This Is Not News

People have been lining up to weigh in on George Tenet’s new book, At the Center of the Storm, about the lead up to the Iraq war. Most predictably among them, his former bosses, who were shocked, just shocked at some of the allegations he made. So shocked that they spent most of Sunday making the rounds on the talk shows to make sure everyone knew that.

But of all who have weighed in, perhaps the most interesting comments come from a group of Tenet’s former CIA colleagues who sent this open letter to him, detailing their thoughts on his willingness to keep his mouth shut about his misgivings about the war just long enough to get a seven-figure advance for said book.

They write:

By your silence you helped build the case for war. You betrayed the CIA officers who collected the intelligence that made it clear that Saddam did not pose an imminent threat. You betrayed the analysts who tried to withstand the pressure applied by Cheney and Rumsfeld.

Most importantly and tragically, you failed to meet your obligations to the people of the United States. Instead of resigning in protest, when it could have made a difference in the public debate, you remained silent and allowed the Bush Administration to cite your participation in these deliberations to justify their decision to go to war. Your silence contributed to the willingness of the public to support the disastrous war in Iraq, which has killed more than 3300 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.

As a matter of theory, it would seem ludicrous that we as a society would need the equivalent of a Son of Sam Statute for our highest ranking government officials. That we would have to compel them not to profit from the explicit or implicit crimes they commit against the citizens they are supposed to serve.

But the reality, the reality that certain people in Washington are so adept at obfuscating, is that some people quite literally have no shame. And George Tenet is the least of these.

I’ve been grading papers this week, so you’ll see more of me next week when my brain no longer resembles tapioca pudding.

But reading the papers almost makes me think that the Imus story was created by some god of paper-writing examples, given the number of my students that brought it up. Unfortunately, if there is such a god, it’s clearly an evil one, since Virginia Tech also made its way into a few discussions. And no one needs to make their word count badly enough to want that to happen.

I don’t have a whole lot to say tonight. Fortunately, you can look down a few column inches and see that Pattie’s doing the heavy blog lifting.

But by all means, go check out Keith Olbermann’s latest Special Comment on MSNBC’s site. Those are definitely some questions I want to see asked to Rudy Guiliani during this campaign.

I’m also compiling a list of museums and educational institutions that have teacher resource pages. I’m going to put the whole thing online when I’m done, but for now, take a gander at all of the cool stuff at the National Archives.

A couple of hours ago I felt my throat starting to get scratchy. This would be my third cold in about six weeks. There’s nothing like relentless damp weather, swinging temperatures, and a five year old to batter the ol’ immune system. It’s not doing a whole lot to brighten my mood, either, not that the news is doing anything to help.

I’ve gotten word from several of the schools I teach at that there’s an effort to encourage people to wear orange and maroon, Virginia Tech’s colors, on Friday. The maroon won’t be much of a problem, but I’m gonna have to see if I can track down some orange tomorrow.

I just do not have the mental energy to even look at the news to comment. But it occurs to me that at 10:30 yesterday, my students and I were discussing whether moral theory can tell us anything about the idea of self-sacrifice, or why we feel that it is a praiseworthy act when someone risks or gives up his or her life in order to preserve the lives of others. I dearly wish that these had been merely theoretical questions for the students and teachers at Virginia Tech. Some lessons do not need to be put into practice.

One of the web comics I check out regularly is Dork Tower. John Kovalic usually has a good sense of humor about the fannish, geekish things I enjoy. His latest blog post also demonstrates that he’s one hell of a good guy. So go give the site a look-see. I’m gonna go give my family a hug.

I’ve talked about Stanley Milgram’s obedience experiments on the site before. Another oft-cited set of observations into the effects of authority on human behavior came from the Standford prison experiment of the 1970s, in which subjects quickly descended to a level of cruelty unexpected by the experimenters – and the experimenters were so captivated by what they were seeing that they let the experiment continue. Dr. Philip Zimbardo, who organized the experiment, has written a book and set up a web site devoted to what he calls the Lucifer Effect – the process by which our surroundings influence us to commit evil actions. Zimbardo applies the insights from the Stanford experiment and his subsequent work to current situations, including the Abu Ghraib scandal. (Zimbardo acted as an expert witness in one of the court-martials.) He also has an essay on the Web discussing the Milgram experiments. I’m giving serious thought to incorporating the book into some of my moral philosophy courses, but for now, the website provides a lot of material worth looking through.

I had been planning to write a whimsical post about April Fools Day at some point, inspired by seeing April Fools editions of the college newspapers at some of the campus where I teach. When I attended an overnight visit for prospective students at Fordham, The ram had just put out their AF edition, with a front page that proclaimed that condoms and beer would soon go on sale at the Student Deli. At least one of the editors I spoke to that weekend made sure to point out that it was just a joke. Once I got on the staff, I got to participate in some of the April foolery. We did a theme issue in which a giant asteroid was going to hit the campus and destroy the world, which allowed me to put an obvious R.E.M. reference on the front page, and sneak in numerous non-obvious references to Babylon 5 and Mystery Science Theatre 3000 on the inside. I kind of wonder how many people actually found those editions funny, and how much of it was just a giant in-joke for our own benefit. At any rate, I got a smile out of seeing those AF papers this year, although I didn’t get a chance to look through all of them.

Which meant I was a little bit surprised when one school made the big city newspapers because some of the jokes about school and archdiocesan leaders were deemed to have stepped over the line. I can’t help but feel bad for those editors – I imagine all the hard work they’ve put into their journalistic careers, and this can’t be the kind of thing you want to be remembered for. Somehow I feel like the story shouldn’t have blown up the way it did, but I guess there’s no easy way to keep something like that purely in the school community.

Anyway, I was going to skip any mention of April Fools at all, since I was kind of bummed out about the subject. Then last Sunday, the comic strip Baldo – about a Latino teenager and his family & friends – featured a strip where the family’s Tia Carmen was dragged away by immigration agents. There’s been no followup at all so far in the weekday strips – they’ve continued the storyline that began before Sunday. But on the creators’ website, there’s a big April Fool graphic. And I’m sitting here wondering what kind of April Fools joke that strip was. It seemed like the creators had a point they wanted to make, but without any kind of context, it’s hard to be sure what the point was. And whatever point one might be inclined to draw from the strip is probably mitigated by the fact that it was, essentially, just a joke. I know humor and satire can make serious points, but you have to be able to tell that it’s satire. Instead, it just seemed like the idea was that April Fools meant that we should take the strip seriously, but not too seriously.

I’m not sure I have an organized point here, other than the notion that I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about what April Fools Day is good for and if most of us have lost the skill or the restraint to make effective use of it. But for the most part I think I just need to get some of this down on electrons in an effort to get it out of my head.

Two Phillies games, two blown saves, two extra inning losses. It’s gonna be a long April.

And I’m not crazy about the three-man announcing booth, either.

I’ll try and have some positive thoughts once they win a game.

I walked home from physical therapy, after dark, in a short-sleeved shirt, and felt fine. Granted, it’ll probably be about 15 degrees cooler tomorrow, but I’ve been amazed at how much better I’ve felt the last few weeks, now that earlier Daylight Saving Time has kicked in and it’s getting a little warmer. (By the way, I’m officially in favor of earlier DST. That hour of daylight was totally wasted on me at 6 AM.) I really don’t remember the seasons affecting me quite so strongly before. But maybe that’s just hazy memory making me think I was more active in winter.

And hey, at least I didn’t spend the winter up in the Arctic like the Stargate crew did. Man, realism is all well and good, but when getting splashed with water is a medivac situation, it’s time to call in the CG.