"Our Strategy Can Be Summed Up This Way: As Iraqis Stand Up,
We Will Stand Down"

President Addresses Troops
Osan Air Base
Osan, Republic of Korea
4:29 P.M. (Local)

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you all. Thank you all very much. (Applause.) Please be seated -- unless you don't have a seat. (Laughter.) Laura and I are so honored to be here. We thought we'd stop by and feel the thunder and the fury of the Mustangs. (Applause.) Thanks for greeting us. It's a privilege to stand with the brave men and women of the 51st Fighter Wing and the 7th Air Force. (Applause.) Our citizens are safer because you're ready to fight tonight. (Applause.) You're serving the cause of liberty on distant frontiers, and I bring a message from home: Your Commander-in-Chief is proud of you, and so is the American people. (Applause.)


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The Iraqi people are proving their determination to build a future founded on democracy and hope, and the United States of America will help them succeed. (Applause.)


The fifth element of our strategy in the war on terror is to deny the militants future recruits by replacing hatred and resentment with democracy and hope across the broader Middle East. If the Middle East is left to grow in bitterness, if countries remain in misery while radicals stir the resentments of millions, then that part of the world will be a source of endless conflict and mounting danger. If the peoples of that region are permitted to choose their own destiny, and advance by their own energy and participation as both free men and women, then the extremists will be marginalized, and the flow of violent radicalism to the rest of the world will slow and eventually end.


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History has proven that free nations are peaceful nations and that democracies do not fight their neighbors. By advancing the hope of freedom and democracy for others, we'll make our own freedom more secure.


Our strategy can be summed up this way: As Iraqis stand up, we will stand down, and when our commanders on the ground tell me that Iraqi forces can defend their freedom, our troops will come home with the honor they have earned. (Applause.)

More Dots

You want to connect them? Neither do I, not really. But I want to respect the truth, and the most basic way to respect it is by first knowing what it might be. The memo above was written on November 22nd, 1963. It was mistakenly unclassified thirty years later, after George H.W. Bush lost an election to Bill Clinton. The memo places George H.W. Bush in Dallas on the date of the JFK assassination, and reports him calling the Houston SAC to report hearsay, day and source unknown, that one James Parrot planned to kill JFK when he visited Houston, and that Bush would be traveling to Dallas but returning to Houston the following day. Yet another one of life's odd little coincidences.

The Melian Debate

You and I should say what we really think, and aim only at what is possible, for we both alike know that in the discussion of human affairs the question of justice only enters where there is equal power to enforce it. The powerful exact what they can, and the weak grant what they must.

Thucydides, The Pelponnesian War

Palestinian Decoder Ring

So, if you were a leader in an Arab-speaking country, maybe like Palestinian Minister Abbas, a.k.a. Abu Mazen, how would you feel if George W. Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert had just endorsed you and called you a "good man?" I dunno...maybe like a narc whose high school principal had just come over the loudspeaker and congratulated for helping to break up drug rings? It would be like walking down the hallways with a "kick me" sign taped to your back. Only this high school doesn't stop with kicks. It stops with dead men walking.

As usual, I get confused with Palestinian politics, and who is who.

Who is Hamas? What is Fatah? Were democratic elections in Palestine a brilliant idea, or what? And as a host, how often should I purify the waters of my hookah? Answers: 1) a revolutionary terrorist organization of long standing, and a paste made from ground garbanzo beans, tahini, olive oil, and garlic; 2) a revolutionary terrorist organization of long standing and a reverse acronym of 'hataf,' an evocative word which fondly recalls the Islamic caliphate's medieval consolidation of the Holy Land; 3) democracy in Palestine is, predictably, as peaceful a prospect as baring Leon Trotsky's neck for a tomahawk in Mexico City; and, 4) at least once a day, every day; the hookah water should be kept hygenically clear.

Hamas is a political party which gets its funding from Arabs. Fatah is a political party which now gets its funding from western nations. Hamas and Fatah are fighting, and have split the quasi-country in two after counter-coups. Arabian nations and the US have both armed their respective champions and sent in sacks of flour, so there's a stalemate in which Hamas has taken over Gaza and Fatah alone can't stop them. After the US inexplicably pushed for democratic elections, the Palestinians chose a government which they felt best represented their needs. As this representative, West-hating government was not a welcome development, the US urged the Saudis to form a coalition government which included both Fatah, and Hamas, in return for aid money to keep its people from starving, agreed. Then thousands of weapons and tons of explosives were sent to Fatah by Egypt, while convicted US felon Elliott Abrams said that "Hamas" must be deposed at any price." Israel is now invading Gaza in order to depose Hamas and consolidate a despised, unelected regime favored by Christians and Jews. What could go wrong?

Here's what columnist Nahum Barnea had to say about the background situation in the Yediot Aharonot:

"The US and Israel had a decisive contribution to this failure. The Americans, in their lack of understanding for the processes of Islamization in the territories, pressured to hold democratic elections and brought Hamas to power with their own hands…. Since the elections, Israel, like the US, declared over and over that "Abu Mazen must be strengthened," but in practice, zero was done for this to happen. The meetings with him turned into an Israeli political tool, and Olmert's kisses and backslapping turned Abu Mazen into a collaborator and a source of jokes on the Palestinian street."

The neocons wanted elections in Palestine, and elections were held, but an 'extremist party' came to power in a landslide. The idealistic desire to install democracy into one of the most uninviting venues on earth put a grass-roots party into power, one which was inimical to Western interests. Of course, we can't blame the idea guys because no one except thinking beings, soccer fans, and voting machine vendors could have predicted that the more 'moderate' party, Fatah, led by a well-financed political tool named Abu Mazen, wasn't electable.

At this date Abu Mazen can't rule, he can't lead, he can't walk the streets and he probably can't breathe. Who could blame him for having his cars armored and his bags packed, and ready to go? (Singing: "Oh I'm leavin,' on a jet plane...don't know when I'll be back again.") For Abbas to bug out is only prudent, because Arabs see him as a minor, excisable cancer worthy of chemotherapy, who can also be blown to pieces with a few pounds of C-4. On the other hand, Abbas is hearing the strains of Metallica singing, "Master! Master! Obey your master!"

Either way, when Israel marches into Gaza, it will surely serve as a rallying cry and fund-raiser for muslim insurgencies all over the world. Charity car washes will be held for the Palestinians in Istanbul, Riyadh, and Dubai.

Retired Gen. George Washington Criticizes Bush's Handling Of Iraq War

WASHINGTON, DC—Breaking a 211-year media silence, retired Army Gen. George Washington appeared on NBC's Meet the Press Sunday to speak out against many aspects of the way the Iraq war has been waged.

Washington likens Vice President Cheney to controversial British Chancellor of the Exchequer and Stamp Act architect George Grenville.

Washington, whose appearance marked the first time the military leader and statesman had spoken publicly since his 1796 farewell address in Philadelphia, is the latest in a string of retired generals stepping forward to criticize the Iraq war.

