New Orleans, despite it's tourist friendly image, has always lived on the edge, of poverty, of a great flood. So when things collapse, there is no surprise that the city collapses into disorder.
Many, many New Orleans residents barely had the resources to survive day to day living. When government checks come on the first week of the month, and even those with jobs may not have access to savings or even a bank account, cashing their checks at check cashing places, the ability to leave in a hurry is nearly impossible.
And when people talk about looting, there is a situation where there is no order, no supply, no water and no light. Also, people are being told to not walk around barefoot to avoid skin infections. Jungle rot and trench foot are all too common in damp situations. That means people can't walk.
The problem is that the government is treating this like a US domestic crisis where people can drive to relief centers and that ain't it.
First, you have a lot of poor people who have NO resources. None. So a late check can be a problem. Katrina? They're in survival mode, but then most of their lives have been desperate anyway. They can adapt to desperate. It's the middle class who are going to get a reality check. Their savings are going to crash, their credit cards are maxed out, and they are going to be just as stranded as the poor, one-third of the city. Only the rich can live away from home for extended periods. People are already outside the Astrodome, looking for shelter, but being refused because they didn't come from the Superdome. All the middle class people who sneered at the poor and supported Bush are going to be just like those poor people are, just as reliant as they are for a government handout.
Someone suggested that if there was another 9/11, people would rally around Bush.
Here it is and people are pissed.
When Andy Sullivan knocks Kos for saying this is worse than 9/11, he's wrong and Kos is right, because I lived through 9/11 without so much as a lost glass of water. This is a lot closer to an attack than any natural disaster we've seen. An entire city has turned into a movie set, and I mean Escape from New York. The people fleeing New Orelans are refugees, soemthing we haven't seen since the Civil War. The Astrodome is a temporary solution, and refugee camps will have to be built. There are sharks and alligators swimming in the streets, nobody will be going home for a long time.
There is still an inability to realize the scale of this. They are talking about trucking in supplies. Why not do what they did in Afghanistan and just drop food and water from C-130's? They need to act like this is a humanitarian crisis, and not just a national disaster.
The decision making here is flawed. While the Louisiana NG sits in Mosul, the mayor has to drag cops from search and rescue to looter patrol. Why? Because armed gangs are playing Baghdad, 2003. One guy shot his AK at a police station.
Why does it matter that the NG is in Iraq? Because the infantry which would be stopping looters is in Iraq. It's one thing to get water and shoes, another to rob anything which came along. Which is what some people are doing.
Of course, as the middle class runs out of class, they will start stealing and going nuts because they are just that desperate.
And the surprise: Atlanta has $5 gas. Hmmm, there's no risk of a riot there, is there.
What bothers me is the pace. When you have starving people in other countries, the AF can drop supplies to the needy. In the US, people have to wait for trucks which may not come for days. People are going to die at this pace.
How poor is NOLA?
Read, then ask yourself if you're suprised at how people are reacting.
http://www.nola.com/news/t-p/metro/index.ssf?/base/news-11/1124865103219740.xml Blanco held a poverty summit in December to develop ideas on how to confront Louisiana's nation-topping poverty statistics. In 2003, the number of families living in poverty in Louisiana was about 181,000. Nearly 30 percent of people younger than 18 in Louisiana live in poverty, while almost 15 percent of its citizens 65 and older also are below the poverty line. Those figures are close to double the national averages.
Blanco's "Solutions to Poverty" summit, held in Monroe, ordered each parish to form its own group of experts in the worlds of nonprofits, business and faith-based initiatives, along with other volunteers to start at the local level. The New Orleans region includes Orleans and St. Bernard parishes. Orleans has a 34 percent poverty rate while St. Bernard's is more than 17 percent.
Unemployment rate -- June 2003(for New Orleans): 6.6%
Unemployment rate -- June 2002 (for New Orleans): 6.1%
Unemployment rate -- June 2003 (Louisiana): 7.6%
Unemployment rate -- June 2002 (Louisiana): 7.0%
Civilians employed: 562,100
Civilians unemployed: 32,000
Projected job growth, by state: 4.6%
Projected income growth, by state (projected per-capita income change: 1988 through 2020): 39.8% (for Louisiana) http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2003-10-07/news_scut.html Once again, the government is telling you what most people know by walking down their street -- people are hurting, financially.
Last week, the U.S. Census Bureau announced that the nation's official poverty rate rose from 11.7 percent in 2001 to 12.1 percent in 2002. Four out of 10 of those poor people live in the South, the poorest part of the nation. In Louisiana, the poverty rate is a third higher than the United States as a whole. Over the past three years, 17.9 percent -- nearly one in five people -- have been poor in this state. That's basically a tie for highest poverty rate in the nation with Arkansas, where the poverty rate officially stands at 18 percent.
http://bizneworleans.com/70+M56d76a2d7b6.html The underserved As the 40-year-old DeSalvo sees it, New Orleans represents a gold mine for her research. For one thing, more than a quarter of the city’s population lives below the poverty line. Low-income patients, she says, are more likely than others to suffer from more than one chronic condition, such as obesity, heart disease or diabetes. In addition, more than two-thirds of the local populace is black, constituting what DeSalvo says is an understudied minority group.
For the past 10 years DeSalvo, an associate professor of clinical medicine, has juggled her time among Tulane Hospital and Clinic, the Medical Center of Louisiana’s Charity Hospital and the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, developing strategies to identify and treat high-risk individuals. Among other trends she’s examined, she has seen that when the cheapest and most accessible food available to people is at a McDonald’s or Popeye’s restaurant, then those individuals are not likely to be eating enough peas and carrots. Similarly, they probably won’t buy drugs to treat their high cholesterol if they don’t have enough money to clothe their children. And if they’re scared to walk down the street, they probably aren’t getting enough exercise. http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/050718/18neworleans.htm If that sounds far-fetched, consider this: New Orleans sits below sea level and is locked in by an extensive levee network, like a giant flood-prone bowl; a modest Category 3 storm could deposit up to 27 feet of water in some neighborhoods. A few years ago, the American Red Cross ranked the prospect of a hurricane's hitting New Orleans as the country's deadliest natural disaster threat, with up to 100,000 dead. Still, many Big Easy denizens insist they'll stay put for the next one. "There's a reason New Orleans has a drink called the hurricane," says Jeanne Hurlbert, an LSU sociology professor. "The culture here is 'we don't evacuate.'"
http://ntiaotiant2.ntia.doc.gov/top/awards/details.cfm?oeam=226003020 New Orleans is home to many social and economic disparities. For example, 58 of the 73 neighborhoods in the city have a poverty rate higher than the national average. In 17 neighborhoods, over two-thirds of the children under six live in poverty and in one neighborhood 94% are below the poverty level. These neighborhoods are served by nearly 2,500 nonprofit organizations that, based on recent evidence, fail to use and share community-based information effectively
Several readers complain that it's in fact true that the hurricane will disproportionately affect poor people. I don't really dispute that in the sense most mean it. Yes, the poor will have special hardships. Obviously so. But what I objected to, and still object to, is the reflexive playing of the class card. Is it really true that some middle class retirees who heeded the advice of the government to leave town, only to watch their homes be looted after a lifetime of hardwork for a better life are suffering less than a poor person who lost his rented apartment? What's the metric for measuring this sort of suffering? What about the small businessman who worked his entire life to build something he's proud of? What about the families who lost loved ones, but had the poor taste to make more money than the poverty line?
Whatever happened to the idea that unity in the face of a calamity is an important value? We're all in it together, I guess, except for the poor who are extra-special.
Because the poor, having little savings, have an increased chance of DYING due to the lack of resources in the affected area, JONAH, YOU STUPID PRIVILEGED BITCH. Free temporary housing and food may not come soon for tens or hundreds of thousands of poor people. Savings could make all the difference. It's not like poor people are gonna get checks in the mail anytime soon.
He's un-fucking-believable.
I wonder if he's ever missed a meal.
Goldberg is dense. He whips out the racist canard of thieving blacks and forgets that the hurricane ruined those businesses and it's all about survival now, although for a man who mocked this yesterday, he should understand that.
No one in New Orleans except for the cops, have a job. Even the middle class will soon max out their credit cards and drain their savings. A lot more people are going to be poor in New Orelans without the coping skills.
On the night of March 9-10, 1945, the 20th Air Force took off from their fields on Saipan and Tinian loaded with 5,000 lbs of incendiaries.
By the time they finished, 100,000 were dead, 1m homeless.
These are the bombed out areas of Japan's major cities in 1945. On the left is Tokyo.
That is the frame of reference for New Orleans. Not a hurricane like in Florida. We are talking total devestation and a massive rebuilding effort taking years and people have not come to grips with that.
A note: People are wondering why there is such an emphasis on the Casinos on the Mississippi Gulf Coast and the reason is simple. It is to that region what the Port of New Orleans is to Louisiana. It is $500K per day, $182m in revenue a year. I'd worry about that as well.
This is a partial transcript from "Your World with Neil Cavuto," August 30, 2005, that was edited for clarity.
NEIL CAVUTO, HOST: Forget insurance. My next guest says not one taxpayer dollar should go toward rebuilding the city of New Orleans (search).
Joining us now is Jack Chambless. He is the economics professor of Valencia Community College in Orlando.
Professor, why do you say that?
JACK CHAMBLESS, ECONOMICS PROFESSOR, VALENCIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE: Well, if we look at Article One, Section Eight of the United States Constitution (search) — and I encourage all Americans to look at that before we start opening up our tax coffers to pay for all of this — we have every obligation to provide for New Orleans in terms of charity, private charity from one person to the other.
But the founding fathers never intended, Article One, section Eight of the Constitution, never intended to provide one dollar of taxpayer dollars to pay for any disaster or anything that we might call charity. What we now have is the law of unintended consequences taking place, where FEMA (search) has come into New Orleans, a place where, ecologically, it makes no sense to have levees keeping the Mississippi River (search) from flooding into New Orleans, like it naturally should.
Now with FEMA bailing out Louisiana, bailing out Florida and lowering the overall cost of living in these places, we have people with no incentive to leave. And the law of unintended consequences means that more people are dying with every one of these storms. They're becoming more and more expensive, more and more property loss, just because the federal government has violated the Constitution to provide for these funds.
CAVUTO: Yes, but, Professor, if you have your way, then, these areas will just be the domain of the well-to-do, right?
CHAMBLESS: No, no, not at all.
I mean, people of modest means lived in the Bayou, they lived along the coast of Florida long before the government got involved. But they assumed personal responsibility for their decisions. They paid for insurance. They paid the market premium for insurance.
CAVUTO: Yes, but those insurance companies, Jack, have left. They're not insuring these people anymore, right?
CHAMBLESS: Some of them have left. I'm a resident of Florida. We still have insurance in the state of Florida. It's become more expensive.
CAVUTO: No, wait. To be clear, I know your state well, and there are some areas where that is simply not offered.
CHAMBLESS: Right. But that's part of the cost.
You shouldn't have to compel the insurance companies or force them. They are a private for-profit business. If they believe the risks are too high and the probability of incurring losses are too great, nobody should force them to underwrite policies there. But, if we look at what the insurance companies are also doing, in a way, they're able to free ride off of the taxpayers, because they're not responsible for flood insurance.
I wrote in Friday's column about the off-the-record party Bush threw for the White House press corps last week, earning me my first-ever mention in a Maureen Dowd column in the New York Times.
Only two of the reporters actually present at the dinner seem to have had enough courage to actually write about it.
Julie Mason of the Houston Chronicle writes that "as it often can be when strange bedfellows find themselves at a party, the evening had a somewhat awkward atmosphere. Was it work or social? Neither side seemed sure.
"Nothing the president said could be quoted, but it's rare that reporters get uninterrupted access to him for 90 minutes, particularly when beer is served. Bush, who gave up drinking years ago, drank a non-alcoholic Buckler."
NBC News producer Antoine Sanfuentes blogged: "Over a fare of fried catfish, potato salad, coleslaw, and chocolate-chip cookies, reporters were offered a brief glimpse inside the presidential retreat as well as an opportunity to speak informally with the President."
Bush, who's never come clean about his drinking is now drinking non-alcoholic beer? Hmmm. Interesting.
That was the accusation coming yesterday from the Heritage Foundation, which hosted author John J. Tierney Jr. for a forum titled "The Politics of Peace: What's Behind the Anti-War Movement?"
Tierney researched the movement for a book and came up with some choice descriptions. "I have to say it is communist," he told an audience at the conservative think tank, also describing the groups involved as "revolutionary socialistic" and "cohorts" of North Korea, Saddam Hussein and Fidel Castro's Cuba. "We're really dealing with . . . a comprehensive, exhaustive, socialistic anti-capitalistic political structure," he said.
Tierney, of the Institute of World Politics, identified five groups: ANSWER, Not in Our Name, Code Pink, United for Peace and Justice, and MoveOn.org. He said these groups "come from the Workers World Party" and are an "umbrella" for smaller groups, such as the "Communist Party of Kansas City" and the "Socialist Revolutionary Movement of the Upper Mississippi." Of the last two, he said, "I'm just making these up."
Tierney singled out Sheehan, whose son died in Iraq and who camped out at President Bush's ranch this month to protest the war. "I've never heard of a woman protesting a war in front of a leader's home in my life," he said. "I've never heard of anything quite so outrageous."
Heritage's Dana Dillon introduced Tierney by saying that "the discussion today does not oppose the antiwar movement per se or question the patriotism or loyalty or common sense of Americans on either side of the debate." But the blurb promoting the event on Heritage's Web site said of the movement: "At root, they are anti-American rather than anti-war."
The author said he has "grave, grave problems with the conduct of the operation in Iraq" and wouldn't want to see his 20-year-old son go there. But he said it is "automatic" that anybody who joins a protest by one of the offending groups is supporting communists.
John Tierney, Bronze Chickenhawk winner for his actions at the Heritage Foundation.
He doesn't want his son to be in Iraq, but Cindy Sheehan is a "communist"?
Doesn't he mean Jane Fonda?
I mean, if he's going in the wayback machine, let's go back to 1971 and leave Iraq like we did Vietnam.
If he's worried about communist influence, he should be attacking Wal-Mart. Because there is no group more tied to communists than the Bentonville Hillbillies. They are owned, lock, stock and barrel by the Chinese Government and their factories. When Beijing says jump, Bentonville says how high.
While Bush was pushing medicare, New Orleans was facing Katrina, bereft of funds, Guardsmen and leadership
George Bush spent today making a ridiculous analogy between WWII and Iraq. He also played golf, got a guitar and slept well.
Meanwhile New Orleans is turning into a city of refugees. Even those who escaped are now running out of money and places to stay. Those stuck in the city may well die if a major rescue effort isn't launched, major being Navy amphibious vehicles and landing craft to get thousands of people to higher ground.
The military and FEMA will have to build refugee camps, because most of New Orleans will have to be rebuilt. The buildings are no longer habitable in most of the city.
We are not talking a small tent city either, but massive places built to hold people for months, maybe years. The scale of this disaster is on the scale of a major invasion or occupation. Understand this: the New Orleans of Marti Gras and Jazz and Heritage is gone, forever.
The city is underwater, not for days, but maybe weeks or months, with a toxic brew of chemicals making most of the buildings toxic waste containers.
So how does Bush lead, by avoiding the topic, except for platiudes. He didn't even stop his vacation until the scale of the disaster was clear.
Bush thinks leadership is sounding tough and ignoring all sound advice. It isn't. And when people like Kevin Drum call for "not politicizing" this, he provides more cover for Bush's failed leadership. The disaster in New Orleans was made worse by politics and it will be solved by politics.
Bush's leadership in times of crisis has been rote and weak. He seems to think his mere presence is leadership and it is not. He has been led to think President is a synonym for leader and it is not.
He should have flown home immediately and run this like any military operation. Donald Rumsfeld should not have been cheering him along, but helping to direct as many resources as possible to New Orleans.
Time and again, Bush uses invective and character assassination instead of actually leading people. If he cannot step to the plate now, he is condeming thousands to death.
BAGHDAD - Iraqi interpreter Ayat Selman, a beautiful Baghdad native with covergirl hair and a kilowatt smile, hasn't seen her family in eight months.
She's an English-Arabic interpreter of Kurdish descent working with the U.S. Army.
And she said going home in the current climate of violence would be tantamount to suicide. "It's a good job. I like it. But I miss my family," she said sitting on a stiff cot in her air-conditioned tent at Camp Liberty. "If I go home, the insurgents will kill me."
Selman took the job serving U.S. troops two years ago because she wanted to help rebuild her country and learn more about American culture. The money was good, $1,050 a month for interpreters who live on the base. And it was a great opportunity to hone her impressive language skills.
"I appreciate that [the Americans] liberated us from Saddam [Hussein]," she said, wearing the desert-color fatigues, hat and head scarf she dons before climbing into armored Humvees for dangerous eight-hour patrols, six days a week. "It's good for Iraqi generations in the future."
Selman, who learned English studying microbiology at Baghdad University, added, "Before, we didn't have the Internet. We didn't have cell phones."
Selman, 25, is one of many Iraqi nationals working at the base who are hoping to build a better life, grateful for a paying job but anxious about hitching their fortunes to the U.S.
"If the coalition forces leave right now, we are dead," she said bluntly, surrounded by four other female interpreters who nodded in unison. ..........................
I hope to God these are not these women's real names. Because the Iraqi resistance reads US papers, uses Google and has an intelligence network which will hunt these women down with the help of their neighbors.
The US will have to bring thousands of these people to the US or watch them executed for being collaborators. The resistance has a pretty strict rule: cooperate with the Americans and they will kill you.
Inmates at a prison in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans have rioted, attempted to escape and are now holding hostages, a prison commissioner told ABC News affiliate WBRZ in Baton Rouge, La...A deputy at Orleans Parish Prison, his wife and their four children have been taken hostage by rioting prisoners after riding out Hurricane Katrina inside the jail building, according to WBRZ. A woman interviewed by WBRZ said her son, a deputy at the prison whose family is among the hostages, told her that many of the prisoners have fashioned homemade weapons. Her son had brought his family there hoping they would be safe during the storm.
Use this as an open thread to post up news about New Orelans
With conditions in the hurricane-ravaged city of New Orleans rapidly deteriorating, Gov. Kathleen Blanco said Tuesday that everyone still in the city, now huddled in the Superdome and other rescue centers, needs to be evacuated.
"The situation is untenable," Blanco said, pausing to choke back tears at a news conference. "It's just heartbreaking."
The breach of two levees Tuesday meant the city was rapidly filling with water and the prospect of having power was a long time off, the governor said. She said the storm also severed a major water main, leaving the city without drinkable water.
"The goal is to bring enough supplies to sustain the people until we can establish a network to get them out," Blanco said.
FEMA is considering putting people on cruise ships, in tent cities, mobile home parks, or so-called floating dormitories, boats FEMA normally uses to house its own employees, said Coordinating Director Bill Lokey.
Lokey said he anticipated FEMA will set up a permanent office in the area.
Recovery will take so long, he said, that some workers could spend their entire career working on Katrina.
"This is the most significant natural disaster to hit the United States," Lokey said.
The devastation was enormous. One of the twin spans of Interstate 10 was broken into dozens of pieces between the pylons, stretched out across rising water like puzzle pieces. Only rooftops were visible in several neighborhoods and the occasional building was on fire. In relatively lucky neighborhoods, residents waded in the empty streets in knee-deep water.
Blanco, Lokey and others spoke to reporters after officials flew to New Orleans with FEMA director Mike Brown and other officials. They stopped at the Superdome, where Mayor Ray Nagin outlined the dire situation: hundreds, if not thousands, of people may still need rescuing from rooftops and attics, he said.
Blanco described the dedication of rescue workers who at midnight were told to take a break.
"They refused. They couldn't do it," Blanco said.
Blanco said rescuers were unable to get to people stranded, but safe, in one tall building because so many other people were "calling to them and jumping from rooftops" into the water to be rescued first.
Things were so bad, Nagin said, that rescue boats are bypassing the dead.
"We're not even dealing with dead bodies," Nagin said. "They're just pushing them on the side."
Maj. Gen. Bennett C. Landreneau, adjutant general for the Louisiana National Guard, said search and rescue teams were still picking up people throughout the city, leaving them on highway overpasses-turned-islands and on the Mississippi River levee to wait until they could be moved again.
Jesus.
This is like a nuclear explosion without the radiation. This makes 9/11 look like an exercise. I mean, 20 blocks away, life went on. But this? They have to evacuate a major American city.
WWL has just reported that the Mayor of New Orleans reported that a massive miscommunication has occurred. The choppers that were rescuing people were supposed to attempt to sandbag one of the levy breaches. Somewhere along the way, it was never communicated, night has fallen, and within 12-14 hours the entire city will flood.
Mayor Nagin: Unhappy that the helicopters slated to drop 3,000-pound bags into the levee never showed up to stop the flow of water. Too many chiefs calling shots he says.
Mr. President, there aren't enough military choppers in this country to both SAVE LIVES and try and mitigate DISASTER?
Total failure of leadership, and an entire city is now going to flood.
UPDATE: From the WWL Web site:
****ALL RESIDENTS ON THE EAST BANK OF ORLEANS AND JEFFERSON REMAINING IN THE METRO AREA ARE BEING TOLD TO EVACUATE AS EFFORTS TO SANDBAG THE LEVEE BREAK HAVE ENDED. THE PUMPS IN THAT AREA ARE EXPECTED TO FAIL SOON AND 9 FEET OF WATER IS EXPECTED IN THE ENTIRE EAST BANK. WITHIN THE NEXT 12-15 HOURS****
I think it's time to face facts. That place is going to be a Mad Max/thunderdome Waterworld/Lord of the Flies horror show within the next few hours. My advice is to prepare yourself now. Hoard weapons, grow gills and learn to communicate with serpents. While you're working on that, find the biggest guy you can and when he's not expecting it beat him senseless. Gather young fighters around you and tell the womenfolk you will feed and protect any female who agrees to participate without question in your plans to repopulate the earth with a race of gilled-supermen. It's never too soon to be prepared. Posted at 10:05 AM
Let me translate:
Poor niggers, New Orleans is yours. Act like your usual animal selves and die killing each other. Us safe, dry white folks will laugh at your plight, since you are only niggers and not human.
When will these people act like adults and not spoiled children.
I just walked in the door, ate something, and am now going through my mail. This came in over the transom and I'm just fucking stunned. Surprised, no. Stunned, yes.
My cousin, who's an Air Force wife, is lucky that her husband is teaching at the Air University for a three year tour. But make no mistake, she's tough as nails. She's lived in Japan, Texas, Virginia, and worries about every possible deployment. But since he's an F-15E maitenance officer, his risk is moderate. But still, it's stressful and only the strong stay married. Because when they started out, he was an airman and being broke and young is not easy. Many people don't make it..
Unlike my cousin, who lived on an EM's salary, then an NCO's salary for a decade, this woman has only seen the upside of military service, the parties, the prestige. Well, there's the other side and that means doing his job.
Didn't she think the war could come knocking on her door?
The person who sent this to me said the woman was a chickenhawk. I think what happened is that reality hit her in the ass and she can't cope.
Of course, she's making his job all the harder with her breakdown, which is what this is. He can't not go, he's probably a Lt. Col. All she's doing is making his life hellish.
RESERVE OFFICER'S WIFE THINKS HE'S CHOSEN ARMY OVER HER DEAR ABBY: My sister needs help. Her husband, "Dale," who has been in the Reserve for 15 years, is being deployed to Kuwait next month, and she's a mess. She went to the emergency room this morning because she thought she was having a heart attack. It was an anxiety attack. One minute she's distraught because he's leaving; the next she wants to divorce him.
"Andrea" was always proud of Dale's service. She has happily bragged that she's an officer's wife, about the pay, the retirement that will come their way, and the travel deals they have enjoyed staying at Army properties all over the country. Until now, she has supported the action in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now, however, she has kicked Dale out of the house because she believes he has chosen the Army over their family. She says he won't be allowed to call or e-mail her or their two kids while he's on active duty.
Andrea refuses any suggestion of support services through the Army because she doesn't think the session will be kept confidential. Although I want to support her, I believe she's denying Dale the support he deserves. It infuriates me that she has been in favor of the military action as long as it involved other people's families and not her own.
Andrea and Dale have been married 20 years. She has never lived alone, nor does she have the means to support herself. She has been seeing a therapist for the past few months for depression, but her next session isn't for a few weeks. How can I help? What can anyone else do to help? -- CONCERNED SISTER
DEAR SISTER: Please put aside your anger and give your sister all the emotional support you can, because she's extremely needy right now. She has been hit with cold reality. Her behavior is irrational because she is frightened. Her husband is headed for a war zone from which he might not return. With her husband gone, she may also have to find a job to supplement his salary. She should be talking to her physician and clergyman as well as her therapist. (She may need medication as well as therapy to see her through.)
I hope your sister comes to her senses before it's too late, or she may spend the rest of her life regretting her immaturity and self-centeredness. Her attempts to punish her husband are counterproductive and could sabotage his peace of mind and safety. This is not a matter of choice. Her husband is fulfilling an obligation.
Some people had to be rescued from their rooftops in New Orleans after the storm passed.
Floodwaters from a canal were sending more water into already flooded areas of New Orleans, and Mayor C. Ray Nagin said in a television interview that the city was 80 percent under water, with some of it 20 feet deep.
Hundreds of residents have been rescued from rooftops, and as dawn broke rescuers in boats and helicopters searched for more survivors of Hurricane Katrina. The death toll in just one Mississippi county could be as high as 80, Gov. Haley Barbour said. Preliminary reports on Monday put the toll at 55.
"The devastation down there is just enormous," Mr. Barbour said on NBC's "Today" show. "I hate to say it, but it looks like it is a very bad disaster in terms of human life," he added, referring to Harrison County, which includes Gulfport and Biloxi.
"This is our tsunami," Mayor A. J. Holloway of Biloxi, Miss., told The Biloxi Sun Herald
Someone pointed out that in 1992, a brigade of the 82nd, was sent to Florida on top of the Marines and NG. Now, thousands of Guardsmen are in Iraq and not coming home any time soon.
Yet, with a crisis which may have just spared the obliteration of New Orleans, a two block gap in the Lake Ponchatrain levee has flooded the city and made the pumps used to keep the city dry, fail. Which means much of the city is underwater.
While the Presient clears brush.
Where is the military?
The road net in that region is just shot. Where are the Air Force Special Operations Squadrons with their pararescue men, boats and helicopters. Where is the Navy and their small craft. The Guard has a brigade protecting Mosul, but the Coast Cuard are rescuing people. Why aren't the helicopters of the 101st Airborne helping out?
Despite the scale of the disaster, the military is frighteningly uninvolved here. People are acting as if this is just another Florida hurricane and this may well be far more severe, One would think this would be treated like a nuclear attack, and the pace is far more casual.
And this is the result of the hurricane missing the city.
People are going to die in their attics unless far more and far better rescue equipment is deployed.
BY TRACY CONNOR and ALISON GENDAR DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
A subway flasher caught in the act on a cell phone camera may have been arrested in 1994 for exposing himself at one of the same subway platforms he hit recently, sources told the Daily News.
Six victims in addition to the cell phone user have told police they were flashed by the man whose photo appeared on the front page of Saturday's Daily News.
And a dozen tipsters said they believe the suspect is Dan Hoyt, co-owner of raw-food restaurants called Quintessence.
Hoyt, 43, was arrested in 1994 and charged with public lewdness after he unzipped and flashed a victim at what was then the N platform at Manhattan's Eighth St. subway station, sources said.
He eventually pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and was sentenced to two days of community service.
Hoyt reneged yesterday on a promise to come in and talk to cops, so police were on the hunt for the wayward restaurateur.
Hoyt's alleged victims were shocked to hear he had been targeting the same subway station for more than a decade. Four of the seven women who told The News they were flashed said it happened at the Eighth St. station
By now it would be almost surprising if one had not heard about the Cindy Sheehan media spectacle occurring outside of the president's ranch in Crawford, Texas. For those who have hid under a rock and sheltered themselves from the political news media, Cindy Sheehan is the mother of Casey Sheehan, 24, who was an Army specialist and one of the honorable men who have fallen while in combat in the war in Iraq. She is asking to meet with the president again for a one-on-one discussion about the war in Iraq and "why our sons are dead," because she wants the troops pulled out immediately.
Since the beginning of her protest, Sheehan has called President Bush "that filth spewer and warmonger." In addition, she has opined, "America has been killing people on this continent since it was started," and "the killing has gone on unabated for over 200 years." Sheehan says the U.S. government is a "morally repugnant system" and easily lets varying media outlets know that "this country is not worth dying for."
Because of the political component of her protest, Sheehan has teamed up with anti-war activists such as Michael Moore and Berkeley-based MoveOn.org. Former Green presidential candidate Ralph Nader has also publicly supported her.
The Casey Camp, named after Sheehan's son, has brought many organizations interested in broadcasting her poignantly political message to Crawford. Fenton Communications, a San Francisco-based public relations firm for liberal interests has joined Sheehan, along with True Majority, a non-profit group set up by Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's ice cream, Democracy for America, Howard Dean's political group and Code Pink, the organization founded by San Francisco's Medea Benjamin.
My first reaction upon hearing of this vigil protest and Sheehan's demands was to ask myself where this protest and its followers have been for the past several years. Yours truly actually debated this same exact topic in a class two years ago. While there is no question as to the right of Sheehan to protest, the war in Iraq and its justification is an old debate and, since then, no landmark paradigm or new knowledge has prompted the necessity of a re-evaluation of the choice to go to war. The only difference between now and two years ago is the fact that Sheehan can fend off opposition by referencing the grief resulting from her son's death.
It is necessary to sympathize with those who have lost loved ones; however, if all went according to Sheehan's requests and she was able to meet with the president, nothing tangible would result. Bush would state that he believed Sheehan's son died for a noble cause and that the war in Iraq is justified, just as he has previously stated to the media. In return, Sheehan would inform the president that her son died for a lie and that she wants the troops pulled out of Iraq, just as she has previously told the media. This basic outcome assumes that cameras would be present. If that assumption was false, then there would be two stories reported in the press: one of the president's and one of Sheehan's. Therefore, it seems reasonable to ask, what is the purpose of this political exhibition?
......................... I sent along this little note:
Mr. McFawn,
I can only assume from your column that you are a member of ROTC. After all, if the war on terror is so critical, I'm sure you're planning to take an active part in it, as a platoon leader in the Airborne, perhaps, maybe in a Marine rifle company? If not, then I am assured you have made plans for enlistment after graduation. Because stopping Islamofascism isn't just a job for someone else, right?
I'm sure, a young man like you would actively seek combat duty after he gets his degree. After all, you would never be content to let someone else, perhaps a graduate of Los Angeles City College, fight in Iraq in your stead.
