More Dissembling (aka Disassembling)

I wrote about the topic in the following paragraphs yesterday, it published without error, but didn't actually publish. The blog edit pages were working, but the blog pages themselves were down for hours. It seems things have gotten sloppy at blogspot after being acquired by Google. I put in a support request, because the date edit function is obscured in the edit window, and instead of the fast response I had when I had a similar question a year and a half back, this request has been ignored for over a week. Now a post which was supposed to have published successfully was trashed. It is a free system and I shouldn't bitch too much, but I wouldn't have deleted my local copy of the post if I knew the success message was unreliable. Is this just bad luck, or is it a signal Google is moving to the current US business model, of "it's nearly good enough."

I can't believe this. Anyone remember why we had to go to Iraq -- the overriding reason? Independent of the 'questionable intelligence' which to me was painfully obvious it had been ordered up by the white house and cooked. Independent of the fear mongering and jingoism? Oh yeah, that's right, to stop terrorism. So here's rummy's new line:

"To be responsible, one needs to stop defining success in Iraq as the absence of terrorist attacks," Rumsfeld said.

"Which view of Iraq is more accurate, the pessimistic view of the so-called elites in our country, or the more optimistic view expressed by millions of Iraqis and by some 155,000 US troops on the ground?" Rumsfeld asked.

This is precious. It wasn't picked up very quickly in the US, but was reported widely yesterday in foreign newspapers. Most skipped the second paragraph, which also gagged me. Who are these mysterious "so-called elites" he invented? First I've heard of them. Sounds more like he is still relying on name calling and made up labels. Let's see, there is a cabal running the country, disciples of Machiavelli, who consider themselves above the law, above courtesy, etc. Rummy is part of the cabal, and he accuses those who see through the rotting veneer of being elites? If they weren't killing and destroying so many lives it would be funny.