yet another blog

The North Korea intel botch is worse than you think
By Fred Kaplan, Slate Magazine
Updated Thursday, March 1, 2007, at 6:49 PM ET

Its too bad that the U.S. political system offers no way to take a vote of “no confidence,” because that describes the state were living in now. We have come to the point where nothing that the Bush administration says can—or should—be trusted. That is, the government deserves no confidence.

This judgment which many might view as laughably late is sparked by stories in Thursdays New York Times and Washington Post quoting senior U.S. intelligence officials saying that North Korea might not have an enriched-uranium program after all.

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Just one more example of the malaise that seems to be afflicting virtually every society throughout the entire world - the fact that we seem unable to trust anything that our politicians tell us. Why is this? Do all notions of honesty and integrity fly straight out the window immediately one enters politics? And what does it say about us, as a species, that we’re prepared to tolerate (indeed, in many cases, take it as a given) such mendacity in those charged with directing our public affairs?

For make no mistake about it - the fault lies with us. We allow ourselves to be wooed by false promises, we give them our money to spend; year after year we condone their behaviour simply by virtue of going along with it. Maybe because the alternative simply requires too much effort, entails too much disruption to our comfortable little lives (in “civilised” societies, anyway).

And we spread this disease like a virus. For is it not with the deliberate and malicious connivance of largely Western, and largely “civilised”, governments that less “fortunate” nations are encumbered with tyrannical regimes who are educated by us in the art of promoting self-interest in preference to the welfare of the peoples they are supposed to represent?
With the US administration on the brink of plunging into yet another insane bloody conflict in Iran that would almost certainly have world-wide repercussions on an unprecedented scale never has there been a more pressing need for us, the people, to take matters back into our own hands; and one of the steps on that path could be to devise a “moral code” to which we demand our elected representatives should adhere - or face the severest penalties (why does the name Mussolini spring to mind I wonder?).