After all, men like you are strong enough to resist the emotional appeals of grieving mothers like Cindy Sheehan, and we need iron-willed men like you on our front lines, stopping Islamic terror where and when it shows its face. How wily of Sheehan to use the death of her eldest son as a political point. After all, she does have three other children. What's the loss of one in combat? A tragedy, but life goes on, right?
While I'm sure we need to debate Iraq, I know someone like you believes in action over words. You want to confront Islamic terror, not discuss it as residents of East LA and Compton get all the glory of stopping it.
Good luck in Iraq or Afghanistan, where I am certain you will be in the next few years.
Christopher Hitchens being awarded the Bronze Chickenhawk by President Bush
While the Kombat Keyboard Badge is for general service in the act of warmongering, those are not for individual acts. The following medals are
The Golden Feather
This is the highest award for individual chickenhawk activity by a pundit or commentator.
To Jonah GoldbergDespite a near constant barrage of criticism for refusing to enlist, Goldberg held fast against the liberal assault and defended his position, despite the cruel ridicule of James Wolcott, a firm ally of the liberals, and Atrios, Goldberg refused to retreat, despite the snickers of others.For this brave action, he is award the Golden Feather for chickenhawkism in the face of the liberal enemy.
The lavender and yellow represents the royal pretentions of the Chickenhawks and the yellow, represents their courage in the face of the liberal enemy.
The Silver Chickenhawk
The colors of the silver chickenhawk represent the green, mountain dew they drink and the yellow, their courage.
Awarded for courage in the face of the liberal enemy and conspicuous courage
To Ben ShapiroDespite being a virgin, he managed to withstand the ridicule of bloggers and even an Iraq War vet to defend his right to support a war he would not fight in. For his heroism in the face of the liberal enemy, he is awarded the Silver Chickenhawk
The Bronze Chickenhawk
The colors orange, represent the cheetos and doritos of the keyboard commando, and the yellow represents their courage.
To Chistopher Hitchens,On the night of August 25, 2005, Hitchens, fortified by only a snifter of Brandy, confronted snarky Islamofacist fiend, Jon Stewart. Despite stumbling, he held his own against the ally of Osama Bin Laden and enemy of our president.For his conspicious bravery in the face of liberalism, he is awarded the Bronze Chickenhawk
A large section of the vital 17th Street Canal levee, where it connects to the brand new ‘hurricane proof’ Old Hammond Highway bridge, gave way late Monday morning in Bucktown after Katrina’s fiercest winds were well north. The breach sent a churning sea of water coursing across Lakeview and into Mid-City, Carrollton, Gentilly, City Park and neighborhoods farther south and east.
As night fell on a devastated region, the water was still rising in the city, and nobody was willing to predict when it would stop. After the destruction already apparent in the wake of Katrina, the American Red Cross was mobilizing for what regional officials were calling the largest recovery operation in the organization’s history.
Police, firefighters and private citizens, hampered by a lack of even rudimentary communication capabilities, continued a desperate and impromptu boat-borne rescue operation across Lakeview well after dark. Coast Guard choppers with search lights criss-crossed the skies.
Officers working on the scene said virtually every home and business between the 17th Street Canal and the Marconi Canal, and between Robert E. Lee Boulevard and City Park Avenue, had water in it. Nobody had confirmed any fatalities as a result of the levee breach, but they conceded that hundreds of homes had not been checked.
As the sun set over a still-churning Lake Pontchartrain, the smoldering ruins of the Southern Yacht Club were still burning, and smoke streamed out over the lake. Nobody knew the cause of the fire because nobody could get anywhere near it to find out what happened.
Dozens of residents evacuated to the dry land of the Filmore Street bridge over the Marconi Canal were stranded between the flooded neighborhood on their right, and the flooded City Park on their left, hours after they had been plucked from rooftops or second-story windows.
Firefighters who saved them tried to request an RTA bus to come for the refugees, but said there was no working communications to do so.
Ed Gruber, who lives in the 6300 block of Canal Boulevard, said he became desperate when the rising water chased he, his wife, Helen, and their neighbor Mildred K. Harrison to the second floor of their home. When Gruber saw a boat pass by, he flagged it down with a light, and the three of them escaped from a second-story window.
On the lakefront, pleasure boats were stacked on top of each other like cordwood in the municipal marina and yacht harbor. The Robert E. Lee shopping center was under 7 feet of water. Plantation Coffeehouse on Canal Boulevard was the same. Hines Elementary School had 8 feet of water inside.
Indeed, the entire business district along Harrison Avenue had water to the rooflines in many places.
Joshua Bruce, 19, was watching the tide rise from his home on Pontalba Street when he heard a woman crying for help. The woman had apparently tried to wade the surging waters on Canal Boulevard when she was swept beneath the railroad trestle just south of Interstate 610. Bruce said he plunged into the water to pull her to safety. He and friends Gregory Sontag and Joey LaFrance found dry clothes for the near-victim and she went on her way in search of a second-story refuge further downtown.
They're short people, boats, everything.
The people who are going to die here are poor and black.
Their bodies will be seen bloated and floating on TV and it was largely preventable, to some degree.
But make no mistake, the poor will bear the brunt of this.
Iraqis carry the coffins of Moqtada Sadr follower s who were killed last week in clashes with rival Shiites. After the confrontations, supporters of the radical cleric poured into Baghdad and at least six other cities.
By Anthony Shadid Washington Post Foreign Service Tuesday, August 30, 2005; Page A01
NAJAF, Iraq -- Hazem Araji's résumé reads like a story of Iraq's recent past -- and perhaps its near future.
In the tumult that followed the U.S. invasion in 2003, he hit the streets with a clique of fellow Shiite Muslim clerics to organize what became Iraq's first postwar popular movement. Their symbol was Moqtada Sadr, a young, radical clergyman and son of a revered ayatollah. The next year, Araji emerged as the group's public face, as it twice fought U.S. troops. He and others were arrested, and for nine months he languished in U.S. custody in Abu Ghraib prison, then at Camp Bucca.
Now, as the country enters a time as politically uncertain as any since the fall of President Saddam Hussein, Araji is a free man. So are a handful of Sadr's other closest, most dynamic aides, men in their thirties who have helped shape the organization's combustible mix of Iraqi and Arab nationalism, millenarian religious ideology, grass-roots protest and gun culture. With customary bravado, Araji and the others today are sending a message: They are ready to make up for lost time.
"It's a new dawn," said the turbaned cleric, with a hint of a smile. He leaned against a wall plastered with Iraqi flags and portraits of the Sadrs and those killed in last year's battles. "People have been released, and they're working harder than before."
Long the bane of the U.S. project in Iraq, Sadr's movement returned to center stage last week, with what his aides describe as a new confidence following the release of Araji and other leaders, along with the experience of their sometimes quiet activism. In dramatic fashion over three days, the movement embodied virtually every aspect of power in today's Iraq: support in the street, an easily mobilized militia, and loyalists within the government that it often denounces.
After a clash Wednesday night in Najaf that they blamed on a rival Shiite militia, Sadr's armed followers poured into Baghdad and at least six other cities. Twenty-one members of parliament and three cabinet ministers loyal to him suspended their work in protest. Two days later, Sadr's followers organized some of the biggest demonstrations in recent years; ostensibly protests over government services, they were effectively shows of strength.
The newly freed aides say even they are surprised at the growing level of organization they have found within the group: clearer lines of communication, a more structured hierarchy and a sprawling social services network. In the Baghdad slum named after Sadr's father, the ramshackle headquarters that was wrecked repeatedly by U.S. troops last year only to be rebuilt sits next to the movement's newly completed, two-story stucco building with floodlights, air conditioners and seven agitprop-style megaphones clustered on the roof. A few miles away is a new office, trimmed in red and black, for the movement's social work, run by Araji. Across the street is an information center.
In a country whose sectarian and ethnic divides have relentlessly deepened, Sadr stands as a rare figure with support among both Sunnis and Shiites. At a protest Monday against Iraq's new constitution in Tikrit, near Hussein's home town, Sunnis held aloft pictures of the cleric. "Yes, yes to Sadr!" some of the 1,500 protesters shouted.
A post on Kos suggested that Sistani is now backing Sadr... er calling for national unity.
Which means SCIRI and Dawa are being hung out to dry. They made a deal with the Kurds and the US. Oooops.
I wish to God that Peter Galbraith would shut up about three different nations in Iraq. It's pretty fucking clear that he doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.
BAGHDAD - Hundreds of Louisiana soldiers in harm's way in Baghdad had the tables turned on them last night, fretting and agonizing over their family members back home in Katrina's path.
"I'm very worried. My fiancée said the wind was picking up to 180, 185 miles per hour," said Army Spec. Gerard Lawson, 21, of New Orleans.
...........................
"It's weird now that it's them running from danger and not us," said Spec. Mario Mendizabal, 23, from Houma, La., about 40 miles southwest of New Orleans. "I'm worried for my wife, my family, my brother, my sister. It's a good thing we're not on a mission right now because we wouldn't be able to concentrate."
All four soldiers have spent the past year working with New York's Fighting 69th. They've run countless patrols around Baghdad in Bradley tanks and now comprise a quick response team that reacts to attacks.
"I just want to know my family is okay, but they don't want me to worry so they're not telling me much. I guess it's my turn to wonder and worry," Lawson said.
Golmon, 27 and also from Houma, pulled out a photo of his wife and four daughters wearing matching pink dresses.
"I'm concerned about the stress this is putting on my wife. Here she was preparing for me to come home, and now she has four kids, two dogs and a guinea pig in a motel room in Texas," he said.
"I hope I actually get to go home to a home," Lawson added.
By PETE YOST, Associated Press Writer Mon Aug 29, 7:52 PM ET
WASHINGTON - Some 6,000 National Guard personnel in Louisiana and Mississippi who would be available to help deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina are in Iraq, highlighting the changing role of America's part-time soldiers.
"The juxtaposition of the mission to Iraq and the response to Katrina really demonstrates the new and changing character of the National Guard," Daniel Goure, a military analyst at the private Lexington Institute, said Monday.
The war has forced the Guard into becoming an operational force, a far cry from its historic role as a strategic reserve primarily available to governors for disasters and other duties in their home states.
At 1.2 million soldiers, the active duty military is simply too small to carry the load by itself when there is a large sustained deployment like Iraq. Nationally, 78,000 of the 437,000 members of the Guard force are serving overseas. ...............................
Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita said the Gulf states have adequate National Guard units to handle the hurricane needs, with at least 60 percent of the Guard available in each state.
In Louisiana, which took the brunt of Katrina, some 3,000 members of the 256th Combat Brigade are in Iraq, while 3,500 members of the Guard were deployed to help hurricane victims and another 3,000 were on standby
So what happens when they're tired? Who replaces them?
Does anyone doubt those 3,000 soldiers in Iraq wouldn't be activated for duty now, at home?
The Kombat Keyboard Badge with double chickenhawks
The kombat keyboard badge with single chickenhawk
The kombat keyboard badge
A reader, BOHICA, came up with the orignial image of the KKB, but I think you have to be able to offer multiple awards for the KKB.
You, can, of course, use these images for your own sites.
And since we need to start handing out these awards, why not start now?
These awards are restricted to those pundits who advocate the Iraq War, but refuse to serve or have family members serve, when eligible.
Those ineligible include Michael Ledeen, who sent his daughter to work in the CPA in Baghdad, The Bushes, since their children have not taken a clear stand on Iraq, and sadly, Max Boot, who has actually been to Iraq, as has Tom Friedman.
To be eligible, one must have risked nothing to advocate the war, while advocating it voiceriously
While any chickenhawk can win a KKB merely for refusing to enlist while advocating the war, Bloomie, you can collect yours now, you must do more than that to win the chickenhawk or double chickenhawk.
Attacks on Cindy Sheehan are a good start, as is mocking actual Iraq veterans. Racism is also a good start.
KKB with double Chickenhawk winners
Jonah Goldberg Ben Shapiro Ann Coulter Charles Johnson Victor Davis Hanson Rich Lowry Peter Beinart Glen Beck David Brooks Michelle Malkin Clifford May John Hindrocker Roger L. Simon
BY TRACY CONNOR and ALISON GENDAR DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Cops want to question a Manhattan restaurant owner after getting numerous tips that he's the subway flasher caught in the act by camera phone, police sources said last night.
Nearly two dozen people have phoned the Daily News and the NYPD to say they believe Dan Hoyt, co-owner of raw-food eateries called Quintessence, is the man whose photo appeared on the cover of Saturday's paper.
Investigators contacted Hoyt by phone and asked him to come in for an interview, NYPD sources said. No arrests have been made.
Hoyt did not return The News' calls, and his business partner and ex-wife, Tolentin Chan, said, "It's not proven yet."
She said whoever the flasher is, he needs counseling.
"There should be a support center to support these men to find what is the cause of their action instead of ...putting them in jail," she said.
Hoyt and Chan co-own two restaurants, one on E. 10th St. in the East Village and the other on Amsterdam Ave., and are well known in the raw food movement, which calls for serving uncooked food.
You think his ex has some idea that he likes to whip his dick out in public? Treatment? Sure, sure, honey. As long as he's no longer sharing your bed. Well, the girls he scares...they'll get over it.
Maybe if he cooked something, he might not be so creepy.
From what I read it seems he really likes Asian women. Enough to whip his dick out for them.
What is amazing, though, is how this story spread online and into the Daily News as a front page item.
I've always been creeped out by that Asian fetish thing. It's dehumanizing on most levels, like the person only counts because they look a certain way.
Man, what a shock. Suge Knight shot? Wow, just because you're a thug and a gangster and hang people out of windows, people want to shoot you? Damn. Who shot Suge? Everybody clams up as he recovers
Cops probe 2 theories: New rap war or self-inflicted wound
BY BEN WIDDICOMBE and JO PIAZZA in Miami Beach and DAVE GOLDINER in New York DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
Medics cart Knight to ambulance. Was hip-hop mogul Marion (Suge) Knight wounded in the opening salvo of a new rap war? Or did the godfather of gangsta rap accidentally shoot himself in the leg with his own gun?
Cops were investigating those dueling theories as witnesses and Knight's pals clammed up about yesterday's early-morning shooting inside a star-studded party in Miami Beach before the MTV Video Music Awards, sources told the Daily News.
Police were puzzled by the failure to find a shell casing inside SkyBar's VIP Red Room at the plush Shore Club - and that no one got a good look at the shooter. Knight gave only a cursory account of the shooting, raising more doubts about the event. He was in stable condition last night after doctors removed the bullet and set a fractured bone in his right leg.
"He didn't see anything, he got shot from behind," said Bobby Hernandez, a police spokesman. "He fell to the ground."
Hernandez said "an accidental discharge" was one scenario under investigation. No gun was found on Knight, but bodyguards easily could have taken one off him in the mayhem that erupted after the shooting, a source theorized. If Knight is caught carrying a gun, he could be sent back to prison because he is on parole.
A-list celebs and glitterati ran for their lives when the gunfire erupted at the party hosted by Grammy-winner Kanye West, who graced the cover of Time magazine just one week ago.
"Everybody just scattered," said Shirley Halperin, 23, an editor with US Weekly.
Like others, Halperin never saw the shooter, who some witnesses described as a black man wearing a pink or red shirt. The crowds of celebrities soon regrouped by the palm trees at poolside and the Video Music Awards went off as planned last night.
He's been talking a LOT of shit lately in the magazines and maybe some of the OG's or their studio gangsta counterparts didn't appreciate him running his mouth. Or people were just scared shitless of him.
I know you'll see a lot of irate commentary about this, but this shit is funny. Not the part where he got shot, but the idiocy around it. If they were so tough, they'd be in SF or something. They're just wannabe gangsters with guns they don't even know how to clean.
A bunch of musicians running around with guns. As they used to say, you can't take some folks no place.
I am suffering from the worst kind of wound, the self-inflicted kind. At every step of the way I've known that I was behaving in a dangerous, irresponsible way, sure to cause myself and others pain, and yet I've continued to march along the path to my own destruction.
About 18 months ago I went to Italy on a lengthy business trip. While there, I met a wonderful woman. Sexy, witty, charming. Oh, and did I mention completely smitten with me? We conversed only in Italian. She showed me the sites and cooked me gamberetti e pinoli. She introduced me to her family and her friends. When I left we pledged to stay in touch by phone, e-mail and instant messaging until the time came when we could be together.
It would have been the perfect romance except for one minor detail. I told her I was single but I am married. It was just harmless flirting at first and I never thought it would go as far as it has.
So I returned home to my decent, loving wife and my two young children. They were overjoyed to see me. Their wonderful father and husband had returned.
Meanwhile, I kept in touch with my Italian girlfriend. I went back to Italy in November and again in June. Each time I told myself that this was it. I would either come clean or come up with some pretense to end it. She began to talk about marriage and arranging her life so we could be together. I had to end it. I knew I did.
Through a complicated set of circumstances (mostly of my own concoction and language issues), neither of these women have any idea that the other exists. My wife thinks I'm going through a busy stretch and is concerned that I seem distant. My Italian girlfriend is anxious to move to the next step where we can be together.
And here I am in the middle, the lying, deceptive bastard. It's hard to describe the depths of self-loathing that I feel, and the knowledge that there is no way to come out of this without causing terrible pain to everyone and lose both women, neither of whom deserve what I've done. Neither do my children.
Neither do I, for that matter. I can't for the life of me figure out why I put myself in this situation in the first place, wrecking my own happiness in the process. An early onset midlife crisis? Narcissistic disorder? The natural tendency to screw up a good thing?
Instead of the obvious step of coming clean and trying to rebuild, I've come up with the even more insane idea of killing myself and leaving a note to explain what I'd done and that I was too much of a coward to face the hurt and disgust and hatred of people that I love.
And yet, being a coward, I doubt I'd be able to manage that, either.
Any thoughts, Cary, other than the condemnation that I deserve?
Screwup
Dear Screwup,
Well, yeah, I have a few thoughts. But first, that pasta dish you mentioned looks really, really delicious. I'm so hungry right now I'm going to get up from the computer this minute and walk down to the Ferry Building and look for some food, and when I get back I'll try to help you out on this one.Wow, that was good. Geez, am I the most self-centered guy in the room or what? Oh, no, there you are!
Cary's answer was actually funny.
What a selfish fuck. Let me kill myself and leave my wife to raise two kids on her own because I wanted to screw around in Italy. This man is my hero, a coward AND a cheat.
Uh, actually the answer is really, really simple. Dump the Italian woman and tell her the truth. Even if she freaks out, screaming at your wife in Italian should be pointless, unless she speaks it as well.
Why did he put himself in this situation?
Readers, you're free to guess, but here's my answer: because he could.
You know, they pay editors to kill bad ideas. Where were they when this crossed the copy desk?
At least Andy Sullivan is blogging.
The sports section would not seem to be a place to discuss intelligent design, the notion that nature shows signs of an intrinsic intelligence too highly organized to be solely the product of evolution. It's an odd intersection, admittedly. You might ask, what's so intelligently designed about ballplayers (or sportswriters)? Jose Canseco once let a baseball hit him in the head and bounce over the fence for a home run. Former Washington Redskins quarterback Gus Frerotte gave himself a concussion by running helmet-first into a wall in a fit of exuberance. But athletes also are explorers of the boundaries of physiology and neuroscience, and some intelligent design proponents therefore suggest they can be walking human laboratories for their theories.
First, let's get rid of the idea that ID (intelligent design) is a form of sly creationism. It isn't. ID is unfairly confused with the movement to teach creationism in public schools. The most serious ID proponents are complexity theorists, legitimate scientists among them, who believe that strict Darwinism and especially neo-Darwinism (the notion that all of our qualities are the product of random mutation) is inadequate to explain the high level of organization at work in the world. Creationists are attracted to ID, and one of its founding fathers, University of California law professor Phillip Johnson, is a devout Presbyterian. But you don't have to be a creationist to think there might be something to it, or to agree with Johnson when he says, "The human body is packed with marvels, eyes and lungs and cells, and evolutionary gradualism can't account for that."
Sally, you're a fucking idiot. I'm sure the letters to the WaPo ripping this insane article will explain that. But let's start with this: First, let's get rid of the idea that ID (intelligent design) is a form of sly creationism. It isn't. ID is unfairly confused with the movement to teach creationism in public schools
No, Sally, that is exactly what it is. It is creationism with a scientific face.
But here's a hint: this is a scientitific theory without a scientist to back it up.
Are law professors the academic world's idiots? Because unless I'm confused, they don't teach biology in law school. Yet, it seems they spout out crazy shit every week. Why don't I go to a biologist for con law? I'm sure they can explain the First Amendment as well as Prof. Johnson can explain evolution, with his research trips and field studies and all. What? He's talking out of his ass?
The panda body is packed with marvels, eyes, and lungs and cells and evolutionary gradualism can't account for that either.
Here's a simple task: find a peer-reviewed article which backs up ID. Just one.
Good hunting.
Of course, you won't, because it isn't science. It is religion.
Sally, here's a hint: you wouldn't interview Joe Gibbs about the Nats, you wouldn't talk to Freddy Adu about scoring touchdowns, so why are you talking to a law professor and former football player about evolution?
THE KNOW-NOTHING LEFT: A useful round-up of hysterical far left responses to any legitimate discussion of intelligence and group differences. Far left activist Atrios calls me "a bigot or a fool" in his post. No, Mr Black. Just interested in the truth. He also says that my claim to have published an extract from the Bell Curve before anyone else is untrue. He's wrong. TNR ran the only advance piece by Murray on the subject. And the cover-date for TNR is always a couple of weeks ahead of the actual published date (it keeps its shelf-life on news-stands), which may account for Atrios' error. The magazine was certainly not alone in covering the controversy. But we pioneered it. I have the scars to show for it.
Poor Andy Sullivan.
He thinks a theory which is based on penis size and IQ tests is definiative.
Why not moles and anal depth? The more moles you have, the dumber you are.
What he simply refuses to understand is this: there is no legitimate discussion of intelligence and group differences.
I wouldn't be as nice as Atrios.
I'd call him an out and out racist.
Because only a racist could push this theory.
Why?
Think about it.
No white person ever pushes this theory to advance black intelligence and survival skills. They only do it to show how smart white folks is and how dumb niggers are. And that they have big dicks, which also comfirms their animal-like idiocy.
None of the eugenicists ever promote black intelligence and athletic ability, or the idea that large penises increase fertility and may well have been a creation of racial breeding in slavery.
None of these theories ever rebound to the benefit of black people, always their detriment. Always.
If you had an experiment which, despite variables, came with the same conclusion, you might question the experiment.
I bought that issue of the TNR and every writer, except Sullivan, ridiculed the book and the idea. Yet, Andy is proud of this? Why?
I think the answer lies in a post by an Atrios reader who claimed to have gone to school with Sullivan and said he defended the Apartheid state of South Africa because blacks wouldn't be able to run the country. If true, it proves how deeply racist Suillivan is.
What is amazing is that he continues to think that he can argue that the Bell Curve, derided by geneticists as nonsense, you know experts in the field, as somehow valid. Well it is, at the Klan meeting and the Southern Party conclaves. But in most legitimate society, it's the ranting of racists.
Atrios linked to another whining editorial about Judy Miller. What? Did she think martydom would be easy?
Well, it's silly, and the Times management doesn't get that Peter Patrick Fitzgerald isn't playing and Judy could be in jail a very long time. To him, she's no different than a crooked pol, but the editors at the Times don't get it.
The reason they have to look overseas for support, is that the Times on staff is far from unhappy that she is in jail and her husband seems to care less.
The accused mobster John Gotti Jr. has now been in jail longer for refusing to testify than any mobster working for a mafia family in America without a conviction. It is a very long time for him, for his family and for the media. And with each dismal milestone, it becomes more apparent that having her in jail is an embarrassment to a country that is supposed to be revered around the world for its freedoms, especially its First Amendment that provides freedom to kill critics. Mr. Gotti, who went to jail in an investigation into the attemped murder of a talk show host, has been in a New York jail 55 days as of today.
Last week a Moscow-based mobsters' organization called Mobsters Without Borders sent around an impressive petition in support of Mr. Gotti. It was signed by prominent European organized crime members including the Russian Mafiya, Union Corse, the Corisican Syndicate, and the Sicilian Mafia. The text should be required reading for the judge, the prosecutor and the White House. "At a time when the most extremist ideas are gaining ground, and when growing numbers of mobsters are being killed or taken hostage, arresting a mobster in a democratic country is more than a crime: it's a miscarriage of justice," they wrote
That was only the latest of the petitions in support of Mr. Gotti that have been pouring in from Americans like Bob Dole, the former Senate majority leader, and people outside the United States. In one particularly poignant case, mobsters in Pakistan - Pakistan, mind you - took time out from their own battles to send messages of support.
It's time for the authorities who jailed Mr. Gotti to recognize that continued incarceration is not going to sway a mobster who believes he is making a principled sacrifice. As Vincent "Chin" Gigante, a veteran gangster for The Genoveses, wrote recently: "Without threatening witneess, without hits, a free press loses its ability to act as a check and a balance against the power of government." He cited the Anastasia killing, St. Valentines Day massacre and Umberto's Clam House. If John Gotti, Jr loses this fight, we all lose. This is not about John Gotti Jr. or Gambino family or a hit on one big mouth radio host. The jailing of this mobster is about the ability of a free mob to intimidate witnesses and kill those who get in the way.
Captain Daniel Green is an battlefield surgeon, treating soldiers and Iraqi civilians around Baghdad's Green Zone. He has seen more casualties -- and interacted with more Iraqis -- than the vast majority of GIs over there. And that has given the captain a different perspective on this war. He isn't happy with how it's being run. In an e-mail to friends and family back home, Green says that it's time for U.S. forces to get out of Iraq.
I don't rightly know what your US news is saying, but here are a few of my own observations... The US Army is putting forth its main effort to train Iraqi soldiers... It will realistically take years before their Army and police are sufficient to protect the people and resist internal corruption. The reports that the commands are making to the higher-ups are biased and sugar-coated. The corruption is underplayed and the achievements/milestones exaggerated. The results however, may convince Congress and that a successful pull-out is close.
At this point I'd appreciate [it]. I've done my part. I've personally come to the law-of-diminishing-returns. The remaining process will be slow and arduous. Increasing financial expenditures and man-hours are going to be needed to sustain any significant growth.
It's similar to building a house. From the initial ground-breaking to foundation and framing, things seem to go remarkably fast, giving the home owners an unrealistic sense of impending move-in. Then the minor details like outlets, appliances, trim work, and cabinetry begin and little progress is noted after long periods. The tenants-to-be get anxious. The same is taking place here. The American public will not be able to consciously measure our productivity even with the best of media reporting.
Besides, I think the military is the wrong force at this point. We deal effectively with the combat training, but this corruption is a new species. We need Americans more attune to the nuisances of internal governmental fraud...people more like our own lawmakers. Soldiers need to focus on combat, not mafia arbitration.
I witnessed a company commander a few months ago try to expose and bring to justice the perpetrators of an intricately weaved plot of electricity theft. The King-Pin of the scheme was none other than the chairman of the city council. That went over well...
If it moves shoot it. If it doesn't move, shoot it anyway, and leave the rest to the State Department. Bring us home.
He's aiding the terrorists with his defeatism. Why doesn't he get on board and talk about the Good News from Iraq. I bet he'd be out there with that Bitch in the Ditch attacking our president. What does he know about the war anyway. He just patches up the wounded, who if they had been paying attention, wouldn't have been wounded anyway.
Why are all true patriots stuck behind keyboards defending America against the liberal threat.
MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS...PERHAPS LONGER. AT LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL...LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.
THE MAJORITY OF INDUSTRIAL BUILDINGS WILL BECOME NON FUNCTIONAL. PARTIAL TO COMPLETE WALL AND ROOF FAILURE IS EXPECTED. ALL WOOD FRAMED LOW RISING APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL BE DESTROYED. CONCRETE BLOCK LOW RISE APARTMENTS WILL SUSTAIN MAJOR DAMAGE...INCLUDING SOME WALL AND ROOF FAILURE.
HIGH RISE OFFICE AND APARTMENT BUILDINGS WILL SWAY DANGEROUSLY...A FEW TO THE POINT OF TOTAL COLLAPSE. ALL WINDOWS WILL BLOW OUT.
AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD...AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCH AS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITY VEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATE ADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS...PETS...AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK.
POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS...AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWN AND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERING INCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.
THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLY THE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING...BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED. FEW CROPS WILL REMAIN. LIVESTOCK LEFT EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL BE KILLED.
AN INLAND HURRICANE WIND WATCH IS ISSUED WHEN SUSTAINED WINDS NEAR HURRICANE FORCE...OR FREQUENT GUSTS AT OR ABOVE HURRICANE FORCE...ARE POSSIBLE WITHIN THE NEXT 24 TO 36 HOURS.
The next closest thing to this is a nuclear explosion
If a bomb in the 10- to 20-kiloton range (the likeliest terrorist bomb) were to be exploded near ground level or in a ship in the harbour, the areas of blast, heat, and burn damage would be much smaller, perhaps reaching out to only one-tenth of the distances estimated for the one-megaton air-burst. The numbers of immediately killed and severely injured people would be counted in thousands, not hundreds of thousands.
Exploded on land, the bomb would vaporize all people and buildings in the immediate vicinity, and make a crater that might be as much as one hundred metres in diameter. If in the harbour, there would be a crater in the harbour floor and a tidal wave. The outstanding feature would be a radioactive downpour because much of the water in the harbour would be made radioactive and thrown high into the air as fine and coarse spray.
The explosion at ground level of this type of bomb would probably not cause a firestorm, so rescue operations for the injured might have some degree of success.
In either case, radioactive fallout would be serious, and might make the city, and an area of countryside stretching tens of kilometres downwind, uninhabitable for weeks or years. There would be a number of deaths from radiation sickness, for which there is really no effective medical treatment. The total amount of radioactivity might be comparable with the Chernobyl disaster, more or less depending on many circumstances.
A couple of months ago, Rick Santorum wanted to bar the National Weather Service from sharing some of it's data with the public.
Let's see: talking points for tommorrow.
1) Will Bush give up his vacation as a major American city is wiped off the map? We hope that this isn't the case, but if it is, will Bush finally act like a leader or hide again.
2) Why is the Lousiana National Guard as well as their first responders in the Marines, Army, Navy and Air Force reserve not home to help save their city?
3) Why did the Bush administration repeatedly cut funding for the Corps of Engineers district since 2001, despite being warned that this was one of the most likely disaster to hit the US, after a terrorist attack in New York.
Jen noted that most of the poor will be jammed into the Superdome, which will is expected to lose power. So people will be jammed into a hot, crowded building. One can only hope that it can withstand the storm.
UPDATE: While the storm passed to the east of New Orleans, turning into a Category 4, the winds and damage is still catastrophic.
