I usually manage to listen to the Rush Radio Drive Show for about 30 seconds. Now, with yet another war to cover, I'm listening to serious news, e.g., NPR, about as long. It's just easier to drive along in silence, and note each morning that another tree or bush has blossomed. We've got the red bud, the pears, and breath of spring going good. Possibly way up high, the tulip poplars as well. If Libby and I don't get to the tin roof quick, it'll be covered with pollen again, and we'll have to wait till it's so hot we can't get up there at all except before about 8 am. Yes, it's just like the dang song.
Anyways, Monday the guy on the morning drive, one Casey O'Day, says (re the current story on our military atrocities in Afganistan), that there will always be a few bad apples. And then, in the next sentence, or maybe it was a semicolon, he says "In Vietnam they had necklaces of ears, and it worked. We need to leave five bodies here, and then five over there, and in a while the people will start cooperating." (I paraphrase, but not by much.) So then, how's that for having it both ways? You got your bad-apples, you got your ear necklaces. Effective ear necklaces, by the way. Does Lindie England get a post-release medal then, or does the thing work this way--that you always have rules in place, and what you have to do is break those rules and not get caught--deniability will always be maintained. As for getting serious about those ears, just google "ear necklace" and you'll find some pretty interesting reading. My guess is, Mr. O'Day was born after 1975.
He certainly missed the lesson of Yugoslavia, which Hitler learned in '42, on his way to the Soviet Union to die.
The deal with deniability is, it's not real. Has this been forgotten? It's a PR ploy. Newt Gingrich can't really get away with saying two weeks ago that we should have a No Fly Zone imposed, and yesterday say that Obama is being reckless and also overly cautious. There is the film, as even Jon Stuart can point out.
And apparently, this gibberish works in economics too. "Works" that is. You can cut taxes and then have a budget deficit crisis, and continue to follow the principle of never raising taxes. It's breathtaking.
Eventually somebody's going to examine those ears a bit more closely, and maybe it'll be like in the Searchers: "That's your mother's scalp on that pole, Jeffrey."
iwork in the news biz, have for more than 30 years, but i can't listen to the news anymore. my husband makes me podcasts of RTE documentaries and CBC interviews and i listen to those in the car.
ReplyDeletere libya, i confess to being swayed by Nicolas Kristof in the times. and by the story yesterday in the times about the woman who was raped repeatedly by khadaffi's men and fled to the hotel where the western press was housed....and then was dragged away by khadaffi's men again, screaming.