mattp

The Big Time is closer to I-5 for those who may come from afar. Magnolia is half way to Mongolia.

Maybe he'd show if we went to the Roadhouse. He certainly isn't likely to show up if you respond to his suggestion that way! Personally, I don't really like the BigTime but I'll be there if that is where it is to be. I might even have some cool pictures for show and tell. Anybody else got anything?

That's an excellent climb, and the ski descent is pretty good too, no?

You can climb Outer Space on a sunny weekend in October without crowds, but at this time of year you should expect a lineup. Because the route is relatively moderate, has good belay ledges and is so well known, lots of people use that climb as an opportunity to "get the kinks out" of their system and if there are any parties in front of you there is a great chance that at least one of them is going to be "slower than average." Passing in the middle of the route may or may not be a good idea but, whatever you do, you should be prepared to spend a lot of time waiting around and you should also be ready to be gracious about it when the "other guy" does something you don't approve of. Anybody not willing to share the route with parties either faster or slower than them, or just lots of other parties, should climb something else.

The Klipchuck campground is several miles down the east side of the pass, but it is on a semi-sunny south facing slope and in a forest of Ponderosa Pines. As long as you don't mind camping next to family groups and such, in my opinion it is a much more pleasant place to camp than anywhere up on the pass.

Fair enough, Stonehead, but read the Friedman editorial in the New York Times today: Instead of trying to dodge and evade responsibility for what we are doing by attacking the "liberal media" and blaming it all on some rogue little guy when the problems are obviously systemic and our leaders have actually encouraged this kind of thing in statement after statement about how this is war and the Geneva Conventions don't apply, our leaders should be apologizing for what our boys have done and actually taking steps to correct this situation. Simutaneously, when we see some orchestrated rioting, or a campaign for suicide bombing or whatever it is, we should call a spade a spade and hold the religous and political leaders in Saudia Arabia and other "friendly" countries accountable for encouraging what is clearly unholy slaughter, no matter which book you adhere to. The problem is, we've got ourselves into a mess and our leaders just want to avoid taking responsibility for it.

That's no jive, Fairweather. For example, go to the NCCC websit and look at their winter 2003-2004 newsletter, page 6, where the guy celebrates what a great opportunity they have to get roads cut back in the wake of the washouts two years ago and says that they may even want to block repairs to even main roads like the Mountain Loop Highway. I'd have to say that I agree with their basic argument that road building SHOULD be undertaken with proper environmental analysis and careful consideration of construction impacts, and I also agree that there are lots of roads that we could probably do without, but a friend of mine on their board says that it remains true that many of their members are in fact against providing recreational access and use these "issues" as a tool toward that agenda. He actually encouraged me to suggest that some of my more recreation-oriented friends joint their group to offer a different perspective. Obviously, it is a question of balance. Even we recreational junkies have to acknowledge that at least one portion of the Mountain Loop Highway that was wiped out is right in or immediately alongside the flood plain and they should be very careful about undertaking re-construction there. In addition, we have to face the reality that their funding is being severely cut back and they can't afford to maintain all the roads that everybody would like. Maybe Congress should allocate more money for recreational access, but they are heading in quite the opposite direction.

PP, I'm not falling for that one. If you read the thread, and if you've read the newspaper, you'll see that we're talking about a Newsweek report that an interrogator flushed a Koran down the toilet in an attempt to rile a prisoner. As you already know, the "retraction" was rather vague, and as I've pointed out (I think twice already), nobody in the Military or in the Administration denies that a Koran ever got flushed down the toilet. What they say is that "we've heard these complaints several times before, and we find no proof that it ever happened." You'd have me chasing my own tail, debating the "facts" when we really don't have any "facts" except these: 1. Newsweek prepares a story that contains lots of information along with a short reference to a line in an upcoming report about Koran being flushed down the toilet. 2. Newsweek names an "unnamed military source" as confirming this. 3. Newsweek sends the article to the Military for comment or correction. 4. The Military does not comment on or correct this item. 5. Roitting occurs in Afghanistan. 6. The Administration blames the riots on the Newsweek piece even though the military commanders in Afghanistan clearly say the riots were NOT caused by a reaction to that piece. 7. The Administration beats their drum about how everybody should rally against Newsweek. 8. Newsweek offers the "retraction," in effect falling on their sword - albiet a weak retraction, but a damaging one never-the-less. 9. Peter Puget and others on cascadeclimbers.com are confused by all of this and somehow think that the story here is about Newsweek'd violation of journalistic standards.

