First, hit the Planned Parenthood box. I've already been paid for it, but you need to sign the petition. Karen Hughes's comments comparing the pro-choice movement to Al Qaeda are deeply unpatriotic and she needs to know Americans will not stand for such vile slander.
Ok, I'm finally going to put up the Amazon/Paypal box this weekend. We're trying to raise enough money for a computer upgrade. The PC still lies dormant because I'm lazy and the Mac works fine. But this is not a state which can last forever. It must be repaired, with more memory and a faster CPU. Thankfully, we're not talking more that $200. But to be honest, I'd also like to buy a wireless router and some other stuff. Give what you can, a dollar is fine, seriously, I'm not greedy and I'm still convalescing, so, do what what you can when the box goes up and it will be used well. No beers, no porterhouses, just hardware and software and DSL fees.:)
As I said before, when I use money raised from the site, I'll tell you what it goes for. Unlike George Bush, I believe in accountability.
Once again, I have to thank the people who sent cards and gifts when I was sick. Thank you cards will be coming, now that I can write clearly. It was unexpected and I remain grateful as one can be.
I remain undecided about attending the Democratic convention, I think the GOP convention will make for great TV with the drunk cops rioting and all. However, unlike my peers, I probably won't be raising cash for Boston. You can take a bus from New York round trip for $20 to Boston and my sister lives near downtown, so no need to raise cash if I go. Unless you want to buy me stuff from Filenes and the Eddie Bauer outlet near Downtown Crossing.:)
If I decide to go, I'll let you know. But to be honest, most of those things are a great ego boost for the people covering it, but if I'm right, the news from Iraq will be more important.
Also, let me just thank you all for your responses and general civility with your comments. While we haven't gotten our weekly spot on Air America yet, or hosted a show, your contributions are what excite me and keep me going. And if you're just lurking, please post, the more the merrier. Besides, I don't have the greatest radio voice. Trust me on this.
Someone asked me why I write about food. Well, of all the responses I get, they are the best, the most honest. I'm hardly a foodie or even a food writer. I just love the way people open up about something where there are no right opinions.
The thing about the pictures of Iraqi prisoners being humiliated is that it is the result of braindead management and racism.
The whole culture of Abu Gharib was designed to control and humiliate Iraqi detainees. The photos come from a fairly wide culture of contempt. These are not the first prisoners to be abused by Americans or the first courtmartial to happen over this kind of treatment.
What is incindiary are the pictures of a woman humilating Arab men and dogs being sicced on them. These are gross violations of Arab culture and sure to assist the resistance in killing Americans. The idea of a woman humiliating men will go down poorly in the Arab world, as will the idea of dogs being used on prisoners.
Saddam didn't take pictures of the people he tortured, and more importantly, he didn't humiliate them for pleasure. Iraqis kept their torture secret.
The fact that the prison officials allowed contract interrogators to have supervisory roles with the prison guards is even more revolting.
Now, why did these things happen? Why would American, and now British, soldiers, seek to abuse, humiliate and then record their acts?
Because that is what you do when you have a racist contempt for those in your charge.
Omer Bartov, the leading German historian of the Eastern Front, helped create an exhibit of Wehrmacht soldiers abusing Russians a few years ago. The exhibit broke the myth that all of the abuses on the Eastern Front were done by the SS. Of course, this exhibit went down like a lead balloon. People were angry at confronting the lies they had hidden behind for decades.
The guards and the interrogators had a deep racist contempt for the Iraqis. They felt no need to treat them decently. When you can call them hajis and sand niggers, how far is it to allowing an Iraqi translator to rape a teenage boy, who was arrested for whatever reason? The abuse didn't come from thin air, but a casual racism which the US command has tolerated from its soldiers.
With communication limited, and a barrier of interrorgators and translators, it becomes very easy to be divorced from the humanity of their prisoners. So things which are clearly horrific, like pyramids of naked men and exposing their genitals, become a giantic joke. They aren't people, but things to abuse. They aren't like us, they can't even communicate with us. Their country is a mess, they needed us to save them, they don't even have a Taco Bell, why should we respect them as fellow humans.
Now, to Arabs, these images are akin to seeing child porn. It couldn't be more offensive or humiliating if you tried. A woman displaying the gentials of Arab men? Dogs? If you wanted a recruiting poster to kill Americans, this would be it.
The soldiers who did this had no clue. Not about Arab culture, the laws of war or the Geneva Convention and the general running the prison was more interested in looking good than running an effective prison. That doesn't mean they aren't guilty of vile abuses, but their superiors shouldn't get a free pass.
God help any Americans captured by the resistance now.
I am genuinely perplexed by the reaction of Sinclair Broadcasting Group to tonight's Nightline. I'm even more perplexed by calls to read the names of the 9/11 dead instead.
I honestly don't get this reaction.
Those Americans died in the service of their country. What is so wrong about reading the names of those killed in Iraq, whether in combat or in accidents, which Nightline expanded to do, after several parents called to ask why their loved ones were excluded.
I don't see this as any more political as the ceremonies for the opening of the WWII Memeorial on the Mall. I never knew that an accounting of war dead would harm the president and was "anti-war". Most sane people are against war.
But because they are so afraid that people might link our retreat in Fallujah, the general mayhem in Iraq and 724 dead, to Bush's failure to control the situation, they have to dishonor the American dead like this. And make no mistake, they are dishonoring the dead, denying their families the small comfort of seeing their loved ones honored on national TV.
If reading all the names is an anti-war statement, then it's an anti-war statement. If it isn't, it isn't. What it is to me is an acknowledgement of their sacrifice.
But the naked fear of Sinclair's bosses and their conservative allies is quite telling. They were just saying a month ago that casualities didn't matter. That it was less than those that died on Omaha Beach, or living in California. That Americans would take casualities to support the war on terror.
But when called on their bullshit, and faced with the real names of real people, most of who weren't even old enough to drink, they turn tail and cry politics. When their families were crying for their loss, they minimized it and used macho talk to excuse their callousness. Now, when faced with reality, all 724 people are really dead, they ran like the cowards they are.
If reading the names of the war dead is bad for Bush, so be it. It shouldn't be an excuse for the cowardice of Sinclair Broadcasting Group's naked and disrepectful politics.
Note:John McCain sent a letter to Sinclair today:
MCCAIN LETTER TO SINCLAIR BROADCAST ON PREEMPTION OF NIGHTLINE
For Immediate Release
Friday, Apr 30, 2004
U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ) issued the following letter today to Mr. David Smith, President and CEO of Sinclair Broadcast Group, in response to the preemption of this evening’s Nightline program:
I write to strongly protest your decision to instruct Sinclair’s ABC affiliates to preempt this evening’s Nightline program. I find deeply offensive Sinclair’s objection to Nightline’s intention to broadcast the names and photographs of Americans who gave their lives in service to our country in Iraq.
I supported the President’s decision to go to war in Iraq, and remain a strong supporter of that decision. But every American has a responsibility to understand fully the terrible costs of war and the extraordinary sacrifices it requires of those brave men and women who volunteer to defend the rest of us; lest we ever forget or grow insensitive to how grave a decision it is for our government to order Americans into combat. It is a solemn responsibility of elected officials to accept responsibility for our decision and its consequences, and, with those who disseminate the news, to ensure that Americans are fully informed of those consequences.
There is no valid reason for Sinclair to shirk its responsibility in what I assume is a very misguided attempt to prevent your viewers from completely appreciating the extraordinary sacrifices made on their behalf by Americans serving in Iraq. War is an awful, but sometimes necessary business. Your decision to deny your viewers an opportunity to be reminded of war’s terrible costs, in all their heartbreaking detail, is a gross disservice to the public, and to the men and women of the United States Armed Forces. It is, in short, sir, unpatriotic. I hope it meets with the public opprobrium it most certainly deserves.
Atrios has a post on Ben Affleck joining Ted Kennedy on Capital Hill to campaign for the minimum wage.
The current minimum wage, which has made Walmart millions by underpaying its workers and providing no benefits doesn't work. If calculated for real needs, the average mininmum wage should be around $!2.
Every time raising the minimum wage comes up, conservatives, who haven't worked for the minimum wage for years, think it will "hurt" business. Which is insane. The owner of Godfather's Pizza, a truly shitty fast food chain, had health insurance for his office staff, but his line workers were simply too "expensive" to insure or pay well. He testified in the mid-90's that raising wages would force him to close stores.
This, is, of course, a lie. Anyone who defends the penury which American law permits is either a liar or a fool. The current minimum wage has climbed two dollars in 20 years. No one ever correlates the cost of federal assistance to the working poor with the cost of a sub-poverty line living wage. If America's employers actually paid their least skilled workers enough to live on from one job, maybe American tax payers wouldn't have to suppliment their income with food stamps and medicaid.
Make no mistake, we are making up the difference between the minimum wage and the profits companies are making.
I watched Duncan Hunter (R-San Diego), talk about self-reliance and individuals coming together as service families lined up for free food given out by the Boy Scouts.
So many Americans have swallowed bullshit which comes from movies, not from actual American history. The West was the largest government grant program in history. Most farms failed long before the mandated five years of the Homestead Act. The real story of the West is the growth of cities, not the individual farmer, who usually failed badly and abandoned the farm for the city as soon as they could. I have to wonder about the sanity of any person, watching people line up for food and spout this drivel.
The minimum wage is a gift to service and retail businesses. It allows them to underpay for labor and profit. Even most fast food places have to pay around $7 an hour to hire anyone, so the legal minimum wage is fictional in most places. What the current mimimum wage does is depress wages for work and allow owners to save on labor costs.
Needless to say, this system doesn't exist in Europe, where the government covers the cost of benefits, like health care and encourages unionization. Too many Americans believe that they can handle their own problems, which is a myth best left on the movie screen.
Raining hell on Falluja is a tactic bursting with political danger. So why do it? The answer, according to Newhouse's David Wood, is because thin-skinned American Humvees can't handle an up-close fight.
"A shortage of armored combat vehicles in Iraq is pressing U.S. forces into a cruel dilemma: either advance stealthily on foot, or hold up at a city's outskirts and use artillery, mortars and airstrikes," Wood writes.
"Using bombs and AC-130s is a strategic defeat," given the political repercussions, said Kenneth Brower, a weapons designer and consultant to the U.S. and Israeli military. "But we've had to use them."
In contrast, Israel has developed special armored vehicles for urban combat in Gaza and the West Bank, senior Israeli officers said, enabling them to drive up close to the enemy and use pinpoint weapons. Soldiers ride into Palestinian neighborhoods in tanks with turrets replaced by armored boxes with bulletproof glass, which allow the vehicle commanders to see 360 degrees without exposing themselves to fire.
American tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, like the Bradley, have notoriously restricted vision when hatches are closed. In city streets, they must operate with crewmen exposed in open hatches or be flanked by walking infantrymen to protect against side attack.
"We have a whole spectrum of vehicles that enable you to see where you are going and who shoots at you, without being hit," said a senior Israeli officer who recently commanded a brigade in Gaza.
"This enables you to advance inside the city and to get closer" to the enemy, said the officer, who spoke on condition that he not be identified by name. "As far as I can recall we have never used indirect fire in 3 1/2 years in the West Bank and Gaza."
See, if we had known we'd be colonial occupiers, we could have built a whole fleet of weapons for repression. Looks like we screwed up.
Of course, sending Humvees into areas with RPG's is insane. But then, what else is new in this war.
Maybe if we don't read the names of the dead in public we can pretend this isn't happening.
By Lisa de Moraes
Wednesday, April 28, 2004; Page C01
ABC News's "Nightline" will devote its entire broadcast on Friday to reading the names of the more than 500 U.S. servicemen and servicewomen who have been killed in action in Iraq.
As anchor Ted Koppel reads the names for the entire half-hour, viewers will see photographs of those killed since March 19, 2003, as certified by the Defense Department.
In its announcement yesterday, ABC News said the program was its way of paying tribute to the dead. And "Nightline" executive producer Leroy Sievers called it the program's way to "remind our viewers -- whether they agree with the war or not -- that beyond the casualty numbers, these men and women are serving in Iraq in our names, and that those who have been killed have names and faces."
That is good to know because otherwise we might be left thinking that Friday's broadcast, which ABC will simulcast on its Jumbotron in New York's Times Square, is a cheap, content-free stunt designed to tug at our heartstrings and bag a big number on the second night of the May ratings race
Atrios mentioned that the Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which owns several ABC affliates, is refusing to air this broadcast because they think it's a political stunt to undermine Bush.
I would suggest that you call them to ask why honoring American war dead is beyond them. It would especially help if you were a veteran. Also, don't be shy, if you're a member of a veteran's organization, let them know that these people would rather air a sitcom rerun than remember those who died for this country in combat. I'm sure they'll be airing stories on the new WWII memorial on the Mall. So why don't those who died in Iraq deserve the same respect and honor as those who died in other American wars?
Here's the list to contact the Sinclair stations which Atrios dug up:
Contact the Sinclair Broadcast Group at 410-568-1500 and ask them why they refuse to acknowledge those who have served this country honorably.
You can also contact your local affiliate:
WXLV, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High Point NC 336-274-484
WEAR, Pensacola 850-456-3333
KDNL, St. Louis
WSYX, Columbus OH 614-481-6666
WLOS, Asheville NC 828-684-1340
WCHS, Charleston, Huntington W VA 304-346-5358
WGGB, Springfield MA (413) 733-4040
WTXL, Tallahassee (850)893-4140
Be polite with them - recognize that it isn't their decision but you're nonetheless calling to voice your objection
Now, some of you have a point, maybe I do watch too much TV. But not as much as Lisa de Moraes, who also deserves a few e-mails for her unrelenting cynicism.
So, it would be a good idea to air the show about the dead on Memorial Day? When no one is watching and is sitting around drunk and well fed?
I think the idea is "not to tug on our heartstrings", but to remind the country of the cost of war at a time people may actually watch. I guess she's not watching the news every night to see a glimpse of her relatives in Iraq. It's only content-free when you don't have to see someone you know name being read. Otherwise, it's about all you will ever need to know about the Iraq war.
What doesn't surprise me is her complete cluelessnes about the topic. I hope ABC gets landmark ratings for this, although they won't. I would want them to air it during sweeps so people can see it. They should get as much publicity as possible for this, so people can at least see the names of the dead who didn't play for the NFL.
There has been no complete reading of the names of the dead in the media. If Nightline wants to sell Levitra while doing so, it's still a public service.
I don't think the Beltway crowd gets it. For many Americans, watching the news is hellish because they don't know if they'll see their relatives wounded or in combat. It's a frightening thing for many families. That machine gunner blasting away at unseen Iraqi positions is someone's son. That guy climbing out of a tank with a bloody face has a mother who had to see that.
The news is only news for those of us who don't have someone in Iraq. For those that do, it's a combination of expectation and horror.
It's easy to be cynical and snide about ABC's motives if we're not talking about your family.
I think it might serve as some small comfort to have your child's sacrifice noted by someone besides your family and local newspaper, regardless of the motives. After all, they're not coming back from the dead. A night of remembering the dead can't hurt, even if the motives are less than pure.
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran and Robin Wright
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, April 29, 2004; Page A01
FALLUJAH, Iraq, April 28 -- Perched atop sandbags and peering through powerful binoculars, Marine officers manning front-line positions around this tense city can see the problem clearly enough, even through the swirling dust that gives Fallujah the sepia hue of a Wild West town: Military-age men in white robes swagger about with impunity, they say, hardening their defenses and resupplying their encampments.
The Marines say the men are Sunni Muslim guerrillas who have taken over this Euphrates River city and transformed it into a stronghold of resistance to the American occupation of Iraq.
But neither here, nor in the Baghdad palace that serves as the headquarters of the U.S. occupation administration, nor in the corridors of official Washington, is the solution to the Fallujah problem clear. Although American officials and Iraq's U.S.-backed leaders agree that the insurgents should be captured or killed, preferably before the Americans hand over limited sovereignty on June 30, no good options exist to accomplish that goal, according to U.S. officials familiar with the issue.
A further incursion into Fallujah -- the only way many Marine officers say the insurgency here can be squelched -- has been rejected by local and national Iraqi leaders as an unacceptable risk to tens of thousands of noncombatants in the city.
"There are a lot of different proposals on the table, but all of them are fraught with problems," said one senior U.S. official in Iraq, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
The same dilemma confronts U.S. military commanders and civilian officials 130 miles to the south, in the holy city of Najaf, as they attempt to resolve a standoff with a radical Shiite Muslim cleric and hundreds of his militiamen. Even more so than in Fallujah, a full-scale move into the city by U.S. forces would fuel Iraqi anger and further poison relations between the United States and the country's Shiite majority.
As military commanders and civilian administrators scramble to craft solutions to the crises in Fallujah and Najaf, "all the choices are unpalatable," said a senior U.S. official in Washington who spent several months in Iraq last year and who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the subject. "No one likes the options."
A post on Atrios goes into great detail on the numbers of US forces, but the reality is that the Marines are facing the Iraqi Army, not just "guerrillas", which is being centrally directed by former commanders of the army, maybe the Republican Guard.
I nearly broke my TV, when ABC's David Wright said it was inevitable the Marines will win. It isn't. The Marines should have won already. If these were just guerrillas, the Spectre should have broken their backs. It didn't even come close. Instead, when the Marines tried to seize the train station, they got repulsed. Guerrillas can't do that. Soldiers can.
The Marines need a divisional push to seize Fallujah and they don't have the men. Not even close. When you get into urban warfare, you need men, not machines. If they launch their battalions into Fallujah, they'll get ground up.
Any time someone says the Marines can win, remember, every Iraqi has an AK-47. Shopowners, kids, ex-soldiers, and Iraq, a veteran's meeting would fill a soccer stadium, old ladies. When those .223 rounds start slamming into your house, picking up and shooting is easy. No guerrilla force has been as lavishly equipped and and as cheaply equipped as the Iraqis. They merely had to drive to dumps and pick up all the weapons they wanted. Saddam's gift to Iraq was free weapons. He may have starved and tortured them, but he gave them the means for self-defense.
So when a "guerrilla" leader in Iraq looks to face the Americans, his men go into the streets with all the weapons of a modern infantry platoon, machine guns, automatic weapons, rpgs, hand grenades, mines, and with most of the men trained professionally as soldiers. The lie that these are foriegn fighters and remnants is just that. The remnants died in frontal attacks last March and April and foreign fighters would have been killed without an Iraqi support network.
Imagine if you lived in Ohio and all of a sudden Britons, Canadians and Australian guerrillas showed up to fight the Iraqi occupation Army. How long would they last if they didn't have local support? A month? Maybe two? They don't have the local accent, they can't eat or hide out. They wouldn't even be an effective military force.
Instead, we are facing people who have enough military training to dig in and hold defensive positions, just like they did against Iran. Say the older guys were 19-20 in 1988. They're in their mid-30's now and the younger guys know the techniques of combat, even if they haven't been shot at.
Another thing, which should have been evident from the Iran-Iraq war was that the Iraqis are extremely brave when well led. The poor leadership of the Gulf War has not been replicated. Instead, the Iraqis are demonstrating a real courage on the battlefield. Even posting bounties on Kimmit, Sanchez and Rumsfeld for $15m. That's more like the 101st at Bastogne than some scared guerrilla force. The Iraqis definitely seem to have a swagger to match the Marines. And their leaders, unlike US reporters, know exactly the position the Marines are in. They are also experienced enough not to try and go on the offensive against the Marines. It may have thrown them off balance at Ramadi, but the cost was very high.
The US command keeps trying to minimize who we are facing, and anyone with a brain can see Fallujah has a coordinated, widely supported defense led by professionals. If it wasn't, the Marines would have rolled it up weeks ago. They didn't agree to a cease-fire because they were winning. And despite the talk, it is clear the "local leaders" are not in charge. Former Iraqi Army officers are. If we ever get the whole story of the defense of Ramadi, many American commanders will be proven a liar or very lucky they didn't press the issue.
WASHINGTON — A senior Defense Department official is under investigation by the Pentagon inspector general for allegations that he attempted to alter a contract proposal in Iraq to benefit a mobile phone consortium that includes friends and colleagues, according to documents obtained by The Times and sources with direct knowledge of the process.
John A. Shaw, 64, the deputy undersecretary for international technology security, sought to transform a relatively minor police and fire communications proposal into a contract allowing the creation of an Iraq-wide commercial cellular network that could generate hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue per year, the sources said.
Shaw brought pressure on officials at the U.S.-led Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad to change the contract language and grant the consortium a noncompetitive bid, according to the sources.
The consortium, under the guidance of a firm owned by Alaskan natives, consisted of an Irish telecommunications entrepreneur, former officials in the first Bush administration and such leading telecommunications companies as Lucent and Qualcomm, according to sources and consortium members.
Shaw's efforts resulted in a dispute at the Coalition Provisional Authority that has delayed the contract, depriving U.S. military officials and Iraqi police officers, firefighters, ambulance drivers and border guards of a joint communications system.
That has angered top U.S. officials and members of the U.S.-led authority governing Iraq, who say the deaths of many Americans and Iraqis might have been prevented with better communications.
In interviews, Shaw said he had a long-standing personal relationship with at least one member of the consortium, but had no financial ties or agreement with the consortium for future employment. One other member of the consortium's board of directors is under contract with his office as a researcher.
Shaw said he was trying to help the group because it could quickly install the police and fire communications system, and because the group was using a U.S.-based cellphone technology called CDMA that had lost out in what he called a "rigged" competition last year for commercial licenses in Iraq. Three companies using European-based technology won contracts.
Additionally, Shaw said that he had been contacted by Rep. Darrell E. Issa, a Republican whose San Diego County district was packed with Qualcomm employees, and the office of Republican Sen. Conrad R. Burns of Montana, the head of the Commerce Committee's communications subcommittee, urging him to ensure that U.S. technology was allowed to compete for cellular phone contracts in Iraq. Issa confirmed they he had contacted Shaw on the issue. Burns' office did not respond to inquiries.
CDMA, which was developed by Qualcomm, is used in the United States and some countries in Asia. Its rival, a standard developed by Europeans called GSM, is used in the U.S., Europe and the Middle East.
"Hey, we won the war," Shaw said in an interview. "Is it not in our interests to have the most advanced system that we possibly can that can then become the dominant standard in the region?
Here is a GSM vs CDMA map of the world. Notice that ALL of the countries in the Middle East are GSM only. Introducing a CDMA network into the region effectively prevents local cellular companies from bidding on Iraqi work projects.
There is a long, taudry history of Darrel Issa pushing Qualcomm's CDMA, the worldwide loser in the GSM/CDMA battle, on Iraq.
As US troops were fighting their way to Baghdad, there was already a fierce bidding war to slide CDMA into Iraq. As the Register notes:
Spread-spectrum radio began life as a military technology; Qualcomm grew fat on Pentagon pork defense contracts in the late Reagan years as it sought to tame CDMA for civilian use. Which it eventually did, after many delays, and with some admirable panache. Only CDMA arrived, when it eventually did arrive - three years after co-founder Dr Jacobs promised - too late to make an impact on the cellphone industry as it was. The world had multilaterally decided on an older time-division digital technology several years previously.
The result is that the world has a single standard, and enjoys economies of scale and very, very cool gadgets. The USA on the other hand decided to allow four incompatible standards to battle it out, thus blocking innovation from overseas, and allowing cellphone carriers to play atrocious bait and switch games with cellphone users.
Like so many things connected to the CPA and Iraq, the whole wireless phone contracting process has been tainted with corruption. As fighting was going on, MCI was awarded a contract to develop a wireless phone network in Iraq.
WorldCom's Iraq deal assailed
Critics wonder why MCI got contract after fraud scandal
By BRIAN BERGSTEIN
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK -- The Pentagon made an interesting choice when it hired a U.S. company to build a small wireless phone network in Iraq: MCI, aka WorldCom Inc., perpetrator of the biggest accounting fraud in U.S. business and not exactly a big name in cellular service.
The Iraq contract incensed WorldCom rivals and government watchdogs who say Washington has been too kind to the company since WorldCom revealed its $11 billion accounting fraud and plunged into bankruptcy last year.
"We don't understand why MCI would be awarded this business, given its status as having committed the largest corporate fraud in history," AT&T Corp. spokesman Jim McGann said. "There are many qualified, financially stable companies that could have been awarded that business, including us."
The whole Bush approach to Iraq's economy is about the same as GI's who robbed Iraqis during searches of their home. It was never about helping Iraqis, but getting rich. Foisting CDMA on Iraq was never in Iraq's best interest. Any more than the flag they cooked up.
As I watched the BBC News last night, Iraqis outside Fallujah took a new Iraqi flag and burned it. As I laughed, the presenter said that the locals called it the flag of the infidel.
It it any surprise that someone connected to this CDMA fiasco now needs a lawyer?
I admit that during my convelenscence that I watch a lot of TV. Part of the reason is that my cousin lost my reading classes, and at 39, I need them as much as I did at 12. And I needed them then.
But I don't watch it with an empty mind. If you catch Dr. Phil or Oprah, a lot of their shows revolve people's money problems. When a couple starts bickering, sure the glossy stuff is about sex and childcare, but at the root is money.
On Oprah, one family owed $92,000 in debt, many in legally usurious "payday loans". What did their family have for that massive debt? A computer on payments, a camcorder, a truck costing $700 a month. In short, junk.
The wife was addicted to spending. She bought useless crap because it made her feel good.
Here's a simple rule: never buy any electronics on time. If you don't have the cash, leave the flat screen TV at the store. Buying a depreciating asset with credit, which is what a computer is, is stupid. You have to replace it every three years. Which is why I use used ones and build my own. You never want to go in hock for a computer.
More and more, these shows are dealing with couples with financial problems. Now, the "expert" they had wanted people to cut their cable and cellphone bills. But that's bullshit thinking. You could probably save more by adapting the way you shop and eat than not paying for cable. After all, this isn't 1980. We now pay for TV. You can look to chop channels, like Showtime, or get a cheaper cellphone plan. He suggested that "you use a payphone". Well, that's not going to work if you have small kids and need to keep in touch with them.
One of the most expensive things you have in your home is your landline phone, yet most people never look at the bill. A lot of bills people get, they never examine. They just pay them.
The problem with a lot of the financial advice handed out on TV is that itn isn't realistic. People get in debt because of lving above their means. Hell, this woman was bitching about going to the dollar store with a Louis Vutton purse. Uh, honey, if you hadn't bought that pointless purse, maybe you wouldn't be broke now.
Americans have lost the distinction between quality and cost. They see some celebrity, who gets a whopping discount on their purchase, and they have to have them. I once passed by the Manolo Blahnik boutique in Midtown one day. You have never seen skimpier shoes. When you hear an actress praise these shoes, or Jimmy Choo's or a Vera Wang dress, they aren't paying retail. Hell, just the mention might be a paid endorsement. They may get it for free. The trick is to lure you in to pay the retail they don't.
Now, I'm not against quality. I will pay good money for quality items, like a suit. Now that I can wear them, I'd buy a Brooks Brothers suit without hesitation, if I had the cash. The same with a Mercedes or BMW. Why? Because if I can afford them, I know they will last me a long time. But this year's Armani? I am not George Clooney, sorry. I don't make that kind of cash. Nor can I pretend to.
Too many people go into debt, not for their own business or a home improvement, but over status items. A too expensive car, too much for their home, things they cannot hope to keep if times go south.
I'll never forget this. On an Oprah, a woman wanted to buy an $800K house while her husband couldn't come close to affording this. She had no idea about financial management, no idea of the down payment, the mortgage payments, much less the property taxes. All these very expensive things which would not only affect her income, but her lifestyle for years to come.
A fancy house is nice, but not when you work 60 hours a week to pay for it. And then can lose it at the first economic dowturn.
Just today, Dr. Phil was dealing with a family which had a deeply troubled nine year old, but the husband was working 60-80 hours a week. Well, what do you think happens when you spend so much time out of the home. Dr. Phil had to tell the guy to take some time off, and he wasn't the first guy to be told this.
We have a cycle of buy and bust with consumer spending, People are never educated in school about the basics of the economy. So many people define their lives by vanity purchases which have no real appreciable value. It's one thing to buy a Coach purse or bag which will last a decade or more, but another to buy a bag which will be unfashionable next year.
The fact that many people are more interested in toys, whether Xboxes and Playstations 2 or Air Jordan's, throwback jerseys, than the kind of purchases which bring real value, or even saving money. Yeah, Jay-Z looks great in a throwback jersey, but he's a multimillionare who can afford that stuff, most of us aren't.
The most amazingly stupid thing I've heard was on Suze Orman, where this guy took money from his IRA to buy a laptop and PDA. Wha? You take money from your retirement fund for a depreciable device which will have to be replaced in three years?
Oh yeah, the guy was unemployed at the time.
I also am bothered by the tightwads who become rich. This guy was chortling over shopping at Costco. Well, you know, some of the things I want can't be found at Costco. I don't take pride in buying in bulk and tying my purchases to coupons. It's unseemly. Just as displaying great wealth is vulgar, so is excessive cheapness. It's embarassing and degrading.
Saving money is smart, but being cheap is as sinful as being wasteful.
The smart thing to do is to live below your means. Live on less than you make and when bad times come, you may survive them without too much pain. If not, when they repo your car and foreclose your home, you have no one to blame.
WHEN friends come for dinner we tend to cook what we know. There is no sense attempting sea urchin napoleons when roasted chicken and braised pork shoulder have proven to be crowd pleasers. But life gets dull without a challenge, so we decided to stir some risk and ambition into our routine, composing a spring dinner inspired by the new wave chefs, the ones turning culinary tradition on its head from suburban Barcelona to the Lower East Side of New York.
Even if you have never sampled their handiwork, you may have heard about such haute-cuisine iconoclasts as Heston Blumenthal, the chef at the Fat Duck in Bray, England, which recently earned three Michelin stars for a repertory that includes bacon-and-egg ice cream and sardine-on-toast sorbet (Carvel take note). There's Ferran Adrià, the chef of El Bulli in Rosas, Spain, and the de facto dean of avant-garde chefs, who spends six months of every year in a Barcelona lab refining such inventions as wonton wrappers made from the "skin" of scalded milk. On these shores are visionaries like Grant Achatz at Trio, who has introduced Evanston, Ill., diners to the pleasures of lobster slow-cooked with Thai iced tea.
They're the sort of chefs who consider themselves artists and philosophers more than fish grillers and asparagus poachers, testing the limits of a diner's trust (and often charging a king's ransom for the privilege), but succeeding far more often than they fail.
As for us, we had an agenda other than simply shaking off the winter doldrums with a night of kitchen gymnastics. We wanted to rifle through the chefs' high-concept tool bags for any techniques or tools that amateur cooks might take home. An encounter earlier this year with a bright red pixie dust at the Manhattan restaurant WD-50 had encouraged us: the powder had a fruity, exotic and deliciously intense pepper flavor. It was in fact a common bell pepper, Wylie Dufresne, WD-50's chef, revealed, dehydrated in a simple device you can buy on eBay for less than the price of a fancy cocktail, and then pulverized in a coffee grinder. If we could learn to tease sophisticated flavors from everyday sources, the exercise would be worth the risk.
So we ordered a dehydrator (rather than risk losing an eBay auction, we bought a brand-new Nesco/American Harvest dehydrator direct from the manufacturer, $59.95 at www.nesco.com) and went to work planning the menu. The cookbook "El Bulli 1998-2002," the nearly 500-page, nine-pound volume by Mr. Adrià and his associates seemed the ideal place to start, and fortunately a friend lent us a copy — it's about $200. Flipping through the book was an instant immersion in the new wave mindset, where sweet meets savory in alarming ways (olive and white chocolate, tuna and black currant), where hot and cold are transposed (barbecued corn sorbet, hot mayonnaise) and where textural expectations are upended wherever possible (cauliflower is couscouslike, almonds foamy).
Some of Mr. Adrià's tools seemed out of reach — anybody got a Pacojet, the Swiss-made, 2,000 r.p.m. frozen-food processor? Or a Thermomix, the German steamer/food processor? And the photos of the superminimalist kitchen at El Bulli with leagues of lab-coated chefs at attention, were intimidating. But the book got us thinking outside of the box.
Now most of us are not going to cook haute cusine at home, or even try. But this interested me because it covers a theme I've been thinking about for a while, what do you keep on hand at home.
There are a few basics which we all have, sugar, salt, black pepper, eggs. But whens someone raised the issue of canned olives, it set me to thinking. Fresh olives are available in delis, supermarkets, farmers markets. If you really wanted an olive, a nice, salty olive, this isn't the 1970's. Get fresh ones.
The same wirh cheese, bread and vegetables. We can get them fresh and eat them daily.
Americans tend to shop as hoarders. We get frozen food, hoard it, try to buy days out for bread and cheese and other things which taste best when fresh. When my mother was a girl, she went to the butcher for my grandmother, everyone did in the 30's and 40's. It was common and well understood. A supermarket was for canned goods. People expected to get things like milk and bread and meat as they needed them. Not to store and hoard.
We know most Europeans don't shop like this. They tend to buy as they need and cook as they need. But it is rare in France to cook at home for guests. Most eating in Europe tends to be either intimate, and at home, or takes place outside. Americans tend to cherish home cooking, even as more of us lose the basic skill of cooking.
But it occurs to me that to cook, you need some creativity and some flexibility and that requires both tools and basic food stuffs.
Everyone needs a good knife. A good knife matters more than most things, because it is so flexible. What is a good knife? One which has a reliable handle and feels good in your hand. That's it. Some folks might like a Wustoff, finely balanced and expensive, some might like a single cast piece of metal. It depends solely on your tastes.
A non-stick frying pan also is crucial. It can do most things on most days. I'd get one with an oven-proof handle. One of the great tricks of cooking is to start something on a stove and finish it off in the oven. You can then get crunchy and not oily.
I live without a food processor, but I can see it being useful. Unlike a bread machine. Most people get it, use it a couple of times and let it sit. Now, I know there are some of you who use it every day, and there are those of use who floss daily. You remain exceptions.
A deep, large pot is essential. It can serve as both pasta boiler and less admitted, a fryer. Instead of buying a dedicated fryer, a relatively deep pot can fry up most of what you need, especially with the metal basket most of the good pasta pots have.
What essential food stuffs should you keep around? A can of tuna, a can of salmon, rice, pasta, a lot of spices, canned tomatoes, frozen veggies, at least one frozen piece of meat, breakfast meats, eggs, canned mushrooms, kosher salt, flour, olive oil, pizza dough, two kinds of cheese.
A quick pizza is a great dinner when you're wiped out. Omletes and even sausages sandwiches can be a filling meal. If you get frozen peppers and onions, you pick up a roll and you have a hero in five minutes. The thing is to keep around food that you can fix quickly and when tired. Not just frozen chicken fingers and Hot Pockets, but real food which doesn't take forever to cook. Kielbasa is a quick meal on its own. Kielbasa and eggs is heavenly.
Quick cook rice and salmon with onions is one of my favorite meals.
