The Distant Ocean

Ralph Nader emerges, sees shadow

Here's Floyd Norris writing about a gripe that's near and dear to my heart:

Chase, the retail operation of JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo were offering 0.05 percent. [...] At that rate, if you wanted to put away enough to produce a retirement income of $50,000 a year, without touching the principal, you would need $100 million on deposit. [...]

Rates are low because the Federal Reserve wants them there, to help clean up the financial mess and stimulate the economy. [...] Meanwhile, with little public attention, those consumers who acted responsibly, the ones who refrained from buying houses they could not afford and did not take out home equity loans to finance consumption, but instead saved their money for a rainy day, must feel like losers.

Why yes, Floyd, I do.  Thanks for mentioning!

So what's Ralph Nader got to do with it?  I found Floyd's article through an article of his.  And although I mainly reused this posting title because I love the mental image, it's got at least one genuine meaning.  Whenever I hear a democracy-hating liberal venting about how Nader only runs for president to feed his towering ego, they almost inevitably get around to this damning indictment: if he's running for something other than personal gratification, why does he just disappear in between elections?  Where does he go for four years if he's so concerned about the issues he claims to care so much about?

Well, my highly observant liberal friend, he writes at least one article a week, gives speeches around the country, debates right-wing blowhards, files lawsuits to hold the Democrats accountable for their assaults on democracy, organizes local activists, works with the numerous organizations he's founded, and somehow still manages to find time to absorb more information about current events than any ten people I know—among other things.  Just what every other 76-year-old spends their time on, I'm sure.

Life sure would be easier if I felt like I could just manufacture evidence out of whole cloth for whatever fanciful notion crossed my rage-addled brain, you know?

You can't fight in here! This is the War Room!

I've written previously about the rude awakening Phil Radford of Greenpeace has been experiencing at the hands of Barack Obama, and it continues apace.  Here's Radford describing his encounter with Obama at a meet and greet on Earth Day:

He walked person to person, saying hello, as advocate after advocate threw him softball questions. I shook the President's hand, and said:

"Mr. President, I am Phil Radford from Greenpeace. We are concerned that your administration is overturning the ban on whaling."

"I know" he replied. "I've seen your ads in the papers."

"Great," I replied. "What is your plan to change your administration's position?

"Look," said the president, sounding like his Saturday Night Live doppelganger, "I love whales. I will do what I can to protect them."

"Will you reverse your administration's position?" I asked.

The President responded "Oh come on, don't lobby me here right now..."

Lobbying for the environment on Earth Day?  What was Radford thinking?

Many things, I'm sure, but one of them was probably that Barack Obama is a bald-faced liar—since this (PDF) is what candidate Obama told Greenpeace during the campaign:

As president, I will ensure that the U.S. provides leadership in enforcing international wildlife protection agreements, including strengthening the international moratorium on commercial whaling.  Allowing Japan to continue commercial whaling is unacceptable.

Obama neglected to mention that by "enforcing" he meant "eviscerating", by "strengthening" he meant "terminating", and by "unacceptable" he meant "a personal goal of mine."  It's possible that he had his fingers crossed while he was answering, though, so maybe it's unfair to hold this against him.

The best part of Radford's article is the end, where he comes back to the single most important point all activists should keep foremost in their minds at all times, but especially when a Democrat is president:

[L]obbying played a minor role in securing the Clean Air Act, Clean Water Act, and ban on commercial whaling. People taking action made the difference. The 200 million people in the streets on the first Earth Day are who brought about the change. We'll be in the streets again until President Obama lives up to his written promise to end commercial whaling.

Please do click through on the "people taking action" link and help Greenpeace reach their goal of having 75,000 people tell Barack Obama that they're finally becoming aware of just what an opportunistic, lying scumbag he really is.

(Thanks again to Edward Dorson for the article pointer, and see here for his own response to Obama's unique approach to protecting whales.)

Killing you softly

Here's how the Navy was "celebrating" Earth Day:

The Navy celebrated Earth Day April 22 by showcasing a flight test of the "Green Hornet," an F/A-18 Super Hornet multirole fighter jet powered by a biofuel blend. [...]

"The alternative fuels test program is a significant milestone in the certification and ultimate operational use of biofuels by the Navy and Marine Corps," said [Secretary of the Navy Ray] Mabus. It's important to emphasize, especially on Earth Day, the Navy's commitment to reducing dependence on foreign oil as well as safeguarding our environment. Our Navy, alongside industry, the other services and federal agency partners, will continue to be an early adopter of alternative energy sources."

