Which Hunter is the Witch Hunrter? Or Will We All Be Boiled in Oil?
Stafford Williamson
September 14, 2006
I have been impressed of late, as I mentioned in a previous column, by Keith Olbermann’s editorial commentaries. Clearly I am not alone in this sentiment. (Apologies to Keith for misspelling his last name last time. Who knew he was so Hessian as to use the double "n" ending.)
Strictly speaking when I mentioned him a couple of weeks ago he had unleashed a stinging attack on the Republican admonition that their political foes were “appeasers” and “morally or intellectually confused,” if they held opinions contrary to the administration’s position on the Iraq war. Since then Mr. Olbermann aired a second commentary, equally scathing, and frankly fairly impressive too. What surprised me recently, however, was to hear radio stations re-broadcasting both of his somewhat long-winded opinions in their entirety.
No, the frost is not fresh on Charon’s beard on his return from the far side of the River Styx. It was not the conservative talk radio personalities providing Mr. Olbermann with a platform. It was Air America, the liberal side of talk radio that Al Franken and friends caused to coalesce on the opposite end of the political teeter-totter. They believed and probably rightly so, that that although conservatives believe that they see liberal bias everywhere they look at the “liberal media,” that the scales of the talk radio and open discussion of liberal political issues and view had virtually evaporated from the airwaves. Clearly a balance beam with no weight on one end of the scale is not in balance, however slight the mass of arguments from the other side.
I can’t say that I have ever found anyone with whom I agree on every subject, in every detail, without exception. I can say that I have often changed my opinion on a matter, even a matter that I considered to have been a settled fact, upon hearing or participating in a spirited and intelligent discussion of a subject. Similarly I have learned a great deal from discussions that did not persuade me.
For example, though I have not been fully persuaded, I heard a lecture last night from one Neil Christianson, a local resident and ex-military type. His talk was on his theory of a cold core model of the earth. Earth-shaking news if he is right. That theory was abandoned a couple hundred years ago after what Mr. Christianson claims were faulty conclusions that assumed too much from Isaac Newton’s gravitational theories. Newton was, after all, mainly interested in orbital mechanics, Christianson argues (well, among other things, many, many other things). Mr. Christianson’s theory of the cold core model of earth’s core does seem to explain why seismic waves do not travel at the faster rates expected through liquids as the forces of gravity turn rock into a supposedly continuously liquid core. And by his calculations at least, the nickel-iron core proposition doesn’t fully satisfy the mass density needed to explain the earth’s structure.
I am not sure I agree with any substantial amount of his theory, but having postulated (and published) some alternative descriptions of “string theory” and sub-atomic structure myself, I fully empathize with his desire to be heard on the subject. I also learned that, according to Mr. Christianson, the practice of seizing the assets of drug dealers led to an excess of contraband diamonds that became a windfall to the scientific community and resulted in significant research into very high pressures using a sort of diamond on diamond anvil. What was really interesting to me was some of the discussion about superfluid states of matter under these very high temperatures. If you can wade through the rather strange compulsion he seems to have to connect ancient cosmology with modern astrophysics, you can find some of his rather cursory discussions of solid hydrogen’s Hexagonal Close Packed (HCP) phase, Intermediate Close Packed (ICP) phase, Face Centered Cubic (FCC) and Base Centered Cubic (BCC) progressively more dense phases of “solid” hydrogen, which strangely enough, behave like “superfluids.”
Take a look if you have PowerPoint or a PowerPoint viewer. http://members.cox.net/nchristianson4/Ancients.ppt
Okay, if I buried you (or even if I didn’t) under the scientific jargon there, let me return to politics and the media, for although I learned from those discussions I was not persuaded.
I am not persuaded, either, for instance, that Matt Lauer’s uncharacteristically penetrating and persistent questioning of President George W. Bush this week was motivated or inspired by Keith Olbermann. On the other hand, it is not, by any means, impossible to consider that his producers may have been influenced by the positive public response to Olbermann’s continuing commentaries. There are clearly some political winds of change blowing as we approach these mid-term elections. Olbermann’s editorials on national, albeit cable, television have far more than a mere “butterfly effect,” on those winds of change. It could well be that Matt’s attack-dog tenacity was more inspired by the ABC News division’s own reaction to the overwhelming advance criticism of the docudrama, “The Path to 9/11” which aired Sunday and Monday.