The trick to stocking your cubbard is to have food you can cook quickly. Which is not a Lean Cusine and a diet soda. Sure, you can cook that quickly, but it isn't really a meal. It's frozen crap ladened with salt, which is what preservatives really are.
You should be able to have a hot, fresh meal when you come home, one you fix. The key is to make sure that you have the basic ingredients and tools to execute a decent meal. Yeah, you can save money and have better tasting food, but with a little foresight and planning, you can actually have food you can enjoy when all you want to do is sit down and watch the black people get voted off American Idol.:)
Send Jobs to India? Some Find It's Not Always Best
Send Jobs to India? Some Find It's Not Always Best
By EDUARDO PORTER
Published: April 28, 2004
Even as the prospect of high-skilled American jobs moving to low-wage countries like India ignites hot political debate, some entrepreneurs are finding that India's vaunted high-technology work force is not always as effective as advertised.
"For three years we tried all kinds of models, but nothing has worked so far," said the co-founder and chief technology officer of Storability Software in Southborough, Mass. After trying to reduce costs by contracting out software programming tasks to India, Storability brought back most of the work to the United States, where it costs four times as much, and hired more programmers here. The "depth of knowledge in the area we want to build software is not good enough" among Indian programmers, the executive said.
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If it sounds like "Made in the U.S.A." jingoism, consider this: The entrepreneur, Hemant Kurande, is Indian. He was born and raised near Bombay and received his master's degree from the Indian Institute of Technology in that city, now known as Mumbai. Mr. Kurande is not alone in his views on "outsourcing" technology work to India. As more companies in the United States rush to take advantage of India's ample supply of cheap yet highly trained workers, even some of the most motivated American companies — ones set up or run by executives born and trained in India — are concluding that the cost advantage does not always justify the effort.
For many of the most crucial technology tasks, they find that a work force operating within the American business environment better suits their needs.
"Only certain kinds of tasks can be outsourced — what can be set down as a set of rules," said Nariman Behravesh, chief economist of Global Insight, a forecasting and consulting firm based in Waltham, Mass. "That which requires more creativity is more difficult to manage at a distance.
Nightline is going to read the name of every American soldier killed in combat on Friday. The Newshour with Jim Leher and This Week with George Stehpanopolous note the dead every week, but no one has read all of the known dead at one place and one time.
It would be nice if we could do the same for the Iraqis, but since there is no real government, they don't collect the names of kidnapped, raped and murdered girls, the crime victims and those gunned down by American troops. We many have killed 8000 people, but the occupation may have killed twice that many. Not even the anti-war movement sites those other, incidental deaths as our fault, but they are. The lack of security is as much our fault as an errant artilery shell.
There was a debate on Atrios yesterday, where some people tried to claim that the soldiers dying in Iraq weren't dying in their name because they opposed the war.
Well, that's a nice fanatsy, but the AC-130 pounding the shit out of Fallujah doesn't have a sign saying "Sponsored by Rush Limbaugh and EIB". It is an American plane, crewed by American citizens, not just like the readers here, but who may well have been readers here or be readers here. They don't come from caves, but nice homes, with nice American parents, and they live in America, supported by American tax dollars.
We would like to say that because we opposed the war, those horrible things happening in Iraq are not our fault. But they are.
We are all guilty.
It will be to our everlasting shame that we watched Bush get elected, then watched him lie about 9/11, prostituting it so badly that Karen Hughes could compare the pro-choice movement to terrorists. An idea Osama Bin Laden and other Muslim fundamentalists, who are rabidly anti-family planning, would agree with.
What was our response?
We let some anti-semitic wackjobs from ANSWER define much of the anti-war movement for a long time. With their "out of everywhere" signs and their refusal to let supporters of Israel speak, many of us were far too silent about their excesses. Now, no one says much, even as Bush's insane tough talk ensures more Americans will die. Our Congress looks for some kind of fix so this won't end like George Bush's others failures. Maybe if he hid in Alabama for a year and took Dick Cheney with him, we might salvage this.
The troops fight in our name because we cannot opt out of that. They fight for us because that is what you do when you take that oath. We can't say "oh no, I disagree with the war, so they don't die for me."
Wrong.
They die for you because the people you voted for sent them to Iraq, and your tax dollars keep them alive. They don't get to choose where they go or what they do there, except at the sharp end of the weapon, where every choice comes down to your morals.
The sad reality is that our troops are attacked, every day, while Iraqis stand around and watch these men die. When people bemoan Iraqi casualities, they forget a good portion of them were trying to kill Americans, and many others are killed in response to combat. The majority of Iraqis say nice things in polls, but the IED's still get planted, the militias still roam the streets and American soldiers die. This is a pointless exercise, a futile one, because you cannot fix anything when the reaction is indifference and silence.
We are all guilty. The bombs dropped and the bullets fired come from Americans no different than you or me. It does not matter to an Iraqi family if we oppose the war when their son is killed. Americans killed him. Our tax dollars are making their lives hell. Almost no one in our Congress wants to end this madness. So why should an Iraqi care if there is an anti-war movement. It isn't stopping the war for them.
The only way to reedeem ourselves is to force Bush from office and force Kerry to end the war.
We don't get to pretend the troops didn't die for us, that the bombs dropped aren't our fault. We pay our taxes, we obey the law, we let Bush wage this war, they died for us. Can you blame Iraqis if they aren't exactly impressed if you opposed the war personally. It isn't helping them. Our Americn soldiers are kiling their children and our lives remain undisturbed. The Iraqis have no such luxury.
The sad part is that we can't end the war on our own. But neither can we opt out of the consequences of waging it. We can't pretend we, as Americans, aren't stakeholders in this awful, as all wars are awful, war. We are all guilty and will be until it ends.
Wednesday, April 28, 2004 Posted: 0219 GMT (1019 HKT)
The ski resorts say they will return the guns.
RENO, Nevada (AP) -- The U.S. military is demanding the return of five howitzers that two Sierra Nevada ski resorts use to prevent avalanches, saying it needs the guns for the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Alpine Meadows and Mammoth Mountain received the artillery pieces on loan from the Army and began using them last year to fire rounds into mountainsides and knock snow loose.
But the ski resorts received word earlier this month that the Army's Tank Automotive and Armaments Command at the Rock Island Arsenal in Illinois needs the howitzers back.
"I need to have them back in the troops' hands within 60 to 90 days," said Don Bowen, the Army command's team leader in charge of the howitzers.
"It's a very short timeframe to get them serviceable and back into the theater in southwest Asia. Afghanistan-Iraq is the immediate concern."
On the Daily Show yesterday, Bob Kerrey said he had left off his Naval service on his first resume. This from a Medal of Honor winner, one of three SEAL's to win the medal in Vietnam.
While Bush dregdes up Vietnam to discrete John Kerry, he forgets exactly how ugly a time it was.
I first became familiar with John Kerry in the mid-1980's, when I read the Winter Soldier hearings transcripts. They were bound, like all hearing transcripts, and lots of soliders were angry about their service in Vietnam. People forget the insane tension which had existed in the US during 1970-71.
Vets were caught in the middle between anti-war protestors, who had only recently gained steam, and the working class who'd fought in WWII and Korea. Construction workers attacked an anti-war protest in downtown Manhattan, while the White House chortled. Domestic enemies of Nixon faced the Huston plan, a full-scale violation of their rights. Only J. Edgar Hoover's common sense prevented the White House from making the Plumbers illegal break-ins state policy.
The US Army was collapsing, drug use exploding, combat refusals rife, fragging (the murder of officers and senior NCO's) common. People have forgotten how divided the US was. Veterans were routinely attacked on college campuses. Wearing a fatgue jacket with a unit patch was asking to be called baby killer.
And while stories of vets being spit on at airports were probably fictional, the open hostility they faced was not. Admitting service in Vietnam was an easy way to be scorned by both pro-war supporters and anti-war activists. The reason Vets now seem so self-protective and cloistered is that they only had each other to turn to.
The Nixon Administration was full of big talk, but their VA hospitals were rundown and as Bob Kerry found out, filled with rats, as one ran over his chest.
John Kerry joined the anti-war movement older and probably angrier than a lot of his peers. He knew the folly that he saw was wrong. So, yes, like a lot of angry young men, especially those who had been betrayed by both their government and their peers, said things which didn't sound great. But the cold hard fact was there were atrocities in Vietnam, as there are in every war. The Toledo Blade just won a Pulitzer for uncovering the activities of Tiger Force, a unit of the 101st which killed over a hundred innocent Vietnamese.
The vets who are so indignant about Kerry's public statements in 1971 are for the most part lying or didn't see enough combat to know people at war kill civilians as well as the enemy.
For Bush to drag this all up, especially behind the skirts of Karen Hughes, is insane. Bush not only supported the war, he avoided service in it, and thus benefitted from being a part-time soldier, which advanced his career, such that it was.
What people forget is that despite the success of John Kerry, Vietnam was like a giant weight on people's lives long after the war was over. To say the words "Vietnam Vet" was to create a stigma which lasted well into the 1980's. All those who didn't serve, the Clinton's, the Cheney's, they had their careers enahanced while those who did either downplayed their service or faced roadblocks. Bob Kerry didn't hide his military service for no reason. Employers simply did not hire Vets. They didn't and they never said why. My father worked with Vietnam Vets and they had a brutal time in the 70's and 80's.
Most people didn't go to Canada or lie to avoid the draft. Going to Canada was a lifetime decision. You couldn't expect to come back. Meanwhile over 30,000 Canadians served in Vietnam. So the idea that they wanted draft dodgers, deserters and draft avoiders has been overblown in popular legend. More than a few men with short haircuts were turned over to the FBI by the Mounties. While going into exile was a brave decision, so was facing the draft.
Bush made his decision, one that many people tried to make, which was to avoid service in Vietnam. The problem with what Bush did, as opposed to Clinton was that he supported the war. Now he's trying to denigrate Kerry's service, which should engrage people. Kerry didn't take the easy way out. He didn't avoid combat, and he could have, having served a tour off Vietnam on a destroyer. Instead, in a span of five months, he won three Purple Hearts, a Bronze Star and a Silver Star, a remarkable record for a junior officer. There is absolutely no question about his service or his personal bravery.
John Kerry did what George Bush never had the guts to do, which is face the Vietcong. Bush wanted the aura of military service and risk, without the actual risk of death. Now flying a jet is risky, but Bush couldn't even do that. At least a year of his service was missing from his record. They don't even know he showed up and they don't know why he was booted from flight status.
George Bush could have gotten his daddy to send him into an F-4 Squadron in Thailand, but he didn't. He wanted to emulate daddy without daddy's balls. He refused to fight in a war he supported. For God's sake, he could have been a supply officer at Udon, Thailand, stayed drunk and still served his country. Daddy fought the Japanese and was shot down. Bush wanted to be a pilot without the risk. A lifetime of personal cowardice which continues today.
The new Iraqi flag reminds me of what the Israelis would impose over the West Bank, so everyone would know they had a colony. The colors are an anti-semite's dream, and Iraq is filled with Jew-haters, convinced they are being colonized by Israel, and who's people are buying up houses in Baghdad.
This flag is ridiculous, because it violates traditional Islamic and Arab rules for flags, which include green, white, black and red. Blue and white is most often seen on fire in the Arab world, because it is usually in the Israeli flag.
The colors in the Arab flag have specific meanings which respresent Islam and Arab nationalism. None of which are represented by the current Iraqi flag.
One would have to wonder, exactly why someone would pick a flag which reflects nothing of 1500 years of Islamic and Arab culture, and only make a nod to it by throwing in a crescent of the wrong color.
Riverbend has a rather concise comment on the new "Iraqi" flag:
I also heard today that the Puppets are changing the flag. It looks nothing like the old one and at first I was angry and upset, but then I realized that it wouldn't make a difference. The Puppets are illegitimate, hence their constitution is null and void and their flag is theirs alone. It is as representative of Iraq as they are- it might as well have "Made in America" stitched along the inside seam. It can be their flag and every time we see it, we'll see Chalabi et al. against its pale white background.
My email buddy and fellow Iraqi S.A. in America said it best in her email, "I am sure we are all terribly excited about the extreme significance of the adoption by the completely illegitimate Iraq Puppet Council of a new national piece of garishly colored cloth. Of course the design of the new national rag was approved by the always tastefully dressed self-declared counter terrorism expert viceroy of Iraq, Paul Bremer, who is well known for wearing expensive hand-stitched combat boots with thousand dollar custom tailored suits and silk designer ties.
The next big piece of news will be the new pledge of allegiance to said national rag, and the empire for which it stands. The American author of said pledge has yet to be announced."
Now they can burn a third flag in Arab street demonstrations.
By Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 27, 2004; Page A01
While attention remains riveted on the rising count of Americans killed in action -- more than 100 so far in April -- doctors at the main combat support hospital in Iraq are reeling from a stream of young soldiers with wounds so devastating that they probably would have been fatal in any previous war.
More and more in Iraq, combat surgeons say, the wounds involve severe damage to the head and eyes -- injuries that leave soldiers brain damaged or blind, or both, and the doctors who see them first struggling against despair.
For months the gravest wounds have been caused by roadside bombs -- improvised explosives that negate the protection of Kevlar helmets by blowing shrapnel and dirt upward into the face. In addition, firefights with guerrillas have surged recently, causing a sharp rise in gunshot wounds to the only vital area not protected by body armor.
The neurosurgeons at the 31st Combat Support Hospital measure the damage in the number of skulls they remove to get to the injured brain inside, a procedure known as a craniotomy. "We've done more in eight weeks than the previous neurosurgery team did in eight months," Poffenbarger said. "So there's been a change in the intensity level of the war."
Numbers tell part of the story. So far in April, more than 900 soldiers and Marines have been wounded in Iraq, more than twice the number wounded in October, the previous high. With the tally still climbing, this month's injuries account for about a quarter of the 3,864 U.S. servicemen and women listed as wounded in action since the March 2003 invasion.
About half the wounded troops have suffered injuries light enough that they were able to return to duty after treatment, according to the Pentagon.
The others arrive on stretchers at the hospitals operated by the 31st CSH. "These injuries," said Lt. Col. Stephen M. Smith, executive officer of the Baghdad facility, "are horrific."
100 killed, 600 wounded.
And the Iraqis have 800 dead and god knows how many wounded.
Our war in Iraq is not going well, except to the White House.
Karen Hughes, a campaign adviser to President Bush, described herself as "very troubled" by the fact that Kerry only throw away his ribbons -- not the medals themselves.
"He only pretended to throw his," she charged Sunday on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer."
"Now, I can understand if out of conscience you take a principled stand and you would decide that you were so opposed to this that you would actually throw your medals. But to pretend to do so, I think that's very revealing."
Here's a wonderful idea: why doesn't Karen Hughes shut the fuck up? What does she know about Vietnam, being under fire or being wounded.
Her boss was too much of a pussy to go to Canada, blow his eardrum out, much less go to Vietnam, happily sending a poor Texan to take his place, so he ran to Daddy's friends and got slid into a "champagne" squadron protecting the US from Mexico, and then coudn't even complete his service. He got booted off of flight status.
Meanwhile, people were trying to kill Kerry every day he was in Vietnam.
They're dragging out people who don't know the man, don't have Silver Stars and didn't serve with him to play the same game they did with John McCain. But their problem is that Kerry isn't going to take this, since it is the seminal event in his life, and seems ready to toss it back in Bush's face.
Bush and his campaign keep trying to press this issue, and it bites them in the ass. Kerry was fearlessly courageous, and won two medals in less than five months. While the Bronze Star is awarded frequently, the Silver Star is not.
It's nice to see the chickenhawks quibble over Kerry's wounds. Have any of them been wounded in combat? No? Any of them aware of the lifelong pain most shrapnel wounds can cause? No? Then they should all be ashamed of themselves. My father was wounded by shrapnel in a training exercise in Japan. It is still a nasty wound, decades later. And he didn't get a Purple Heart, either. It wasn't massive, but it sure as hell hurt. Anyone who hasn't been wounded and isn't a doctor is in no position to discuss this.
John Kerry was wounded in the service of his country. He was highly decorated. Unlike Bush, he went to Vietnam, already opposed to the war. Yet, he sought out combat duty, writing his request during the Tet Offensive and despite his opposition, served honorably. His actions were consistent with his beliefs.
There aren't many words I would use to express my contempt for this tactic. Why even raise the subject? Kerry served honorably, Bush slacked his way through. It shouldn't matter now. But it does. The Bush campaign is, dishonorably and disgustingly slandering Kerry's service. I don't care if his first Purple Heart was a scratch. He got it in combat. His third certainly wasn't, considering he picked up a SF Officer from the drink with a wounded arm. The man was so impressed, he put him in for a Silver Star, and he got a Bronze
George Bush avoided ANY service in Vietnam. He asked to not serve overseas. He wrangled his way into the Guard because of his daddy. He didn't even attend OCS. Yet, he allows his campaign to attack Kerry's war record?
Bush has been a coward his entire life. John Kerry clearly was not. If they want to compare the two records, let's do so. Too bad he can't get daddy to buy him a few medals now. Bush's entire career is the result of a father's errant love for his son. He never asked of his son what he asked of himself. Which is a tragedy. Maybe if he had, maybe his son wouldn't be the cowardly failure that he is today. He even has to hide behind a woman to attack Kerry. If he thinks Kerry didn't deserve his awards, why not say so himself? No, like a coward, he sends a woman to do his dirty work. If he were a man, he'd say it himself or drop the issue.
I don't watch American Idol, I watch Gilmore Girls instead. Why? I think the writing on Gilmore Girls is some of the best on TV and I think most of the people one American Idol can't sing to save their lives. Even though the subject matter may not, at first, be appealing, I will watch or read anything which is well written or compelling, which is how I've been drawn into watching Nova, American Chopper and Trading Spaces, even the Roman Empire in the First Century.
How do I know if the writing is good? Well, if I watch something and it makes sense, like many of the romantic complications on Gilmore Girls, something many shows get wrong or just recycle from movies (how many times can Ross and Rachel play at being a couple), then I'm going to watch it.
Of course, I have to excuse 24's plot holes because any group of writers who can keep the plot moving, which is a pretty hard task, deserves praise. You try moving a story along from plot point to plot point for 22 episodes. Few people can do it for two hours. Ever see the Battle of Algiers? That movie is captivating because it moves quickly and there are few movies which do.
But, if anything is a Rorhschact test on the American pysche, American Idol is it, at least with teenagers. And as this piece from Salon indicates, there is something else going on:
Take, for example, last week's results on "American Idol." As I mentioned in my last column, there are three extremely talented contestants on "American Idol" this year, all of whom happen to be black women. The other contestants range from just OK to cringe-inducingly bad. This past week, when Ryan Seacrest announced the three contestants who received the least number of votes, most viewers assumed that Diana DiGarmo and John Stevens, two white teenagers who should be practicing their box steps in show choir instead of paining the nation with their clumsy karaoke routines, would surely land in the bottom heap.
Not so, America! Instead, La Toya London, Fantasia Barrino and Jennifer Hudson, all of whom were praised to high heaven for their fantastic performances, were in the bottom three. The judges were asked what they thought of the results. They expressed disappointment, but reminded us that, after all, this is a democracy.
Others talked about a conspiracy.
Um, racism isn't really a conspiracy. It's pretty much out in the open. This is a racist country. Most people in this country are racists. Every single black person in this country knows it. Can't you just take their word for it? Even if you don't personally see evidence of racism in this country, can't you trust those who are in the position to see it, those who are telling you, day after day, that it's there?
Or do you not trust them?
Now, having seen just enough of the show to understand this, the black girls are the only ones with real talent. But Idol is as much about appeal as talent. And there is clearly a racial cast to all "reality" shows. Was anyone really surprised that Donald Trump, a man well known for his racial issues, didn't hand over a company to Harvard MBA Kwame? Or that in the history of reality shows, only ONE black contestant has won.
And as Dave Chappelle so adroitly pointed out, black male characters are usually driven off shows like the Real World?
The reality, however, is a bit more complex than racism. Remember, Ruben Studdard won the last season and Justin Guarini, who is biracial, came in second in the first season. I'd argue that it isn't racism alone, although that's a factor, but an unwillingness to vote for certain kinds of black people.
On reality skill shows, black men are at a disavantage. On talent-based shows, black women are at a disadvantage. While it is perfectly fine for black men to sing, and a lot of this is based on sexual attraction as much as talent, black women are simply discarded. No matter how talented black women are, they will lose to either a cute white girl or a man. Who do you think watches and votes on American Idol? White teenage girls. Why else do you think Clay Aiken came in second and got an insane amount of publicity?
As to the question if white people believe black people's claims of racism, of course not. No way in hell. White people live in a state of denial. Which is how, as Atrios keeps pointing out, Howie Kurtz could harp on Jayson Blair, seeing only his race, and not his asskissing and backstabbing skills, and ignore Jack Kelley, who wrote some of the most turgid, racially and ethinically tained prose since Theodore Bilbo published Segregation or Mongrelization, a copy of which is on Stormfront.
Unless directly confronted with evidence of racial bias, most whites will treat minority claims of racism with the sort of eyerolling denial small children get when monsters are under their bed. But unlike the monsters, whom to date have eaten no children, racism is quite real.
White people can see it, as in police stops of minority kids, and excuse it. They excused the beating of Rodney King "because he was threatening". He was on the ground, getting stomped, the only threat he posed was bleeding on their uniforms.
You can see that the most talented singers on American Idol gets the least votes. Why? Well, it just happens that they are black women. Even the show's hosts and judges were stunned by the result. Now, people will deny it, as they deny the open racism of US troops in Iraq, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
Today's abortion rights march was successful and hopefully reminded people that pro-choice is not a slogan, but critical for millions of women and the people who sleep with them.
This is the nonsense Karen Hughes spewed today:
"I think that after September 11, the American people are valuing life more and we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life," she said. "President Bush has worked to say, let's be reasonable, let's work to value life, let's reduce the number of abortions, let's increase adoptions. And I think those are the kinds of policies the American people can support, particularly at a time when we're facing an enemy and, really, the fundamental issue between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life."
Huh? What does 9/11 have to do with abortion? Nothing. Bush knows if he said he thought abortion was a sin next to gay marriage, he'd be doomed. But he is so close to the Jesus freaks we know his personal prayers include the "unborn". Except when it may embarass him or his kin.
The fact is that every doctor who worked in an emergency room before 1970 knew exactly what abortions were, because they would see the effects every weekend. Lye, hangers, self-infliction of wounds. Women were desperate to end their pregnancies and did anything to do so.
Hughes is offensive as hell, considering that her boss revels in death. Death row in Texas, death in Iraq. Hell, he's even been accused of paying for an abortion in his Prince Hal days. His daughter, Jenna, is rumored to have had two abortions, on the account she likes to get drunk and sleep around and there are witnesses for both. Although none for the abortions except people who can't talk.
Not that it should matter. No one should have a child they don't want and can't care for. Seeing teenage mothers struggle with children they can't take care of is far from a pretty sight. The pro-life movement makes claims to care about these kids, but you don't see them talking about adopting seven year olds.
Most people rarely ever discuss their abortions. It remains hidden long after the fact. There is little joy or casualness about the issue. No one does it frivilously or without thinking. The additional cruelty the pro-life movement inflicts on people seems both pointless and needless. No harridan screaming keep your baby is going to buy Pampers or clean shit 10 months later. And if they think abortion is bad, what about child abuse? Nothing like seeing a 14 month old with it's head caved in.
The pro-life movement is based on a smug sense of personal moral superiority, as in "we're saving babies". Which they aren't, of course. They aren't saving anything, just annoying and scaring the clinic workers.
But what's even worse is the way many of these folks are against birth control and sex education. The Army realized that abstinance education didn't work in 1940 and handed out billions of condoms. And don't think those 11 Bravos in Iraq are going without. Condoms are part of their basic equipment. But when a servicewoman gets pregnant, she either goes home and has the kid, or pays for the abortion out of her own pocket. Why? To satisfy the right wingers. No federal funds for abortion.
This ridiculous notion extends to foreign policy. No funding of family planning programs overseas, no matter how it benefits the people affected.
These people aren't just a danger to pregnant women, but to everyone's reproductive freedom. They want schools to tell kids not to have sex, which is as successful as their don't go crash diets and stop smoking dope programs. In other words, a complete and utter failure. No culture is as obsessed with sex and as ashamed of it. We pour $11 Billion into porn yet debate Howard Stern's language. America is a land of vast sexual hypocrisy.
It is important that the national debate not be reduced into a sterile conversation about abortion. I'm not going to have one in this lifetime, yet these people pose a clear and present danger to my reproductive freedom. I want to know my partner can get birth control so we might be able to plan when we have kids, or that I can buy condoms without a hassle any time or any place. Or that my niece and nephews are taught about sex and not some wacky absitnance program. Their religious impetus is fine for them but for most of us, who don't talk to Jesus every day, we'd like to live by common sense rules not dictated from God, at least directly.
Too often, the abortion debate is reduced to liberal spokeswomen on one side, and creepy bearded men using young women as their spokespersons. Most of whom are hypocrites and don't know it. Abortion is like combat in one sense, you have no idea what you'll do until you're faced with the decision. I'm sure some pro-choice women had their kids and kept marching. I'm positive some pro-life women have snuck into abortion clinics to dump their unwanted fetus.
The reason the pro-life movement offends me is simple: they are so certain of their cause and so indifferent to the consequences. No one chooses abortion casually. To vilify them or to act morally superior is dead wrong. It's a hard choice for anyone, at any time, one they wish they wouldn't have to make. To think, as Hughes's insulting words imply "we just need to respect life" is to reduce humn reporductive freedom to that of brood mares.
Part of freedom is to have the choice to have children or not and not have it dictated by people who think God has a pipeline to them and blessed them specially.
If you listen to John Kerry, you would think Iraq could be fixed. If you listened to Joe Biden, you would think all we have to do is defeat the insurgency and get the UN aboard. Even if you listened to Howard Dean, you would think the great sin was not getting the UN aboard.
The neocon's delusion was that we were invading France, 1944 and the Iraqi people were waiting for liberation. The reality is that we were invading Yugoslavia, 1943 and most of the country hating us.
The central problem is that we have no allies in Iraq. No Charles DeGaulle who was on our side. Instead, we had a shifty crook who most Iraqis will kill on sight. Without a base of support, no US occupation can last months, much less years. To be honest, I was surprised Sistani gave us a year. We will not get another one. I cringe when I hear Democratic politicians say we will need to be in Iraq for years. Because what legitimate government would allow us, the hated occupiers, to just set up bases there?
The British tried that game and were rewarded in 1941 with a Nazi-inspired rebellion.
The Democratic Party is in a bad position. They cannot say the obvious: we will be lucky to escape Iraq with our army. The American public still conflates the war on terror with Iraq and the reality is that the two are as related as lemurs and goldfish. So they say things, which if the Europeans didn't hate Bush with a passion usually reserved for mistresses, any EU MP would fall down laughing to refute. No, NATO isn't going to Iraq. No, the UN will not bail you out.
Then you get Biden as well as Howard Dean saying "we need arab troops on the ground."
Huh? Which ruler risks being overthrown by doing that? Egypt? Syria? Algeria? Morocco? Nope, nope, nope, nope. The Arabs are not going to join a fight being quickly tied to Israel's eternal war with the Palerstinians. Israel's assasination campaign has already had a blowback in Iraq. Those for mercenaries were killed inrevenge for the murder of Sheik Yassin. By endorsing Sharon's land theft for peace policy, even the Jordanians want nothing to do with Bush.
The new neocon theme "the other Arabs don't want democracy in Iraq" is nonsense. Arab states don't usually interfere in the internal machinations in other countries, except for the Saudi wahhbist imams, bringing madrassas to a country near you. They don't care how you run your counry as long as you control it.
Dean gets a lot of credit for being against the war, but his postwar solutions don't have much basis in current reality. Neither does John Kerry's.
The problem is security and we can't do anything to fix it. The Times says send more troops. Ok, where are they coming from? The National Guard Brigades will take six months to activate and become combat ready. And as a Times story so clearly notes, long deployments to combat sends Guard families into penury.
What no one says, and is self-evident, is that the US is missing it's Pakistani auxilliaries. We could use a couple of divisions of Pakistani troops to patrol the highways and Sadr City, but since Musharraf realized his head would be on a pike if he had agreed, they stayed home. We aren't misisng NATO, a few battalions of paras and mech infantry would be nice, but they won't change much. We need our Pakistani and Egyptian friends to kick in tens of thouands of troops. We had almost bribed the Indians into joining in and then that government realized that they were in trouble.
This constant expectation that The UN can make things right is also delusional. There is no evidence that the UN, any more than the US, can even be secured in Iraq, or that Iraqis want them there. While Sistani may trust them, to some degree, others may not be so willing.
Too many Democrats endorse the war aims without understanding what they truly entail. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) said on CNN that we have to "crack that nut" Fallujah, or it would be "a symbol to the Islamic world". Well, you can't crack anything with a one to one ratio of troops and that is what we have with the Marines in Fallujah. To too many Democrats, it's all about making Bush's policy work, when there is no way it can ever work. Killing more women and children is no solution and no matter what lies the Marines tell, they will kill more women and children unless they evacuate the entire city,
It's nausiating seeing all the hype fortaking on the resistance, as if they are a few bandits and not whole battalions of the Iraqi Army. They're attacking in platoon and company strength for God's sake. I'm tired of people mouthing the platitudes that "we can beat them." "They're not a military problem". So why haven't they been beaten? Why haven't the ammo dumps been blown up? They cut the highway to Baghdad. Sounds like a military problem to me.
Now, a year later, you want to add more troops? A year of combat experience and training for the resistance? With our Iraqi forces nearly useless in combat?
The Democrats are checkmated by Bush's faux-Western resolve. What he says sounds great to many people who do not follow the news daily. He sounds like he's in charge. In reality, he's a babbling idiot scaring no one. But to call him on that plays into the GOP's hands. The Iraqis have taken everything we've thrown at them and not quit. Bush, who is sure briefed differently, pretends to America that there is both a point to this war and it has something to do with protecting America. That we are fighting Saddam groupies.
In my ideal world, the Dems would challenge Bush, claim he's losing the war and decide to end it so we can reenforce Afghanistan. But that's electoral suicide until we are truly embarassed in Iraq. The sad fact is that pictures of coffins and 100 dead will not change mids.
You would think our ready acceptance of cease-fires would be a hint. But until we lose a company in an ambush or see thousands of Sadr City residents flooding into the Green Zone with weapons or some other horrific disaster, no one will speak the truth, which is that we have already lost Iraq, It only matters how we leave it.
The sad fact is that Iraq is an immoral war fought for reasons bordering on fantasy. A particularly American fantasy, where we ignore history, the conduct of our troops (who gunned down four kids in a routinely miserable display of fire discipline), and wonder why the Iraqis do not see what good people we are. It is utterly ridiculous for John Kerry to say we can stay in Iraq for years, a position hardly different than the anti-war Howard Dean often annunciated. We broke it, we fix it is not a policy. It is not an explaination for 700 dead Americans. It is, most importantly, not going to work.
We need to get out of Iraq before we are kicked out of Iraq and then start over.
April 4 began as a routine day in the slum. A 19-man patrol in four Humvees was escorting three Iraqi "honey wagons" on their rounds collecting sewage. Platoon leader Sgt. Shane Aguero noticed one unusual thing, though. "People were throwing more rocks than usual at the trucks and at our gunners. Our work crews were threatened at each stop. At the last place about 400 people said [to the workers] "˜if you come back we'll kill you.'" All three drivers hauled their cargo to the disposal site, dumped it and quit on the spot.
Next the patrol encountered a number of armed men in a mosque and told them the weapons would have to be confiscated. The militants refused, and the Humvees moved on after some muddled negotiations about how the weapons would be turned in at a future date. Around 5:40 p.m., the patrol rolled past the Sadr Bureau, headquarters for the political wing of his organization. Aguero noticed at least 200 men out front who "quickly ran away when we arrived. Another 15 or 20 people outside were waving their hands at us"”but to say "˜stay away'? Or to say hello? We couldn't tell". A block later, the soldiers heard a few rounds of small arms fire. "We couldn't tell where it came from, it was just three to five rounds," says Sgt. Jerry Swope of Austin, Texas, who was in the last vehicle, "we figured it was a lone gunman."
Aguero decided to try to detain the shooter. But as they tried to determine the source of the gunfire, suddenly more gunmen joined in from street-level and form second-story balconies. "We began to engage the enemy, then got back in our vehicles and headed north," he says. Sudden, Aguero found his unit heading into a Mad Max gauntlet of burning tires and road obstacles of every imaginable description: concrete blocks, metal market stalls, air conditioners, scrap metal, truck axles, even refrigerators. The burning debris put out so much choking black smoke that visibility was down to 300 meters.
The street had become "a 300-meter-long kill zone," recalls Aguero. The vehicles swerved and ran onto sidewalks, rolling on the rims of flat tires, as gunmen kept up the barrage of bullets. Suddenly Sgt. Yihjyh Chen, gunner in the lead truck, collapsed after taking a hit. The Iraqi translator in his vehicle began administering first aid. Another soldier was shot, and began bleeding from the mouth. Then two of the Humvees became disabled. Aguero yelled at one driver to gun the engine to get his Humvee moving. That's when the engine literally fell out. It was time to bail. As they'd been drilled to do, the soldiers set out to strip the disabled vehicles of sensitive items and to "Zee off the radio""”to ensure critical communications codes and equipment don't fall into enemy hands.
Now the problem was how to secure everyone in just two Humvees. "I said, "˜Okay, take that alley 250 meters to the left," recalls Aguero. The two still-functioning vehicles pulled next to a three-story building, one facing forward and the other in the opposite direction. Aguero led the remaining soldiers on foot to the door, kicked it down, secured four startled Iraqi men in one room, and set up machine-gun positions on the roof. ("The Iraqis were scared," says Aguero. But not entirely hostile. "when it was over they tried to give us water," recalls Swope.)
All the while, gunmen kept up a battery of small-arms fire. Swope stayed with his vehicle to keep communications open to the battalion and the quick reaction force. Aguero ran up and down the stairs, checking the defensive positions on the roof and in the street. By this time, Iraqi militants were in the adjacent alley, lobbing grenades. One detonated a few feet from Aguero, peppering him with shrapnel and deafening him temporarily in one ear. Over the radio, Swope heard that the first quick-reaction force (QRF) sent to assist them had been ambushed two streets away. "That's when we realized the uprising was citywide," says Swope, "And we were going to be there awhile." (In all, Swope stayed in the alley, manning his radio, for three nerve-wracking hours.)