(Makes you wonder if we'd have a Green Messerschmitt by now if WWII had gone differently, doesn't it?)

If the Navy is really interested in reducing its emissions profile, I know an even better way: leave the F/A-18s on the tarmac at MacDill rather than transporting them halfway around the world to bomb Iraqis and Afghans.

Ran HaCohen emerges, sees shadow

There was a time when Ran HaCohen was producing articles at antiwar.com on a fairly regular basis, but these days it's at least six months between new offerings, which is a sore test for people like me who feel that every word he writes is worth reading.  I can understand that it must be discouraging being one of an increasingly marginalized group of sane Israelis, though—which just happens to be his topic this time around:

The deep racism of the Israeli psyche is on the rise. The 1990s, at least in hindsight, marked some liberalization of the public discourse; the first decade of this century crushed it, and now the mildly critical, left-liberal discourse hardly exists in the mainstream. No wonder the liberal left has just 3 seats out of 120 in the Knesset; all the other parties are various shades of right-wing, far right, or fascism (except the small outcast "Arab" parties). The racist mindset can be observed in the most trivial daily situations, like my elderly neighbor, when told I saw someone peeping at my window the other night, instinctively reacting with a single question: "Have you seen whether it was a Jew or an Arab?"

Ever more often, when I mention the Netherlands, I am told that all the Dutch were anti-Semitic and collaborated with the Nazis; my already ritualized reaction – that my grandparents and my mother owe their lives to Dutch Christians who risked their own lives to save them – is met with a shrug, expressing something like "don’t challenge my precious prejudice" or "don’t be so naïve, we all know everybody hates us." And this is not just the case of Holland: from Sweden to Ethiopia, from Turkey to Argentina, no matter how Jewish-friendly (and Israel-friendly) a nation has been historically, Israelis are encouraged to view all non-Jews ("Goyim" is the pejorative term used uncritically by most Hebrew speakers) as inherently anti-Semitic and therefore anti-Israeli. Every criticism of Israel’s policy is automatically dismissed as yet another incarnation of an endemic, incurable hatred of Jews. Just like anti-communism was the national religion of the USA during the Cold War, the fanatic belief in an eternal world-wide anti-Semitic conspiracy is the true national cult of Israel. The voices portraying even President Obama as anti-Semitic are just one undertone in an ear-deafening choir of incitement against every dissenting voice, within or without.

By all means, read the rest.

I'll be here all week

According to a Fox News headline, "Iranian Missile May Be Able to Hit U.S. by 2015".  Man, it sure does fly slowly!

But seriously folks, the report characterizes the awesome existential threat we face from demonic Iranian supervillains thusly:

"With sufficient foreign assistance, Iran could probably develop and test an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the United States by 2015," says a new 12 page unclassified report prepared by the Department of Defense on the Iran Military Threat.

Well, sure, and with "sufficient foreign assistance" I imagine I could "probably" launch a geosynchronous satellite that would override all radio reception on the East Coast, forcing everyone to listen to Rick Astley all day, every day.  Which also happens to be a more serious and credible threat to the security of the United States than Iran's imaginary 1200-mile-per-year missile.

(This joke just never gets old.)

ADDING: Fox also informs us that:

The report outlines Iran's nuclear weapons capabilities and developments saying it is "keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons," which is consistent with what we've heard from a wide range of U.S. officials.

Yes, in the same sense that "Phil is keeping open the option to purchase a knife" is consistent with my repeated claims that "Phil is currently purchasing an extensive collective of knives so he can carry out his plan to carve me and my entire family into tiny bouillon-sized cubes."  And furthermore:

The report says Iran's military strategy is designed to defend against external or "hard" threats from the United States and Israel. "Iran's nuclear program and its willingness to keep open the possibility to develop nuclear weapons is a central part of its deterrent strategy," according to the report.

You almost have to pity the Fox reporter who was charged with spinning this DoD report 180 degrees from what it's apparently actually saying, which is that 1) Iran has no nuclear weapons program, 2) Iran wouldn't be able to develop an ICBM in less than 5 years even with "sufficient foreign assistance", and 3) Iran's military posture is defensive, and is specifically geared toward offering protection from constantly-reiterated threats from the United States and Israel (which are, of course, predicated entirely on Iran's offensive military posture).

