April 2003

Blathering About Meigs

ArchPundit April 12, 2003 2 Comments

Friends Of Meigs had this to say about the closing of Meigs Airfield:

Chicago, IL ? The City of Chicago today used surprise and shock tactics to start demolishing Meigs Field, the world-renowned airport serving downtown, ripping up runway without notice in the dark of night under police guard. ?We are in shock,? said Rachel Goodstein, president of the Friends of Meigs Field. ?The City of Chicago had agreed to keep Meigs Field open until 2026,? she said, citing a December 2001 agreement between Mayor Daley and Governor Ryan.

World reknown? Uh-huh. As Steve Neal pointed out That designation fits London’s Heathrow, Metropolitan France’s Orly and Chicago’s O’Hare Airport. It certainly doesn’t fit an airport that primarily serves some small corporate traffic, some general aviation and some state planes.

Their complaint that Daley broke the law by breaking an agreement with George Ryan is a bit hard to figure. That agreement had to be codified and the Illinois Legislature refused to do so–well, to be accurate Pate Philip refused to pass the bill because it allowed for the expansion of O’Hare. The agreement couldn’t be passed in the US Senate because Peter Fitzgerald filibustered it. So the agreement certainly wasn’t law and even George Ryan agreed the original agreement was by the wayside because of the lack of legislative action.

The Friends of Meigs are now suing to stop any further destruction of Meigs. This is nothing more than a nuisance lawsuit. While the midnight raid was petty and stupid, it makes some sense given the ridiculous arguments coming out of Meigs proponents and their actions.

The only legal issue present is whether Daley should have waited thirty days or not. Trying to blame Daley’s autocratic style (normally a legitimate criticism) is simply a diversion for having an argument weak on the merits. Daley wasn’t even that autocratic this time except in the exact timing of the runway destruction. The fight over Meigs has been going on for nearly 10 years. Many are claiming that the public process was subverted when the reality was that the public process was unbelievably long.

Even more strange is the talk out of Congress that this was a blow to Chicago infrastructure. In no way is this a blow to most flight traffic in the region. An important point to demonstrate this is only 16 planes were at Meigs on the day it was closed. There are no commercial flights and haven’t been for several years. Why eliminating a small airport of little value in the larger regional transit scheme should be a factor in future infrastructure decisions is unclear other than Friends of Meigs is really loud and Members of Congress thought that this was actually a big deal.

Why Do We Care About History?

ArchPundit April 12, 2003 No Comments

Atrios is far to forgiving concerning the looting of Iraqi National Museum. This, well I guess, was truly a one-of-a-kind museum for humanity. Such places are essential for us to understand our past as well as our future. Those concepts are inseparable.

And about this Chalabi Character

ArchPundit April 11, 2003 No Comments

Unless Dick Perle is going to become a Iraqi citizen, he ought to stay the hell out of it. Of course, the good news is that if the US pushes Chalabi, Chalabi will probably lose an election. That is, if there are real elections…

The Hall is for Homers Anyway

ArchPundit April 11, 2003 No Comments

Baseball Hall of Fame head Petroskey’s uninviting of the Robbins and Sarandon has led to Roger Kahn telling the Hall to take a hike.

Petroskey is a bit dim-witted:

Petroskey did tell ESPNEWS on Friday that if he had to do it over again, he would’ve called Robbins and Sarandon.

Errr…maybe it is just me, but wouldn’t a call to them to, oh, I don’t know, see if they would agree to keep the occasion non-political be appropriate before cancelling the whole thing be appropriate?

My major problem with the Hall is they are a bunch of Yankee Homers who refuse to acknowledge the infinite superiority of Wrigley Field to Yankee Stadium. No really, of the great parks their display on Yankee Stadium is huge while Wrigley gets a picture–smaller than the atrocity known as Busch Stadium here in St. Louis. Homer losers.

Don’t Let Rumsfeld Off the Hook

ArchPundit April 11, 2003 No Comments

And no I’m not talking about the looting. The looting was going to happen to a certain extent and while it is somewhat ugly, well, welcome to the Hobbesian world we live in. There is a reason we have government and the streets of Baghdad are a good example of what happens when civil authority breaks down. I have no idea if we will restore order in the next few days, but assuming we do, it really isn’t a big deal. If it lasts for a couple weeks, someone should be accountable.

What is a big deal is the war plan. Sure it worked out and we can credit the armed forces for performing flawlessly. The thing is, we also need to credit Iraqi strategery. What stopped the dams and bridges from being blown? Several things:
1) Good luck on our part
2) Faster penetration than anyone expected
3) Saddam’s incompetence

Pretty much, our easy success in both Gulf Wars can be summed up by Saddam’s incompetence. In both cases we would have prevailed and prevailed, in relative terms, easily. There are several aspects of this plan that seem to be riskier to our forces than necesary. I’m guessing part of this is a hope that Saddam would perform as poorly as he did in Iran and the first Gulf War and part Rumsfeld wanting to show off his ideas. Either way, hope isn’t a way to run a military campaign. The fortunate aspect of this is the military is obsessive about reviewing its efforts and even if reports are squelched, any weakness in the plan as analyzed will eventually be public.

