Oil for food, yeah? Yeah right!

[catsidhe]

George Galloway expressed himself plainly.

Strange how the Rightist blogs haven't seen fit to mention it, despite the outrage over Media Watch and other otherwise obsessive linkage. (I'm not naming names. I don't think I need to.)

So Kofi Annan is personally responsible for draining oil out of Iraq and starving innocent children, was he? The evidence was this list:

"Now you have nothing on me, Senator, except my name on lists of names from Iraq, many of which have been drawn up after the installation of your puppet government in Baghdad. If you had any of the letters against me that you had against Zhirinovsky, and even Pasqua, they would have been up there in your slideshow for the members of your committee today.

"You have my name on lists provided to you by the Duelfer inquiry, provided to him by the convicted bank robber, and fraudster and conman Ahmed Chalabi who many people to their credit in your country now realise played a decisive role in leading your country into the disaster in Iraq.

"There were 270 names on that list originally. That's somehow been filleted down to the names you chose to deal with in this committee. Some of the names on that committee included the former secretary to his Holiness Pope John Paul II, the former head of the African National Congress Presidential office and many others who had one defining characteristic in common: they all stood against the policy of sanctions and war which you vociferously prosecuted and which has led us to this disaster."

Well, that's some evidence. Ahmed Chalabi, eh? Well. Oh, and mention is made of unnamed sources, as well. When Newsweek does that it is an international travesty. When a Senate Committee does it, it's sanctified, as if ex cathedra is the same as incontravertible or unquestionable.

Oh, and remember our little talk on Torture?

"You quote Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Well, you have something on me, I've never met Mr Dahar Yassein Ramadan. Your sub-committee apparently has. But I do know that he's your prisoner, I believe he's in Abu Ghraib prison. I believe he is facing war crimes charges, punishable by death. In these circumstances, knowing what the world knows about how you treat prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison, in Bagram Airbase, in Guantanamo Bay, including I may say, British citizens being held in those places.

"I'm not sure how much credibility anyone would put on anything you manage to get from a prisoner in those circumstances. But you quote 13 words from Dahar Yassein Ramadan whom I have never met. If he said what he said, then he is wrong.

Now, for a nation that prides itself on free thought and outspokenness, why did it take a foreigner to have the cojones to stand up to these Macarthysts and straight-out call them a Star Chamber?

Go read all of it. There are two pages there. Yes, I mean you too, erudito.

Comments

Re: Already have

[erudito.livejournal.com]

Given I have never made such a claim, it is not even at me.

My point is a much more subtle one. A high degree of cognitive conformity in academia leads to bad intellectual product -- both in intellectual output and in the education offered to students.

As for the point about disagreeing is not repressing, not in itself, no (though there was considerable whining about disagreement representing repression from the US Left after 9/11). If, however, it includes such things as shouting down opposing speakers, demanded apologies and/or resignations for expressing the wrong views, using your position as a teacher to deride student dissent, it becomes a bit of a different issue. These things are far from universal in academe, but they do happen enough to be a concern.