The gunfight had erupted just fifteen minutes after Volesky formally took command. "It was in my box," he says. The radio was alive with details of the engagement. "Contact! Contact! ...we're taking fire, heavy fire." From the camp other soldiers could easily hear explosions, and they saw the ominous arcs of tracer fire on the horizon. One of the quick reaction forces rolled out of Camp Eagle about at 2200 hours with Humvees, Bradleys and a couple big LMTV trucks. A civil-affairs team was part of the force. "We knew a big engagement was on," recalls Capt. Jeff Embree. Casualties had already begun to pour into Camp Eagle, soldiers moaning and bleeding in a truck driving noisily on its rims. Embree, who was in the last Humvee of the 18-vehicle convoy, says "we could see the tracer fire, there was a mess of traffic on the radio."
As the story notes, there are 2.5 million people in Sadr City. If 10 percent decide the US should leave, there is nothing we could do to stay.
It is a miracle only 12 soldiers got killed this day. If Bush has decided to move into Najaf, daily firefights in Sadr City will be common.
After watching Band of Brothers, I was struck about the love those men had for each other. Not romantic love, of course, but fraternal love. The love of men for each other because they had shared mortal danger.
We often think about romantic love, but that is often the most illusive and hard to define of all the kinds of love we feel. It is hard to explain why or how you give your heart to someone, without sounding completely selfish.
But fraternal love is something different, an unselfish love, one which comes from sacrifice and time.
When we see rows of coffins, whether on a tarmac or on a plane, each one of those people leaves behind those who loved them. Family members, friends from home, but most importantly, those they served with. All their little kindnesses, the shared meals, the pre-war adventures, the down moments, all lost.
When someone tries to minimize the death of those in combat by comparing it to traffic accidents or murders, they deny the pain and tragedy of teenagers killed in combat. There is no other kind of death as painful or as pointless. The hole from the death of any child is tremendously painful. But when it is a combat death, it is worse. Because while sacrifice has meaning, to that family, their child is gone,alone, far away, in the company of strangers.
We also forget that to many people, their friends are gone. It is just as painful to those who serve to see their friends die as it is for anyone else. The mental burden on those who serve doesn't diminish. Death is death and painful for everyone. Losing a friend is a painful thing and life-altering. It drives many people into madness, long after combat is over.
Fraternal love is the bond which holds the combat units of any military together. The closeness, the sense of shared sacrifice and suffering, keeps men fighting when the rational thing would be to flee danger. When someone is killed in that fight, and most people survive, it is a tragedy. The more we save, the more painful that each death becomes, the sharper the questions become around their loss, could it have been prevented?
It is the bonds of fraternal love and the horrors of war which forever marks those who survive it.
I was just watching TLC's Not what to wear, where twin Filipina sisters dressed 10 years younger than they were. Their coworkers had nothing but negative comments on their clothes. Which was a problem, since they were accountants for ad agencies.
See, the first rule of work is look the part. Nothing marks the losers from the winners than the people who show up dressed work appropriate. In some places, you have to wear a suit, in some places, you have to wear a Spiderman T-shirt. But you need to look the part. Apperances matter, more than you would think. A lot of programmers, who are wickedly bright, can't get promoted because they never mastered basic hygene. You can't send someone to meet a client who reeks of not taking a bath.
That may seem minor, but it isn't. It's bad enough that no programmer think they suck, but to smell bad?
The second rule is be loyal. Now, a lot of people were waxing about how Tami Silicio did this great thing. Few of you, because you agreed with her actions, thought about how she was disloyal to her employer. This is a woman who'd already sued Halliburton (more on that later), and who's employment prospects were shaky, at least as an overseas contractor.
Now, if you're her boss, how can you trust her? You've already given her a chance, and this is how she repays you. In the greater scheme of things, her's was a moral act. But as an employee, she's completely untrustworthy.
Here's a simple solution: quit. If your company's morals don't match yours, quit. All of you rushing to Silicio defense, should consider another case of personal morals in the workplace. Many pharmacists are now refusing to fill birth control prescriptions because they consider it a form of abortion. Now, imagine you're going to get a refill, and the pharmacist now is making a moral judgment on your life. You'd be outraged, demand the pharmacist be fired. He's not there to make moral judgments on how you live, but to fill your prescription.
My feeling is simple: quit. Work in a place which allows you to pick and choose who you serve. Forcing your employer to accomodate your political beliefs is unfair to them and their customers.
Third, your company has a culture. Try to change it and you'll be fired. I once read a letter from a guy who said he could revolutionize the Internet, but that everyone he worked with was stupid. After I kept reading, I realized the guy was as loony as they come. The public rarely sees such letters, journalists always do.
Unless you're the CEO, you either deal with the culture as is, or you quit. Or be fired. Companies, as a rule, like friction free workplaces. So guy screaming about how this process or that process sucks, usually with no tact, is going to get noticed and then fired. There are ways to change things, usually involving politics and negotiations, otherwise, if you stick up, you'll be pulled out and tossed aside.
Being right is less important than being smart. People are right about a lot of things, few people are listened to. The person who fits in, establishes themselves as ethical and responsible, is the person who can say no and mean it. Credibility is everything at work and few people bother to establish it.
Fourth is protect yourself. Someone claimed that Joe Wilson and Richard Clarke were whistleblowers. They were anything but. They secured their incomes, pensions and new jobs before they ever said a word. Clarke waited until he left before he said a word about counterterrorism in public. Suing your employer will, in most cases, get you blackballed in that industry. Tami Silicio, in normal times, would have been unhireable as an overseas contractor, because she sued Halliburton for violating her rights.
Being right is one thing, few companies will hire someone who sues their employer in a given field. Companies are litigiation shy and want to avoid anyone who will unleash the lawyers. Even firing people is fraught with legal challenges.
If you know this, you don't then place yourself at risk. Unless you're hired to make policy, you have to live by it.
While some whistleblowers are genuine heroes, most have an axe to grind in one way or the other. While people sang the praises of Colleen Rowley, it is no mystery as to why her information didn't make it up the chain of command. She not only didn't coopt her bosses into endorsing her viewpoint, she dressed like a mouse and was socially isolated from her peers. Now, in the real world, you can be as right as rain, but if people look at you as a freak, no one will take you seriously. No one was going to risk their career for her.
Richard Clarke and Rand Beers were a lot smarter. Beers just quit and went to work for Kerry. He threw up his hands and walked away. Clarke took a different job, kept his notes and waited. So when he wrote his book, all the White House could do was call him a liar. They couldn't take any money out of his pocket. They had the effect they wanted, but they protected themselves in the process.
When Sherron Watkins ratted out her bosses at Enron, she was depicted as a hero. But when people talked to her coworkers, it became a case of who would drop a dime first. Watkins was described as an always screaming workplace bully, little better than her bosses. She was roundly detested by her peers.
What people need to consider is that truly ethical people will quit a job before they violate their sense of ethics. If someone expects to keep a job after violating their employer's trust, which in some cases needs to be violated, they are naive or delusional.
The fifth rule is that you aren't working with your friends. Too many people expect that their "friends" at work will support them. Well, if you get in trouble, they are usually the first people to run away. Always have a social life seperate from work, with different people. It's OK to get along with your coworkers, but your relationship is economic. Expecting them to be loyal to you over the job will often lead to disappointment. Your life should be seperate from what you do, unless you are in a band.
Why? Well, see all the glowing pieces on Google? How they fix lunch and dinner for their employees? Well, why do they do that? Because the fuckers never leave the place. They have people pushing 10-12 hour days easy. You cannot have a life and work for them. Any place where you can wear what you want and play with toys is going to ask for your soul in exchange. You will have no life as long as you work there. You will become socially and morally stunted.
I don't care if you can become rich, you will lose part of your humanity in the process.
..............
At the top of the list of those likely to be jettisoned is Ahmed Chalabi, a Shiite politician who for years was a favorite of the Pentagon and the office of Vice President Cheney, and who was once expected to assume a powerful role after the ouster of Saddam Hussein, U.S. officials acknowledged.
Chalabi has increasingly alienated the Bush administration, including President Bush, in recent months, U.S. officials said. He generated anger in Washington yesterday when he said a new U.S. plan to allow some former officials of Hussein's ruling Baath Party and military to return to office is the equivalent of returning Nazis to power in Germany after World War II.
Chalabi has headed the committee in charge of removing former Baathist officials. In a nationwide address yesterday designed to promote national reconciliation, U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer said complaints that the program is "unevenly and unjustly" administered are "legitimate" and that the overall program has been "poorly implemented."
That criticism may curtail Chalabi's influence over the removal of former officials -- and his power over the employment and income prospects of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
Washington is also seriously considering cutting off the $340,000 monthly stipend to Chalabi's party, the Iraqi National Congress, according to a senior administration official familiar with the discussions. This would be a major change, because the INC has received millions of dollars in U.S. aid over the past decade as the primary vehicle for supporting the Iraqi opposition.
Chalabi is part of a wider problem, however. Polls indicate that most of the 25 members of the Iraqi Governing Council have little public support nine months after they were appointed. The lack of popular backing is the main reason the United States and United Nations are seeking a new body to govern Iraq before national elections are held in January 2005, U.S. and U.N. officials said.
I wouldn't count on the demise of Ahmed Chalabi just yet. They left him with the files to blackmail people and put him his nephew in charge of Saddam's tribunal.
He's got a deep backfield in Washington, which has kept him alive before. To be blunt, he's the neocon's Iraqi house nigger. He mouths what they expect and he gets his cash. This leak, and this is what it is, is either designed to smack him back in line, or to have State and the NSC undercut DOD and Cheney.
People still expect that he can run Iraq. No Iraqi expects that, but the folks at the neocon think tanks do. And they were still trying to shovel him in. The CPA memo, stupidly, goes on at length about how CIA and State prevented Chalabi from being in charge. Which is insane on it's face. You wouldn't have to worry about Sadr in Najaf if that happened. You'd have to worry about Sadr City emptying out to lynch him. Last year, a resistance member said "the day Chalabi takes over, the next day we will blow up his house." I would take that at face value.
By rights, Chalabi should be in a US jail for fraud. Or back in Jordan. Either way, this trial balloon about him being tossed from massa's house is just that. The UN may not want him in charge, but Dick Cheney may still. And Dick Cheney gets what he wants.
Take this as a warning shot over his bow. Chalabi foisted the debaathisation as a way to seize power and keep potential rivals at bay. Someone once did a survey of Iraqi exiles about their leadership styles and they all resembled Saddam. So instead of chopping up a critic and sending his pieces back home to his wife, Chalabi uses blackmail and US money to keep people in line.
Only his influence with the CPA and their GOP masters back home has kept him a player in Iraqi politics. If people remember, Jorge Mas Canosa, a Cuban exile, had the same connections and the same fantasy about running a post-Castro Cuba. Until people realized that exiles are not particularly liked. The idea that Mas Canosa could land at Mariel Harbor and take over was comical, especially after the Angolan war.
Chalabi is seen as at best, an American puppet. Which will eventually drive him from Iraq or get him killed. US reliance on his crooked ass is both sad and a testiment to his ability to con people. But to the average Iraqi, he's not anyone they would trust. Let me put it another way, Sadr is far more popular than Chalabi could dream of being. Imagine the outrage if Americans exlied in France wanted to come back and run America in 1784. People wouldn't have tolerated it. Why should Iraqis tolerate a leader who had not suffered with them. Sadr's credibility comes from that suffering and loss. Just because Chalabi paints a tone poem they like in Washington, it may sound like noise in Arabic.
I've just read the umpteenth defense of Silicio and her adventures with cameras and no one seems to get the point.
Her employer probably had no choice but to fire her. If they didn't act, they would have been vunerable to losing their contract and lawsuits from the families for invasion of privacy. It's easy to characterize Maytag Air Group's action as some kind of right-wing solidarity move, but the reality is that Silicio violated the terms of her employment by taking those pictures.
Having covered work issues for years, I have to say the first rule is to not be stupid. Taking pictures at a Kuwaiti Airport is stupid. If she had been Kuwaiti, she'd probably be in jail. As it was, she and her husband, who helped her, were just fired.
The reality is that as a contract employee, she can probably be fired at will. Especially when US law may or may not apply. But she wasn't fired at will. She was fired for cause, which means she violated a work rule. Which has to do with shooting pictures inside US military aircraft, regardless of the cargo.
Now, I think it was a beautiful picture, a great one, but it wasn't her job to take them. By doing so, she placed her company in potential liability from both the DOD and the families of the dead. Her job was to load aircraft. I wonder why the Air Police didn't detain her on the spot. Think about the security risk she could have created if she had taken a picture of equipment going to Iraq? Now, she obviously didn't do that, but if you let employees run around wth cameras, some may look to line their pockets and inform the Iraqi resistance.
I find the policy of hiding the dead arriving at Dover, odious. It is to the shame of the US media that they did not challenge this policy in court. And that they had to hide behind a runway worker to do their job. Now hundreds of pictures, due to the FOIA request of a blogger, are out there. The quotes from the editors of the major news organizations , which have run to use these photos,are embarassing.
But right and keeping your job are two different things. What company could tolerate an employee violating a basic rule of employment and of security? The DOD would well be within their contract rights to demand that any employee snapping pictures be canned.
I know this isn't the popular position, but frankly, I've seen too many cases where employees make their own policies at the expense of their employer. It's easy to defend Silicio behind a keyboard, but I would bet, if an employee you had violated a basic work rule, your understanding would evaporate like water in a New York August day.
She should have realized that her act would have cost her the job she had and then done it anyway. After all, she was right. But to expect her employer to lose a contract behind that is a bit much.
As a contractee in a foreign country, the rights she had were probably few and far between, which is one of the risks you take when you become a contractor. Which means she worked at her employers pleasure at any rate.
Ed Offey of Defense Watch argues that the Marines are engaged in a delicate balancing act in Fallujah.
Say a quiet prayer for our Marines in Fallujah.
It is becoming clearer by the day that they are going to have to clean out the band of several thousand Iraqi insurgents and foreign terrorists the old-fashioned way – in block-by-block city fighting at the squad and platoon level.
A solitary act of barbarism three weeks ago, the murder and defiling of the bodies of four American contract security guards, has now prompted a major military show of force that could well be the defining moment for the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq. With only three months before the June 30 deadline for the handover of power in Iraq, the stakes in Fallujah could not be higher for the coalition.
Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, the senior Marine commander in Iraq, said yesterday that only surrender by the insurgents would forestall a Marine sweep of Fallujah. “There are X number of days left,” the general told reporters. “In that period of time, we need to see some distinctive cooperation on the part of the Iraqis inside the city to disarm. If that doesn’t happen, it’s inevitable that we'll go in and attack those people.”
Two events point to that stark scenario taking place.
First, despite a tenuous cease-fire, a group of insurgents mounted an attack on Wednesday that quickly escalated into a prolonged five-hour battle that only ended after several air strikes on the Iraqis’ positions. At one point, dozens of Iraqis rushed the Marines’ positions in what one Marine described as “almost a suicide-like attack.” Three Marines were injured and nine Iraqis killed with an unknown number of wounded.
Second, efforts to have insurgents turn in their weapons as part of the cease-fire have had scant results. When one truck showed up with a small pile of rusty and dysfunctional weapons, one Marine said, “This is one of those tests to see how stupid we are.”
Despite alarmist reports by some news organizations that the Iraqis have assembled a skilled fighting force in the city, a careful review of the news coverage suggests this is an exaggeration. As the Christian Science Monitor noted today:
“From a purely military viewpoint, the unrest in Iraq is not necessarily a massive problem. Fighting in Fallujah has involved around 1,000 dedicated insurgents, in a city of 300,000. The broader insurgency seems to involve 10,000 to 15,000 fighters, according to data compiled by Anthony Cordesman, a military expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.”
There have been some isolated signs of military cohesion among the insurgents that suggests a number of former Iraqi Special Republican Guard soldiers may have joined up, but it remains clear the Marines would ultimately prevail given their training, superior weapons and night-fighting capabilities.
Conway and his subordinate commanders have brought in several thousand reinforcements, providing a force of 3,500 Marines who are currently conducting raids and stockpiling ammunition and supplies in event the attack proceeds. He has also brought in AH-1 Super Cobra attack helicopters and Air Force AC-130 Spectre gunships to patrol over the city by night.
I have to disagree with a couple of his premises here.
First, there may be 1,000 guerrillas, but they are definitely backed by locals. Iraq is one of the most militarized societies on earth. There are so many AK-47's about, every family has one. Kids carry them freely, and most importantly, the adults know how to use them. So any assault into Fallujah could get very ugly, very quickly. NVG gear is fine, but the locals know every street and ally, and they are not the Palestinians, they have enough guns and skill to do ambushes.
Second, as Offey describes, the resistance is hardly afraid of the Marines. The rusted weapons in the truck was a gigantic fuck you, akin to McAuliffe's telling the Germans Nuts at Bastogne. Then they launch a five hour attack? They are not afraid of the Marines or the casualities they can create. They are reportedly fighting in platoon and company-sized units. Without the weapons the US can bring, they will certainly get killed in large numbers.
But, the problem is that the US doesn't have enough forces to drive them from the city. At most, they can bring a regiment, and then still have to deal with diversionary attacks, which will pull away forces and more importantly, air support.
At most, the US can get a three to one advantage, and I suspect the forces are a lot closer to equal than we'd like to believe. This makes offensive operations very difficult. The problem is that the Iraqis are not farm boys with shiny guns, they're mostly ex-soldiers. There may be some foreign fighters in the mix, but the Marines are facing soldiers, trained soldiers, some with combat experience. They're also facing a coordinated command which can shift forces around.
Also, the local leaders are no longer in charge. They can make any deal they want, but the ex-colonels are running the defense of Fallujah. It's not some radicals or some foriegn fighters in charge, but real soldiers fighting a real defense. Knowing the power the US can bring, and to still send out a pile of junk weapons means someone has a set of balls on them. And that doesn't bode well for our Marines in Fallujah.
WASHINGTON (AP) - Pat Tillman was killed in Afghanistan after walking away from a multimillion-dollar NFL contract to join the Army Rangers, U.S. officials said Friday.
Tillman, who served with the Army Rangers, was 27.
Although the military had not officially confirmed his death, the White House put out a statement of sympathy that praised Tillman as ``an inspiration both on an off the football field.''
Former Cardinals head coach Dave McGinnis said he felt both overwhelming sorrow and tremendous pride in Tillman, who ``represented all that was good in sports.''
``Pat knew his purpose in life,'' McGinnis said. ``He proudly walked away from a career in football to a greater calling.''
Several of Tillman's friends have said the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks influenced his decision to enlist.
Lt. Col. Matt Beevers, a spokesman for the U.S. military in Kabul, confirmed that a U.S. soldier was killed Thursday evening, but would not say whether it was Tillman.
He said the soldier died after a firefight with anti-coalition militia forces about 25 miles southwest of a U.S. military base at Khost, which has been the scene of frequent attacks.
Tillman turned his back on the NFL to serve with his brother as a Ranger. His service was one of the few acts of sacrifice that anyone can recount in the days after 9/11, where a rich, comfortable person actually risked his life. There was plenty of selflessness around Ground Zero, but sadly, it never left there.
It is an absolute shame that he died in combat. But he died protecting his country from a threat we actually knew existed. Of course, his death is no less tragic than the hundreds of others killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, but maybe people might pay attention since he was once famous. Maybe Bush might even go to his funeral. After all, there's nothing presidents like better that the NFL. Even the former baseball owner Bush. Remember the noxious pro-war rally the NFL launched at the start of their last season? Using service personnel as props? The NFL will exploit his death as they exploited his body in life.
The fact is that instead of appealing to the best of Americans, Bush appealed to their pockets.
People may wonder if a draft would equal out the scales, send more middle class and rich kids into the military. It wouldn't. The Army has remained the same for 230 years. The draft existed for about 40 of those years, and those who take the risks are a very small group. If you looked at the economic backgrounds of the average infantry platoon, they would look the same, the working poor and lower middle class. Whether climbing Stony Point, charging Vicksburg, chasing Pancho Villa or walking around Pusan, the lower end of the society has born the greater risk. The rich either avoided service or sought the most glamorous duty. The number of college students, forget college graduates, in an infantry platoon has always been limited. College is usually what comes after the army and has since 1945.
The reality is that the draft would not be fair, but sweep thousands of poor men into the Army when they would have chosen to work in a garage or Walmart or do anything else. The middle class will always have an out in American society, medical deferments, claims of homosexuality, alternative service. They will almost never be given a rifle, placed in a tank or act as a gun bunny, humping 105 shells in the summer sun. Their education and skills will send them into staff jobs far away from combat.
Dos anyone think that given national service, the class of Duke 2005 would be running to serve in a infantry unit? Or would they sweep an old folks home and still take graduate classes at night? Only the poor would be shoved into the Army and then the combat arms. Which is what happened in every war, even WWII. Our view of WWII is shaped by the GI Bill, which fundamentally changed the society.
The military has been the greatest promoter of education in the US. They have embraced it so completely, that no ranking oifficer can be promoted without a masters. Many have doctorates, which makes them, by far, the most educated managerial class in the US. During WWI and WWII, the Army shifted thousands of soldiers into colleges to teach them advanced technical and civil skills. In 1944, the Army, in desperate need for infantry replacements, emptied out these programs and shoved these men into combat. This lasted for all of six months.
So when we look back at WWII, we see all these successful, college educated men coming from the military. Well, they were poor and working class kids when they went into the military. It was the GI Bill which allowed them to become middle class. If you look at the difference between a NG Infantry platoon and a Regular Army platoon, and you'll see that the NG platoon is middle class. Why? Because after their initial service in the Regular Army, which most NG soldiers have, they go to school, get jobs and join the middle class. They rejoin the service because they miss the Army, but still want a life.
The Army has always been a tool for social promotion. It has taken the poor and working class and given them access to social advancement. This is nothing new. We cannot confuse the idea of social equality with the realities of the military. Which is the American military has always been a home for the poor and working class, while the upper middle class and rich have never served. Even in the Civil War, the officers were the local politicans and merchants, elected by their men. During the Indian Wars, the ranks were filled by immigrants, ex-confederates and the poor.
The idea that national service, of any sort, would spread the burden, is not born out by 230 years of history. It can only change when education and access to health care are equalized. As long as some Americans get better educations and better health care than others, those who bear the risk of combat will not change.
NAJAF, Iraq - Nassir al Asadi is angry that Americans are running his country. He's upset that the police force he works for does nothing to oppose them. And the 35-year-old father has lost patience with the Iraqi holy men of his Shiite Muslim faith who fail to condemn the occupiers.
So when rebel Shiite cleric Muqtada al Sadr last July called on Iraqis to join the armed resistance, al Asadi didn't hesitate. Nor did his siblings. They believe that should they be martyrs while in al Sadr's Mahdi Army - named after the Shiite messiah - it would be a ticket to heaven, a far better fate than serving any foreign master on earth.
The Mahdi Army is the key threat to American-led forces in central and southern Iraq, and the anger of al Asadi and his family offers a glimpse into why many Shiites the United States had counted on as allies are enemies instead.
"Hopefully, the Americans won't be able to take Seyed Muqtada, but if they do, it'll only be over our dead bodies," said al Asadi, giving Muqtada the title used by Shiites whose families are descended from Islam's prophet Muhammad. Al Asadi was sitting cross-legged on the floor of his parents' living room, slicing apples for his 2-year-old son, Hussein.
Al Asadi's siblings live in a rundown neighborhood that's accessible by a dirt road on the outskirts of the holy city of Najaf.
Although nine of her 10 children have joined the Mahdi Army, Basim Jihad isn't rattled by the prospect of losing them to violence. The 50-year-old Jihad shares her children's loyalty to al Sadr. She beamed at her sons and their seemingly futile quest.
"I think of them as the Fedayeen (men of sacrifice) for our faith," she said. "If they are killed, it's a bravery medal for me."
So far, the medal has eluded her. Jihad's sons have been in a single gun battle against coalition forces, attacking Spanish-led troops in Najaf during an April 4 demonstration. The three-hour firefight killed 22 people and wounded at least 100.
The al Asadi brothers are reluctant to say how they train. "We were soldiers in Saddam's army. We know how to fight," Nassir al Asadi said.
Their weapons hidden as they await orders, the al Asadis are an untapped layer of Mahdi guerrillas who'd pose a far greater threat to U.S. soldiers than the often teenage al Sadr loyalists who patrol the streets of Najaf and Kufa with Kalashnikov rifles and rocket-propelled grenades.
"The Americans promised us freedom, but they lied," Nassir al Asadi said, adding that he doesn't believe the Bush administration will return control of Iraq to its people on June 30 as scheduled. "Since they won't give it, we'll take it by force."
Such sentiments have made April the bloodiest month for U.S. forces since they invaded Iraq 13 months ago. While Sunni Muslim insurgents fight Marines in the west, al Sadr's gunmen fire on U.S. soldiers in the south.
Even al Asadi's sister, Worood, 19, has joined the group. Her gender limits her role to demonstrator and security guard, searching women entering the Kufa Mosque, where al Sadr delivered his call to arms. But like her brothers, she's hungry to fight the Americans and would do so if al Sadr changes his mind.
Yeah, thugs and criminals. That's who follows Sadr, right?
This is what I've argued: Sadr's militia is backed by former Iraqi soldiers, people who have the ability to fight in combat. The kids are all well and fine for showing off in the street, but American troops would meet a far different army when they hit the streets of Najaf.
Another thing is that civilian officials have very little sway over these militias. In Fallujah, it's even worse, because they've formed up in military formations led by ex-officers. It turns out, without the oppressive paranoia of Saddam and his Tikriti clique, they're pretty good soldiers. Because they've halted the Marine advance there, regardless of any propaganda. The Marines may try to drive deeper in the city, but they can't force their way into a city of 300,000 people with 2500 men. Not unless they bomb the entire city into rubble.
Given the religious significance of Najaf, any fight there could be brutal.
The media never points out one simple fact, Iraq is filled with ex-soldiers, some with very recent training.
AsJuan Cole points out, the whole demobilization of Iraq's Army was a gift to Ahmed Chalabi, who so belongs in jail for embezzlement, either here or Jordan, and American soldiers have paid for with blood ever since. The one calculation about Sadr which no one says in the mainstream media is this: the majority of Saddam's Army was Shia. If you force them into the streets, most have not only military training, but combat experience. Far more than some Al Qaeda recruit run through an Afghan guerrilla camp. They may not be organized now, but a few smart captains and majors could pull together units and make it very hard for Americans.
Why these Pentagon folks think that the Iraqi Army, held together by nationalism, would let the exile thief Chalabi run their country. He got them out of the way so they couldn't organize a political base, but with 5 million AK's floating around, and plenty of young, eager, and broke mid-level officers floating around as well, a clash was inevitable. Only money and status could have prevented it. Just because they wouldn't fight for Saddam doesn't mean they can't fight. Ask the Iranians.
Kos has a lively debate on John Kerry's above average service record which you should check out.
But after looking at some of the docs, I have to wonder why they're bringing this up. Kerry volunteered for combat duty on Swift boats, which he didn't have to do, and almost got killed. The right wants to debate if he got wounded the first time, but since he was treated for it, he got his medal.
My only thought is that the Bushies are trying to do to Kerry what they did to McCain and Clelland, slander their service and question their patriotism by dragging out right-wing cranks who have an axe to grind.
The only problem here is that Bush's own service record is so deficient that they need to avoid the whole issue. Kerry had completed a tour on a destroyer. He didn't have to seek combat duty, and he did and pretty much did as well as one can do without some major disaster befalling them. There is nothing but praise for Kerry in his records and his crew still stands by him. Unlike Clelland and McCain, Kerry's got witnesses to his acts of bravery. He's got a real live Green Beret officer who he saved while wounded.
The simple fact was that John Kerry was a fearless officer who showed total disregard for his personal safety.
Someone suggested that the Rove plan is to attack him for his anti-war activism. Which would be even dumber.Bush used his connections to be assigned to a fighter squadron with obsolete aircraft, refused an overseas assignment and was taken off flight status. Does he really want to answer questions about his support of the war? If he opposed it, how can he attack Kerry for his very public stand, which got him noticed by the White House. If he supported it, why wasn't he flying an F-4 over Vietnam? Kerry, coming from exactly the same background, fought in Vietnam, then opposed the war.
This is a stupid argument which will harm Bush. Raising it was even dumber. They had to know his service record was good. The glowing words describing his conduct cut into Bush's less than glowing service like a hot knife through butter.
If they want to debate patriotism, John Kerry is the perfect vehicle for it. I don't think they'll ambush him like McCain and Clelland. a few eyewitness stories will shut them down cold.
WHAT is great sushi? Of course, said Seki, the chef and owner of Sushi Seki on First Avenue, great sushi needs great fish. But, he continued, great fish is not enough.
"Sushi is so simple that each element must be perfect, and all the elements must be balanced," he said. "Like pizza."
Like pizza, sushi can be downed as a quick lunch or dwelt upon obsessively for a lifetime. Once your sushi consciousness has been raised, it becomes a pleasure to appreciate its subtle distinctions: the rice should be warm, so that the chilled fish begins to approach body temperature before the piece goes into your mouth; nori, seaweed sheets used for rolling maki, should be thin and crisp, instead of tough and leathery; the wasabi and gari (pickled ginger) should be freshly made.
In Japan, aficionados judge a sushi chef by more than the quality of his fish. ("His" because there are almost no women who are sushi chefs in Japan: legend has it that women's hands are too warm to make sushi.) The proportion of rice to fish is carefully considered. Even the arc described by a piece of sushi fish as it rests on top of the rice has a prescribed shape.
"It should have the same curve as the pages of a book, when you open it and place it on a table" said Gen Mizoguchi, the sushi chef at the new Megu in TriBeCa. Traditional sushi chefs arrange the pieces in rows to mimic the appearance of a school of fish swimming.
Despite this cultural and culinary baggage, it is worth noting that sushi began not as an elegant way to eat raw fish but as a way to preserve it. Packed between layers of cooked rice, whole raw fish fermented slowly instead of rotting, becoming lightly pickled. That pickled flavor is still a faint but essential element in sushi. It is why sushi rice is sprinkled with vinegar.
I came late to eating sushi, in my mid-30's. The sublime nature of raw fish had escaped me well past the time it should have. I liked cooked Japanese food, but sushi had always seemed, well, icky, to me.
I was at a party when raw salmon was served in sashimi style. I took a piece and ate it, and liked it. There were no women to pick up, I was already drunk, so, I had nothing to lose.
Sushi is one of those things you have to try and once you do, it is the perfect dinner. Why? Because it is great for a date, shows you're sophisticated, and is relatively cheap. New York's East Village is filled with both Japanese expats and a ton of sushi restaurants. Jen loves sushi and celebrated her last two birthdays over sushi. In fact, because I was recovering when her birthday came, I owe her a sushi dinner. Which is fine by me, because sushi, like single malt scotch, is an aquired taste I didn't mind aquiring.
I know we talk a lot about home cooking here, but sushi is one of the things I have no interest in learning how to cook. Given that a sushi chef is so skilled, I would rather just have them make it and revel in his skill rather than make some half-baked version at home. Japanese food is not hard to cook, but sushi is as much art as food. There is something refreshing in the effort placed in seeing a skilled artisan at work.
Sushi, oddly enough, is one of the most subtle foods I have ever eaten. It doesn't have strong flavors, unlike most western seafood. The polar opposite of sushi and sashimi is Maryland crab. Old Bay seasoning is as unsubtle a flavor as one can have on food. I find it a bit too salty for my taste, but it smacks you in the face.
With seafood, subtle flavors are best, unless you want to cover the food with something so outstanding that it stands up and salutes. Most seafood doesn't need it. Crab, is of course, the exception. Even mussels do better with a simple garlic and butter sauce. Not crabs. If you don't come with big flavor, don't come at all. A little butter and lemon won't do. It's not a lobster or clams.
Now, I grew up in a seafood loving family. Crabs were our delicacy where others would save that for barbecue or roast meat. We would boil crabs when there was any chance, especially in mid-summer. Shrimp was nice, but crabs was the special meal. Not that we would have it with anything, nope, not even hot sauce. Crab was always special on its own. Old Bay Seasoning wasn't even an issue. A beer boil was a post-adulthood innovation. No squeamishness about boiling live crabs. Just toss them in a large pot and boil them.
The thing about sushi, which I came to later on, is that it is the most sophisticated meal you can have and not have it soaked in buttery sauces and have to dress up for. Good sushi, which can be as expensive as any meal in Manhattan, is subtle, not because of the ingredients, which are pretty much the same, but because of the skill of the chef, the use of the knife, the way he handles the fish, the way he displays it. That's the thing which you don't notice, but marks his skill as clearly as a flag.
Sushi is a simple food, but it is often simple food where the most skill is required to execute it successfully.
US Christian fundamentalists are driving Bush's Middle East policy
George Monbiot
Tuesday April 20, 2004
The Guardian
To understand what is happening in the Middle East, you must first understand what is happening in Texas. To understand what is happening there, you should read the resolutions passed at the state's Republican party conventions last month. Take a look, for example, at the decisions made in Harris County, which covers much of Houston.
The delegates began by nodding through a few uncontroversial matters: homosexuality is contrary to the truths ordained by God; "any mechanism to process, license, record, register or monitor the ownership of guns" should be repealed; income tax, inheritance tax, capital gains tax and corporation tax should be abolished; and immigrants should be deterred by electric fences. Thus fortified, they turned to the real issue: the affairs of a small state 7,000 miles away. It was then, according to a participant, that the "screaming and near fist fights" began.
I don't know what the original motion said, but apparently it was "watered down significantly" as a result of the shouting match. The motion they adopted stated that Israel has an undivided claim to Jerusalem and the West Bank, that Arab states should be "pressured" to absorb refugees from Palestine, and that Israel should do whatever it wishes in seeking to eliminate terrorism. Good to see that the extremists didn't prevail then.
But why should all this be of such pressing interest to the people of a state which is seldom celebrated for its fascination with foreign affairs? The explanation is slowly becoming familiar to us, but we still have some difficulty in taking it seriously.
In the United States, several million people have succumbed to an extraordinary delusion. In the 19th century, two immigrant preachers cobbled together a series of unrelated passages from the Bible to create what appears to be a consistent narrative: Jesus will return to Earth when certain preconditions have been met. The first of these was the establishment of a state of Israel. The next involves Israel's occupation of the rest of its "biblical lands" (most of the Middle East), and the rebuilding of the Third Temple on the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosques. The legions of the antichrist will then be deployed against Israel, and their war will lead to a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. The Jews will either burn or convert to Christianity, and the Messiah will return to Earth.
What makes the story so appealing to Christian fundamentalists is that before the big battle begins, all "true believers" (ie those who believe what they believe) will be lifted out of their clothes and wafted up to heaven during an event called the Rapture. Not only do the worthy get to sit at the right hand of God, but they will be able to watch, from the best seats, their political and religious opponents being devoured by boils, sores, locusts and frogs, during the seven years of Tribulation which follow.
The true believers are now seeking to bring all this about. This means staging confrontations at the old temple site (in 2000, three US Christians were deported for trying to blow up the mosques there), sponsoring Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, demanding ever more US support for Israel, and seeking to provoke a final battle with the Muslim world/Axis of Evil/United Nations/ European Union/France or whoever the legions of the antichrist turn out to be.
