To the vanishing point

In the "war on terror," our signature weapon the laser-guided missle, theirs the suicide bomber. And with every missle launched, new recruits for suicide missions are created. The more missles, the more suicide bombers.

Can we kill all, or enough, of the suicide bombers to claim victory? There were a finite number of kamikaze pilots in WWII. Eventually we could kill them all. But is there a finite number of suicide bombers? Or is there a queue of them stretching out to the vanishing point? An endless succession?

What cold blooded questioning war demands. News this morning of a Iraqi man screaming for help while his wife and two children burned to death in their bombed car. This while the sympathetic gaze of America is focussed on the jilted Jennifer Aniston.

Why the Iraqi army won't stand up

Our current best plan to solve the problem of Iraq? To inject more military trainers into the country to get the Iraqi army ready to stand up and fight. The more quickly the Iraqi army stands up, the more quickly our army can stand down.

This plan on the surface seems logical, yet it is based on a flawed assumption: that the Iraqi army is like our army, or the army of any other established nation state. We expect that the members of the Iraqi army will identify themselves first and foremost as Iraqis and will fight and die for their country, just as soldiers in our military will fight and die for America. But what if they don't and won't?

As a number of analysts have pointed out, there's really no Iraq to Iraq. The country is not so much a nation as it is an idea imposed a century ago by the British on a region divided among very distinct and antagonistic sects and tribes. The Iraqi soldier, in other words, is more likely to identify himself as a Sunni or a Shiite or a Kurd first and as an Iraqi second -- a very distant second. This hardly lends itself to establishing the esprit de corps necessary to accomplish what our government expects the Iraqi army to accomplish.

I suspect that most of the soldiers in the Iraqi army are there not out of patriotism but out of mere necessity. It's a job. They need some means of supporting themselves and their families. So if the head of some sectarian militia offers them a better deal, they are likely to take it. This is why our government is so worried about the Saudis funding the Sunni insurgents, or Iran supporting the Shiite militias.

To sum up, our current best strategy in Iraq is based upon the same thing that so many previous failed strategies were based upon: wishful thinking. So enough already about getting the Iraqi army to stand up. It's time for us to get the hell out of Dodge.

Pinochet and Difficulty

Having made thousands of innocent people disappear in his day, General Augusto Pinochet finally drops down the rabbit hole himself, thus escaping the long arm of justice. And what is the reaction from the White House?

"Augusto Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile represented one of the most difficult periods in that nation's history," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto. "Our thoughts today are with the victims of his reign and their families. We commend the people of Chile for building a society based on freedom, the rule of law and respect for human rights."

Notice the diction here. The dictatorship of Pinochet was not one of the darkest periods in Chile's history, one of the most shameful periods in Chile's history, one of the most abominable periods in Chile's history, etc. No, it was a "difficult" period. Something tells me that "difficulty" is not the word the families of the disappeared would likely choose to describe what they suffered under Pinochet. How about "terrorism"?

It would be difficult indeed to acknowledge our government's complicity in the Pinochet coup and the terror regime that followed. Difficult to explain why Nixon and Kissinger cozied up to the good General while he presided over atrocity after atrocity. Very very difficult.

See article by Amy Goodman at http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1214-33.htm

Johnny Bolton Resigns

From today's Washington Post:

Unable to win Senate confirmation, U.N. Ambassador John Bolton will step down when his temporary appointment expires within weeks, the White House said Monday.

Critics have questioned Bolton's brusque style and whether he could be an effective bureaucrat who could force reform at the U.N. . . . .

The White House resubmitted Bolton's nomination last month. But with Democrats capturing control of the next Congress, his chances of winning confirmation appeared slight. The incoming chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Democratic Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, said he saw "no point in considering Mr. Bolton's nomination again."

LET US ALL RISE AND SING

Ye haven't an arm, ye haven't a leg, hurroo, hurroo
Ye haven't an arm, ye haven't a leg, hurroo, hurroo
Ye haven't an arm, ye haven't a leg,
Ye're an armless, boneless, chickenless egg
Ye'll have to put with a bowl out to beg
Oh Johnny I hardly knew ye

With your drums and guns and guns and drums, hurroo,hurroo
With your drums and guns and guns and drums, hurroo,hurroo
With your drums and guns and guns and drums,
The enemy nearly slew ye
Oh my darling dear, Ye look so queer
Johnny I hardly knew ye.

