Thursday, September 18, 2003 :::
In today's Bleat, Lileks compares his daughter to the Saddam Hussein regime; mostly, though, he critiques a Star-Tribune editorial on the situation in Iraq.Every day I read a piece like the Strib edit. They all have an inescapable conclusion: Saddam should have been left in power. No, they don’t say that. Yes, the writers would surely insist that Saddam was a wretched tyrant, and the world is better off without him in power, BUT, Baghdad’s electricity service is now undependable. No, but. Yes, but. Perhaps, however. Perfection has not been achieved; the depredations of a three-decade nightmare have not been banished in six months, and that really is the issue, isn’t it. What irritate me are the letters to the editor in the Globe, every other day or so, saying Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz should be fired. What frustrates me about those letters isn't this conclusion, it's the invariable presumption that everyone agrees. They're not trying to persuade people that things are going badly in Iraq, and that it's Rummy's fault; rather, they use phrases like "obviously" and "everyone knows", and "no one I know voted for Nixon", while page three of the same paper reports a new poll indicating 60% approval for the administration's handling of Iraq.
::: posted by Steven at 11:55 AM
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