The believers are convinced that they will soon be rewarded for their efforts. The antichrist is apparently walking among us, in the guise of Kofi Annan, Javier Solana, Yasser Arafat or, more plausibly, Silvio Berlusconi. The Wal-Mart corporation is also a candidate (in my view a very good one), because it wants to radio-tag its stock, thereby exposing humankind to the Mark of the Beast.
This nonsense about the Rapture makes for a good movie, but the reality is that millenial movements are nothing new. Hell, Calvinism had pre-ordination as a major tenant of faith. If these people want to spend their money on badly written novels, who am I to complain. After all, I have a few Tom Clancy's around.
But the scary part is that these people are expecting to be lifted off out of their lives, because they are saved and the Jews will get the rest of their final solution and the Muslims will join them. Which is nonsense. When I'm asked about religion, far from my favorite topic, I say I'm a Methodist, which I am. A nice, safe, liberal faith which doesn't hate gays andn won't embarass themselves like the Episcopalians.
I don't expect God to murder all non-born again people, since that's most of the earth, nor do I think bringing about Armageddon is a smart move. There was already a battle of Meggidio, in 1918 and the world didn't end.
While I believe in God and good works, these people use religion as a cudgel. They pervert the concept of being saved into some kind of supernatural cloak. They can be bigoted, small minded and cruel and whip out Jesus as a shield.
At it's most extreme, they use religion as a cynical tool, like Judge Roy Moore. The dingbats who thought God's word had to be represented by some sculpture profaned the word of God. If you believe in the Ten Commandments, they should be in your heart, not tossed in someone's face.
And the idea that all other faiths must fall before Jesus, is well, deeply offensive. If there is a God, then He must lead us to find our own ways to him.
This sort of religious thuggery has gotten people killed in Iraq. For some reason, people were offended by Christian prostelization. As if they didn't have their own faith.
This drive to denigrate other religions on the part of the born agains comes from a profound ignorance of the world. They think their little patch of Dogpatch was ordained by God and anyone else who doesn't share in a love of BBQ and Nascar needs to be brought to Jesus. Yet, it never occurs to them that they might not like Imams trying to convert them to Islam, to bring them to the true light of Allah.
These millenialists think End Times are here. I might be more impressed if this didn't happen every 1000 years or so. These people, with their blather about the Rapture are nothing new. At the end of every century someone thinks Jesus is going to come back and take them with him, and of course, they are disappointed.
The support these wackos give to Israeli is really a kinder, gentler version of the Final Solution. Sure, they don't compare them to vermins and rats, but they clearly want to exterminate the Jews as much as Himmler. But instead of gassing them and turning them to fertilizer, they want to bring them to Jesus, preferably as Southern Babtists or Pentacostals. They have nothing but disdain for Judaism and would like to eliminate it.
The Israelis know this and game them for support. But like with all cynical alliances, the bill will come due one day and these folks will expect their climatic battle, which will kill lots of Jews and Muslims while they, a distinct worldwide minority, gets to see the bloodbath at the hand of God.
Which is insane, but amusing. South Park once had heaven populated by Mormons while everyone else went to hell. The only problem was that while Hell sucked, and you got to watch Saddam bugger the devil, Heaven sucked even worse. What do these people think heaven is, some kind of Super Texas, where there is only those who think like them and everyone else gets screwed?
It's a truly American version of religious triumphalism. The only problem is that the current dry drunk in the White House latched on to Jesus as warrior prince. I have no idea if he's as wacky as his fellow Texan Babtists, but his crutchlike reliance on God is as pathetic as is scary. God, I don't think, is encouraging Bush in his bloody war in Iraq. Any more than he turned a blind eye to the Holocaust. Humans were given free will and God rarely intervenes, at least to me. The same God which watched Hitler rise, watched the US Army defeat him and hang his henchmen. Man is responsible for man's good and man's evil.
Belief is a good thing. Using that belief as a weapon to insult or harm others, much less thinking you get a box seat before you go to heaven profanes God's word and thought.
The Seattle Times ran a picture of flag-draped coffins in a transportplane a few days ago. The row of coffins went on for a while, and the picture was quite pretty, until you realized that each flag represented a dead American, mostly teenagers. It was a heartbreaking reminder of the cost of war, any war.
Every death is a tragedy. Every one. We forget that sitting in our homes, watching TV or arguing about Bush. But for those who die, there is a gap which will never be filled. The teenagers who roam Iraq today will never forget their dead friends, not at 25, 50 or 80. Those deaths will remained ingrained in their lives no matter where they go or what they do. It will define and haunt them for as long as they live.
I was watching Band of Brothers on the History Channel, and the two things which struck me was that every death of a friend was a tragedy, even to combat paratroopers, and the love they had for each other was amazingly deep and profound and lasted long after their lives had moved on from the Army and war. It was as if time had no barrier and to hear these now elderly men recount their war, it was as if they had not left the 1940's.
One day, our great grandchildren will hear similiar stories from Iraq war veterans, and 2004 will be the most important time of their lives.
The Newshour did a profile of a Marine who died in Ramadi a couple of weeks ago. He came from a small town in Wyoming, and the entire town came out to his funeral, which had to be held in the school gym. His family so desperately wanted to believe that he died defending America, that his death was not in vain. They so wanted to find a meaning in his death, and their sacrifice that it was truly heartbreaking. They had lost their 19 year old son, one of eight locals serving in Iraq.
His best friend, who had joined the Marines with him, was, like a 19 year old who had no idea of what he wanted, eager to get to Iraq.
The Marine, who was motivated by 9/11, was eager to serve his country. A truly noble and decent sentiment. The tragedy was that he was misused by Bush and his cabal to fight a war we cannot win.
At the same time this family was burying their son in the foothills of the Rockies, a memo from CPA headquarters was making the rounds. In it, allegations of a vast and ongoing corruption was made. The CPA was filled with desk-bound warriors who were being stolen from and could do little to prevent it.
When the Marine's father said that it was better that he die fighting terrorists over in Iraq than in the US, I don't imagine that I would have had the heart to tell him how wrong he was. Terrorists don't defend their homes, they don't have to stay in Iraq, they can go anywhere and do anything. That his son died fighting the demobilized Iraqi Army fighting for their homes and families. That would be too cruel to say, and only time can reveal the truth.
There is a reason no candidate for President, not Dean, not Kerry, could tell people the truth about Iraq, that we cannot fix it, we cannot make it better with more troops. People wouldn't accept it, they wouldn't believe that we could engage in such folly. Americans want to believe in their government, regardless of politics. They do not want to believe that the President could be so foolhardy, so indifferent to American lives.
The CPA memo represents the rotten heart of the occupation. This won't remain an American stories, Iraqis will read it and see how flawed the American attempt to run their country is. If anything justifies the resistance, it is finding out that the people trying to run your country are little better than Mafia dons.
Every death is a tragedy, every loss of a friend, a brother, a son, irreplacable. All we can ask, no matter how painful it is, that their loss means something. We may never accept their loss, but to know that their death meant something was a small comfort. But to read the CPA memo, and the sordid world of graft and corruption it depicts, is to know our folly in Iraq is a terrible mistake. One can only hope as this becomes more clear that the families can take comfort in the fact that their children died serving their country. Because without that, the loss becomes truly horrid and unbearable.
Yet the memo is gloomy in most other respects, portraying a country mired in dysfunction and corruption, overseen by a CPA that "handle(s) an issue like six-year-olds play soccer: Someone kicks the ball and one hundred people chase after it hoping to be noticed, without a care as to what happens on the field." But it is particularly pointed on the subject of cronyism and corruption within the Governing Council, the provisional Iraqi government subordinate to the CPA whose responsibilities include re-staffing Iraq's government departments. "In retrospect," the memo asserts, "both for political and organizational reasons, the decision to allow the Governing Council to pick 25 ministers did the greatest damage. Not only did we endorse nepotism, with men choosing their sons and brothers-in-law; but we also failed to use our prerogative to shape a system that would work ... our failure to promote accountability has hurt us."
In the broadest sense, according to the memo's author, the CPA's bunker-in-Baghdad mentality has contributed to the potential for civil war all over the country. "[CPA Administrator L. Paul] Bremer has encouraged re-centralization in Iraq because it is easier to control a Governing Council less than a kilometer away from the Palace, rather than 18 different provincial councils who would otherwise have budgetary authority," he says. The net effect, he continues, has been a "desperation to dominate Baghdad, and an absolutism born of regional isolation." The memo also describes the CPA as "handicapped by [its] security bubble," and derides the US government for spending "millions importing sport utility vehicles which are used exclusively to drive the kilometer and a half" between CPA and Governing Council headquarters when "we would have been much better off with a small fleet of used cars and a bicycle for every Green Zone resident."
While the memo upbraids CPA officials—an apparent majority—who stay inside the Green Zone in the name of personal safety, it also maintains that the Green Zone itself is "less than secure," both for Westerners and Iraqis. According to the author, "screening for Iranian agents and followers of Muqtada al Sadr is inconsistent at best," and anti-CPA elements can easily gather basic intelligence, since no one is there to "prevent people from entering the parking lot outside the checkpoint to note license plate numbers of 'collaborators.'"
Ordinary Iraqis also "fear that some of the custodial staff note who comes and goes," according to the memo, causing a "segment of Iraqi society to avoid meeting Americans because they fear the Green Zone." It also derides the use of heavily armed personal-security details (PSDs) for CPA personnel, saying the practice inspires reticence among ordinary Iraqis. "It is ingrained in the Iraqi psyche to keep a close hold on their own thoughts when surrounded by people with guns," the memo notes. "Even those willing to talk to Americans think twice, since American officials create a spectacle of themselves, with convoys, flak jackets, fancy SUVs."
While the memo offers an encouraging and appealing picture of thriving businesses and patrons on the streets of a free Baghdad, it notes that "the progress evident happens despite us rather than because of us," and reports that "frequent explosions, many of which are not reported in the mainstream media, are a constant reminder of uncertainty."
Indeed, while boosters of the Iraqi invasion delight in the phrase "25 million free Iraqis," if the CPA memo is any indication, this newfound liberty does not include freedom from fear. "Baghdadis have an uneasy sense that they are heading towards civil war," it says. "Sunnis, Shias, and Kurd professionals say that they themselves, friends, and associates are buying weapons fearing for the future." The memo also notes that while Iraqi police "remain too fearful to enforce regulations," they are making a pretty penny as small arms dealers, with the CPA as an unwitting partner. "CPA is ironically driving the weapons market," it reveals. "Iraqi police sell their U.S.-supplied weapons on the black market; they are promptly re-supplied. Interior ministry weapons buy-backs keep the price of arms high."
The memo goes on to argue that "the trigger for a civil war" is not likely to be an isolated incident of violence, but the result of "deeper conflicts that revolve around patronage and absolutism" reaching a flashpoint.
Iraq is deeply, deeply screwed up. The memo says little that outside observers haven't been saying for months. The lack of security crippled the CPA's ability to actually run the country. The exiles simply took over Saddam's rackets in government while wholesale theft was turned into private industry. It is difficult to overstate how unsafe Iraqis feel in the current environment. Corruption, ineptitude and instability has made civil life in Iraqi difficult.
This internal CPA memo predicts civil war as the result of misguided CPA policies. That's a pretty drastic outcome because of bad policies.
Americans have done the worst possible job in trying to actually led Iraqis into taking responsibility for the reconstruction. They hide behind SUV's and bunkers and then expect Iraqis to work with them. Risk adverse is the word. Only soldiers and mercenaries are actually willing to die for Iraq, The CPA values their own safety over anything else, especially Iraqis. Which is why they're holed up in one of Saddam's palaces instead of an office building.
In the desperate rush to establish a US friendly president, we have turned our backs on massive graft, something Iraqis notice and resist with weapons. Our indifference drives the resistance and contempt for the IGC. By ignoring that our Iraqis are not only crooks, but makes the clerics look like honest brokers, we defeat our own policy goals.
April 20 (Bloomberg) -- A former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. secretary who earned less than 2,000 pounds a month was found guilty of stealing 4.4 million pounds ($8 million) from her bosses to fund a spending spree that included a villa in Cyprus.
Joyti De-Laurey, 35, faces six to 14 years in prison after a jury of six men and six women at Southwark Crown Court in London convicted her on 20 counts of stealing from retired Goldman managing directors E. Scott Mead, Ron Beller and his wife Jennifer Moses from February 2001 to April 2002.
De-Laurey had claimed Beller gave her 1.1 million pounds ``as a reward for me being me.'' Mead, who led the team advising Vodafone Group Plc on its record 154 billion-euro ($184 billion) takeover of Mannesmann AG in 2000, gave her 3.3 million pounds for concealing his extra-marital affair, she said. The men rejected her claims.
The trial attracted attention because it provided a glimpse into the lifestyles of senior staff at the third-biggest U.S. securities firm, who took 20 months to notice the money was missing. De-Laurey, motivated by jealousy, spent their cash as if she were an investment banker and often told people she was one, prosecutors said.
How did she think she was going to steal $8m and get away with it. Not only that, her life went from working class to posh overnight. Hello, people are going to notice. No one is going to pay a secretary a bribe of $3.3 million to avoid a divorce. Besides, the claims were ludicrous. These are investment bankers. This is millions of dollars. Even a divorce would have been cheaper.
What always amazes me about these people, besides the self-justifications that they use for their crimes, is how they expect to remain free. Uh, million dollar villas attract attention. Shopping at Cartier attracts attention. If their bosses don't notice, the tax man will. But since these folks are so twisted internally, they usually give themselves away. They let resentment and jealousy drive them, then they wind up in jail, broke.
It was the driving force behind the Apprentice. A lot of the candidates thought they deserved to be rich. It doesn't work that way. Unless you're born to money, you pretty much have to work hard for it. I mean, everyone who was fired was fired for cause. I don't know how that woman Omorosa fed herself, but she was as crazy as a bedbug. She would give the guys at the VA psych ward a run for their money. Being an untrustworthy, lazy drama queen is no way to inspire confidence. And lying on camera is even worse.
Then you had the relentlessly creepy and game playing Amy. Oh, she forgot to make a good impression during the interview? Ooops. Notice Trump fired her and her little boyfriend, and kept the two slickest guys, including a Harvard MBA. Why? Well, unless you're an Enron exec or George Bush, a Harvard MBA will open a lot of doors. Most of them said they wanted to work hard, but they did things which astonished me as a reporter, forget someone with a business degree, which I don't have.
What I noticed about the show was that the producers hired people who then made fundamental mistakes in business and should have been canned. My favorite moment in the entire show was when they lost money from some task they were doing. In the real world, people get fired for that. Quickly. Crazy people make for great TV, but in the real world, they usually go to jail. Because their craziness usually wins out. It takes a great deal of character to admit mistakes. As I was told as a 14 year old Boy Scout. It takes even more charcter to do your job and not lie or steal your bosses money because you resent them.
What nausiated me about both the Apprtentice and this crazy woman is accountability. Blaming other people for your mistakes. I know it's in vogue in Washington at the moment, but it's a shitty way to live. You can work your ass off, but if people cannot trust you to keep your word, you will never be successful.
People have been carping at Kerry for not being aggressive enough, but given the last six weeks, only a fool gets in the way of self-destruction. The Kerry Campaign has been smart to lay back and pick their punches. The last thing they need to do is to become the issue.
First, Dick Clarke made the Bush White House act like thugs. Then the debate shifted to whether Condi Rice would reveal what she told her husband the President. Now, it's about whether Bush cooked up a deal with the Saudis.
With little effort, Kerry stands poised to reap the bounty of an incredible string of bad luck. Hell, the Bushies couldn't get anything. Bremer's replacement is best known for his role in the losing Contra war.
What many people forget is the US lost the Contra War. It was a failed policy. The Sandinista Army had superior tactics pulled from the US Army's campaign in Burma in 1944. They formed long range patrols which spent their time in the jungle and chased the Contras down. Very simple, very effective.
Now, John Negroponte, who at a minimum, stood by silently while the Hondurans murdered nuns and priests, is going to Iraq to solve our pronlems there. Except he won't have any death squads to work with unless he hires them at $1000 a day per man. And the fact that his Arabic is nonexistent shouldn't hurt, right?
With management like this, Kerry has to just lay low and pick his spots on when and where to attack. There hasn't been any reason for him to jump in and go hard after Bush. Even on TV, the 527's have done his heavy lifting. As long as Kerry shores up his base and reacts when Bush screws up, he's doing fine.
Bush's numbers are horrible. He's under 50 percent in most polls, which is death for an incumbent, and if Nader wasn't in the way, Bush would be losing in most of them.
Kerry has money, time and Karl Rove working for him. As long as he waits until he's ready to launch his campaign, his way, watching Bush crumble is the smartest of moves.
Some group has sponsored "Turn off your TV week" which is some silly liberal bullshit about how evil TV is. I read the same shit online, about how I'ven stopped watching TV. Yeah, yeah, and you never take an unfair deduction either. People get so self-rightious and pompous about the subject, it pisses me off. It's either self-serving bullshit or out and out bullshit.
But after seeing a second episode of Fox's The Swan, I'm convinced Hitler didn't die in 1945, but is working as a Fox programming executive. He's sitting over on 6th Avenue, chortling at the abusive nature of this show, which is akin to hunting foals with an Uzi, claymores and hand grenades. Only an SS officer could feel comfortable with a show where breaking down humans, encouraging their insecurities, and then carving them up like a turkey is the primary attraction. It's sadism on TV.
I've written about this show before, and commented on the sick souls who need the surgery. However, Howard Stern summed that up. "They're still ugly and they dress them like whores."
They had one woman on this week who shaved. She fucking shaved, and I'm talking about her face. She had a classic Mexican Indian nose and it seemed her Anglo schoolmates said she looked like a witch. Hell, even the doctor was brutal in his assesment. Uh, hello, most of Mexico looks like her. There's nothing wrong with her nose.
The other victim was this 40 year old woman who had her brother burn alive in a car accident and then had her husband leave her for someone else. For some reason, her depression focused on her looks and how her life would be better if she changed them.
I would like to know the person who would approach these women with this deal and ask them if the Office of Special Investigation was looking for anyone in their family. Had they ever visited anyone in Argentina?Was April 30 a special day in their household? Did dad get all misty eyed when the Odessa File came on TV. When they asked dad if he served in WWII, he kept talking about how cold Russia was.
Because only a war criminal or their spawn could think this TV show was anything but evil.
This show is evil beyond the surgery in the way Iraq is beyond screwed up. The whole concept is evil. It doesn't have small evil attached to it, but the kind of evil which will condemn you to hell where you get to watch Saddam Hussein bugger the Devil. That kind of hell. One even Dante would pass on.
Of course, like watching a car crash, it's impossible to not watch and sneer at the same time. I found myself wondering exactly how evil these people were, and they ran off the fucking scale. Past Mao evil, even past Stalin. I was trying to decide if Hitler had risen from the dead or if Pol Pot had faked his death and gotten a job at Fox. I went with Hitler, because only he could think of evil on this vast a scale and disguise it as entertainment. I know the executives at Fox have no shame, but The Swan is the kind of thing where someone should seriously consider jailing these people and torturing them, kind of like the mercs who used to work for the SADF or the Chiliean DINA.
Atrios is running a quote about a slip Condi Rice made at a dinner party filled with Timesmen and women.
Political Conversation: Condi’s Slip A pressing issue of dinner-party etiquette is vexing Washington, according to a story now making the D.C. rounds: How should you react when your guest, in this case national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice, makes a poignant faux pas? At a recent dinner party hosted by New York Times D.C. bureau chief Philip Taubman and his wife, Times reporter Felicity Barringer, and attended by Arthur Sulzberger Jr., Maureen Dowd, Steven Weisman, and Elisabeth Bumiller, Rice was reportedly overheard saying, “As I was telling my husb—” and then stopping herself abruptly, before saying, “As I was telling President Bush.” Jaws dropped, but a guest says the slip by the unmarried politician, who spends weekends with the president and his wife, seemed more psychologically telling than incriminating. Nobody thinks Bush and Rice are actually an item. A National Security Council spokesman laughed and said, “No comment.”
Poignant? Maybe if you're Laura Bush. If I was her, I'd stay out of light aircraft for the next decade or so. If her husband ever suggests it, she needs to remember Paul Wellstone. While I don't think he was assasinated, the risks of light aircraft are pretty high.
You could call it a freudian slip if you want, but let's get real. Bush has kept Rice's incompetent ass around past any normal justification. Given the Bush history of fidelity (pops hired his mistress as White House chief of protocol), it is far from impossible that GW is tapping Rice or at least thinking really hard about who his second wife will be.
I mean, unless she secretely married someone, Rice has some very strong feelings for her boss, and I don't think they stop at the like/respect line. If Laura Bush gave a damn about more than her smokes, Xanax, Charodnnay, and her trollope daughters, she might not like her husband's closest advisor calling him her husband. Unlike the married and able to leave Karen Hughes, who was probably smart enough to cultivate Laura to keep her off her back, Condi seems to have had a different goal from day one. While being First Lady is impossible, being the next Mrs. George Bush is not.
After all, like a good born-again Christian, dumping your wife is par for the course. After a couple of years on the pig farm, some brown sugar might be all too sppealing. And does anyone get the feeling that Condi wouldn't love to replace Laura?
I mean Clinton, who was stupid in tapping a 25 year old for blowjobs, at least was treating Lewinsky like the disposable office ho. He went a bit far in stringing her along, but his behavior was at least recognizable, if despicable. It wasn't like he expected her to replace Hillary, except in his most maudlin moments.
Bush, otoh, would clearly be looking for a full replacement. Hillary could at least blame her husband's dick. If Laura got dumped, it would be an act of comission. Condi is more accomplished than his wife by degrees. And given how sympathetic Barbara Bush is, she'd be living in a Houston condo faster than you can say mistress, chugging down booze, popping Xanax and wondering what happened as she kept her mouth shut.
I can see this whole thing, the stolen kisses (never more than that, plausable fildelity here), the lingering looks. It would be romantic if it wasn't creepy and disgusting. You don't think during Bush's Prince Hal days that he kept the trouser snake in a cage, do you? Dad reportly used hookers for some parties, why not GW?
Seriously, time is the greatest aide to romance. The more time you spend with someone, the easier it is to be attracted to them. And given that Rice is single and pushing 50 and has a neglible social life, it is natural that she feel some attraction to her boss. The creepy part is that you get the feeling that Bush is not immune to her charms. While he keeps his wife around, you just get the feeling that he might be looking for a upgrade.
If you think that's impossible, I have one name for you: Newt Gingrich. Dumped his first wife while she had cancer. Dumped his second wife over the phone and took up with a 25 year old Hill Rat. And given the rumors about Jeb, Neil's messy divorce and dad's cheating, being surprised that Condi may well wind up being Condi Rice-Bush, is naive to say the least.
his article was reported by David Barstow, James Glanz, Richard A. Oppel Jr. and Kate Zernike and was written by Mr. Barstow.
They have come from all corners of the world. Former Navy Seal commandos from North Carolina. Gurkas from Nepal. Soldiers from South Africa's old apartheid government. They have come by the thousands, drawn to the dozens of private security companies that have set up shop in Baghdad. The most prized were plucked from the world's elite special forces units. Others may have been recruited from the local SWAT team.
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But they are there, racing about Iraq in armored cars, many outfitted with the latest in high-end combat weapons. Some security companies have formed their own "Quick Reaction Forces," and their own intelligence units that produce daily intelligence briefs with grid maps of "hot zones." One company has its own helicopters, and several have even forged diplomatic alliances with local clans.
Far more than in any other conflict in United States history, the Pentagon is relying on private security companies to perform crucial jobs once entrusted to the military. In addition to guarding innumerable reconstruction projects, private companies are being asked to provide security for the chief of the Coalition Provisional Authority, L. Paul Bremer III, and other senior officials; to escort supply convoys through hostile territory; and to defend key locations, including 15 regional authority headquarters and even the Green Zone in downtown Baghdad, the center of American power in Iraq.
With every week of insurgency in a war zone with no front, these companies are becoming more deeply enmeshed in combat, in some cases all but obliterating distinctions between professional troops and private commandos. Company executives see a clear boundary between their defensive roles as protectors and the offensive operations of the military. But more and more, they give the appearance of private, for-profit militias — by several estimates, a force of roughly 20,000 on top of an American military presence of 130,000.
"I refer to them as our silent partner in this struggle," Senator John W. Warner, the Virginia Republican and Armed Services Committee chairman, said in an interview.
The price of this partnership is soaring. By some recent government estimates, security costs could claim up to 25 percent of the $18 billion budgeted for reconstruction, a huge and mostly unanticipated expense that could delay or force the cancellation of billions of dollars worth of projects to rebuild schools, water treatment plants, electric lines and oil refineries.
In Washington, defense experts and some leading Democrats are raising alarms over security companies' growing role in Iraq.
"Security in a hostile fire area is a classic military mission," Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a member of the Armed Service committee, wrote last week in a letter to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld signed by 12 other Democratic senators. "Delegating this mission to private contractors raises serious questions."
The extent and strategic importance of the alliance between the Pentagon and the private security industry has been all the more visible with each surge of violence. In recent weeks, commandos from private security companies fought to defend coalition authority employees and buildings from major assaults in Kut and Najaf, two cities south of Baghdad. To the north, in Mosul, a third security company repelled a direct assault on its headquarters. In the most publicized attack, four private security contractors were killed in an ambush of a supply convoy in Fallujah.
The Bush administration's growing dependence on private security companies is partly by design. Determined to transform the military into a leaner but more lethal fighting force, Mr. Rumsfeld has pushed aggressively to outsource tasks not deemed essential to war-making. But many Pentagon and authority officials now concede that the companies' expanding role is also a result of the administration's misplaced optimism about how Iraqis would greet American reconstruction efforts.
The authority initially estimated that security costs would eat up about 10 percent of the $18 billion in reconstruction money approved by Congress, said Capt. Bruce A. Cole of the Navy, a spokesman for the authority's program management office.
But after months of sabotage and insurgency, some officials now say a much higher percentage will go to security companies that unblushingly charge $500 to $1,500 a day for their most skilled operators.
"I believe that it was expected that coalition forces would provide adequate internal security and thus obviate the need for contractors to hire their own security," said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the new inspector general of the authority. "But the current threat situation now requires that an unexpected, substantial percentage of contractor dollars be allocated to private security."
"The numbers I've heard range up to 25 percent," Mr. Bowen said in a telephone interview from Baghdad. Mark J. Lumer, the Pentagon official responsible for overseeing Army procurement contracts in Iraq, said he had seen similar estimates.
But Captain Cole said that the costs were unlikely to reach that level and that the progress of reconstruction would eventually alleviate the current security problems.
The American Foreign Legion is a highly paid mercenary force draining the regular Army of needed special operators. We have 10,000 mercenaries under only nominal US control and with the full expectation that privates making $1300 a month will come to their rescue. We have no idea what kind of deals they're making, what triggered an attack, or how they behave with Iraqis. Yet, some kid feeding his family off food stamps will be expected to die for these people who make in a day what he makes in a month.
No wonder professional soldiers are not running to save their mercenary buddies. They well could be walking into a blind trap caused by mercenaries violating law and common sense.
The failure of Iraq policy has been clearly ennunciated by the reliance on this foreign legion of ex-soldiers and SWAT team members. And in some cases, ex-torturers have been enlisted. A few members of the old SADF, the Chilean Army have been called to Iraq. What are they doing to the Iraqis who fall in their hands? Who is responsible for anything they do? The US, private companies? What if they hook some electrodes to the testicles of an unwilling Iraqi? Who is ultimately responsible? Who are they ultimately loyal to.
They aren't soldiers, they can quit at any time and go home.
While outsourcing repair functions and other tasks is one thing, buying the services of private soldiers is highly risky and filled with downsides.
I know the idea of a private army may appeal to some on the right, the risks to our policy and soldiers is just too high.
The Spanish are leaving Iraq "as soon as possible". They smell the disaster coming and they're not hanging around. While the new PM, Zapatero claims he's just fulfilling a promise, he's not moving his military alone. His commanders told him, quickly, that the world is going to explode and if he left the troops there, well, it would explode around them as well as the Americans.
This is the start of the exodus from Iraq. The British commander said point blank that the day the Shia want us to leave, we're gone. While Tony Blair may want to hang on to the bitter end, Gordon Brown, his likely successor, will not.
Now, the NY Times is reporting that Bremer is losing patience and wants a military solution to end these revolts. Which is sad and insane, but the talk of an armchair general misled by his miliatry commanders. We are being told, in fluent English, invading Najaf would trigger a Shia uprising. Yet, Viceroy Jerry wants this wrapped up.
What has amazed me is the way the media can't state the obvious: the guerrilla forces are winning. Maybe I'm stupid, but the Marines are stalemated outside Fallujah and the Army is letting Sadr's militia grow by the day. Then of course, the roads are blocked. Good luck in feeding Baghdad like that.
If someone was told this was the situation, they would see a disaster. But bercause so much is invested in it, including national self-image, we can't see the obvious. We expect things to change, to get better. That the Iraqis will see that we're right. Which is quite unlikely to happen. Unless the Iraqis suffer a convincing defeat, something US forces cannot deliver with their numbers, we will lose.
No one says the simple fact that the Iraqis are amazingly well armed for guerrillas. Which allows them to stand against US troops.
The only hope to save lives is for the US to admit their tactics failed and political goals will not be met. Anything short of this, much less trying to attack Najaf, can only lead to disaster.
It's nice to know that we've found the source of all our problems for 9/11. I mean, after all, Tom DeLay said so.
If you listened to right-wing radio, you'd think this evil traitorous bitch's memo was the cause of the murder of 3,000 people. For this crime, she needs to die. The heroes who have been calling her house, threatening her life, have been the finest kinds of Americans. They see a traitor and they threaten to kill her and her family.
I mean, why not? Let's slt her and her family's throats and burn down her house. Isn't that what Rush and his buddies want? She wrote a memo backed by law and custom since 1979 and somehow she's a traitor who should die slowly and painfully. It's all her fault. Not Bush's or Rice. Let's all blame the assistant attorney general who left office in 1997.
This is ridiculous in the extreme. The cowards who would threaten her are not joined by the 9/11 families who had to shame Bush into allowing Rice to testify under oath. They aren't bitching about a memo when so many other flaws are responsible for what happened. No, only the small dicked cowards who feel pumped up by talk radio make death threats.
If Tom DeLay and John Ashcroft were men, they would denounce this behavior. But since Ashcroft's main role is to cover his ass first and foremost, he won't say a word.
What is wrong with these radio bundists? Everytime they get a chance, the death threats flow. They're not running to Iraq, they're not enlisting, but they feel pumped up by the modern day Father Coughlins. What would murdiering Jamie Gorelick solve? Would it make America stronger? Capture one terrorist? Or make some basement-dwelling coward feel good?
BAGHDAD, Iraq, April 17 — The United States military command on Saturday closed down long stretches of two strategic highways leading to Baghdad, as American troops labored against insurgent attacks that have severely reduced the flow of food, fuel and other supplies into the capital.
The closings appeared to confirm the effect of two weeks of heightened violence in Iraq. American soldiers, stretched thin, have already been deployed in large numbers to contain serious and unresolved uprisings in the cities of Falluja and Najaf. Now they have been sent to face the growing problem of keeping crucial sections of highway open for the passage of critically needed convoys reaching the Iraqi heartland from Turkey, Jordan and Kuwait.
The American command's hope appears to be that by keeping all civilian traffic off the roads on the approaches to Baghdad, it will be more difficult for insurgents to mount ambushes against the trucks and convoys in the most dangerous sections of the highways.
On Saturday, travelers heading north to Baghdad on the main highway from Kuwait saw at least three highway bridges destroyed in a 60-mile section immediately south of the capital. Munadel Abdul Ellah, 44, a Hilla resident who drove to Baghdad on Saturday, said large numbers of American helicopters flew overhead and hundreds of troops patrolled the roads.
"It's a very bad situation," said Mr. Ellah, who spent nearly eight hours making a round trip that usually takes only two hours. "There were so many troops on the highway. It was like when they first came to occupy the airport last year during the war."
American forces had already effectively lost control of long sections of the 375-mile highway leading west from Baghdad to Jordan. The road runs through the battle zone around Falluja, 35 miles west of the capital. Ambushes near Falluja and the adjacent city of Abu Ghraib have destroyed numerous convoys carrying fuel and other supplies for American troops in the past two weeks.
...................
The announcement on Saturday of the the closing of the highways running north to Turkey and south to Kuwait was accompanied by an American military statement saying that the routes "are damaged and too dangerous for civilian travel," and that anybody driving on the closed sections could be subject to attack. "If civilians drive on the closed sections of the highways, they may be engaged with deadly force," the statement read.
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the chief spokesman for the military command, was dismissive when asked if the closings had been forced by threats from insurgent groups to enter Baghdad in force and attack Western targets. "If the fighters would like to take the fight to Baghdad, they'll have the First Cavalry Division waiting for them," he told reporters here in the capital.
Still, American officials here and in Washington have been frank about the disruption in supplies reaching Baghdad.
On Friday, General Kimmitt said American commanders believed that there was "a concerted effort on the part of the enemy to try to interfere with our lines of communication, our main supply routes," but said the main effect would be on ordinary Iraqis, who would eventually pay higher prices in the capital's shops and markets.
The general said American military supplies were less of a problem because there were "alternative methods" of delivering ammunition, food and fuel, presumably by air. But even at the bases, commanders have been rationing use of critical stockpiles and urging decisive action to ensure that road convoys get through.
But a senior American official said Saturday that the cutoff in supplies reaching the American occupation authority's headquarters in Saddam Hussein's former Republican Palace in central Baghdad were approaching a critical point. Canteens feeding 2,000 people, civilians as well as military personnel, may soon be forced to serve combat rations in plastic sleeves, known as meals ready to eat.
The guerillas are winning.
They have cut the supply lines and US forces are unable to get what they need. Sure, they can airlift critical supplies, and dodge SAM's, but cutting the highway is a major deal and will limit combat operations.
We are on the verge of a disaster, a Chosin Resevior-like disaster, in Iraq. The US should be able to keep supply lines open with their forces. Now that they can't, we may have to fight our way out. This is a very serious, extremely serious, development.
Logistics is the way armies operate. Forget the tactics, if you can't eat and change uniforms, you can't fight effectively. If the guerillas have blocked the main supply lines from Kuwait, they have achieved a victory which is 200 times more important than their stand in Fallujah.
The generals behind the guerrillas have figured out that we can't do two things: fight the guerillas on their turf and feed ourselves. We're going to have to choose. Which is why going after Sadr was so incredibly bone stupid. Alienating the Shia means every mile of our supply lines could face attack.
Once again, CENTCOM says stupid things, while the facts say something else. The NVA never cut the supply lines to MACV. The insurgents are threatening to starve Baghdad or at least make food resupplies difficult. That's a massive deal, it's probably the most important development of the war to date.