Rumsfeld and "Honor"

Neo-con theorist Kenneth Adelman, on a conversation with Donald Rumsfeld, to The New Yorker:

"What was astonishing to me was the number of Iraqi professional people who were leaving the country. People were voting with their feet, and I said that it looked like we needed a Plan B. I said, 'What's the alternative? Because what we're doing now is just losing.'"

He said Rumsfeld did not take the assessment well.

"He was in deep denial -- deep, deep denial. And then he did a strange thing. He did 15 or 20 minutes of posing questions to himself, and then answering them. He made the statement that we can only lose the war in America, that we can't lose it in Iraq. And I tried to interrupt this interrogatory soliloquy to say, 'Yes, we are actually losing the war in Iraq.' He got upset and cut me off. He said, 'Excuse me,' and went right on with it."

Enter Rumsfeld as Falstaff:

Well, 'tis no matter; honour pricks
me on. Yea, but how if honour prick me off when I
come on? how then? Can honour set to a leg? no: or
an arm? no: or take away the grief of a wound? no.
Honour hath no skill in surgery, then? no. What is
honour? a word. What is in that word honour? what
is that honour? air. A trim reckoning! Who hath it?
he that died o' Wednesday. Doth he feel it? no.
Doth he hear it? no. 'Tis insensible, then. Yea,
to the dead. But will it not live with the living?
no. Why? detraction will not suffer it. Therefore
I'll none of it. Honour is a mere scutcheon: and so
ends my catechism.

Then & Now

George W. Bush, after the 2004 Presidential election:

"Let me put it to you this way: I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it."

George W. Bush, after the 2006 Midterm election:

"Once I built a railroad, I made it run, made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad; now it's done. Brother, can you spare a dime?"

new rules on gays

The Catholic Church's just released “Ministry to Persons with a Homosexual Inclination: Guidelines for Pastoral Care”:

1. Tell them to knock it off and straighten up.
2. If they won't knock it off, sodomize them to drive home the point.
3. Console them by telling them "God hates the sin but thinks the sinner is fabulous."
4. If all else fails, excommunicate their genitals.

civil war . . . yet?

From today's Washington Post:

"The escalating violence in the Tigris River towns in many ways serves as a microcosm of the daily violence roiling Iraq. Sectarian attacks have increased more than tenfold since the start of the year and now claim more than 100 victims a day, according to the Iraqi government."

DUBYA SINGS!

AIN'T GONNA BE NO CIVIL WAR
AIN'T GONNA BE NO WAR
IF WE STAY THE COURSE
ON OUR BLINDERED HORSE
DER AIN'T GONNA BE NO WAR

AIN'T GONNA BE NO CIVIL WAR
AIN'T GONNA BE NO WAR
LONG AS WE WAIT
WITH NO PULLOUT DATE
DER AIN'T GONNA BE NO WAR

AIN'T GONNA BE NO CIVIL WAR
AIN'T GONNA BE NO WAR
WITH THE GOOD LORD'S GRACES
AND SOME PERMANENT BASES
DER AIN'T GONNA BE NO WAR

Police Academy X: Messypotamia

The Baghdad Police College, hailed as crucial to U.S. efforts to prepare Iraqis to take control of the country's security, was so poorly constructed that feces and urine rained from the ceilings in student barracks. Floors heaved inches off the ground and cracked apart. Water dripped so profusely in one room that it was dubbed "the rain forest." --Washington Post

A nice metaphor for the U.S. effort to prepare the Iraqi security forces for our long-delayed-but-always-expected pullout.

Being There

Appalled by a colleague who, in discussing the war in Iraq, while acknowledging that the war is a disaster, remarks, "But wouldn't it be exciting to be a part of the the most consequential happening of our time!" As if he envied the young men and women now serving in Iraq.

Let me find an analogy. Suppose that a gang rape happened at a small town tavern, and this crime was the "biggest thing ever to hit this town." Would a reasonable person respond by saying "Gee willikers! Wish I had been at the tavern that night rather than at home watching t.v. with the wife and kids. Nothing exciting ever happens to me!"