"This entire military venture has been foolhardy and of ill design," said Washington, dressed in his customary breeches and frilly cravat. "The manifold mistakes committed by this president in Iraq carry grave consequences, and he who holds the position of commander in chief has the responsibility to right those wrongs."

Washington noted that while Saddam Hussein was an indefensible tyrant, that alone did not justify a "conflict that seems without design or end."

"The Iraqi people did suffer greatly under unjust rule," Washington said. "But in truth, it is the duty of any people that wishes to be free to fight for its own independence. Had France meddled in our revolution beyond the guidance and material assistance they provided, I should think similar unrest would have darkened our nation's earliest hours."

Washington made the cable news rounds, telling Wolf Blitzer that the war was a "tragic mistake for our nation."

The Virginia-born Revolutionary War veteran and national-capital namesake also expressed his worry over the state of the American militia, the unchecked powers of the executive branch, and the lack of a congressional declaration of war.

"The very genius of the American presidency is that it is an office held by an elected representative of the people, not by a monarch who can rule by fiat and enact policy at will," Washington said.

The retired general asserted that many of the current problems in Iraq could easily have been predicted by wiser civilian leadership.

"I can say from personal experience that even a malnourished force with feet clad in rags should not be underestimated, even by a far superior power," added Washington, who has disavowed further comparison between the Iraqi insurgency and the American colonists. "There is nothing a committed fighting force cannot accomplish if bolstered by the strength of its convictions."

Washington's critical comments echo those of other retired generals, including Maj. Gen. John Batiste and former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Wesley Clark, who attacked Bush's Iraq policy in a series of television ads run by political action committee VoteVets.org during the 2006 midterm elections.

"We're very happy that someone of General Washington's stature is speaking out," said Jon Soltz, cofounder and chairman of VoteVets.org. "He has impeccable conservative credentials, extensive foreign policy experience, is a true citizen-soldier with a proven commitment to his country, and, if that's not enough to get Bush to listen, he's the face on the dollar bill."

However, White House response to the former general's criticism was swift and sharp. Spokesman Tony Fratto dismissed Washington as "increasingly irrelevant" and "a relic" who "made some embarrassing gaffes" during his own military career, such as the Continental Army's near destruction in the Battle of Long Island in 1776.

"The general's reckless and irresponsible comments show that he clearly does not understand the realities of 21st-century warfare," Fratto said.

Conservative pundits moved quickly to discredit the decorated general.

"I don't care who you are—or if you cannot tell a lie—it's un-American to question the president in a time of war," Sean Hannity said on his radio program Monday. "Plus, I find it very interesting that a man who owned slaves and sold hemp thinks he's entitled to give our Commander in Chief lessons on how to run a war."

Toward the end of his Meet the Press interview, Washington expressed fears for the future of Iraq, Middle East policy, and America itself.

"These convoluted foreign adventures were not what I envisaged for my young nation," Washington said. "Certainly the citizens of the republic deserve better than this. Had I but known this was the fated course of my country, I might not have found the strength to liberate Her from the mantle of King George."

(Courtesy of the inspired Onion.)

Blame The Puppet

Last Friday the US Warrior Vice-Czar Bob Gates flew to Iraq to dole out some band-aids and breath mints. The headline of the story was "US Disappointed With Iraqi Political Steps." Umm, yeah, that was my "Thank Allah it's Friday" moment, good for a nice little chuckle. Still, I'd prefer to see a similar headline on a lighter subject, something like: "Sesame Street Producers Pissed About Big Bird's Goofy Walk, Talk."

Paris Hilton, The Death Penalty, And World Peace

Some say the world will end in fire,
some say say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire,
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
Paris Hilton would suffice.

(My apologies to Robert Frost.) A lot went down this past week or two. America kick-started the Cold War with Russia, taking up right where other drama series previously left off, one with the anti-anti-missile-missiles, the other with annexing Czechoslovakia and Poland. As a bonus, while America's favorite Preznit keeps stoking the nuclear fallout hopes in Europe and Russia, he also managed to insult the largest, oldest Christian denomination by being the first world leader to ever address a Catholic Pope with the greeting: "Yo, Bo-Peep Dude!" Syria and the United Arab Emirates stopped pegging their currencies to the US dollar, Pakistan and Palestine attacked themselves, and in Iraq, white people keep on thinking that a Christian occupation of a Muslim land can create stability rather than a butcher's banquet. Yet all these disturbances in The Force were inconsequential compared to the irreparable rend in the fabric of reality itself, a rend which widens by the day and betokens a permanent shift of astrological significance: Paris Hilton went back to jail.

Some people think that Paris Hilton is a dumb, grasping glamor-gal, and it's hard to deny that's much of what she is. When it comes to fame, however, this young woman has the genius of the ages. She's Madame du Pompadour, better known as Louis the XV's favorite mistress and closest advisor (pictured above) combined with Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese observer of human nature. From a very young age, she has displayed a deep, apparently effortless and ruthless insight for what it takes to lead. Think I'm stretching it too far? Ok, let's start with the small stuff. Her self-earned income was $7 million last year. She can't sing; she has an album. She can't act; she had her own TV show and is now in the movies. She can't dance; and is the queen of dance clubs. She never completed high school; she runs a highly successful business. Girls and grown women dress like her and try to look like her. Now she's rich, she's in jail, she's self-aware, and she's moving on to bigger things.

I'd like this to be satirical, but I can't honestly foretell how high she'll go or how much she'll do. I only know this: Paris Hilton has the ability to read social intent, to pre-empt it, and indeed to nudge it so she can dictate its terms. Being in jail will prove to be the best thing that ever happened to her because she'll use the adversity to elevate her fame and her game, and she's on a collision course with power. She adds a ton of blond gravitas to her repetoire at the bargain price of three weeks in the clink.

Speaking of prison and the death penalty: if the state can murder people, the overall effect of saying it's ok to kill who you don't like might just out-do the benefits of any possible deterrent effect by somewhere between 10 or 100 to one. The death penalty further cheapens the lives of the victims with yet more death, and takes the prerogative of the most solemn decisions of revenge away from those aggrieved and places them in the hands of the state. Ending the practice of executions moves countries one step closer to world peace.

When Paris Hilton's beauty starts to fade, she will stay in power through her innate intelligence. It's in there, and it's coming to a fame-o-mometer close to you.

Current Reading: People Of The Wetlands--Bogs, Bodies, and Lake-Dwellers

Does that title have you excited yet? Enthralled? It's ok if it doesn't, but the picture should have you at least a little bit curious. It's one of the world's most famous naturally preserved mummies. I suddenly had time to read the book it was in after seriously aggravating a previous neck injury last week, which precluded all non-essential tasks, like most blogging. Nerve pain radiated out from my upper spine, cramping up everything from there to my chest, rib cage, lower back, through my armpits, and having me retching from nausea and missing sleep much of the week. Never knew armpits could cramp up? They can. And, no, they're not pretty when they do.