This is why we needed 400,000 troops. You could have put the Pakistanis to clear the highways while the US went after the guerrillas. Now, we can't do both. Something has to give and it has to give soon.
Make no mistake, none. This has been a month of defeats for the US. We had to stop outside Fallujah, stop outside Najaf and now face a blockade of Baghdad. We are actively losing this war and that will be clear as time goes on.
Atrios is running Big Media Matt's exculpation on why he supported our current folly in Iraq. His excuses are rather pathetic and ahistorical, but at least he admits they're wrong.
The idea among the pro-war liberals that we could save the brown people from themselves is as deeply racist and ingrained as belief in the Super Bowl as a national holiday. They listened to exiled Iraqis talk about how they would do better than nasty, evil Saddam and how we could enlighten the whole region, let women drive and have the vote.
What they missed, of course, was that Iraq under Saddam had granted more rights to women than any subsequent government would
They would never admit that they thought what those wogs needed was a little enlightenment. They thought the average Iraqi was like Kenan Makiya, author of Republic of Fear, the first popular book on Saddam and the reign of terror which was the Baath Party.
A lot of liberals recoiled when faced with the culture of the Arab world and thought a chance to remake it would bring their values to that part of the world. They can say now that they didn't want Bush to screw it up, but to be fair, George Marshall would have screwed it up. What pro-war liberals wanted was nothing less than a new culture to be implanted in Iraq, one which would meet their goals, and one which had no historical support.
For over a year, Kos and I wrote, repeatedly, that this wasn't going to happen. Societies faced with radical political change can go in many ways, some quite reactionary. What stunned me was the way that the pro-war liberals thought Iraqis would embrace our ideas of what their country should be with acceptance. After all, they listened to the same exiles who only knew the Iraq of their childhood, not the Iraq of war and privation.
No implantation, whether done by the inept Bush or a competant admistration, would have worked, because Iraqis have their own history and culture. They are a fiercely nationalistic people and one who would never accept outside change easily. They have also suffered a great deal since 1980. The idea that a bunch of well-heeled academics, traitors to Iraq and shady liars could be an effective government was a fantsy quickly rejected by the Iraqi people. Why liberals thought the most independent minded of Arab peoples would accept our lectures on how to live is beyond me.
There are other, practical, reasons on why our efforts in Iraq were doomed from day one. Very simply, the US forces supported no one with a base of support in Iraq. Chalabi was unknown in Iraq and when he was known, became quickly reviled as a con man and American puppet. SCIRI, the Hakim's organization, was reknowned for torturing Shia POW's to get them to join up. So when we get there and remove Saddam, the last men standing are the clerics, and they don't like the US much, forget any liberl ideas of remaking their society.
We tried to ignore Sadr, who's appeal is closer to the Black Panthers with vastly more guns and no drug dealing. Sadr's power comes from living and working with the oppressed. You can call him a thug all you want, and fairly so, but he's the voice of the poor and and his father lost his life standing up for them.
We tried to pretend that Sistani was a friend, when he would never let an American darken his door. No pictures with Viceroy Jerry for him. Unlike when Hirohito allowed pictures with MacArthur, giving the imprimature of support for the occupation, Sistani hs never allowed a CPA ofiicial to hold a meeting with him. He sits in Najaf, sends his aides out and keeps waiting for the CPA to hand him power.
What the liberals never got, and this goes deeper than the CPA's incompetance and bad management, was that we are neither trusted nor liked in the Middle East, and a major reason is our culture. Remaking Iraq, especially when we had no real allies, even the Kurds are gaming us, was impossible. Only a racist arrogance encouraged us to think it was possible. One, more than a few liberals bought into, thinking all Iraq needed was a dose of Western culture and not realizing they would kill to protect their own, no matter how we viewed it.
LOS ANGELES, April 16 — The nation's multibillion-dollar pornographic film industry virtually shut itself down this week after producers learned that at least two of its actors had been infected with the virus that causes AIDS.
Most of the major companies in the adult-movie industry, which turns out about 4,000 films and videos a year, agreed to halt filming for 60 days so that any of the performers who worked with the infected actors could be tested and re-tested for exposure to the virus, H.I.V.
Darren James, the first of the two performers known to have been infected, may have contracted the virus while shooting a film in Brazil, friends and associates said, and passed it on to at least one of the 12 actresses he worked with in Los Angeles after his return.
"That was kind of a downer," said Jill Kelly, a producer whose production house, which is named after her, normally turns out eight films a month. "People think this is something that happens all the time in this industry, but it really doesn't."
Mr. James appears to have infected a Canadian actress who is new to the business and goes by the stage name Lara Roxx, industry leaders said. About 65 performers have been identified as having had sex with either of the two actors or with someone else who did. All are being tested.
On Friday, preliminary test results on a second actress who worked with Mr. James raised fears that she too might have contracted H.I.V., Ms. Kelly said.
The last recorded H.I.V. infections in the pornography business here were in 1999.
"It hurts everyone's pocket, but we're talking about people's lives," Ms. Kelly said of the shutdown, which was initiated not by public health authorities but by the industry itself.
Leaders of the industry said the moratorium indicated the seriousness with which they handled health issues.
The reason this is news is that porn is an $11 billion dollar industry backed by the largest companies in America. While Ashcroft cam babble about HBO being porn, which is insane on it's face, he won't do much about it. Prosecutions and other federal action tend to backfire. The Meese Commission, which was liberally sprinked with Andrea Dworkin's psychotic rantings, was some of the best collections of porn ever created.
How potent is porn? Well, Netflix, the DVD rental service, is losing money. If it rented porn, it's profitiablity will be assured. Blockbuster and Walmart are entering the DVD by mail business, but they will all remain vunerable to the company which rents Hollywood and porn side by side. All of the major cable companies rent soft core porn, and most major hotel chains rent hard core porn as part of their profitability picture.
Sharon Mitchell pretty much forced the issue of HIV in porn, and the industry has been relatively successful in keeping it under control. But there is an essential conflict: people like to see their fantasies on film, but real people are having real sex on screen. There are no stunt anuses on camera in porn. When you see unsafe sex in porn, it's unsafe sex.
Also, people, even porn actors, have real sex lives with real partners. Which makes them just as vunerable as anyone else to HIV infection.
Considering that this is the first outbreak in five years and the industry's largest film producers eagerly shut down for sixty days, they've acted with far more speed than other industries have to save their business. Keep in mind, Vivid makes four films a day or at least 20 films a week. That's 160 films which won't be made. Now, it might not be fun to not get the next Kobe Tai or Jenna Jameson film for a couple of months, this is where real life intrudes on fantasy.
What needs to be considered is that this is the ONLY way porn producers protect their workers. Otherwise, it is an exploitative, generally sleazy industry which treats their workers like dirt. The legal brothels in Nevada have much better work rules, including mandatory condom use for ALL customers. Violate that rule and lose your business.
The reason the California porn industry has to worry about HIV is simple: customers want to see unprotected sex. All those cum shots are a risk for the actresses involved. But people's fantasy lives are often stronger than realistic constraints. If customers bought films where condoms were used in greater numbers, more producers would make those films.
The actresses are often young and naive, either working out issues in their personal life (Howard Stern usually asks porn actresses if they were abused as kids) or seeking a desperate sort of fame. They don't realize that only two actresses have crossed the line from doing porn to straight film in nearly 30 years. Jenna Jameson's fame is still that as a porn actress and she still works in the industry.
While I have nothing against porn, it's like a slaughterhouse, We all like beef, but few of us want to rip the innards out of a cow. Porn fills a sexual need for most men, but few of us want to think about how it's produced or the conditions the actors and actresses work under.
One of the most amazing things which Condoleeza Rice said during her public testimony is that the CIA and FBI don't communicate well with each other and that this was a "structural" problem.
Uh, no kidding. Any book about the CIA since Victor Marchetti's highly redacted 1973's The Cult of Intelligence has depicted a virtual cold war between the Agency and the Bureau. The OSS, the predecessor to the CIA, reportedly took pictures of J. Edgar Hoover screwing a bus boy in a Washington hotel, and passed the pictures on to the CIA. The FBI tried to strangle the OSS in its bed. Relations between the two agencies have ranged from icy cold to lukewarm. They have never been good.
There are cultural and political reasons for the hostility, but to act surprised that it exists is not only shocking, but insulting to any sentinent adult with ANY knowledge of national security issues.
There is talk of creating an American Surete or MI-5, but that would miss the point. It's moving in the wrong direction. The FBI, despite it's numerous flaws, spends most of it's budget on counterintelligence. What is needed is not an MI-5, but an agency dedicated to crime intelliegence and supporting local and state police forces. The function which needs to be removed from the FBI is not the murky world of spookdom, but the every day business of crime and investigation. Why? Because it is clear that the Bureau cannot do both, and the reputation of the FBI is dirt with most local police forces. A new agency dedicated not only to investigating crime on a national basis, but providing support to other law enforcement agencies would probably be a far wiser solution that building a new MI-5 for America.
While the FBI wants to protect their turf, it is clear that the two missions are incompatible. The FBI cannot be a one-stop shop for all domestic threats to America.
However, what is missing from this conversation is the role of the Defense Department in this. Most of the intelligence budget and operations are controlled by DOD. The CIA is the only major intelligence agency not controlled by DOD. How come the Defense Intelligence Agency missed links to Al Qaeda, they were heavily invested in Pakistan. Where was the National Security Agency's intercepts of AQ communications? The defense department agencies missed as much as the CIA and FBI, yet will now only get the scrutiny which is needed.
It is easy to blame Langley for what happened on 9/11 and share the blame with the FBI. That's an old and established habit. The missing link is DOD. It isn't as if one agency alone screwed up. They all missed something. But to act as if it was a mystery that the FBI and CIA refused to talk is an insult to common sense. Anyone who could pick up one of a hundred books could have figured that out. Unless Rice shares the reading habits of her boss, her ignorance of this is either disingenuous or shocking.
Read Juan Cole today. Sistani's top aide has said that if the US tries to take Najaf, he'll call the Shia into the street.
No one wants this confrontation. Even Sadr has had second and third thoughts between fits of paranoia. But the US is poised on creating anarchy if they launch attacks on either Kerbala or Najaf. Sistani woud have to order the defense of the city. Once that happens, Sadr City would explode as well.
At every turn, the US seems not to understand anything about Iraq. Asking Sadr to surrender to the collaborationist police and expecting to have people hand over their cousins.
I'm watching Gen. Kimmit telling the press that most people in Fallujah feel that they are "held hostage". Which is a joke, or would be if American teenagers weren't going to die. Now they're declaring highways no go zones. Of course, that makes the guerrillas job easier. No civilians in the way to be killed. Unless they take the wrong road and are shot by Americans.
Did it occur to anyone in the CPA that maybe they don't have the pulse of the Iraqi people? That maybe, just maybe, when poor Shia give their food to Sunnis, that the perception that the resistance in Fallujah doesn't have widespread support might be wrong.
I don't think anyone understands what we're running towards, which is anarchy. Order in Iraq isn't going to collapse slowly, but quickly. Once Sistani orders the defense of Najaf all hell will break lose. The Americans are saying "it's only Sadr." The Iraqis are saying "no, it's not." You already have one disaster in Fallujah, why in God's name would you invite another one in Najaf. And if anything happens in Najaf, Sadr City will not remain calm. So Coalition forces could face a three front war and supply lines threatened.
There is frightening lack of foresight here. Picking fights you cannot win is insane. We cannot fight the entire enraged Shia population. Saddam tried it and nearly lost and he had most of his army intact. His million man . We don't have a million men in Iraq.
Now, you have the shaky 1st Armored Division ready to attack Najaf. They are one bad day from a collapse in combat. Extending their tours was as braindead an act as possible. These guys have to feel that they're being sentenced to death after escaping a year in Iraq. That extra 120 days is a number in Washington, but it's the difference between life and death or injury in Iraq.
Here's a question: who will fight harder-Americans with low morale or Shia defending their holy sites?
Watching the incredibly unlucky Pfc. Keith Maupin on TV, it is easy to realize one thing: for all of Bush's tough talk, the Iraqis are meaner than us. Americans are good at remote killing, with bombs and rockets and cannon, but we cannot stare into a camera with hostages. At least for politics.
Have no illusions. The hostage takers, who are more than likely ex-Iraqi soldiers, will kill all 40 hostages to meet their goals, which is to get rid of Americans. Or they will hold them until their families are crying on TV and cursing Bush to do something. There is no Jessica Lynch-type rescue possible. All the movie dramatics don't apply here. Charlie Sheen will not be sliding down and crashing into a window, The point seems to be that hostages are free for the taking.
The Iraqis, despite the Americans myopia, keep raising the stakes. They can show how hard they truly are and how they can make Americans suffer while Bush watches and repeat his mantra of toughness. Maybe he thinks he's John Wayne. But the real world makes short work of John Waynes. Those who talk tough are soon forced to eat their words.
All of the blather eminating from CENTCOM and the White House can be defeated with the murders of American truck drivers. Burn a couple alive on tape and that will cut the heart out of the civilian workforce. As evil and as ghastly as it is, it will show exactly how tough the Iraqi resistance is. We are dealing with people who will do what is required to win. These are the same people who faced American B-52's and Iranian Revolutionary Guards as well as Saddam. These are tough people and they don't waste their time with cheap words.
Everyone wants the hostages to come home alive, which is what they are playing on. They want us to beg for their release. But at the same time, we better realize that they will kill them all if they have to. They will raise the level of pain well past what we can bear. And no matter what Bush says, we will break. Because they will match our tough words with their tough actions.
Every week, Scott Wilson drives to the Outback Steakhouse in Ellicott City, pulls his green truck to the curb and waits to pick up dinner for his family of five.
Inside, two takeout waitresses rush to take phone orders while another runs Wilson's food out to his Chevrolet.
This steakhouse, one of the chain's busiest outlets in the nation, logs 50 to 60 curbside takeout orders each weekday and 150 orders each weekend day, so workers try to keep traffic moving.
"It's very convenient," said Wilson, 47, a Marriottsville contractor.
Wilson, who paid $76 for his family's meal, is one of a growing crowd that is choosing to neither cook nor dine out but instead pick up restaurant meals curbside.
Customers say it's quick and allows them to eat higher-quality food at home with their families. For busy restaurants, the extra income from selling meals at the curb is irresistible. So, restaurants are racing to implement or increase their curbside service.
Chains like Applebee's and Chili's have joined Outback in tapping into this call for convenience.
I"m sorry, but $76 for Outback? Every week? Man, give me a grill and some decent cuts of meat and I'll kick Outback's ass. I can see that once in a while, but every week is a waste of money.
I'll admit I'm not Outback's biggest fan, but shit, their food is mediocre and a smart cook could blend takeout from the supermarket with prime grade steak and some quick deep frying and get a better meal.
I love the occasional steak or grilled chicken, but unless you're crashing through the door bone tired, 30 minutes can get you a better meal. I have to admit that their garlic mashed potatoes rule, but even the bloomin' onion leaves me cold.
I will say this, it is a step up from fast food. It might even be healthier. But it is nearly half of what a family spends on food in an average week. I cannot see dropping that kind of money on Outback or any chain without the resturant ambiance. Although with kids, that can be a pain in the ass.
My way of thinking is that if your kids all eat beef, you can do a Tuscan steak, which is a porterhouse (t-bone and filet minon) grilled and then sliced, medium, in 30 minutes on a grill. Steak cooks quickly. Frozen mashed potatoes can be cooked quickly and have garlic and parsely added.
Coconut shrimp can be pre-prepared and dipped into a fryer. A bloomin' onion is merely a whole onion breaded and deep fried. But to be honest, I'd spend $10-12 bucks on the sides there and cook the steak myself.
The drive for quick meals is not just a dietary one, but an economic one. I was watching Oprah one day and this woman left her 11 year home alone while she worked long hours. I was stunned that this woman's priorities was so out of wack. Economic success, for selfless reasons, had totally placed her family life secondary.
The reason someone can drop $76 at Outback and think this is a good idea is not for the food. The food is OK. It's about exhaustion and trying to recapture family time. It's easier to eat Outback than to cook for three kids. It makes daddy a hero to come in with restaurant food, and not just to the kids.
We should all have the time or the planning to do better than Outback, but in a society where you need two incomes to live decently, you can't.
Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni wondered aloud yesterday how Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld could be caught off guard by the chaos in Iraq that has killed nearly 100 Americans in recent weeks and led to his announcement that 20,000 U.S. troops would be staying there instead of returning home as planned.
"I'm surprised that he is surprised because there was a lot of us who were telling him that it was going to be thus," said Zinni, a Marine for 39 years and the former commander of the U.S. Central Command. "Anyone could know the problems they were going to see. How could they not?"
At a Pentagon news briefing yesterday, Rumsfeld said he could not have estimated how many troops would be killed in the past week.
Zinni made his comments during an interview with The San Diego Union-Tribune before giving a speech last night at the University of San Diego's Joan B. Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice as part of its distinguished lecturer series.
For years Zinni said he cautioned U.S. officials that an Iraq without Saddam Hussein would likely be more dangerous to U.S. interests than one with him because of the ethnic and religious clashes that would be unleashed.
"I think that some heads should roll over Iraq," Zinni said. "I think the president got some bad advice."
Gee, just because Zinni was a former head of CENTCOM, what does he know about Iraq? He's just another liberal who is betraying our troops. Just like Eric Shinseki, Hugh Shelton and Wes Clark. Traitors one and all. They should shut up and support the troops. Which translates into shut up and support Bush, regardless how many dead teenagers come home.
I say let's really support the troops and bring them home, alive and able to defend this country against real threats, like Osama Bin Laden. Staying in Iraq is a suicide pact which will destroy the US Army and the Iraqi people.
Ralph Nader is running around campuses telling kids that Bush is going to reinstate the draft. My Congressman, Charles Rangel wants to reinstate the draft to "balance" who serves in the military.
Both are dead wrong.
First of all, the modern, lottery-based draft is no more fair that the exemption based draft which existed after WW II. Why?
It all breaks down to who serves and who takes the most risk. While a draft would have a flood of middle class kids, few would serve in the combat arms. The most balanced formation, in terms of social class, ever in US history is the modern National Guard infantry platoon. More middle class soldiers are serving in combat today than in any time in American history.
What a draft would do is simple. The poor kids who get advanced technical jobs in today's military would be shunted into the combat arms (infantry, artillery, armor, combat engineers). All those vaunted middle class kids would be, if they didn't get medical exemptions, given all those rear-area jobs, or join the Navy or Air Force, avoiding combat.
Besides the fact that Bush would be chased from office if he tried to pass a draft, and the fact that the military wants nothing to do with it, tthe draft is not a social leveler. It never has been. The most socially balanced US army was the Continental Army, which had nearly 25 percent black soldiers, percentages which it would not see again until Vietnam.
The composition of the infantry has remained remarkably consistant for over 250 years, according to Charles Moskos: the poor and lower middle class led by middle class officers. The US is one of the few nations on earth who's generals grew up either poor or working class. The reason many went to West Point is that it was the only way they could afford a college education.
The myth of the draft as a class leveller comes from WWII, where it was only true for about six months. And the reason for that was the ASTP (Army Specialized Training Program), which took oridnary soldiers and trained them in various skills in colleges. As infantry casualities hit 90 percent for units in Normandy, these programs were emptied out and stocked with these educated young men.
But for most of the war, the infanty was those unwanted by other branches.
The reason we think the draft was a social leveller comes from two sources. One is the GI Bill. We forget that the men who basically changed America were poor before the GI Bill and middle class after, with their low interest houses and college educations. The benefits were the same if you typed on Governor's Island, survived Bataan and years as a guerilla in the Philippiines or landed on Utah Beach. Everyone who served and was discharged honorably was eligible to participate. It literally created a middle class where none existed.
And while the middle class willingly served in the Cold War draft, most avoided service in the infantry. Why?
The Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT). That one test, which determines the range of careers you're eligible for in the military, seperates the stupid from the smart. If you do poorly, well, I hope you like driving trucks, traditionally, the job of the stupid in the military. If you do well, any job you want is yours. The infantry requires some reasonable intelligence.
Also, many of the draftmongers don't get that the military can increase their ranks by changing enlistment requirements. The military is a third smaller than it was in 1991. This isn't the WW II or the Vietnam army where you can take people from the street and train them for a few months and send them into an infantry platoon. Infantry operations are far more complex these days and requires vastly more training.
A draft would do nothing for Iraq, because it would take two to three years to build a new division. If you think we'll be in Iraq in two to three years, fine, but it wouldn't help the current military. It would be, if a draft passed in 2005, churning in the second cohort of draftees into those new divisions in 2008. You would lose a cohort (the first draftees) in the formation of those divisions, and the second cohort would fill them out.
Also, the military wants nothing to do with a draft because of all the losers they would have to take. As it stands, if someone doesn't work out in the military, they can leave with little stigma, a draft army won't work that way. All the mental lightweights, social misfits and general losers who would now be shunted out of the military would have to be accepted.
Right now, anyone in an infantry unit volunteered to be there. There is always a pool of young men eager to see combat. The idea that policy would change because middle class kids are filing papers in division headquarters is silly. There will always be 18 year olds willing to shoot other people, at least until they actually have to.
Also, the job of the military is to provide national security, not make a fair, socially balanced military. If that was the case, the current reserves and National Guard provide that balance. Americans have never rushed to send their sons in the military. Not in any war. The Civil War was fought by the poor, working class and former slaves. Harvard and Yale had their boat race without a pause in 1864, while black former slaves served in the bloodiest battles of the war.
The draft is, for the most part, a tool of the past. Our military is too expensive to use the bodies created by the draft, the task of infantry combat too delicate to accept the unwilling in their ranks. Only the committed can do the most dangerous of jobs.
If you want social equality, fund schools equally. Nothing else, especially not a draft, will spread the burden of war across society. In reality, the military has served as tool of social promotion. The 7th Cavalry in 1876, the men who died at Little Big Horn, were mostly immigrants and ex-Confederates. The Army was the employer of last resort, even then.
The draft is technically possible, but the realities of it mean it would be less efficient than simply raising military salaries. Draft or not, the men who become 11 Bravos will not change. Rich kids, through education, medical care or luck, will avoid the burden of combat service, just like they have for nearly 250 years.
Our friend Sadr gets to have his militia kill Americans, avoid arrest and according to the NY Times, may well get to live in Tehran for a month or two.
The Iranians, eager to avoid the near-apocalyptic bloodbath which would come from an attack on Najaf, have tried to negotiate a settlement where Sadr escapes martyrdom and the US escapes engraging the Muslim world.
This is, without question, a complete and total victory for Sadr and a humilating defeat for the US. Our big talk strategy has ended with US forces looking impotent and ineffective. US forces are effectively stalemated in Fallujah, taking casualities and unable to control the city. Now, after demanding Sadr surrender, not only will his militia be "disbanded", which is semantics for sent home with their guns, he'll be allowed to escape.
He's been turned from a pest into a major player in Iraqi politics. His willingness to fight the Americans, force Sistani to defend him and serve as a voice for the poor, as well as having his militia kill Americans without sanction, has allowed him to win respect that he didn't have before. He may have been fading before two weeks ago, but now, no deal in Iraq can happen without him.
Even Chalabi was quoted as backing away, ever so slightly, from his American patrons over Sadr and Fallujah. This won't save his life when the mobs come for him on July 1, but it is a sign that this has all gone too far.
So does anyone think the Mahdi Army will stop their reign of terror with Sadr cooling his heels in Tehran? Not likely, since cell phones haven't been abolished. Sadr City will still be seen as a no-go zone for Americans and Sadr's lectures will be spread by tape and internet throughout Iraq.
Oh yeah, he's now a nationalist hero who wanted to avoid bloodshed from the crazy Americans. The Shis who stood by the Sunnis when the Americans attacked them.
If negotiations don't collapse, Sadr can laugh all the way to Tehran, knowing the Americans gave him status and prestige he never would have gotten on his own.
Now Viceroy Jerry looks like a fool unable to keep his word. If he can't bring in Sadr, dead or alive, much less pacify Fallujah, what can he do?
BAGHDAD, Iraq - Gunmen killed a high-ranking Iranian diplomat in Baghdad today, but it was unclear whether the killing was linked to Iranian efforts to mediate between U.S. forces and a radical Shiite cleric.
Khalil Naimi, the first secretary of the Iranian Embassy, was shot in the head while he was in his car near the embassy, Foreign Ministry official Mohammad Nouri told The Associated Press in Tehran.
The killing came as a senior Iranian envoy visited Iraq to try to mediate an end to the U.S. standoff with radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
Asked whether the killing was linked to the envoy's visit, a embassy official said on condition of anonymity, ''There is some speculation, but we do not have a clear idea.''
The hood of Naimi's car was crumpled and bullet holes pockmarked the windshield. The diplomat's car had diplomatic plates but no symbols on it suggesting it was Iranian.
The Neocon Likudniks have their great victory. Bush endorsed Sharon's desperate land grab in the West Bank not realizing the blowback effects in Iraq. To any Arab, this is naked land theft. There is no hope for a Palestinian state with armed compounds in their midst, with the right of Israeli protection and no responsibility to the local government.
Instead of saying to Sharon that he needs to stop the killing, Bush gave him what he wanted and ruined any chance we could be seen as an honest broker. This one sided land theft makes it impossible for any Palestinian government to make a deal.
Of course, this is an insane burden for any Israeli government. Having to fortify the settlements and protect them from the inevitable blockade they would face. Their very existance would enrage Palestinians. And given the deep racism of many of the settlers, it would be like setting up Klan compounds in Baldwin Hills and demanding the LAPD protect them.
Sharon is a supremacist who holds Arabs in the deepest racist contempt. He made his name as an IDF officer for his efficiency in killing Arabs. Now, as he faces jail for corruption, he devises a plan which well could lead to an Israeli civil war. The moderate secularists are going to grow tired of paying for Israel's colonial adventure for a bunch of diehard anti-Arab bigots.
Bush's carefully crafted neocon endorsement of this insane plan which pisses off the right and the left leaves the US screwed. What does he think led on Al Arabiya tonight? The shafing of the Palestinians. What does that tell the Iraqis. Here comes the shaft. You better get used to President Chalabi and like it. But unlike the Palestinians, the Americans live far away.
Bush babbled on about a Palestinian state, but you can't have a state where your enemies can destabilize you at their will. Terriortorial integrity is a key aspect of nationhood, this violates it.
The Israelis expect the Palestinian Authority to end violence. But how can they do that when Bush and Sharon say openly that they endorse the theft of Palestinian land.
The neocons have worked long and hard to tie US policy to the Likudnik vision of the world. Kerry will have to abrogate this and change US policy because it is a shortsighted and dangerous plan. It also isolates us from the EU and UN, who oppose land theft.
Bush, once again, listened to the neocons, and heads face first into a disater. These settlements and this plan cannot stand. This is a plan for the colonization of the West Bank without having to pay for the occupation. There will be no peace as long as racists drive the need for settlements on the West Bank. Without their imput, there would be no settlements. The low rents, benefits for living on the West Bank, which drove many normal, non-ideological Israelis to these settlements, was a carefully designed racist policy to deny Palestinians their land. Expecting peace to be made on that basis is insane.
The cold hard fact is that if we have to wait for John Kerry to be elected, there won't be an Iraq to make policy for. No one, not pundits, not policy makers, realize that events are moving rapidly against us in Iraq. There are no secular politicians to make a deal with and the longer we remain, the worse the war gets.
First, the CPA needs to begin direct negotiations with Shia and Sunni clerics and the Kurdish parties on a handover of power. Let us admit who runs the country and lets cut a deal with them. We need to work out some kind of legitimate transfer of power under UN mandate
Second, US forces need to begin a phased withdrawal while they still can. There is too much blood shed to think we can be there a decade as if was Kosovo. The Iraqi Army should be reconstituted and given all security missions as the US withdraws. Iraqi security is an Iraqi problem, not one for American teenagers. All Iraqis, whether in party militias or the resistance be given a chance to rejoin their units or join new ones.
Third, with Iraqi approval, a UN mandate with peacekeeping and training forces should be established. Then, a mixed Arab League and NATO force should come in and work with the Iraqi Army. They would retrain the police and Army over time.
Fourth, most Western company contracts should be abrogated and Iraqis put back to work.
Fifth, basic criminal and civil law should be established to allow a real crackdown on criminal gangs and begin the restoration of security to Iraq.
Bush wanted to remake Iraq in the neocons image, one where a Chalabi could flourish. That isn't going to happen. We either deal with the realities of Iraq, and Kerry's suggestions are just as impracticable as Bush's, but for different reasons, or face a defeat which will ruin the Army, cripple foreign policy and kill many Iraqis in the resulting mayhem.
The US has to realize that this misguided war means no one will join us in Iraq, most of our partners will pull their troops after a year, and our position will be horribly exposed. It will not matter if Bush or Kerry asks the questions, no country who isn't in Iraq will join us. We have to deal with the people on the ground and get out of the way. If not, 83 dead will be one day's total, not two weeks.
After Bush's pathetic performance last night, all he could say was that "we have to stay the course." The fact that the course will be bloody and ultimately fail seems not to have penetrated the White House. It may not penetrate until the Shia and Sunni clerics are wandering around the CPA headquarters, picking through burned American documents as collaborators are shot in the streets for the pleasure of Al Arabiya and BBC cameras.
We have no friends in Iraq, no faction we can trust. As bad as the South Vietnamese government was, it was a government. There is no government in Iraq. The IGC isn't one, not with most Iraqis hating them. Even our puppet, Ahmed Chalabi, plays us like a naive girlfriend. Whatever lie he tells us, even bragging about his lies, we just accept it, saying he provides an "invaluable service".
The pace of war has changed, and all the negotiations prove this. The US overreached in Fallujah and talked themselves into a corner with Sadr. Comparing him to Hitler or Lenin is rhetorical overreach. He may run a bunch of thugs, but he's not trying to kill Sunnis or Kurds. Stating outright that we were going to arrest or kill him was mindbendingly stupid. That's what he and his followers want, martyrdom. Now, we have to either back down or go into Najaf and kick off the Shia rebellion.
From the first days, this has been a military-based rebellion. I honestly don't think that paying off the Army would have worked. Iraqi nationalism is too strong a force, and the combat refusals and defections we've seen would have happened anyway. What the army might have done is stop the crime explosion.
The WaPo has a nice piece on the resistance today by Tom Ricks.
By Thomas E. Ricks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, April 14, 2004; Page A01
FORWARD OPERATING BASE DUKE, Iraq, April 13 -- Insurgents fighting the U.S.-led occupation force have sharply increased the sophistication, coordination and aggressiveness of their tactics over the past week, Army officers and soldiers involved in combat here said.
Most dramatically, as several thousand U.S. troops pushed south this week from the Baghdad area to this new base in central Iraq, one highway bridge on their planned route was destroyed and two others were so heavily damaged that they could not be used by heavy Army trucks and armored vehicles.
Those attacks on convoy routes, which U.S. forces were using for the first time, revealed a previously unseen degree of coordination among insurgent groups, said Army Col. Dana J.H. Pittard, the commander of a brigade-size task force now assembling for possible combat operations against the forces of radical Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada Sadr in or near the holy city of Najaf.
"The dropping of the bridges was very interesting, because it showed a regional or even a national level of organization," Pittard said in an interview. He said insurgents appeared to be sending information southward, communicating about routes being taken by U.S. forces and then getting sufficient amounts of explosives to key bridges ahead of the convoys.
With occupation forces battling Sadr's Shiite militiamen south and east of Baghdad and Sunni Muslim insurgents to the north and west, the timing of the Iraqis' tactical development is nearly as troubling for U.S. forces as its effect. But the explanation for the change is not yet clear, military commanders said.
Here in southern Iraq, which is overwhelmingly Shiite, U.S. officers say the best guess is that former soldiers who served under President Saddam Hussein have decided to lend their expertise and coordinating abilities to the untrained Shiite militiamen.
"It's a combination of Saddam loyalists and Shiite militias," Maj. Gen. John R. Batiste, commander of the 1st Infantry Division, said in a brief interview here at FOB Duke, where he was reviewing combat preparations.
Batiste said the influence of former Iraqi Republican Guard officers was especially apparent in the fighting in the Sunni town of Fallujah, where, he said, many veteran officers made their homes. "You could staff a division with the Iraqi officers living there," he said.
Maj. Kreg Schnell, Pittard's intelligence chief, agreed with Batiste's assessment. "There's been a marriage of convenience between Sadr's militia and Saddam loyalists," he said.
No. Schnell is wrong. The Iraqi Army was mostly Shia, except in the top ranks. There are plenty of Shia majors and colonels who were expert engineers. In fact, the Iraqi Army was reknowned for their engineering skills, which would place the bridge dropping campaign in good stead.
And they are not untrained militiamen. Most over 19 had military training. Iraq is chock full of combat vets. Their teeth to tail ratio is a lot lower than 13:1, as the US Army has. Most Iraqi soldiers were Shia, not Sunni.
These assumptions have cost 83 dead in 13 DAYS. That makes April the bloodiest month of the war, with a rate of 6.07 killed a day, according to the Iraq Casuality Count. That is twice as high as November, 2003.
It is absolutely criminal to pretend that this is some Red Brigades-type movement instead of a widely supported rebellion. The American Revolution only had the support of 1 out of three Americans. Over 50 percent of Iraqis want us gone. If ten percent of Iraqis opposed us, that's 2.6 million people. We have less that 200,000 Americans, civilian and military there. We cannot do anything in Iraq without the support of the people. Not their quiet indifference. Most Iraqis are neutral or leaning to oppose the US. That makes our position impossible. The sad fact is that the Nazis had more support in occupied France than we do in Iraq. We don't even have a decent puppet government.
It's been a year, Iraqis have been more than happy to kill Americans while their citizens watch and cluck their teeth. Why does Bush pretend that Iraqis actually give a damn if American teenagers die to make their country safer. They don't care and they resent our presence. It's also true that the American teenagers forced into making policy have shot and robbed their way across Iraq.
The fatal flaw in the occupation is a simple one: US citizens are above the law. Why have there been no rape or murder courtmartials of soldiers who have assaulted Iraqis? You mean no GI has assaulted an Iraqi in a year? No questionable shootings? Two Gi's staggered drunk into the Baghdad Zoo and shot it up. So what happened to them? Nothing much.
Unless you commit a crime where there are witnesses who care, nothing happens. Americans routinely disrespect Iraqis and get away with it. We're the occupying power, not the friends of Iraqis. Pretending that they support us is a murderous fiction.
Okay, didn't realize that Bush was on at 8:30 and not 9. Oh, well, at least I caught an old Star Trek: TNG episode that I actually never saw before--a true rarity.
What's NOT rare on TV tonight: Watching Bush choke.
Man, he looks AWFUL. He is stuttering. He looks like he woke up late. He is rambling. He is not answering questions. He is being FORCED to do this press conference, by whom, we shall find out soon, I suppose. He looks like a teenager at his shotgun wedding.