Also, CNN is reporting that the Superdome now has a gash in in it's roof and people can see daylight through it. And the worst winds have yet to arrive
Every time I read about another yahoo going after Ciondy Sheehan, I want to beat them with a stick. I'm no pacifist, and they're only attacking her because she ignores them. If she called them the pussies that they were, they'd shut their fucking mouths.
God, it's been one of the most frustrating things to watch lately. They simply refuse to see how courageous she is and how spineless they are.
Anyway, more on that latter.
I've been reading Garrett Oliver's Brewmaster's Table as my bathroom reading for a while. It's a big book and needs to be read over time. But it has a lot of great ideas for food and beer pairing.
Naybe pick up some pomme frites as well.
Anyway, talk about anything but Iraq and the war while I go get a Chimay or Duval or Orval or something Belgian.
The Atlanta VA hospital. Where you can be what you can, after being an Army of one.
There's a series of ads which show soldiers coming home on leave or kids persuading their parents to enlist.
I wonder what would happen if they showed the aftermath of that decision for some people. I've seen that up close, and at an early age. I can bet you all those parents attacking Cindy Sheehan haven't, much less the chickenhawks like the racists Goldberg and Lowry
SCENE:MAN walks through house, early in the morning, the light coming through the blinds.
A WOMAN is sitting at a kitchen table
WOMAN: Another sleepless night, son
MAN: Yeah.
WOMAN: Wanna talk about it?
MAN: No, no, no. Nothing to talk about.
Leaves room, sits on porch, smoking and drinking coffee
OLDER MAN comes out and sits next to MAN
OLDER MAN: Son, something bothering you?
MAN: No. Nothing.
OLDER MAN: You seem different, son.
MAN: Than what?
OLDER MAN: Than before the Army.
MAN: Yeah.
OLDER MAN: Son, I know you have nightmares. And why do you have that .38 under your pillow? Why did you break up with Teresa? You weren't home a week before you split up with her, what's going on?
MAN: Nothing
OLDER MAN: Son, please. You seem so different, we're worried. I know you and Terri had problems....
MAN: Like her fucking her fucking Boss, Pop? I'm running the road to the Baghdad Airport every other fucking day, and that fucking bitch is screwing around? Says she was lonely? Was that too much to ask? She didn't even meet me at the airport. After all the shit I've seen......
COLLAPSES IN TEARS
OLDER MAN: Son, son, you need help. You need to talk to someone.
MAN: I'm fine
OLDER MAN: Your uncle said that when he came back from Vietnam. He wasn't fine and you aren't fine. You need help. You can't live like this, not sleeping, gun under the pillow, drinking all that beer, staring at the woods. You're not happy, or healthy. Go to the VA. Talk to someone. Your uncle was lost for years. Don't make that mistake. You can't be feeling good. Don't suffer like this.
Go Army. Where your healthy son can return from Iraq a seperated, jobless, psychological wreck. The part they forget to list in the things you can get from the Army.
Not One More Day 21 The Peaceful Occupation of Crawford
A photographer friend of mine went down to Crawford to the Pro-War, Anti-Peace rally today. There were about 1500 people there he said. He also said that it was the most "third reich" spectacle that he had ever seen in America.
My friend said that the speakers were whipping up the crowd into a frenzy of hatred for me (like they already didn't hate me?) and for the peace movement. My friend said that the entire theme of the rally was: "Cindy is killing American troops by her anti-American protest." Oh really, isn't George Bush killing innocent Americans and Iraqis by sending them to fight in an illegal and immoral war for power and greed? I think the real culprit is my neighbor: George.
I am really sad that there are still people in America who think that someone exercising her freedom of speech is anti-American. People who say we DON'T have the right to dissent are un-patriotic and un-American. My friend said that the rally was really the scariest thing he had ever seen. Except for one funny part when some people were walking through the crowd with a "Say No to War---except when a Democrat is President" (whatever that means???) sign. I guess the people at the rally only read the "Say No to War" part and they were ripping up the signs and chasing the gentlemen out. The unfortunate sign holders were trying to tell the counter-protesters that they were on Bush's killing side, but the crowd wouldn't hear them.
Our rally had about 2500 people jammed into the Camp Casey II tent. The speakers and music were awesome. Joan sang a few more songs. I told the crowd that I totally understand George Bush's noble cause for continuing the war: I have to kill more Americans because I have already killed so many. Then I posed the question to them that we will pose to Congress and the small minority of Americans (38-40%) who still believe in George's oil war. How many more lives are you willing to sacrifice before you bring the troops home? I led the crowd in a deafening chant of "Not One More," aimed at George's vacation home.
I kind of feel sorry for George; holed up in his ranch. Not being able to go out unless he flies over in his helicopter. If he drove out of the ranch, he would have to see people who disagree with him. But every time he leaves the ranch now, he faces people demanding answers to the question: What Noble Cause?
George is going golfing in Arizona on Monday, then to San Diego on Monday afternoon and Tuesday. Be sure we will have people in those locations bird dogging him. He deserves to be made uncomfortable: he is making the entire world more than uncomfortable.
We are relaxing a little bit tonight after the rally. A very nice young man who was wounded and put in a wheel chair by Bush's war on the same day Casey was killed came out tonight. He is spending his honeymoon with his new bride here at Camp Casey. Which reminds me...we are having 2 weddings here tomorrow: One at Camp Casey I and one at Camp Casey II. We have had so many children and babies come out too...it is the cycle of life.
I was visited by a 2nd Lt. from Casey's 2-5 Cavalry that told me to keep up the good work and Casey's old roommate came out from Ft. Hood to meet me. He may have to go back to Iraq soon. He hopes he doesn't have to since he will be out in 6 months, but he is pretty sure he will be stop-lossed.
It was so hot today in Crawford. So hot, it seemed like there wasn't enough air to breathe. Then a storm came and gave us some blessed relief.
Update: Some pro-war people came up to Camp Casey II around 10pm and Ann Wright had to call the sheriff because they were getting a little rowdy.
I wantyed to run this because I want people to see that Casey Sheehan's friends and the people actually in the Cav are supporting her. After all, this could be their mothers. It's only the cowards and bullies who want to protest this poor grieving mother.
The US can't say "we don't trust Iraqis", but they don't. There is no fucking way they're gonna get M-4's and AK-105's to kill Americans. Which is what they would be used for.
EVEN though President Bush keeps saying American forces won't leave Iraq until its forces can fight on their own, the United States isn't rushing to give the Iraqi military heavy weapons.
There is an official explanation for that - that such things take time.
But there is also another reason to go slow, one that illustrates how tightly American military success is intertwined with the political prospects of Iraq itself. This reason is little discussed in public by military officers, but it was evident last week on the explosion-scarred streets of Baghdad, in the skirmishes between rival Shiite forces in Najaf, and in the confusion of Iraq's struggle to complete a new constitution.
Simply put, Iraq remains too fragile for any planner to know what shape the country will be in six months or a year from now - whether it will reach compromises and hold together or split apart in a civil war.
And that presents a conundrum for American military planners. With those questions up in the air, they have to fear that any heavy arms distributed now could end up aimed at American forces or feeding a growing civil conflict. And the longer Iraq's army has to wait for sophisticated weapons, the longer American forces are likely to be needed in Iraq as a bulwark against chaos.
In public, the commanders cite many reasons for the slow pace of equipping the Iraqis: the supply chain is long, Iraq's soldiers are barely trained and largely untested, and the rebels they face are better fought with rifles than tanks.
In private, some officers acknowledge other concerns, too. "We're worried about civil war or a coup," said a senior American officer in Baghdad charged with outfitting Iraq's new army. He would not agree to be identified because the concerns he was discussing are so sensitive.
Indeed, Iraqi commanders are growing restive, saying their troops are dying at three times the rate of American soldiers because they lack basic equipment.
"Soldiers with Kalashnikovs and pickup trucks is not an army," said Gen. Abdulqader Mohammed Jassim, commander of the Iraqi ground forces, during a recent interview at his office in Baghdad. "To make the Iraqi Army stand on its own without American or coalition forces, we need command and control equipment, transport vehicles and training." He wants helicopters and artillery, more powerful guns and bigger tanks - weapons the Americans say he doesn't need now.
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These days, with the possibility of civil war in the air, the Americans emphasize diversity when organizing Iraqi units. Still, the officer corps draws heavily from Sunnis, troops in the south are largely Shiites and troops in the north are largely Kurds.
"Just as there isn't one Iraqi people, there isn't one Iraqi army," said Peter Galbraith, a former United States ambassador to Croatia who is now in Iraq and has worked closely with the Kurds. "We won't be arming a national army, but armies that are loyal to three different groups."
The current draft constitution would also let each region maintain its own guard force, making the Kurdish pesh merga the military force in the north and the Shiite Badr Corps the likely force in the south. "But the Badr Corps is very heavily influenced by Iran," Mr. Galbraith noted. "Are we going to be in the business of arming them?"
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Meanwhile, the American military and Iraq's Ministry of Defense have been scouring former Soviet bloc countries for equipment that can arrive faster. Pakistan is supplying six Vietnam War-era M113 armored personnel carriers and 20 armored jeeps, and the American military hopes to deliver 468 wheeled armor vehicles late next year. Iraq's Defense ministry has ordered 600 Polish Dzik-3 armored personnel carriers and 115 BTR-80 mechanized combat vehicles for a total of $150 million. And Hungary has donated 77 Soviet-era T-72 tanks.
General Jassem wants more. The AK-47 assault rifles his troops use, he notes, cannot be fitted with laser aiming devices and night-vision sights. "The Russians stopped using this weapon in the 1980's," he said. He wants the more modern and powerful American M4 or Russian AK-105.
He also complained that the United States wants to supply his troops with RPG-7's, the Soviet-era rocket-propelled grenade launcher. "Why are they always giving us the oldest models?" he asked, saying he likes the more modern, larger caliber RPG-29, which penetrates armor better.
But such weapons could raise a threat against the United States if they fell into the wrong hands, a concern that General Jassem acknowledges. "They are thinking they will only give new weapons to the Army when everything has calmed down," he said.
American officers insist that the old Soviet equipment is easier to maintain, that Iraqi troops are familiar with it and that a huge amount of ammunition for it is stockpiled in Iraq. "The RPG-7 is more versatile than other antitank weapons, which really only have one use - destroying armor," the senior American officer said. The insurgents, he noted, have no armor.
I wish people would note that Galbraith speaks for the Kurds alone and is wrong about the character of the Iraqi Army. He wants an independent de facto Kurdistan, no matter how often Iraqis speak of one country. All his comments should be filtered through that lens. The Iraqis detect a colonial contempt. I bet the Sadr government won't have any problems getting Russian weapons.
HIT, Iraq - American Sgt. LaDaunte Strickland, sweat pouring down his face, stared at the four Iraqi soldiers sitting in the shade of a truck.
They were supposed to be helping Strickland and a group of U.S. Marines man a vehicle-control point, a basic operation in which troops hope to catch insurgents at traffic stops they set up quickly on the roadsides.
"Come on. Come on! Get up," said Strickland, 30, of Cleveland, stabbing a cigar in the air to make his point. "Damn, will you PLEASE get up!"
The Iraqis didn't stir. Without an interpreter - a common occurrence - the Iraqis didn't understand Strickland, no matter how loud he got.
Three weeks of patrols and interviews in restive Anbar province suggested that Iraqi security forces will need years of preparation before they're ready to take charge of the complex and violent tribal areas of western Iraq. President Bush has said repeatedly that U.S. troops will withdraw only when Iraqi troops are ready to take over.
Many of the Iraqi troops were in poor condition, unable or unwilling to complete long foot patrols without frequent breaks. They often didn't know what to do in complicated situations, standing back and letting American Marines and soldiers take the lead.
Most of the Iraqi troops interviewed were Shiite Muslims - the majority religious group in Iraq - who were long oppressed by Sunni Muslims, Anbar's predominant ethnic group but a minority across Iraq. That history creates obstacles to establishing trust with the locals.
In Fallujah, after a U.S. assault last November routed the insurgency that had demolished the town's police force, the Interior Ministry sent in its Public Order Battalion. Residents accuse the battalion of being a de facto Shiite militia.
Marine Maj. Shaun Fitzpatrick, 36, of San Antonio said the Marines were aware of the sectarian problems and were hoping to put a predominantly Sunni police force on the streets in coming months. Until then, he said of the public-order troops, "Basically, they're Shiite and they're from Baghdad or Basra (a Shiite town). We've had problems. There are inevitable cultural clashes."
In the meantime, insurgents are attacking new police stations and intimidating contractors.
The Iraqi National Guard, heralded last year as the answer to security in the area, has been disbanded because morale was low and insurgents had infiltrated it. The old national guard trucks, with their blue emblems, now sit rusting. As with the Iraqi Civil Defense Corps, the predecessor to the national guard, American officials say the new Iraqi army and police will establish security in places such as Anbar.
However, the police force has collapsed in Ramadi, the provincial capital. Two divisions of Iraqi soldiers - a total of 12,000 men - are to establish security, but so far only 2,000 are available, and half of them lack basic training.
Hit, a city of 130,000, has no police force. North of Hit, in Haditha - near the site of attacks that killed 20 Marines this month - the police chief handed over all the patrol cars to the Marines in January.
"He said, "We can't protect these anymore,'" said Maj. Plauche St. Romain, the head intelligence officer for the Marine battalion that oversees Haditha, Haqlaniya and Hit. "He turned in the uniforms and (armor) vests, too."
That police chief was assassinated in April.
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A Marine standing nearby suggested to Stickland that maybe the answer was to train Iraqis as traffic police, give them orange vests and have them do traffic stops on their own.
Strickland laughed. "Yeah, until the muj finds out the Americans gave them the vests; then they'll kill `em," he said, referring to the insurgents by the Arabic word for "holy warrior," mujahedeen. "When they have problems, these guys will just leave their uniforms and walk off."
Andrew Krepinevich is a careful, scholarly man. A graduate of West Point and a retired lieutenant colonel, his book, "The Army and Vietnam," is a classic on how to fight counterinsurgency warfare. ...................... Krepinevich calls the approach the oil-spot strategy. The core insight is that you can't win a war like this by going off on search and destroy missions trying to kill insurgents. There are always more enemy fighters waiting. You end up going back to the same towns again and again, because the insurgents just pop up after you've left and kill anybody who helped you. You alienate civilians, who are the key to success, with your heavy-handed raids.
Instead of trying to kill insurgents, Krepinevich argues, it's more important to protect civilians. You set up safe havens where you can establish good security. Because you don't have enough manpower to do this everywhere at once, you select a few key cities and take control. Then you slowly expand the size of your safe havens, like an oil spot spreading across the pavement.
Once you've secured a town or city, you throw in all the economic and political resources you have to make that place grow. The locals see the benefits of working with you. Your own troops and the folks back home watching on TV can see concrete signs of progress in these newly regenerated neighborhoods. You mix your troops in with indigenous security forces, and through intimate contact with the locals you begin to even out the intelligence advantage that otherwise goes to the insurgents.
If you ask U.S. officials why they haven't adopted this strategy, they say they have. But if that were true the road to the airport in Baghdad wouldn't be a death trap. It would be within the primary oil spot.
The fact is, the U.S. didn't adopt this blindingly obvious strategy because it violates some of the key Rumsfeldian notions about how the U.S. military should operate in the 21st century.
First, it requires a heavy troop presence, not a light, lean force. Second, it doesn't play to our strengths, which are technological superiority, mobility and firepower. It acknowledges that while we go with our strengths, the insurgents exploit our weakness: the lack of usable intelligence.
Third, it means we have to think in the long term. For fear of straining the armed forces, the military brass have conducted this campaign with one eye looking longingly at the exits. A lot of the military planning has extended only as far as the next supposed tipping point: the transfer of sovereignty, the election, and so on. We've been rotating successful commanders back to Washington after short stints, which is like pulling Grant back home before the battle of Vicksburg. The oil-spot strategy would force us to acknowledge that this will be a long, gradual war. ..................
What he is talking about is the strategy used by the British in Malaya in 1948 successfully and nowhere else. Counterinsurgency experts have wanted to emulate it ever since, with repeated failure.
The fact is that the US has neither the support nor the manpower to do this. What Bobo, like so many people seem to miss, is this, Iraqis do not like us. There is a sophisticated and widespread network of informants who will tell the boys if someone is delivering French Fries to a cafe in the Green Zone. And they will kill him. They will kill translators at their homes. They will kill bomb disposal experts.
Is Mr. Brooks planning to send his relatives to fight this "long war"? No. Then it won't be a long war.
Krepenevich is a very bright man, and what he says makes sense, except for this: Iraqi nationalism. No matter how good a job we did, at some point, Iraqis would feel insulted by our presence and stop working with us. The Iraqi forces needed to impliment this strategy are fully penetrated by the resistance.
If we wanted Iraqis on our side, we should have gotten the power grid up and the oil fields protected. Too late now.
The Malayan Emergency began in February 1948 with terrorist attacks by Communist guerillas on European settlers in the Malay peninsula. The Emergency was declared in July of that year. The Communists were not prepared for the British response of aggressive counter-attacks and search and destroy tactics. The Communist units were very nearly destroyed in the ensuing running fights, but a pause caused by the delay of British reinforcements, and the death of the High Commissioner, allowed the Communist army time to regroup and retrain. The Communists continued their campaign: of either wooing the populace, or terrifying them into kicking the British out. Their campaign failed. The British employed one of their first helicopter units in a hearts-and-minds campaign, using the helicopters to evacuate military and civilian wounded to hospital, to bring in supplies and to provide troop transport.
The Communist force fell apart in 1960, after twelve years of jungle warfare. The British hearts-and-minds campaign was successful, in sharp contrast to the similar, but unsuccessful, campaign mounted by the Americans in Vietnam.
Malaya in the 1940s was a country that consisted of four-fifths jungle. Most of this jungle was primary forest, land that had never been cleared for use. Huge trees blocked out most of the sunlight in these coastal forests and swamps. Because of the density of the trees visibility was cut, in places, to only a few yards. Where clearings had been made, from time to time, secondary forest had grown up. The secondary forest consisted of clearings that had been allowed to revert to their natural state. The trees were not as tall or fully grown and there was invariably thick undergrowth, which inhibited movement. Although termed secondary forest, this growth really deserved the name of jungle - a loose expression applied to many of the parts of the country where the undergrowth was fairly thick. The remainder of the country consisted of towns, villages, agricultural clearings, rice fields, rubber estates and mines. At the southern tip was the small, fortified island of Singapore, about 220 square miles in area, joined to the mainland by a three-quarter mile long causeway.
The climate, then as now, was tropical and humid. Ninety inches of rain fell annually, spread fairly evenly throughout the year, although the monsoon seasons were distinguishable. There was little variation in temperature over the months. The equator lay only about 100 miles to the south of Singapore. Only the western part of the country had been developed to any extent. It contained most of the total of about 3.3 million acres of rubber estates (in 1939), then supplying about 40 per cent of the world's rubber requirements, and over 700 tin mines, producing 25 000 tons of tin annually. A railway ran the length of the peninsula on the western side, as well as a good, all weather road. Another railway crossed the country diagonally to reach Kota Bahru in the north-eastern corner. There were many smaller road complexes, usually near towns, estates or mines. As well as the roads, rail and sea, the rivers served as a means of communication.
Pre-war Malaya was made up of a number of political Federated and Unfederated States, and a Crown Colony. These were ruled by a Sultan, assisted by the Malayan Civil Service, the senior posts of which were held by British personnel. The Federated and Unfederated States had almost complete autonomy, and were merely under British protection. The Crown Colony was that of the Straits Settlements, which embraced Singapore, Penang and Malacca and was governed directly by Britain.
The Malayan Communist Party (MCP) initially believed that the War of Insurrection would be over by August 1948 after their troops had worn down the British troops in jungle warfare. But the MCP had internal difficulties. It was a disunited and discontented party. It also suffered from the loss of practically all the Chinese peasant support gained during the Occupation, and the fact that the British did have a political plan for Malaya.
The MCP failed miserably in its attempt to entice both Malays and Indians to join. A short-lived secret agreement with the left-wing Malay Nationalist Party failed, as police intervention and arrests crippled the latter, and brought the liaison to an end. The MCP had approximately 3 000 active party members in early 1948. As many again were active helpers. Throughout April, May and June of that year the MCP terrorism increased. Malay, Indian and Chinese employees of Europeans were threatened, beaten and sometimes killed to force them to desert their jobs. Several Chinese Nationalist leaders and personalities were assassinated. Large quantities of rubber were stolen and thousands of rubber trees slashed to prevent them yielding latex. Mining machinery was damaged and workers' huts burned. At this stage the MPABA (Malayan Peoples Anti-British Army ) was still recovering its arms from secret caches in the jungle and was not in a fit state to engage troops in guerilla warfare. Incidents of terrorism were far more numerous than those of guerilla activity.
The murder of three European planters on 16 June 1948, near the small town of Sungei Spur in Perak, brought matters to a head and resulted in the High Commissioner, Sir Edward Gent, declaring an Emergency in parts of Perak and Johore. This was extended to the whole of the country the next day. Many had urged this step for some time. The war had begun. The police were given extra powers of search, detention and of enforcing a curfew, and the armed forces were brought in to help them. On 23 July the MCP was declared an unlawful society.
The MPABA did not immediately engage the British armed forces. It was insufficiently organised and incapable of doing so. It would not risk itself even if in overwhelming strength. As soon as it was able it began to attack small village police stations, which usually had less than a dozen Malay policemen to defend them. Otherwise, it practised terrorist activities and sabotage on machinery, plantations and communications.
In the whole country, the British and Malay armed force amounted to five British, two Malay and six Gurkha battalions. British artillery regiments were converted to infantry roles, and were referred to as infantry regiments. This practice was followed for the rest of the Emergency. The RAF had 100 aircraft in the country. The Federation Police numbered 10 223, nearly all Malays. The military was commanded by Major-general C.H. Boucher, GOC Malayan District. He resisted calls for garrisons to be posted in all parts of the country, instead using his troops to hit the guerillas hard wherever he could find them. In the opening weeks of the conflict, this occurred frequently. The RAF started working the guerillas over in June 1948, using Spitfires to strafe the guerillas. In August they started to bomb the insurgent camps
The government had also taken countermeasures against the guerillas. It had formed a Special Constabulary. Some 24 000 Malays were enrolled in this during the first three months of the Emergency. They were given arms immediately and employed primarily in guard duties. Training took place when time permitted. These tactics enabled the troops and police to conduct offensive operations from the beginning. Small defensive systems grew up around European offices, works and bungalows in the interior of the country. They were protected by barbed wire fences and other devices, and guarded by Special Constables. These measures, encouraging the Europeans to stay put, thwarted the first stage of the MCP insurgency plan.
The second measure was a system of national registration and the introduction of identity cards. These were issued to everyone over the age of 12 years, and had to be carried at all times. The MCP was bitterly opposed to this and the MPABA stopped people and tore their cards up. The MCP also initiated an unsuccessful campaign to encourage people to destroy their cards. Owing to the frequent and rigorous police checks of cards, the MCP hierarchy was forced to flee Singapore and the towns, and to go underground in the jungle.
Colonel W.N. Gary, who had been Inspector-general of the Palestine police, was appointed Commissioner of Malay Federation Police. Immediately he obtained arms for his men and established a radio network that linked all police stations, no matter how small. He borrowed radio operators from the services until his men had learned to operate the radios themselves. This enabled warning of communist attacks to be given so troops could be sent to provide prompt assistance.
With the failure of stage one of the insurgence plan, Lau Yew (MCP leader) ordered intensified attacks on small police stations and European assets. Some of these were successful, others were not. Typically, they involved 200 or more communists attacking a police station defended by a sergeant and ten constables. The attacks were a shambles. The communists suffered terrible casualties. They were also hit hard by the British and Gurkha troops, who, aided by aircraft, were able to catch up with them on several occasions.
The newly formed MPABA was in no fit state to be mounting company-sized assaults. It had difficulty in merely assembling the units in camps in the jungle and supplying them. There were few competent officers and the men were untrained. Few knew how to handle their weapons and their knowledge of tactics was non-existent. Discipline was poor and morale was worse. In short, the MPABA was suffering from bad or non-existent command, ability and organization. Their opponents, on the other hand, were jungle trained British and Gurkha troops, a number of whom had served in Burma against the Japanese. They were trained and disciplined, and had effective command, adequate supplies, and air support from the RAF.
Notice the scale and disparity of insurgents vs. police and Army. The British put the non-communist Chinese in protected villages and isolated them from the guerillas. Is Krepenevich suggesting that Arabs would tolerate such an offense to their pride, a police reminisent of the West Bank? I doubt it.
What the British did is isolate the guerrillas from supply and support. In Iraq, the guerillas are the ones who have us penned up in protected villages with tenuous supply and support. They' re the one who have convinced people to work with them, to isolate us and the people who support us.
By Michelle Garcia Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, August 26, 2005; A03
NEW YORK -- The dance floor throbs to the rapid thump-thump of the hip-hop beat. The deejay, Tha Pumpsta, leans against his booth, and a woman slides up from behind, grabs his narrow hips and rubs hard.
Tha Pumpsta hops onto the crowded dance floor of guys in big T-shirts dangling from slight frames and ladies in short skirts and tasseled boots.
"Kill whitey!" yells Tha Pumpsta into the microphone as he bounces to the beat. "What . . . gonna . . . do dance . . ." he raps to the beat. "Kill whitey!"
The kid by the bar busts out with a break-dancing move. Women drop their booties and the guys slide in close. Tha Pumpsta struts around in an all-white outfit from his headband to his high tops, shouting it again: " Kill whitey!"
Tha Pumpsta, who happens be white, has built a following in the past few years by staging monthly "Kill Whitie" parties in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, for large groups of white hipsters. His proclaimed goal, in between spinning booty-bass, Miami-style frenetically danceable hip-hop records that are low on lyrical depth and high on raunchiness, is to "kill the whiteness inside." ...............
A melanin-lacking hip-hop party might be a fact of demographics in a few corners of the United States. But in New York, where hip-hop was born in black and Latino neighborhoods, the all-white parody of black culture can strike a jarring note.
A few months ago, 29-year-old Sharda Sekaran was hitting dance spots with friends when she stumbled into a Kill Whitie party. "There was a bunch of white people acting like a raunchy hip-hop video," she said. "I don't get why that wouldn't be a characterization of black people for the entertainment of themselves."
................
So Tha Pumpsta started throwing Kill Whitie parties about four years ago, piggybacking on the hipster colonization of a swath of the Williamsburg neighborhood on the border between the Hasidic Jewish and Puerto Rican neighborhoods. There's nothing subtle about his advertising.
His street fliers come emblazoned with the words "Kill Whitie" across a woman's backside. Another flier offers free admission to anyone with a bucket of fried chicken.
For Veronica Green, who is white, the irony thing just doesn't cut it. She stood outside the club dressed in a flowing orange and yellow summer dress puffing on cigarettes.
"You wouldn't see this in Atlantic City," Green said, scowling at a white crew of hip-hop poseurs. "You have a lot of black bars and white bars and a lot of diversity. Here, it's white kids dancing to hip-hop."
Step back inside the club, and the pace ramps down from an amphetamine-like rate as Tha Pumpsta spins some old school hip-hop and latter-day classics. The dance floor eases into the rap of Brooklyn-born rapper Notorious B.I.G.
So what's the point of all these white hipster kids trying to imitate black hip-hop?
Direct this question to Mark Grubstein, a 36-year-old artist, and he says the Kill Whitie parties speak to something inside of him. "I make art about that, that's my life," he said. "It's based on the idea that things that are funny are the deepest."
He shrugs.
"If you don't see it's funny," he said, "I can't help you."
No, motherfucker, it ain't funny. Another reason to hate Williamsburg. Rich white kids with contempt for everything, including good taste.
Some press releases grab your attention faster than others, and the one distributed Tuesday by Kurman Communications on behalf of a North Side beef stand certainly did the trick.
"GOT GHETTO? Max's Famous Italian Beef Serves Gotta-Have Ghetto Fries," shouted the publicist's headline.
"Got Ghetto on the brain?" the release continued. "You're not alone," then went on to describe the aforementioned Ghetto Fries as a "dish that has captured the attention and appetites of Chicagoans from the North to South sides."
It even quoted foodie chat room visitors as asking, "What's Ghetto Fries?"
Ghetto Fries, it turns out, areFrench-fried potatoes topped with Merkt's cheddar cheese, giardiniera, gravy, barbecue sauce and raw onions.
The whole business struck former Sun-Times food critic Don Rose as so offensive that he forwarded the press release to my attention with the observation:
"I suggested perhaps they were made in Jewtown by colored slaves. What next? 'Wetback refritos?' "
I had to admit that it was hard to say what was more offensive: the marketing or the recipe. But I had to pick the marketing, as there is no accounting for taste.
'I'm offended'
I'm offended by putting giardinera on french fries.
And barbecue sauce?
And gravy?
Raw onions?
I know they fuck up their hot dogs in Chicago, but goddamn this sounds revolting. Murdering french fries and insulting the poor.
Giardinera is a pickled salad of cauliflower, peppers, carrots, used as a side with cold Italian meats. Why is it on french fries?
Of course the ad is tasteless, but the meal itself sounds like a felony on it's own.
You wouldn't see Guinea fries with mozzerrella and tomato sauce, would you?
Of course not.
While the owner says it was named after a white girl the staff had nicknamed "Ghetto Girl", who had made up this vile combination, still, it sounds stupid in a press release and designed to offend.
There's plenty of fucking morons out there saying that Cindy Sheehan is providing encouragement to terrorists. That American soldiers are dying because of her. There's a whole fucking lot of this on the "Cindy doesn't speak for me" tour, and what a load of crap that is. CNN pointed out the other night that they're acually funded almost entirely by MoveAmericaForward.org, which I got a kick out of. Anyway, what I want to know from these fucking mental giants is this:
Does anyone actually seriously think that the terrorists were just about to pack up and go home, give up the jihad and all that, right before Cindy came onto the scene?
Does anybody really think that al-Zarqawai was considering calling the whole thing off and going back to a promising career in theoretical physics, but then he heard there was a white Christian woman in Texas who was protesting the president, and that gave him the reassurance needed to continue the fight?
Seriously, what the fuck? Like there was a whole bunch of terrorists sitting on the fence about whether or not they really want to go all the way from Syria or Saudi Arabia to Iraq to fight the Americans, and they were really wondering about it, and Cindy's protest just pushed them right over the edge, and now they're learning how to make car bombs? No! They don't fucking care! The asshole wingnuts are just trying to smear Cindy the only fucking way that they know how, by making her unpatriotic and a supporter of terrorism.
I'm looking forward to watching Congressional Republicans in 2006. They'll be trying to distance themselves from Iraq, and you'll see the personality cult that Bush has created turn rabidly against any Republican that tries to break from Bush. It's already happened with Hagel. It'll be great fun to watch. We may think Democrats aren't unified enough on the war issue, but just wait till you see the Republicans split on it. Bush has built up a religion based on worship of himself, melding politics and religion. We're going to see vicious conflict between the fundamentalist Republicans and the secular Republicans. And it will be gret to see.
