Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 95

'Mission Accomplished Day' This Week

Ten years ago this Thursday Bush landed on the aircraft carrier and declared you know what.  To warm up, here's Neil Young with one of the greatest antiwar songs of the decade.  "Back in the days of Mission Accomplished/Our Chief was landing on the deck/the sun was setting/on a golden photo-op...Thousands of bodies lowered in the ground/lowering boxes to the trumpet's sound."

Sexual Assault 'Has To Stop'

New White House PSA on sexual assault/date rape.  If she doesn't--or can't--give consent, "help her, don't blame her."   With multitude of stars.   Plus Obama and Biden. 

Willie Nelson Turns 81

Happy Birthday to Willie, and hoping he blows out 81 joints on his cake.  Here he does "Dead Flowers" with--Keith Richards, Ryan Adams, Hank Williams III.  Below that, one of his greatest vocals on one of greatest songs, Townes Van Zandt's "Marie."

Up Against the Wall

Final full day in Berlin...much to report and reflect on...but for now....Have experienced much Cold War history, though not nostalgia, as we are staying in Eastern Berlin and, in fact, nearly every place we've visited has been in the old East (well, there was also the soccer match at Hitler's 1936 Olympics Stadium in the West).  We toured the DDR Museum, which includes a Stasi interrogation room and prison cell, and so on, but today was the highlight:  a visit to the main Berlin Wall memorial at Branhauser Strasse.  It extends for several blocks and includes not only rare lengthy sections of the original and the renovated Walls, but also tributes to the more than 130 shot or otherwise killed trying to escape, tunnels, remains of guard towers, and much, much more, and very tastefully done.  There's even a sculpture that has also been placed in...Hiroshima.   Photos to come but for now: 

Eleven Years Ago: Friedman's Famous Iraq Column

It was 11 years ago today when Thomas Friedman wrote his iconic NYT column declaring that no WMDs need be found in Iraq to justify our (as he put it elsewhere, on Charlie Rose show) "suck on this" invasion.  "Mr. Bush doesn't owe the world any explanation for missing chemical weapons (even if it turns out that the White House hyped this issue). It is clear that in ending Saddam's tyranny, a huge human engine for mass destruction has been broken. The thing about Saddam's reign is that when you look at that skull, you don't even know what period it came from -- his suppression of the Kurds or the Shiites, his insane wars with Iran and Kuwait, or just his daily brutality."  (Much more in new edition of my book on Iraq and the media, So Wrong for So Long.)

Whether you were for or against this war, whether you preferred that the war be done with the U.N.'s approval or without it, you have to feel good that right has triumphed over wrong. America did the right thing here. It toppled one of the most evil regimes on the face of the earth, and I don't think we know even a fraction of how deep that evil went. Fair-minded people have to acknowledge that. Who cares if we now find some buried barrels of poison? Do they carry more moral weight than those buried skulls? No way.

So why isn't everyone celebrating this triumph?

Springtime With Hitler

Quite an experience yesterday.   Went with my daughter, the Arsenal football (soccer for you Yanks) fan, to a match between one of the two major Berlin teams and squad from another German city, forget which, before 51,000.  This would have been exciting in any case, as I have never gone to a match with her, just watched on the TV.  But there was this: match was at Hitler's 1936 Olympics Stadium far out in western Berlin.

So had a nice train ride (through "Zoo Station," immortalized by U2 etc.) out to the stadium, which one might have thought would have been torn down long ago.  Actually, it's still the original concrete oval with a half-roof.  On the approach you still find the welcoming towers (see left) on either side.  Not too much else remains outside from 1936, beyond the haunting memories, though you can view one of the Olympics swimming pools.  Inside--yes, the track where Jesse Owens kicked ass still circles the field, though now in shade of blue.

Good game, Berlin won 2-0 and you can see crowd jumping to feet for first goal (below).  About 10,000 locals, in blue and white, stood for entire game in special area at one end, singing and chanting the entire time (though that also seemed a bit, shall we say, too evocative).  So great to watch a contest without a single commercial break or announcer or jumbotron ordering crowd to "make some noise" or music blaring every time there was a stoppage in play.  No kissing-cam.  No t-shirts rocketed into the crowd.  No wave.  And, contrary to soccer rep, no fights that I saw, though a special squad of police stood at a major gate at end of game to guarantee safe passage home for the away team fans.

Couldn't stop thinking about Jesse Owens and Hitler, and Leni R's "Olympiad," however, and that famous track...

And Away We Go

Offline for a bit, will check in tomorrow.

Michael Gordon Strikes Again

It's amazing that he's managed to keep his exulted position on foreign affairs and foreign wars at the NYT through several changes of editors, going back to his role as co-conspirator on some of Judy Miller's Iraq WMD articles, right up the Syria last year and now this week on Russia and the Ukraine.   Today he is forced to admit at the top of this story that he may have been bamboozled--yet again--in the service of promoting hawkish or at least official U.S. administration or Pentagon views.  This is really juicy but I have to jump off now, carry on!

A collection of photographs that Ukraine says shows the presence of Russian forces in the eastern part of the country, and which the United States cited as evidence of Russian involvement, has come under scrutiny.

The Colbert Truth

Letterman welcomes Stephen on tonight's show, here's preview.  Stephen with new glasses to signify...becoming his own man?

Rain of Terror?

For Earth Day: Creedence, "Who'll Stop the Rain."