams before and I’ve never seen such a vocal expression of patriotism.

I guess I hadn't realized how deeply the country needed this until I experienced that crowd reaction. There was no partisanship, no "ha ha suckaz, Obama did this" or "Democrats this, Republicans that," it was "America got him." Getting bin Laden was a “win” that was a huge boost for the country, psychologically speaking. It was a taste of that unity Glenn Beck claimed he wanted, and which those same fringe righties seem unable to participate in now. Which I find very telling: if you hate President Obama so much that you can’t be happy for the country now that the mastermind of 9/11 was brought to justice, then that tells us everything we need to know about you.

I don’t know what’s been happening at other sporting events around the country this week, and I’d be interested in hearing if there’s been a similar reaction to what I saw in Nashville last night. Nashville is close to Ft. Campbell, and the hockey team has a military outreach bringing lots of Ft. Campbell families to each game, so we might have seen something others didn’t. It’s important to remember that thousands of people joined up for military service in the wake of 9/11 for the express purpose of capturing bin Laden: not to protect oil shipping lanes, not to bring democracy to Iraq or Afghanistan, but to catch the people responsible for 9/11. This was their “Mission Accomplished” moment.

I think sometimes we forget the deep and lasting impact of 9/11 on the American psyche. The bickering, partisanship and gridlock of the past 10 years may have been there anyway, but coupled with the national hit to the ego that was a deadly attack on American soil, it allowed some of our uglier tendencies to emerge. I’m thinking of the fearmongering, the Islamophobia, even the homophobia, as ordinary people wrestled with the idea of an America the vulnerable. Coupled with all of the other changes in our society -- a shrinking middle class, wage stagnation, technological changes, cultural changes like marriage equality and increasing racial diversity -- and the result is a lot psychological instability for a country of 300 million people. We might have been able to handle the cultural and social changes but add an attack in there too and no wonder we went a little nuts.

Anyway, as I said, I’m still just hashing around some ideas. But I thought that was interesting.

Osama Bin Gone

Celebrating at Ground Zero:



Outside the White House:



And at Ohio State:



George W. Bush might not have been that concerned about Osama but it's clear that the American people were. Celebrations are underway all around the country. It's an amazing thing to see. Donny Deutsch on "Morning Joe" just called this spontaneous eruption a "national fist pump"'; even Peggy Noonan just referred to it as a "visual return of competence." I'm hearing "yes we can" again. There is jubilation in the streets, which is something we haven't seen in a long, long time.

This is a moment our nation desperately needed.

[UPDATE]:

And this is for those Debbie Downers who claim there's nothing to celebrate because the country still faces problems:



Thanks, you know, sometimes it's hard to tell which side you're on but this time you've made it really clear. You and the rest of the Obama haters of the right can STFU for just one day, 'mmmkay?

Holy Shit

I don't know if this is correct, but it's blowing my mind:



Jill Jackson is a producer for CBS News covering Capitol Hill. Details to come at 10:30. Can we leave Iraq now? And Afghanistan? Of course not.

But I think it's safe to say we won't be talking about birth certificates anymore.

Why Is This Man On My TV?

Why is Ben Venzke, CEO of Intelcenter, on my TV again? Oh that’s easy: I’m watching CBS’ “coverage” of the new (alleged) Osama bin Laden tape.

I’m trying to figure out why, whenever OBL supposedly rears his head, CBS News runs to Venzke for comment. Here’s Venzke’s latest CBS moment, which was sent around the U.S. to local CBS affiliates in a news package. Although the piece came from CBS News’ London correspondent Mark Phillips last week, I caught it on NewsChannel5 (WTVF) this morning:

Bin Laden's audio message, one of more than 30 since al Qaeda's 9/11 attacks, comes at a time of heightened security in the U.S. and the United Kingdom. What is particularly troubling for analysts is bin Laden's use of language that preceded other attacks.

"Peace be upon those who follow the light of guidance," bin Laden said in the tape.

"This phrase, which appears at the beginning and end of the message, only appears in bin Laden's statements typically in messages that come in advance of an attack," said Ben Venzke CEO of Intelcenter, a private contractor that works with counter-terrorism agencies. "This could be in the coming weeks or as far out as 12 or 14 weeks from now."