So let these fuckers attack Cindy all they want. There will be a reckoning for them at a later date, their words will come back to haunt them, and they're only driving the few remaining coherent people left in their cause away from it, and pissing off the majority of the people in this country who agree with Cindy. These blathering idiots are giving us 2006 and 2008.
Unlike many people, the author here is actually in Iraq, and he's making a pretty clear point that the guerrillas could give a fuck what Cindy Sheehan says. Bush is the only one that matters and he's making their job easier.
Jim Wolcott quotes the following nonsense from Rich Lowry
He laments on NRO: "Invariably, whenever columnists like myself write in support of the Iraq war without having served in the military there, letters flood in deriding us as 'chicken hawks.' How can writers support the war without fighting in it themselves? these letter writers ask, although usually not so politely."
He has an answer for his hecklers, and a lame answer it is too.
"If only members of the military — who are overwhelmingly conservative — were considered competent to decide the nation’s posture on matters of war and peace, we would have an even more forward-leaning foreign policy. I’m comfortable letting the 82nd Airborne decide what we do about anti-American rogue states. Are opponents of the war?"
First of all, conservative or not, it is difficult to imagine that the US military leadership on its own would be as avid on invading and occupying other countries as the neoconservative architects of World War IV, of which Iraq is but one theater. Who do you think would be more likely to press for preemptive war, General Tommy Franks, who knows what the logistics, manpower, and materiel demands would be, or former undersecretary of defense Doug Feith, "the dumbest fucking man on the planet"?
I suspect Dumbfuck would be the more forward forward-leaner.
Moreover, perhaps Lowry was absent when they taught this in school, but the 82nd Airborne doesn't "decide" what the US does about rogue states. The guys and gals of the 82nd don't wake up in their barracks one morning and kibbitz amongst themselves. "What the hell, maybe it's time we took out Iraq. Let's get our gear together and requisition a transport plane, treat ourselves to a few kickass months in the Sunni triangle."
The 82nd Airborne goes where the Pentagon decides it should go, and that strategic decision is made by the civilian leadership. When the quality of the civilian leadership is corroded by arrogance, ignorance, and ideology, it is a formula for catastrophe.
Mr. Lowry, the staff of the 82nd Airborne's job, as they would tell you, is to decide how to go some place, not why to go. I'm sure, since every senior officer has a masters or a doctorate, they can explain the rational for war.
But the difference between them and you is simple: they risk their lives to impliment their decisions, and you risk a boil.
The military is overwhelmingly apolitical, not conservative. That's a myth created by polling which doesn't ask about non-voters. No, they are not raging liberals in the officer ranks for the most part, but neither are they fans of people like Rich Lowry who would send them to die for fantasies of empire.
Agius of the blog, Neat Things, stood at the entrance of a College Republican meeting and attempted to recruit soldiers to fight in Our Leader's Glorious Iraq Adventure. He was quickly met by the Official Guardian of College Republican Honor (he keeps the honor in his wallet next to the condom he hopes to use someday), who berated him for his insensitivity and prevented him from continuing his recruitment efforts.
CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 27 -- They arrived in thousands from all corners of the country, asserting their right to protest in the name of war and peace near President Bush's ranch.
It was almost 100 in the shade, but the temperature in this dusty prairie town felt far higher, with protesters of wildly differing views and temperaments packing into narrow roads and small open spaces. Some came to party, some came to weep, a small number came spoiling for a fight -- police said there were two reports of assaults.
This weekend is the culmination of the standoff between Bush and war protester Cindy Sheehan, who arrived 21 days ago. She came asking Bush to meet with her, even though he had done so before, to discuss the war. Her protest snowballed, with the arrival of Sheehan sympathizers and then pro-war demonstrators. Both sides planned major rallies over the weekend because it is the last one before Bush ends his vacation and Sheehan leaves.
Chief Donnie Tidmore, head of the seven-member Crawford police force estimated that 8,500 protesters had descended on his town.
In three weeks, Sheehan, who lost her 24-year-old son, Army Spec. Casey Sheehan, in Iraq last year, has become the face of an invigorated antiwar movement. She has drawn praise from scores of supporters as well as condemnation from conservatives who believe she is motivated by a political agenda that dishonors fallen soldiers.
"This is America standing up and saying this is enough. Mr. Bush, you always said that if you are not for us, you are against us. Well, Mr. Bush, we are against you," she said to a standing ovation at a rally of her supporters.
"Why are we allowing him to continue to kill our kids, because he's killed so many already?" she asked. She then invited the crowd to turn toward Bush's ranch and chant "Not one more" -- not one more death -- 10 times so that the president might hear.
Her protest, timed to coincide with Bush's vacation and the usual news vacuum in August, mirrors the country's increasing fractiousness over the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq. Sheehan has said that if she fails to get a second audience with Bush before her self-imposed deadline of Wednesday, she will lead a bus tour to Washington, where she says she will set up a permanent vigil.
The pro-war protesters can come for a day or so, but Cindy Sheehan isn't going anywhere, except to Washington.
One day, and not too far in the future, people will be appologizing to Sheehan for attacking her, because they will see that she's right.
Because things in Iraq are about to get a lot worse.
By Maggie Mulvihill Saturday, August 27, 2005 - Updated: 09:19 AM EST
Gov. Mitt Romney, who has comforted the grieving loved ones of soldiers killed in Iraq and promoted National Guard recruitment, yesterday said he has not urged his own sons to enlist - and isn't sure whether they would.
The Herald posed the question as Romney - a potential 2008 White House contender and backer of President Bush's Iraq policy -was honored by the Massachusetts National Guard after he signed a bill extending pay for state workers on active duty.
``No, I have not urged my own children to enlist.I don't know the status of my childrens' potentially enlisting in the Guard and Reserve,`` Romney said, his voice tinged with anger.
Massachusetts residents can enlist in the National Guard up to age 39.Romney's five sons range in age from 24 to 35. Neither the Romney children nor the governor have served in the military, Romney spokeswoman Julie Teer said. More than 1,100 guardsmen and women from Massachusetts are currently serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, a guard spokeswoman said.According to federal statistics, 28 Massachusetts soldiers have been killed so far.
``I don't think you should be so `rah-rah' for a war that you aren't willing to send your own family members to,'' said Rose Gonzalez, 30, of Somerville, whose mother, a state employee, was deployed to Iraq in January.``If he thinks the war is so just and so important and we shouldn't pull out, then he should encourage his own sons to go.``
What? He thinks his sons are too good to wear Army green?
He and the rest of the chickenhawks are going get to that question more and more. Calling for people to join the Guard, but not your family is cheap and hollow.
Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, August 26, 2005; Page A01
In Najaf, 5,000 followers of Sadr, the young Shiite cleric whose Mahdi Army fought U.S. forces twice last year, filled the streets for the funerals of four fighters killed in clashes Wednesday.
Sadr called on his militia to end clashes with rival Shiite fighters that, a day before, had threatened to escalate across Shiite-dominated parts of central and southern Iraq. The fighting, mainly with guns and rocket-propelled grenades, was the heaviest between rival militias since the U.S. invasion and underscored their power and reach.
"I call on all believers, may God grace them by His graciousness, to stop shedding Muslim blood and go back to their homes, may God reward them," Sadr said in a handwritten statement bearing the stamp of his office issued by his followers in Najaf.
The call appeared to end the fighting, but not before Sadr had demonstrated to rivals that his militia could strike virtually anywhere in Shiite areas of the country. But he stood down before endangering his still-tentative presence in the political process. He demonstrated a willingness, too, to engage Iraq's Kurdish president and Shiite prime minister, who appealed for him to end the clashes.
Sadr remains a wild card in the constitutional deliberations. Some Sunni leaders have praised his opposition to federalism, which he says should not be decided under occupation. But he has yet to declare to supporters his stance on the constitution.
He made his point: he can strike anywhere in the South he wants. SCIRI was caught short by that, and the training his boys have been doing.
I think that a Sadr-run Iraq would pretty much be a theocracy in all but name, it wouldn't be an Iranian controlled theocracy in name.
But at the end of the day, unless Sadr is likely to be the last man standing, or his movement is. He's not an Iranian like Sistani, he didn't flee to Iran like the Hakims or the West like the Chalabis and various exiles, his family suffered greviously under Saddam, his father was killed on the street.
Too many Shia have placed personal ambition or ethnic pride over national identity. With Sadr calling for a unified Iraq with some autonomy for Kurdistan, he has a very powerful card to play if he decides to go for power. The Sunnis can talk to him. They can't to SCIRI and Dawa, who still have grudges from the past.
So, he may dither around, and still claim deference to Sistani, but that won't be forever. And contrary to Peter Galbraith, that is still the majority opinion in Iraq, one state.
By Blaine Harden Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, August 26, 2005; Page A01
GREENOUGH, Mont. -- Rich guys have come west to shop. They have bought ranches with soul-stirring scenery and settled in -- usually for just a few weeks a year -- to savor what Montanans proudly call "The Last Best Place."
David Letterman has done it, as have Ted Turner, Tom Brokaw and thousands of non-celebrities. These high-net-worth interlopers have raised eyebrows and land values, but for the most part they have not raised hackles -- until this summer.
That's when word got out that David E. Lipson, a multimillionaire entrepreneur who was once chairman of Frederick's of Hollywood, the racy lingerie company, was not content with merely owning a big spread in Montana. He wants to trademark "The Last Best Place."
If Lipson has his way -- and six of his applications have been all but granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office -- his various companies would have exclusive commercial use of "The Last Best Place" as a brand name. The phrase could be used to sell anything -- real estate, footwear, maybe a fruit drink.
"It is a normal business practice," Lipson said over lunch at his 37,000-acre ranch, called Paws Up, here in the Blackfoot Valley. "You trademark your brands."
Lipson said he would not try to prevent the state of Montana from using "The Last Best Place" in tourist promotion and was merely seeking to protect his business interests from trademark infringement.
"We were amazed that all the rights to 'The Last Best Place' hadn't been trademarked," he said. "It was shocking."
Shock -- together with shoot-that-varmint anger -- is what many Montanans felt when they heard about Lipson's effort to lock up commercial use of a euphonious and wildly popular slogan he did not invent.
"We just don't like big shots coming from someplace else and claiming they own something they don't," said Gov. Brian Schweitzer, a rancher himself, as well as the first Democratic governor of Montana since 1988. "Who is he? The Wizard of Oz? We don't think he is the Wizard of Oz, and I sure as hell ain't the scarecrow!
By DEXTER FILKINS and JAMES GLANZ Published: August 27, 2005
BAGHDAD, Iraq, Saturday, Aug. 27 - Shiite and Kurdish leaders drafting a new Iraqi constitution abandoned negotiations with a group of Sunni representatives on Friday, deciding to take the disputed charter directly to the Iraqi people.
With the American ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, standing by, Shiite and Kurdish representatives said they had run out of patience with the Sunni negotiators, a group that includes several former members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party. The Shiites and Kurds said the Sunnis had refused to budge on a pair of crucial issues that were holding up completion of the constitution.
The Shiites and Kurds reached their decision in meetings that ran late into Friday night, disregarding the Sunnis' pleas for more time.
The Shiite and Kurdish representatives sought to play down the importance of leaving the Sunnis out, saying that with their Baathist links, they had never truly spoken for the broader Sunni population. The Iraqi leaders who drafted the constitution defended it as a document that would ensure the unity of the country and safeguard individual rights.
"The negotiation is finished, and we have a deal," said Ahmad Chalabi, the deputy prime minister and a member of the Shiite leadership. "No one has any more time. It cannot drag on any longer. Most of the Sunnis are satisfied. Everybody made sacrifices. It is an excellent document."
..................
When pressed for the names of Sunnis who would back the draft constitution, representatives of Mr. Chalabi's office suggested Mr. Hassani, the secular Sunni speaker of the National Assembly, and provided his mobile phone number. But Mr. Hassani said he had reached no such conclusion.
"No, no," Mr. Hassani said on his phone. "I never said I am in agreement or disagreement."
In fact, Mr. Hassani said, he still had reservations about several parts of the constitution, including the provisions relating to women's rights. From the Sunni point of view, he said, all that had happened was that the Kurds and the Shiites had sent a new proposal to the Sunnis.
That's a crock of shit.
It boils down to this: Iranian-influenced Shia and seperatist Kurds want to divide the country, in fact, if not in name.
We now have an incontrovertible Bush failure. The Shia seperatists and the Kurds ignored Washington and got their revenge, and the scumbag liar Chalabi is in the mix.
BY OFELIA CASILLAS, DAVID HEINZMANN AND REX W. HUPPKE
Chicago Tribune
CARBONDALE, Ill. - (KRT) - Word that Sgt. Dan Kennings had been killed in Iraq crushed spirits in the Daily Egyptian newsroom. The stocky, buzz-cut soldier befriended by students at the university newspaper was dead, and the sergeant's little girl, a precocious, blond-haired child they'd grown to love, was now an orphan.
They all knew Kodee Kennings' mother died when she was 5. The little girl's fears and frustrations about her father being in harm's way had played out on the pages of the Daily Egyptian for nearly two years, in gut-wrenching letters fraught with misspellings, innocent observations and questions about why daddy wasn't there to chase the monsters from under her bed.
It turns out daddy didn't exist at all.
.................................. Last week Hastings contacted the newsroom and said Kennings had been killed in action in Iraq. A professor in the journalism school who was familiar with the Kennings story called the Tribune last Wednesday, and the newspaper had a reporter on the road to Carbondale, Ill., that night.
However, no details of Kennings' death could be confirmed. His name didn't appear on a Department of Defense Web site that lists U.S. casualties.
By last Thursday, the story was falling apart. Military officials could find no one named Dan Kennings in the Army or any other branch of the service, and no deaths in Iraq fit the time frame Hastings had described.
Hastings refused to speak with the Tribune, saying through Brenner - who had graduated in 2004 and was living with his family in West Chicago - that she wanted to shelter Kodee from the media.
On Saturday morning, cars began pulling into the gravel parking lot of a one-story American Legion hall in Orient, Ill., about 30 miles northeast of Carbondale. Hastings and Kodee got out of a red Grand Am, the little girl wearing an Army uniform shirt that hung down to her knees.
People inside the memorial service said both Hastings and Kodee were in tears. A video showing Dan Kennings in his fatigues speaking with a group of children at a church was playing, and there was a scrapbook filled with pictures of Kennings straddling a tank cannon or huddling with other soldiers.
By Tuesday night, Michael Brenner was pacing nervously outside a Dairy Queen in Cartersville, Ill., talking to Hastings on his cell phone. He handed the phone to a Tribune reporter and Hastings said she would come to the Dairy Queen and listen to questions.
Brenner, 25, said he was still convinced of Kennings' existence and defended Hastings as a woman trying to protect a little girl.
Hastings pulled into the parking lot in the same red car she'd driven to the memorial service. She was told the military was denying Kennings' existence and that the name Colleen Hastings appeared in no public records databases in Illinois. She was asked for a driver's license and for a death certificate for Kennings. With each question, Hastings shook her head no.
And then she drove off into the night.
The Tribune traced the license plate of Hastings' car, and by Wednesday afternoon, a reporter was outside a home in Marion, Ill., looking for a woman named Jaimie Reynolds.
Reynolds agreed to talk.
Sitting on the back porch of her house wearing a maroon, long-sleeved Southern Illinois University shirt, her face flush from crying, Reynolds admitted she had pretended to be Colleen Hastings. She said Dan Kennings was invented, and those who met him had actually met a friend of hers who agreed to play the role.
She said, and the Tribune confirmed, that she was a broadcast journalism student at Southern Illinois. She graduated in 2004, putting her there alongside the very people she was deceiving.
Reynolds acknowledged the little girl actually is the daughter of friends, and said she persuaded the parents to let her bring the child regularly to Carbondale by saying she was filming a documentary about a soldier killed in Iraq.
"We told her it was for a movie," Reynolds said.
Reynolds said the scheme was Brenner's idea.
"Mike is my best friend," she said. "In the last couple of years, he's had a hard time with his career. He asked me if I would help him out. I said I would. It just got a little bigger than he told me it would. I went with it because supposedly he was my best friend. This needs to be over with. I don't want to lie anymore. He just wouldn't let it go."
She also said she fell in love with Brenner, making it that much harder for her to stop the lie.
Brenner denied Reynolds' accusation and said her claims were outrageous. .......................
As for Brenner, the director of the Southern Illinois journalism school said he supports the young reporter.
"Just from knowing him personally, I don't have any sense that this is something that he would have done," said Walter Jaehnig, who also teaches an ethics course at the university.
Jaehnig said the Daily Egyptian would be publishing an apology regarding its coverage of Dan and Kodee Kennings. He said the university is embarrassed by the ruse, but hopes to use it as an opportunity to teach.
"I think my other concern here," he said, "is that we find a way to ensure that this incident is a learning experience for our present students and that they understand the importance of fact checking and verification of everything they write."
In her home in Indiana on Thursday, Caitie reflected on Jaimie Reynolds, the woman who over the past two years had become like a "big sister" to her.
"I feel sad for her," Caitie said. "And I feel like she betrayed me."
I think the woman is mentally ill, myself. While people suggest the two could have cooked it up, and that may be true, I think she's ill regardless, and now wants to throw blame off her. Blaming Mike Brenner is easy, but unlikely, since she was the main agent in all the events.
It could be a scheme of both of them, but to need that kind of attention is, well, sick.
Here is one of the articles published by the Daily Egyptian (from Google, they scrubbed them all)
redgus: Gus says: To read more about Kodee go to: American refugee and 50 minutes of hell
Editors Note: Due to popular demand, Kenningsology, which ran weekly in the summer, is back. It will run every Thursday featuring the thoughts of 8-year-old Kodee Kennings, including a mini-update on her condition and the latest on her father, Dan Kennings, and his experiences in Iraq. For those not familiar with Kodee's story, follow a link on the dailyegyptian.com voices page for background.
Kodee has been doing well since the Knoxville incident (see website) and continues to adjust to life away from her father, Dan Kennings, who is stationed in Mosul, Iraq, with the 101st Airborne Division.
According to some of his friends, morale is not particularly high, but he takes solace in letters and phone calls home. Calling home is rare for Kennings. It costs him $2 a minute.
(For anyone wishing to send Dan Kennings letters, his e-mail address, which he is able to check periodically (weekly if he?s lucky), is dbkennings@yahoo.com.)
He called the DAILY EGYPTIAN a few days ago and said he is doing fine. He sounded upbeat, though he desperately wants to leave Iraq. It is a situation he will never get used to.
"I wouldn't say I'm used to it," he said of the volatile situation surrounding him. "I'd say I'm kind of immune to it, but not used to it."
He had called the DE wanting to talk to the people his daughter regularly interacts with because he knows, as we all do here at the DE, that Kodee is no stranger to the SIU Communications Building.
She has become a normal part of life in the DE newsroom, regularly calling and dropping by. Kodee started a Nerf-gun war in the newsroom a few weeks ago that lasted more than an hour, one of many things she has done to keep the newsroom light-hearted. She wrote the following Kenningsology on the DE:
-The D.E.
The D.E. is a newspaper. It is the bestest newspaper and I like it. Lots of people work for it and they are rely smart. They make the paper every say but not weekends.
I have a hole bunch of frends at the D.E. They are Michael, Jens, Jack, Lance, Zack, Jerry, Ethan, Adam, Amber, Geoff, Shane, Moose and Todd.
Michael use to rite sports but traded it in for being the editor. He's the boss of the newsroom. He's kind of like the Vise Presadent. He just comeands and fixs storys. He wins awards.
Jens and Zack rite about football. They get to sit in the press box rily high up so they can see all the game. Then they rite about what they see and use rily big words. They got a vocabulary that's genyus.
Ethan rites about golf. They should give him something else to rite because golf is boring.
Todd has sports editor job. He makes the jernailists rite. Adam covers volleyball. They lose a lot so his stories are always the same.
Jack makes people give him mony. He sells space for adds and then wants mony. He keeps the paper a flote becus its free. Jack rites a colem and tell people his way of thinking. He use to be a soldier.
Lance is the general manager and hires people. He antekes (Kodee's word for critiques) the newspaper every day and finds mistakes. I don't think he finds many becus Michael still has his job.
Jerry is Jack's boss. He takes the mony to the bank.
Moose (Moustafa) is a guy. He rites about September 11th. He rites other stuff to.
Geoff used to rite but quit. He has to many jobs and a girlfriend. He's not French thow. (Kodee believes anyone with a girlfriend will eventually French kiss her, thus becoming French.) He's a copy editor and he looks for mistakes. He's also a kind of boss.
Amber is a girl riter. She ries lots of stuff. She rites about drugs.
These views do not necessarily reflect those of the DAILY EGYPTIAN.
That sounds like an immitation of a seven year old. In my experience, they don't use words like bestest and spell write rite. She mispells money? Really? In cute ways? This is a second grader. She can spell girlfriend and not money? Come on. My niece is eight, her spelling at seven wasn't this bad.
But then, I'm a 40 year old writer and not a kid on a college newspaper, but I would hope my bullshit detectors were a little better than that back then.
Two and a half years after the music business lined up behind the chief executive of Apple, Steven P. Jobs, and hailed him and his iTunes music service for breathing life into music sales, the industry's allegiance to Mr. Jobs has eroded sharply.
Mr. Jobs is now girding for a showdown with at least two of the four major record companies over the price of songs on the iTunes service.
If he loses, the one-price model that iTunes has adopted - 99 cents to download any song - could be replaced with a more complex structure that prices songs by popularity. A hot new single, for example, could sell for $1.49, while a golden oldie could go for substantially less than 99 cents.
Music executives who support Mr. Jobs say the higher prices could backfire, sending iTunes' customers in search of songs on free, unauthorized file-swapping networks.
Signs of conflict over pricing issues are increasingly apparent. This month, Apple started its iTunes service in Japan without songs from the two major companies - Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group - leaving artists like Avril Lavigne, Beyoncé and Rob Thomas out of the catalog because the companies refused to license their music to iTunes, executives involved in the talks said.
That gap in the Japanese music market, the world's second biggest, is considered a harbinger of what may await American consumers as the contracts that record companies have with Apple in the United States come up for renewal early next year.
Mr. Jobs in the past has cast himself as an innovator battling established media giants like Disney and Microsoft. But these days, allies and adversaries both agree, he has more power online than Wal-Mart has in the bricks-and-mortar world.
Apple commands an estimated 75 percent of digital music sales, and roughly 80 percent of sales of MP3 players, with its market-leading iPod. While many still admire Mr. Jobs's touch - iTunes quickly established a market for paid downloads after the industry wasted years on misfires - he also inspires enmity or jealousy from others in the industry, which is back in a slump after a modest rebound last year.
Mr. Jobs' vision of simple, uniform pricing for songs and a policy of limiting Apple's music to Apple's devices are increasingly under attack.
"He'd like to continue to define the rules of the game," said Paul Vidich, a special adviser to America Online and former executive vice president of the Warner Music Group. Mr. Vidich said the digital music market, while growing, was still a fraction of the music business, but added, "I just think the music companies are now at a point where there's too much money on the table not to insist" that Apple accept variable prices.
"The question is," Mr. Vidich said, "what do they want the profile of the business to look like going forward?"
A sore point for some music executives is the fact that Apple generates much more money selling iPod players than it does as a digital music retailer, leading to complaints that Mr. Jobs is profiting more from tracks downloaded to fill the 21 million iPods sold so far than are the labels that produced the recordings.
Andrew Lack, the chief executive of Sony BMG, discussed the state of the overall digital market at a media and technology conference three months ago and said that Mr. Jobs "has got two revenue streams: one from our music and one from the sale of his iPods."
"I've got one revenue stream," Mr. Lack said, joking that it would require a medical professional to locate. "It's not pretty."
In a more conciliatory statement yesterday, Mr. Lack said: "I look forward to sitting down with Steve in the fall when we are scheduled to discuss Apple and Sony BMG's relations going forward. I think Steve has done a great job on behalf of the industry and in the months ahead we have lots of challenges to conquer together."
There are two problems here, one, the limiting of iTunes to Apple, which can be changed, and the pricing, which is stupid.
Remember, Gnutella is widely available for anyone who wants to get music, they don't need iTunes.
The .99 cent price is high as is, to go higher is to risk killing the service and that, ultimately may be the plan. I don't think the record companies like iTunes any more than they liked Napster. At the end of the day, they want digital music to go away. And if not go away, they want to sell the music to the consumers for as high as $3.49 a song, which was proposed earlier.
Yes, it's madness, but the record companies are as visionary as Brehznev's Kremlin.
Even in the shadow of recent violence, two Arabs have become heroes of Israel's surprising soccer team. Next Saturday, in Switzerland, Israel could all but clinch a World Cup berth in the nation's most important sporting event in three decades
By Grant Wahl
In Israel, in order to be a realist you must believe in miracles. -- David Ben-Gurion, former Israeli prime minister
On the night the Arab saved Israel, it only took one magical kick, a low-driven strike that in less volatile precincts might have been called a missile or a bomb or a daisy-cutter. Four years ago Abbas Suan was a minor league soccer player who moonlighted in construction to support his family. Today, at 29, he's the most popular Arab in Israel, a smiling McDonald's pitchman and the namesake of uncounted newborns, not least because of that remarkable shot on a March night in Tel Aviv's Ramat-Gan Stadium. As Israel's World Cup hopes were fading, Suan unleashed a scorching 22-yard goal in the 90th minute, giving the home side a 1-1 tie against Ireland and keeping alive the most compelling underdog story of the 2006 Cup.
On the night the Arab saved Israel, an entire World Cup-crazy nation rejoiced. From Haifa to Nazareth to the Negev, one in three Israelis watched on television as Suan dropped to his knees, kissed the ground and thanked Allah just before his teammates -- all but one of them Jewish -- smothered him in a gang tackle of ecstasy. In Sakhnin, Suan's hometown, the soccer mecca of Arab Israel, devout Muslims clogged the streets, honked their horns and filled the sky with fireworks. In Tel Aviv 40,000 Israelis exulted behind handmade signs (noAfear, ultrasAisrael, israAhell) and turned the sold-out national stadium into a blue-and-white cauldron, the air filled with confetti, crepe paper and rapturous noise.
For one glorious instant all the divisive voices were silent: the Jewish extremists in Jerusalem who'd unfurled a banner reading abbas suan, you don't represent us; the Islamic extremists on Al-Jazeera who'd accused him of collaborating with "the Zionist enemy"; all those lip-readers, Arabs and Jews alike, who stare at his mouth like detectives (ah ha!) during the national anthem he refuses to sing. "The greatest moment of my life," proclaimed Suan of his role in the team's comeback, which he celebrated by literally wrapping himself in the Star of David flag.
Then, four nights later in Tel Aviv -- can you believe it! -- an Arab saved Israel again. This time the team's other prominent Muslim, 31-year-old midfielder Walid Badir, headed home the equalizer in the dying minutes to salvage a 1-1 tie against mighty France, and the celebrations raged once more. Imagine: Israel, tiny Israel, undefeated in seven qualifying games, is on the brink of reaching its first World Cup in 36 years -- this one to be held in Germany, the most symbolic of venues -- and two of the men are Arabs who've heard racist taunts their entire careers. "My biggest dream is to get to the World Cup," says Suan, whose team can take a giant step toward clinching a berth with a win at Switzerland on Sept. 3. "After that, I don't know if there will be anything left to dream about."
During the violence of the second intifada, the Palestinian uprising that began in 2000 and lasted for five years, right-wing Israeli nationalists had an exclusionary slogan for the country's 1.2 million Arab citizens, Palestinians who make up nearly one-fifth of the population: No Arabs, no terrorism. In the days after Suan and Badir saved Israel, a new chant echoed inside a Tel Aviv stadium: No Arabs, no World Cup.
In the more liberal quarters of Israel's Jewish majority and Hebrew media, the reaction was by turns festive and ironic. goyim equal golim! (Non-Jews equal goals!), rang one headline, while wry cultural commentators joked after Suan's equalizing strike, "Finally an Israeli Arab gets equality." The head of one civil rights group went so far as to suggest that Suan and Badir's goals could bring increased respect to Arab members of the Knesset.
But many Jews would rather not focus on the goal scorers' ethnicity. "We have Jewish players and we have Arab players, but they are all Israeli players," says Itche Menachem, the president of the Israeli Soccer Federation. "Soccer can be a bridge to coexistence. It's a bridge that we've started building; we're on it, and we'll complete it. Someday the time will come when an Arab scores a goal, but they won't say he's an Arab. They'll just give the name, and he will be another member of the team." ................................
It won't be easy. Only the group's top finisher will qualify outright, with the runner-up advancing to a playoff with another group's second-place team for one of Europe's four remaining berths. Ireland has the most favorable remaining schedule, its two tough matches both coming at home. The Swiss have the best chance to play the spoiler, with three of their final four games against the Big Four. And the underperforming French will no doubt be buoyed by the return of Zinedine Zidane, Lilian Thuram and Claude Makelele, proven stars who've ended their international retirements to try to save Les Bleus.
Israel has nowhere near the experience of those teams, and yet there's something special, maybe even historic, about this outfit. "In previous years, whenever Israel was involved in crucial matches, the fans always knew they would crack under the pressure," says Nir Kipnis, a longtime sportswriter for the magazine Blazer. "This team is different. They have more character." Win in Basel on Sept. 3, and the Israelis could begin planning for Germany, or at least a spot in the European playoffs. (Only two matches against the winless Faeroes would remain.) Tie, and because of their poor goal differential, their chances would be slim. Lose, and they would effectively be out.
Israel's press, conditioned by years of dashed hopes, is forecasting more heartbreak. Yet Shpigler, the only Israeli to have scored in a World Cup, says he has already imagined himself wearing a new suit to Israel's opener in Germany next year, already imagined sitting between Franz Beckenbauer and Pelé, his old New York Cosmos pals, in the VIP tribune. Mathematically, a tie in Basel won't eliminate Israel from contention, but.... "I realize that to get to the World Cup we have to win in Switzerland, and in order to win we have to be daring," Shpigler says. "It will be hard, but we can take them by surprise. You know, Basel is a place where wonderful things happen to us in history."
In a tale already rife with symbols, consider one more: Israel's day of reckoning will take place in the same city where, in 1897, Theodor Herzl convened the first Zionist Congress, the body that proposed the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine. Pessimists scoffed at that notion too. "So, you see, we are playing a home game in Basel!" Shpigler bellows, a smile lighting up his face. "I always say every qualifying campaign, now we are going to the World Cup again, but I was never right until today! Be careful, Brazil!"