Again, between Schubert and Handel on our local all-classical music station (KBAQ-FM, a PBS station in Phoenix) I stumbled away and tripped upon an Air America interview that traced the roots of the creative team behind the mini-series from ABC’s Entertainment division. Their pedigrees were, reportedly, either impeccable or downright frightening depending on your perspective. From the liberal point of view of those folks on Air America the mini-series creators had had many and long associations with both conservative and religious organizations, and conservative religious organizations at that. Seeing such personal histories seemed to speak volumes bordering on delusionary conspiracy fantasies as to the motivations and objectives of the creative personnel.
I always thought that it came with the territory of liberalism that one was supposed to embody a spirit of openmindedness. That one should allow a thing to speak for itself, without necessarily assuming that bitter root can never bear sweet fruit. That did not seem to be the perspective of either the guest or the host on this particular Air America broadcast. They were painting a dark picture filled with presumptions of ill intentions.
Clearly, there was some grounds for complaint based on the preview versions that had been seen by some Democrats and others who were portrayed in the dramatization. Dramatic license that had former Clinton National Security Advisor “Sandy” Berger hanging up on a CIA field operative via satellite phone while this person was within sight of Osama Bin Laden in his terrorist training camp was interpreted as a strong indictment of the Clinton administration’s culpability for inaction that could have foiled the September tragedy. What emerged, in the end, was a reasonably balanced account of events leading to the failure of various branches of US Intelligence and Law Enforcement to prevent the horrific crimes of September 11, 2001. I watched the whole thing. Sounds a little like that’s Alka Seltzer ad for indigestion doesn’t it? In truth it was neither that enjoyable on the way down, nor that painful in retrospect. What was a little harder to swallow was the fact that I watched 20 minutes of the President’s address to the nation on the occasion of the 5th anniversary of the date. That address actually even delayed the start of the broadcast. The mini-series was paused for the President just as the narrative was beginning to present facts of the case about the last few remaining months (under a Republican administration) that also failed to prevent the disaster. My feeling was that the President was lucky to be able to make the case that his administration’s policies had been an effective and appropriate response to the World Trade Center destruction because nothing in the movie earned the Republicans any higher marks in those last 7 months than what the Democrats had done in the prior years.
Of course, politics being politics, the Bush administration had claimed that the broadcast was an historic commemorative message from the President, not a political statement (and therefore not subject to the “equal time” for Democratic rebuttal). What we actually saw was bald-faced campaigning. He was selling the Iraq war as the only viable surrogate for a real program to end terrorism aimed against the United States. He ignored, as always, that Saddam Hussein was a sworn enemy of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi the leader of what became al-Qaeda-in-Iraq. He ignored, as always, that more recent bombings in Great Britain, Spain, Indonesia and even Mumbai, India were also the work of al-Qaeda. Nor did he mention that al-Qaeda inspired, but home-grown groups are springing up like mushrooms in Miami, Canada and England.
Was, “The Path to 9/11” mini-series an attempt to place blame on Democrats? Perhaps, in part, that might have been a factor in motivating some of the participants, but on balance the obvious causes of failures in preventing it were turf wars within the intelligence and enforcement agenceies. One very telling inclusion was an unsympathetic portrayal of the US Ambassador to Yemen at the time of the USS Cole bombing investigation. The Ambassador, played by Everybody Loves Raymond’s favorite wife, Patricia Heaton was a truly excellent performance. But what it presented was the diplomat’s reluctance to give free reign to the cowboy FBI agents so intent upon bringing the terrorists to justice that they cavalierly ignored local customs and cultural taboos. Yes, it might have been nice to have better local cooperation in the USS Cole investigation. But was it a Clinton appointed Ambassador who stood in the way? That was not the obvious point, at least not from my viewing perspective. She enunciated her concerns that FBI agents stomping on toes in Yemen might jeopardize not only the relations of that small nation with the United States, but even the delicate condition of just emerging democratic institutions within the carefully US nurtured government of that generally US friendly, oil rich country. As the movie also made perfectly clear, Yemen and the Yemeni tribes are the historic roots of the whole bin Laden family. Religious and cultural sympathies of the locals lie far closer to their (albeit mis-guided) brethren than to the remote and alien citizens of America. Since 2001, Yemen has been more cooperative at times but remains a haven of retreat for al-Qaeda.