Oh, well thanks for that insight (or should I say, incite?) At least CBS sorta identified Venzke’s company properly this time--I’ve seen reports going back a few years in which they refer to Intelsource as “an agency.”

They are not an “agency.” They are a military contractor. Like Halliburton, KBR, Xe (Blackwater), Boeing, Raytheon or any other military contractor. They have a contract with the Pentagon and they profit from our war on terror. They have a financial stake in scaring the crap out of people. So I’d say anything Venzke or Intelcenter has to say about Osama Bin Laden needs to be taken with that in mind and the news media should not use them as a source.

Unfortunately, it gets even worse for CBS News when you realize what the Pentagon contracts Intelsource to do. In fact, the Pentagon hires Intelsource to search for videos and other communications from terrorist groups--videos like this latest one of Osama bin Laden. Isn’t that interesting? So in other words, the Pentagon hires Intelsource to find videos of Osama bin Laden. Then when they find one, the CEO of the company which was hired to find the video in the first place goes onto the news to verify its authenticity.

Well isn’t that cozy. So, do we know that Venzke and Intelsource have ginned up phony terror videos which they then verified in their media appearances? Actually, it has been alleged by a few conspiracy-oriented blogs. I won’t link them, as I can’t vouch for these blogs. But there was one instance where an expert accused Intelsource of doctoring an OBL video it found and released (Venzke of course denied doing any such thing).

But all of that is beside the point. The issue is not whether Intelsource has behaved unethically, since we don’t know. The issue is that CBS News has provided a military contractor with the opportunity to do so. They should never have put their news division on such ethically shaky ground.

Could it get worse? Why yes, it can: I e-mailed my concerns to a NewsChannel5 anchor with whom I’m on friendly terms. I knew they did not generate the report but since that’s where I saw it, I asked them to pass my concerns along up the news division chain. My friend responded first with thanks that I’d call it to their attention, noting they were unaware of Venzke’s role as a military contractor.

But they then said there is nothing they can do about it because

quite frankly, it's something that comes to us and we don't have the resources all the time to catch that kind of thing.

Our broken news media: is feature, not bug.

I wonder if this is what Viacom intended of its news division. The Pentagon contracts with a company to find videos of terrorists and when that company finds them, the CEO gets to flaunt their authenticity on the news. No one is the wiser but we all stay very, very scared.

Mission accomplished.

Victory For Al Qaeda?

[UPDATE]:

There's a Central American version, too:

Nicaragua's Ortega says crisis is God punishing U.S.

"It's incredible that in the most powerful country in the world, which spends billions of dollars on brutal wars ... people do not have enough money to stay in their homes," former Marxist guerrilla Ortega said in a speech late on Thursday.

-------------------------------------
As the stock market tumbled to new lows this week, a commenter on one of the blogs--wish I could remember where/who--observed that destroying the American economy was Al Qaeda’s purpose behind both World Trade Center attacks. So as the American economy slides further into the danger zone, and the ripples reach far around the globe, I have to wonder if this isn’t Al Qaeda’s “Mission Accomplished” moment.

Remember this tidbit from the 2004 presdiential election?

Bin Laden, whose al Qaeda network carried out the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, proved he's kept a close eye on U.S. politics as he detailed al Qaeda's strategy of bleeding America bankrupt, even as Americans weighed their presidential votes largely on the issues of terror and the economy.

He provided a financial analysis of al Qaeda's destruction in his latest 18-minute video, a full transcript of which was posted Monday on the Internet.

According to bin Laden's math, each $1 al Qaeda has spent on strikes has cost the United States $1 million in economic fallout and military spending, including emergency funding for Iraq and Afghanistan.

"As for the size of the economic deficit, it has reached record astronomical numbers," bin Laden said, estimating the deficit at more than $1 trillion.

In reality, spending in the war against terror and other factors have resulted in an expected $377 billion shortfall for 2003 — the highest deficit since World War II when inflation is factored out. The total U.S. national debt is near the $7.4 trillion statutory limit.

That was November 2004, of course. As I posted in yesterday’s “Memory Hole,” the National Debt Clock had to be reconfigured to accommodate the latest $10 trillion figure.

My fellow prisoners, this is something to think about, long and hard.