What good can come out of having taken part in this disgraceful war? How is it possible that any U.S. soldier will come away from it without wounds, be they physical, psychological, or moral? The proper attitude to take toward our soldiers is one of pity, not envy. Compassion for what they've gone through. We can admire their professionalism, admire their devotion to duty, etc., but to admire them for having been used to prosecute an immense crime? No, only pity there.

I wish I may, I wish I might . . .

It finally arrived in my email, the bit of apocrypha so many others have received. It is entitled "HOW TO STOP ISLAMIC TERRORISTS" and goes on as follows:

Once in U.S. history an episode of Islamic terrorism was very quickly stopped. It happened in the Philippines about 1911, when Gen. John J. Pershing was in command of the garrison. There had been numerous Islamic terrorist attacks, so "Black Jack" told his boys to catch the perps and teach them a lesson.

Forced to dig their own graves, the terrorists were all tied to posts, execution style. The U.S. soldiers then brought in pigs and slaughtered them, rubbing their bullets in the blood and fat. Thus, the terrorists were terrorized; they saw that they would be contaminated with hogs' blood. This would mean that they could not enter Heaven, even if they died as terrorist martyrs.

All but one was shot, their bodies dumped into the grave, and the hog guts dumped atop the bodies. The lone survivor was allowed to escape back to the terrorist camp and tell his brethren what happened to the others. This brought a stop to terrorism in the Philippines for the next 50 years.

This delightful myth came to me with a note from the sender: "Take that, liberal."

During times of crisis, wishful thinking runs rampant. All we need do to quash the Iraq insurgency, see, is provision ourselves with sufficient pig matter. Let's have our soldiers armed, not with assault rifles, but with super-soakers filled with pig's blood. Those mighty mujahadeen will head for the hills! As for terrorism at home, rather than air marshals we could have commercial airliners guarded by live pigs -- and let Porky ride first class, so every passenger can get an eyeful as they board. That'll make those creeps think twice before they turn the plane into a bomb, since they'd be taking the pig with them!

Sad, isn't it, that educated adults can fall for such bigoted nonsense, that they can give in to the wishful thought that America, if we puff ourselves up Big enough, if make ourselves Bad enough, can scare the bejeezuz into our enemies, can turn these would-be bloody martyrs into docile lambs. After all, they are nothing more than superstitious children, right?

According to this "logic," the tortures and humiliations carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo should have had the effect of frightening all faithful Muslims into easy submission to our will. Of course the opposite happened: the abuse of detainees has inflamed hatred of the United States throughout the Arab world and mightily fueled Islamic militancy. It has, indeed, made it impossible for us to win "the hearts and minds" of the Muslim peoples. With the possibility of a political solution now out the window, all that is left is an endless cycle of violence, of killing and being killed. Blood feud.

What has put us in this awful position? Once again, wishful thinking. The wishful thinking of Bush's neo-con cabal, who fooled themselves -- and for a while fooled us -- into thinking Iraq would be a military cakewalk. Now only a fool would believe that there is a military solution to the problem of Iraq.

We need to make the war in Iraq THE issue in the next round of elections. We need to use the war, the candidates' view of the war, as a touchstone. Anyone who evinces even a trace of belief that Iraq can still be won by military means needs to be shunned like the plague.

We cannot afford any more wishful thinkers in office.

a series of catastrophes ending in . . . ?

From today's Washington Post:

Rumsfeld obliquely acknowledged mistakes and setbacks in Iraq, quoting the French statesman Georges Clemenceau as calling all wars "a series of catastrophes that results in victory."

So, war must always result in victory? How about the idea that often in war both sides are losers? How about war as "a series of catastrophes ending in catastrophe"? Ever hear of Vietnam?

What kind of Defense Secretary would admit that the war he has managed has been "a series of catastrophes" unless that characterization came in the course of a resignation speech? "My administration, although choreographing a series of catastrophes, has produced a war that is a booming success. You're doing a heck of a job, Rummy!" [And here the Secretary gives himself a nice pat on the back with a prosthetic arm designed for just such a purpose].

How much worse could it be?