............................ What would you do if you were Abbas Suan? Would you dip your toe into the pool of protest, knowing that once you go there you can't come back? Would you tell your family's tragic story? How your father, as a boy, fled advancing Israeli forces with his family during the war in 1948. How they left behind their house, their furniture, their prized 175 acres of land. How they settled in Sakhnin, a poor Arab town, only to have your grandfather die prematurely, leaving a widow and eight children who worked 16-hour days to survive. How your father, now 68 and living in your house, can still show visitors the deeds to the family's land and wonder, 57 years later, if there will ever be reparations.
Would you use your platform as a sportsman? Or would it be wiser, safer, just to say nothing?
What would you do if you were Walid Badir? Would you dip your toe into the pool of protest? Would you tell your family's tragic story? How your grandfather Salim Ahmed was shot dead by Israeli police. How, in 1956, he and 46 other Arab peasants were killed in the notorious massacre at Kafr-Kassem. Would you use your platform as a sportsman? Or would it be wiser, safer, just to say nothing?
Two players, two triumphant symbols. So why, among Israeli Arabs, is only one of them beloved?
Walid Badir stands and fidgets, warily eyeing his questioner. For three weeks Badir has politely refused interview requests. The only reason he's here now is that Grant has waved him over to the sideline before a national-team training session. Only a couple of questions, Badir says, and only under one condition: "I never answer questions about politics. That's how I am. That's how I've always been."
Is there a reason that you don't want to talk about what it means to be an Israeli Arab? A reason you don't want to talk about your grandfather? "No reason," Badir replies. "I don't want to answer these questions. I am a soccer player, and that's that."
Abbas Suan glances at the red light on the reporter's tape recorder. For months after his goal against Ireland, Suan refused to speak out on Arab Israeli issues, acutely aware of the weight his words carry. But now, ever so slowly, he is beginning to dip that toe. "I represent most of the Arab problems in Israel, problems of land and discrimination," he says. "For all the Israeli people I want to emphasize that we can live together, but [the Jewish majority] has to listen to our problems."
Later, the subject turns to his family's old property near Beit She'an. "We want to talk about the fact that we want our land back," Suan says. "The family has 175 acres. The cemetery is still there. Many things of our family are still there."
Suan is asked why he stands for but doesn't sing the Israeli national anthem, which hails "the Jewish spirit" and "the land of Zion." He smiles, looks skyward and chooses his response with precision: "Have you seen the words?"
...........................
The names may be Arab and Jewish, but for one glorious instant the players are not Arabs or Jews. They're just 22 men on a training field, 22 soccer dreamers wearing the same blue uniform, and above all, on the eve of perhaps their finest hour, 22 Israelis.
Like the nation it represents, Israeli soccer has already overcome a labyrinth of obstacles in its brief history. Because most Arab states refuse to take the same field as Israel, the team had to hopscotch among a Risk board of regions -- Asia, Europe and even Oceania -- before finally joining Europe in 1992. From 2002 to '04 the national team had to play its home games abroad after soccer's governing bodies declared Israel a "security risk." And, of course, across the world there has been chronic racism directed toward Israel's players, Jews and Arabs alike.
Compared to those challenges, a match at Switzerland is nothing. For a team that has achieved the unthinkable -- going toe-to-toe with Europe's soccer elite, rallying Israel's once-jaded fans, uniting Arabs and Jews -- how hard could it be for these men to prevail in one 90-minute game?
Then again, you can't help but wonder, maybe they've already won.
Unlike American sports, soccer is both national drama and athletic event. Despite the racism the Arab players face playing in Israel, it is, unfortunately the same for minority players throughout Europe.
Where racism and American sports are fairly uncommon, in Europe (where Israel plays), nasty racial comments are hardly unknown, and dealing with them varies from silent agony to outspoken challenges.
The thing which is so positive here is that there is acceptance of the players for their talent and that winning beats politics.
The thing about Christopher Hitchens is that no matter how wrong or drunk he is, he always sounds like he's making sense. It's an impenetrable articulateness that makes him a compelling talking head even when he's talking out of his ass. He doesn't often fail to get the last word, but Jon Stewart just beat him to it. After a sublimely cordial conversation that began with Stewart asking Hitchens to explain "why I am wrong about Iraq," Hitchens bristled to Stewart's suggestion that the war was just "the British and Churchillian method that we'll just go into the Middle East and we'll redraw the map."
Stewart: The people who say we shouldn't fight in Iraq aren't saying it's our fault. . . That is the conflation that is the most disturbing. . .
Hitch: Don't you hear people saying. . .
Stewart: You hear people saying a lot of stupid [bleep]. . . But there are reasonable disagreements in this country about the way this war has been conducted, that has nothing to do with people believing we should cut and run from the terrorists, or we should show weakness in the face of terrorism, or that we believe that we have in some way brought this upon ourselves. . .
Hitch: [Sputter]
Stewart: They believe that this war is being conducted without transparency, without credibility, and without competence...
Hitch: I'm sorry, sunshine... I just watched you ridicule the president for saying he wouldn't give. . .
Stewart: No, you misunderstood why. . . . That's not why I ridiculed the president. He refuses to answer questions from adults as though we were adults and falls back upon platitudes and phrases and talking points that does a disservice to the goals that he himself shares with the very people needs to convince.
[Audience erupts in applause]
Hitch: You want me to believe you're really secretly on the side of the Bush administration. . .
Stewart: I secretly need to believe he's on my side. He's too important and powerful a man not to be.
Hitch: [Sputter, return to talking about his latest book.]
Have never seen Hitch rattled like this. Really. Stirring. Go, Jon. Oh, and ass-fucking, boobies, gin, etc.
People often forget that the Daily Show is a comedy show, and wonder why he doesn't rip people like Trent Lott and Rick Santorum new assholes. Mocking a politician is easy to do, besides, when you get hostile, they get defensive. It's easier to mock them gently than to hammer them and scream about impeachment. It is a comedy show, not Meet the Press, except Jon Stewart make Timmah look like a dolt.
It's easy to make fun of pols, but ususally, when Chris "Kim Philby" Hitchens goes on TV, he waxes his hosts. C-SPAN is like a feeding ground to him, on most shows, they bow to his overt intelligence and boozy hostility.
Only problem for our Kim is that Stewart is a professional drunk handler. So when Hitchens gets nasty, Stewart knows how to bitch slap him. Expertly.
Hitch got some boos when he staggered out, disheveled and bearded. But then, he was jumped by a no-bullshit Stewart.
This has happened most famously on Crossfire, but when Stewart stops joking and drops his voice, it's not pretty to be on the other end. I mean, Stewart was shortlisted for years as the next great talk show host, the Daily Show was an opportunity to make something his own and not be tied to that silly chat format. The reason they do interviews is to cut the writers some slack. 22 minutes of comedy a day is hard.
Instead of him making jokes and dropping in smart questions, he came out hard and not looking for jokes, but answers. If you do too much of that, it becomes tiresome, and he can sometimes add an edge to his voice like with Bernie Goldberg, but he was taking no prisoners with our Kim. Hitch was getting ready to liberal bash and Stewart cut him off at the pass. Instead of joking around, he threw down a pretty serious gauntlet and Hitch, used to softballs, was tossed back.
Keep in mind, Stewart is a commedian, not a reporter. The whole idea of him asking questions to pols and pundits should be silly, but it isn't. I mean, it's cute when he forgets that Kate Hudson and Gywneth Paltrow are Jewish. I've never seen a more surprised look on his face when than when she wished him Happy Chanukah, and he was dumbfounded, until he realized that she was half-Jewish.
But when he gets someone like Hitchens, who, frankly, I was surprised who came on the show, like with Tucker Carlson, all the bullshit stops.
Comics become successful because they have a quick wit and are intelligent. People forget that with Stewart at times, which is why he's able to sandbag the arrogant. So when Stewart gets serious, people are surprised. Like he has no right to be intelligent behind the humor.
Atrios points out this post from bareback Andy on how great the Bell Curve, which suggested, to the scorn of everyone, that niggers are stupid with big dicks and gooks are smart with small dicks and white folks in the middle. Sounds a lot like Dr. Lynn from our previous post, no?
CHARLES ON LARRY: A must-read from Charles Murray. One of my proudest moments in journalism was publishing an expanded extract of a chapter from "The Bell Curve" in the New Republic before anyone else dared touch it. I published it along with multiple critiques (hey, I believed magazines were supposed to open rather than close debates) - but the book held up, and still holds up as one of the most insightful and careful of the last decade. The fact of human inequality and the subtle and complex differences between various manifestations of being human - gay, straight, male, female, black, Asian - is a subject worth exploring, period. Liberalism's commitment to political and moral equality for all citizens and human beings is not and should not be threatened by empirical research into human difference and varied inequality. And the fact that so many liberals are determined instead to prevent and stigmatize free research and debate on this subject is evidence ... well, that they have ceased to be liberals in the classic sense. I'm still proud to claim that label - classical liberal. And I'm proud of those with the courage to speak truth to power, as Murray and Herrnstein so painstakingly did. Pity Summers hasn't been able to match their courage. But recalling the tidal wave of intolerance, scorn and ignorance that hit me at the time, I understand why.
- 12:52:00 PM
Andy, no, you are a racist.
If you agree with Charles Murray, you are a racist.
The Bell Curve is tripe not based in science but racial hatred and eugenics, the science of nonsense. It isn't free research, it isn't a liberal idea unless you think Julius Streicher is a liberal.
I know you have some fantasies about being taken by black men, with their large penises, but when you consider that geneticists find race a fluid concept, how can you endorse this kind of racism one step above Segregation or Mongrelization?
Easy, because you're a clueless white man. That's why. You don't have to pay for your ideas, while 1/3rd of America does. I mean, it's really a dodge in the end.
Murray is the intellectual gloss for racial hatred and cruel indifference. If niggers are born stupid, why help them? After all, you can't help them, right?
Here are the words of another eugenicst which sound familiar
Any crossing of two beings not at exactly the same level producesa medium between the level of the two parents. This means: the offspring will probably stand higher than the racially lower parent, but not as high as the higher one. Consequently, it will later succumb in the struggle against the higher level. Such mating is contrary to the will of Nature for a higher breeding of all life. The precondition for this does not lie in associating superior and inferior, but in the total victory of the former. The stronger must dominate and not blend with the weaker, thus sacrificing his own greatness. Only the born weakling can view this as cruel, but he after all is only a weak and limited man; for if this law did not prevail, any conceivable higher development of organic living beings would be unthinkable.
The consequence of this racial purity, universally valid inNature, is not only the sharp outward delimitation of the various races,but their uniform character in themselves. The fox is always a fox, the goose a goose, the tiger a tiger, etc., and the difference can lie at most in the varying measure of force, strength, intelligence, dexterity, endurance,etc., of the individual specimens. But you will never find a fox who inhis inner attitude might, for example, show humanitarian tendencies towardgeese, as similarly there is no cat with a friendly inclination toward mice.
Therefore, here, too, the struggle among themselves arises less from inner aversion than from hunger and love. In both cases, Nature looks on calmly, with satisfaction, in fact. In the struggle for daily bread all those who are weak and sickly or less determined succumb, while the struggle of the males for the female grants the right or opportunity to propagate only to the healthiest. And struggle is always a means for improving a species' health and power of resistance and, therefore, a cause of its higher development.
If the process were different, all further and higher development would cease and the opposite would occur. For, since the inferior always predominates numerically over the best, if both had the same possibility of preserving life and propagating, the inferior would multiply so much more rapidly that in the end the best would inevitably be driven into the background, unless a correction of this state of affairs were undertaken. Nature does just this by subjecting the weaker part to such severe living conditions that by them alone the number is limited, and by not permitting the remainder to increase promiscuously, but making a new and ruthless choice according to strength and health.
No more than Nature desires the mating of weaker with stronger individuals, even less does she desire the blending of a higher with a lower race, since, if she did, her whole work of higher breeding, over perhaps hundreds of thousands of years, night be ruined with one blow.
BAGHDAD - As its armored Humvees rumbled west along Route Mets in northern Baghdad, the ill-fated convoy sensed something was wrong.
"I remember we all mentioned there were no Iraqi police out. We were like, 'Oh man, that's never a good sign,'" said Daniel Barr, 33, a sergeant with New York's Fighting 69th.
"It was still an hour and a half before curfew. It seemed like the neighborhood knew something."
The soldiers were in the same meat market a week earlier, buying watermelon from a local vendor. But now it was 10:45 p.m., and the darkness was compounded by the start of a nasty sandstorm that would later shut down Baghdad.
Nobody saw the powerful platter charge hidden in a bag and tucked beside a vending stall.
In a horrifying flash, the bomb exploded just 16 feet from the convoy's lead Humvee. Molten chunks of steel and copper ripped through the vehicle's turret and right rear passenger door.
The driver, Spec. Brian Lopez of Queens, took a hail of shrapnel in his neck and arm and struggled to control the burning vehicle as it tore through several meat stands and slammed into a building at 30 mph.
The Brooklyn-born gunner, Sgt. Anthony Kalladeen, 26, and backseat rider Pfc. Hernando Rios, 29, of Woodside, Queens, died instantly.
It was Aug. 7, a month before the group was scheduled to return home from a year-long tour.
"I remember Kalladeen and Rios, there wasn't a sound out of them," recalled Barr, who was sitting in the front passenger seat and temporarily knocked unconscious by the blast. "Lopez was wandering around the vehicle in pain. I know I was in pain. ... The next thing I know I'm running down the road trying to load Kalladeen into a vehicle, but the door wouldn't close."
"It was rough," he said with vacant eyes trained on the dusty earth. "I know I knew they were gone."
.........................
They said Kalladeen, who was born in Brooklyn and grew up in Yonkers, was a talented wrestler, always the first to report for patrols and quick to spend his own money on photographs and other gifts for Iraqi families.
They remembered their Queens buddy Rios as an avid reader and father of three who loved to eat and once got himself stuck trying on the life preserver at Camp Liberty's pool.
Johnson reflected on their loss.
"I'm hurt, upset, mad," he said. "It's a bad feeling to make it [11 months] and then take losses like this. It's frustrating."
Since it arrived in Iraq last October, New York's Fighting 69th has lost 19 men under its command.
The area in northwestern Baghdad where Kalladeen and Rios were killed recently has seen an uptick in violence.
"In the last few weeks we've identified two new terror cells in our area," said Lt. Ronnie Maloney, 34.
"When we came here, we all knew there was the possibility something bad could happen. Still it's upsetting," said Sgt. Walter Nichols, 42, a police officer in Niagara Falls who was in the Aug. 7 patrol. "You prepare, plan and know it's possible. But you never expect it to happen to you."
August 26, 2005 -- Here's a guy who's going places — even if the only place he went yesterday was back and forth on 42nd Street.
Enterprising MBA Christopher Barth, fashionably dressed in a sharp suit and tie — not to mention a sandwich board reading "HIRE ME, '05 MBA BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT" — spent the day handing out résumés to likely-looking would-be employers in Midtown.
"I've been trying the traditional methods of getting employment, but nothing so far has come up that's suitable," said Barth, 25.
"My wife, Jamie, and I came up with this idea and I thought, 'Wow, yes, that might work.'
"Almost every vacancy is advertised on the Internet now, and you have to apply for everything via e-mail," he lamented. "No one wants to talk to you directly. It's impossible to make human contact, which makes it difficult to stand out from the crowd when you're trying to get a job.
"I'm prepared to try whatever it takes, and at the end of the day on the streets I head back home and search online."
Barth — who has a BA in Japanese language and literature from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst — is hoping for a career in project management, and is more than happy to start at the bottom.
He graduated from the Metropolitan College of New York with his MBA a month ago, has studied in Japan and is proficient in the language.
He also had temporary stints at Staples and international freight forwarder Round the World Logistics Corp.
"He was a very good employee and I would definitely recommend him," his former boss at Round the World, Alan Li, told The Post.
By the end of the day, Barth, who lives in Brooklyn, had already set up two interviews and been handed nearly a dozen business cards.
But in the end, I doubt he'll get work from this stunt.
Here's a guy with an MBA who clearly has desireable skills, but goes about seeking a job in a wildly inappropriate way.
Why?
You don't know when this guy will get an idea in his head which will embarass you. Someone who would walk around midtown with a sandwich board is one of two things, desperate for work, or needs lots of attention.
Because he has a strong resume otherwise, he speaks Japanese, which, alone, should get you work.
Employers are leery of these sorts of things and his time could be better spent working with a headhunter. Do you know how uncommon Americans with Japanese langhuage skills are? Headhunters have their drawbacks. like the fee, but when you have an MBA and Japanese langauge skills, they may work a lot bteer than monster.com and walking around with a sandwich board.
The article is far more likely to get him a serious interview than his parading around midtown.
Oddly enough, a guy in Texas did the same thing and was told, "you need professional help. Sititng by the highway with a sign, hire me, isn't working".
One of the great misconceptions about work is that if you're just outgoing and eager, someone will hire you. This isn't 1945, they expect professionalism. And given that the kind of job he's looking for will have him dealing with Japanese executives, you want to see him exhibit sharpness and a professional demeanor. Not a penchant for stunts.
I know people will be impressed with his creativeness, but think about this, this guy wants to manage projects. You don't want him to be creative, you want him to follow orders and make sure things get done.
Also, how much respect can you have for a guy begging for work instead of applying intelligently? I mean it makes a nice newspaper story, but you have to wonder....
What is called for here is not genocide, the killing off of the population of incompetent cultures. But we do need to think realistically in terms of the 'phasing out' of such peoples.... Evolutionary progress means the extinction of the less competent. To think otherwise is mere sentimentality.
...
Who can doubt that the Caucasoids and the Mongoloids are the only two races that have made any significant contributions to civilization?
After joining the Nazi party in 1921, Streicher held appointed and elected positions that made him notorious for his crimes against humanity. Evidence did not show that Streicher participated in the plans for war, however. He was a spokesman for the annihilation of the Jewish people. He is quoted as saying “a punitive expedition must come against the Jews in Russia. A punitive expedition which will provide the same fate for them that every murder and criminal must expect: Death sentence and execution. The Jews in Russia must be killed. They must be exterminated root and branch.” He also published “If the danger of the reproduction of that curse of God in the Jewish blood is finally to come to an end, then there is only one way the extermination of that people whose father is the devil.” No defense could justify these remarks!
Count I: Indicted Not Guilty Count II: Indicted Not Guilty Count III: Indicted Guilty Count IV: Indicted Guilty
Sentenced to: Death by hanging
Sauckel was instrumental in the use of slave labor. The evidence overwhelmingly showed Sauckel established labor service in Germany, to which more than 5.000.000 people were subjected. He is quoted as saying “out of five million foreign workers who arrived in Germany not even 200,000 came voluntarily”.
Rosenberg was in charge of the Nazi party while Hitler was in jail. He later took part in plans to attack Norway. He is also held responsible for many of the actions in the occupied Eastern Territories. Rosenberg planned the confiscation of art treasures in France. He is also credited with the invasion of almost 70,000 homes in France in 1941. He knew of and participated in crimes against slave laborers and mass killings of Jewish people. Although he occasionally acknowledged the brutality being used, he continued in his post until the end of the war.
By 1935 Kaltenbrunner was the leader of the Austrian branch of the SS and parts of the Gestapo. He was part of the plans to end the rein of the Austrian government, but he did not appear to be a part of the general plans for war. Rather, Kaltenbrunner was involved with the crimes against humanity. He issued orders against Jewish people, prisoners of war, and slave laborers. He took a leading role in the “final solution”. People under Kaltenbrunner’s command killed over four million Jewish people in concentration camps.
Kaltenbrunner’s defense was that he was under orders involving foreign intelligence and never assumed control of the activities of the SS police. He claims he did not know of the overall plan. This defense only convinced the tribunal that Kaltenbrunner was not part of the plans to wage war.
Frick held numerous positions, including Minister of the Interior, that gave him knowledge of the plans for war. He signed laws and issued orders against many countries and their citizens. He also signed many laws ordering the elimination of Jewish people. He also had knowledge of the torture committed against people in nursing homes, hospitals, and asylums. Although others complained to Frick about the murder of these innocent people, Frick turned his head and allowed it to continue.
Frank held positions such as President of the Academy of German Law until he was dismissed from the position as a result of a dispute with Himmler. He did not play a significant role in the plans for war. He was instrumental in the attacks against Poland, however, and for that he was found guilty. He is quoted as saying “Poland shall be treated like a colony; the Poles will become the slaves of the Greater German World Empire.” This attack was especially violent. He was also a key player in the initial plan to use slave laborers. He oversaw the first ghettos created for Jewish German people.
Frank’s testimony included feelings of guilt for what he did. “A thousand years will pass and the guilt of Germany will not be erased.” He also explained that the police, rather than Frank himself carried out these atrocities. He tried to give the responsibility for his actions to others high in command, but Frank was a willing participant in too many crimes against humanity to put the blame on other people.
The good doctor Lynn should be glad he wasn't born in Germany in 1910, or he migh have shared their fate.
One tough guy. Guess who was in Jordan last week at the request of its king, Abdullah II, leaving, by coincidence, the day before a missile was fired at a U.S. naval vessel? None other than Kerik, who now heads a security firm, called the Kerik Group, which is exploring projects in Jordan, Dubai and Lebanon.
Eight months after his personal life unraveled before the nation following his nomination as director of Homeland Security, Kerik has resurfaced. Although a mystery remains of how he was vetted for the police commissioner's job without filing the proper financial disclosures, it appears no indictment will follow from that or from anything else he allegedly did.
Instead, on Kerik's Web site, there is a picture of him and President George W. Bush, with the presidential quote, "Bernie is a dedicated, innovative reformer who insists on getting results."
Kerik's lawyer Joe Tacopina, whose office houses the Kerik Group, says of him: "He's one of the strongest human beings I have ever met. He spent four years in the Middle East, went to the war zone in Iraq when he had no obligation to do that. It is his nature to be mentally and internally tough. That is who he is.
Levitt would know, but the thing is, with the mob, you never know when an indictement will come or who would rat out someone to save their ass. To be as crooked as Kerik and get away with it would, normally, be stunning, except that the NYPD knew two cops were contract killers for 20 years and couldn't prove it until this summer. So I'm not suprised. Or it could be that the DA or US Attorney's office just doesn't have enough, and newspaper reports aren't enough, to bring an indictment on felony charges.
But crooked? Bernie Kerik is bent. Simple as that, and one day proof will be offered to show that. Guys like him, once on the pad, will stay on the pad until they get busted.
A farm that has been breeding guinea pigs for medical research for more than 30 years is to stop after intimidation by animal rights activists.
The family-run Darley Oaks Farm in Newchurch, Staffordshire, has been hit by a six-year campaign of abuse.
The owners and people connected with the firm have received death threats.
The family said they hoped the decision would prompt the return of the body of their relative Gladys Hammond, whose remains were stolen from a churchyard.
The remains were taken from her grave in nearby Yoxall in October.
Mrs Hammond, who was buried in St Peter's churchyard seven years ago, was the mother-in-law of Christopher Hall, part-owner of the farm.
In a statement, a close relative of Mrs Hammond, who declined to be named, said there was now no reason why her body could not be returned.
"Gladys was a relative of the Halls by marriage only and had no involvement in guinea pig breeding.
"She was a kind, gentle country lady who loved animals. She was also friendly, generous and loving and always put her family first."
I don't get it.
It seems really, really cruel to remove someone's remains over this.
Given the way terrorism laws are being redefined, this kind of activity could well end up with long jail sentences for the people doing it. Because when local cops look at this kind of stuff, oddly enough, they will find it fits under all those new terrorism laws. Governments are really flexible in that way.
What's so silly is that they can just import more guinea pigs anyway.
By Terry M. Neal washingtonpost.com Staff Writer Monday, August 22, 2005; 8:00 AM
................
I asked Army spokeswoman Maj. Elizabeth Robbins for further explanation on the intent of the ads.
"Clearly it was to talk to influencers," she said. She said studies have shown that today's young people yearn to serve their country in one way or another. The problem is that today the people who influence their decisions "are less likely than they were in past generations to recommend [military service]."
Why?
"In part because the economy is strong," said Robbins. "In part because they are concerned about the war. And in part because fewer of them have a direct relationship with the military or have ever served."
So would it be logical to conclude that, if the strong economy is one of the reasons it is more difficult to recruit, the most affluent parents should be the most difficult to reach? After all, their children have more options, including college, than less affluent parents? And if that's true, isn't it somewhat ironic that the military is paying millions of dollars ultimately to influence the behavior of the parents who are among the most likely to be supportive of the war in Iraq?
"I disagree with your premise," Robbins said, arguing that the military is represented strongly across the board by people of all income levels and faces challenges in recruiting at all income levels.
Referring to the Post-Gazette anecdote, she said, "One woman saying stupid things does not a trend make."
Actually, I did have a premise, but it wasn't unshakable. But because neither the Army nor the Defense Department keeps detailed information about the household incomes of the people who join, it was not easy to prove or disprove.
................
The Army was able to provide socioeconomic data only for the 2002 fiscal year. Its numbers confirm Segal's findings that service members in the highest and lowest income brackets are underrepresented, but because those numbers chronicle enlistments in the year immediately following the 2001 terrorist attacks, it's difficult to ascertain whether this was a normal recruiting year.
Segal and Jerald G. Bachman, a research professor at the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, have studied the correlation between a parental education levels and likelihood for their offspring to enlist.
Examining data from early to mid-1990s, they created five categories, with one being the lowest level. Perhaps not surprisingly, they found the children of the most-educated parents -- those with post-graduate degrees -- were the least likely to join the military. The children of parents with high school diplomas were three times more likely to enlist.
One of the interesting phenomenon of today's politics is that, in general, Republicans tend to be more educated on average than Democrats, with a larger percentage either holding a bachelor's degree or having attended some college. But Democrats represent a larger portion of the super-educated -- that is, those holding graduate degrees. So Democrats are made up of the least and the most educated, with Republicans congregated largely near, but not at, the top.
So how did those near the top of the educational tree do in Segal's and Bachman's study? They were half as likely as those in group two to enlist. And because there are far more people who have been to college or have bachelor's degrees than there are people who have post-graduate degrees, the former group has far more political influence, just in sheer numbers.
While there have been changes in racial and ethnic enlistment trends, with the number of black recruits dropping precipitously since the Iraq war, Segal and Bachman said they've seen nothing to indicate significant changes in the class -- of which education levels is a prime indicator -- trends in the military.
Journalists can get themselves in trouble by drawing simplistic conclusions based on less-than-exhaustive research, and we won't do so here. But we can at least raise the question of whether the rich are more likely to support the war because their loved ones are less likely to die in it.
Draw a simple conclusion: if most people join the military for a college education, wouldn't that indicate their economic status? The rich have never served in large numbers, esxcept in WWI and WWII.
August 25, 2005 -- AN after-hours orgy erupted at celebrity chef Mario Batali's Bistro Du Vent last week, resulting in the firing of four staffers, PAGE SIX has learned.
The randy sex romp between an openly bisexual waitress, a male chef, a female manager and a waiter was captured on the West 42nd Street restaurant's surveillance cameras, which feed to a monitor right next to the host's stand.
We're told that the oversexed staffers were boozing it up at the bar after closing when things got physical.
Our snitch, who saw the steamy surveillance footage, says the X-rated action took place "on the bar top, down to the floor, on top of the banquettes — chef on waitress, manager on waiter, waiter on waitress, all four tangled up in one bunch."
But apparently the night porter caught a glimpse of the freaky festivities, and told the incoming dishwashers and busboys that morning on his way out. They, in turn, tattled to the waiters and waitresses, who all crowded around the host stand monitor and watched the orgy unspool, freeze-framing it at points for maximum enjoyment.
Later that afternoon, Bistro Du Vent general manager Jeremy Noye announced to his staff that four employees had been fired, adding, "That's all I'm going to say, and we're going to move on from here."
When we called Noye for comment yesterday, he told us, "I'm going to let Mario handle this. I'm not in a position to make any official comment at this time."
Batali's assistant claimed her boss was "out of the office" and could not be reached.
Batali — the rotund, red-haired Food Network star best known for his Italian meccas Babbo, Lupa, Otto and Esca — recently opened Bistro Du Vent with partners Joe Bastianich and David Pasternack.
Last month, we reported that a waiter at the restaurant refused a tip from "Hurlyburly" actress Martha Plimpton because it was too skimpy. A source claimed at the time that Plimpton and her posse "were so embarrassed, they pulled cash out of their pockets, left it on the table and slithered out of there."
Bistro Du Vent's sturdy Gallic fare recently earned a two-star review from The Post's Steve Cuozzo, who described it as "an oddly endearing venue for satisfying French bourgeois cooking in a Midtown arrondisement full of bad, bad restaurants."
CAMP TILLMAN, Afghanistan - The heavy machine guns, grenade launchers and recoilless rifles atop this Special Forces camp's dirt-filled Hesco walls all point up the dusty wadi to Pakistan, 2 miles away.
That's where the jihadists come from. And it's Pakistan's inability - and inmany cases outright refusal - to try tostop them from infiltrating into Afghanistan that infuriates soldiers on this frontier.
Yet the commander of all U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Army Maj. Gen. Jason Kamiya, says he is unaware of his troops' complaints about ineffective Pakistani border police, who sometimes appear complicit with Al Qaeda.
"I have not heard that - no, sir," said Kamiya, who was questioned by the Daily News during a border visit last week. "I don't know much about the Pakistani border police."
Nevertheless, U.S. military and intelligence sources throughout the border area complain that Kamiya's staff, who took charge last spring, have hamstrung them with layers of red tape requiring command-level permission to operate near the border or cross itin pursuit of Al Qaeda killers.
"That border is the bane of my existence," said one U.S. commander. "If anything, we feel more restricted than we did three months ago."
He cited a recent incident when U.S. troops were told to chase a platoon of Al Qaeda fighters into Pakistan one day and then ordered not to kill them once they crossed the border. "I was dumbfounded," the commander said.
"As soon as we hit the border, our hands are tied," complained a clandestine officer who has served in the country since 2001.
Special Forces are even more constrained than conventional troops, several sources said.
"It's the Wild West out here," said a source involved in counterterrorism missions. "The border is completely untamed."
Top U.S. commanders know that the border is a tricky political problem for Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, who must balance fighting terrorism against his electorate's growing hostility toward America.
Even a simple U.S. foot patrol along the border must be approved by higherups, who sometimes bar officers from leading their own men into harm's way, sources said. .........................
During a July firefight at nearby Observation Post Four, the two G.I.s manning the border overlook fled after Pakistani border guards on a hill opposite them fired in the air with a .50-caliber machine gun instead of directly at 40 Al Qaeda fighters charging up the slope at the Americans.
Down in the valley below OP-4, Teague points to a collection of mud houses, a marketplace just inside Pakistan known as the Lwara Bazaar.
"That's where Al Qaeda hangs out and has all their meetings," Teague said. An infrared scope on a mountain above Tillman can pick out people carrying machine guns in the bazaar.
"There are no Al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan anymore, but there are plenty next door," Teague said.