What did arrive in wolf’s clothing during the story that was being told were all the instances that looked like “actionable” intelligence reports. Or, more specifically, characters portraying CIA operatives in particular kept trying to tell us (and their superiors) that these were “actionable” reports. If, in fact, the FBI had not been ignoring the Arizona memo that warned of al-Qaeda agents taking flight school training, and the CIA had reported the identities of certain al-Qaeda members to the FBI and INS there might have been a few small things that could have been done. What the larger effect might have been one can only speculate. But the so-called “actionable” intelligence reports, mostly from Afghan Northern Alliance leader Massoud, that something was planned; a) in America, b) big, and c) involving planes: all of which hardly leads one to believe that any steps taken could have ultimately prevented the attacks, or even have significantly mitigated them, except perhaps to delay the timing.
So, was it, after all is said, another Clinton witch hunt? Strangely the Air America discussion did contain a clue. They said that at least some of the financing for the production came from the same billionaire who funded much of the Clinton witch hunt from White Water to Lewinsky-gate. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar as Freud said, but as Ms. Lewinsky knows, sometimes it can be so much more, too.
All of this may have no effect on the “price of tea in China” as they say, but it most likely will have an effect on the price of oil next January. Afghanistan and Iraq are mainly “oil plays” in terms of the international economy. Turning to greener sources of portable energy is going to be an effective strategy to lessen the importance and influence of the middle East on the rest of the world. How fast we turn that corner is very likely to save lives on all sides. We can only hope that by November the Democrats have been able to illuminate that corner so that we can all see that it is within our sight and within our reach.
Love
Stafford “Doc” Williamson
Strictly speaking when I mentioned him a couple of weeks ago he had unleashed a stinging attack on the Republican admonition that their political foes were “appeasers” and “morally or intellectually confused,” if they held opinions contrary to the administration’s position on the Iraq war. Since then Mr. Olbermann aired a second commentary, equally scathing, and frankly fairly impressive too. What surprised me recently, however, was to hear radio stations re-broadcasting both of his somewhat long-winded opinions in their entirety.
No, the frost is not fresh on Charon’s beard on his return from the far side of the River Styx. It was not the conservative talk radio personalities providing Mr. Olbermann with a platform. It was Air America, the liberal side of talk radio that Al Franken and friends caused to coalesce on the opposite end of the political teeter-totter. They believed and probably rightly so, that that although conservatives believe that they see liberal bias everywhere they look at the “liberal media,” that the scales of the talk radio and open discussion of liberal political issues and view had virtually evaporated from the airwaves. Clearly a balance beam with no weight on one end of the scale is not in balance, however slight the mass of arguments from the other side.
I can’t say that I have ever found anyone with whom I agree on every subject, in every detail, without exception. I can say that I have often changed my opinion on a matter, even a matter that I considered to have been a settled fact, upon hearing or participating in a spirited and intelligent discussion of a subject. Similarly I have learned a great deal from discussions that did not persuade me.
For example, though I have not been fully persuaded, I heard a lecture last night from one Neil Christianson, a local resident and ex-military type. His talk was on his theory of a cold core model of the earth. Earth-shaking news if he is right. That theory was abandoned a couple hundred years ago after what Mr. Christianson claims were faulty conclusions that assumed too much from Isaac Newton’s gravitational theories. Newton was, after all, mainly interested in orbital mechanics, Christianson argues (well, among other things, many, many other things). Mr. Christianson’s theory of the cold core model of earth’s core does seem to explain why seismic waves do not travel at the faster rates expected through liquids as the forces of gravity turn rock into a supposedly continuously liquid core. And by his calculations at least, the nickel-iron core proposition doesn’t fully satisfy the mass density needed to explain the earth’s structure.