Bush's New Iraq Argument: It Could Be Worse

By Peter Baker
Washington Post,Thursday, August 24, 2006

For three years, the president tried to reassure Americans that more progress was being made in Iraq than they realized. But with Iraq either in civil war or on the brink of it, Bush dropped the unseen-progress argument in favor of the contention that things could be even worse.

Bush acknowledged this week that he has been discouraged as well. "Frustrated?" he asked. "Sometimes I'm frustrated. Rarely surprised. Sometimes I'm happy. This is -- but war is not a time of joy. These aren't joyous times. These are challenging times and they're difficult times and they're straining the psyche of our country."

The President continued,

"Yes, straining our psyches. Like straining our bowels, only mental. It's like a mental constipation, but nationwide. We need to be regular. Sometimes I'm sad. It's sad to strain mentally. But rarely am I surprised. Clueless, sometimes, but rarely surprised. Peace is happy. If we had peace we'd all be happy campers. We can all agree on that. Except Vice President Cheney."

Embryo R-E-S-P-E-C-T!

New Method Makes Embryo-Safe Stem Cells
By Rick Weiss,Washington Post

Scientists have developed a method of growing stem cell colonies without destroying human embryos. The method involves removing a single cell from an early embryo, a procedure already commonly done to test for genetic defects. . . . Although the safety of the cell-removal process is still under study, there is no evidence that the procedure puts embryos at significant risk or that babies born from such "biopsied" embryos are abnormal in any way.

"You can honestly say this cell line is from an embryo that was in no way harmed or destroyed," said Ronald M. Green, director of Dartmouth College's Ethics Institute and chief of an ethics panel that ACT convened to assess the experiment before it was done.

But early reactions from others suggest it will not be that simple. Bush offered little encouragement yesterday and, if anything, raised the bar higher, suggesting he would not be comfortable unless embryos were not involved at all.

"Any use of human embryos for research purposes raises serious ethical concerns," said a statement released by the White House. ". . . The President is hopeful that with time scientists can find ways of deriving cells like those now derived from human embryos but without the need for using embryos."

The statement went on, "The President is indeed uncomfortable with any disrespect shown an embryo. For example, one should never touch an embryo without first obtaining permission from the embryo to be touched. Using swear words such as 'damn' or 'shit' in the presence of an embryo, or deliberately breaking wind with an embryo nearby--these behaviors should also be strictly verboten. In short, one should treat all human embryos in much the same way one would treat a maiden aunt with strong fundamentalist Christian convictions."

More unkind observations on G. W. Bush

-- Bush often claims that he makes decisions "in his gut" -- by gut instinct. If so then he has a pretty dumb gut. So a new nickname for Dubya. Dumbgut. The Iraq war Dumbgut's excellent adventure. Dumbgut the Decider.

--Bush's election not unlike many an election for class president wherein the student body shows its contempt for the process by electing the least likely person available, say the class imbecile or delinquent -- often to the imbecile / delinquent's astonishment and agonizing embarrassment. "Wha . . . ME?"

--As every month of his presidency passes Bush's eyes seem to grow beadier, move closer together. By 2008 they will have actually merged and we'll have our first cyclops Chief Executive.

more collateral damage

"'And has thou slain the Jabberwock? / Come to my arms, my beamish boy! / O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!' / He chortled in his joy. "

Midst all the newspaper and magazine articles calloohing and callaying about the extermination of al-Zarqawi, I noted a single reference to some "collateral damage": a woman and a child also perished when that Baquba safe house was blown to bits by our bombs.

The killing of al-Zarqawi was apparently the result of some very fine intelligence work. I wonder, did that intelligence also indicate that a woman and child were present in the house? Were the bombs sent on their way despite this knowledge?

Let us focus on that child for a moment. How old? Eight years? Eight months? A boy or a girl? Was the woman killed his or her mother? What was the child like? Did he or she have a ready smile? Infectious laughter? Eyes that looked out onto the world with trusting wonder? Was he or she loveable? Did he or she have many friends? What were his or her hopes and dreams? Did he or she survive the initial blast? Did he or she die in agony? Did he or she know that death was coming? Was he or she frightened?

What questions! How dare I try to cut through the comfortable callousness that most of us have developed to protect ourselves from the ugly realities of this war!

But that child . . .

