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P.O. Box 3159, Eugene, OR 97403
Email: editor@dailyemerald.com
Online Edition:
www.dailyemerald.com
Tuesday, June 3,2003
-Oregon Daily Emerald —-:
Commentary
Editor in Chief:
Michael J. Kleckner
Managing Editor
Jessica Richelderfer
Editorial Page Assistant:
Salena De La Cruz
Editorial
Smacks to campus-area landlords
who have removed recycling options
for their tenants, smacks to the city
for not having a housing code that
mandates recycling availability for all
tenants, and smacks to those tenants
who misuse the recycle bins and lead
some landlords to remove recycling.
Quacks to Ruben Studdard for be
coming this year’s “American Idol.”
Studdard’s presence and voice had
many anti-reality TV types cheering
for him as he beat the less-charismat
ic Clay.
Smacks to congressional Republi
cans for pushing through a giant tax
cut and at the last second, slipping
in language that removes child tax
credits for the poorest Americans.
For shame.
Quacks to Israeli Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon and Palestinian Prime
Minister Mahmoud Abbas for making
concessions and getting the peace
process moving again. Let’s hope
when they meet Wednesday with
President George W. Bush, even more
progress will be made.
Smacks to the University admin
istration for deciding to publish stu
dents’ e-mail addresses in the print
version of the student directory —
which likely will turn everyone’s
gladstone account into a trash can
for spam.
Quacks to the LGBTQA for finish
ing off Pride Month on campus with a
“Love-In” that successfully demon
strated there is support for LGBT
members of the campus community.
Smacks to whoever vandalized Uni
versity student Sanam Aarabi’s art
work displayed in the EMU Aperture
Gallery. Art is often a political tool —
so create your own art if you have a
statement to make, but respect other
people’s work.
Quacks to the ASUO Student Sen
ate for funding a digital upgrade for
campus radio station KWVA, and su
per quacks to Charlotte Nisser for all
of her hard work at KWVA to make
the upgrade happen.
Smacks to the FGG for voting Mon
day to let major media companies
own even more outlets, which will
help extinguish the voice of independ
ent and local media across the coun
try. Super smacks to Chairman
Michael Powell, who it seems is single
handedly fighting to eliminate Ameri
can democracy.
Quacks to the University Theatre for
its 1,000th production, “This Ship of
Fools,” and super quacks to the theater
and Noah Smith’s friends for organizing
a benefit performance to help pay for
Smith’s medical expenses.
Smacks to the Lane County Budget
Committee for eliminating its animal
abuse investigator. Sure, let’s not wor
ry about the kids mutilating kittens —
it costs too much. Instead, we’ll be
sure to catch them after they become
serial killers.
Quacks to Florida legislators, who
recently repealed a two-year-old law
that had forced women to publish
their sexual histories in a newspaper
if they wanted to give a child up for
adoption but didn’t know who the fa
ther was. Why was this archaic throw
back to public shaming passed to
begin with?
Where’s the WMD?
According to decision theorist Philip Tedock,
when confronted with choices, decision-mak
ers take into account not only the potential
ramifications of their actions, but also how oth
ers will perceive them. The easiest way of deal
ing with this social accountability “is by mak
ing decisions that one is reasonably confident
will be acceptable to others.”
The United States and Britain sold a preemp
tive attack of Iraq by invoking the imminent
threat of Hussein’s weapons of mass destruc
tion. It is unlikely that any motive other than
the elimination of these weapons could have
convinced Congress and Parliament to assent
to war.
DJ Fuller
No holds barred
So was the elimination of WMD an authentic
casus belli, or was it an easily digestible ration
ale cooked up by administrations intent on de
posing Hussein for other, less justifiable rea
sons? This question
becomes more pressing
with each day we fail to
find WMD, the search for
which has now stretched
into its third month.
It appears that the con
sensus on the WMD story
is fraying at the seams.
Early last week, Defense
Secretary Donald Rums
feld suggested that Hus
sein may have destroyed
his WMD before the war be
gan. He later retracted this comment.
Assistant Defense Secretary Paul Wol
fowitz, in an interview with Vanity Fair, allud
ed that the Bush administration pushed the
WMD issue because it was “the one reason
everyone could agree on.”