Ironically, I got a free issue of Craine's. It said that jobs were up in NYC--by a sliver.
Watch that number pitch now.
I can't believe the true depths of the lack of Bush's intelligence, in all ways.
Did anyone else catch his inability to admit that he made a mistake--ever, for ANY decision?
Wonder if Mrs. Kerry is hitting her Rolodex for a good interior decorator. She should; Monkey Boy is moving out soon.
Ooh, nice camera cut to Condi Rice--she looks about as comfortable as...oh, I dunno, someone really uncomfortable. Use Comments to put in your own snappy comparison!
Jesus, this is just AWFUL.
I weep for my country.
I think I'll just finish my eggy rice and go to bed.
By Karl Vick and Anthony Shadid
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, April 13, 2004; Page A01
BAGHDAD, April 12 -- The U.S. Marine siege of Fallujah, designed to isolate and pursue a handful of extremists in a restive town, has produced a powerful backlash in the capital. Urged on by leaflets, sermons and freshly sprayed graffiti calling for jihad, young men are leaving Baghdad to join a fight that residents say has less to do with battlefield success than with a cause infused with righteousness and sacrifice.
"The fighting now is different than a year ago. Before, the Iraqis fought for nothing. Now, fighters from all over Iraq are going to sacrifice themselves," said a Fallujah native who gave his name as Abu Idris and claimed to be in contact with guerrillas who slip in and out of the besieged city three and four times daily.
He spoke in a mosque parking lot emptied moments earlier of more than a ton of donated foodstuffs destined for Fallujah -- heavy bags of rice, tea and flour loaded into long, yellow semitrailers by a cluster of men who, their work done, joined a spirited discussion about the need to take the fight to the enemy. They included a dentist, a prayer leader, a law student, a lieutenant colonel in the Iraqi police and a man who until 10 days earlier had traveled with U.S. troops as a member of the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps.
"Our brothers who went to Fallujah and came back say: 'Oh, God, it is heaven. Anyone who wants paradise should go to Fallujah,' " Abu Idris said.
The lopsided battle 35 miles to the west -- where 2,500 Marines have been deployed -- has had a profound impact here, redefining for many in Baghdad the nature of the campaign against U.S. troops.
Intense, sympathetic and often startlingly graphic coverage on Arab channels has deepened a vein of nationalism, stirred in part by still unconfirmed reports of high civilian casualties. Over the weekend, in the living room of a decidedly secular family, a woman wept over the images on a screen she finally leaned forward and kissed.
Headlines in Iraq's newly free press reinforce the video images: "Fallujah Wakes to a Grave Massacre" read the banner in Monday's edition of the daily Azzaman. Fresh graffiti sprayed in sweeping Arabic letters is turning up across the city. On one wall in the southern Baghdad neighborhood of Jihad, the messages were spaced 10 yards apart: "Long live Fallujah's heroes." "Down with America and long live the Mahdi Army," a Shiite militia. Then: "Long live the resistance in Fallujah." And finally, "Long live the resistance."
The popular response -- of Shiite and Sunni giving aid, shelter to refugees and even volunteers to the fight -- has pushed fears of an Iraqi civil war to the background. The fighters in Fallujah are said to include Mahdi Army militiamen loyal to the radical cleric Moqtada Sadr. A housewife in Baghdad's Salaam neighborhood told of a passionate argument with her husband, a Shiite who insisted on joining friends volunteering to fight in Fallujah.
"This is jihad," she quoted him as saying. She added: "It was the first time he ever slapped me."
Yeah, this is having the effect CENTCOM expected. The guerillas are getting reenforcements. Great. I'm sure they won't shoot down any more helicopters or take any more hostages.
I'm listening to Howard Stern tease Jon Favreau about playing Dungeons and Dragons in high school. An alumnus of Bronx High School of Science, it was pretty much a rite of passage. I played some D&D, but I liked Traveller a lot more. There was nothing better than seeing gauss rifles, which could penetrate armor, in action.
For those who remember, Traveller was a lot more flexible than D&D in that you could use the rules to play in any time period.
It sounds kind of silly now, all the dice rolling and character generation, but then, this has been transfered to computers, in both the stand alone version and the multiplayer version. Many of the fans created in childhood now play as adults, anonymously, shielded from the laughter of people like Stern, who while geeky, never got the joys of combating dragons.
I was slightly too old to play Magic and the other card games, but I have seen my nephew, who's eight, become addicted to Pokemon and Yu-Gi-Oh.
I have to admit that my knowledge of the military doesn't come from wargaming as much as model building. There, I would log hours in the library researching equipment and uniforms. Because wargames came self-contained, models don't. Right now, I'm researching Air America (the CIA Airline) to build a kit of one of their planes. It's therapy for my hands, and it amuses me in a snarky sort of way.
My favorite wargame in high school was Arab-Israeli Wars, probably the best title to deal with the subject. It was based on the Panzerblitz system from Avalon Hill. Not until Tanks was released for the PC by SSI did I find a game as entertaining.
Of course, the rise of Advanced Squad Leader changed everything. Complicated to play, filled with pieces, it was the sign that many of these things needed to be done off paper. I never got far with ASL, because it was expensive as hell. But it has its fans, even today, 20 years later. Curt Schilling, the Red Sox pitcher, runs a company which keeps the game alive. Personally, I converted to Steel Panthers a while back. The homebrewed conversions are still on my PC.
The thing about wargames is that they don't provide some magic insight to the concept of war. They're games, with rules and constraints. But if you think clearly, you can learn a lot about the kinds of decisions you might make in combat.
Take Fallujah. No matter how they gamed that out at CENTCOM, and they did, they forgot one thing, the weight of the opposition. If they drank their own kool-aid, then they thought it was a few hundred guerillas. The problem is that moving a mechanized army through a congested city leads to ambushes. You can see this when you play Steel Panthers:MBT, a homebrew version of the original SP series.
You move a tank into a town and you need infantry to protect them. In fact, you want to keep them as far back as possible to avoid them being ambushed. You lose visibility, range, all of the advantages that they have in the open. A city can eat up an attack like kids at McDonalds. One minute, you have a battalion crossing a few city blocks, and then a couple of hundred guys hold them up. Buildings, streets, all turn into death traps.
This translates into real life when you hear Marines say they will resume the offensive and it makes no sense. They're in the most open part of the city and stalled out. They go into a residential area and they're trapped. The Marines claimed they killed mostly guerillas, which is a fantasy. In a city, with civilians, and high powered rifles, most of the dead are the weak and the slow. Which means children and women, not teenage boys with rifles and their dads. Then, you have teenagers with rifles.
Philip Caputo, who wrote the first successful memoir about Vietnam, A Rumor of War, quoted his sergeant, who had served in Korea, and said he had seen his fellow Marines zero their rifles on Korean farmers. He told Caputo "there is no more dangerous thing than an American teenager with a rifle."
People don't realize that the round from an M-16 goes through clay and wood buildings. You could be sitting a block away from the fighting, drinking a Coke, and get wounded. Bullets travel and they don't have names on them. You could shoot a guerilla and depending on the weapon, wound someone not close to them. It's not the movies. It's not a game, where the bullets all go the right places.
Now, we're about to repeat this in Najaf, where the stakes are that much higher.
Thomas Hamill was a dairy farmer not long ago. But then he sold his farm and started driving trucks. Living in rural Mississippi, that didn't pay great. Then, of course, his wife had open heart surgery a couple of months back. With debts and a sick wife, he was looking for a better paying job. Kellogg, Brown and Root had one. Great pay, 10K a month, tax free. Benefits. Only one catch. It was in Iraq.
Which was fine until his convoy got hit and he became a hostage.
In a jobless economy, Halliburton's wages call like a siren song to the desperate. The problem is that the convoys come under gunfire.
Iraq is filled with America's economic vicitims. Mercenaries lured by action and money, soldiers who expected their duty would get them to college before a war would breakout, Now truck drivers and construction workers desperate for that tax free $100K a year, paid for by US taxpayers.
Kidnapping is nothing new in Iraq. Little girls have been snatched off the streets for about a year. Now, it's come to foriegners.
The Iraqi resistance knows that if you kidnap enough foreign workers, they will stop coming. No one wants to be the Hamill family. You don't have to even burn them alive, as they threatened to do with the Japanese captives, just scare them. Although I fear there will be dead captives, just to make a point.
Of course, this serves a wider strategic purpose. This cuts the supply lines. The US military needs those convoys, but can't protect the roads which brings them supplies. Throw in scared workers running home and the basic underpinnings of reconstruction are being destroyed.
The US expects Iraqis to stand up and stop the resistance. Which proves how clueless they truly are. Forget nationalism for a moment, since 1968, any Iraqi who objected to the bosses got either a trip into exile or a trip to Abu Gharib prison and a grave. The last mass uprising ended with 300K dead. Remember, these are the same people who fought Iraq and America for Saddam. All in the name of nationalism. The Iranians waited eight years for the Shia to turn on Saddam and it didn't happen.
They aren't going to risk anything for anyone at this point.
Besides, the Americans don't make it easy. They treat all Iraqis as suspects. And the Commonwealth press is filled with stories of bone ignorant GI's humiliating Iraqis. In British and Australian papers, the GI is seen as little better as a racist thug willing to murder at the drop of the hat.
You would think their bosses would act better, but when Marines say that 95% of their kills were guerillas, you don't know whether to laugh or cry. It reminds me of a line from Full Metal Jacket :"if they're dead, they're VC". That's the kind of lie which makes guerillas.
Of course, CENTCOM knows they're in trouble. They didn't add a third regiment and begin negotiations in Fallujah for appearances sake. Their supply lines are in danger and they're losing too many people to take more of the city.
Yet, the big talk never ends. The resistance keeps their mouth shut and confounds the Americans. The Americans bluster and threaten and fall short. The resistance may not have a formal umbrella organization, but they are going for the economic guts of reconstruction and winning.
Phil Carter takes alook at the Iraq security forces. While he does a nice job at explaining the issues around unit cohesion, he misses the larger political implications of the stateless Iraqi security forces.
The Iraqi forces represent no political force. The IGC is regarded as little better than a puppet government by most Iraqis. Those who work with it face a threat to their lives. Most members live outside the country and have not moved their families back. They represent who the Americans think should be in charge, not who Iraqis would choose. So while there is a need for security, when the Sadrist militias demand the police station, they have as much political legitimacy as the Americans. And they know where these people live. So the cops flee and wait for another day.
The failure of the security forces represents a larger failure of the politics of Iraq. Since the police and Civil Guard only represent themselves and some vague notion of Iraqi nationhood, the resistance has just as much a valid claim to the heart and minds of the Iraqi people. The cops can easily be seen as the collaborationist arm of the American occupiers. They don't have an Iraqi boss, they can't defy the Americans, much less arrest them, Why should the Iraqis respect them?
The only reason that they're allowed to exist, and just barely, is that Iraqis desperately need security.
The reason that they's so ineffective is simple: American racism. In yesterday's Daily Telegraph, British soldiers think the Americans treat the Iraqis like untermenschen, a damning comment from their fellow professionals. With the barely concealed contempt that Americans have for Iraqis, anyone working with them is not only risking their lives, but facing the hostility of Americans who have only one goal, going home alive.
The Americans also play with fire without realizing it. One of the two civilians killed a couple of weeks ago, who was not a former SEAL or Ranger, was an expert on woman's rights. Many Iraqis who have no love of the resistance may well participate in killing someone who they feel is defiling their culture. Her killers were Iraqi policemen. Anyone dealing in woman's rights is going to be a target in Iraq, regardless of politics. But except for a Nightline profile, outrage was muted.
The Americans simply don't realize that service in the security forces leaves Iraqis ripe for blackmail. Too many people, like Phil, see this as security issue and it's not. It's a political issue.
Crime and resistance often go hand in hand. The criminal gangs exist with the tolerance of the resistance and vice versa. The money made from theft and the black market often goes into anti-American activities. The Americans can get informants, and considering that Iraq was a Republic of Fear, informants were cheap, but they can't get the loyal police force that they need. Not loyal to the Americans, but to an Iraqi government. The IGC, roundly held in contempt, is not a suitable substitute.
The Iraqis are being asked to repress their fellow Iraqis for the promise of "democracy". At least Saddam offered real benefit and promotion to those who toed the line. You could be the most honest cop in Iraq, and your cousin could send your name to the local resistance cell as a traitor, and the Americans will do nothing to help you. What is often being missed is the incredible social pressure being placed on Iraqis to not aid the occupation.
Bremer sits there and lies about how most Iraqis support the occupation, but the reality is that anyone who works with the Coalition faces blackmail or death. This indicates that there is a vast number of Iraqis who cannot stomach the occupation. It only takes a few men to do sabotage, but it takes the widow in the shop window who lets the "boys" know when the cops are coming to keep the resistance alive.
If the occupation had real support, Shias would be flocking to be cops and soldiers. Instead, they stand on street corners and listen to Sadr and his fellow clerics. They also hold those who work with the Americans in deepest contempt. Anyone whon says they work with Americans can face assasination.
The Americans now act surprised that an Iraqi battalion wasn't going to march to Fallujah and join in the killing. Uh, didn't you get the hint that they have to wear masks to patrol. That if their families knew, they could face death. That there is a stigma in serving the Americans?
The French Milice, who fought the Resistance, could at least justify their treason by saying they were serving Marshal Petain. What can an Iraqi policeman say? I'm serving the IGC? Not likely, they don't deserve to be served. He could say he's serving the Iraqi people, but then, when the resistance comes, they have to betray the Americans.
Many Iraqi soldiers, when faced with fighting Iraqis or killing Americans, turned on their masters. That's far worse than a combat refusal. And even then, the Americans seem tone deaf. The Iraqis were saying : We are not traitors. We will not be your lackies and kill our fellow Iraqis because they resist you. Even Saddam gave us better reasons. The Americans sit around and wonder "why won't they follow orders?" Well, they only did it for the money and they knew if anyone found out they had fought with the Americans in Fallujah, not only would they be pariahs, not only would the resistance spies in their units tell, but their families would reject them.
Every security unit in Iraq is riddled with spies. All have their links to the resistance, for self-preservation if nothing else. They are not going to do any more than they have to, especially kill their cousins. They even have to lie to their families about working with the Americans.
The rhetoric coming from Washington is so misguided, and so contrary to the facts. The resistance is popular and widespread. While only a few have picked up guns, the popular sentiment supporting them is deep. Even if, intellectually, you want the freedoms Americans promised, culturally, the idea of serving the occupier offends you. So it's easy to spread word that Hamid is working for the Americans and then the local resistance cell finds out. So Hamid faces a choice, help the resistance or die.
We can pretend that this isn't the case, but too many ambushes and assasinations have happened for anything to be the fact. All it takes is random scraps of information and near constant observation for this to take place. You don 't need the Red Orchestra to determine when a convoy will pass by, just some bored kids.
Iraq was a clandestine culture for centuries. It doesn't take much for people to hide their intentions and keep secret links. Building resistance and avoiding informants has to be ingrained in the culture. And given the close family links, once the US lost the heart of the people, it could only grow.
We cannot expect Iraqi "security" forces to serve a phantom. There is no government, no political ideology for them to serve, no government to protect them. As long as that exists, the Iraqi security forces are going to remain a spy-ridden failure which could turn on the US at any moment.
I was reading the WaPo today when I saw this article by Laura Sessions Stepp, the woman who discovered her son's classmates were giving blowjobs in the back of schoolbuses. The reason that was of interest was that the kids were 13 at the time. Of course, the parents of her son's classmates turned on her and claimed she exagurated the whole thing, but that's more her editor's fault than her's. I mean, why was she writing about something which should have upset the hell out of her?
But I thought this article was cute, and worthy of comment.
Gabriella Robayo and her lunch date were seated at Bertucci's when her companion dropped a speck of butter on his pants. "I mean a speck. You couldn't even see it," Robayo says.
For the rest of lunch he whined about a stain the size of a pea on his beloved khakis. "He even said he was going over to the Gap after lunch to buy a new pair," says Robayo, a freshman at George Washington University. "I couldn't believe it."
That was deal-breaker No. 1. Deal-breaker No. 2 came the next day, when they stopped at Starbucks for coffee. When she went looking for sugar, he grabbed her cell phone and then read her messages in front of her. That did it. She split. And she wouldn't answer the next time he called.
Oh, the things that young women say have sent them packing before they've even set down their bags. There's the dumb remark, as in "I guess I should have told you I was a drug dealer." Or: "Do you know you have cellulite on your legs?" There's the boorish behavior, as in his sleepwalking nude into the bedroom of his date's mother -- while on a visit to the family cabin -- and saying "Donna, let's play poker!" There's the farewell kiss that imparts about as much feeling as kissing a melon.
..............
Yet one can't help but feel a bit sorry for the young men. In their muddled, gender-corrected world, they can never be sure what turns a young woman off -- or on. Meanwhile, popular culture has sold women on the possibility of the perfect mate; thus dating has become an exercise in intense scrutiny with little wiggle room.
Look, that last paragraph is a bunch of crap. Going up to a woman naked and asking her to fuck is going to get you hit, arrested or both. These guys are assholes and they know it. Groping, leering and being cheap are ways to end a date quickly.
What woman would want a guy who whined about his pants the way my seven year old niece whines about baths? Then he violated her privacy and thought it was funny. His male friends would have smacked the shit out of him for that. They would have understood the impulse, but if you're trying to impress a woman, why would you humiliate her?
Here's a hint: if you violate the security of a woman, she's going to get rid of you. If you want to hook up, go to a party or a bar and hit on women. If you want to go on a date, act like a gentleman, for God's sake. Which means paying for dinner or at least have the cash to pay for dinner and make the offer. Don't whine about butter stains. Don't limit your conversation to sports, sci-fi/comics and your exes. Women, unless you meet them in a sports bar, sci-fi convention or divorce court, want to know about you, not your hobby horses.
They never write articles like this about men, however. And there are plenty of things which drive men nuts:
* We don't care about your imperfections. Guys don't notice the allegedly crooked nose or extra 10 pounds or how your butt sits out crooked. We're with you , as you are. We're used to being imperfect.
* Your ex-boyfriends are dead to us. They're exes for a reason. Ok, an assumption of virginity is silly after 18, but we don't need to know every detail about what kind of guy he was. We won't like him anyway, and you dumped him, so....Oh yeah, we're NOT going to ask him how you were in bed, trust us. That subject can only be raised in one context, taunting before a fist fight. Otherwise, we'll find out on our own. If you need to send us a tip, have your girlfriends do it. We actually like to pretend your exes are scumbags who belong in jail for various crimes.
* We don't mind paying for dinner, really. We're not going to ask for a blowjob in repayment. Sometimes, it's just nice to treat. We don't want to be a bank for your meals, but acting like we're trying to lay claim to your body because of a sushi dinner is well, insane. That's what drinks are for. Besides, blowjobs should be given freely, regardless of who paid for dinner.
*Self-confidence is a wonderful thing. Yes, after we know you, explaining why your mom drives you crazy is fine. But we also want to hear about the things you do well. No one wants to be with a perpetual vicitim. We love stories about you standing up for yourself. Low self-esteem is not attractive. Asking why we're with you makes us feel stupid. What are we supposed to say? Well, you have big tits and are smart? Our reasons are not the ones you really want to hear aloud, really. The ones we put in cards and tell our friends are good enough.
* Please don't assume. It's really creepy to have you plan stuff for our family without asking. Just because we've gone out a few times doesn't mean we're exclusive and you're my girlfriend. In the modern world, you have to ask for exclusivity, you can't assume it. And until I promise to be faithful, dating is not cheating, sorry. It works both ways. You don't ask about other women, I won't ask about the booty call you keep around.
* Solve your problems. I don't really care about your girlfriend with the cheating boyfriend. I don't care what kind of dog he is. An occasional request for advice is one thing, All My Children is another. If you want drama, that's fine. I may want to pass on the subscription.
* If you're into chicks, please say so. If I'm the first guy you've dated in five years, say so. Look, most guy wants a threesome, but knows hitting the lottery is easier. We know that the odds are that we if ask for one, we're going to get hit. We know this. If this IS a possibility, please let us know. Or if you've been sleeping with your "best friend", it would be nice to know before we're at dinner one night and she gets all jealous.
Look, I know the odds are low, but it happens and there is nothing less fun than having someone turn into some jealous monster over your burger. If I'm in a competition, can I at least know we're playing for money before I sit down at the table?
*Most men make the mistake of placing women they like on a pedestool. Which is silly, they're human beings too. If you're not interested, don't act like we've commited a crime by being interested in you. We may not be the right guy, but humiliating us is wrong. Too many women, not all, act as if the wrong guy is not only wrong but malicious. Which usually isn't the case. Oh yeah, remember, the same thing will happen to you one day and kindness is always a virtue.
George Bush has spent 40 percent of his time as President on vacation. He wants to be considered a wartime president, yet has spent more time raising money and fishing than doing his job.
The Coalition forces in Iraq, by a series of miscalculations, has forced a crisis which will lead to the defeat of our military and the creation of a theocratic state. A complete and total reversal of our stated policy, yet possibly, the only outcome which could have happened after Saddam killed all his secular political opponents.
No one is saying this in the Beltway, and few even online, but the fact is that no Iraqi government could survive with US troops as even a security force and be considered independent. Any legitimate Iraqi government will be judged not on electricity or oil sales, but how many American soldiers are left. If the number is not zero, they will be deposed by force.
Does Bush adjust his strategy? Does he admit error? No. It's a zero defect government. No mistakes possible.
So instead of treating this crisis like a crisis, he's hiding in Texas, as disengaged as ever. The talk coming from the White House was so at varience with reality you could only scream at the TV screen. They have killed 58 Americans in 11 days. The Americans lost 82 in all of November. At this pace that's nearly 6 men a day. Multiply it out and that's 180 men killed at this rate. Saddam's army wasn't that effective.
Bush shouldn't have run back to DC, but video conferencing? Shouldn't he drag his secretaries down for a meeting? Why the managment by remote control when Iraq is dragging his presidency down the tubes? Does he live so isolated from reality that he thinks Iraq will get better?
LBJ was so misled by his intelligence, he missed what anyone watching TV could learn, which is that we were losing in Vietnam. By the time we hammered the NVA at Tet, public support was evaporating. Even our tactical victory looked messy and incomplete.
Bush has a NKVD HQ running Iraq, a rebellion which could turn from Sadr and the Sunnis to the Shias and the Sunnis at any minute and his response is to sit around Crawford and make phone calls.
Never has a president so misused the power of his office. Instead of dealing honestly with these issues, he repeats the same misguided mantra that the people fighting us in Iraq hate freedom. As if freedom can only be gained by servicing the US. What I mean is that a president has the power to go to the American people and level with them, tell them the truth. Not just patronizing slogans about the "war on terra".
If Bush had said he screwed up over 9/11, people would have forgiven him. Instead, he lies until he is exposed. He jokes about WMD. He shows neither sympathy for the dead nor recognition of their sacrifice. It is all rote statements, while his supporters contort themselves to deny the truth. And then, arrogantly sticks to a handover date no one believes will happen or is just a ruse to place Ahmed Chalabi in charge, Iraq's Vidkun Quisling.
I have no expectation that Bush will see a jail cell. But the next President should set the FBI on Chalabi and arrest him for fraud. His lies have killed Americans and he did it for money. He should spend his days in an American jail for what he did. I think given the tender mercies of Iraqis, a US jail cell might be a pleasant alternative.
Iraq isn't going to get better. The Americans have worn out their welcome in the most nationalistic of Arab countries. Iraqis have a sense of self which sees occupation as an insult. No matter what we offer, and it hasn't been much, eventually, they would have tired of us. With anarchy, death and violence as our gifts to Iraq, they want us gone that much sooner.
About 10 years ago or so, I was drinking in a cop bar with some friends. One of the guys, who was a cop, asked me if black people ate their easter dinners in McDonald's, because the place was packed on an Easter Sunday afternoon.
I said no, they were just getting lunch, because the kids were hungry after church. While a lot of churches serve food, people get hungry because Easter is the biggest church day in Black America. A lot of people don't go to church on Christmas, but easter? Well, that was the day to dress the kids up and drag them out. My younger sister holds to that tradition, my older sister's boys are too old to be dragged anywhere by a women who is their mom. I watched the chat shows and listened to the BBC.
When I was a kid, my father used to take us to the Auto Show, which was one of the treats of my childhood. We'd see the new cars and wander around. And take pictures, lots of pictures of us dressed up. For some reason, my cousin had some of these pictures her late mother had stolen.
We usually had ham most easters. To be honest, I am indifferent about ham. I only like one ham meal, which is cold thick sliced ham on bread with mayo. Personally, I prefer roast beef or lamb, but we're having roast chicken this year. Jen loves ham, she prefers it to other meat, but that's her, not me, and since she's not cooking a ham and I'm at home, well, I'll enjoy my roast chicken. Even when I ate ham regularly, I was never a fan of it. One day, I'll spring for a spiral cut or Virginia ham and she can feast on it. Me. I'll just make a medium roast beef.
When I was a kid, we used to have pot roast and leg of lamb frequently, so frequently, I used to call it gray meat. My mother likes her red meat, not that she eats it now, well done. As I have grown older, I realize what a crime that was. Well done is for burgers, I don't care what Jen or anyone else says.
When I was in high school, the local deli used to serve rare roast beef to make their sandwiches. I ate it, but never really liked it. It was too soft. I still don't. Medium rare to medium is more my speed. But it was great with brown mustard. Beef usually is.
If I had big easters, I would probably have a ham for my guests, but I'd be eating a medium hunk of lamb.
The reason Easter doesn't stand out in my mind was that the sides were ordinary, baked macaroni, rice, gravy, sweet potatoes, green beans. Easter was kind of "oh, it's a holiday, better get the ham" kind of deal than a real feast.
I think a decently cooked lamb has a great flavor, especially as a break from fowl and fish. I know people have turned beef into some kind of special event where they chow down on 16 oz super steaks, but lamb, which when cut well, can provide that interesting flavor missing from white meat, even pork. It is tender, but can be cooked so it still has flavor. Pork needs massive seasoning for flavor, hence ham, pulled pork, ribs, bacon. Without it, you need a truly light hand, like with chicken.
Lamb doesn't need that heavy handedness to have flavor. Some rosemary, thyme, mustard. I know people like yogurt with it, but I find yogurt vile. I rather toss on spices and mustard. Lamb chops make a nice dinner with potatoes and veggies.
I haven't tackled a leg of lamb in years, but when I do, probably for a party or something, I'll probably try to get it to medium and treat it like a pork roast, with a good rub and a gravy made of pan drippings with a mustard base, maybe some apples. Lamb is one of those meats, like pork, that needs something sweet to accompany it.
US Marines are sitting outside Fallujah, using a cease-fire to reenforce their two outnumbered battalions, and hoping that some Iraqis can decide to stop killing each other and them. Despite all the big talk of "surrender or die" US forces are essentially stuck a mile inside the city and unable to move father without calling in the big guns and air support.
If a regular Iraqi battalion held the town, US forces would make short work of them. But the fact is that this is as much political as military and all the resistance has to do is kill Americans and hold on. They have turned one of the most hated towns in Iraq into a nationalist symbol across the country. The commanders tell the reporters one story, their unit movements say another.
One exmple, the use of the AC-130. That plane is never used in offensive operations. It can kill a football field's worth of soldiers. No one can move forward when Spectre is above, unless they want to die. It is usually used when US forces are pinned down. Then, it can wipe an attacking enemy out. The fact that it was used in Fallujah indicates that their attack stalled out. Then, they had to call in more AF fighters, which means they were in serious trouble. Marines hate calling in the Air Force because they have a habit of killing Marines.
Then, of course, they bought up a third battalion. A full regiment of troops still stuck in that one mile area of Fallujah.
In no war game you could play, in no Lessons Learned, do you bring up another unit if your attack is going well. You do that when your other units are getting hammered.
What the US thought was that the guerillas would collapse and run deep in the city and the US can get the bad guys and call it a day. Well, the resistance in Fallujah turned out to be Iraqi Army vets who knew how to fight. Don't let the causality figures fool you. Many of the Iraqi dead are civilans. I wonder how many guerillas are being killed. Remember that they don't have helmets, body armor and armor. The fact that so many Americans are being killed is the stunner. 50 dead in one week is stunning. The guerillas are amazingly effective combatants.
Let me explain. The guerillas have taken out tanks, an Apache, killed 50, wounded hundreds heavy armored Americans in gun combat. The NVA would have loved a week like this in Tet. This means we are not facing some bunch of "terrorists" trained in dusty Afghan camps, but professional soldiers.
There is this myth that the Iraqi Army was made up of cowards who quit after the first gunshot. Which was a pernicious lie. The Iraqi Army withstood eight years of brutal combt against Iran. Complete with human wave attacks, gas and near defeat. These are competant soldiers. Then, there was the war against the Americans, the Kurds and the Shia. Iraq is packed with people who know how to not only use guns, like in Afghanistan, but have sound foundations in military tactics.
Guerillas cannot withstand regular troops with any regularity. The fact that they have held the Marines off for a week in Fallujah should indicate that the US soldiers are not facing armed teenagers, but fellow professionals in the mix. There may be teenagers, but the decisionmakers are professional soldiers. People who can use tactical intelligence and read maps. They drew the Marines into the city, negated their advantages, and then shot them up. Not an accident.
One scary factiod someone said is that a 10 year old with an RPG hit a tank. Well, here's something CENTCOM won't tell you. The minute you get into a city, a tank is almost useless. Not completely, almost. Especially a behemoth like the M-1 Abrams, turned into a mobile pillbox. Anyone with guts and an RPG can try to knock it out.
The Marines, by forcing their way into Fallujah, walked into urban fighting which they do not have the men, weapons or political support for.
We will never control Fallujah. We will use the cease-fire as a fig leaf to hide our defeat, and that's what this is, and shove some Iraqi cops and Civil Defense troops in as a shield.
Nor will more troops help, because they don't exist. We already have 24 brigades deployed out of 33, the rest are refitting and losing men who don't want a return to Iraq. No country is going to send men to put down an Iraqi rebellion at this point. The thousands of Pakistanis, Nigerians and Bangladeshis we used as our infantry will stay home and watch this debacle devolve. People think we mean NATO troops when we say adding troops to the coalition, we don't except in a symbolic way. We really want Egyptians, Nigerians, Pakistanis and even Indians, who have large battalions and brigades and who troops can walk around towns and have enough discipline to not rob the locals.
They are not going to send their troops to kill fellow Muslims for us and our vague goals of democracy.
Any attempt to expand the Army will come way too late to solve our troubles in Iraq. We need 3-500K men on the ground today, not three years from now. You don't send two battalions to take a city the size of Albany. You send a division to do that. You had a division in Fallujah, there would be sniping, not fighting and a cease-fire. We don't have a division to send there. We will not get a division to send there. We may have problems getting the First Marine Division home.
We need to negotiate with the clerics and leave Iraq. We cannot win there, the people are not on our side. If they were, these guerillas would have no support, no food, no ammo. Instead, they are embraced by the people. What is the US waiting for? A massacre of a rear area unit? Bremer's assassination? Every time Bremer speaks for the Iraqi people, he lies worse than Saddam.
There has been scant evidence that the Iraqi people want us to stay. Some want us to kill the criminals we unleashed, others just want us to leave, most are pissed that we haven't made them rich. The right doesn't get it. The Iraqis they get lied to by tell them that they want all these things. But the people in the street don't like us or want us there. If they did, the cops and ICDC wouldn't run at the first sign of conflict with the guerillas. They have killed Americans. Take that as a hint. Anyone who exposes themselves as working for the US, not just CPA, but media, risks assassination. Is that support for the US?
We are failing in Iraq. Our mission, our war, lies in shambles. How many more Americans and Iraqis have to die before we decide to walk away?
The Bush Administration lives by the motto of zero defects. No one is ever wrong, and they make no mistakes.
The ONLY reason Condoleeza Rice still has a job is that she's an attractive black woman. She is utterly incompetent at her job, if anyone had listened to her fawning, incredible explainations of her testimony. every aspect of her not doing her job was someone else's fault. The FBI didn't tell her, the CIA doesn't talk. You have a Ph.d and this is news to you? That's like saying firemen and cops don't get along.
She simply cannot bang heads together and that allows State, DOD, Justice and Homeland Security to make their own policies and go their own way. Rice should have reigned in Rumsfeld and the neocons once Iraq started to turn sour, which was about April 11, 2003. Instead, on every national security issue, from the transformation of the Army to North Korea, Rice has let then departments and Dick Cheney make policy while she sat by, watching this all go by. Her role seems to be mother hen to Bush and not his honest broker.
But, ultimately, her actions reflect her boss's utter disinterest in process. Clinton and Bush 41 were addicted to process. They wanted to know how things worked. Bush 43, like a good CEO, only wants to know the big picture. The problem is that he is so absent from the White House, between spending 40 percent of his time on vacation, and constant fund raising, he's a shadow presence. They know the divisions heads (DOD, State...) have nearly unlimted power to go their own way. Even worse, Cheney is so firmly implanted in their corner, no one can object.
When someone does, they are smeared and attacked with a ferocity which stuns most people.
Iraq is clearly spinning out of control. The response by CENTCOM is no better than lies. They still don't get that allying with the Americans is a death sentence for the average Iraqi. They have been looking for hopeful signs for a year and met with blank stares. Juan Cole says the IGC is falling apart as members flee back home, resign or both. This reliance on exiles was destined to fall apart. Is there no recognition that Sadr has vastly more credibility than the IGC members because he stuck around, as did his family?
Viceroy Jerry sits up there and talks about what Iraqis want and I listen to this and wonder how would he know what Iraqis think? He's ferried around by mercinaries who will kill anyone who poses even the slightest threat to him for $1000 a day. He is incredibly isolated from the lives of Iraqis and he claims to know what they need. When one member of the IGC objected to our "offensive" in Fallujah, he was fired. What message does that send to Iraqis, who already hold the ICG is contempt.
Notice, Rice, who is supposed to direct Iraq policy, has been spending the entire week saving her ass as Iraq burns. What drives me mad is the way that constant lies are being spouted by everyone involved, in contrvention of what you can see on TV.
What you are seeing, and it is not the entire picture, is a lot of poor young men with guns and military training taking to the streets. Not "former regime elements" and "foreign fighters". Do people not realize the element of humiliation occupation brings to these men? Forget the checkpoints and searches, just imagine the looks Iraqi women get from horny and lonely GI's? That's enough to set these guys, who don't have much else to think about, pissed. You get Sadr and his Sunni peers saying "the Americans are defiling your country" and it doesn't take much to set them off. They see the Americans oggling ther women and then they get smacked around and have their homes searched because of some informant.
Then, the Americans, genuinely confused at the simmering hatred most Iraqis have for them, wonder why they aren't getting widespread cooperation and being treated with respect.