The day after OP-4 was overrun, the 26 paratroopers at Border Control Checkpoint Cervantes were pounded by 26 AlQaeda rockets fired from Hill 2911, which straddles the border. And 105-mm. howitzers from a 173rd Airborne Brigade battery annihilated 35 enemy fighters who fled down a well-beaten path back into Pakistan.
Pakistan sometimes allows such strikes if the Americans are attacked. But that incident led to public outcry.
Noting the irony, a U.S. intelligence officer said, "The Pakistanis radio us all the time and say, 'You went too far across the border,' or, 'Your rounds hit inside our country.'"
A Stryker of the New York-based 42nd InfantryDivision
Crazy Ann Coulter now accuses New Yorkers of being cowards
As Republicans were saying repeatedly – captured on Lexis-Nexis for a year before it showed up in a Frank Luntz talking-points memo in 2004 – the savages have declared war, and it's far preferable to fight them in the streets of Baghdad than in the streets of New York (where the residents would immediately surrender). That strategy appears to be working. Then again, maybe it's just that it's so damnably hard to find parking in New York ...
Gripping a Silver Cross in her left hand, Alexa Ruiz stood motionless atop the steps of St. Elizabeth Church in Washington Heights yesterday, tearfully watching six New York National Guardsmen place the flag-draped coffin of her husband into a hearse.
Just two weeks ago, Ruiz, 28, and her husband, Army Spec. Jose Ruiz, were happily making arrangements over the phone about a new home in Tacoma, Wash., where they planned to move with their 9-month-old daughter, Liana.
He died shortly after that call.
"My baby is gone," a tearful Alexa Ruiz said of her husband of six years.
Jose Ruiz, 28, was gunned down with three other soldiers by small-arms fire from a civilian auto when his armored vehicle broke down in Mosul, Iraq, on Aug. 15. He was assigned to the 21st Infantry Regiment, 1st Brigade, 25th Infantry Division
Cindy Sheehan after seeing a potrait of her son, Casey
Cindy Sheehan posted this on Kos, and I think you should read it
I got to Camp Casey and I arrived with a mom whose son, John, was killed on January 26, 2005, and his wife and baby, who never met his dad. We arrived in Waco at about 4:30 to the local press. The White House Press Corps was still with the president.
When I arrived at Camp Casey II this afternoon I was amazed at what has changed since I was gone. Now, we have a huge tent to get out of the sun; caterers; an orientation tent; a medic tent (with medics); a chapel, etc.
The most emotional thing for me though was walking through the main tent and seeing the huge painting on canvas of Casey. Many things hit me all at once: That this huge movement began because of Casey's sacrifice; thousands, if not millions of people know about Casey and how he lived his life and the wrongful way in which he was killed; but the thing that hit me the hardest was how much I miss him. I miss him more everyday. It seems the void in my life grows as time goes on and I realize I am never going to see him again or hear his voice. In addition to all this, the portrait is so beautiful and moving and it captures Casey's spirit so well. I sobbed and sobbed. I was surrounded by photographers, I looked around until I finally found a friendly face, then the news people crushed in on me and I couldn't breathe. I didn't mean to have such a dramatic re-entrance to Camp Casey, but the huge portrait of Casey really surprised me.
I can take all of the right wing attacks on me. I have been lied about and to before. Their attacks just show how much I am getting to them and how little truth they have to tell. What really hurts me the most is when people say that I am dishonoring Casey by my protest in Crawford. By wanting our troops to come home alive and well, that I am somehow not supporting them.
So, after Joan Baez gave us a great concert tonight, I got up and I talked about Casey. About the sweet boy who grew up to be a remarkable young man. Casey was not always a brave, big soldier man. He was my sweet, sweet baby once. I told the people at the Camp named after him, that when he was about 2 years old, he would come up behind me and throw his arms around my legs, kiss me on the butt and say: "I wuv you mama." I also talked about the loving big brother and wonderful, nearly perfect son. Casey was a regular guy who wanted to get married, have a family, be an elementary school teacher, and a Deacon in the Catholic Church. He wanted to be a Chaplain's assistant in the Army, but was lied to about that also by his recruiter. The last time I talked to him when he called from Kuwait, he was on his way to mass.
For Casey to even join the Army, let alone being killed in battle was the thing that was most uncharacteristic of him. He was a gentle and kind soul who only wanted to help others. What did his untimely and unnecessary death accomplish? It accomplished reinvigorating a peace movement that was sincere, but not very active...or if active, not well covered by the main stream media.
Joan sang the song Joe Hill In it Joe Hill says: "I never died." Well, looking out at the faces here at Camp Casey, and knowing that for everyone who is present here, there are thousands of others who support our work, I am convinced that Casey never died, and he never will. When I look into the eyes of the kind and gentle souls who have come here, I see Casey and the faces of all the others killed in George Bush's war for greed and profit. We will never forget them and we will honor them by working for peace.
Yesterday, it was "It is Time" to call for withdrawal of Iraq, today Armando says:
But it leaves out an important policy point: to change the Bush Iraq policy requires a change in the politics of Iraq, be it through a change in 2006 or a GOP reaction to political pressure.
A change in the politics of Iraq-- what does that mean? I couldn't disagree more if Armando is saying that Democrats should politicize Iraq as an issue-- over withdrawal. Look, Cindy has never won an election, Paul almost did. If you think Hackett won by calling for a withdrawl, you were not paying attention.
On to Digby. First, I followed the Hackett election pretty close, and the only way I'd support saying that Hackett made Iraq an issue, is that he did it by going to the right of Bush. Hackett appealed to the "now that we are in it, do it right" frame, and put himself under Bush's praise in a TV commercial. On other issues, like gay marriage, Hackett was an all-out libertarian, but on Iraq, he was doing exactly what Digby said:
Right now I think the right political move is to keep the pressure on the Republicans. Make them take ownership of this war, gas prices all the simmering discontent that you can see lurking in all the polls on every issue. Separate ourselves, not with our intellectual superiority (which is a given in any case) but by our energy and our disgust with the status quo.
Right, and that means the target is not Democrats, or calling for withdrawal by Democrats, but targeting the DC establishment as a whole, under Bush's leadership, which gets to Digby's question:
Will our "shrillness" help or hurt the party? I think the netroots believes it's time to try a message that has a little more heat than lukewarm water. The establishment, still smarting from their seminal loss in 1972, is scared to death of anything that resembles real passion. Far more than a serious division in the party over specific policy, that, I think is the real fault line.
What kind of politics --- not policies --- do the Democrats think will win?
Change, running against the status quo... what always wins against an entrenched establishment. But to do that, it's not like you need the entire Democratic party aligned with the effort. Not at all, it just has to be the loudest. A terrible direction, but the loudest right now, and making the WaPo and WSJ stories, is the ones calling for Democrats to demand Bush pull out now. That results in a politicization of this war.
And I would argue that '72 is not the equivalent year in question, but instead, '68. By '68, the country had turned against the war; but also at that time, McCarthy ("I hear America sighing") came out as the face of the Democratic Party, advocating an immediate withdrawal of Vietnam.
And we all know what became of that over the next 5 years, both for Vietnam and the Democrats. The politics of Iraq, if we want to both get out and replace the majority, call for not making Iraq a politicized catfight between Democrats and Republicans.
This is a nice debate, but seriously irrelevant in the case of Iraq. Postioning will not help when US troops are fighting off the Madhi Army in a running battle to the Iraq-Kuwait border.
The real problem is not whether the Dems call for a withdrawal, that day is coming regardless of what policy papers are issued, but if people realize that the US will withdraw, the only question is how, Vietnam or Chosen Reservoir. Do we talk our way out or fight our way out. When people say the US will have permanent bases in Iraq, they don't realize that Iraqi internal politics would never tolerate such a disgrace and offense to Iraqi nationalism.
What Jerome, and a lot of people don't get, is this: we could lose the Army in Iraq.
What we are fighting now is a guerrilla war. If there is a national uprising, by which I mean the Sadrists, Sunni tribes and Shia parties turn on the US at once, we will face an enemy of equal size or more. If the people around Sistani see themselves losing to Sadr, they may well decide the Americans have to go.
Do not be so quick to discount the Cindy Sheehan position. If the constitution fails, and it will, US troops could be jammed up. By which I mean facing a sea of enemies. There isn't one battalion of the Iraqi Army I would trust to stand by the US. Even the Kurds could cut a deal if the US seems to be going down for the count.
Besides, every roadmarker we have used has failed us. The elections, the consitution, all of it has seen an increase of effective guerrilla activity, not a decrease.
So kicking around which mealy mouth call for phased withdrawl Dems should stand for is ignoring the reality that things could collapse quite quickly in Iraq.
I've been meaning to get to the Rude Pundit show for a week or so.
Why haven't I?
The press of business.
This month has been busy as hell.
Anyway, Jen and I saw the premier of the Rude Pundit show, which may have some tickets Friday. I went into the details of Jen getting sick, but I didn't talk about the actual show
OK, first, we ran into Lower Manhattanite, who finally showed me his modded Mac laptop. I was so jealous. I had bad thoughts, like running down the Bowery with it and hopping into a cab. But that would be wrong. So wrong.
Then I met Julia from Sisyphus Shrugged and Lindsay from Majikthise and her boyfriend. Both are actually quite nice people. While Lindsay and I disagree on some things, she's a sweet person. Which it's good to meet people when you can and which I am bad at. And I had met Julia at the Tank last year and she's cool. She says I inspired her daughter, who I also met last year, to cook her own breakfast, which is good for a nine year old.
The Rude Pundit show itself is an act of verbal violence. It is no hold barred, no bullshit. I mean, he's got a bunch of blowup dolls lining the walls.
He tells a lot of different stories, about guns, women and school. But he says one thing which blew me away. He said liberals should be known as people who rape Republicans, and he goes into graphic detail into the raping of various Republicans.
There is a fine line between rightious anger and crassness. Rude Pundit, who's actually a drama studies professor named Lee Papa, walks that line with skill. It's one thing to call someone an asshole, it is another thing entirely to explain why he's an asshole.
When you discuss an idea that outrageous, if you get the tone wrong, you lose the audience. He got it right. Of course, the blowup dolls helped.
To be honest, I was overwhelmed by the show at the time, and am today. Because it was so raw. Like the sensation of seeing some uncovered emotion and you're drawn along.
It's held a small place, with couches and chairs,so it's intimate, which makes the effect more intense.
Afterwards, Jen got sick, but I went for drinks with Julia, Lindsay and Lee, who's a nice guy.
But even now, I'm impressed with the bravery of the show. It's one thing to be brave in print, it's another to expose yourself so boldly on stage.
President Bush doesn't lack for critics when it comes to his Iraq policies, but the smartest and most devastating of these is Peter W. Galbraith, a former United States ambassador to Croatia.
...................
"The Bush administration finally did something right in brokering this constitution," Galbraith exclaimed, then added: "This is the only possible deal that can bring stability. ... I do believe it might save the country."
Galbraith's argument is that the constitution reflects the reality of the nation it is meant to serve. There is, he says, no meaningful Iraqi identity. In the north, you've got a pro-Western Kurdish population. In the south, you've got a Shiite majority that wants a "pale version of an Iranian state." And in the center you've got a Sunni population that is nervous about being trapped in a system in which it would be overrun.
In the last election each group expressed its authentic identity, the Kurds by voting for autonomy-minded leaders, the Shiites for clerical parties and the Sunnis by not voting.
This constitution gives each group what it wants. It will create a very loose federation in which only things like fiscal and foreign policy are controlled in the center (even tax policy is decentralized). Oil revenues are supposed to be distributed on a per capita basis, and no group will feel inordinately oppressed by the others.
The Kurds and Shiites understand what a good deal this is. The Sunni leaders selected to attend the convention are howling because they are former Baathists who dream of a return to centralized power. But ordinary Sunnis, Galbraith says, will come to realize this deal protects them, too.
Galbraith says he is frustrated with all the American critics who argue that the constitution divides the country. The country is already divided, he says, and drawing up a constitution that would artificially bind three divergent societies together would create only friction, violence and civil war. "It's not a problem if a country breaks up, only if it breaks up violently," Galbraith says. "Iraq wasn't created by God. It was created by Winston Churchill.
"
.................. Tony Cordesman disagrees strongly
..................
But experts on Iraq and constitutional law warned that the current draft does not do enough to heal divisions or ensure rights for Iraq's disparate ethnic and religious groups or minorities.
"It may well be more of a prelude to civil war than a step forward," Anthony H. Cordesman said in an analysis for the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The draft heavily favors southern Shiites and northern Kurds -- in both political power and oil revenue -- while offering inadequate incentives to Sunnis, he said. "Rather than an inclusive document, it is more a recipe for separation based on Shiite and Kurdish privilege."
Even legal experts who support the draft are concerned about provisions for the 20 percent Sunni minority. "A constitution that is a deal between the Shiites and Kurds is not a deal," said Noah Feldman, constitutional adviser to the U.S.-led occupation government and adviser to Iraqis who wrote the interim law.
Too bad Peter Galbraith's analysis is rejected, out of hand, by most Arabists. He's quoted on Iraq with no balance. His divided Iraq is designed to create a de jure Kurdistan, simple as that.
He carries water for the Kurdish parties and has done so for years. It is critical, in that vision of the world, to talk about a divided Iraq.
Too bad SCIRI bought into that. It serves their Iranian masters as well.
The problem is that Sadr and the Sunnis don't buy that and they're the deciding factor. SCIRI and Dawa, the main Shia parties, can maybe field 35-40K men. Sadr, who already controls Basra and half of Baghdad, can field many, many more if he has to. They lack the training, but Sadr and his entire family is a hero to the poor, and in this contest, he's likely to be the last man standing.
It's a crock of shit to say all of the Sunni leaders are former Baathists. Some are, some were jailed by Saddam. But that's the wrong divide. It's coming down to a battle of nationalists versus seperatists. Sadr is a nationalist, while his Shia peers are not. The only reason SCIRI and Dawa are still on their field is a combination of support from Sistani, the Iranians and the US.
If showdown day comes, Sadr might be able to flood the streets with 100,000 men. He didn't have to do much to turn the South of Iraq into turmoil. He's been building good will with the Sunnis for over a year. So if they truly tire of this, what is to stop him and his Sunni allies from blockading the Green Zone?
The thing is that at every turn, Sadr has relied on Iraqi nationalism and not Shia self-interest to make his point. While Sistani treats him as a joke and the US as a menace, do not forget that Sadr's family, more than anyone else, suffered at the hands of Saddam and have the kind of credibility even Sistani doesn't.
The first place I had corn on the cob with mayonnaise was San Cristóbal de las Casas in Chiapas, Mexico. There was a dusting of chili powder, too. I love mayonnaise and was tickled to find another food to use it on; it enriched the sweet corn while the chili added pleasant heat.
It no longer takes a trip to Mexico to satisfy my craving. Mexican restaurants in the city are serving corn on the cob, often with mayonnaise. Zócalo, 174 East 82nd Street, is holding a corn festival through Friday, with specials including corn on the cob with chipotle mayonnaise, lime and Mexican cheese: (212) 717-7772. At Sueños, 311 West 17th Street, roasted corn on the cob comes with mayonnaise, chili powder and lime: (212) 243-1333. La Esquina at 106 Kenmare Street (Lafayette Street) grills corn (above) slathered with a mixture of half Mexican crème fraîche, half mayonnaise, plus a dusting of Mexican cheese, chili powder and paprika: (646) 613-7100.
And for those who prefer to hold the mayo, Centrico, 211 West Broadway in TriBeCa, serves grilled corn on the cob brushed with butter and zapped with lime and chili: (212) 431-0700.
There's this diary on Kos about some post he made about anti-war "hippies".
There's an anti-war left?
Really?
You mean ANSWER's semi-annual protests and the quarterly UPFJ March?
When the post says don't alienate the "hippies", I started to laugh. You might as well claim to not round up unicorns. Neither exists. Not in 2005.
The "left" so far has been amazingly ineffective in opposing the war. So much so that the right has to turn moderates like Cindy Sheehan and trade unionists like Michael Moore into the new Comintern. Move On, which is as radical as an NPR fundraising drive, is the new socialist international.
Which is why Norah O'Donnell's claims of "anti-war extremists" would be comical if it wasn't infuriating.
The anti-war movement is hardly a capitive of the "left", the ineffective, faltering left.
It's heart is conservatives, progressives and liberals, parents who refuse to let the recruiters into the door, reservists like Paul Hackett and the families of dead soldiers like Celeste Zappala. The SDS this is not.
I mean, Bill Lind and Larry Johnson are hardly members of the Sparticus League. Tony Zinni is hardly a Marxist.
Instead, it is the professional class of soldiers, the liberals, knowledgable academics who oppose this war far more strongly than the "activist" set.
Take Indymedia, factionalized and feuding, is hardly a center to oppose the war.
Nader has no credibility left.
ANSWER is another factionalized group, which is can do little more than get march permits.
UFPJ runs the occasional march, but a movement? Not hardly.
The Greens are navel gazers, more interested in their pet projects than real activism.
If you were to look to the left for some kind of clear, consistent stand on any foriegn policy issue, not just the war, you would be severely disappointed.
No, the "sad" truth is that the anti-war movement is made up of people of all political stripes and ideologies who simply don't understand why Americans arte dying to make Moqtada Sadr president of the Islamic Republic of Iraq.
To waste time catering to ineffective people of any stripe, Green or DLC, is a distraction.
But the idea that this is 1968 and the SDS is waiting around the corner to make Revolutionary America is a fever dream of the right.
The problem is that because it is so diverse, there is no single voice. There is no single reason to oppose the war. Some for military reasons, some because they oppose war, some because they oppose this war.
The media buys into this nonsense because it makes an easy frame. The "hippies" against the war, despite the fact that Cindy Sheehan is as much a radical as your average NPR supporter. Jane Fonda, she is not. She is a grieving mother who wants to know why her son died.
The idea that the "left" opposes the war is humorous. There are moderates, liberals, progressives, all social democrats by European standards, but true leftists? People who want to socialize the economy? Please.
The right creates a strawman to hide their own radicalism, waiting for the fiction of end times, untrammeled capitalism and imperial warfare. They use the old images of the left from the past to hide their own radical ideas of the future.
NEW YORK The American Legion, which has 2.7 million members, has declared war on antiwar protestors, and the media could be next. Speaking at its national convention in Honolulu, the group's national commander called for an end to all “public protests” and “media events” against the war, constitutional protections be damned.
"The American Legion will stand against anyone and any group that would demoralize our troops, or worse, endanger their lives by encouraging terrorists to continue their cowardly attacks against freedom-loving peoples," Thomas Cadmus, national commander, told delegates at the group's national convention in Honolulu.
The delegates vowed to use whatever means necessary to "ensure the united backing of the American people to support our troops and the global war on terrorism."
Cadmus added: "It would be tragic if the freedoms our veterans fought so valiantly to protect would be used against their successors today as they battle terrorists bent on our destruction.”
Without mentioning any current protestor, such as Cindy Sheehan, by name, Cadmus recalled: "For many of us, the visions of Jane Fonda glibly spouting anti-American messages with the North Vietnamese and protestors denouncing our own forces four decades ago is forever etched in our memories. We must never let that happen again….
So, is this how desperate the right is? The American Legion should change their name to the Freikorps and head immediately to Crawford to beat on Gold Star Mothers and combat vets.
Uh, I dare him to accuse Cindy Sheehan of sitting with the Sadrists who killed her son in combat.
The problem is that his argument is made of straw. No one is denoucing the troops. We denounce the people who didn't give them the tools to fight. They should not be protected from censur
What so many people on the right forget is that Mrs. Sheehan's son died in combat while a soldier in the US Army. She has a moral authority they don't come close to.
Speaking in Idaho a few minutes ago, Bush argued that moms like Cindy Sheehan are a threat to freedom:
There are few things more difficult in life than seeing a loved one go off to war, and here in Idaho, a mom named Tammy Pruitt…knows that feeling six times over.
Tammy has four sons serving in Iraq right now with the Idaho National Guard — Eric, Evan, Greg, and Jeff. Last year, her husband Leon and another son Aaron returned from Iraq where they helped train Iraqi firefighters in Mosul.
Tammy says this — and I want you to hear this — “I know that if something happens to one of the boys, they would leave this world doing what they believe, what they think is right for our country. And I guess you couldn’t ask for a better way of life than giving it for something you believe in.”
America lives in freedom because of families like the Pruitts.
But if it was up to families like the Bushes, we'd be speaking Vietnamese and praising Chairman Ho.
Well, first of all, Mrs. Pruitt's family members didn't die in Iraq, or be seriously injured. Let her fly over to Rammstein hoping that her child isn't on death's door and see how she feels then. Let her have two soldiers in Class A's wait on her doorstep to tell her someone has died in combat or her get that phone call that says your son is greviously injured and you need to come to Germany.
She has no idea how she will react. None. She may take it well, she may go insane. There is no way to predict what will happen.
She may support the war today, I don't blame her for that, but to imply that she would accept the loss of one of her children as a patriotic sacrifice is to expect the amazing.
To have the President say so is odious, and desperate.
And if this life is so good, why aren't his drunken, club hoppping daughters a part of it.
Hey, if it works on chickens, let's treat gays the same way
Today, the good professor Volkoh goes from wondering if gays can convert "normal folk" to them faggots got the cooties. Well, that's insane. But maybe if he wrote about bird flu, it might make sense
Some readers challenged my claim that there is "disproportionate and grave health danger from breeding chicken activity" to huamns, compared to the danger from organic breeding. I think this danger is tragic, and I very much hope that medical advances will lead to the danger's decreasing. All decent people should agree that it's tragic. (The bunk that we hear from some quarters about bird flu being God's punishment for poultry farming would suggest, as some wit put it, that cows must be God's chosen animals, since their rates are apparently very low.) But it seems to me quite clear that this danger is very much there.
Reader Brian King, for instance, writes:
The fact is that breeding chickens laying eggs are more then twice as likely to practice safe breeding then heterosexuals having a one-night stand. Given this, from a health point of view, you should think that it's preferable for a bisexual man to experiment with poultry farming, then to remain heterosexual. If the bisexual man in 2005 has sex with a male, that male has a 66% chance to demand a condom, while a female only has around a 33% chance to demand a condom. Ergo, pairing the bisexual with the breeding chickens results in statistically safer sex then pairing the bisexual with the female.
Your reasoning is flawed because current infection rates are a comment on the safe breeding practices of men 20 years ago. Poultry, in response to this crisis, have changed their behavior over the years. Now, poultry farmers are the most informed people in the world about safe breeding. . . .
[Quoting a study:] "From 1993 alone, nine different studies reported that two thirds of farm-raised poultry were being primarily safe in locales as disparate as North Carolina, Britan, Australia, Pittsburgh, and San Fransisco. Yet, the national bird flu behavioral surveys surveyed farm-raised poultry men and found: 'Among respondents with multiple partners, only 28% of men and 32% of women always use them (condoms) with secondary partners...in general, almost half the roosters and hens with multiple partners never use clean breeding facilities.' Another study compared roosters and hens and found rooster breeding conditons use "twice as cramped"
If farm-raised poultry are engaging in safe breeding, that's wonderful. Nonetheless, even if one focuses on new (post-1993, and even more recent) HSV1/bird flu cases among U.S. poultry, the majority are among farm-raised poultry (if one uses means of acquisition as an admittedly rough proxy for sexual orientation). farm-raised poultry are only roughly 4% of the male population. This means that farm-raised poultry are still disproportionately much more likely than straight roosters to get infected, by a factor of 20 or more. Even if farm-raised poultry are using clean breeding facilities more often, they may be engaging in riskier sexual behavior (egg laying as opposed to insertive artificial breeding), and (probably more importantly) they're having breeding with animals who are much more likely to be infected. The CDC, for instance, reports that of new bird flu diagnoses among males in 2003 (which I suspect are mostly animals infected after 1993), nearly 18,000 of the about 32,000 involved "cramped breeding conditions" as the primary risk factor, and nearly 2,000 more involved "cramped breeding conditions and injection drug use." Only a little over 5000 involved farm-raised poultry contact as the primary risk factor. The Texas data for new HSV 1 diagnoses (see PDF p. 12) among roostersin 2003 is similar: 1700 of the 3500 involved male/male sex, plus 150 more involved male/male sexual contact plus drugs as risk factors. 270 were from farm-raised poultry contact, though another 1100 were other/risk not reported, so maybe there were more farm-raised poultry acquisitions there.
Another reader suggests that it's a mistake to focus solely on HSV 1, and it's better to look at estimated lifespans — if roosterlifespans are on average the same as rooster lifespans (presumably controlling for various demographic factors), then that means that breeding as actually practiced is on average less dangerous than farm-raised poultry activity. Dr. Franklin Karoostersy (a leading poultry activist of long standing) writes that "Close breeding of poultry is not dangerous, and its alleged danger is being MUCH over-stated and exaggerated here. As an 80-year-old poultry breeder, active for some 50 years and less so for well over a decade before that, and in good health for my age, I can certify to such lack of danger. Most of the founding fathers of the mass poultry farm system died in their 70s, 80s, and 90s."
A lifespan comparison study would be a great study to see, but I don't think it's ever been done right, and it would be very hard to do right. In the meantime, let's look again at the Texas data for (see PDF p. 12). The data suggests that there were about 50,000 HSV 1 and bird flu cases among breeding chickenss in Texas since 1980 (again, if you use method of infection as an admittedly rough proxy for the infected person's sexual orientation). The population of Texas is roughly 20 million; that leaves 10 million males; and if roughly 4% of Texan poultry are infected (working off the national percentage, that's about 400,000.
Naturally, we'd need to add to that 400,000 in some measure because of transience — there were animals moving in and out of the state, and dying and being born since 1980, and since such animals are counted in the bird flu and HSV 1 cases, they should be counted in the population data as well (and unfortunately I don't know of any data that can tell us precisely how many animals have lived in Texas in 1980, as opposed to those who live there now). But even if we double that, we still have a huge mortality / HSV 1 infection rate — not at Asian levels, thankfully, but over 5% of all Texas poultry — and one that's likely underestimated, because presumably many animals who have HSV 1 haven't yet been tested and therefore aren't included in the HSV 1 statistics.
So breeding chickens activity does seem much more dangerous, on average, than male farm-raised poultry activity. As I've said before, this danger is tragic. But it seems to me a grave mistake to deny this danger.
What the fuck is his problem? Did he pick the wrong vacation spot and people are begging to suck his dick? This shit was hashed out 20 years ago and the greatest HIV infection rate is among black women who are not lesbians.
HAVANA, Cuba (Reuters) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, popular with the poor at home, offered on Tuesday to help needy Americans with cheap supplies of gasoline.
"We want to sell gasoline and heating fuel directly to poor communities in the United States," the populist leader told reporters at the end of a visit to Communist-run Cuba.
Chavez did not say how Venezuela would go about providing gasoline to poor communities. Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA owns Citgo, which has 14,000 gas stations in the United States.
The offer may sound attractive to Americans feeling pinched by soaring prices at the pump but not to the U.S. government, which sees Chavez as a left-wing troublemaker in Latin America.
Gasoline is cheaper than mineral water in oil-producing Venezuela, where consumers can fill their tanks for less than $2. Average gas prices have risen to $2.61 a gallon in the United States, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Chavez said Venezuela could supply gasoline to Americans at half the price they now pay if intermediaries who "speculated ... and exploited consumers" were cut out.
Kill me? I'll create havoc legally in your country. Let Pat Robertson get you cheap gas, gringos.
Imagine if New York had been run by a brutal dictatorship, and exiles who now lived in Boston and Philly demanded the country be liberated and told a series of stories of the mayor, for humor's sake, Rudolph I, was planning to make poison waste bombs to seize Ellis Island.
While there is no evidence of such bombs, the exiles have their way, and there is an invasion. Since Rudolph I had jailed and killed the City Council and other politicians, there is no apparent leadership class.
So, desperate for leaders, after finding the exiles useless, they turn to a special class of leader: the Five Families.
Now, if you don't know who the five families are, well, they're part of New York lore. They are also known by another name: the Mafia.
The Five Families
Genovese LUCIANO, GENOVESE, GIGANTE et al. Gambino GAMBINO, CASTELLANO, GOTTI et al. Bonanno BONANNO, GALANTE, MASSINO et al Colombo PROFACI, COLOMBO et al. Lucchese LUCCHESE, CORALLO, AMUSO et al.
In a fit of desperation, the families are chosen by the occupation army to become political leaders, but don't give up their criminal activities.
So one day, you wake up to find out that the Genovese family now has 1/4 of the seats of the City Council, with the other families each having a share, with minor, ineffective parties with a few seats and Vincent "The Chin" Gigante is the temporary mayor, which the Gambinos, let by Junior Gotti, have real problems with.
The Latin Kings don't participate, but protest the process and train their members, while the Crips and Bloods have begun a guerilla war against the "white oppressors" and the Five Families are allied with the Catholic Church to reimpose a ban on divorce and abortion.
Sound crazy?
Well, no, switch Gambino for SCIRI, Genovese for Dawa and the rest is Iraq, 2005.
Do you think Gambinos and Luccheses could stop their self-interested activities to govern for the entire city?
No?
Well, that's what you're asking the parties to do in Iraq.
Let's look at the numbers, which offer a different picture of patriotism than the editorial pages do.
* Every one of the Army's 10 divisions — its key combat organizations — has exceeded its re-enlistment goal for the year to date. Those with the most intense experience in Iraq have the best rates. The 1st Cavalry Division is at 136 percent of its target, the 3rd Infantry Division at 117 percent.
Among separate combat brigades, the figures are even more startling, with the 2nd Brigade of the 2nd Infantry Division at 178 percent of its goal and the 3rd Brigade of the 4th Mech right behind at 174 percent of its re-enlistment target.
This is unprecedented in wartime. Even in World War II, we needed the draft. Where are the headlines?
* What about first-time enlistment rates, since that was the issue last spring? The Army is running at 108 percent of its needs. Guess not every young American despises his or her country and our president.
* The Army Reserve is a tougher sell, given that it takes men and women away from their families and careers on short notice. Well, Reserve recruitment stands at 102 percent of requirements.
* And then there's the Army National Guard. We've been told for two years that the Guard was in free-fall. Really? Guard recruitment and retention comes out to 106 percent of its require
Of course, we'll hear stammering about an "army of mercenaries"— naive, uneducated kids lured by the promise of big retention bonuses. That's another lie told by the elite to excuse themselves from serving our country in uniform.
The young men and women who have been through the crucible of combat — often on repeated deployments — are hardly naive. Their education levels exceed the American average. And, as of Aug. 2, the Army had spent a 2005 total of only $347 million on Selective Re-enlistment Bonuses — that's weekend walking-around money for America's Fortune 500 CEOs.
Big bucks for risking your life? Not hardly. Only 60 percent of soldiers get any re-enlistment bonus. For the overwhelming number whose skills merit an extra incentive, bonuses runs between $6,000 and $12,400 per year of contracted service — per year of facing death, wounds, separation from family and uncertainty as to whether you'll ever see that family again.