Meanwhile, across the pond, a senior British
intelligence official has murmured that a gov
ernment dossier on Iraq — which claimed that
Hussein was capable of deploying biological and
chemical weapons within 45 minutes of decid
ing to use them — was altered to make Tony
Blair’s case for war more compelling.
BBC News reports that the dossier, which
was “presented as the work of the intelligence
services,” was actually compiled by junior aides
of Blair’s. They apparently mistrusted their own
expertise, for “long passages were copied al
most verbatim — and sometimes exaggerated
— from a paper written by a Ph.D. student in
California,” while “other information came
from Jane’s Intelligence Review.”
Whether or not the Bush or Blair administra
tions actually believed there were WMD in Iraq,
the failure to find those weapons would reflect
on them equally poorly. If no WMD turn up, we
can postulate a number of reasons for their ab
sence, all of which make the coalition of the
willing look bad.
If WMD were never there, then the coalition
either acted on poor intelligence or lied out
right. If the weapons had been there but were
smuggled somehow to Syria or Iran, then the
war failed in its purpose of nullifying the prolif
eration of WMD.
Rumsfeld’s suggestion that Iraq may have de
stroyed its weapons before the war is patently
ludicrous. Why would Hussein have done such
,Steve BaggS Emferald
a thing without telling the United Nations?
The only reason for him to have destroyed
his WMD, in the face of imminent attack by a
superior military, would have been to prevent
the attack from happening in the first place. For
Hussein to have publicly destroyed his WMD
would have been purposeful; what function
could secretly destroying them have served, ex
cept to expedite his own demise?
It doesn’t really matter which way you look
at it — if no WMD turn up, the Bush and Blair
administrations’ preemption policy will look ei
ther disingenuous or poorly conceived.
Which is why they are still insistent that the
weapons will be found, in light of overwhelming
evidence to the contrary. As Tetlock
writes,””the need to justify policies that have
worked out badly can place great pressure on
decision-makers to increase their behavioral
commitments to these failing policies.”
The Pentagon announced Friday that it is
sending a new team to Iraq to hunt for WMD.
This, after the first team, the Army’s 75th Ex
ploitation Task Force, has dismanded its opera
tions after a fruitless search. Why a new team
will be more successful than the first isn’t all
that clear. Why the Pentagon would send one
anyway is quite a bit more so.
Contact the columnist
at djfuller@dailyemerald.com. His opinions
do not necessarily represent those of the Emerald.
U.S. media's negligence threatens our democracy
Guest commentary
Uncounted stories of magnitude and rele
vance go untold by a negligent and conflicted
United States press — the disgrace runs deep.
The U.S. press completely ignored the story
of 60,000 valid Florida voters in the last presi
dential election illegally purged from the voter
rolls by Katherine Harris. The press focused al
most exclusively on the “hanging chad” issue
while ignoring an outright act of treason.
Journalists such as Greg Palast who investi
gated and reported on the issue had to go to Eu
rope to be published. Let us not forget secretary
of State Colin Powell’s urgency in making the
case for war with Iraq, utilizing 5-year-old pla
giarized and moot information from some grad
student’s research paper. Frankly, this is also an
act of treason, but where is the press follow-up?
And of course, this war was supposed to be
about those apocalyptic WMD’s, which have nev
er been found, but that is old news. While Iraq
and Afghanistan lay in ruins, news network
cheerleaders are already gearing up for Bush’s
Caligula-like war mongering ambitions for a
regime change in Iran. Continuing, ad nauseam.
“Top gun” President George W. Bush flies
onto aircraft carrier for photo-ops while simul
taneously cutting veterans benefits in half. The
press completely ignores this act of outrageous
hypocrisy, not to mention the deafening silence
pertaining to his being AWOL from the National
Guard for 18 months.
And finally, three cheers for the press falling
all over itself to saturate the American public
with the touching Jessica Lynch rescue story.
Remember the debunked “incubator baby” sto
ries from the first Gulf War. It turns out that the
saving of the little white princess from the evil
ones is nothing but a big propaganda scam (see
BBC documentary “Saving Private Jessica”).
Our democracy is unraveling, and it won’t
stop until an irresponsible and pathetically
compromised news media is held accountable.
Gerry Rempel lives in Eugene.