First, Iraqis couldn't imagine the rich Americans could be so incompetent in rebuilding their country. Even the vaunted school rebuilding program is more scam than reality with Halliburton subcontractors tossing on a coat of paint. More importantly, the real issue is the kidnappers who lie in wait to get the schoolgirls, rape them and hold them for ransom. Everything in Iraq is tainted by security concerns. From daily life to running the country, security dominates.
Second, the US tried to rely on exiles to help them adminster the country. To the majority of citizens, who had seen their leaders killed for opposing Saddam, this was unacceptable. The London Iraqis were welcome to visit, but they were expected to go home and let the people who had stayed create their own future. Exiles are often poison to establishing a stable government, and while the IGC was portrayed as representative of Iraq, most Iraqis considered them cowards and Qusilings.
Most Iraqis do not want to relive 1920. They want to go on with their lives. But they are not going to watch Fallujah destroyed on their TV's. In reality, the Marines had to halt because they don't have the forces to control the city, but they have to make it look good.
There is no sense of responsibility in the Bush Administration, for anything. The worst of CEO accountability avoidance has migrated to national defense and foreign policy. No one is responsible, not for 3,000 dead or 650 dead or 10,000 dead. All of the graves created by Bush failures are explained away with a bodyguard of lies. But that bodyguard is being undone by the messy reality of facts.
PERSPECTIVE: You can see the World War II Memorial's Freedom Wall here. "[E]ach of the wall's 4,000 4 1/2 inch gold stars represents 100 American servicemen who died in the war."
Reader Chris Stacy observes:
Look at the single column of stars closest to you.
That single column of stars represents well over twice the number of American servicemen killed in Iraq in the past year.
That single column of stars represents the number of casualties we suffered roughly every six days -- week in, week out, for almost four years -- during WWII.
At the casualty rate we have suffered in Iraq over the past year, it would take well over 600 years to fill this wall with stars.
In your mind, line 62 of these walls up, end to end (that's somewhere
close to a mile long). That's roughly the number of people who live in Texas, New Mexico and Arkansas. That's the number of people that are no longer ruled over by Saddam Hussein.
For the benefit of the esteemed Mr. Blix, that wall could also represent the estimated number of Iraqi citizens that Saddam Hussein put into mass graves in the past 10 or 15 years.
For the benefit of the Hon. Sen. Kennedy from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the great multitude of journalists who cannot seem to free themselves from the grip of a 30 year old delusion -- at the casualty rate we have suffered in Iraq over the past year, it would take almost 90 years to surpass the number of American servicemen killed in the Vietnam conflict.
.......
Every death is a tragedy, every war a source of sadness. But when I see newspapers calling 12 deaths in a day "heavy casualties," I know that this war isn't anywhere close to the scale of past wars -- or of the war we're likely to see in the future if we falter in our efforts now.
Ok, let me put this absolutely vile statement in context. The US Army in WWII had 12 million men under arms, nearly 400,000 died, the exact number 357K. Obviously Instahack was too lazy to research or even call one of his collegues, but there are 134,000 soldiers in Iraq, not 12 million. There are 430K soldiers TOTAL in the US Army today, and about 50,000 infantrymen. The Marines have about 136K men and women.
So you have about 556K soldiers and Marines TOTAL. One 24th of the size of the WWII Army.
So, besides the fact that 12 dead is twelve families shattered, the fact is that the US Army today can take far fewer dead than the WWII Army. Twelve dead IS a significant loss. These scum don't figure the math right and justify their chickenhawk cheerleading.
Twelve dead is a Marine squad. When you lose a squad in MODERN combat, you've stopped a company cold. Glenn and his reader's vile calcuations ignore force strength and composition. That's a lot of dead for one day, with a force which can't afford a lot of dead.
But what is the larger point? That the dead is a lot smaller than Omaha Beach? No shit. But as these ignorant people forget, the Iraqis are not supposed to be the 352nd Division. We're supposed to be liberating them. They aren't supposed to be shooting at us. Instead, they're holding off Marine and Army battalions while our supposed allies desert to the other side.
This kind of cheap calculation angers me to no end. This isn't divisional combat against the Werhmacht, but urban guerilla warfare. Any loss is a big loss. Infantry replacements aren't sitting in some reple deple in Western France. We can't afford too many days losing eight and 12 men.
I hate when people abuse history. To compare Omaha Beach, where concrete embankments held a division of infantry to the streets of a city in a country we were supposedly liberating, is a vile insult to both the men that died and common sense.
I guess the chickenhawks like Glenn will dig up any vile excuse to justify this pointless war. Here's another WWII comparison: imagine if the French, tired of our military government and killing of civilians while fighting the Germans, rose up, Catholic and Protestant, and started ambushing US convoys and killing Americans. And we started bombing and shooting them.
That's Iraq today. Not some cheap and wildly offensive comparisons to WWII.
The sad fact about Iraq is that no one gets the scale of the tragedy. Not only are the theocrats going to win, but the scale of killing is vast. Over 40 Americans and 300 Iraqis have been killed in fighting.
There is this arrogant idea that all the US has to do is kill enough people and the resistance will end. Dan Barlett, the White House spokesman making the rounds of the morning shows, said "we're fighting evil".
When I heard that, my mouth fell open. Hasn't anyone in the White House noticed most Iraqis are on the fence, and many more have decided to oppose the occupation. They are not supporting us. They are not taking our side, except when we pay them. There isn't one pro-american group native to Iraq. No one cares about Chalabi's henchmen.
I heard a Lt. Col say "we're winning every firefight." So? Why are you in firefights? Why are people killing your Marines? Doesn't that speak of a massive policy failure. Now, I know he has to win a battle, but the idea that we're fighting in Iraq is insane. We were supposed to liberate these people, not have them turn on us.
Sistani is trying to split the difference and stop the killing. Well, that isn't going to work. Sadr is not the only Shia in arms. Iraqis are telling western reporters that they are sick of the incompetence and mishandling of Iraq. Iraqis have the most educated populace of the middle east, 130K engineers and architects, but the country is being rebuilt by Halliburton. Unemployment is 60-70 percent and not going down, the streets are unsafe.
Now, CNN is reporting that the Badr Brigade has been given permission to go after Sadr's Al-Mahdi Army. First of all, the Badr Brigade is deeply mistrusted by many Shia as being Iranian lackies. Second, this could spur an inter-Shia civil war where the Badr forces could come out second best. A lot of people may not like Sadr, but he has, according to Juan Cole, nearly 5 million supporters. Jumping in to kill Shia for the Americans might not be wise. Also, there have been reports that the Al Mahdi Army and the Badr Brigades were cooperating.
Trusting any Iraqi militia is foolhardy. Too many Americans assume that what comes out of Iraqi mouths is something close to the truth. The right and the CPA quotes polls like they mean something. What Iraqi hasn't learned that telling the truth in politics could get you killed? The entire culture was based on telling people what they want to hear.
I don't trust any poll or survey from Iraq. I trust facts, like the spread of the rebellion, the way the police and Civil Guard turned turned on US troops and joined the insurgents. The fact that Sistani still will not meet with the Americans should indicate how much we're truly liked and admired in Iraq.
The whole CPA is a grotesque mistake, isolated from normal Iraqis, a big green target for the random mortar or rocket. It should be called NKVD HQ, because it is dominated by ideologues. Iraq is not Afghanistan, it is not a rural society dominated by tribal leaders. Yet, US policy has tried to run Iraq like Afghanistan, with utter and complete failure.
The US broke off the attack in Fallujah to negotiate, which in English means that they cannot get more than a mile into the city. Their attack has stalled and they don't have the reenforcements to unstall it. The food supplies are basically going to feed the guerillas, since there is scant seperation between the two. Scenes of nearly broke Shia sending their food to the Sunni heartland is both touching and scary.
This fight, which I think was pushed by Chalabi and his neocon buddies, to get the Sunnis under heel and Sadr out of the way, is a complete disaster. US troops, from now, until the day we leave Iraq, will face gunfire in Sadr City. Our supply lines will face random attacks. The Sunni tribal towns will never permit Coalition troops in their borders without a fight. Every Iraqi we kill is one who has to be avenged.
The US started a fight with people who don't quit. CENTCOM says "we control Iraq", well no, you don't and can't. So what if you took back Kut, the Al Mahdi boys just went home. They will be back. Maybe at night, when a convoy comes by. Maybe on the rail lines. They may back down from gun battles in the street, but we've just started the Shia insurgency. Shias have always opposed Americans, some joined the insurgency from day one. Now, the masses are deciding it's time to kick the Americans out.
What amazes me is that most Americans don't understand a simple point: not since March 21, 2003 have Americans in Iraq not been under fire. There has not been a single day where US troops have not been shot at or attacked in some way in some part of the country. While most Iraqis have sat on the fence, there have always been enough who so resented the occupation, they have sought to kill Americans and those who collaborated with them.
The war never ended, they just changed enemies. When Saddam left the field, the resistance took over. Of course, they might have fizzled out if the Army hadn't been fired and the ammo dumps secured, but that would have required common sense and planning.
David DeBatto served in Iraq as a counterintell NCO and was wounded in combat. He wrote about his experiences for soldiers for the truth.org, where he is a contributor.
I had the opportunity, because of circumstances that only God and war can produce, that allowed me to do things that most soldiers, myself included, only dream about. Things like attending feasts with high-ranking government officials on both sides of the conflict. I am talking about generals, governors, ministers and so forth. I was able to speak before governmental bodies in Iraq and assist with the reconstruction of councils and assemblies. In one case, I was even being asked to set the price of grain in a province that had their economic infrastructure destroyed by both Saddam and the black market that ensued after his regime collapsed.
Yes, I also did have the joy (I guess a soldier can call it that) of capturing and throwing some Iraqi secret police and assassin types in jail and participating on many raids with M-1 tanks, Bradley fighting vehicles and even some helicopter gunships on occasion. All great fun and an adrenalin rush.
Well, fast forward to today. All hell is breaking loose in Fallujah, AR Ramadi, Najaf and other hotspots all over Iraq. We are now taking some of the heaviest casualties since the end of hostilities officially ended last May, and with no end in sight. The June 30 handoff date is in jeopardy and the Pentagon is scrambling to come up with contingency plans to deal with the new “unexpected” insurgency they now have on their hands. In short, they are scared. When any governmental agency gets scared, they look for a scapegoat.
Yesterday, that scapegoat was me.
The Army has launched what I can only describe as a smear campaign against me by trying to destroy my credibility. They are claiming, among other things, that I am trying to present my self as an official Army or Pentagon spokesman (God forbid!) and that I have been trying to set national policy (I never realized I had that much authority). They are, of course, trying to minimize my experience and expertise by saying, in effect; I don’t know what I am talking about. Pretty standard stuff for a large agency trying to muzzle someone who is speaking the truth about them.
Mind you, these accusations are being made primarily by men (I use the term loosely here) that either never served a day in Iraq or Afghanistan or spent their time in-theater in a nice, air-conditioned office with Internet and e-mail connections 24/7, showers, latrines, good food and never went over the wire except to re-deploy. This was done when soldiers like myself were going out, over the wire, on 3-4 mission a day, seven days a week and getting about 3-4 hours of sleep a day, if we were lucky.
We took incoming from RPG’s, AK-47’s, and 60 and 80 mm mortars every day and night. We were also exposed to the very real danger of attack from the enormous crowds that circled us every time we would stop and dismount in a town or village. As for my team, a THT (Tactical HUMINT Team) for which I was the team leader, we were responsible for some of the biggest and most significant intelligence collection efforts in the central Sunni Triangle area in which we operated. I am very proud of my team and what they accomplished, usually under very difficult conditions; conditions made all the more difficult because of poor leadership at the 0-4 and 0-5 levels, some of the very same people now leveling baseless allegations against me.
Here is how I see it. Some ticket punchers and wannabes are upset that I was able to do what I did in the Gulf and have the b**** to talk about it and what I see is happening over there right now. They are also getting pressure from above to shut me up. I understand. It’s an election year. The bottom line; I can look myself in the mirror every day with no problem. I know they can’t.
But how did he see so much action if Iraq was stable? After all, the Iraqis love freedom, right? Why were they trying to kill this poor man? The DOD says ridiculous things and people believe them. Which is a shame. But reality seems only to be fit for game shows.
Yes, I watched Condi Rice lie and obfuscate for three hours today, but frankly, it did nothing to convince me that she was actually competant at her job. There isn't really much to say about her performance which wouldn't be filled with disgust. However, I will point you to Sid Blumenthal's article in Salon today. He nails Rice's ineffectiveness far better than anyone has so far.
However, I did watch Fox's new show last night, The Swan. The horrifying concept of this show is to take two homely/average women and do a shitload of plastic surgery on them until they look like actresses or something.
The makeover show is all the rage on TV. From Monster House to Trading Spaces to Pimp My Ride, remaking the things you own is the new American fad. Which is fine. Monster House is pretty cool and Trading Spaces, despite their set designer tendencies, does nice things with paint. Pimp My Ride, the new MTV show, with the rapper Xhibit taking SoCal hoopties and upgrading them with 20K of auto parts, is amazing.
But as anyone who has ever trolled Home Depot knows, recreation is a good thing. The tips on these shows does make for interesting, even striking designs. While I was sick, my cousin rebuilt my bedroom. I'm happy with the changes, but I need to do a paintjob when I'm recovered. And having seen the bold colors on Trading Spaces, I'm inspired to use them.
But there is a vast change between adding a bookshelf and having someone carve up your face.
Between Extreme Makeover, I want a Famous Face and now the Swan, we have entered the American Freakshow. There were these two twins who wanted to look like Brad Pitt. I couldn't believe it. Not only were these guys ugly, they had no genetic connection to the Pitt family. They would never look like Brad Pitt. Brad Pitt's mom barely looks like Brad Pitt. His sisters are not runway models. No, that was a once in a generation jackpot. And the fact is that he basically cleans up well. For the most part, he looks like the Missouri farmboy he once was.
Another Famous Face victim wanted to look like Kate Winslet. Huh? She's got a nice face, but average body. This girl thought that Winslet lived in some magical fairy world. The one girl who seemed to be sane was a Britney Spears imitator who needed bigger tits. Which was OK. She actually looked like Spears naturally.
What is so sad about this spate of human makeovers is that all of these people need serious therapy. It's all about self-esteem and self-love. The one Brad Pitt twin had crush on a hottie who wanted to be friends. Well, he gets 20K of plastic surgery and the girl still wanted to be friends. Like his looks would change her feelings. Not that he looked like Pitt, or as someone said on VH1, he looked like Brad Pitt, "if he were ugly".
The Swan added a twist worthy of the Grimm Brothers. First, homely girl, or actually mentally ugly girl, gets surgery. Then she competes with another girl to go into a beauty pagent. Who would think of this? The Maquis de Sade? Laventi Beria? What sadist would take a women with dirt low self-esteem and then tell her she wasn't pretty enough for a beauty contest. Cruel isn't the word. Just because you carve on her like a Tuscan steak doesn't mean she had any more self-esteem now than before.
What makes this whole thing so freakish, so wrong is that these people think that their lives will magically change and they will be treated like a famous person, or that they will have their lives. It's criminal that doctors would treat these people with surgery instead of psychiatry. These people are using medicine when they need mental health treatment. Looking like Kate Winslet, something Kate Winslet had to get used to, is not going to make you a better person.
I look very different today than I did in December. I know what a radical transformation is like. But I don't think I changed mentally. All the surgery these poor people get will not make them new people. Only a self-examination can make you a new person. There are beautiful women who have severe self-esteem problems. Who feel disrepected and wish someone would treat them as the thoughtful, intelligent people they are.
If you are not stable mentally, no surgery will make you stable. When I was in rehab, I met fully paralyzed people, people who could barely more their necks. Others who had tumors on their neck and had them removed. I wish I had their mental toughness. It takes a great deal of will to live after you become a paraplegic. And then I see these people who don't much like themselves, and I wonder why are they changing their exteriors and not their interiors. Looking like a movie star is an illusion. They don't look like that in real life. No one does.
Americans like a quick fix and what is quicker than a new face and some liposuction. Too bad that it doesn't change your heart, soul or eliminates your insecurities.
WASHINGTON, April 7 — United States forces are confronting a broad-based Shiite uprising that goes well beyond supporters of one militant Islamic cleric who has been the focus of American counterinsurgency efforts, United States intelligence officials said Wednesday.
That assertion contradicts repeated statements by the Bush administration and American officials in Iraq. On Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that they did not believe the United States was facing a broad-based Shiite insurgency. Administration officials have portrayed Moktada al-Sadr, a rebel Shiite cleric who is wanted by American forces, as the catalyst of the rising violence within the Shiite community of Iraq.
But intelligence officials now say that there is evidence that the insurgency goes beyond Mr. Sadr and his militia, and that a much larger number of Shiites have turned against the American-led occupation of Iraq, even if they are not all actively aiding the uprising.
A year ago, many Shiites rejoiced at the American invasion and the toppling of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni who had brutally repressed the Shiites for decades. But American intelligence officials now believe that hatred of the American occupation has spread rapidly among Shiites, and is now so large that Mr. Sadr and his forces represent just one element..
Meanwhile, American intelligence has not yet detected signs of coordination between the Sunni rebellion in Iraq's heartland and the Shiite insurgency. But United States intelligence says that the Sunni rebellion also goes far beyond former Baathist government members. Sunni tribal leaders, particularly in Al Anbar Province, home to Ramadi, the provincial capital, and Falluja, have turned against the United States and are helping to lead the Sunni rebellion, intelligence officials say.
The result is that the United States is facing two broad-based insurgencies that are now on parallel tracks.
No kidding. Gee, you mean it's not "former regime elements" and "foreign fighters" any more?
You mean the Badr Brigade and other Shia militias have tossed their lot in with Sadr? The "hothead" we were going to arrest, the one who should have surrendered?
This lack of planning is getting people killed. The half-assed way Bush is trying to toss Iraq to Chalabi, who will either need to hire half of Blackwater USA to save his ass, or faces near-immediate death, is revolting. From day one, we knew the Shia were going to play their hand. Which is why Al Qaeda blew Hakim away with a car bomb. Sistani is playing the fence, while Sadr has maintained a simple line from day one, Yankee go home.
We are no longer in Kansas, Dorothy, this is spiriling out of control and the civil war we're entering is one where the US and their collaborators are on one side and the careful Sunni/Shia alliance Sadr has been forging since last year is on the other.
This is turning into 1920, except the Shia and Sunnis are coordinating and talking. For the unaware, 1920 is the year of the nationwide rebellion against the British occupiers. Sadr was and is clever by stressing nationalism with a religious cloak. He is fast becoming a national hero for resisting the Americans.
What the US doesn't realize is that their Vichy government is roundly detested by Iraqis of all stripes. They may hate and fear the thugish theocracy Sadr would impose, but they revile the IGC and its handpicked exile collaborators. Cowards is the kindest words for them.
The US seems not to realize that the only loyalty Iraqis have to them is money. Which is why the insurgent-riddled police and Civil Guard have turned their backs on their American paymasters. There is no political figure working with the US who inspires any kind of loyalty. Why shouldn't they throw their lot in with the rebellion? They still have to live there and the Americans have been all too cavalier with their lives. Not enough weapons, protection, facilities.
Sadr, for all his flaws, inspires loyalty. They know he's suffered with them and paid a tremedous personal price because of Saddam. And he hasn't backed down to the Americans. As much as you can dislike his beliefs, and question his judgment, his character inspires people. It's not that Sistani and Hakim were wrong in trying to get an election out of the Americans. But too many people have been killed, robbed and abused by Americans for that to stand.
Sadr lost his entire family to Saddam. He's the last man standing and that carries a great deal of weight with people The Americans treated him like a pest until it was much too late. He was no pest, but the representative of the poor and disenfranchised. And because he helped them, they will help him.
Americans neither respect nor understand Iraqis and refuse to admit this. Anyone who knew the Iraqi character knew we would reach this day. The Iraqis were destined to chafe under US rule, even indirectly. Saddam had to kill 300,000 people to control Iraq. The Americans cannot do that. Iraqi nationalism is what held the country together and kept the Shia quiet for decades. The Army was held together by nationalism, not Saddam. It is that Army which has popped up from time to time, most recently in Ramadi. When they checked the dead, it was filled with middle aged men, people who had fought against the Iranians and Americans.
If middle age men are fighting the Americans, people with families and kids to support, our troubles in Iraq will soon be over. Because we will no longer be there.
Some employers say they're hiring workers in other countries - a trend known as "offshoring" - because they can pay lower wages, providing a much-needed competitive advantage. They say U.S. workers aren't forced to train replacements (known as "knowledge transfer"), but are given the choice whether to participate.
At WatchMark-Comnitel, a telecommunications software company in Bellevue, Wash., 17 employees in quality assurance were laid off in 2003, and replacements in India were hired. Sixteen U.S. workers helped train their replacements. Company officials say no workers were forced to do the training, but those who did got extra incentives.
"It was a voluntary choice they had to participate," says WatchMark-Comnitel spokeswoman Sherry Toly.
"Separation packages were offered whether they participated or not. We've been very happy (with the offshoring), and we feel we have a better product. Lower costs have transferred to an improved product."
But workers such as Myra Bronstein aren't convinced.
On a Friday in 2003, the former WatchMark software tester was part of a team of workers summoned to a meeting. There, she says, managers handed out letters explaining that the testing staff was being laid off. Managers then told the group that their replacements would be workers in India, she says. The workers were flying in and would be in the office Monday. She says she was instructed to train them.
Bronstein felt trapped. She says she believes that if she refused, she would have probably been fired without severance and would have been ineligible for unemployment benefits. If she quit, she says, she wouldn't have received severance or been eligible for unemployment.
The next week, she and the other employees facing layoffs were introduced to the workers who were taking their jobs. The workers from India, she says, would be earning a sixteenth of what she had been paid.
"I was staring hard at my shoes and trying not to cry. It was hideously awkward. I felt forced," says Bronstein, 48, of Mercer Island, Wash. She is still unemployed. "It was very deflating and dehumanizing to train your replacement. I felt sucker-punched. It was as if they handed us a shovel and said, 'Here, dig your own grave.' "
Jen ran across this article and asked me to post this. I was horrified after reading this. I would like some of the pundits who are so bland about the jobs being outsourced, forced to train their replacements from the Dawn and Times of India. See how they like it.
On a personal note, Jen wanted to say hi while she adapts to a new job. When she gets time I guess she'll drop in and say hello,
TORONTO—Army private Brandon Hughey got in his silver Mustang around midnight on March 2, rolled past the gates at Fort Hood in Texas, and headed northeast. All he had to guide him was a deepening dread and principled objection to the war in Iraq and a promise of help from a complete stranger he'd found on the Internet. His unit was deploying to the Middle East the next morning and, as Hughey, 18, wrote in a February 29 e-mail to the stranger, an anti-war activist, "I do not want to be a pawn in the government's war for oil, and have told my superiors that I want out of the military. They are not willing to chapter me out and tell me that I have no choice but to pack my bags and get ready to go to Iraq. This has led me to feel hopeless and I have thought about suicide several times."
His heart pounding to the hip-hop beat on his radio, Hughey drove for 17 hours straight, keeping an anxious eye on the speedometer, panicked that he might get pulled over. The activist met him on March 4 in southern Indiana, stashed the Mustang (with Hughey's dog tags in the trunk) in Indianapolis, and took the wheel behind his own car for a 500-mile trip to the bridge at Niagara Falls. He gave Hughey a New York Knicks cap to pull on over his crew cut so the guards at the Canadian border would believe they were on their way to see a Toronto Raptors game.
Hughey did watch New York shut down Toronto in a fourth-quarter comeback that night—but on TV from St. Catharines, Ontario, where a Quaker couple has taken him in. He is the second American soldier who opposes the war to have applied for refugee status in Canada. As the occupation in Iraq drags on, morale among soldiers plummets, and talk of a post-election draft heats up, their cases will determine whether Canada will once again welcome young Americans resisting a questionable war.
The first was Jeremy Hinzman, a private first class with the 504th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 82nd Airborne, who arrived in Toronto on January 3 with his wife, Nga Nguyen, and their 21-month-old son, Liam. In contrast to Hughey, Hinzman engaged a lengthy process of pleading from within his unit for non-combat duty as a conscientious objector (C.O.). After his request was denied, Hinzman faced orders for Iraq. He and his wife crammed what they could into their Chevy Prizm and headed north, with their son, from Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
Hinzman, 25, understood what he was risking: if he wins his case, never being able to visit the U.S. again; if he loses, being deported, going directly to jail with a harsh sentence. Desertion during wartime is a capital offense; though the last execution for a runaway soldier was in 1945, Hinzman worries that the penalty could be revived. "The Bush administration has done so many unprecedented things," he notes. Nonetheless, seeking sanctuary in Canada looked better than any alternative. Hinzman reasons, "I thought of refusing orders and turning myself in [as Staff Sergeant Camilo Mejia did last month]. But because of how they had handled my C.O. application, I wasn't sure I would get a fair shake. Anyway, I don't feel I should be incarcerated for following my conscience."
To win refugee status, Hinzman and Hughey will have to demonstrate that they are fleeing a well-founded fear of persecution in the U.S.—an extremely tough claim. What's more, notes a former member of Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board, refugee law specifies that "prosecution is not persecution": Punishment for breaking a law is not grounds for asylum unless the law itself—China's one-child policy, for instance—is deemed a form of persecution
Morale is not going to be getting higher with extended combat stays in Iraq, the first time the US military has done that since they extended the tours of bomber crews in WW II fromn 25 to 50 missions.
We'll see more of these stories in the weeks ahead.
Why the military doesn't release these guys, who are obviously not running a scam, is beyond me.
A bid by the world's largest corporation to bypass uncooperative elected officials and take its aggressive expansion plans to voters failed Tuesday, as Inglewood residents overwhelmingly rejected Wal-Mart's proposal to build a colossal retail and grocery center without an environmental review or public hearings.
With all votes counted Tuesday evening, 4,575 Inglewood residents had voted in favor of Wal-Mart's plan, while 7,049 had voted against it.
Wal-Mart hopes to break into California's grocery business by opening 40 such Supercenters statewide. The one in Inglewood would have been Los Angeles County's first.
"It is a shame that a small number of voters have determined that more than 100,000 Inglewood residents will have to leave their community to enjoy the shopping opportunities that others have close to home," Wal-Mart officials said in a statement.
The company had spent more than $1 million on its campaign, and opponents had warned that if the company won, residents throughout California should gird for similar battles.
"What this shows is that Wal-Mart can't dupe people in this city to sign away their rights," said Mike Shimpock, a strategist for the campaign against the move. "If they spent $1 million here and lost by this margin, I doubt they'll try this elsewhere. They'll have to approach cities as equal partners."
Thwarted by officials in Inglewood and elsewhere, company strategists decided to take their proposal directly to voters, who the retailer said would be well served by new jobs, tax revenues and low prices.
The expansion encountered fierce opposition from organized labor, which insisted that Wal-Mart's aggressive business practices and anti-union employment policies would result in lost jobs and depressed wages ...
The arrogance of Walmart is amazing. They had a 71 page which exempted them from most local and state regulations. They thought they would offer the colored folks some jobs, make a lot of promises, none written down and they would fall all over themselves for thw work.
When they realized that Walmart's slave labor wages and practices would kill their downtown shopping district and impact their supermarkets, most people wanted nothing to do with it. Walmart ran a series of happy negro ads telling people how great the company was, as if they could ignore the news reports. Walmart sells crap and everyone knows it. They treat their workers like crap. They run virulent anti-union campaigns because they know the Bentonville Hillbillies make their billions by cheating hardworking, loyal workers out of a decent wage.
Walmart is a bad neighbor and everyone knows it. Don't people wonder why Target is regarded as both a better neighbor and a better place to shop? Would anyone choose the crap at Walmart over the crap at Target? The folks in Inglewood have big box stores, how could they not? Everyone drives in SoCal, they know Walmart.
What worked people's last nerve was the way Walmart decided to ignore the ruling of the council and go over their heads. Why deal with elected officials who don't rule your way? Instead, write a propostion which exempts you from every environmental and zoning law and hoodwink the coloreds into voting for it. They would have never tried it in any state where there is no iniative process.
Walmart deserved to lose this on the principles alone. Just because you're dealing with black and latino voters, don't think they don't value their local laws and would trade them away for a few low wage jobs.
While Dear Leader is spending his week at the pig ranch, there are Marines and soldiers fighting for their lives in Iraq. The fact that 12 Marines were killed in Ramadi should indicate two scary things: one, they were almost overrun by waves of trained infantry. Untrained guerillas don't mount up human wave attacks.
Second, that was a diversionary attack designed to prevent reenforcements to reach Fallujah. The scale and intensity of the attacks were not coincidental. They had to be organized, the attacks planned and designed to keep the Marines pinned down.
So, the First Marine Division had two major battles on their hands, which limited their ability to shift forces around. Without the attack on Ramadi, there would have been the shifting of at least another battalion to join in the attack. Instead, the Iraqi command, and this was planned by soldiers, not "terrorists", decided to go after the Marines as they were getting sucked into Fallujah.
Too many people believe in the superiority of American arms to get the point. If the Iraqi insurgents were weak, US firepower would have put down the rebellions by now. But the US doesn't have the kind of firepower advantages that most Western armies have had. There is clearly a pool of trained soldiers fighting the Americans. People who plan their actions and do not break under fire.
Already, they have forced the US to bring in gunships and kill civilians.
What people don't seem to understand is that if Sadr and the Sunni clerics coordinate their actions, the US is in trouble. All they have to do is overrun one base, and that was the attempt at Ramadi yesterday, drive up US casualities in a series of bloody battles, and they will gain support among the Iraqi people.
The US doesn't have the forces to fight two rebellions and Sadr's appeal is nationalist as much as religious.
What is misleading is citing that Sadr has 10,000 men. Well, he may have that many, but when the US rolls into these towns, the local men whip out their guns, acting as a force multiplier. Which is what happened in Ramadi. All you need is a bunch of teens acting as spotters and silent neighbors when the guerillas move around. Anyone who picks up a gun is a bonus.
Someone said that there were only 2,000 guerillas. Well, that's about the size of an Iraqi regiment. That's a lot of men. In a city of 300K or more, there has to be more men under arms. Which means the Marines are outnumbered.
There's this mantra which says "the US can defeat X guerillas because of their firepower". That's clearly not true, or Ramadi and Fallujah would have been bombed into rubble by the B-52's. There are political limits to the amount of force we can use against people we're suppposed to be liberating. The Iraqis have no such limits.
The casuality figures are misleading as well. While 12 Marines died in Ramadi, they say 66 Iraqis died. Considering the Iraqi attacks, and the fact they were on the offensive, it seems like an acceptable loss for the Iraqi guerillas. They largely lack body armor and helmets, so their casuality rate would be higher. This should scare people because it means Iraqis are going to take higher casualities to achieve their ends.
We can't take these cities by force. Unless we resort to city-leveling force, it won't happen. We need political solutions to end the combat. There are no workable military solutions here. We don't have enough soldiers to force our will, our allies will not intervene to save us and the Iraqis will not quit until we leave.
See, because the boys at Little Green Footballs have attacked Nathan Newman, someone I have never communicated with or linked to, I now must disavow him, like a good liberal.
See, once the LGF guys complained, there was no way I could stick up for his right to free speech. They were upset by his writing, and that was enough for me. So what if they were racist troglodites, and I had never read what Newman wrote or e-mailed him. He's evil and I must make my reputation by denoucing him. After all, if someone complains, he has to be in the wrong.
Therefore, a pox on you Newman, you controversal bad person . After all, no one would try to attack me through blogads. Nope. i'm safe and he needs to apologize for his dastardly deeds. That's how we deal with conservatives, by attacking anyone they complain about and denoucing them. Nathan, I hereby denounce you and those filthy words you wrote, no matter what they were. I need to cover my ass and have people like me, no matter what.
Oh yeah, I'd delink you, if we were linked, but we weren't.
So, if you were going to lay seige to a town filled with ex-soldiers, would you announce to the world you were going to do so? Our big mouths have gotten five Marines sent to their maker because of this, and now we're engaged in a pitched fight on the edges of Fallujah.
It couldn't be that any of the guerillas were ex-officers, had maps and guessed where the Marines would have to go. They don't have interior lines of comminucation, right? Or adequate weapons to defend themselves? The Marines think they can shoot their way through, but they are forgetting that these people are defending their homes and families. Fallujah isn't some dusty town with a few shacks, but a city comparable to Cinncinati. These are relatively well educated and intelligent people, and since they supported Saddam, home to a bunch of embittered mid-level officers who earned their stripes against Iran and the Kurds. So what makes anyone think they're going to just collapse when the Marines show up?
Sadr is a different kettle of fish. His boys have less military skill, but he's picking his ground carefully. Holing up in Najaf, while Sistani keeps his mouth shut, is slick. They've picked a place which crosses the US's line of communications. The Spanish are supposed to control the area, but US troops will have to launch their attacks there. But they can't attack the holy areas. Sadr deserves credit for being clever. Now, if the US unloaded the BUFF's, some armor and a few MLRS's, Sadr would be a memory, but so would the Imam Ali mosque. Sadr's people know this. The US will have to risk men to get him.
The US cannot afford two defeats and they are heading towards them. Fallujah is a serious problem and probably would need 10,000 men to pacify, or kill enough guerrilla to drive the rest back into lounging around and engaging in low-level sabotage. A thousand men and some shaky Iraqis is not nearly enough to do the job.
Storming into Najaf to get Sadr could tip the hand into massive Shia rebellion. They may not like Sadr and his youthful grandstanding, but they sure like the Imam Ali mosque and would deeply resent US troops lighting the place up.
All of this could have been avoided with more temperate talk and a less willingness to shoot up Iraqi cities. These are not military problems, but political ones. Sadr and the people of Fallujah have political grievences which can be solved by money and negotations, maybe a few courtmartials. But five Marines died avenging the four mercs in one day and we don't control the town. How can we with 1200 men? There are 260K+ people there. This isn't Starship Troopers or the Forever War. This is real life and the enemy knows their weapons and the ground. There are no gauss rifles or nuclear rpgs to bring them to heel. They have the same small arms we do.
For a year, the US, from the CPA palace to the grunts have treated Iraqis like subhumans, stupid little brown monkeys who need big white brother to lead them. That is patently not true. At every turn, they have either frustrated us or outwitted us, which Bush and his minions have not admitted. The nadir of this is the twin calls for revenge on Fallujah, unaware that the guerillas were planning for our return the minute we said we would, and an attempt to arrest Sadr by force. These aren't high risk moves, they are insanely risky moves.
The Iraqi guerillas may not be an army, but the people who lead them are not stupid. They can and will confront us on nearly equal terms when they can. If we continue to try and kill our way to a solution, more soldiers will die and our goals will be unmet.
April 5, 2004 | MILWAUKEE (AP) -- One schoolthat received millions of dollars through the nation's oldest and largest voucher program was founded by a convicted rapist. Another school reportedly entertained kids with Monopoly while cashing $330,000 in tuition checks for hundreds of no-show students.