I like how Earth is celebrating Earth Day

Am I the only one who's getting a gigantic kick out of watching Eyjafjallajökull spit in the eye of modern technological civilization?  Take that, human air travel.  And this has to be the best thing I've seen so far about this spectacular demonstration of planetary poetic justice:

While airlines hope to fly up to about half their regular schedules Monday, the potential for long-term air travel disruption still exists. Records show that the last time the Icelandic volcano stirred, in 1821, it erupted on an off for two years.

Two years?  Oh god yes.

Go, Earth, go!

(If you think I'm being too flippant about all these suffering travelers or you'd just like something a little more substantive, go read George Monbiot's observations about the fact that in order to address global warming, we must drastically reduce the amount of flying we do.  The point that struck me the most forcefully: "But I urge you to remember that these privations affect only a tiny proportion of the world's people. The reason they seem so harsh is that this tiny proportion almost certainly includes you.")

He had to destroy the whales in order to save them

Here's an excerpt from a New York Times article:

"From our point of view, [the U.S.-brokered agreement is] a whaler’s wish list," said Patrick R. Ramage, global whale program director at the International Fund for Animal Welfare. "It would overturn the '86 moratorium, eviscerate the South Ocean Whale Sanctuary, subordinate science and I.W.C. precedent to reward countries that have refused to comply by allocating quotas to those three countries."

"Rather than negotiate a treaty that brings commercial whaling to an end," he concluded, "they have created a system under which it will continue."

So what headline did the NYT choose for this article?  "U.S. Leads New Bid to Phase Out Whale Hunting", of course.

(See here and here for earlier episodes of Obama vs. the Cetaceans, and thanks to Edward Dorson of the Shark Research Institute for the article tip.)

ADDING: Everyone should click through on the comments to read Mother of God's excellent essay on reptile brains and the power of D'oh.

Tidbits

Bush, or Obama?

By the mid-2030s, I believe we can send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth.  And a landing on Mars will follow. And I expect to be around to see it.

Bush, or Obama?

With the experience and knowledge gained on the moon, we will then be ready to take the next steps of space exploration: human missions to Mars and to worlds beyond.

Answers here and here (though I'm sure the short declarative sentence structure gave it away, right?).

And since it's April 15th, here's evidence that most Americans (including many about whom you might naturally have some doubts) are in fact sane:

The Quinnipiac University poll found that 60 percent of Americans among both major political parties think raising income taxes on households making more than $250,000 should be a main tenet of the government's efforts to tame the deficit. More than 70 percent, including a majority of Republicans, say those making more than $1 million should pay more.

But 80 percent say raising taxes on those making less than that should not be part of the government's approach.

Maybe the rest of the country can follow Oregon's lead:

Oregon voters delivered a "tax the rich" message [in January], voting to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy to prevent cuts in public education and other social services.

The voters solidly approved two ballot measures: Measure 66 raises taxes on households with taxable income above $250,000 (less than 3 percent of the state's population), and Measure 67 raises the minimum tax on corporations from its current $10 (!) and increases the tax rate on upper-level profits.

Before you get too excited, the minimum corporate tax was increased from $10 all the way up to $150—though corporations will also pay an additional percentage on profits over $250,000.  But in a state that's historically been as antagonistic as California (if not more so) to tax increases, it's the principle that counts.

Article man writes trivial

I was shocked to read a news report this morning that Ron Paul is DEAD.  That's right, DEAD.  And the report stated furthermore (and somewhat enigmatically) that even with Barack Obama in a hypothetical 2012 race, Ron Paul will still be DEAD.

Or at least that was how I first read this headline: "RON PAUL DEAD EVEN WITH OBAMA IN HYPOTHETICAL 2012 RACE".

(My reading was admittedly encouraged by line break placement on the front page of Google News, but c'mon—is it really that hard to put "running" before "dead even", or just drop "dead" entirely?)

This was almost as bad as the billboards I've seen advertising "A BARE-KNUCKLED BUCKET OF DOES".  How someone could get multiple female deer into a bucket was beyond me, and I was similarly baffled about what could possibly have made these normally even-tempered ungulates so fighting mad.  But apparently Verizon's marketing department felt this unique mental image* would somehow convince people to buy cell phones.

Now, it's not that hard to write clear copy, but on the other hand the world would be much less entertaining if everyone did it.  So on the whole, I think I'm happier with zombie Ron Paul and the angry deer.

