What Happened to the Comments Section on this Blog?
Since this blog has been up and running, the comment section has been wild and woolly, with conservative and progressives, Bush-lovers and Bush-bashers, thrashing out the important issues of the day. I appreciated the (positive) comments and was intrigued by the (responsible) negative comments. And in the best of the blog tradition, I picked up useful information from the commenters. My friend Micah Sifry, who pens the blog at www.iraqwarreader.com, is fond of saying, “collectively, your audience knows more than you do.” (I once watched him try to convince an editor at The Nation of this view; this editor remained dubious.) I agree with Micah. The commenters here have reminded me of information I have forgotten or alerted me to material I somehow missed. Many thanks to them.
But beyond all the positive and constructive input that has come from commenters, this blog has also received a high amount of abusive and obscene comments lately. Some of this may have started after the conservative Weekly Standard posted a piece attacking the comment section of the blog for providing a haven for–get this–passionate Bush detractors. The author of the Weekly Standard article even objected to the way one blog visitor reacted to the entry I wrote criticizing New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof for taking a swing at my book, The Lies of George W. Bush: Mastering the Politics of Deception. This commenter had proclaimed, “Yes!!! You go, David Corn! Tell it! TESTIFY!!!! In your FACE, Kristof!!!” That was apparently too much enthusiasm for this WSer. Has she ever visited the Free Republic site?
The traffic to this blog has doubled and tripled in recent days, and I doubt that is attributable solely to the Weekly Standard swipe. (But thanks for the mention, Bill Kristol.) Alas, the upsurge has brought into our community too many visitors lacking basic manners. Consequently, the fellow who helps me manage the site turned off the comments function today while I was traveling. He and I will discuss what can be done to facilitate lively, but not obscene, discourse. In the meantime, talk among yourselves and check back soon to learn what we have decided–and, of course, to read future entries….STAY TUNED for a blast (coming Wednesday morning) at Bush and Cheney’s most recent forays in historical revisionism.
Indecent gestures in the form of print are a sign of the times. There can be no denial of the fact that the Republican Party set out to move the agenda through the media (i.e. Fox News Channel and CBN). The Rush Limbaugh phenomenon has unleashed obscene speech and even legitimized it. Even President Bush has been caught calling the media untoward names. Can something be done to stop them? Probably not. The internet is here for everybody. Just like turning off the TV, one has to ignore obscene speech.
Comment by Joe Tully — 7/15/2004 @ 11:39 am
I find it hard to comprehend the amount of lies that Governments can produce in pursuit of their agendas.
We have the same here in Australia.
http://www.johnhowardlies.com/index.htm
Make one wonder why we need them at all.
Comment by Jack_Australia — 7/15/2004 @ 7:54 pm
David,
This is in response to your Nation blog post today. The real question is not whether or not Valerie Plame recommended Joe Wilson to go to Niger, or for that matter, that he might have even contradicted himself on the issue. The two important points are his findings that the claim is false and Bush & Co’s egregious response by outting Plame. However, related to the former point, Ray McGovern, former CIA career agent under numerous presidents pointed out on Democracy Now last year that for one thing, Niger is not even in control of their yellow-cake uranium- that all of it is accounted for and monitored by an international agency; and, pre-war Iraq supposedly already had 50 tons it that it had no idea what to do with it. Thus the point being that the whole Niger – yellow-cake incident is not only unlikely, it points to the bigger problem of how the 16 words got into Bush’s report when supposedly most people “in the know” knew this claim to be flimsy at best. McGovern also pointed out that someone probably suggested that they should lay the “blame", if you will, on the British government- which of course, Bush did in his speech. Now, in light of the British government report, which some claim contradicts Wilson’s assessment, my reading of the NYT article on it actually shows more inconclusiveness. That is, the British report’s intelligence on the Ira-Niger yellow-cake relied on pre-war Iraqi government agents, not former exiles (which I might add supposedly they had serious reservations about the veracity of the exiles claims). However, the British govt. also stated that those Iraqi agents did direct access to the intelligence or the programs to which they gave information about- that is, that Iraq wanted to obtain the yellow-cake. In short, Bush and Co deliberately exaggerated the claims on numerous occasions (at least 4 times specifically in the run up to the congressional vote to give them war powers), outted a CIA agent, which Bush 41 knows how absolutely unconscienable that is (think Philip Agee), and continue to try to destroy the integrity of a life-long public servant (who was also a registered Republican). The brazen audacity in which this government operates is absolutely stultifying and to make matters worse, the fact that so many people just don’t see it, speaks volumes about the lousy job that the media has done (on whole) in holding Bush and Co to the task.