Imagine that you found yourself in a room with public enemy number one, Osama bin Laden. Also in that room was a child. You were handed a pistol and given an option: you may kill bin Laden, but you must also kill the child. Otherwise you must let both go free.

I am not asking what Jesus would do. We all know what Jesus would do. I am asking what YOU would do. For this dilemma is one our soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan face constantly: in killing the enemy, they must also sometimes kill the innocent.

Would you pull the trigger -- twice?

Bush: "My bad"

You know, you know how it is with me baby
You know, you know I just can't stand myself
Takes a whole lot a medicine
For me to pretend that I'm somebody else.

--Randy Newman, "Guilty"


WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush, beset by public doubts about his leadership, has opted for a more humble tone in discussing the Iraq war, including admitting mistakes, as a way to rebuild his credibility, analysts said on Friday . . .

Bush was unusually frank in discussing his mistakes in a war that has killed more than 2,400 Americans and thousands of Iraqis, saying he regretted the "Bring 'em on" challenge he issued to Iraqi insurgents in July 2003.

He said the remark was the "kind of tough talk, you know, that sent the wrong message to people."

Bush went on to apologize for the years he spent "completely zonked out on cocaine and drunker than a fiddler's bitch. That was a bad one on me. Sorry, Mom and Pop. I learned my lesson."

Bush's change in tone did not signal a change in policies, however. He and Blair refused to set a timetable for withdrawing troops and Bush said conditions on the ground would dictate future decisions about troop levels and commitments in Iraq.

******************

He apologizes for the cowboy rhetoric but not the actions that rhetoric was used to cover and justify. As if things would be different if he'd used a more diplomatic, more civilized tone as he led us into an unjust war. As if democracy would be in full flower in Iraq today if only he'd minded his Ps and Qs.

How long will it take for him to apologize for the war? To apologize to the families of the thousands killed? To apologize to the tens of thousands maimed, physically and or psychologically?

Well, perhaps that will be best left to future administrations.

Kenny Boy and the Book of Job

On reports that ex-Enron CEO Kenneth Lay has, in recent days, compared his trials and tribulations to those suffered by the Biblical Job.

****************

There was a man in the land of Enron whose name was Kenny-boy. And that man was perfect and upright . . . just about, and one that kinda feared God, and eschewed evil, more or less. And this man was rich beyond all imagining, and the greatest guy west of the Mississippi.

And one day the Lord said unto Satan, "Hast thou considered my servant Kenny-boy, that there is none like him in the earth, one that kinda feareth God, and escheweth evil, more or less."

Then Satan answered, "Uh, well, now that you mention it, I have considered Kenny-boy at some length, and had some palaver with him. In fact we've made quite a few, how shall I say, business arrangements together."

And the Lord said unto Satan, "Eh? What was that?"

And Satan returned, "Oh yea, me and Kenny-boy, we go way back. Good old boy, that Kenny. And a good Christian too. His Dad was a preacher, they say."

And the Lord replied, "Hum. Well, from now on he's all yours. I wash my hands of the bastard."

SOMETIME LATER

Kenneth Lay cried out onto the Lord: Why me, oh Lord! Why me?

And the Lord did answer: "Becauseth thou art a mighty shite in the eyes of God, Kenneth Lay, and thou shalt no more escape a heavy sentence than thou shalt draw out leviathan with an hook or his tongue with a chord. In short, you are well and truly fucked, my boy, by thy own filthy hand. So don't come bitchin to me."

the high and the low of it

We're in the money! We're in the money!
We've got a lot of what it takes to get along!

--Al Dubin, from "The Goldiggers"

We're low, we're low, we're very very low
As low as low can be.
For rich or high for we make them so
And a miserable lot are we.

--Richard Buckner, "The Song of the Low"

*****************************

HIGH

Record profits for Halliburton, which declared 2005 "the best in our 86-year history." David Lesar, Halliburton's chairman, president and CEO, declares on the company website, "For the full year 2005 we set a record for revenue and achieved net income of $2.4 billion with each of our six divisions posting record results."

LOW

As of Monday, May 8, 2006, at least 2,422 members of the U.S. military have died since the beginning of the Iraq war in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes seven military civilians. At least 1,907 died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers.