* (Trust me, you want to click through on this one.)

UPDATE: USA Today apparently realized their report of Ron Paul's demise was a bit premature, so they've removed the bamboozling word from the title (though it's still in the article).

Barack Obama, nuclear terrorist

This is what Barack Obama said last week regarding his administration's recent Nuclear Policy Review (NPR):

The United States is declaring that we will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and in compliance with their nuclear nonproliferation obligations.  This enables us to sustain our nuclear deterrent for the narrower range of contingencies in which these weapons may still play a role, while providing an additional incentive for nations to meet their NPT obligations.

Obama is also on the record as stating that "I think we should keep all options on the table" with regard to Iran.  That's the standard language in which US nuclear threats are couched, of course, and US politicians are careful to stick to that formulation in order to allow apologists to argue that they didn't mean what they clearly meant.  But Obama's Secretary of Defense gave the game away in his remarks about the Nuclear Policy Review:

SEC. GATES: Well, I think that the -- I actually think that the NPR has a very strong message for both Iran and North Korea, because whether it's in declaratory policy or in other elements of the NPR, we essentially carve out states like Iran and North Korea that are not in compliance with NPT.

And basically, all options are on the table when it comes to countries in that category, along with non-state actors who might acquire nuclear weapons.

So if there is a message for Iran and North Korea here, it is that if you're going to play by the rules, if you're going to join the international community, then we will undertake certain obligations to you, and that's covered in the NPR. But if you're not going to play by the rules, if you're going to be a proliferator, then all options are on the table in terms of how we deal with you.

So let's put this together:

1. The Nuclear Posture Review (PDF) declares that "the United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the NPT and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations."
2. Gates says this language is specifically intended to "carve out states like Iran and North Korea."  And for these states, as Gates stated repeatedly, ...
3. ..."all options are on the table."  So Gates is explicitly threatening that the United States may use nuclear weapons to "deal with" Iran and North Korea.
4. Finally, Obama reiterated both his and Gates' threat that "all options are on the table" when he said his administration's purpose is to "sustain our nuclear deterrent" for Iran and North Korea, furthermore stating that this threat is intended as an "incentive" to those nations.

To summarize: the Obama administration has just made an explicit nuclear threat against Iran and North Korea, for the political goal of coercing them into complying with the US interpretation of their NPT obligations.

This is the Department of Defense's official definition of terrorism:

terrorism

(DOD) The calculated use of unlawful violence or threat of unlawful violence to inculcate fear; intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political, religious, or ideological.

So the "threat of unlawful violence...intended to coerce or to intimidate governments or societies in the pursuit of goals that are generally political" is terrorism.  Or in other words, by the DoD's own definition, Barack Obama is a terrorist—and given that his threats involve the use of nuclear weapons, it follows straightforwardly that Obama is more specifically a nuclear terrorist.  And not only is he a nuclear terrorist; as the one person who has access to a massive nuclear arsenal, the stated willingness to use it outside of the realm of direct self-defense, and the power to follow through on that threat, Barack Obama is currently the only nuclear terrorist on the entire planet.

All of which provides the necessary background to understand this statement of Obama's at the opening of his Nuclear Security Summit:

In short, it is increasingly clear that the danger of nuclear terrorism is one of the greatest threats to global security -- to our collective security.

For once, I can say I agree with him 100%.

The Enforcer [ WARNING: contains Joan Walsh content ]

Chris Floyd is always right, which is probably really annoying to anyone who knows him.  But what's even more annoying is that a recent article of his included a link to a Salon article about Dennis Kucinich's new role as a fundraiser for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.  And that same page at Salon also included a piece by Joan Walsh.  And inflicting Joan Walsh on another human being, or allowing another human being to come to harm through unexpected exposure to Joan Walsh, would be punishable by flogging in a more just society.  Curse you, Chris Floyd!

Having been cast into the slurry trough that is a Joan Walsh article, though, I admit I did find this bit of her bloviations fascinating from a psychological perspective:

I was on vacation when [Kucinich] took his strong stand against passing President Obama's flawed healthcare reform bill, or else I'd have whacked him for ineffectual lefty grandstanding. But I have to say, when he reversed himself on the bill today, he articulated my reasons for supporting it as well as anyone.