I am not sure I agree with any substantial amount of his theory, but having postulated (and published) some alternative descriptions of “string theory” and sub-atomic structure myself, I fully empathize with his desire to be heard on the subject. I also learned that, according to Mr. Christianson, the practice of seizing the assets of drug dealers led to an excess of contraband diamonds that became a windfall to the scientific community and resulted in significant research into very high pressures using a sort of diamond on diamond anvil. What was really interesting to me was some of the discussion about superfluid states of matter under these very high temperatures. If you can wade through the rather strange compulsion he seems to have to connect ancient cosmology with modern astrophysics, you can find some of his rather cursory discussions of solid hydrogen’s Hexagonal Close Packed (HCP) phase, Intermediate Close Packed (ICP) phase, Face Centered Cubic (FCC) and Base Centered Cubic (BCC) progressively more dense phases of “solid” hydrogen, which strangely enough, behave like “superfluids.”
Take a look if you have PowerPoint or a PowerPoint viewer. http://members.cox.net/nchristianson4/Ancients.ppt
Okay, if I buried you (or even if I didn’t) under the scientific jargon there, let me return to politics and the media, for although I learned from those discussions I was not persuaded.
I am not persuaded, either, for instance, that Matt Lauer’s uncharacteristically penetrating and persistent questioning of President George W. Bush this week was motivated or inspired by Keith Olbermann. On the other hand, it is not, by any means, impossible to consider that his producers may have been influenced by the positive public response to Olbermann’s continuing commentaries. There are clearly some political winds of change blowing as we approach these mid-term elections. Olbermann’s editorials on national, albeit cable, television have far more than a mere “butterfly effect,” on those winds of change. It could well be that Matt’s attack-dog tenacity was more inspired by the ABC News division’s own reaction to the overwhelming advance criticism of the docudrama, “The Path to 9/11” which aired Sunday and Monday.
Again, between Schubert and Handel on our local all-classical music station (KBAQ-FM, a PBS station in Phoenix) I stumbled away and tripped upon an Air America interview that traced the roots of the creative team behind the mini-series from ABC’s Entertainment division. Their pedigrees were, reportedly, either impeccable or downright frightening depending on your perspective. From the liberal point of view of those folks on Air America the mini-series creators had had many and long associations with both conservative and religious organizations, and conservative religious organizations at that. Seeing such personal histories seemed to speak volumes bordering on delusionary conspiracy fantasies as to the motivations and objectives of the creative personnel.
I always thought that it came with the territory of liberalism that one was supposed to embody a spirit of openmindedness. That one should allow a thing to speak for itself, without necessarily assuming that bitter root can never bear sweet fruit. That did not seem to be the perspective of either the guest or the host on this particular Air America broadcast. They were painting a dark picture filled with presumptions of ill intentions.
Clearly, there was some grounds for complaint based on the preview versions that had been seen by some Democrats and others who were portrayed in the dramatization. Dramatic license that had former Clinton National Security Advisor “Sandy” Berger hanging up on a CIA field operative via satellite phone while this person was within sight of Osama Bin Laden in his terrorist training camp was interpreted as a strong indictment of the Clinton administration’s culpability for inaction that could have foiled the September tragedy. What emerged, in the end, was a reasonably balanced account of events leading to the failure of various branches of US Intelligence and Law Enforcement to prevent the horrific crimes of September 11, 2001. I watched the whole thing. Sounds a little like that’s Alka Seltzer ad for indigestion doesn’t it? In truth it was neither that enjoyable on the way down, nor that painful in retrospect. What was a little harder to swallow was the fact that I watched 20 minutes of the President’s address to the nation on the occasion of the 5th anniversary of the date. That address actually even delayed the start of the broadcast. The mini-series was paused for the President just as the narrative was beginning to present facts of the case about the last few remaining months (under a Republican administration) that also failed to prevent the disaster. My feeling was that the President was lucky to be able to make the case that his administration’s policies had been an effective and appropriate response to the World Trade Center destruction because nothing in the movie earned the Republicans any higher marks in those last 7 months than what the Democrats had done in the prior years.