As there are about 50-100 posts to catch up on, a book post, being relatively simple, seemed like a good way to start. Plus, I empathize with the poor gent in the picture, which is featured on the cover of the book. He, you might say, ahhh, died of his neck injury. My nerve paths may have complained, but the mummy, now he had some urgent issues. The braided leather rope around this man's neck dug deep furrows into the skin under his jaw and at his throat, indicating he was hung and left dangling for some time before his body was thrown into the Tollund bog in Denmark around 2,400 years ago. He was blond, and he had not shaved in at least a week.

Many of the mortal coils preserved in bogs around the world were, like Tollund Man, the result of executions. Thousands of bodies are preserved in the bogs, along with artifacts, tools, boats, clothing, and objects hinting at technology and customs at the boundaries of history. No place does bog forensic evidence point to execution with such prevalence as in Northern Europe, which in composite tends to confirm Tacitus when describing Geman tribal justice in the late 1st century A.D.:

- traitors and deserters are hanged on trees;
- cowards, shirkers, and sodomites are pressed down under a hurdle into the slimy mud of a bog;
- wives guilty of adultery are taken from the house, stripped, shaven, and flogged by their husbands;
- criminals are taken to their place of execution, and the body from the execution, on a cow-hide so as not to touch cultivated land.

Geez. These precursives are only encouraging in contrast, and at that, there are many here among us now whose views do not provide very stark comparison. Nonetheless these mummies and bog artifacts convey to those of us with northern European roots the first views of our illiterate ancestors. Their sturdy and utilitarian clothes, their great skills with wood and leather, their often under-nourished physical condition, the food in their bellies (often gruel containing a startling variety of seeds and non-local grasses), even their very flesh and hair. All but their blood. As the Irish dramatist R.B. Sheridan once said, "Our ancestors are a good kind of folk but they are the last people I should choose to have a visiting acquaintance with."

Starry Starry Night

(Van Gogh, Vincent Van, the Vin-Man, Vin. The Van-Gopherater!)

I heard Don Mclean's song (he who wrote 'Bye Bye Miss American Pie') about Vincent Van Gogh long before I ever saw any of the artwork it talked about. His hit song, 'Starry Starry Night' was haunting when I was 10 or 12, even without knowing what it was about. Then in junior high and high school I saw a couple pictures of Van Gogh's paintings in textbooks. Little black and white pictures, an inch or two by an inch or three, in textbooks. When I was a junior there was one color picture of Vincent's 'Sunflowers' in our book. It looked thoroughly unremarkable. A painting of flowers, a little twisted, a little off-kilter like you or I might do with limited skill. Sunflowers which nobody had watered lately. And for me and my classmates, it still had no connection with Mclean's maudlin little song.

Later, I shuffled off an exo-skeleton or two and swam naked through oceans, finding myself in places where they kept the real paintings our textbooks had only taken pictures of. I walked in front of 'Sunflowers' in Basel, and it arrested me for an hour. Vincent saw the world on mushrooms, through a prophet's eyes of doom. Where other people were working and toiling in commonplace fields on gloomy afternoons, something different sang in Vincent, and his brush-strokes rose up off the canvas like helium-filled balloons. When you're in front of his works, it's easy to see why they disturbed people so much a hundred and forty years ago. No one else back then perceived the world like him, he strove to paint the overwhelmingly beautiful, ordinary scenes of what he saw, so his paintings were windows into altered states. While foretelling many innovations in technique and style, no one has ever made anything like them since. As Mclean says, "I could've told you, Vincent, this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you."

This YouTube video is a nice review of Vincent Van Gogh's paintings, is far more complete than available in any three museums combined, and matches up well with McClean's song. You can't see the genius of the works first-hand, but you can hear another artist appreciate them in his way as they pass by in montage. And if you ever get a chance to see one or more of Van Gogh's paintings in person, take it. You might be disturbed, but you won't be disappointed.

Dubya's Travels

He seeks war like Goliath, then seeks peace with pygmies. (Ref: Gulliver's Travels.)

Time Bite Analysis: The Republican Debate

The whole debate comes down to one picture, the one above between Giuliani and McCain. They're both deeply flawed bit players who are in on the joke and to whom the Party owes much. Pretty much wasted airtime. The Republicans don't need a candidate. They need a messiah, or failing that, a blockbuster. Romney is presidential and belongs to an unacceptable messianic religious cult, and Fred Thompson (more on him later) wasn't there, so let's focus on the simultaneous body language going down in the time-bite's frame above.

If I recall correctly, Giuliani is quite fittingly and simply using Il Duce's patented "Clarifying Stilleto of Threat" gesture of 1930. Whereas McCain is combining set-piece gestures, artfully twinning Hitler's "Teutonic Homeland" by moving it downward from the sternum into the more modern Sopranoesque stomach area, then crowning it with waspishly upraised thumbs. It's masterful, and appeals to a maximum demographic swathe.

This is a tough one. I like McCain's creativity here, which is inarguably top-drawer and improvisationally brilliant, and possibly betrays a hint of scholarship. If only I knew what he wanted me to feel. It's if he's trying to draw me in, cheer me on, and is threatening to bomb me, all at the same time.

Like an Armani suit, Giuliani's repertoire is elegant, hard-edged, and somewhat stifling, as anyone who has lived in his former dominion knows. Yet at least I understand what he means. I know he wants me to shut up and pay rapt attention to whatever palliatives emit from his visage before he sets his vengeful, 9-millimeter minions upon me. Or upon the journalist who is daring to interrupt him.

For the debate, I'm glad McCain was there to spice things up stylistically, and he's probably the only genuine adult in the whole murderer's row. Still, a debate is probably not the time for creativity. I'll have to give this one to Giuliani on technical points. The Clarifying Stiletto of Threat comes through, yet again.

Dead Heat On A Democratic Merry-Go-Round

Barak Obama has drawn even with Hillary Clinton in a USA Today/Gallup Poll. Other polls still show Clinton with as much as a 12-point lead, but "increasingly huge crowds" are showing up for Obama sightings. One such gathering was in Seattle last Friday, which I couldn't go to because of a business dinner, because its $100, $200, and $500 seats were completely sold out before I even heard about it, and because Lord Wife was busy flying to the other side of the country for the weekend, leaving me to contend with the overwhelming enthusiasms of Lord Running Boy.

Reviews of Obama's performance in the New Hampshire debate were decidedly mixed, but then debate isn't his natural milieu. Talking with voters is his stomping ground. Amongst Democrat-only voters, Clinton's lead narrowed to 5 points in the same poll from a 17-point lead in mid-May. Obama captures more swing Republican votes. (Mental note: bigotry has always made pragmatic exceptions.) The momentum is clear, and the Clinton Juggernaut must be contorting in expensive spin-spasms.