Those of you who favor having access to the traditional trailheads might want to pay attention and write some letters or something. Some conservationists are seeking to block repair of the Mountain Loop highway and the White Chuck road, and funding is in short supply as well.

I have not had a bicolor rope for years and I don't bother to mark the middle, either. If you want to match the ends for a rappel or something, all you have to do is to start with the two ends and hand-over-hand your way to the middle. It is not an absolute necessity to have a middle mark, though it is a nice convenience.

Jay, you argue that I haven't proved that Newsweek has retracted the story due to political pressure from the Administration, and you are correct. I have not. However, they retracted their story after the Administration demanded they do so and I have not seen you or anybody else suggest any other reason why they are retracting it. General Meyers said the violence in Afghanistant was NOT (read again NOT) caused by that story and the idea that this one line in the Newsweek makes us look any worse than we already did, after all the last two years' stories about prisoner abuse and all the high level rhetoric about Moslem extremists, and the president's even saying we were on a "crusade," seems kind of silly. However, the Administration clearly said they needed to see this story retracted, and it quickly got retracted. As to what the average citizen knows, you apparently have not read any of the myriad news stories about how uninformed the American public is. Most of us cannot even put Iraq on the map - in fact a large number cannot even put America on the map. Many or most think weapons of mass destruction WERE found and that Saddam DID perpetrate the Trade Center attacks. I'm not saying that the Administration has forced the press to put these mis-statements in their headlines, but the degree of public misunderstanding of history, and the manner in which this administration successfully and so easily re-writes history every day (like their denying they said there was an immminent threat) and puts such a spin on everything is nothing short of astonishing.

Yes, all administrations work to control the press and that is part of their job. However, this administration has proven obsessed with it and they are masters at it. Can I "prove" that the White House controls media stories more than they should? No. The call as to whether it is "more than they should" is value driven. Jay may like it when they take a story about how the U.S. is mistreating prisoners and spin it so we are mostly arguing about whether Newsweek was not careful in their reporting. Maybe he thinks it is pretty cool that they took down Dan Rather over publishing a story that was in fact true, and he doesn't mind that they had the press sufficiently intimidated that nobody much made noise about the Vice President's blatant lie in a nationally televised election debate. But his assertion that if they had the truth on their side, Newsweek or any other reporter would fight back and win a Pulitzer for it is just not supported by the last 5 years' history. Jay argues that if they could control the press we would know nothing about the failure to find weapons of mass destruction or we would never have heard about prisoner abuse. Seemingly, he says that it is all or nothing.

After I said that we might see similarly violent reactions here if the shoe were on the other foot -- for example if we saw news casts showing some rogue village in Aghanistan protesting American presence by wiping their butts with the flat -- and I said this would not come in the form of riots but maybe calls for a bomb to strike that village or retaliation against local Moslems, KK wrote: John Glenn testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in 1999 that flag burning can stimulate a violent reaction. After September 11, somebody tried to set fire to a mosque in Seattle. After the Faluja hanging photo was published, some right wingers were calling for massive retaliation. What makes you so sure this would never happen?

The proof is in the pudding, JayB. In this morning's newspaper, a letter to the editor noted that this event is just like the Dan Rather memo, and the press obviously can't get it right. Our own Fairweather and PP seem confused by all of this, too. The fact is that the the White House has managed to make Newsweek's use of a single unnamed source into justification for condemning Newsweek for publishing a small statement that is in all probability true, and which they first asked the Military to correct for them if it was not true. Masterful. Your second point is a red herring. You seem to be suggesting that if they could manipulate the press, we would never see in the newspaper that there were no weapons of mass destruction. It's a matter of degree. They haven't been able to squelch the story, but they have certainly spun public attention away from it and we see very little discussion of the Blair memo, either. Many Americans are still bent out of shape over the fact that Clinton lied about a blow job, whereas the Bush administration has spun things so that people like you don't seem to care that we were lied to about everything that actually matters about this war. Similarly, have you forgotten that the Vice President straight out lied in the election debate when he looked straight at the camera and said he never promoted the idea that Iraqi ability to attack the U.S. constituted an imminent threat? I couldn't believe my ears when I heard him say that -- because he had been the administration's "front man" on this point and had talked about how proof of the weapons might come in the form of a mushroom cloud over Manhattan and stuff like that. But the press hardly said "boo." Maybe you are right - maybe if they challenged the administration they could have won a pulitzer. But for some strange reason, we didn't seem much talk in the press about how this was a blatant lie. In a similar fashion, Bush's team was not able to squelch the story that he was awol, but they certainly manipulated that story as a tool to take down Dan Rather and played the public to increase their ability to spin the news.

