SocraticGadfly: 10/10/04 - 10/17/04

October 16, 2004

And Kerry still voted to use force against Iraq?

From Ron Suskind’s New York Times magazine profile of President Bush:
A group of Democratic and Republican members of Congress were called in to discuss Iraq sometime before the October 2002 vote authorizing Bush to move forward. A Republican senator recently told Time Magazine that the president walked in and said: “Look, I want your vote. I’m not going to debate it with you.” When one of the senators began to ask a question, Bush snapped, “Look, I’m not going to debate it with you.”

And Kerry would sign off on an undebateable item?

October 13, 2004

Now our troops are murdering Iraqi civilians in cold blood

Abu Ghraib has nothing on American soldiers fragging Iraqi civilians in broad daylight, according to Seymour Hersch.
Now, it’s cold-blooded My Lai type murders by our troops in Iraq:

Hersh talked about a call he had gotten from a first lieutenant in charge of a unit stationed halfway between Baghdad and the Syrian border. His group was bivouacking outside of town in an agricultural area, and had hired 30 or so Iraqis to guard a local granary. A few weeks passed. They got to know the men they hired, and to like them. Then orders came down from Baghdad that the village would be "cleared." Another platoon from the soldier's company came and executed the Iraqi granary guards. All of them.

Better-off white liberal guilt AWOL on schools?

Conservatives like to talk about real, or acted, white liberal guilt for a lot of things.
But Yale’s Stephen Carter, in the Oct. 12 New York Times, wonders when white liberals of enough means to afford private schools for their children will feel real guilt to the point of putting their children where their mouth is
Of course, I’m sure most of the Times’ editorial staff, let alone those on the Op-Ed page, are either unaware of or ignoring the irony.