The recent scandals have shocked politicians, angered parents and left even some voucher supporters demanding reforms.
The troubles have helped lead to passage of a state law requiring voucher schools to report more financial information to the state. Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle signed it last month.
But so far, efforts to impose more rigorous academic standards on voucher schools have failed.
Milwaukee's 14-year-old voucher program has served as a model for others around the country. It doles out state money to allow poor parents to send their children to private schools. Wisconsin will spend $75 million this year on vouchers for more than 13,000 students.
The schools are required to report virtually nothing about their methods to the state, or to track their students' performance. Proponents say that frees the schools from onerous bureaucracy. But some say the lack of oversight makes them a prime target for abuse.
The voucher school is reflective of America's wider contempt for expertise. Americans have a native belief that any guy, with common sense, can do any job. Which is why we have barely educated parents home schooling their kids, using right-wing Christian books (often the only ones available). You just had a mother, who home schooled her kids, sent to the loonie bin after she brained two of them. The fact that dealing with small kids all day takes four years of education and extra training eludes most people. It's now understood that the earlier the kids are exposed to education, the more they learn and can retain. They don't need to be stuck at home becoming little anti-social freaks. School is only partly about education. It's also about socialization. You can be a genius, but if you can't hack school, life is gonna be that much harder.
Voucher schools were created by conservatives to destroy public education. Instead of increasing the flexibility of schools and allowing teachers to teach and principals to have real control of their school, this was a way to siphon money off and usher in a system of private schools where rich, white kids going to private schools would eventually get government money, and the rump public schools would have to take the loser kids, the cripples, the idiots and violent abused kids.
Now, the only kids affected by these scam voucher schools, and they showed one in Brooklyn in a storefront, are poor, black and desperate. Yet, they're literally thrown to the wolves without any educational support. Schools of education exist for a reason. And even if some teachers and some schools suck, ripping them apart and handing out the money to any hustler who talks a good game is an especially cruel hoax. Where did the idea that voucher schools needed to be exempt from the same rules that public schools come from? The right, blathering about market forces. Yet, they wouldn't let their precious prep schools be run without accountability. That's only suitable for poor kids.
If Milwaukee's parents want to stop the theft of their kids futures, they might want to sue to demand basic standards for voucher schools. Otherwise, it's a theft of the most precious thing they have, their children.
The rightwing nutjobs think all Iraq needs is a little asskicking, and then they'll love Uncle Sugar and embrace our Israeli friends. Well, I like fantasies as well, but they usually involve naked women.
The Iraqi resistance is going to win. They have more men, more weapons and control much of the country. Americans live in a fantasy world where we have incomplete knowledge of Iraq and allow our procounsel to act as if we give a damn about Iraqis.
Fact 1: US forces are woefully undermanned
The reality is that if Saddam needed 600K men to control Iraq, how can the US do it with 110,000? The Iraqi police and civil guard are filled with resistance members and have turned their guns on US forces more than once. The US is a day late and a dollar short when it comes to security. Things are so bad that we had to contract out Bremer's security. We haven't secured miles of open weapons dumps, which has killed more Americans than any single thing. Our inattentiveness to detail has killed our soldiers.
Yet, the right thinks once a few Americans show up, the ragheads will melt away. If these people had bothered to dig up a map and a demographic survey, they would know that holding Sadr City would be impossible. There are at least 2 million people there, maybe more. They can flood the green zone any day they want, just like they did to the Shah in 1979.
Fact 2: US troops are incredibly sloppy and unable to deal with the locals
How many Iraqi families have had their relatives killed by US troops, or their homes invaded? Thousands? How many of those now support the resistance? How many Americans understand Arabic? US fire discipline has been nightmarish. Hospitals, the handicapped, school children, journalists, all have fallen to US bullets without one court martial.
Steal money, go to jail, turn over a Humvee, go to jail. Kill an unarmed reporter, nothing happens. Kill an Iraqi, it might be a news story. But you won't be going to jail.
Does anyone think that you can invade a country, kill people, jail them on an informant's charge and remain unmolested? Idiots like Kathleen Parker think Americans live on a moral plain higher than Iraqis. Well, after our revolution, Americans tarred and feathered their neighbors. That may sound quaint, but the tar ripped the skin off of people. Then, they took those neighbors, who were Tories, marched them to the dock and gave them a one way ticket to Canada, while stealing their homes and property.
Billmon dug up some lynching photos, which are as gruesome as anything done in Fallujah. So this idea that Iraqis are animals and we aren't is just stupid. You jail people relatives, kill their kids, and see how they react. All of this driven by US ineptitude.
American troops always subcontracted the patrolling to Pakistanis and other swathy auxiliaries. Well, they aren't there and US lack of skill in dealing with people is evident. Shoot first may have worked when dealing with the Warsaw Pact, but it only fuels resentment in Iraq.
Fact 3: There is no government
The debate currently raging in the CPA is over who to turn the government to. Odds are on Ahmed "the convicted felon" Chalabi, an exile detested by the majority of Iraqis. Elections are impossible with all the violence. How can you vote when militias rule the street?
The CPA is a patronage mill for GOP campaign workers. It was set up as an ideological rampart to remake the middle east and it can't even build schools. It has few Arabic speakers and deals with Iraq from behind a walled compound. At least MACV had teams in the field. These are the most ideologically driven people since the NKVD ruled Eastern Europe. And their ideology is failing, badly.
Fact 4: The rebellion is widely supported
There is no Sunni triangle. That's a myth based on a misreading of demographic maps. It's like calling Boston the Irish Triangle. This is not 1920 (so far). Sunni, Shia and Kurds intermarry and live across the country. Mosul has plenty of Arab Sunnis as does Kirkuk, making Kurdish claims on both cities tenuous. Shias live through most of the area north of Baghdad. There is far less division than people think. Dividing the country ethnically would be a disaster. It's not Northern Ireland.
So the lies issued from CENTCOM, foreign fighters, Al Qaeda, make no sense. How can a Yemeni or Iranian survive in Iraq without massive local help? How could they eat, get money, care for their wounded? Are the Iraqis just standing by and watching others turn their country into a battleground? Not likely. Even the police and Civil Guard are penetrated by the resistance. Only five percent of the population has to pick up a gun to have a full-scale rebellion.
Fact 5: Tough talk is a sign of weakness
Every day Viceroy Jerry boasts of arresting people or pacifying some area, and fails, they have all been failures, we seem weaker. The talk from CENTCOM is like out of a bad movie. If the US was truly effective in controlling the resistance, you'd know it. The streets would be secure, elections would be on pace, and Sadr would have walked in and demanded a show trial. Instead, he's ready to throw down with a couple of US battalions and reach paradise.
Trying to arrest Sadr is more than about him. It's playing to Shia myths of martyrdom and redemption, not creating stability. He may have started out with a few supporters, but now, we're creating yet another Shia martyr, one who's entire family was murdered by Saddam. And we're giving him the chance to gain a complete and total martyrdom at the hands of US forces inside a mosque. Maybe the CPA thinks he's going to jail, but he's been given a chance to oppose the US and become a regional hero. If he dies at US hands, he joins Yassin and Osama as an anti-western hero.
The whole arrest thing is silly. Who would testify against him? How would he be convicted? The whole thing is ridiculous. Why not ship Chalabi to Jordan, where he faces a couple of decades in jail.
Instead, someone is creating a crisis which will kill dozen of Americans and either leave Sadr free or a dead martyr. Which to Shias is about the same thing politically.
The Associated Press
Monday, April 5, 2004; 3:37 PM
NEW YORK -- The Pulitzer Prizes for international reporting went to Anthony Shadid of The Washington Post, for what the board called his "extraordinary ability to capture, at personal peril," the voices and emotions of Iraqis as their country was invaded, their leader toppled and their way of life upended.
...........
The Los Angeles Times also won the Pulitzer in national reporting for its examination of the tactics that have made Wal-Mart the largest company in the world.
The prize for investigative reporting was awarded to Michael D. Sallah, Mitch Weiss and Joe Mahr of The Blade, Toledo, Ohio, for their series on atrocities by Tiger Force, an elite U.S. Army platoon, during the Vietnam War
Shadid, unlike the WaPo's editorial page, not only didn't embarass himself, but turned out to crush the Times embarassing reporting, led by John "stenographer" Burns and Judy "Ahmed Chalabi is my friend" Miller. Time and again, he used his Arabic-speaking skills to get stories that simply went over the head of his peers. His most amazing story was about a family which executed a son for informing on his neighbors. The grim choice was either that or war between two villages. So many of his stories reflected a deeply conflicted Iraq missing from CPA briefings.
For every Miller and Nedra Pickler, who seem to push their agendas, there are Anthony Shadids who do their job. In a year when scum like Jayson Miller and Jack Kelley floated to the top of the pond, it's important to keep in mind not everyone wants to be one of the heathers.
The Toledo Blade also deserved their award for digging up a long forgotten series of atrocities in Vietnam. While larger papers ignored the story once it broke, the work the staff of the Blade did will not be forgotten. Americans like to pretend that we are better than other people. Stories like Tiger Force remind us that we aren't
The Pulitzers are as political as any other award, and this has been a crappy year for journalism. But, once in a while they get it right, and this is one of those years.
Crusing by atrios today, he linked to right-wing hack columnist Kathleen Parker, who advocated nuking Fallujah.
Does becoming a right-wing columnist make you retarded. I won't discuss the technical impossibilty of a nuclear strike, you can figure that out, but have these people gone insane? We're supposed to be liberating these people. If not, why is Saddam still in jail?
The fact is that isolating Fallujah is about the same as isolating Cinncinati with 4,000 Marines. Yeah, that's bound to work. Why not just shoot these guys and save the hassle of breaking into homes, looking for men long gone.
As if this wasn't enough, Paul Bremer has now declared Sadr an "outlaw" and have laid siege to his mosque. Which is scary stupid. What are we going to do? Go get him? Juan Cole compares him to David Koresh, but there were only 50 men in the Branch Davidian compound. Sadr's personal bodyguard is bigger than that.
The US will have to try and force their way into the mosque and that allows the Mahdi militia to set up defensive positions and cut US forces down. In a rolling street battle, they killed seven soldiers and wounded 24. In a set-piece defense like this, well, a lot more people could die.
Bremer is a cheap talking punk. He talks as if he can ensure justice and he sounds like an ill-mannered fool. Sadr wants to be a freaking outlaw, the young men following him want to be rebels against the infidels. Bremer talks like an action movie mayor when the people he's dealing with are as serious as cancer. Sure, Sadr had a big mouth and his paper was filled with lies, but it didn't kill anyone. They were waiting for a chance to kill Americans and Bremer handed it to them.
Now, we have a grim choice of killing Shias by the streetload or turning Sadr into a massive hero.
The pictures of American troops storming into a mosque is scary to me. It would be Osama's dream photo:look at the infidels delifing our religion. Coming out with a dead, martyred Sadr would be even worse.
Why are they doing this? We cannot deal with a Sunni innsurection. Why are we making Sadr into an American-killing hero? Leaving him alone was the only smart solution. Killing him would be dumb, jailing him would be worse.
What government could be formed in a situation of a dual rebellion. Sadr has been cultivating Sunni clerics for months, do you think they're going to abandon him now, when the Shia could join the rebellion. The CPA's lies are coming undone as we watch American teengers die for their mistakes.
This could have all be avoided. Instead, Bremer acts like he's got the 6th SS Panzer Army under his command, not 100K dispersed and outnumbered troops. "Arresting" Sadr is a pitched gun battle at best. Is anyone going to cry for the poor dead Shia we're killing? No.
Remember, Saddam didn't attack the Shia, they attacked him. We're doing one better.
By Sewell Chan and Karl Vick
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, April 4, 2004; 5:30 PM
BAGHDAD, April 5--Seven U.S. soldiers were killed and more than 24 wounded in clashes in Sadr City, a mostly Shiite neighborhood in the northeastern part of the Iraqi capital, an Army spokesman said early Monday morning.
The deadly clash came hours after supporters of Moqtada Sadr, a fiery, young anti-American cleric, fought Sunday with a Spanish-led force at a military base in the southern Iraqi town of Kufa and as a week of protests and violence escalated across the country.
Master Sgt. David A. Melancon of the 1st Armored Division said in a statement Monday that the fighting in the capital began when "the militia of Moqtada Sadr's army -- Jaysh Mahdi or Mahdi Army -- attempted to interfere with security in Baghdad, intimidate Iraqi citizens and place them in danger. Specifically, the militia attempted to occupy and gain control of police stations and government buildings."
Militia members attacked soldiers and Iraqi law enforcement officers with small-arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades, according to Melancon. The U.S. and Iraqi forces, he added, "prevented this effort and reestablished security in Baghdad at the cost of seven U.S. soldiers killed and more than two dozen wounded."
In Kufa, at least 14 protesters and two soldiers, including one American, were killed and more than 100 were injured in fighting that witnesses said involved gunfire, mortars and an AH-64 Apache attack helicopter.
In addition to the U.S. solider, Spain's Defense Ministry in Madrid said, one solider from El Salvador was killed, the Reuters news services reported. Another nine soldiers were injured. (The Spanish ministry said its earlier report that four Salvadoran soldiers had been killed in Kufa was incorrect.)
So which battalion commander should be courtmartialed? Because the idea that US troops could go into freaking Sadr City and get out in one piece is delusional at best. Instead, 31 soldiers got lit up. Or a ratio of nearly one killed for three wounded. Which is a phenominal rate for a small unit action. That means a company was decimated by Shia militia men.
How can I draw that conclusion? Let's say the average mech company has 120 rifles on any given day. High casualities would be 3 killed and seven wounded. Crippling casualities would be 5 killed and 12 wounded. So what do we have? Seven dead and 24 wounded. A bunch of barely trained militiamen shut down the better part of a batallion today.
A battalion? Well, yeah. Because once you start losing men, you hunker down. Things got so bad, they had to call in air support. When one company started to take casualities, the dustoffs had to reach them. That stops offensive action, especially when you're taking fire from everywhere, which is what had to have happened here.
As best as I can guess, these guys rolled up into Sadr City, observed from the minute they rolled out of their base, got trapped in the streets and it was Mogo 2. Remember 18 died in Mogodishu over 24 hours when heavily outnumbered. Seven died in what seems to be a few hours. Extrapolate the numbers and it is this, not the bridge at Fallujah, which is the second Mogodishu.
What I don't understand is the fact that anyone could order any sized US force into Sadr City. There are at least 2 million people there. If you have 5,000 men with guns, they will outnumber any US force which enters there. Ordering US forces there is no better than sending them to die.
People see all those tanks and Apaches and think US soldiers are invincible. They aren't. They are matched, man for man, by the Iraqis. Many Shia are combat veterans and can handle their weapons. By the standards of a guerilla force, the Iraqis are lavishly equipped. They have automatic weapons, RPG's, light machine guns, all with enough ammo and training.
Tanks and Humvees are nearly useless in the crowded streets of Sadr City. If they unload all their firepower, they will kill civilians by the bushel load. It's a man for man fight and the US got hurt today. And tomorrow will not be any better.
This, of course, is the beginning of the end. We were baited into going after Sadr's top aide and now, there will be days of Shia funerals in Sadr City. How long will it be before other Shia clerics have to rally around Sadr because of these deaths? Once that happens, all our plans for Iraq are over. Now, we have a situation where the Shia have killed seven US soldiers, wounded 24 and driven a wedge between any deal we could have made with Sistani.
This makes Fallujah look like a walk in the park. And what excuses will CENTCOM come with now? Saddam loyalists? Foreign fighters? Nope, these were the Shia...our supposed allies. There are seven families who won't feel that they're our allies after they killed their teenaged sons.
If anyone had asked, I would have said I disagreed with Kos on mercenaries in Iraq. While I don't think they're an absolute evil, they are needed by private companies to protect their employees, not Paul Bremer. Once the USG hired them, they crossed a line. And while killing four contractors is definitely wrong, revenge isn't going to solve anything. It comes from a misreading of the situation in Fallujah, which thinks 4,000 Marines can control a city almost as large as Cinninnati.
Iraqi cities are large and hard to control and Saddam had the same problems the US has. Any attempt to punish Fallujah will get 18 year old Marines killed with no real result.
All this name calling and gutlessness is bullshit. If the Democratic Party expects to win, they better find a way to develop some balls, because this is just the start of what is going to happen. Given the amount of money Kos has raised for various Democratic organs, why did the Kerry campaign see this in isolation? It isn't. They're playing the same games with Move On.org and anyone who opposes the GOP. They're mean, they're nasty. Oh, please. I've worked for both parties and the differences on the ground are small. Begala and Carville nail it completely. If you were selling soda and could only change brands every four years, the commercials would be nastier than you could imagine.
Well, it's in the interest of the GOP, whether lone bloggers like Michael Friedman, who needs a lesson in free speech, or the party, to cut internet fundraising off at the source. Someone said none of Reynold's advertisers would pull out. As if I care? They still have to deal with the letters and the hassle. Which is the point. I think no one should boycott anyone. If you want to read the chickenhawks at LGF, go right ahead. Or the Nation of Islam. Read what you want and encourage everyone to have the same access online.
If a bunch of lefties wanted to block Instapundit or Andy Sullivan, I'd be just as vociferious in defending their right to free speech. You would think Reynolds would understand what happens to Kos today can happen to him tomorrow. Or me or anyone else. But apparently, he doesn't and making a cheap political point is more interesting to him. You start picking on sites for one day's comments, you're going to have to close down everyone. Robots don't write these sites, people do, and we all have bad days, emotions and opinions which don't stand the test of a few hours. That's life and we all need to accept it.
Oh, and to all the pissed off right-wing trolls, keep hitting my site. I can use the attention.
Anyway, there's a reason I don't raise money for pols and never will. It is simple: they will run at the first sign of trouble. Kos was raising money last year for the DNC when many people wanted to toss them in the drink. Yet, at the first sign of trouble, they run like gazelles from him, instead of asking what the deal is.
Oh, they'll kiss your ass when times are good, Unity dinners and all that. But who the hell needs friends when times are good? You need friends when shit goes wrong. The fact that people were wringing their hands and arguing the point disgusts me. It's about who side are you on, not if you agree with them. I know my friends are loyal, my two month absence from this site proved that. And I'll raise money for them in a heartbeat. They aren't going to run.
But politicians are a different story. Most are selfish bastards who will turn on you on a dime and not pay you what you're owed. Now, I think George Bush needs to be unemployed and I would never discourage anyone from contributing to Kerry or anyone else. But I won't ask you to, except in an ad and that's because I got paid for it.
Politics can be a disillusioning business and the people who you thought would stick by you sell you out in a heartbeat. The hypocrisy here is amusing. No one is going to refuse the money from Kos's readers. And in a month or so, or as soon as Iraq generates another tragedy, the Kerry campaign will be back on one of the web's most trafficked political sites.
What I find so silly, or outrageous, is that after a few e-mails, after all it was tourney weekend, Democratic candidates ran like little bitches. Oh, we got a few e-mails, we have to disassociate from this horrible person. Hell, if they had investigated the situation, they would have found out the worst thing about the guy is that he's a Cubs fan, which is a level of maschocism I can't imagine. And that the freaks at LGF wanted to stalk him. What Reynolds and the rest of the boycott fans don't get is that Bush/Cheney will do exactly the same thing to them.
Once you start raising money for them, you have to excuse things you don't support. I don't care how many Dems think Egyptians are going to serve in Iraq. That's not going to happen, We're going to lose Iraq, the only question is how many more people die in the process. John Kerry will never admit that, even if he thinks it privately. But if I were to raise money for him, without being paid for it, I couldn't go after him for that. As well as his nonsense about gay marriage.
I think everyone should support the candidates of their choice. But as Kos's travails have demonstrated, if you go beyond sending a check, you may get kicked in your ass, despite your best intentions. Don't ever expect a politican to support you the way you support them.
This way, if people don't like what I say, they don't have to come. They don't have to waste their time delinking and denouncing me.
I'm fine, and I know you guys were worried, but my DSL went down. After I called Verizon, it was fixed in 15 minutes. I was watching the NCAA's last night, fell asleep and left it to today. So unless you see a note from Jen or someone else, if I'm not online, assume it's a normal connection or mechanical problem. Add in the tourney, and well, I had good reasons for being offline.
I'm getting better each day, so no need to worry about a relapse:) It's just taking time. However, I'm not immune to computer and connection issues.:)
Glenn Reynolds, instapundit, thinks it's a good idea to harrass Kos's advertisers, or at least doesn't objects. Well, if he thinks it's a good idea for Kos, I think it's an excellent idea for him. As I have plenty of time, I think we could give him a dose of medicine he thinks is good.
Now, he may have some weasel claim that HE didn't call for a boycott or harassment, but you know, when you lie down with dogs, you pick up fleas. He wants to pass on a bad idea, well, he'll get to live with the consequences if Kos is affected. We're not going to lie down, excuse his actions or find a way to live with it. You fuck with one of us, we'll come back and play the same game. I don't like or believe in boycotts, for anyone. But there is no day I'll stand by and watch someone who helped me get their ass kicked.
So if Glenn, safely protected by tenure, wants to limit the free speech of someone else, even with a wink and a nod, well, we're gonna take a lesson from the White House. We're gonna blame HIM, not the guy he linked to. He's gonna be the one reading quotes back in his local paper and getting to deal with the hassles from nervous advertisers. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If he wants to play Bill O'Reilly, I'll sure play Al Franken and I won't be alone.
Glenn,
Do you really think it's wise to ask people to harass Kos's advertisers over his opinion. While not all of us have tenure, calling for a boycott is something which could be turned on any one of us.
After all, as a vet, he does have a right to his opinion about mercenaries, and that was what they were. Not contractors or any such bullshit. Their job was to kill Iraqis. And as a law professor, you must know US "contractors" in Iraq are not protected under the Geneva Convention, so what happened to them was as permissable as it was under Iraqi law. That doesn't make it right, but they were paid vastly more than US servicemen to take high risk assignments.
Another thing, which bothers me, if no one else, is that US Marines will die to "avenge" them. The same Marines who's families live on food stamps, Navy relief and help from home. Who's reserve members will come home to forclosed homes, lost jobs and lifetime injuries. Who on your side of the fence is crying for them?
And now, to add insult to injury, these same teenagers are being asked to go into Fallujah and die for men who were making $100K a year. If we were talking about fellow soldiers or Marines, at least they would have shared the same burden. Instead, you're cheering on an expedition which will kill teenagers fighting for their country to avenge men who were fighting for a paycheck.
Is that the kind of thing you want to endorse? Or have you even considered that? If there was a legal process in Iraq, the killers would belong in jail. But by that same standard, anyone killed by a mercenary would have the right to have them jailed. No matter how gruesome their deaths, these were men outside the law. Why should US Marines die to avenge them, when soldiers who were killed in similiar ways were left unavenged?
Are mercenaries lives more important than US soldiers? Two soldiers were dragged from their Humvee and stoned by a crowd in Mosul. Did you even know that happened? Did you call for revenge then, or did you need TV pictures for your outrage to mount?
This is a two-sided game. You want people to boycott Kos's advertisers, people can boycott yours. It may not be fair, but neither is life. I think it's best we all let each other speak freely and leave the boycotts and advertiser letters alone. But if you want to cripple his site, I'll personally write a letter to your advertisers, department heads, school newspaper and every other place I can find.
Why? Because in years of watching you write incredibly inaccurate and just wrong headed things, I never thought of doing the same, I thought the marketplace of ideas was wide enough for all of us. But if you think the rules should change, well, Kos won't be the only one affected.
Oh, and I have plenty of time to do this, since I'm recovering from open heart surgery, which has left me broke and determined.
But like I said, I think the best thing is argue ideas and leave all this silly talk of letters to advertisers alone. As you know, there is no law saying we all have to agree.
---Steve Gilliard
Steve Gilliard's News Blog
Note: Kos is already losing advertisers. If you don't react, the right is going to have a field day with him. I think Martin Frost (D-TX) was the first one. Well, he's gonna need a lot of help to run against Tom DeLay's lackey. You might want to remind his campaign staff that if they expect to raise a dime on line, they better stand by the people who have stood by them. If not, there are other campaigns to help.
These guys want to mess with your right to express yourself. I think they deserve the same. When I was sick, you guys stood by me. Now it's time to stand up for Kos and anyone else these people attack. And start with Instahack. He got the ball rolling, let him feel what it's like.
Two of my favorite things are salmon and eggs and spice rub.
Salmon and eggs is a simple meal which needs to be cooked carefully. The eggs have to be softly scrambled, and cooked in butter. Not oil, not margerine or bacon fat. The whole meal has to be rich. The eggs need to be scrambled in butter to the point where they taste buttery, You can add cream or salmon roe, for an upscale flavor. But I like onions and aparagus, for that super rich mouth feel with the salmon.
Most of meals are nothing like this, for obvious reasons, because it has too many calories.Well, not really, but you need the fat for mouth feel.
OK, you saute the onions in a thin coating of oil or butter, but to translucence, not carmelization. Then you add in cooked asparagus and cooked or smoked salmon. You just want them warm, not browning. Then toss in beaten eggs, two per person, and softly stir the eggs under low heat. Then add in some butter. The whole idea is to get a buttery mouth feel. Yes, there is some fat here, but you want this smooth, glistening buttery combination of asapargus, eggs and salmon. All go great with butter and enhance the taste.
This is not an every day meal, but is a quick way to impress someone. You marry these ingredients and they are so rich and its so simple to fix. It's really a good way to use leftovers in a way which will surprise. It's also a great brunch meal. Throw in a platter of bacon, some potatoes, fresh bread and you can feed several people cheaply. This is not a meal you need to gorge on. You can, but it can turn ordinary eggs into a sumptious meal with little effort. The more sides you have, the more it makes the eggs shine because they are so soft, rich and flavorful.
Spice rub is another thing which enhances meals. Now, most days, I have chicken or fish and salad for dinner. Spice rub is a great thing to add to anything.
Now, unlike barbecue spice rub, I don't add sugar and since I don't really like salt, I may add a pinch. But what I recommend is this: take the spices in your closet. You can do this to enhance vegetables, salads, eggs, anything, but especially, meat.
I like to use rosemary and thyme, which makes it more chicken favored, but you could use sage, or any spice you like.
OK, so you look at the spices, maybe you have some onion powder, garlic powder, black pepper, paprika and oregano. What you want to do is balance the flavors. Paprika adds color and garlic can overwhelm, so you add more onion powder than garlic and limit the paprika to prevent burning. Salt and pepper are your base, maybe a third of the mix and then you add the other flavors as needed. If you want it more spicy, add ground chilies and cayenne. More herby, oregano, rosemary, thyme, sage, tarragon.
You can also use fading fresh spices in this mix, but you'll need to toast them.
One of my favorite additions is a bit of a sweet spice like ginger, cinnamon or nutmeg, just as an accent. Sugar burns, unless you're going out to the grill.
You can make it just as a mix, but I made a toasted version for Jen for last Christmas and she wouldn't shut up about it months later, she liked it so much. We'd be at dinner and she mentioned how she'd used it on fish or meat or veggies. I was impressed it was that versitile.
To toast, place the spice mix in a bone dry frying pan and heat it until warm and you can smell the fragrance. Taste. Place in jar, close.
You can use it like Mrs. Dash, or in fried foods, or on baked foods, either in a light shake or as a rub. This works especially well for roasts and other baked meats. This brings all kinds of flavors into meat without a lot of salt, which can dry out meats. Too many people use spices timidly. If you develop your own spice blend, cut back on the salt, you'll make the every day healthy meal, especially if you're doing Atkins, with it's protein heavy diet, a lot more tasty.
While everyone is chattering about mercinaries in Iraq, no one is drawing the obvious conclusion, American troops are going to get killed avenging mercenaries making 10 times more than they did for the same jobs. The poor grunts who have to go to Fallujah don't have fancy employment contracts and they don't walk around in civvies with M-4's. Yet, because some hired guns got killed, they're going to have to mount up for some dick swinging revenge raid.
Of course, the Mercs got killed because US troops have piss-poor discipline and killed women and children in panic. The Iraqis are not using fine distinctions. By the logic of normal people, the dead mercs should be revenged by their bosses. Or more intelligently, pay the tribesmen to leave them alone. Instead, some kid, probably by the time the NCAA's are on, will be getting a free trip to Bethesda for his new leg. Will Blackwater USA, the "security" company who hired the dead men, pay the Marines bills? Of course not.
What the DOD is doing is conflating private enterprise to be the same as government work. The mercs have no legal standing in warfare. The Iraqis can burn them as they like, serve them on pita or cut off their heads according to the Geneva Convention. What the US is doing is saying that mercs have a legal, protected status. One American Marines, making so little that their families get Food Stamps, must kill and die to protect.
What happens when these rent-a soldiers light up a town or shoot up some Iraqis. Is the DOD going to embrace them then , or pretend these guys are just employees with no ties to the USG. Which might sound pretty lame to the families of the dead Marines send to avenge the dead mercs.
The USG in Iraq has thought so little about the role of mercs that they don't seem to have a dividing line between the role of soldiers and contractors. And neither do the Iraqis.
One other point: there is no way to tell the difference between SF/SEAL troopers and mercs. They use the same cars, weapons and gear. They all wear civilian clothes as well. The Iraqis who ambushed the two cars could have thought they were going after a Special Operations team. There is no way to tell the difference without asking.If you want to know why this hasn't been a big story so far, the media in Iraq hires the same companies. Baghdad is so dangerous that any high profile Western reporter risks their lives without hired guns by their side. The USG is not their only client, by far.
There's also a big difference in the companies employed. There are the Ghurkas who protect buildings and facilities, Iraqis who serve as armed doormen, and the elite US/UK SOF troopers who do the dirty work. Iraq has become a Disneyland for ex-soldiers.
If the US is going to claim ignorance about the numbers of mercs, how can they ask Marines to risk their lives to avenge their deaths? These guys are mercenaries, they risked their lives for money, which is part of the job. Now, Marines will be expected to get killed because of that.
Here's a brief history of Vinnell Corporation, one of America's favored merc companies. They rebuilt the Croatian Army in 1995, protect the Sauds, and are training the Iraqi Army. Unlike Blackwater, they are more a private version of a military training team (MTT) than Special Ops surrogates.
The right has long wanted an American version of the French Foriegn Legion, able to impose American imperial will without the dead bodies of American teenagers involved. The problem is that mercs are regarded as persona non grata in most of the third world, especially in Africa, where they have caused untold instability. South Africa, once a home to mercs, outlawed the business in the '90's, just as Executive Outcomes was doing a booming business guarding the Angolan oil fields.
The use of companies like Blackwater allows this shadow army to exist, created by the low wages of US military service and the constant supply of action for those who become addicted to it. Running around with cammies and weapons can turn into a drug for some. The stupid levels of money and lack of rules attract others. After all, if you're a white supremacist, you're gonna find it hard to make your 20 in the US Army. But who cares what you think when you go solo.
What this creates is a force which turns every gripe regular soldiers had about special ops troopers and creates a nightmare. Mercs serve as a release valve for folks who might work for drug dealers, the Russian mob or anyone with cash. At the same time, like the four dead mercs in Iraq, they can create a major problem which requires American teenagers to bail them out. It's nice to call them disposable soldiers, but that's not the reality. They are a policy risk, because if the US conduct in Iraq is any indication, they are US soldiers without portfolio or protection.
The Associated Press has learned that after prolonged discussions with the Kerry Campaign, former consumer activist and presidential candidate Ralph Nader will end his presidential campaign within the next week and endorse John Kerry.
"Look, it's all about ego in the end,"Nader said in an exclusive interview with AP. "Being president is about having a massive ego. I think I can redirect my efforts to electing a president which best represent my views."
Asked about his constant attacks on democrats over the years, Nader claimed he was shaping social progress by them.
"Democrats got too caught up in governing to actually look out for the people," he said from his Washington headquarters. "They were too ready to make deals to get laws passed to actually effect change.
"The Democrats were always in the pocket of big business and more concerned about jobs and revenues to make sure that there was a true progressive voice in America. Which is why I challenged them. Al Gore's environmental record was a joke and I felt obligated to oppose it."
When asked about Bush's environmental record, Nader said he didn't support it either.
"Come on, Bush didn't pretend to be an environmentalist. Gore did. He needed to be called to account on it, regardless of the consequences. Gore would have not done what was needed to fix the environment and people knew that and supported me."
Nader was asked why so many Republicans were supporting his campaign.
"They endorse my views of withdrawal from NATO and Iraq, higher,wealth based taxes, and economic equality, as well as limits on corporations," he said. "That's a conservative platform many can endorse, and do, like Ben Stein."
When asked if Stein didn't give more money to Bush, Nader replied "he's keeping his options open."
Nader said his decision to withdraw from the race was based on a series of agreements he and Kerry came up with over the last two weeks.
"Unlike Gore, Kerry listened to my ideas and has agreed to back them," he said. "He explained to me that our positions were closely aligned and if I didn't quit, he'd send Howard Dean to run me down like a dog. That he was no Al Gore and if I didn't get out of the way, he'd break my legs and dig up my financial records for a lark."
With such a persuasive argument, Nader said he was eager to get on the Democratic team.
"Kerry's killed people," he said. "He gets that look in his eye and you better say yes. Those vets around him are no Beltway think tank guys, they'll kick your a** if you f*** with their boy. They are not playing."
Nine Americans died in Iraq yesterday. Four, civilian contractees, or in reality, retired special ops guys, were blown up, burned, mutliated and dragged from their cars. A gruesome way to die.
The generals lied, saying this was about Saddam, while any sane person who could think would know the only person who cares about Saddam is his French lawyer. The deaths in Fallujah were personal. The US has messed with the local tribe and they will fight the US until we leave. Every time we go there, a gun battle erupts. The little mob action today was to drive that point home.
All they could talk about on Nightline is will the US "cut and run". That is the dumbest fucking question possible. The question should be why the hell are we in Iraq and are our policies working.
We have not had the big disaster yet in Iraq, where 30-40 people die at once, the one where you lose a platoon or an office. But we will.
The dishonesty circling Iraq is so thick it would blanket most cities in a fog. We're about to shove Chalabi the thief into some kind of office after we leave, which is begging for a popular uprising. Our effort to train the police is delusional, at best, criminal at worse. They were nowhere to be seen today and many are using US training to kill Americans.
The insurgents have excellent intelligence and will only grow in capability as time goes on. Yet, CENTCOM lies about this, claiming it's Saddam supporters doing the killing. It's Iraqis who hate occupation and they're not only Sunnis.
The point Americans should concentrate on is how do we leave Iraq, not if or when or in 2006. The Sunnis are at war with us, we're ignoring Kurdish expansionism, and the Shia are biding their time, while issuing anti-American sermons every week.
We are on the brink of disaster in Iraq, with elections about as possible as man-powered flight.
Talking about "staying the course" is as futile in 2004 as it was in 1971.