A total of 643 soldiers with very special capabilities, from special operators to doctors, got an average payment of $57,000 — a fraction of what the private sector offers them for doing the same jobs at far less risk. ...............
Guess we have to face it: Patriotism is alive and well. Soldiers believe in the Army, and they believe in their missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. They love their comrades, too. And yes, the word is "love." They would die for the man or woman serving beside them. They're risking their lives to save a broken state, to give tens of millions of human beings a chance at decent lives, to do the grim work that no one else in the world is willing to do.
Their reward? The Cindy Sheehan Extravaganza. Predictions of disaster. The depiction of Michael Moore as a hero and our soldiers as dupes. And a ceaseless attempt to convince the American people that there's no hope in Iraq.
The ugly truth is that much of the media only cares about our soldiers when they're dead or crippled. That's a story.
As you read this, 500,000 soldiers are on active duty because they chose to serve their country. Additionally, hundreds of thousands of Reservists and Guard members have been called into uniform. And they're all behaving as true soldiers do: Running toward the sound of the guns, not away from them. .............
No, Col. Peters, the problem is that retention and enlistment are two different things. As you should know. Many soldiers report being told that they either reenlist or get sent back to Iraq with the next unit in line to go. Now, if you were faced with that choice, would you go to war with strangers? I'd like to see the divorce rates following reenlistment. I bet you there's a bump there.
Really? What about the 5,000 deserters, including the 37 recruiters. What about the thousands of broken marriages? No one said soldiers fight for money. Those that do, an increasing number, by the way, quit and work for Blackwater and the rest of the mercs.
The Army can use unit loyalty as a whip. People are reluctant to leave their friends.
If there is a lie about kids attracted by the bonuses, why is recrutiing cratering and parents extremely hostile to recruiters, to the point opf physical threats. To the point where 1/3 of potential recruits fail the AFQT and many others have criminal records.
It's easy to hold up the active Army and say everything is fine. So how many are leaving to work for mercenery companies? How big are the bonuses for the 18X MOS? $100K?
No, Col. it's the soldiers who are tired of the neglect and disrespect they get. Wounded at Walter Reed need the charity of others. Parents buy their children chickenplate armor. We know who cares about the wounded and dead, and if it wasn't for the media, a soldier would still be living in his car after losing a kidney, a soldier would have to had hitchhiked from Ft. Sam Houston to New York. A Marine would have not been admitted to college, because he'd been out of Texas too long. It is the media, not the Army, which is helping American servicemembers get the help they need when the government has turned their back.
It is the media who reminds people that Marines like Paul Hackett served bravely in Iraq while conservatives belittled his service. It isn't Michael Moore denigrating military service, it's Rush Limbaugh.
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army will miss its recruiting goals this year but will be able to sustain troop levels in Iraq over the next four years, a high-ranking general told FOX News.
Lt. Gen. James Lovelace, the Army deputy chief of staff, said the Army can sustain 100,000 in Iraq for the next four years if needed without "breaking the force" but he said it would include three or four rotations for some troops.
"We're gonna fall short of our recruiting goal this year. We know that,” Lovelace told FOX News. “We're putting in place mitigation plans to begin to address it in ’06
Col. Peters, isn't there a contradiction? We can send units into combat for four tours, the longest time ANY US unit would be subjected to combat in the nation's history, certainly longer than the 30 days average of WWII or even the 12-13 month tours of Vietnam. Doing two tours was seen as exceptional, even in special operations units. Now we're asking everyone to spend 4 1/2 years of eight in combat. We already have 1/3 of Iraq War vets needing mental health counseling.
If US troops feel they're helping others live in freedom, why do they routinely refer to them by racial epithets like haji and sand nigger? Why do US troops repeatedly state that they neither trust nor like Iraqis?
Col, when you ask the loudest backers of this war if they have any plans to enlist, most refuse to even consider it. So the question isn't patriotism. or disliking the President, which is irrelevant to service anyway, but sacrifice. How long can we ask the same people to sacrifice their lives to fight this war?
Didn't you deride the fighting ability of Arabs? Freed from the Soviet-style command and control systems you know so well, they have proven remarkable adept at fighting Americans.
So in short, no one is questioning the patriotism of the soldiers, nor do people like Cindy Sheehan, who sacrificed her eldest son in combat, and who your contempt for is disgraceful, but many of us question the patriotism who would send an Army to fight in Iraq year after year with things getting worse for both Iraqis and Americans. What kind of patriotism is that.
I know that it must be tough for Norah O'Donnell filling in for Chris Matthews on MSNBC's Hardball. What, with makeup, the hair stylist and all, I'm sure she doesn't have the time to actually look up any, well, facts before the pretty camera light goes on.
The Yellow Dog Blog is here to help. So, Norah, before you go on the air and once again refer to Cindy Sheehan and the protestors in Crawford as "anti-war extremists," please have a look at numbers showing that the good people at Camp Casey are very much in the mainstream.
From the CNN/USA Today/Gallup Poll of Aug. 5-7, 2005:
* 54 percent of Americans believe the United States made a mistake in sending troops to Iraq. * 54 percent say it was not worth going to war in Iraq. * 56 percent believe things are going either "moderately badly" or "very badly" in Iraq. * 57 percent of respondents say that the war with Iraq has made the U.S. less safe from terrorism.
How about the Newsweek Poll from Aug. 2-4, 2005?
* 61 percent of Americans disapprove of the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq. * 64 percent say that the Iraq war has not made Americans safer from terrorism.
Let's look at the Associated Press/Ipsos poll dated Aug. 1-3, 2005:
* Respondents were asked "When it comes to handling the situation in Iraq, do you approve or disapprove or have mixed feelings about the way George W. Bush is handling that issue?" 59 percent disapprove.
So you see, Norah, people who disagree with the war in Iraq are actually in the majority.
You're welcome. Now, please apologize to Coleen Rowley, who you blindsided on Hardball last night. Say you're sorry to Cindy Sheehan while you're at it.
Oh, and don't worry, the secret – and the incredible irony -- that you have a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy, is safe with me.
This is why I repost other people's work. He works up the outrage I feel, but simplyu can't express without a string of obscenities.
I saw maybe 30 seconds of this nonsense and had to turn it the fuck off before I smashed my monitor.
Just to note, Williams is a blowhard chickenhawk, Rowley a former FBI agent. My bet is that while he'd be wimpering in the corner, she'd kick his ass and pistol whip him for sport.
Why do they think they're more macho than those who actually risk their lives in service of this country?
Iraqi and foreign oil officials said Iraq's oil exports were shut down Monday by a power cut that darkened parts of central and southern Iraq, including the country's only functioning oil export terminals.
Exports through the country's other main route, the northern export pipeline to Turkey, have long been halted by incessant sabotage.
Iraqi officials said sabotage was also responsible for Monday's blackout, which prevented oil from being pumped into tankers waiting at berths.
Iraqi pipelines are a frequent target for insurgents, as a large quantity of the oil heads for Western nations and disrupting the flow of crude is seen as a way to destabilize the U.S.-supported government.
But chief analyst Ehsan Ul-Haq of PVM Oil Associates in Vienna said the Iraqi supply disruption was not yet a major market factor because "it's still not quite clear whether (Iraqi) exports will be affected for a long time."
And the Iraqi version of the war on oil continues it's unrivaled success, as Iraqi oil is attacked for over the 257th time since the war began.
Weren't they supposed to rebuild the country with that oil?
Atrios linked to pro torture professor Eugene Volkoh's musings on homosexuality.
It was so logical, we decided to give it the respect it deserved.
Of course his musings make no sense, so the following article also makes as much sense.
Chimps and Orangutangs Trying to Convert Others to Homospecies Behavior:
I've seen lots of assertions that it's a "myth" that chimps and orangutangs try to recruit others into specieism (See, among many other examples, here and here.) Yet it seems to me that this assertion of "myth" is likely itself something of a myth, or at least quite incomplete. .............................
To further illustrate this, ask yourself: How would most chimp or orangutangs who believe that specieims are perfectly proper respond to these questions?
(1) A person who has had only monkeyexperiences is feeling some homosexual attraction. Should he or she experiment with homosexual relations to see if he or she finds them more rewarding, or at least a valuable facet of his or her future sex life (assuming this wouldn't constitute infidelity, that it's done with the proper protection against disease, that it's done with the right person, and so on)?
(2) Should chimp rights groups try to change society so that such experimentation is less stigmatized?
(3) Should chimp and orangutang friends of this monkey urge the monkey (of course, sensitively and without browbeating) to experiment, and to see if — given that he or she feels at least some same-species attraction — he or she might indeed find same-species relationships more rewarding?
(4) If this were a friend of yours to whom you were attracted, you knew that he or she felt at least some same-species attraction, and you weren't worried about the emotional risk to yourself, would you consider having you be the monkey with whom the friend experiments? (Again, assume that neither of you is otherwise committed, the approach would be suitably sensitive, and so on; naturally, even animal behavior that's perfectly proper in the abstract can be made wrong if done under the wrong circumstances.)
(5) Do you think that older teenage chimps (say, 16 and above) should have out-of-the-closet chimp, orangutang, and lemur role models so that those of the teenage chimps who feel some same-species attraction would feel more open to experimenting to see if same-species relationships will be more rewarding to them than opposite-species relationships? (I'm not asking about species experimentation with the role models, but rather about the role models' presence making the teenage chimps more comfortable with their same-species attractions.)
I suspect that most chimps and orangutangs who think homospeciesity is proper would say "yes" to most or all of these questions. I know that if I were a monkey in some hypothetical future overwhelmingly homospecies society, and I were asked similar questions about "converting" people who were open to monkeysity but had so far had only engaged in homospecies behavior into practicing lemurs or monkeys, I'd say "yes." If you think some behavior can be proper and, for some group, very rewarding, you would naturally want apeswho aren't sure whether they fall into that group to try it out.
And if that's true, then chimps and orangutangs (though not necessarily each chimp and orangutang) are trying to get others who have been behaviorally monkeys, but who might be open to homospecies behavior, to try homospecies behavior. They almost certainly don't see all monkeyss as likely converts. But they probably do think (with good reason) that some fraction — a substantial fraction compared to the number of pure homospeciess — might well be willing to change behaviors, especially if they are made to feel right and welcome in doing so. And, yes, that would include teenage chimps as well as fully grown adults. If most apes think the age of species consent should be around 16 (the legal norm in the country), then I doubt that most chimps and orangutangs would think that it's wrong to encourage 16-year-old males and females who have some same-species attraction to experiment with that attraction.
Now, as I've suggested, I don't think there's anything inherently immoral about such attempt to convert apes away from purely monkey behavior, if they are interested in homospecies behavior, and of course if the "conversion" is done without force, imposition on those who are genuinely too young to decide, and so on. If it weren't for the disproportionate and grave health danger from male homospecies activity, I'd think such encouragement to explore which relationships give apesthe most happiness would be positively quite good. (Yes, I realize that the danger can be reduced by not engaging in anal sex, always using a condom, not having sex with a partner unless he's been tested and had not had sex for some months before the test, and so on. But most apesare not nearly this cautious, and the reality thus remains that, given the vastly disproportionate prevalence of HIV among chimps in America today, the greater risk from anal sex, a practice that for understandable reasons many male homospeciess do not want to forego, and the notorious difficulty with getting apesto actually practice safe practices — whether aimed at preventing disease or conception — the fact remains that experimenting with male homospeciesity is dangerous activity.) Given this danger, I'd prefer that men with lemur orientations who can be happy with women not experiment with men; but that's a judgment about medical risk, not about the inherent morality of "conversion" attempts, and in any event it doesn't apply to orangutangism.
Nonetheless, if I'm right, then I don't think we should deny that the chimp and orangutang movement does aim in part at "converting" apeswho have a wholly or partly lemur orientation from a purely monkeybehavior pattern to one that involves at least some (initially experimental) homospecies behavior.
Remember, the state of California pays this man to teach law to people.
VIRGINIA BEACH (AP) — Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson called on Monday for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, calling him a "terrific danger" to the United States.
Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition of America and a former presidential candidate, said on "The 700 Club" it was the United States' duty to stop Chavez from making Venezuela a "launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism."
Chavez has emerged as one of the most outspoken critics of President Bush, accusing the United States of conspiring to topple his government and possibly backing plots to assassinate him. U.S. officials have called the accusations ridiculous.
"You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it," Robertson said. "It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war ... and I don't think any oil shipments will stop."
Well it was ridiculous.
The thing that Robertson forgets is that Venezuela was thisclose to a full scale civil war when they tried to depose Chavez. Now, if Chavez so much as farts hard, he has proof that powerful Americans want him dead.
If they want a civil war, go after Chavez. But then, when Robertson had a chance to do his share of killing in Korea, he connived to get a staff job, supplying liquor to division headquarters.
A bagpiper plays as the Marine Honor Guard carries the body of Lance Cpl. Brian Montgomery to a waiting hearse at the Mentor United Methodist Church after a memorial service
There are some things that George Bush should know about Casey Sheehan should he choose to sit down and talk with his mom. One thing he could discuss is the fact that a distant relative of his was wounded at Casey’s side. That boy, Brian Emmett, also is my second cousin. But more about that later.
Perhaps the conversation ought to start about the other seven men who died on April 4, 2004 in Sadr City.
From the Army’s 2nd Battalion, 5th Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas were:
Sgt. Yihjyh L. Chen, 31, of Saipan, Marianas Protectorate.
Spc. Robert R. Arsiaga, 25, of San Antonio, Texas.
Spc. Stephen D. Hiller, 25, of Opelika, Ala.
Spc. Ahmed A. Cason, 24, of McCalla, Ala.
Spc. Israel Garza, 25, of Lubbock, Texas.
From the Army’s 2nd Battalion, 37th Armor Regiment, 1st Brigade, 1st Armored Division, Ray Barracks, Friedberg, Germany was Sgt. Michael W. Mitchell, 25, of Porterville, Calif.
And, from Casey’s unit, the 1st Battalion, 82nd Field Artillery Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, Fort Hood, Texas was Cpl. Forest J. Jostes, 22, of Albion, Ill.
Maybe George Bush could clarify why these men died. According to several press reports, they were attacked and killed by forces loyal to Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. And where is al-Sadr today? He’s a player in the Shiite community in Iraq which is on the verge of installing Islam as the basis of government in Iraq. In effect, Casey and his comrades were killed by people whose leaders are on the verge of taking control in Iraq. It would be one thing if George Bush could tell Casey’s mom and the moms of the other boys who died that their sons gave their lives to create a secular Iraq. But we now know that is not true. They gave their lives in a cause that is allowing some Islamic extremists loyal to Iran to play a major role in the "new" Iraq.
I don’t know if Casey Sheehan’s mom is specifically angry about that fact, but my cousin, Kathy Emmett-Meek, is furious. Her son, Brian, was in Alpha Company of the 2-5 Cavalry on April 4, 2004 when Charlie Company from the same Division were ambushed. Brian and his buddies were alerted and entered Sadr City to rescue their comrades. As they lept from their vehicle they were hit with a hurricane of bullets and RPGs. One bullet shattered Brian’s left tibia. An RPG exploded nearby and peppered his right ankle with shrapnel. Brian fired several clips at the enemy and only stopped shooting when he passed out from loss of blood. My cousin and his buddies were and are warriors.
Brian survived. He received a purple heart from George Bush himself during his Easter 2004 visit with wounded troops at Fort Hood. But Brian has not fully recovered. Brian’s mom ratted on him, telling me about Brian’s current state. Then, only after I badgered him did Brian himself admit his difficulties to me. Brian is trying to handle things quietly and bravely, just as he did that day in Sadr City. Yet, he still faces more reconstructive surgery. What is really tragic is that he battles the demon of survivor’s guilt. His mom tells me that, on bad days, he wonders why he was allowed to live and his buddies died. The good news is he still loves his country and is getting on with his life. What really sucks is that he is fighting the VA Bureaucracy to get his benefits. They still have not assigned him a disability status. He described his separation from the Army as a boot in the ass and good luck.
Brian and the other wounded vets deserve more than best wishes and good cheer. They have shed their blood in service to their country and deserve our full commitment.
The ultimate irony of this story is that Brian is a distant relative of George W. Bush (his mother tells me she learned of it while doing genealogical research). Well, at least there is some good news--George W. Bush can now claim he may have a relative who was wounded in combat in Iraq.
By now, many of us have attended a singles event. Speed Dating, Singles Dinners, Lock & Key Parties. To quote my favorite after school special, ?Everyone is Doing It.? But did you know that there is a right way and a wrong way to act at a singles event? Yep. It?s true. After coordinating and managing about 200 different events like this, I?ve seen plenty. The good. The great. The sexy. The just plain foolish. Below is a list of Do?s and Don?ts that I?d like to pass on to you.
Read It. Learn It. Live It.
Do Step Away From The Cell Phone. Got a big conference call? Wondering where your friend is? Uh huh. Okay. Make the call BEFORE you arrive at the venue. Once you're inside, turn it off. Nothing screams 'rude and pretentious' like someone talking on their cell-phone while at a party. The message you're sending to people around you is, 'I'm not interested in talking to you.' Not a great first impression.
Don't Travel In A Pack. People in general fear rejection. Approach one person is daunting enough, but three or four' Terrifying. You could be the hottest, sweetest, most amazing person in the room but if you're surrounded by what looks like a posse of personal handlers, you'll be sipping cocktails by your lonesome. Want a friend along for moral support' Hat's cool. But bring more than two people with you and you'll be staring at each other's faces all night. The chance of being dismissed by one person can make anyone break out in a sweat. But four? Uh uh. Some people would rather stick their tongue in a fan.
Do Keep Your Opinions To Yourself. If you were at a party of a co-worker or friend, would you EVER toss around critical opinions of the guests while within their earshot' No, you wouldn't. First, the person you're dissing might hear you and you could end up hurting their feelings. Second, you'll definitely be overheard by someone and branded a jerk.
Don't Drink Too Much. This is sort of a no brainer.
Do Be Self-Aware. What we mean to say is often not what someone else hears. Intention is not nearly as important as Perception. 'But I was just being funny!' you say. Well, maybe your comments are entertaining to people who know you and who know you're a good person. But someone you meet for the first time may not. Don't expect people to cut you slack, because they likely won't. Ask a friend to give you honest feedback as to how you come across and what sort of impression you make. Your friends love you and want you to be happy. They'll be honest. It might sting a bit, but you'll thank them.
Keep In Mind That 'Outgoing' And 'Aggressive' Are Two Very Different Things. Smiling and saying hello to someone first makes you outgoing. Firing questions at them and following them around makes you aggressive. Making light conversation is outgoing. Challenging or debating with someone makes you aggressive.
Don't Bring An Attitude With You. Nothing turns people off more than an 'I'm better than you/You're not good enough for me' attitude. Most people pick right up on it, too, so don't think for a second you can mask it with a smile. Your body language, inflection in your voice and conversation will give you away. If you feel like you don't 'belong' at a singles event or think you're 'above' it, please stay home. I ask this as a singles event services business owner and a fellow event-goer. That sort of attitude spreads through a room like a virus. It just takes one unpleasant person to ruin the overall vibe at a singles event. The fact is that, for whatever reason, you're single. How you look, how you dress, where you vacation, how much money you make means nothing once you step into that room. Lose the 'tude or plan on standing at the bar by yourself all night.
There's more, if you care
Jen sent this to me, because she's gone to these things, and I never have. Being charming on demand is not in my skill set, for one.
Frankly, I don't think they work for most people, because you have a mixture of desperation and pressure combined with alcohol and crowds. I think it works much better when you are talking about something where the subtext isn't getting laid. It has for me.
I mean, it seems like a good idea, but all you can do is bring your game face. The better parts of you are hardly on exhibit at one of these things. Also, the older you get, the less likely this is going to be fun.
The reason that the author had to write this is because she's dealing with so many damaged people, people who have no idea on how to make a connection with other people, on any level
I think people are at their best when they are doing what they love or at least something interesting. Drinking in crowds isn't it.
But Jen and I wonder if any of you have had success at these things or how you met your current SO. And seeing Lucy Liu or Rosario Dawson in a movie doesn't count.
Oh, yeah, for the curious, I met Jen at Linux World 2000.
I had seen her in the street with a friend a few months earlier, suprised she blonde, but I was running to catch a midweek football game on Grand St. I did note her name tag.
Well, at Linux World, which I was covering for a magazine, we were listening to Jon Katz. I recognized her and did something rare, introduced myself.
Later, we went to the Slashdot party, where I talked to her then boyfriend for two hours. Afterwards, I thought, what a fucking loser. Why go somewhere with your girlfriend and talk to a fucking stranger for two hours.
Oddly enough, when I'm out with Jen, I'm out with her. Well, until she gets ill and has to run home in 85 degree heat at night.
By Laura Wides Associated Press Monday, August 22, 2005; Page A04
LOS ANGELES, Aug. 21 -- Amid tears and their grandchildren's shouts of glee, 58 Japanese Americans sent to internment camps during World War II received diplomas Sunday, finally earning recognition from the communities they were forced to leave more than half a century ago.
The honorees, wearing colorful leis and sashes, walked down the aisle of Los Angeles Trade Technical College's auditorium. Some needed canes, a few were in wheelchairs, and more than a few had tears in their eyes.
The graduates represented the largest group of former internees to ever receive their diplomas at one time.
Takashi Hoshizaki, who should have graduated from Belmont High School in 1944, was one of two student speakers. He told the crowd how his education and life detoured when he was sent to the camps in Wyoming.
"Some may consider a high school diploma just a piece of paper, but it's a symbol to me," Hoshizaki told a crowd of several hundred.
Toshiko Aiboshi, 77, accepted her diploma while her grandson Nicolas Echevestre, 23, accepted one for Aiboshi's husband, Joe, who died in 2001.
The Los Angeles resident said she hopes the event gave her grandchildren insight into a chapter that for so long was a source of shame to many of her generation.
"We both went to Nic's graduation. That was a very special moment," she said. "I hope Nic will feel this is a special moment."
The diploma project is the result of legislation sponsored by Democratic Assemblywoman Sally Lieber to allow school districts to bestow diplomas on Niseis -- second-generation Americans of Japanese ancestry -- sent to the nation's 10 wartime internment camps. The vast majority were from California.
The federal government interned more than 120,000 ethnic Japanese, most of whom were born in the United States, amid widespread anti-Japanese sentiment, between 1942 and 1945. Children went to school in the camps and received diplomas there, but not from the schools they were taken away from.
Since Lieber's legislation passed last year, more than 400 people have received diplomas, some posthumously.
Aiboshi was 14 and living in Boyle Heights when she and her mother were shipped to a camp in Amache, Colo.
"For quite a long time, most Japanese Americans did not talk about being in the camp. It was as if you were in jail and then released. You didn't talk about being released," Aiboshi said.
So, Ms. Malkin, why should these people have been interned again?
I don't know if anyone could not read that article and feel awful that it happened. Except for Michelle Malkin and her racist allies.
The Freepers at Free Republic have joined MAF and are gathering their freeper-selves to go down to Crawford. What's slimy about the whole affair is not that they are demonstrating for the war and want to stand by President Bush, but the personal attack on Cindy Sheehan.
They are upping the ante on sleaze from Mike Gallagher's thirty minute stop and shop fake, photo-op protest and making Cindy the focus of their demonstration. I've seen it coming since Cindy started to get some press and the personal attacks began, but when you see the mechanism in action you realize what cowards they are. Paul Begala was right when he said " Such is the hatred of the far right at the dawn of the 21st Century."...read on
(Update):-Atrios: The first set of pro-war rallies, back in 2002, were the same. They weren't pro-war or "pro-American" rallies, they were explicitly anti-American. The "supporters" carried signs expressing hatred for their fellow Americans (Dixie Chicks, Susan Sarandon, etc...) for daring to disagree with them. Thstey're only happy when they can have a personal enemy, the weaker the better the little cowards
They don't get it. They will stay for a day or so, and then leave. Mrs. Sheehan isn't going anywhere.
All they're doing is her giving more attention. They aren't going to beat her.
Though he continues to insist that President Bush rethink the nation’s current strategy in Iraq, Memphis congressman Harold Ford Jr. made it clear Friday night that he would not repudiate his original support of the president’s decision to intervene military in that Middle Eastern nation.
And, while praising as "a brave young lady" Cindy Sheehan, the Gold Star mother who has been keeping a well-publicized vigil outside the president's vacation home in Crawford, Texas, Ford declined to second-guess Bush’s decision not to meet with Sheehan concerning the war in which her son Casey had lost his life.
Addressing the annual awards banquet of the University of Memphis Law School Alumni, Ford expressed his initial support of the war effort this way: "I support this war in Iraq. I supported it from the very beginning for one reason. Saddam Hussein was a bad guy. Now, there are those who criticize and quarrel with this, and make the point over and over again that perhaps we shouldn’t have done it the way we've done it, and I would agree. But I wouldn’t blame the president, or anybody else for that matter, from waking up on September 12th and wondering aloud what would happen if Saddam Hussein and bin Laden married.
"It would be very easy for us to sit back in the comfort of our own homes and say, Well, one is secular and one is religious and they won't . It would be very easy for us to think that 9/11 wouldn’t happen, but it did."
Bush's "instinct" had been right, said Ford, who has visited Iraq three times in the last two years and plans a fourth visit, but there is "a lot of room for change" in how the president pursues operations in Iraq. "I love my president. I love him personally," Ford said. "But he's just wrong. – wrong for not being willing to admit that we've made some mistakes....It was right to take him [Saddam] down but wrong to think that we can't right this course."
African-Americans overwhelming oppose this war. Ford does himself no favors with his stand. " I love my President". Does he shine his shoes as well. Does Bush pat him on the head?
Ford may be high yella, but he ain't white.
Which is the ONLY way he becomes Senator from Tennessee and then President.
And his uncle is a crook as well? Shit.
I have a better chance of taking Bill "Dobson's Bitch" Frist's job.
The Washington Post notes that the Democratic Party is deeply divided between those who want US troops out now and those who fear the consequences and think it best to stay the course. The article might as well have noted that the Republicans are also divided on Iraq policy.
So the issue isn't a partisan one. It is an American one.
Personally, I think "US out now" as a simple mantra neglects to consider the full range of possible disasters that could ensue. For one thing, there would be an Iraq civil war. Iraq wasn't having a civil war in 2002. And although you could argue that what is going on now is a subterranean, unconventional civil war, it is not characterized by set piece battles and hundreds of people killed in a single battle, as was true in Lebanon in 1975-76, e.g. People often allege that the US military isn't doing any good in Iraq and there is already a civil war. These people have never actually seen a civil war and do not appreciate the lid the US military is keeping on what could be a volcano.
All it would take would be for Sunni Arab guerrillas to assassinate Grand Ayatollah Sistani. And, boom. If there is a civil war now that kills a million people, with ethnic cleansing and millions of displaced persons, it will be our fault, or at least the fault of the 75% of Americans who supported the war. (Such a scenario is entirely plausible. Look at Afghanistan. It was a similar-sized country with similar ethnic and ideological divisions. One million died 1979-1992, and five million were displaced. Moreover, all this helped get New York and the Pentagon blown up.)
I mean, we are always complaining, and rightly so, about the genocide in Darfur and the inattention to genocides in Rwanda and the Congo earlier. Can we really live with ourselves if we cast Iraqis into such a maelstrom deliberately?
And as I have argued before, an Iraq civil war will likely become a regional war, drawing in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Turkey. If a regional guerrilla war breaks out among Kurds, Turks, Shiites and Sunni Arabs, the guerrillas could well apply the technique of oil pipeline sabotage to Iran and Saudi Arabia, just as they do now to the Kirkuk pipeline in Iraq. If 20% of the world's petroleum production were taken off-line by such sabotage, the poor of the world would be badly hurt, and the whole world would risk another Great Depression.
Juan Cole makes the mistake assuming that Americans give a shit about Iraqis.
See, there's a flip side to Bush tying 9/11 to Iraq. He has convinced a sizeable number of Americans that all Arabs and Muslims hate Americans. Bush's tactic has blurred the difference between the two to the point that the US withdrawal will be both quick and catastrophic.
I would bet a quarter of Americans wouldn't mind carpetbombing the entire country, with half of that for nuking it outright.
See, you can't have it both ways. You can't say Arabs are dangerous, but some are our friends. Most people didn't get the shift. So while the right parrots this line, few actually believe it.
So, Cole, being a reasonable, Arabic-speaking person, sees nuance.
There will be no nuance. When the US leaves, and it will leave, it will be on Iraqis to prevent disaster. Right now, they're like squabbling children, each with their own selfish concerns. As long as the US provides security, there will be this desire to fight to the last word.
It is up to Iraqis to decide if they want a civil war or not. Not us. If they want a civil war, that is what they will get.
Is he kidding? Of course we can live with a million dead Iraqis. As long as it's not Americans being killed, most Americans will simply ignore Iraq once we are gone. The onus for peace is not on us, not on Americans, but Iraqis. If they want to have a fractured, failed, state, that's their problem.
Have Americans ever accepted blame for unleashing the Khmer Rouge? That's what I thought.
Look, Americans can bitch about all these things, but they don't force policies which could prevent them through Congress.
Anyone expecting that somehow Americans think they have to prevent an Iraqi Civil War, one Saddam had to kill 100,000 or so to stop, is going to be disappointed. To more than a few Americans, and not just neo-cons, Arabs killing Arabs is a good thing.
So to argue that Americans are preventing a Civil War in Iraq is to suggest something most Americans could care less about.
Hello, my name is Bill. I'm 24 years old and live in NJ. I fought in Sadr City, Baghdad Iraq from Feb. 2004 to Feb. 2005. I served in C. Co 759th MP Bn 89th MP Brigade. I still wholeheartedly support the decision to remove Saddam from power, however I am completely against the continued occupation of Iraq.
When I landed in Baghdad, the US had roughly 350 deaths. When I left the number was close to 1300. I had 4 of my friends killed and another 27 in my company wounded, which gave us a 1 in 3 rate of being a casualty. I saw a good friend of mine have half of his face blown off when a RPG blew up on our windshield. Another friend of my was wounded twice in separate IED attacks and still wasnt allowed home. I killed 4 people during an 18 hour firefight, one of whom was a little girl that got caught by the burst of a 203 round.
I think about Iraq every day even though I've been home 6 months. And I still cannot figure out why I was there or why americans died over there. I'm all for war, but only "right" wars. I was decorated for valor and congratulated by Colonels, and it's all hollow because it is for nothing. That's why I'm against the war in Iraq.
I can definetly say nothing in suburban America ever EVER prepared me for anything I saw over there. Besides the actual combat, the simple fact that instead of just watching one of those UNICEF commercials with the babies with flies all over them, I was actually in one.
....................