Of course, politics being politics, the Bush administration had claimed that the broadcast was an historic commemorative message from the President, not a political statement (and therefore not subject to the “equal time” for Democratic rebuttal). What we actually saw was bald-faced campaigning. He was selling the Iraq war as the only viable surrogate for a real program to end terrorism aimed against the United States. He ignored, as always, that Saddam Hussein was a sworn enemy of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi the leader of what became al-Qaeda-in-Iraq. He ignored, as always, that more recent bombings in Great Britain, Spain, Indonesia and even Mumbai, India were also the work of al-Qaeda. Nor did he mention that al-Qaeda inspired, but home-grown groups are springing up like mushrooms in Miami, Canada and England.
Was, “The Path to 9/11” mini-series an attempt to place blame on Democrats? Perhaps, in part, that might have been a factor in motivating some of the participants, but on balance the obvious causes of failures in preventing it were turf wars within the intelligence and enforcement agenceies. One very telling inclusion was an unsympathetic portrayal of the US Ambassador to Yemen at the time of the USS Cole bombing investigation. The Ambassador, played by Everybody Loves Raymond’s favorite wife, Patricia Heaton was a truly excellent performance. But what it presented was the diplomat’s reluctance to give free reign to the cowboy FBI agents so intent upon bringing the terrorists to justice that they cavalierly ignored local customs and cultural taboos. Yes, it might have been nice to have better local cooperation in the USS Cole investigation. But was it a Clinton appointed Ambassador who stood in the way? That was not the obvious point, at least not from my viewing perspective. She enunciated her concerns that FBI agents stomping on toes in Yemen might jeopardize not only the relations of that small nation with the United States, but even the delicate condition of just emerging democratic institutions within the carefully US nurtured government of that generally US friendly, oil rich country. As the movie also made perfectly clear, Yemen and the Yemeni tribes are the historic roots of the whole bin Laden family. Religious and cultural sympathies of the locals lie far closer to their (albeit mis-guided) brethren than to the remote and alien citizens of America. Since 2001, Yemen has been more cooperative at times but remains a haven of retreat for al-Qaeda.
What did arrive in wolf’s clothing during the story that was being told were all the instances that looked like “actionable” intelligence reports. Or, more specifically, characters portraying CIA operatives in particular kept trying to tell us (and their superiors) that these were “actionable” reports. If, in fact, the FBI had not been ignoring the Arizona memo that warned of al-Qaeda agents taking flight school training, and the CIA had reported the identities of certain al-Qaeda members to the FBI and INS there might have been a few small things that could have been done. What the larger effect might have been one can only speculate. But the so-called “actionable” intelligence reports, mostly from Afghan Northern Alliance leader Massoud, that something was planned; a) in America, b) big, and c) involving planes: all of which hardly leads one to believe that any steps taken could have ultimately prevented the attacks, or even have significantly mitigated them, except perhaps to delay the timing.
So, was it, after all is said, another Clinton witch hunt? Strangely the Air America discussion did contain a clue. They said that at least some of the financing for the production came from the same billionaire who funded much of the Clinton witch hunt from White Water to Lewinsky-gate. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar as Freud said, but as Ms. Lewinsky knows, sometimes it can be so much more, too.
All of this may have no effect on the “price of tea in China” as they say, but it most likely will have an effect on the price of oil next January. Afghanistan and Iraq are mainly “oil plays” in terms of the international economy. Turning to greener sources of portable energy is going to be an effective strategy to lessen the importance and influence of the middle East on the rest of the world. How fast we turn that corner is very likely to save lives on all sides. We can only hope that by November the Democrats have been able to illuminate that corner so that we can all see that it is within our sight and within our reach.
Love
Stafford “Doc” Williamson
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