Diary of a Network Geek

Well, based on these two news stories, Bush knew plenty and just in time!

Okay, so I’m sure it’s not a big suprise that I’m fairly conservative, basically Republican and a supporter of George Bush (both of them). Since the end of the Gulf War II, Bush has taken a lot of flack for not coming up with weapons of mass destruction. Well, guess what boys and girls? The weapons of mass destruction were always there and never left!
Thanks to this article on Slate, I was alerted to this state of events. Apparently, near the end of June, the Washington Post ran an article about how the lack of actual, viable chemical weapons is not significant. Iraq had the trained scientists, the production facilities and the delivery weapons required to make good on their threat of mass destruction. Chemical and biological weapons are viable for only a short period of time, roughly two weeks, then they might as well be poured out and a fresh batch whipped up. So, let’s think back, how long did the Gulf War II take? Longer than two weeks? Well, then, is it a real suprise that there were no viable biological or chemical weapons left? Not really. Were they there? Well, according to the two journalists who wrote the aforementioned articles, the sources they interviewed said “yes”, they were. What’s more, Saddam and his sons are well known for being brutal torturers and amoral killers. They butchered their own people and would have tried to take over the entire Middle Eastern oil-producing region, if not stopped. But, stop them we did. We stopped them from killing more Kurds with chemical weapons. We stopped them from burning oil wells. We stopped them from imprisoning and torturing children.
So, now, what’s the problem?

While I was looking for something totally unrelated, I came across the following news story:

“Marjorie Nighbert, a 76-year-old Florida woman, was hospitalized in 1996 after a stroke. Before her hospital admission, she signed an advance directive that no “heroic measures” should be employed to save her life. On the basis of that directive and at the request of her family, the hospital denied her requests for food and water … Until her death more than 10 days later, Nighbert was restrained in her bed to prevent her raiding other patients’ food trays.”

The Washington Post National Weekly Edition, January 13, 1997, page 23.

This is truly the most horrific and cruel thing I have read in years. Since when were “food and water” considered heroic measures? Why didn’t the family do something? At what point did denying her food and water seem like a reasonable thing to do? How could a doctor, having taken the Hippocratic Oath, allow such brutality to occur?
Is it any wonder why law makers want to protect us from ourselves? We hold ourselves as an enlightened society, superior to the rest of the world, but things like this go on here still. I’m simply stunned.