John Reitzel
Gainesville, Flordia
Comment by John Reitzel — 7/16/2004 @ 10:48 am
While we’ve all been outraged by the Wilson/Plame story and ongoing Bush revisionisom on Iraq, I’ve been puzzeled about the lack of follow-up on the July 3rd article in the NY Times titled “Officials Detail a Detainee Deal by 3 Countries,” describing a secret deal in August 2003 made by the U.S. freeing 5 Saudi terrorism detainees connected to Al Quada from Guantanamo to Saudi Arabia as part of a deal to get Saudi officials to release 5 Britons and 2 others wrongly convicted of guerilla attacks in Saudi Arabia. The Britons said they were tortured into confessing and British intelligence officers maintaianed that the attacks were actually carried out by Al Queda. Two of the Britons were sentenced to be beheaded. Am I the only one to be outraged by this? Did anyone remember that a majority of the 911 terrorists were Saudis? Reuters and CBS both picked up on the story on the 5th and 6th, with CBS doing a quick interview with two U.S. Senators, who said they were concerned and would make inquiries (by that time I had almost fallen out of my chair with disbelief and didn’t get their names). I can’t find any follow-up by any of these news outlets. The Times article noted “…objections from officials at the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency and the Justice Department. Those officials questioned whether some detainees were too dangerous to send back and whether the United States could trust Saudi promises to keep the men imprisoned.” This story is so bizzare that even Michael Moore couldn’t have dreamed it up. What about our long standing policy not to release terrorist prisoners in response to hostage demands? The Britons were, in effect, hostages of the Saudi government - a government which took an Al Quada attack and turned it into bogus charges against the Britons - backed up by torture. What does Bush tell the families of the men already beheaded by terrorists in Iraq and Saudi Arabia? Didn’t they rate the same treatment? The Saudis just found the head of an American (Mr. Johnson) in a refrigerator. We won’t release prisoners to free American and foreign hostages, except when the Saudis are involved. Michael Moore should go back and edit this story into a “Farenheit 911 - Part 2.” It’s clear from the Times article that the White House, and Bush directly had a hand in this. The deal was brockerd “…by the American Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Robert Jordan, who had served as a personal lawyer for President Bush. Officials said Mr. Jordan first suggested the swap to senior State Department officials, but when Pentagon officials learned of the proposal, several objected, including the defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld.” The article also made clear that “…the three-way deal [was] intended to satisfy important allies in the invasion of Iraq, according to senior American and British officials.” - So the thugish Saudi government, up to its ears in Al Quada sympathizers gets actual terrorists freed. The country, teeming with Al Quada sympathizers who help to finance the terrorist agenda, gets its way so that Bush can get his way in the Iraqi debacle. Can anyone clue me in on this? I googled this issue and found no follow up except for a report in a couple of Canadian papers, the National Post and La Presse, on July 10th quoting a Belgian diplomatic cable expresssing concerns over the Saudi “nonfulfilment of their part of the agreement” (one of the hostages was Canadian) . This was due to the Saudi delay for 3 months in releasing their prisoners. The Times, CBS, Reuters, the Guardian, etc - nothing. Did someone pop up and say “oops it’s not true"? Isn’t there anyone out there as outraged as I am? Why din’t the Kerry campaign pick up on this?
Comment by Craig Hathaway — 7/21/2004 @ 9:12 pm