We Are Expending Every Effort To Resolve The Situation

(Note: Someone in Iraq passed the memo below to Pat Lang a while back. It's announcing menu changes for the duration. Not to belittle the efforts of people who risk lives to get food shipments through difficult areas, but somehow I bet Halliburton is paid the same for a meal whether it's good or not. A bunch of bridges have been blown, including one on the main road to Kirkuk 100 miles north of the Green Zone, where the sheep above resides. In Baghdad, trucks are now only allowed over 2 of the 13 bridges which remain standing. The sheep says, "No shortages on the Tigris here, son, and the bridges are fine!")

NUMBER: 007-110 SUBJECT: Theater-Wide Delay in Food Deliveries DATE: 05-21-07

TO: All Mission Employees

Due to a theater-wide delay in food delivery, menu selections will be limited for the near future. While every effort will be made to provide balanced meals, it may not be possible to offer the dishes you are used to seeing at each meal. Fresh fruits and salad bar items will also be severely limited or unavailable.

Although we are expending every effort to resolve the situation, should the food convoys be delayed further, DFACs will be required to serve MREs for at least one meal out of the day.

We regret any inconvenience this may cause but we ask for your understanding of the situation.

Approved: MGT/S. Muench
Drafted: MGT/E. Butler

For Behold, I Am Spam

I apologize once again for my absence, but this time it was excused. Google, which owns Blogspot, locked my blog. They sensed I ran a "spam-blog." Of course, you guys already knew this, but it seems like I had Google fooled there for awhile, and regardless, I can't stop you from coming here no matter how annoying, repetitive, or senseless the content. Google, however, can stop me from publishing at their whim. And they could probably just delete my toxic keyboardings.

Below is the message I got over the weekend, when checking in to see the status of my protest. I got something similar to it when I tried, blog-locked, to publish a post last week about Peggy Noonan:

Your blog is locked

Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (What's a spam blog?) Since you're an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive.

We received your unlock request on June 1, 2007. On behalf of the robots, we apologize for locking your non-spam blog. Please be patient while we take a look at your blog and verify that it is not spam.

Find out more about how Blogger is fighting spam blogs.

Umm...Peggy? For once, I was complimenting you! Of course I immediately felt safer, even when the only recourse the Googleites gave me was to fill out a word verification field with a vague promise of reviewing my blog for appropriateness. Heuristics, meet tautology. Paranoia, meet "everyone is out to get you." Here we are 5 days later, the embargo is lifted, and I don't know why it happened in the first place. There was no explanation whatsoever as to why it happened, or what I could do from it happening again. Just that robots are inherently "fuzzy."

This has been instructive. In certain conditions, one might want to look beyond using Google, a free host, or a U.S.-based hosting service. If your words or those of your commenters are found to be objectionable by your host or the entities it must answer to, you can be classified as "spam" and sent into the nether-world spam-centration camp for an indeterminate period, with no established lines of recourse. (First, they came for the spammers...) I don't want to give concerned governments any advice, or point them to techniques in history, temporarily successful as they may have been.

To be clear, I don't think this was anything other than a screw-up in Google's heuristical robo-efforts to reduce the threat of spam. As it is, Google's stock is starting to look a little high to me. And I don't think we're going to be carted off to the camp recently constructed by Halliburton in the eastern part of the State. At least not before next winter, when some illegal immigrants go. But, if you think about it, spam is terrorism by other means, and all blogs are spam-like. So all our blogs are subject to approval. Like mine, apparently. Blogs are inefficient, subversive, incestuous, unapproved, counterproductive, and uncomfortably free. Whether blogging from work or at home, we'll all need to be reviewed. Fortunately, there are bots to help us.

For Whom The Bush Tolls

There's a reason I link to Peggy Noonan, she who came up with the media-friendly term, "a thousand points of light" for Bush the Elder in a famous campaign speech, one which sought to clarify the urgent separation of charity and state and set the political charter back to the 1890s. She came up with the phrase because she was the Elder's best speech-writer. Why do I link to her, or know her in the first place?

It's not for her politics, logic, or lack thereof, or her basic believing-Catholic-girl viewpoint of what-all is sweet and holy. I link to her because she has a way with words, and eloquently represents the mainstream of both American political and religious conservatism. On top of that, she's the Molly Ivins of the money-establishment crowd, only still alive, and her opinion column is one of the most popular sections of the Wall Street Journal. I worked and lived on Wall Street at one time, and have on occasion since been forced to read that chronicle of financial metastacism. I link to Peggy Noonan because she is an excellent source of reliable, quick oppo-research, and because she's capable of speaking the truth and expressing it well.

If Peggy Noonan is publicly breaking with the Bush Administration, and she is, with both Junya's and the Elder's iterations of it, then you can bet the White House has lost the conservative mainstream, big-time. That presumptuous, ignorant Dynasty is now an island, entire of itself, floating away from reality along with the rest of its shipwrecked psychopants, its hydrocarbon sadists, its neo-colonial zealots, its social-engineering entymologists. Watching the White House on its journey is like seeing a great high church fall, where the twisted, hissing gargoyles who perch in judgement on new, unevenly built flying arches are also their proud, unyielding architects. While awed by the spectacle, one's instinct is to scramble for safety while fervently hoping the clearly over-stressed structure falls away from the crowd. Peggy understands this, and has just shot her full complement of torpedoes at the Bushes.

Here's how she ends her hit-piece on them:

One of the things I have come to think the past few years is that the Bushes, father and son, though different in many ways, are great wasters of political inheritance. They throw it away as if they'd earned it and could do with it what they liked. Bush senior inherited a vibrant country and a party at peace with itself. He won the leadership of a party that had finally, at great cost, by 1980, fought itself through to unity and come together on shared principles. Mr. Bush won in 1988 by saying he would govern as Reagan had. Yet he did not understand he'd been elected to Reagan's third term. He thought he'd been elected because they liked him. And so he raised taxes, sundered a hard-won coalition, and found himself shocked to lose his party the presidency, and for eight long and consequential years. He had many virtues, but he wasted his inheritance.

Bush the younger came forward, presented himself as a conservative, garnered all the frustrated hopes of his party, turned them into victory, and not nine months later was handed a historical trauma that left his country rallied around him, lifting him, and his party bonded to him. He was disciplined and often daring, but in time he sundered the party that rallied to him, and broke his coalition into pieces. He threw away his inheritance. I do not understand such squandering.

Now conservatives and Republicans are going to have to win back their party. They are going to have to break from those who have already broken from them. This will require courage, serious thinking and an ability to do what psychologists used to call letting go. This will be painful, but it's time. It's more than time.

While she compares the Bush Administrations to wife-beaters, ones which richly employed and rewarded her and many other betrayed conservatives, one could hope for a little admission of culpability. Maybe even an apology for being a stupid, formerly contented cow...or not. But hey: at least she's "formerly," at least she's angry, and at least she got it published in the most august press of the land. At least the dip-shits riding to work on the wake a new Dow high can read there's reason to doubt their happiness, and their unscalable intelligence.