The one of the biggest problems I deal with is the fact that even though we fought a three day battle to secure an IP station and we won. We abandoned it the next day and within a week the Mahdi army bullied all the Iraqi police out of it, placed demo charges and blew it up. And our leadership didn't even bat an eye. Can't figure out why we would fight so hard for something that had 4 guys killed and 12 wounded just so we can let it get blown up.
And it happened all the time, we'd go somewhere, hang out long enough for stuff to quiet down, move on and then the place we left would be just the same as before we showed up. I think the only people that had any sort of morale were the officers and higher NCO's (E-8 and up) that didn't have to go out and face the possiblity of getting blown up every day. We had guys breaking down left and right and had to go see psychiatrists because they couldn't deal with being out in the city for 7 days straight in a shot with 12 hours up and 4 hours down. Towards the end of our deployment if we didn't go home in about another month or two there would have been a rebellion.
I tried to explain it to people at work and they pretty much nod and say well that sucked and then when i showed them pictures of what was done over there and then they realize its not just some little 3 minute spot on the nightly news.
That's another thing that I think most americans dont understand, when you hear about a bombing or attack in Iraq on the news, there are about 20 other bombings or firefights that you don't hear about. I would call or email home about a carbombing or shooting to see if they heard anything about it on the news and until our 4 guys were killed the answer was always no. So it astounds me as to how little information really filters down to the american people. There is sometimes days that go by now that I'm home that I wont hear anything about Iraq, and I can promise you something happens every day. My camp was mortared so frequently during one week it was as if we were underseige, like 20 mortars a day for 5 days straight, and when your camp is only about 1square mile those booms sound awfullly close.
And you never hear about how many Iraqi civilians are killed just because they work for Americans and are trying to provide for their families. We had a restaurant on our FOB run by haji's that we used to go to whenever we were either sick of the chow hall food or if we came in too late to get dinner. One night a bunch of us went there to get dinner and we ordered french fries. The guy that took the order, who was also the owner said he didnt have any french fries, so we started ribbing him about how we could give some kid that lives under a bridge $2 to get us fries but yet here he is with a restaurant without a fairly basic item, so after about 2 minutes of busting this guy a little he gets red and says, " I will tell you why we have no fries, man that delivers fries was killed because he works with americans". When he said that it just floored us. We couldnt imagine some one who delivers french fries would be killed just because he delivers food to a guy that works for americans.
We had interpretors' relatives killed, let alone interpretors themselves for working with us. Our interpretor whom i still talk to through email on occasion (badly wants to come to the US) only told his immediate family who he works for, his neighbors all think that he does construction work.
Whatever you do, don't take what you have here for granted.
After being rebuffed in its first effort to open a store in New York City, Wal-Mart is trying again, and this time it hopes that Wal-Mart enthusiasts like Sandra Como will flock to its cause.
Wal-Mart's ad in The Staten Island Advance was one of 70 run recently in community papers.
After all, she lives on Staten Island, where the company hopes to build a store. She frequently crosses state lines to shop at a Wal-Mart in New Jersey. But she does not want one of the company's giant discount stores in her borough.
"If it weren't for all the traffic, I'd be for it," Ms. Como said as she packed boxes of disposable diapers into her Lexus at the Wal-Mart in Woodbridge, N.J., 15 minutes from her home. "But I'd rather come here and not have the extra traffic on Staten Island."
Ms. Como embodies the problem Wal-Mart has encountered as it attempts to scale the fortress walls of New York City, one of the few places in America where its logo cannot be found. In the past month, Wal-Mart has greatly stepped up its efforts to make New Yorkers warm up to it, running radio spots as well as ads in 70 community newspapers. But even in a city that generally takes pride in welcoming outsiders, Wal-Mart is facing a formidable not-in-my-backyard problem.
.......................
Mr. Dell'Angelo said he believed that if Wal-Mart got its foot in the door on Staten Island, that would make it easier for the retailer to expand into the other, more populous boroughs.
"We need this Wal-Mart like a hole in the head because on the south shore of Staten Island we don't need any more retail whatsoever," he said. "And this is a corporation that has a lot of baggage about how it treats its employees. I hope neighborhoods will consider that before they start welcoming Wal-Mart into their neighborhood."
On a recent afternoon at the Woodbridge Wal-Mart, just three miles from Staten Island and the Outerbridge Crossing, about a quarter of the cars in the parking lot had New York license plates, and a large majority of the New York drivers interviewed said they lived on Staten Island. ............................
Ms. Masten, Wal-Mart's director of corporate affairs for the eastern region, would not confirm that Wal-Mart was seeking permission to build on Staten Island, saying it had not executed agreements on any site. But developers say Wal-Mart is loath to acknowledge that it is looking at any particular site, not only because that could spur a new explosion of opposition but also because Wal-Mart would be greatly embarrassed if it were seen as losing out at a second New York site.
Ms. Masten said Wal-Mart would bring jobs to New York. "Each store would bring abut 300 jobs, as well as a broad selection of merchandise at everyday low prices," she said. "Why should New Yorkers continue to have to travel to New Jersey or Long Island to shop at our stores?"
But opponents - labor unions, community groups and small businesses - say that Wal-Mart may take away as many jobs as it creates by driving other retailers out of business.
"Wal-Mart would mean a lot of low-end entry-level jobs, and New York City isn't suffering from a lack of entry-level jobs," said Diane J. Savino, a Democratic state senator from Staten Island. "We're suffering from a lack of middle-income jobs and high-end jobs. In addition, Wal-Mart has a reputation as being not just vehemently antiunion but of violating every labor law in the book." ......................
Borough President James P. Molinaro said he would push for Wal-Mart's approval.
"Anything that develops economic activity in my borough is a good idea - that is, if it's legal and nonpolluting," he said. "And if it gives people place to shop and prevents them from going to New Jersey, it's a good idea. My responsibility is to give half a million people the best possibilities to shop."
Richard Lipsky, the coordinator of the Neighborhood Retail Alliance, the main anti-Wal-Mart coalition in New York, said that the way New York laws are structured, the matter did not come down to how consumers feel.
"You'll find a tremendously high number of people who say, 'They're a good store,' and, 'We go there,' but when you ask them whether they want it in their neighborhood, they say: 'Absolutely not. We don't want to be a magnet for traffic that a store of that size will generate,' " Mr. Lipsky said. "The ultimate decision-making will reflect the site battle more than the generalized goodwill that Wal-Mart can create."
It doesn't matter. Queens, Staten Island, it won't get pass the City Council and the Unions, unless they want to unionize and pay for health benefits. The company will get hammered no matter where they try and go.
The Bentonville hillbilies just don't get it. The way Wal Mart does business is unacceptable to New Yorkers. If they don't think their health care plan isn't going to be an issue, they're delusional. As will their many lawsuits.
Molinaro is a tool. But the odds of Wal Mart beating the unions is small. They got jammed up in Queens early on. When they find the city refusing to buy or pay for goods bought there, the rat in their parking lot on a daily basis and unionization drives conducted weekly, they may not like being in New York so much.
The reason their competitors, like Target, can thrive in New York is simple: they don't abuse their workers. Target is non-union, but they have good working conditions and a working health plan. So does Home Depot. Wal-Mart does not. Wal Mart has as many major lawsuits as an absestos maker. They understand nothing about New York except that they want to be here. Too bad they're like a target for all of the city's various interest groups. They thought Inglewood was a problem? Not even close.
The DLC disgraces his memory every day it is in existence
Kos posted this money quote from Will Marshall, a high ranking Vichyite in the Al "Pierre Laval" From DLC
By dwelling obsessively on U.S. misdeeds while ignoring the far more heinous crimes of what is quite possibly the most barbaric insurgency in modern times, anti-war critics betray an anti-American bias that undercuts their credibility [...]
Patriotism is the ultimate values issue. Democrats need not be embarrassed by it. And they ought not to let Republicans monopolize the emblems of national pride and honor. Democrats need to be choosier about the political company they keep, distancing themselves from the pacifist and anti-American fringe. And they need to have faith in their fellow citizens: Americans will accept constructive criticism of their country if they know the critic's heart is in the right place.
Patriotism is not blindly following the tenor of the moment or going along with what is popular.
If that were the case, the Nazis would have ruled Europe and America would have remained on the sidelines. After all, America First argued, it was "not our war".
When Winston Churchill opposed the conventional wisdom that Hitler was tolerable, he was isolated from public life, his sanity questioned. But he knew unvarnished evil when he saw it and he knew Hitler was it.
Roosevelt had to lie and connive to support the British. He turned a blind eye to the illegal enlistment of American citizens in the RAF and their recruitment to Canada. To British espionage operations in the US. To Americans fighting in Spain as well.
The war in Iraq is wrong. To support it is wrong.
You know, when the Civil War started, abolitionists didn't print newspapers, they fought with the Union. To Marshall, like so many liberal warhawks, Iraq is just another policy issue. Like welfare reform or taxes, it is more important to be on the right side than to be right. Of course, this is a gross moral failing, like isolationationism before WWII.
In 1940, Charles Lindburgh delivered a speech which ruined his standing in American political life. His reasons for avoiding WWII were the converse of the selfish reasons the DLC want to remain in Iraq. It is obvious they care neither for American or Iraqi lives, but defend the war they must, because it is a matter of policy, not humanity.
The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration.
Behind these groups, but of lesser importance, are a number of capitalists, Anglophiles, and intellectuals who believe that the future of mankind depends upon the domination of the British empire. Add to these the Communistic groups who were opposed to intervention until a few weeks ago, and I believe I have named the major war agitators in this country.
................................
The second major group I mentioned is the Jewish.
It is not difficult to understand why Jewish people desire the overthrow of Nazi Germany. The persecution they suffered in Germany would be sufficient to make bitter enemies of any race.
No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution of the Jewish race in Germany. But no person of honesty and vision can look on their pro-war policy here today without seeing the dangers involved in such a policy both for us and for them. Instead of agitating for war, the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way for they will be among the first to feel its consequences.
Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastations. A few far-sighted Jewish people realize this and stand opposed to intervention. But the majority still do not.
Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.
I am not attacking either the Jewish or the British people. Both races, I admire. But I am saying that the leaders of both the British and the Jewish races, for reasons which are as understandable from their viewpoint as they are inadvisable from ours, for reasons which are not American, wish to involve us in the war.
We cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests, but we also must look out for ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction.
What Lindburgh basically said was while it was a shame them Jews got smacked around, they asked for it. His use of the gross stereotypes of Jewish influence was repugnant at the time. A thoughtful man, not entranced by the Nazis, wouldn't have said that.
Well, that the same kind of slander Marshall and his bosses deal in. Well, those "liberals" don't want to sell America to Osama Bin Laden, but they aren't very patriotic, are they? He uses words in an equally poisionous and self-destructive manner. Self-destructive, because as the war spirals deeper out of control, they, like Lindburgh, will be seen to have taken the wrong side, the losing side.
War is not a policy issue. It is policy's result. And the US's policy is failing in Iraq.
When you have a leaky boat, at some point it's time to abandon ship.
Marshall and his Vichyite masters expect others to do what they want done. Despite increasing dissatisfaction with the course of the war, they will support it because to them, this is another policy issue, not real lives.
So now Gibson has written a grudging followup. After getting some defensive nonsense out of the way, here’s what he has to say:
Bombers set off their bombs with the movement of a finger. Just putting two fingers together is enough to detonate.
So what are we supposed to do? Ask them to put down their bomb and kindly stand trial for terrorism?
Seriously, all you people blaming me for the innocent young man getting shot because I approve of the tactic, what is your alternative?
It’s not enough to shout, "You don’t kill an innocent man!" We all know that.
But what do you do with a real bomber if you have managed to chase him down?
What is the tactic you would employ, all you justice experts who so self-righteously decry the killing of an innocent man? You all take the time to write to me to tell me I should be ashamed of myself and how can I live with myself, etc. because I so callously titled the column that day, "Five in the Noggin." So, you’re all so smart. What exactly is the solution to a man with a bomb wrapped around his chest and the detonator in his hand?
I await your wisdom.
That’s My Word
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No John. You shoot them. However, you might want to see if they have a bomb, first. Mr. DeMenzies was killed at point blank range by people touching him.
If you are touching a bomber and restraining him, you might, just might, not blow his fucking brains out and see if he has a bomb first.
See, cowards like you, John, people who would never risk their lives to save anyone, revel in the deaths of the innocent. The police know that this mistake will make it just that much harder to catch real bombers. Most are horrified at what happened, because they did not become cops to kill people.
The tactic you approve of failed. And it didn't fail slightly. It failed in such a grotesque and unmistakable way that it may actually get people killed. No one wants to excute a second innocent man. So a real bomber may live long enough to detonate his bomb. Why? Because people like you John, rejoice in the deaths of the innocent to make yourself feel like big men.
Ok, after four months, I'm going to finally take my ad money and my father to Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut.
That's how busy I've been. Four months for a day trip.
Oddly enough, Jen's mother and my father share the same birthday. I think she went to Broadway. And she's busy, too
My father doesn't like Broadway. He likes gambling.
So does my mother, but that's a different story.
The odd thing about 2005 America is how popular gambling is. I mean it's on TV every day. Most of the day.
But what they don't tell you is how hard poker is. I've played poker since I was was eight. It takes a shitload of skill to win consistently.
When I was a kid, there were illegal gambling, like the numbers, the odd slot machine. AC changed that, but it wasn't until the 1990's that AC became a real place to gamble.
Well, it's not fishing, but, it's a nice way to spend the day.
Let me thank Henry for making this possible. Without ads, I'd be unable to do this.
So anyway, I'll be gone, Jen may post, and this is an open thread.
The problem with young Republicans is that they reduce matters of life and death into policy debates.
When challenged on their enlistment status, many Young Republicans cite the service of others, or how they're fighting liberals and for lower taxes.
It is not the same.
It isn't even close to the same.
Walking point in Ramadi is not the same as writing a policy paper at the Heritage Foundation.
What you need to be told, repeatedly is that it is disrespectful in the extreme to compare such work to serving in combat. It trivializes and demeans those who risk their lives daily in Iraq.
Claiming you support the military while demeaning their service with your facile comparisons indicate the opposite.
Thomas Paine supported the Revolution with a rifle as an infantryman.
He didn't support it from Starbucks over a nasty blog post.
If a cause isn't worth serving, what is it worth? Cheap words?
You demand sacrifice from everyone but yourself. So why should we take you seriously. I can play Risk as well. I just don't ask people to die for me in the process.
When the left wanted to save the Spanish Republic, they fought in Spain.
When they wanted to stop Hitler, they joined the Royal Canadian Air Force, the Royal Canadian Navy and the Canadian Army. They didn't publish nasty articles in PM. They risked and some lost, their lives.
Why? Because they felt freedom was more important than anything else in their lives.
What did the right do? Praise Hitler and ignore his crimes.
We know you are blowhards, cowards, who expect others to do what you want done.
But don't compare your selfish lives with military service unless you wear Kevlar to work and dodge mortars off the highway. We have sent our men and women into harms way with less than what they need. Even men.
Oh, you can spout your twaddle all you want, to whomever you want, you have that right.
But don't pretend you support the military. You don't. You just support the war. The military is besides the point to you. Not to their families, but to you. So save the lectures on patriotism and who wants us to lose the war. You do. You aren't serving. Neither in the military or the interest of this country. Just in your sad, febrile fantasy world of dead brown people and Marines slaying dragons.
WOODY CREEK, Colo. (AP) -- With a deafening boom, the ashes of Hunter S. Thompson were blown into the sky amid fireworks late Saturday as relatives and a star-studded crowd bid an irreverent farewell to the founder of ''gonzo journalism''.
As the ashes erupted from a tower, red, white, blue and green fireworks lit up the sky over Thompson's home near Aspen.
The 15-story tower was modeled after Thompson's logo: a clenched fist, made symmetrical with two thumbs, rising from the hilt of a dagger. It was built between his home and a tree-covered canyon wall, not far from a tent filled with merrymakers.
''He loved explosions,'' explained his wife, Anita Thompson.
The private celebration included actors Bill Murray and Johnny Depp, rock bands, blowup dolls and plenty of liquor to honor Thompson, who killed himself six months ago at the age of 67.
Security guards kept reporters and the public away from the compound as the 250 invited guests arrived, but Thompson's fans scouted the surrounding hills for the best view of the celebration.
''We just threw a gallon of Wild Turkey in the back and headed west,'' said Kevin Coy of Chester, W.Va., who drove more than 1,500 miles with a friend in hopes of seeing the celebration. ''We came to pay our respects.''
Thompson fatally shot himself in his kitchen Feb. 20, apparently despondent over his declining health. The memorial, however, was planned as a party, with readings and scheduled performances by both Lyle Lovett and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.
The author's longtime illustrator, Ralph Steadman, and actor Sean Penn were on the invitation list, along with Depp, who portrayed Thompson in the 1998 movie version of ''Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream,'' perhaps the writer's best-known work.
''Over the last few months I've learned that he really touched people more deeply than I had realized,'' said Thompson's son, Juan.
Thompson's longtime friend George Stranahan lamented the Hollywood-style production. ''I am pretty sure it isn't how Hunter would have done it,'' he said. ''But when your friends make a mistake you support them.''
Anita Thompson said Depp funded much of the celebration.
''We had talked a couple of times about his last wishes to be shot out of a cannon of his own design,'' Depp told The Associated Press last month. ''All I'm doing is trying to make sure his last wish comes true. I just want to send my pal out the way he wants to go out.
All I can say is this: Johnny Depp is a really good friend, loyal to the end. Maybe it was a bit much, but you can't say it lacked style or friends to send him off.
A Kansas teenager who was posing for her senior year photo with a Siberian tiger at an animal sanctuary was killed when the big cat suddenly clamped its jaws on her, police said yesterday.
Haley Hilderbrand was unable to escape once the 7-year-old animal pounced on her Thursday.
"The handler pulled it off of her," said Sheriff William Blundell of Labette County, Kan. "The tiger was later killed."
The 17-year-old from Altamont, Kan., was rushed to a nearby hospital and died of her wounds.
Blundell said no charges have been filed against Doug Billingsly, owner of the Lost Creek Animal Sanctuary in Mound Valley, Kan. "We're still trying to figure out what caused the tiger to attack," he said.
On Monday, all 1,000 residents of Hilderbrand's hometown are expected to attend her funeral at a municipal auditorium in nearby Parsons, Kan.
Why did it attack?
It's a fucking tiger, not a house pet.
Predicting what a wild animal will do is impossible. Most people can't predict when their dogs will bite.
Wild animals are always wild. Just because you bully them into submission doesn't mean they can't lash out at any moment.
The school was grossly irresponsible for letting the students get that close to a wild, living thing.
As for the political process, Matt makes an important point: If Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds want to fight amongst themselves once the U.S. leaves, nothing in the world can stop them. The U.S. should prepare for this very real possibility. On the other hand, it's not like all sides are so impossibly recalcitrant right now, putting the lie to Yglesias' statement that "[a] s long as we provide them with that safety net, they have no reason to compromise." Some elements of the Shiite coalition, at least, have been willing to make limited concessions to the Sunnis on their own accord. President Jalai Talabani has floated a wide-ranging amnesty for ex-Baathists, and the U.S. should overrule people like anti-amnesty folks like Ahmed Chalabi and encourage Talabani to do so.
As for the constitution: Granted, SCIRI-based Shiites like Abdul-aziz al-Hakim want to break up Iraq and form a Shiite super-province in the south, but in conversation, Andrew Arato has made the case that both Sunni groups and many nationalist and secular Shiites—including, it seems, Ayatollah Sistani—want a unified Iraq. The Kurds, meanwhile, want independence, and it's going to be hard to pressure them to accept anything short of autonomy. All in all, it doesn't look good—some near-intractable problems are at stake here. But unlike Yglesias, I don't entirely see how U.S. troops are "counterproductive to producing a political compromise," which is to say, I don't see all sides somehow becoming more willing to compromise if the U.S. starts drawing down. Again, setting a timetable is different from announcing, repeatedly and forcefully, that we will maintain no long-term presence there—the latter may convince more Sunnis to join the political process. Hopefully. I just don't see how the former will convince Shiites and Kurds to compromise more readily. Deep conflicts don't get resolved simply because the parties involved fear that they might have to go to war. History says otherwise.
More to the point, let's not kid ourselves. If Iraq erupted in full-blown civil war, the U.S. would have to intervene. Our oil addiction demands it. Pretending that we can just leave and wash our hands of the whole mess smacks of naivety. Iraq isn't some insignificant little foothold in the Balkans. I understand that civil war may happen whether the U.S. stays or not. On the other hand, the U.S. will have to micromanage the regional situation whether we start drawing down in 2006 or not. It's a real mess, but it's still real. We don't have much choice. Leaving now, only to be forced to re-invade three or four years down, would be the height of near-sightedness.
So what would I suggest? I'm very much open to persuasion, and much of this involves putting trust in a thoroughly incompetent administration, but my instinct is to go with Cordesman's bevy of small-bore recommendations, including: "Keep reiterating that the US will set no deadlines for withdrawal—or fixed limits on its military effort—and will support Iraq until it is ready to take over the mission and the insurgents are largely defeated." Keep pressure on the government to develop both the proper police forces and governing institutions, which won't likely develop on their own accord. Fix the aid and reconstruction process, which is a nightmare and the one prong of our strategy that continues to founder very badly. Sealing the borders may help, though al-Qaeda seems to be planning to take the fight to Syria next, so sealing the borders up could just accelerate that process. I don't know. Oh, and no more troops will be forthcoming, of course. The U.S. can still "surge" troops for specific needs, by fiddling with the rotation rates or reserves, but a major long-term increase in troops won't happen.
That seems like the rough outline of a realistic "plan," although I obviously can't guarantee it will work, and with this administration, it might be a go-ahead for "more of the same." But, I think, it's more likely to produce stability than pulling out prematurely. Feel free to convince me I'm wrong, because I'd like to be. Though I should also note that, in the event Cordesman's proposal simply can't work, then a withdrawal plus "hoping for the best" actually wouldn't be my second choice; rather, Daniel Byman's bloody-minded "Afghanization" plan for a draw-down seems, horrifically, like the most realistic and "stable" option. Meanwhile, the most important task here at home is to make sure that the crooks and liars who got us into this mess are removed from power as forcefully and quickly as possible. Iraq has been a colossal mistake, the sort the United States must never make again. That part, at least, needs no debate.
UPDATE: For a view along similar lines, see Retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey's assessment. Bear in mind, the generals very often get it wrong, but often too, they know what they're talking about, and at the very least, no one can accuse McCaffrey of cheerleadering for this administration
Re-invade?
Brad, it's all well and good to play with other people's lives on paper, but we ain't talking about paper. Because when it doesn't work, your mother won't be buring you at Arlington.
WE HAVE LOST.
Are you going to be one of the "surge" troops in Iraq? No 11X job for you? Well, you are far from alone.
Well, here's the reality, we have lost this war and whatever happens in Iraq will happen without us. The US Army cannot survive 18 more months in Iraq. Recruiting is at the bottom of the barrel. One-third of potential recruits cannot pass the AFQT. Others are bounced for criminal records. So who is going to serve in this army? Not you. Not the Young Republicans. No one.
Here's the deal: we will leave. Either under negotiations or a fighting retreat. But the US' presence in Iraq is untenable. Stop giving aid and comfort to the neo cons and their delusions. We didn't have the men or the planning and we lost. We asking men to die for the Islamic Republic of Iraq, and I for one do not think they should die for that.
Here's one example: when a US unit fights Iraqi guerrillas, they are equally armed. Never in history has this happened. Every Iraqi guerrilla has a modern assualt rifle and most have basic military training, some are professional soldiers.
We have to leave. We cannot fix Iraq and the Iraqis do not trust us to do so.
The only question is how: by talking or shooting and walking.
And you know what, we might not have won the war if there was an Iraqi Army, but when Paul Bremer dissolved it, we sure as hell lost it.
Philadelphia Police say the remains recovered in Chester is those of a pregnant woman missing for a month. Police have arrested 25-year-old Stephen Poaches with double homicide.
District Attorney Lynne Abraham confirmed that the remains were those of 24-year-old Latoyia Figueroa, whose disappearance has gained national attention.
Figueroa was five months pregnant and already the mother of a young girl when she was reported missing July 21st. She had been last seen on the afternoon of July 18th in West Philadelphia.
Relatives and friends who have papered the city with flyers and held large scale searches for any sign of Figueroa, had just marked the one-month anniversary of her disappearance.
Homicide is the leading cause of death for pregnant women. Until Laci Peterson's death, no one had ever studied the numbers. But pregnancy was found to be the leading factor in homicides.
In many cases, men, feeling trapped or just angry at the pregnancy, will kill the expectant mother.
The only reason the case lasted this long was because they didn't have the body. The cops knew what had happened within 48 hours, especially after the boyfriend acted weird when questioned and refusing to cooperate with the family.
From the Chesterfield County Republican Committee website, now comes a blast from the past — it looks like (please, say it isn’t so!) an early 20th century unflattering cartoon of an African American – from the “Birth of a Nation” era, perhaps? Now what on earth could that be doing on a Republican website?
Interestingly, Chesterfield County is 18% African American, but all the elected officials are white. Ironically, when you go to the “Party History” part of the site, there’s a picture of the great African-American leader,Frederick Douglas, and a quote from him saying that the Democratic Party of 1941 was even worse than the Republicans. Uh, yeah, maybe it was back then.
The only problem with this reasoning is that there have been, oh, just a FEW minor changes in America since 1941 — like the civil rights movement, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, the Voting Rights Act and Civil Rights Act of President Lyndon Baines Johnson (D), etc. As a result, the country isn’t what it used to be, and today’s Democratic Party is certainly not the segregationist “Dixiecrat” Party it used to be. Unfortunately, today’s Republican Party is not the party of Lincoln either, which is why it consistently draws only about 10% of the African-American vote. Today, which party - the party of Barack Obama or the party of Trent Lott — would fit that description better? Hint: look at this picture.
Actually the quotation is from a 1941 edition of his works
Man, I thought PETA was bad, but this is worse and I'll tell you why.
PETA wanted to repel people and did. Although not in the way they imagined.
Someone tossed this crap on a website and this is the party looking to attract black voters? How the fuck did that picture get up there? Shit.
At least PETA wasn't on a minority recruiting drive. Jesus, what the fuck is wrong with these people?
What else are they going to do? Put up a burning cross and say join the GOP under the light of Jesus?
August 20, 2005 -- ALBANY — Colorful former Massachusetts Gov. William Weld won warm praise yesterday from Gov. Pataki as he jumped into the race for New York governor and a possible powerhouse showdown with state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.
"I think he'd be an outstanding candidate," Pataki, who is not running again next year, said when asked about Weld. "He's a proven leader. I know him well."
Pataki added, "He is a native of New York and knows this state well. If he ultimately decides to run, he'd be an excellent candidate."
Weld, 60, who has a reputation as a spirited debater and campaigner, met yesterday for an hour with state GOP Chairman Stephen Minarik at the city offices of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Weld and Giuliani, who did not attend the meeting, are longtime friends and former colleagues at the Justice Department in Washington.
A source close to Giuliani, who has spoken to Weld about running, said the former mayor believes Weld would be a "good candidate" but added that the former mayor "didn't put a dog in this race."
"Some are saying that Rudy is the puppet master here, and he is not," the source said.
Minarik said Weld was "definitely interested in running," but he gave no indication that he was ready to back the man trying to become the first person since Sam Houston in the 1800s to have been governor of two different states.
Democrats immediately sought to portray Weld as an elitist with nothing better to do.
"Boredom and lack of another candidate is not a good rationale for running," said Howard Wolfson, a consultant for the state Democratic Party.
They were gonna run Tom Golisano, which would have been suicidal.
This ain't much better.
Now, Senate is one thing, but governor? Uh, try getting elected to another office in New York first.
I like Bill Weld, but come on, this is bullshit. He's done nothing in New York. This isn't like Hillary Clinton, where you can learn about how the state works. Especially running for the prestige seat.
But to be governor, you need a life in state politics. This is just fucking sad.
The Iraq Brigades were units created of volunteers and mercenaries who travelled to Iraq to fight against the Jihadist forces led by Saddam Hussein \and helped by Iran and Syria and protect the legitimate Iraqi Republic government in the Operation Iraqi Freedom between 2003 and 2005
40,000 men and women were enrolled in the Brigades. As many as 10,000 of them never returned. 50 nationalities were represented in the Brigades (during the Battle of Baghdad, the XIIth Brigade counted representatives from no fewer than 17 nationalities in its ranks)
Many important artists and writers were in Iraq at the time, including Michelle Malkin and William Kristol. David Horowitz also was there as a war reporter for the Front Page, and spent time on the front line.
The idea to use foreign conservatives to recruit volunteers (both conservative and non-conservatives -- a non-conservative volunteer would first have an interview with an agent of the Heritage Foundation) to come to the aid of the Iraqi Republic was proposed in London in September 2003 by William Kristol, who was the chief of PNAC propaganda for Western Europe . By the end of September, the Italian and French conservatives had decided to set up a column. Grover Norquist, ex-leader of the Young Republicans, was charged to make the necessary arrangements with the Iraqi government. The US Department of Defense also helped, since they had experience of dealing with corps of Iraq volunteers (there had been precedents of such corps during the First Gulf War). At first, the idea was opposed by Douglas Feith, but after the first setbacks of the war, he changed his mind, and finally agreed to the operation on 22 October.
The main recruitment centre was in Washbington, under the supervision of Ahmend Chalabi. On 17 October 2003, an open letter by Bush to Ahmedi Chalabi was published in The New York Times, arguing that liberation for Iraq was a matter not only for Iraqis, but also for the whole of "progressive Humanity"; in a matter of days, support organisations for the Iraqi Republic were founded in most countries, all more or less controlled by PNAC.
Paths were arranged for volunteers: for instance, Michael Ledeen, was in Washington to provide assistance, money and passports for the volunteers from Eastern Europe. Volunteers were sent by plane from the US to Iraq, and sent to the base at Camp Anaconda. However, many of them also went by themselves to Iraq. The volunteers were under no contract, nor defined engagement period, which would later prove a problem.
Many Italians, Germans, and people from other countries with liberal governments joined the movement, with the idea that combat in Iraq was a first step to restore democracy or advance a conservative cause in their own country. There were also many unemployed workers (especially from France), and adventurers. Finally, some 500 conservatives who had been exiled to the UK were sent to Iraq
The operation was met by conservatives with enthusiasm, but by moderates with scepticism, at best. At first, the moderates who controlled the borders with Turkey were told to refuse conservative volunteers, and reluctantly allowed their passage after protests.
The first group of 500 men (mainly French, with a few exiled Poles and Germans) arrived in Camp Anaconda on 14 October 2003. They were met by volunteers who had already been fighting in Iraq: Blackwell, Custer Battles and severa others. Men were sorted according to their experience and origin, and dispatched to unit