HIGH

In January, Exxon Mobil posted the highest quarterly and annual profits of any U.S. company in history: $10.71 billion for the fourth quarter of 2005 and $36.13 billion for the full year.

LOW

The report comes amid consumer outcry in the U.S. about soaring gasoline prices. The average retail price of gasoline in the U.S. is now $2.91 a gallon, or 68 cents higher than a year ago.

more dog wagging

From today's Washington Post, an article on how the importance of Zarqawi in Iraq has been exaggerated by the military -- perhaps at the Bush administration's request?-- to reinforce the idea of a connection between terrorism in Iraq and the 9/11 attacks.

"U.S. military policy is not to aim psychological operations at Americans, said Army Col. James A. Treadwell, who commanded the U.S. military psyops unit in Iraq in 2003. 'It is ingrained in us: You don't psyop Americans. We just don't do it,' said Treadwell. He said he left Iraq before the Zarqawi program began but was later told about it."

What a joke. What is the war in Iraq other than an immense PSYOPS campaign aimed at the American public? We know the Bush administration is all about politics-- that is, domestic politics. Foreign affairs simply serve the domestic political agenda. At the start Rove and others thought this war would be good for the political fortunes of Bush and his Republican guard, would help them win elections. It certainly won Bush a second term, although now he may regret having won, given his status as lamest of lame ducks. Still, that was the orignal intent and expectation behind the war.

Maybe Bush will start a war with Iran just on the off chance that the patriot effect will kick in again, that he'll get a boost in his pathetic approval ratings? Why not? He can start it, let the next administration -- or the next, or the next -- finish it.

Orwellian prophetic

Reading Orwell's Homage to Catalonia. A passage that rings true today, seventy years later.

"The fact is that every war suffers a kind of progressive degradation with every month that it continues, because such things as individual liberty and a truthful press are simply not compatible with military efficiency. . . . As for the newspaper talk about this being a 'war for democracy,' it was plain eye-wash. No one in his senses supposed that there was any hope for democracy, even as we understand it in England and France, in a country so divided and exhausted as Spain would be when the war was over. It would have to be a dictatorship."

On American press eyewash on Iraq, see Robert Fisk's recent Independent column at http://informationclearinghouse.info/article12395.htm

Support Our Troops?

Everywhere you look, the little yellow ribbons reading "Support Our Troops." A sentiment universally affirmed? Well, not in most of the rest of the world. And here at home?

Insofar as our troops are allowing themselves to be used by a corrupt administration to prosecute an unjust war, I say no, don't support the troops. Don't support them any more than you would have supported the troops of Germany or the troops of Japan in World War Two. Soldiers fighting a bad war should not be supported, no matter how admirable they may be as individuals.

Or rather support them only insofar as you support the movement to have them brought home immediately. Who can dispute the truth of what Michael Moore says at the end of Fahrenheit 9/11, that our troops are sworn to risk their lives in any necessary war but are not obliged to fight in an unnecessary and/or immoral war. It is dead wrong to put them in harm's way unnecessarily. This is what Bush has done.

The ethical status of a U.S. soldier fighting in Iraq? A painful question. If the soldier is intelligent and perceptive enough to recognize that the war is unjust, and yet s/he allows her/himself to be used to prosecute it, can that soldier not be found guilty of a certain degree of complicity?

How about the troops who are not perceptive enough to know that they are fighting a bad war? Is ignorance of the war's immorality an acceptable defense? And how many of them would be willing to offer that defense: "I was too stupid to know what was going on. I was just following orders."

Pity our troops? Most would bitterly resent the gesture, be ready to punch you in the nose for it. Both those who believe in The Cause (an ever-dwindling number) and those who don't but do retain a certain amount of professional pride. Because in pity there is always also a trace of contempt. Sometimes more than a trace.

A good many troops coming home from Iraq are very angry. They feel they have been ill used, although they are not sure how or by whom. Where is the dignity they hoped to find in the uniform?

If a civil war breaks out in Iraq?

From today's Washington Post:

There's no doubt that the sectarian tensions are higher than we've seen, and it's a great concern to all of us," Abizaid told the Senate committee, adding that the situation in Iraq is "changing [in] nature from insurgency toward sectarian violence." Asked about that comment after the briefing, Abizaid said that "sectarian violence is a greater concern for us security-wise right now than the insurgency."