Interesting how clearly she sees her role as a Democratic enforcer against unruly progressives, isn't it?   You can practically feel her disappointment at missing out on yet another golden opportunity to lecture the left for its petulant commitment to principles.  In the minds of centrists and liberals like Walsh, the Republicans may be the locus of evil, but the real enemies are the "ineffectual", "grandstanding" purists on their left who occasionally have the temerity to withhold support from the one true engine of social change: the Democratic party.

Anyway, people, let's try to keep the Joan Walsh exposures to a minimum, can we?  Someone might put an eye out.  Intentionally, I mean.

Kiss the hand that hits you

This was one of the things that caught my eye as the story of the execution-by-Apache of two Reuters journalists (and others) was breaking:

Reuters employees were allowed to view the video on an off-the-record basis two weeks after the killings, but they were not allowed to obtain a copy of it. The news organization said its Freedom of Information Act requests were not approved. 

So Reuters had already seen the video almost three years ago, but they dutifully played by the rules and sat on that information while the government shielded the official evidence behind a self-serving and entirely-unjustifiable security classification.  Wasn't it obliging of them to wait so patiently (to the point of being scooped by an all-volunteer organization)?

As for Reuters' official response, the most critical thing editor in chief David Schlesinger could muster was that this is "graphic evidence of the dangers involved in war journalism and the tragedies that can result" (yes, in much the same way the Manson Family murders were graphic evidence of the tragedies that can result from living in Los Angeles. Ah, the passive voice—is there any level of direct responsibility it can't erase?).  In another statement Schlesinger really got his dander up when he said "I will continue to campaign for better training for the military" and "I want to meet with the Pentagon to press the need to learn lessons from this tragedy."  Marvel at his steely resolve!

Schlesinger assumed the role of editor in chief in January of 2007—six months before this massacre—so it seems likely that he was one of the "Reuters employees" who originally saw the video, and it's also likely that he had a guiding hand in Reuters' response.  And what has he been doing this week as the story has gotten national attention, aside from issuing tapioca-strength press releases?

David Schlesinger, the editor in chief of Reuters, declined to run a story by one of his own reporters containing claims that the 2007 killings of two Reuters staffers in Baghdad by U.S. troops may have been war crimes. [...] Reuters' deputy Brussels bureau chief Luke Baker filed a muscular story repeating allegations from several human rights and international law experts that the killings may have constituted war crimes. But Reuters chief David Schlesinger, a tipster says, spiked the story because "it needed more comment from the Pentagon and U.S. lawyers."

So assuming this is an accurate account, Schlesinger just spiked a heavily-sourced story because it didn't give the military enough of a chance to defend itself for killing two of his employees—and by "defend itself" I mean from someone other than Reuters, since Schlesinger will apparently be satisfied with a friendly little sit-down at the Pentagon rather than any kind of unpleasant legal action.

You know, I can't help but get the impression that seeking justice for these two murdered employees is not exactly at the top of his list of priorities.

The reason for Schlesinger's tepid mewling and apparent self-censorship is pretty obvious, of course: he doesn't want to do or say anything that might threaten Reuters' useful and profitable relationship with the US military.  Reuters, like every other major media outlet, relies on access—and if they were to publish something too critical of the organization that mowed down their employees, or if they had seemed to be breaching an off-the-record arrangement (even for information that so clearly had no reason to be classified and for a story they could easily have developed directly from eyewitnesses, as other journalists did), the Pentagon might cut them off.  And how would they get their embedded reports and anonymously-sourced quotes then?  So if maintaining that useful relationship requires Schlesinger to issue toothless laments about the "tragedies" of war reporting and spike stories that don't give his employees' killers enough column inches, hey, that's just the cost of doing business.

It's not an exact fit, but I couldn't help remembering Katherine Graham's infamous credo that "democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows."  With people like Graham and Schlesinger running the show, I think we can safely say that democracy will continue to flourish.

BONUS: Here's our boy in 2003:

[David Schlesinger, Reuters' global manager] repeated a request for a copy of the US military's report into the death of the Reuters cameraman Mazen Dana, who was shot by a US soldier in August 2003. [...] "For several months, Reuters has patiently and cooperatively attempted to work with the government to resolve this and other serious issues relating to the safety of journalists in areas of military conflict. Unfortunately no progress has been made. Immediate action is necessary to address these issues," he added.

A more mercurial person might have come to the conclusion by now that working "patiently and cooperatively" with the Pentagon is perhaps not the best approach for a media outfit, but Schlesinger is nothing if not consistent.