The Topography Of Golgotha

For 14 hours yesterday, I was at work, teaching Christ to lift his cross by the numbers, and how to adjust his crown; and not to imagine he thirst until after the last halt. I attended his Supper to see that there were no complaints; and inspected his feet that they should be worthy of the nails. I see to it that he is dumb, and stands before his accusers. With a piece of silver I buy him every day, and with maps I make him familiar with the topography of Golgotha.

Captain Wilfred Owen, The Manchesters
KIA Nov. 4, 1918

I'm very behind on blogging, my apologies.

Monday was Memorial Day, a Federal holiday which was first known as Decoration Day. Until passage of the Uniform Holiday Bill in 1968, it was celebrated on May 30th, which is today, but Congress made it and three other holidays fall on either Monday or Friday so as to make 3-day weekends. Originally, the people in the northern parts of my country followed the examples of former Confederate states in honoring their fallen, and a General Logan thought the occasion up and started to formalize a practice which first began in Waterloo, New York in 1866.

One suspects it naturally became a time to meditate upon the Republic we had become, echoing Benjamin Franklin's famous phrase, "A republic, if you can keep it," an issue not fully clarified until 1865. Many minds including mine aren't so sure that clarification or the means by which it was sought were a good thing, but the deep schism noted by Franklin's impish sense of satire had finally, for good and ill, been joined by blood. People low and high, North and South, would go to decorate the graves of young men with flowers, and to remember the half million and more souls who died from cannon, sword, shot and disease on the way to making it so.

I appreciated the weekend and took full advantage of it with my little family and our friends, but I'd have to agree with the Veterans of Foreign Wars, which said in their 2002 address, "Changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this has contributed greatly to the general public's nonchalant observance..." I looked for a parade to attend in Seattle, but couldn't find one or any ceremonial observances whatsoever. I'd been meaning to put up the verse of Wilfred Owen's above on the occasion, and am just getting to it now, but this is the traditional Memorial Day, when in my youth almost every burg, hamlet, or town like mine would have a big parade. Like many Americans, my feelings on America's impulse for Dumb Wars are generally negative, and sometimes this can mix up my feelings on veterans, but even so. I would've liked to go to a parade honoring our past and the sacrifices brave men, women, and children made for each other.

Golgotha, in Wil Owen's verse above, refers to a hillock in Jerusalem whose rocks made, from one viewpoint, the distinctive shape of a skull. From its Hebraic root it would've been known as "the rolling skull," and was a place of execution, conveniently located relatively close to tombs. From the Latin calvaria ("skull") it is known in the New Testament as Calvary, the hill where a man named Jesus was said by his friends to have been crucified, and, over a century later, noted in short, controversial fragments passed down in the writings of Josephus, Tacitus, and Eusebius. The original topography of Golgotha has been forgotten, but the location is being fiercely debated, and its contours are ever being worked out anew by commanders who must send soldiers to their deaths.

Wil Owen knowingly compares himself to Judas, close friend and betrayer of Christ, with this line: "with a piece of silver I buy him every day". He is trying to prepare his men against the worst, and he feels like he's betraying not just them, but sacred humanity itself. Owen was a gay man, a captain for the Manchesters who had to lead boys from his home city to near-certain death and traumatic injury in World War One. He had a nervous breakdown during the awful height of what was dubbed by an old, patrician US President named Woodrow Wilson, even as he opportunistically plunged his country into it as: "the war to end all wars." Owen started writing poetry as therapy in the wake of a nervous breakdown induced by combat, recovering enough to return to his men. To do so, he broke the promises he made to his lover and to a literary circle of friends who admired his writing, and knew the senseless nature of the conflict. Owen hopped a ferry-boat back to Belgium, and died soon thereafter, winning the Victoria Cross while leading his men on an assault across a canal.

War has become less about being gay or straight, child or adult, woman or man than about trying to shield the ones you love from death via the indiscriminate chemical reactions of high explosives delivered by the messengers of distant psychopaths. In that, every one of us is a commander. Command, I suppose, is about doing your damnedest not to betray your charges while sheer idiocy is passed down from above, and telling them, "Listen to me, be quiet, everything is going to be alright." And it will be, it will be.

You Fu!!ed With The Wrong Azalea

The weather gods finally hit their remote-control channel buttons that say, "Seattle, Spring, Nice" so both the flowers and the sun could be out at the same time. All was good, the perfect day for a walk. We gave ourselves a day off, so I took it. And then, I almost died. From laughter only, but still. Death is death, whichever way you slice it.

Near a church for the Disintegrated Methodists, there is a late Victorian house with perfectly tended arboreal grounds, the borders of its English country lawn bursting with vertiginous verdures and all the colorful bounties of spring. The verdures are shielded by a robust, menacingly spiked cast-iron fence which barely manages to stay on the ornamental side of "institutional," or "severe." Near an entry gate, firmly fastened to that fence is a laminated yellow sheet of paper. In big, bold and black 24-point type, it is titled as follows:

To the Cretinous Thieving Asswipes Who Stole Our Azalea

Now that's an attention-grabber. Foul play in my neighborhood! I stopped and read on:

What? You're not expecting language like this around a house of worship? Okay, how about cretinous thieving MURDERING asswipes? That is what you did to our tree, you plant-murderers. It was gorgeous, in full bloom with glorious salmon-colored blossoms. The way you tore it off, it won't grow. It will DIE, and I hope it casts a blight of DEATH over everything you try to plant around it. I hope every plant around you dies. I hope your cloud of blight becomes so obvious that people around you have no choice but to lock you up in some kind of bubble to spare their own precious greenery.

The house is right next to a church, is probably a pastor's residence, and I didn't make it through the whole paragraph before something inside me dislocated and I started to laugh. The laughs soon turned into a fit of coughing, then wheezing, as snot came out of my nose and tears out my eyes as I hung on the fence for dear life, desperately trying to breathe and maintain consciousness for the next 60 seconds. Maybe it was more like 100 seconds. Anyhow, it was rough going there for awhile.

And that was only the first paragraph. It went on:

Yeah, yeah, I am supposed to pray for your immortal soul. Yeah, right. Maybe some people can, but some of us need all the help we can get not to rip you limb from limb! Your mortal butt should be rotting in jail and then MAYBE I can pray for your soul.

And what if you repent? What if some act of divine mercy or divine vengeance fills your heart with contrition? GROVEL. Go before the Lord your God and grovel. Plead for mercy! If that does not work or you still need to repent further, PAY for your sins against our community. Send a large contribution to the faith community of your choice and mark it "azalea fund."

May God take pity on your pathetic wretched existence!!!!!