Dog Bites Man

ArchPundit April 11, 2003 No Comments

Something that I figured out when I was around 10 years old is that totalitarian regimes only allowed censored news coverage. It really wasn’t an earth shattering realization, it was common sense.

The only story that is a bit troubling is the threat to King Hussein. Other than that the stories didn’t tell anyone anything they didn’t–or shouldn’t have already known about Iraq. My goodness, Iraq tortures people? Who knew? Only anyone who had been paying attention for the last 20 years. I can’t find the source now, but some nitwit was trying to blame CNN for not telling Saddam’s son-in-laws about the threat on their lives if they returned to Iraq. Maybe Americans need a roadmap to a clue, but those two clearly understood what their return would result in.

The individual stories only would have led to the deaths or torture of those involved, I’m a bit mystified by what purpose such stories would have served. We already knew that Iraq was doing, so what would the stories add?

A totalitarian government only has one reason to allow foreign reporters in and that is to try and get them to pass along propaganda. That is part of the game. Except the mentally infirm, no one takes pictures of protests any more seriously than the Iraqi (err former) Information Minister. The benefit of having people on site is that they can relay subtle information from time to time. Now, most of the networks are terrible at that because their reports even when not censored are free of useful content.

In the USSR, these reports were often helpful even though the networks made the exact same compromises. Anyone who remembers coverage of the Soviet Union remembers that much of the information in news reports was in what was not said–especially once Andropov took power. I suppose if we want to dumb down news even more we can assume no one has the ability to critically read, but I’d rather worry about those who can critically read and let the rest fall by the wayside.

Some of the most heated rhetoric is bizarre:

Perhaps if the network had been willing to lose access long before, a nation would have been liberated earlier and many, many lives would have been saved.

The statement completely ignores that this information was well known previously. Really well known so one is at a loss as to how reporting the particular stories mentioned would have changed anything.

Franklin Foer’s article that covered how western press deals with Iraq in particular fails to understand a rather basic point. The only reason Iraq lets any journalists in is because Iraqi leaders thought they could manipulate that coverage to their advantage. If there weren’t reporters who cooperated on some level, reporters like Joel Soler would never be given any access. No single organization can provide a full picture, but the differing types of coverage hopefully lead to a decent understanding.

The real scandal over news coverage is how utterly content free most of the TV coverage is. The analysis is historically adrift and has little grounding in any sort of context and as such is useless.

Ironic Tidbit: Consistently blasted for left bias by many in the states, Christiane Amanpour was amongst those booted from Iraq.

Wednesdays are Busy

ArchPundit April 9, 2003 No Comments

Move along, back with a lot tomorrow.

Who Wins: Inhofe vs. Daley

ArchPundit April 8, 2003 No Comments

Think about the repercussions of taking on the most powerful Mayor in America, Jim. Or just go back to ranting about evolution and how our Israel policy should be determined by the Book of Revelation.

Last Monday, after the late night demolition, I was critical of Daley for the manner in which he pulled off this stunt, but the shutting down of Meigs is very reasonable. After hearing from the critics of the move, I’m starting to think Daley acted to mildly and should have gone further. The only lame part of Daley’s argument is his trying to justify it for security reasons.

James Inhofe probably doesn’t realize what is bloody obvious to the rest of the world outside of Oklahoma and the home-schooled. The fact that Inhofe is a moron of spectacular dimensions simply eludes his self-awareness.

A pilot who once lived in Chicago, Inhofe said he found it bitterly ironic the hearing dealt with improving "infrastructure" when the city demolished a critical piece of infrastructure: Meigs’ only runway.

In no way is Meigs Field’s one runway a critical piece of infrastructure. It served a small number of corporate planes and the State of Illinois jets ferrying state legislators and staff back and forth to Springfield for the weekends. On top of it, Meigs is unreliable because of bad lake weather.

Meigs had been slated for closing and being turned into a park for nearly 50 years. It cannot handle much traffic due to size and weather. It is 20 minutes to Midway and it is owned by the Chicago Parks District.

If someone wanted to save it, there was a law before the Senate that the dim-witted Inhofe’s colleague killed. If he wanted to save Meigs as a ‘critical piece of infrastructure’ there was a deal to be made, but Peter Fitzgerald refused. Whining that Daley did what the city had planned for 50 years isn’t a very convincing argument as to why Inhofe might threaten Illinois’ infrastructure funding.

And if Inhofe thinks that their Congressional Delegation can beat our Congressional Delegation, let’s introduce him to the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Ted “Peter Krause” Barlow

ArchPundit April 7, 2003 No Comments

Ted Barlow is clearly a fake name for Peter Krause

Saeed al-Sahhaf, Iraq’s Bobby Rush

ArchPundit April 7, 2003 No Comments

In the 1999 Chicago Mayoral lamb to the slaughter, Bobby Rush was spinning his wheels against Richard Daley. So his last chance was a huge snowstorm that shut down the city. Betting that Jane Byrne rode poor snow removal to the Mayor’s office, Rush figured he could do the same and set-up a press conference showing unremoved snow. Of course, this battle was about as lopsided as the US-Iraq war and he doubled his mitake by allowing his back to be up against the road. The entire time he was giving his press conference, City of Chicago snow plows made that the clearest damn spot of street in the city. All the while Rush had to try and keep his dignity.

I believe Saeed al-Sahhaf knows how Bobby Rush felt.