Still proud to be an American

I was wondering about this:

AMY GOODMAN: I want to play, Rick, another clip from the US helicopter footage. Here, the voices in the cockpit laugh as a Bradley tank drives over a body of one of the Iraqi victims.

US SOLDIER 1: I think they just drove over a body.

US SOLDIER 2: Did he?

US SOLDIER 1: Yeah!

AMY GOODMAN: That is from the military’s own footage. Again, this is military footage from the Apache helicopter with those radio transmissions of the soldiers speaking to each other. What did the residents say about that body?

RICK ROWLEY: ... [T]hese residents came and told me that the man who they drove over was alive, that he had crawled out of the van that had been shot to pieces and that he was still alive when the Americans drove over him and cut him in half, basically, with a Bradley or tank or whatever armored vehicle they were driving in.

I've never been a soldier, though, so I suppose I'm not qualified to criticize the morality of cutting a wounded, defenseless human being in half.

Support the troops redux

In the wake of the release of video of an Apache gunship slaughtering Iraqi civilians (and the medical personnel who came to help them), it seems like an appropriate time to revisit this posting from 2006.

Bill Clinton causes, feels your pain

Here's Bill Clinton last month, apologizing for his obliteration-by-trade-policy of Haiti's rice farming base:

Since 1981, the United States has followed a policy, until the last year or so when we started rethinking it, that we rich countries that produce a lot of food should sell it to poor countries and relieve them of the burden of producing their own food, so, thank goodness, they can leap directly into the industrial era. It has not worked. It may have been good for some of my farmers in Arkansas, but it has not worked. It was a mistake. It was a mistake that I was a party to. I am not pointing the finger at anybody. I did that. I have to live every day with the consequences of the lost capacity to produce a rice crop in Haiti to feed those people, because of what I did. Nobody else.

Yes, what a crushing burden it is to have a livelihood that feeds you, your family, and the people around you.  How noble of Clinton to have wanted to free Haitians from this terrible responsibility!  And the benefits to heavily-subsidized US agricultural exporters were no doubt just a fortunate and entirely unintended side effect.  Win-win!  Except in this case it was, you know, win-die.  But you can't make an omelet, right?

Of course this isn't the first time Clinton has apologized from the bottom of his heart to black people whose lives he's helped destroy:

On March 25, 1998, then President Clinton visited Rwanda years after more than 800,000 people died in a genocidal civil war and said, "The international community must bear its share of responsibility for this tragedy." He continued, "All over the world there were people like me sitting in offices who did not fully appreciate the depth and the speed with which you were being engulfed by this unimaginable terror."

Only the most cynical among us could fail to be moved by this obviously sincere mea culpa.  Well, the most cynical, and those who remember inconvenient facts like these:

President Bill Clinton's administration knew Rwanda was being engulfed by genocide in April 1994 but buried the information to justify its inaction, according to classified documents made available for the first time.

Senior officials privately used the word genocide within 16 days of the start of the killings, but chose not to do so publicly because the president had already decided not to intervene.

Intelligence reports obtained using the US Freedom of Information Act show the cabinet and almost certainly the president had been told of a planned "final solution to eliminate all Tutsis" before the slaughter reached its peak.

It took Hutu death squads three months from April 6 to murder an estimated 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus and at each stage accurate, detailed reports were reaching Washington's top policymakers.

The documents undermine claims by Mr Clinton and his senior officials that they did not fully appreciate the scale and speed of the killings. 

(In fact the Clinton administration studiously avoided calling what was happening in Rwanda "genocide", since it would have compelled them to act, opting instead for the more circumspect "acts of genocide":

Secretary of State Warren Christopher, an accomplished lawyer, instructed his staff to avoid calling the situation in Rwanda genocide, but merely to say that "acts of genocide may have been committed." Ambassador Rawson went one better: "As a responsible government, you don't just go round hollering 'genocide.' You say that acts of genocide may have occurred and they need to be investigated."

Strangely, though, Clinton's administration wasn't nearly so shy about invoking the useful specter of genocide to describe the relatively low level of killing in the civil war in Kosovo in 1999, when it could be used to drum up support for a military attack intended to establish NATO's "credibility" as a vehicle for US force projection outside of the United Nations, among other similarly lofty goals.)

All of which is just a major digression from my main point, which is that Bill Clinton is an odious, lying scumbag whose carefully calculated apologies aren't worth the precious air he steals from the rest of us in order to utter them.