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Saturday, Apr 28, 2007
Flash Back
I'm watching the inaugural program of Bill Moyer's new series, Buying the War. Not much of the show is new information to me. (Although the "Oprah" segment is shocking due to Oprah's vitriol towards someone questioning Judith Miller's bullshit.) In May of 2003 I started putting together a large set of link to news and analysis from the pre- and post-invasion periods. These links are on a page called Trailers of Mass Destruction. There were voices raising doubts, but they were too often buried while the war mongering was page 1A above the fold.
Of special note is the work done by the Washington Bureau of Knight-Ridder (follow link and scroll down for links to some of their coverage). I read some of their work in the local Knight-Ridder outlet, and their flagship paper, the San Jose Mercury News.
The Knight-Ridder organization has been dismantled. Major stockholders decided that the parts of the company were worth more than the whole. The McClatchy Company, which was built around the Sacramento Bee, bought Knight-Ridder, and sold off portions, including the Mercury News to MediaNews Group.
To reiterate, one of the few organizations to really question the administration's propaganda campaign in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, was "parted out" like an old car because certain wealthy stockholders thought that would bring better return on investment.
New Hobby?
The Army Corps of Engineers has a web site dedicated to the Hurricane Protection System in southeast Louisiana. I'll be digging in more to learn about what they are and are not doing. I'm very concerned they are setting the bar too low. Designing for a 100 year event, and compounding that by designing with a very low safety factor leads me to conclude they are designing for failure.
Gosh, if only we could find a few billion in the military budget to do this thing right. Is there any elective military program that we could scale back in order to protect this major American city? Hmmm.