Phew. I didn't make it through to the end without a couple more seizures. Now, azaleas are amongst the most common lawn entity in Seattle, which is a gardening-nazi town to begin with. (Got any pollen allergies? You'll rue the day you stepped foot here. We've got the pollen that torments you, and many more that will.) It's as if fugitive, hunted gardeners from other states fled here to hide out behind the cover of their fescues, magnolias, strawberry trees, lavendars, thyme, clovers, mosses, retching clumps of rhododendrons, big hairy frilly afro-weeds with little blue-and-white flowers all over them, dark red whacky things sticking up in the air that can slice open a hand, rose bushes with thorns big enough to take out an eye, murderous morning glory vines capable of tearing clapboards off a house, Japanese maples which have been doted on like trust fund babies, and 800 kinds of aggressive, mostly mutant ornamental grasses and ivies. And oh, yeah. Don't even get me started on the goddamned bamboos.

I looked at the plant in question, which dared me not to look at it while appearing to be as healthy as an oak, and tried to make out the possible absence of a branch or two. I guess the enraged church gardener referred to the theft of an entire plant by envious homeowners, maybe a desperate couple on the lam, needing to do a fast lawn upgrade in order to flip that one last house before the bubble pops. Fearing eternal damnation and fighting the shell-shocked, still-painfully-cramped muscles which go across my ribs, I declined to approach the scene of the crime or get near what was sure to be a zealously guarded survivor. I reflected on the nature of property rights in general, plant theft in particular, half expecting a matron wielding a knitting needle to pile out onto her porch and stare me down like Charlton Heston, when he played Moses, stared down the Red Sea. Azaleas are special here. There once must have been a sort of mordant, obsessive interest in them, perhaps there were even bizarre azalea-breeding competitions. Maybe there still are. Enough to motivate a crime. An azalea underground. A brush-flower conspiracy. All I know is, this pimp-mobile of plants flowers in every shade of pink, red, violet, chartreuse, and mauve imaginable, and it is nearly impossible to kill.

I should know. I have one, and have not exactly been gentle to it. It's salmon-covered, is in full bloom, and it lies crying in my basement, begging for light. (Just kidding. Really, no, I'm kidding! It was too hard to resist making light of what may be a serious matter. Why, there's already a thriving, red-pink beauty right in front of my house. Please don't damn me or otherwise hurt me.)

I was going to go back, laptop in hand, to transcribe what I consider to be a worthy, evocative piece of Americana. I mean, think about it. We steal azaleas, blow up over their theft, worry about second-hand smoke and I just bought organic duck eggs a couple weeks ago. Filled with Omega-3 acids! In other places, by comparison, people worry about keeping their craniums unshattered and connected to their torsos, along with most of their limbs, as they shop in markets, ride in cars, try to make love, and sleep in houses. Which in turn made me think, "Wait a minute! Something this good might already be on the Net." I searched for the terms "cretinous murdering azalea thief." First-hit paydirt. Somebody sent it into the "I, Anonymous" column of our local entertainment weekly, The Stranger.

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"Hi! I'm Greg. Come Sail Me To Miami!"

Here, aircraft carriers USS Nimitz, Bonhomme Richard, and John C. Stennis steam up the Gulf of Oman on their way through the Straits of Hormuz in a "show of force" intended to intimidate Iran, hang around until they start a war by accident, or get the orders to fly bomb-laden planes off their decks and keep it going like a conveyor belt. Each carrier is part of a strike (CSG) or battle (CBG) group. There are differences between a CSG and a CBG, but each consists of upwards of twenty ships with upwards of twenty thousand sailors and marines, along with at least one nuclear attack submarine per group. The USS Eisenhower appears to have been rotated off station, or at least that it's not in the glamour shot above is some small comfort.

How would we Americans feel if, say, China sailed sixty warships between Cuba and Miami and sent them on into the Gulf of Mexico towards Houston? With loudspeakers playing broken records which say, "All options are on the table! All options are on the table! All options are on the table!" Apart from cursing them as despicable morons, I would guess we'd be feeling a little bit...murderous. Like our national sovereignty was being violated. Like Iran's has been repeatedly for the last century by Western powers. A little word of advice to the next Caretaker of Democracy: Stop.

If I had to take a National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, which, most thankfully I don't because I'm shirking other writing tasks even as I write this post, first, there would have to be a lot of money involved. Next, I would title it: "Iran's Message to America: So Bomb Us Already, You Sick Twisted Bastards."

(For any youngsters here, the post's title refers to famous TV commercials of the late 1960s, in which a short-skirted stewardess would look at the camera and say, "Hi! I'm Marcia. Come fly me to Miami.")

Gordon Brown Is Going To Haul Ass

Out of Iraq. The new British Prime Minister may have supported participation in Iraq's occupation, but he's a politician whose weather-vane isn't stuck resolutely against the wind. There are far more domestic benefits for him in leaving, and BushCo won't pay him or England enough to stay.

I don't think he's going to pull troops out of Afghanistan. If anything, he'll probably send in a few thousand more so he can tout his toughness in shoring up NATO's efforts and thereby innoculate himself. Plus, the Brits have been tromping about there for so long the casualties might seem like the comforting echoes of an Empire. Prince Harry might go there, but he's been pulled back from duty in Iraq.

Leaving Iraq won't exactly create a vacuum, since the 25,000 or so pissed-off, burnt-out British forces have been lying fairly low in the south-east "Shia Rump" already, but their slack can't be taken up by an increasingly scarce Coalition. US forces would have to theoretically replace them.

Obama In Detroit: Fuel Efficiency, Health, & Industrial Competitiveness

Barack Obama made his most detailed economic proposal to date on May 7, during a speech in Detroit. He proposed a sensible remedy for helping automakers while also curbing America's energy consumption. Under his plan, the federal government would help the industry pay for some retiree health benefits if automakers invest in more fuel-efficient vehicles. The partnership idea, which hack economists like Mankiw criticized as an unjustified bailout, would cost an estimated $7 billion over 10 years. Umm...that's cheap.

Auto-makers in Detroit say they're failing because of huge pension and health liabilities. It's not the only cause of their failures, but the problem is systemic across US industry. The auto-makers have a key, legitimate gripe. They're competing against foreign companies whose workers already benefit from universal health care systems, so their balance sheets aren't encumbered by the same obligations. GM and Ford are offering all their manufacturing employees money, sometimes as much as $120k, to walk away. It's cheaper to do that and outsource production. The employees of airlines, airplane manufacturers, and lumber companies are losing their jobs because pensions are going the way of telegraph poles, even though the major portion of those pensions were worker-funded through their unions. The costs have risen, the money wasn't invested well, what was paid in is now outweighed by liabilities, so it's hard to compete.

