Day: September 18, 2002

Sure, they’ve utterly failed to create a viable political party, but the aren’t all bad:

Thanks to CNN’s Crossfire for the link; apparently Ms. Rachel Mills (the Libertarian candidate who is selling the calendars, and, indeed, is pictured within them) will be on the show tonight.
The Crossfire program page asks: “Is becoming a political pin-up the best way to earn campaign cash?”
Well, for Ms. Mills, looks like it might be viable. It’s a darned good thing Janet Reno didn’t try it though…

Why hasn’t the revelation tucked within article received any play in, say, the New York Times today?
“…today it emerged that the offer only applied to military bases – which could let Saddam hide chemical and biological arms stockpiles elsewhere…
The disclosure that restrictions were, after all, attached to Saddam’s offer was made by the London ambassador of the Arab League which brokered the deal in the first place.
Ali Muhsen Hamid claimed Iraq was being sincere, but he stipulated that civilian sites would not be available to the inspectors. ‘We support anywhere, any military site (for inspections), but not as some people have suggested for inspections against hospitals, against schools.'”
I’ve checked the New York Times and WaPo’s Iraq stories today, and find no mention of it. This piece ran yesterday in the online version of the London Evening Standard.
Have the NYT/WaPo followed up on this and found the quote from Ali Muhsen Hamid to be inaccurate? (And if so, wouldn’t that be news as well?)
Are we just seeing a delay in cycle time — have the American media just not noticed it yet? (And if so, shouldn’t they be hiring some bloggers who are paying closer attention than they are — say, this one and this one, both of whom had this story).
I’ll cut the NYT and WaPo one more day of slack on this before I cry “bias”, but the TTLB radar is up and humming… stay tuned…
Update: OK, this isn’t looking any better. Henry Hanks points out that this article was referenced in yesterday’s Best of the Web from WSJ’s OpinionJournal and FoxNews (I can’t seem to locate the FoxNews citation). Those aren’t exactly, er, low visibility spots to hide something. (And its right at the top of BOTW, too). Hanks also mentions that Ali Muhsen Hamid claims to have been misquoted — but that there is a transcript that disproves that claim.

I’m leaning towards dropping the Iraq Discussion Forum. It was an experiment, really, but I don’t think it’s attracting terribly much interest.
I was curious to see if there might be demand out there for a forum like this, but so far, looks like not. I suspect most weblog folks prefer to post on their own blog — and frankly, have had to force myself to post to the forum rather than TTLB proper myself. And those folks that don’t have blogs… well, if you don’t have a weblog at this point, you probably don’t care to write much and won’t like a forum either.
Anyway, if Andrew Sullivan, The Corner, Glenn, and Mickey all want to link to the forum and steer a huge amount of traffic at it, maybe it’ll take off, but if it stays at the current level of minimal posting, it’ll be gone by the end of the week.
Vote with your posts, if you want it to stay!
-NZB