What are you saying in either one of these posts, PP? (1) that the White house says this "wouldn't" happen because it is not our policy? (2) that you think somewhere they have actually said that the "unnamed source" was incorrect? Try again.

I saw such an incident at the Verdon Gorge, where a French climber started trying to pass a British team, and the British leader found her rope being held back by the French leader, or maybe it was just tangled with his. So she threw a carabiner at the guy. Climbers speaking four or five different languages then started yelling at her and at each other over it. This was on a one or two pitch sport climb, though like nearly all the routes at the Gorge, it was 1000 feet off the deck (in the Verdon, you rap down from the top and climb back up).

Actually, KK, Meyers and others have commented on the very aspect of the story that you point out quite adequately. It isn't getting a lot of discussion in this thread or, for that matter, in the press -- because that really isn't the issue here. Yes, people in Afghanistan and elsewhere have their own agenda and some of them will manipulate stories like this for thier own advantage. That's nothing new. If you saw news stories about Afghan nationals in some rogue village using the American flag as toilet paper, you'd see some outrage that could be manipulated in the American press, right? Maybe we wouldn't riot over it, but we'd see all the right wingers demanding that our Air Force drop a couple of bombs into said village and you might well see attacks against visible Moslems here in the U.S. -- that in fact happened right here in Seattle two or three years ago.

Give me a break, JayB. Even the White House periodically acknowledges that they have the press on a shorter leash than have previous administrations. Almost nobody is saying that Newsweek's "mistake" resulted from a pre-engineered conspiracy (though your snide comments about our "conspiracy theories" vaguely suggest that we are arguing something like this), but the obvious fact here is that the White House saw a story they didn't like and decided to try to manipulate the situation for polictical advantage. Newsweek had a reliable military source provide a story that seemed to confirm reports that have been published in numerous newspapers for the last year or two, and that was newsworthy. They sent it to the military before publishing it, asking for comment, and the Koran item was not corrected or commented on. Now they "retract" their story, but even the strongest denials coming from the White House and military sources fail to say that the basic facts are actually wrong. This is just like the memo concerning Bush's being AWOL. The woman who was supposed to have written the memo said it was false in that the memo was a fake, and this was the story. But I seem to remember that she also confirmed that everything stated in the "fake memo" was true. The White House is beating down a media powerhouse by deftly spinning a story away from the real issue: in this case, the undeniable and systematic American abuse of detainees in Guantanamo.

By the way, I've read somewhere that torture and humiliation are poor tools for extracting useful information because the "informant" tends to say whatever he thinks will make the abuse stop rather than to disclose what he would otherwise not reveal. Could there be any truth to this?

General Richard Meyers says the rioting in Afghanistan was not tied to the Newsweek article. In other words: HERE'S MORE INDICATION THAT THE WHITE HOUSE IS LYING. http://usinfo.state.gov/is/Archive/2005/May/13-299433.html They are manipulating this situation for political gain and to try to further intimidate the media. Should General Meyers be forced to retract his story, too?

Glacierdog - Are you aware that Newsweek sent their story to the military censors BEFORE they published it, and they recieved comment on another aspect of the article but no statement of clarification or denial or any comment whatsoever on the Koran in the toilet matter? And even still, I heard where some military guy last night was saying that "we have reviewed x number of documents and we find no proof that this happened." They STILL are not denying the story. Instaed, they're beating the drum about how Newsweek was irresponsible to rely on a Miltary source who confirmed a story that has been told over and over again by released prisoners, counsellors, etc. over the last few years. The problem with Newsweek is that they are so spineless they are backing down.

I don't think Blix ever said he KNEW that Saddam didn't have the weapons, but he certainly said that every time they went to check a site where the US reported they'd find such weapons, there were none. And, in the run-up to the war, he definitely said that the US was vastly overstating the significance of whatever weak evidence they had. Do we have "common ground" on the point that the Bush administration deliberately exaggerated the threat in order to get support for the war? (or can you look at all the evidence and say, with a straight face, that they did not?)

We know.

KK, It seems to me that Hans Blix prety much said he didn't think Saddam had them, and Bush and Co. trashed him for it. How convenient it is to brush that under the rug now...