The automobile manufacturers in Detroit turned on a dime to become the arsenal which won WWII, it was called the "American Miracle" at the time, and that's what Obama kicked off his speech with. He then pointed out that American dependence on foreign oil makes us vulnerable, and that burning oil accelerates global warming. So he offered Detroit a deal: If you make fuel-efficient cars, and I know you can, I will pay for your health care and pensions:

"A clean, secure energy future will take another American Miracle. It will require a historic effort, on the scale of what we saw in those factories during World War Two. It will require tough choices by our government, it will require sacrifice from our businesses, it will require innovation from our brightest minds, it will require a sustained commitment from the American people. It's also going to take leadership on the "Can't do, won't do, won't even try" style of politics of the past. Leadership willing to take on the doubters and the cynics and simply say, "Believe me, we can do it if we really try." I will be that kind of President. A President who believes that America can, a President who believes that when it comes to energy, the challenge may be great, and the road may be long, but the time to act is now. Who knows that we have the technology and we have the resources, and that we are at a rare moment of growing consensus among Democrats and Republicans, unions and CEOs, evangelical Christians and military experts who understand that this must be our generation's next Great Task."

None of the quote above was read off a tele-prompter, nor was any of his speech. It was all off the top of his head, and he was in command; he just came out and said it, what our challenge is as a country: invading other countries to lock up their oil won't work; we have to reduce oil consumption and build another engine. He was greeted with sustained, thunderous applause and whoops of joy by the attending elite. Detroit thinks he "gets it."

Obama has also recognized the crease in which to drive the splitter of a universal health care wedge, and how to generate support for it: Big Business is demanding it. This far outclasses the 3,000-page Clintonian Cryptonomicon plan for health care. We don't need 3,000 pages. The return on investment of health is simple. In World War Two, the Nazis took millions of prisoners and people in concentration camps and worked them in factories for war production. Worked them to death. They had work output per person until average death figured down to the calorie. Whereas the US sent Rosie the Riveters into factories, paid them unheard-of wages and double-overtime on top of that. Guess who won?

Workers need good wages and good health care, and while individuals might not count for much in this cock-eyed world, the corporations they make things for count for a lot. The ability to compete is crucial, and a good, equitable system of health care which makes people healthy is competitive bedrock. Finally, someone understands those fundamentals again, and had the courage to say it in public.

Playing Congressional Chicken With The Lives Of Our Troops

The above is a quote from The Left Coaster, a deft blogger I'll probably get around to adding to the lineup of Caravan-Sanctuaries at right. The most recent post there, "Pelosi and Reid Stumble Back To Point 'A,'" is a good analysis of current events. With war funding, it's obvious a game of chicken has been going on, that the Dims blinked, and it's obvious how much the gang in the White House cares about the professional, volunteer-grunt military: not a rat's ass.

The Democrats, in the abstract and in the cases of a few Democratic members of Congress including Senator Jim Webb, whose son is in Iraq, do care a rat's ass about the military. Certainly enough that they don't want to endanger lives, or politically be seen as de-funding it. So their capitulation on writing another blank check for I-wrack until September 30th, the end of the United States fiscal year, can be seen in that light. In terms of Talking Points and scorched-earth policy, they know what the White House is capable of:

"Our troops have run out of ammunition, and they're being overrun because the Democrats have held up funding."

You probably think that no Administration would be so craven as to hold up bullets to troops in the field. Ha ha ha hah! Guess again, me hordies. The Bush Administration already held up the cheapest, lowest-tech, begged-for equipment for years. They held up cheaper, better, lighter body armor. They held up improved armor and glass on Humvees. These two FUBARs alone, on the most inexpensive of battlefield protections, got a lot of people killed, wounded, and sent into semi-vegetative states, the nether-worlds between life and death.

This past behavior was not mere neglect, but part of a well-established funding pattern. It was triage, a heuristic expression of finite resource allocation along expensive n-best nodes. In English: the troops are low on the BushCo totem pole, and yet more of them would be sacrificed for a domestic political victory. Especially now. To the Bush Administration, they're cheap compared to alternatives.

I'm not holding up the Dims as exemplars of vision, morality, or politics. Far from it. I'm just saying they still exhibit traces of humane contemplation, and with their submission on the Iraq War Funding bill, they recognized they've been out-manuevered by a ruthless calculus. Denying war funding was a battle they weren't prepared to win, and on this issue, Pelosi and Reid now get to retreat, re-group, and learn.

For the record, there already was at least one severe ammunition shortage early in the occupation, and there's one right now, with US police departments not able to get their regular allotments because troops are going through so much of it. In the US commercially, some cartridges now take more than a year to get. This should be telling us a little something about both our free-market supply system and what the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan are experiencing.

According to the Joint Munitions Command at the Rock Island Arsenal, 1.5 billion rounds of small-caliber ammunition were expended in 2006, up four-fold from 2001. That's 10,000 rounds on average in one year for every US soldier serving on rotation in a combat zone!. Almost 1,000 rounds per month, 250 rounds per week, a full M-16 clip and then some every day. That kind of expenditure is higher than in WWI, WWII, and Vietnam. It's the stuff of Zulu Wars, embattled colonial outposts, sieges, and cries of "You're a better man than I, Gunga Din." If they're shooting that many rounds, it's because they're already being overrun.

House Drafts No-Confidence Vote On Attorney General

Various congress-critters, media pros, and bloggers have been predicting that the Attorney General, Alberto Gonazales, is going to resign before the House and/or Senate drop a vote of "No Confidence" on him. The House introduced a resolution today urging Preznit to fire his long-time Texas lawyer, and close friend. The Senate introduced a resolution last week, and Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter sibilanced his way through something which sounded vaguely like a whining threat.

There's a slight problem with the resignation theory, even if the House and the Senate pass their resolutions. It goes like this: then what? Apparently, there are people in D.C. and in the media who, despite being paid lots of money to know how our government works, have not been paying much attention to it. At this point, to think that Bush and Gonzales view Congress with anything other than contempt and condescension from a great height is a feat of self-serving naivete. First off, Bush would sooner have the Secret Service shoot Gonzales than to see him resign. And he sure as a two-headed dog isn't gonna fire him. Gonzales is in the Circle of Trust.

Gonzales is Dubya's consigliere, the special advisor and counselor to the capo of a large crime syndicate. Consiglieri never really resign, you see, and you don't fire them, because the consiglieri know All The Secrets. The only circumstances under which Gonzales will resign is if he gets to maintain de facto control of the Justice Department. If it's announced that he's resigning, that means he's being promoted back into the White House, where he'll continue to ride herd on Justice and the FBI. Throw in the NSA for official measure. That's why he was sent out from there to purge dissent in the Justice Department in the first place, which he did.

Now, if Gonzales dies in a tragic kayaking or auto accident, that's your sign for "We're really getting somewhere." Bloggers and proto-journalists more capable than me, for example Jane Hamsher and Glenn Greenwald, have covered the same basic angle as I do above. With more vitriol and politesse, respectively, because someone's paying them, and they're more on top of it than me. I simply work for a living. But at least I get it. In terms of the Godfather series, Alberto Gonzales is a "Don."

