Back to Reality
President-elect Obama already has a long to-do list. But here’s another item for it: to restore science in government.
The most notable characteristic of the Bush administration’s science policy has been the repeated distortion and suppression of scientific evidence in order to fit ideological preferences about how the world should be, rather than how it is.
In his disturbing book “Undermining Science: Suppression and Distortion in the Bush Administration,” the journalist Seth Shulman describes case after case of intimidation of scientists in government posts, the suppression of scientific evidence and the perpetuation of misinformation.
The fields affected range from climate change to public health. Although some incidents are small in and of themselves, the cumulative effect is horrifying. Shulman also catalogs a long list of established government scientists who, during the course of the Bush administration, resigned their posts in despair…
continue reading here (if you can stomach it) http://judson.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/back-to-reality/
There was a distinct point where my dislike for and distrust of the Bush administration turned to something like searing hatred. That was when Rumsfeld and the Pentagon permitted the priceless artifacts in the National Museum of Iraq (in Baghdad) to be looted even while they cordoned off and protected the fucking oil ministry building. The archaeological community had been in contact with the Pentagon prior to the invasion to warn and inform them of the value of this site and believed that the Pentagon was planning to protect it (the Pentagon denies any such promise, and they are a credible lot, of course). On top of this came Rumsfeld’s comments about “untidiness” and “It’s just different photographs of the same pot being stolen”.
The subsequent loss to archaeology and western history isn’t really calcuable. And of course, this museum and its contents are only one aspect, though the most important aspect, of the losses to archaeology resulting from this stupid and criminal war.
Remember when al qaeda destroyed the Buddhist statues in Afghanistan and our reaction to this barbarism and the loss of an important historical site? America’s operations in Iraq, particularly failing to protect the museum, have consequences many magnitudes worse. What percentage of American citizens understand this? That more Americans do not understand this (or have now forgotten it) tells us little about those citizens and much about how propaganda systems function to divert attention and hide information. This was where Abraham’s people came from. It is the source of the three great religions of the western world. It is where our writing began. But it is OK…it is more than OK, it is necessary…to blow this place to hell in order to increase control of petroleum sources and to continue the profitability of the military industrial corporate complex.
For more information on the museum and the events surrounding its looting, see here… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Museum_of_Iraq