Seems those folks in Iraq have run out of patience waiting for Uncle Sam to go home so they could get down to the bloody business of sorting each other out.

There's an old Irishism: "If you see a good fight, jump into it." I think the best policy here would be to reverse that. There's a hell of a fight getting started, and it's time to jump out.

Damn shame about all that oil, though. Maybe we can recover some of our losses by selling arms to all the competing sides in the civil war. That's been done before.

creeping peeping tomism

Elsewhere, Vice President Dick Cheney made his case for warrantless wiretaps today, telling reporters, "Everything else we've done for the past five years has been completely unwarranted." --Andy Borowitz, The Borowitz Report

Houston's chief of police Harold Hurtt, apparently feeling a bit overwhelmed these days by the influx of hurricane refugees (some of whom are criminals), has proposed placing surveillance cameras all over his fair city--in apartment complexes, in shopping malls, even in private homes. "I know a lot of people are concerned about Big Brother," Hurtt has commented, "but my response to that is, if you are not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about it?"

Mr. Hurtt is hardly alone in holding this opinion. After all, we have a president who is very much at ease with placing warrantless wiretaps on countless American citizens -- this ostensibly (note I say ostensibly) as a sort of fishing expedition launched in hopes of catching a terrorist or two. If you are not a bad guy, why worry that someone is eavesdropping on your telephone conversation? Why sweat it, even if this eavesdropping is in clear violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and therefore a felony? George Bush is the president, after all, and the president knows best.

One begins to fear that ours has become a nation of full-time busybodies --individuals who, instead of putting their shoulders to the wheel and their noses to the grindstone, are gleefully occupied applying their ears to the wall and their eyes to the keyhole. Our famed work ethic is being transformed, before our very eyes, into a watch ethic. Everyone watching everyone else, expecting -- yea, hoping -- to see the worst.

Consider the psychology of the surveillance enthusiast, he who would place a peephole camera in every kitchen, living room, and (especially) bedroom in America. This individual is not only voyeuristic but probably amnesiac as well. A moment's recollection would probably call up an instance wherein he had done something or said something that, presented to a spouse or a superior at work, would be the cause of acute embarrassment if not instant decapitation. (As Shakespeare put it, “Use every man after his desert, and who should scape whipping?") Yet this man's conviction of his own moral rectitude -- and the utter depravity of the rest of mankind -- makes him blind to such a possibility. Either that or he is simply convinced that he's far too clever ever to fall into the trap he would so casually set for others.

Among the rights central to the American way of life is the right to privacy. And as the shrinking of our world makes true privacy ever more rare, we need to grow more vigilant in safeguarding the right. This is why, whenever one of the self-proclaimed Guardians of Public Safety threatens to violate our privacy, we need to go after him, using every resource of the law. If we are lax in this, these contemptible peeping toms may very quickly morph into malignant Big Brothers. Then it will be too late.

A good place to start? Impeach George W. Bush.

Striking while the barrel is still smoking

A special prosecutor has been appointed to investigate why the Vice President harvested a lawyer that was clearly not flushed. This is poor sportsmanship, to say the least, and may break Texas game law.

****

A Washington psychologist, who prefers to remain anonymous, feels the Whittington shooting may be the result of pent-up rage the Vice President felt over not having had the opportunity to pull the trigger on a hijacked airliner on 9.11.

****

"The Vice President was acting on the best intelligence available to him at the time. This intelligence indicated that Harry Whittington was a quail. Mr. Cheney was thereby not only justfied in shooting him but obliged to shoot him. It was the responsible, indeed, the patriotic thing to do. Mr. Cheney is a hero in error."--Ahmed Chalabi.

****

I turned in the saddle and there was Armstrong, her sabre out, charging across the plain behind me, shouting hoarsely, “Wheel, Mr. Vice President! Not that way! Wheel – to the left, to the covey!” But the Vice President ignored Armstrong's plea and shot Harry Whittington in the face anyway.

Oh when shall his glory fade!
Oh the wild shot he made!

Honor that shot he made!
Honor that holy rage!
Oh Noble Dick Cheney!