Oh, well. Congress is all about procedure, and this is one more hoop to jump through on the way to the next one. Yes, OF COURSE Gonzales turned Justice into a witch-hunt tool of the White House. So does that mean we doll up in our best media prom dresses, damn the surveillance, spike the punch, and impeach his capo's ass? No, it means we have to wait in line to pursue the Resolution of Mild Annoyance and compete for posterity's forgotten spots in Bartlett's Quotations.

There's still a year and a half to go in this Presidency, senor, and it is the Never-Ending Story. Can a pressure cooker on the stove, warming up on the "Medium" setting, blow some steam before then? Only if the blow-off valve is plugged.

The Topography Of Golgotha

For 14 hours yesterday, I was at work, teaching Christ to lift his cross by the numbers, and how to adjust his crown; and not to imagine he thirst until after the last halt. I attended his Supper to see that there were no complaints; and inspected his feet that they should be worthy of the nails. I see to it that he is dumb, and stands before his accusers. With a piece of silver I buy him every day, and with maps I make him familiar with the topography of Golgotha.

Captain Wilfred Owen, The Manchesters
KIA Nov. 4, 1918

I'm very behind on blogging, my apologies.

Monday was Memorial Day, a Federal holiday which was first known as Decoration Day. Until passage of the Uniform Holiday Bill in 1968, it was celebrated on May 30th, which is today, but Congress made it and three other holidays fall on either Monday or Friday so as to make 3-day weekends. Originally, the people in the northern parts of my country followed the examples of former Confederate states in honoring their fallen, and a General Logan thought the occasion up and started to formalize a practice which first began in Waterloo, New York in 1866.

One suspects it naturally became a time to meditate upon the Republic we had become, echoing Benjamin Franklin's famous phrase, "A republic, if you can keep it," an issue not fully clarified until 1865. Many minds including mine aren't so sure that clarification or the means by which it was sought were a good thing, but the deep schism noted by Franklin's impish sense of satire had finally, for good and ill, been joined by blood. People low and high, North and South, would go to decorate the graves of young men with flowers, and to remember the half million and more souls who died from cannon, sword, shot and disease on the way to making it so.

I appreciated the weekend and took full advantage of it with my little family and our friends, but I'd have to agree with the Veterans of Foreign Wars, which said in their 2002 address, "Changing the date merely to create three-day weekends has undermined the very meaning of the day. No doubt, this has contributed greatly to the general public's nonchalant observance..." I looked for a parade to attend in Seattle, but couldn't find one or any ceremonial observances whatsoever. I'd been meaning to put up the verse of Wilfred Owen's above on the occasion, and am just getting to it now, but this is the traditional Memorial Day, when in my youth almost every burg, hamlet, or town like mine would have a big parade. Like many Americans, my feelings on America's impulse for Dumb Wars are generally negative, and sometimes this can mix up my feelings on veterans, but even so. I would've liked to go to a parade honoring our past and the sacrifices brave men, women, and children made for each other.

Golgotha, in Wil Owen's verse above, refers to a hillock in Jerusalem whose rocks made, from one viewpoint, the distinctive shape of a skull. From its Hebraic root it would've been known as "the rolling skull," and was a place of execution, conveniently located relatively close to tombs. From the Latin calvaria ("skull") it is known in the New Testament as Calvary, the hill where a man named Jesus was said by his friends to have been crucified, and, over a century later, noted in short, controversial fragments passed down in the writings of Josephus, Tacitus, and Eusebius. The original topography of Golgotha has been forgotten, but the location is being fiercely debated, and its contours are ever being worked out anew by commanders who must send soldiers to their deaths.

Wil Owen knowingly compares himself to Judas, close friend and betrayer of Christ, with this line: "with a piece of silver I buy him every day". He is trying to prepare his men against the worst, and he feels like he's betraying not just them, but sacred humanity itself. Owen was a gay man, a captain for the Manchesters who had to lead boys from his home city to near-certain death and traumatic injury in World War One. He had a nervous breakdown during the awful height of what was dubbed by an old, patrician US President named Woodrow Wilson, even as he opportunistically plunged his country into it as: "the war to end all wars." Owen started writing poetry as therapy in the wake of a nervous breakdown induced by combat, recovering enough to return to his men. To do so, he broke the promises he made to his lover and to a literary circle of friends who admired his writing, and knew the senseless nature of the conflict. Owen hopped a ferry-boat back to Belgium, and died soon thereafter, winning the Victoria Cross while leading his men on an assault across a canal.

War has become less about being gay or straight, child or adult, woman or man than about trying to shield the ones you love from death via the indiscriminate chemical reactions of high explosives delivered by the messengers of distant psychopaths. In that, every one of us is a commander. Command, I suppose, is about doing your damnedest not to betray your charges while sheer idiocy is passed down from above, and telling them, "Listen to me, be quiet, everything is going to be alright." And it will be, it will be. Happy Memorial Day.

Wolfowitz Tagged, Not Yet Bagged

I've been following this little spitball ever since I first saw his pointy asp-face. I've watched him and his brothers in the Trotsky Fraternity hollow out my country and re-devastate well-pummelled parts of the world while getting a lot of people killed. He is the Teacher's Pet Designate of Leo Strauss, the original Neocon. I've written about Wolfie, most recently on Tuesday ('Cry, the Beloved Wolfowitz') when it became certain he was getting tossed out as World Bank President. Now that the much-wished-for worldwide event has been consummated, I will reach deep to marshal all my eloquence:

It's about friggin' time. Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap.

In well-established Neocon tradition, Wolfowitz was dragged out of the Bank by his heels, issuing defiant denials, obscenities, accusations, negotiating demands, hissing threats, spittle, and venom all the way. If you've followed this story even slightly you'll know I'm not being hyperbolic in these descriptions. On his way out, he got himself an extra month, a $400,000 "performance bonus," and he had wanted an official, public commendation from the World Bank for his mistress, former employee Shaha Riza.

Riza is from Libya, and was born in Tripoli; her father was a consultant to the Saudi royal family, her mother was a Syrian who still lives in Libya. She studied International Relations and got a master's degree in 1983 from the London School of Economics. Given her close relationship with Wolfowitz, any intelligence agency would automatically deem her a security risk and a possible double agent, and the length of her relationship with Wolfowitz is not easily established.

World Bank officials aren't exactly the least corrupt people on the planet, so you know if they went to such public lengths to be shot of someone, it must've been really bad. Forcing a president out was unprecedented at that institution, which by tradition has had a US-appointed figurehead. Naj at Iran Facts commented that the Bush Administration might install someone even worse. In reply, I wondered if Project for A New American Century member Dan Quayle is busy. And of course another member, John Bolton is free, and could be proferred.

Now I'll use a hyperbolic comparison: Wolfowitz is a human cobra, and you'd better watch the next lair he holes up in. Real reporters and historians should be tailing him like Humphrey Bogarts in The Big Sleep. Where this man goes, hell follows. It's coming for him, but he is not yet fully contained in all its circles.