Dangerous Thinking

I keep coming back to the central pillar of Mr. Bush's speech Tuesday night. I think we can all agree that the reasons we got into the Iraq war have been shifting like the very desert sands it has been fought upon since day one. The President initially told Congress in his formal letter as required by their resolution that Iraq posed a significant threat to the US through the use of of huge stockpiles of Weapons of Mass Destruction, with a little "aiding and abetting the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11" thrown in for good measure. By the time it became obvious that there were no such weapons or links to 9/11, we were already waist deep in the conflict, so talk of justification was dropped in favor of redefining the "mission". Since the mission of removing Saddam from power was accomplished in about 6 days, we needed another mission definition. It became, in a nutshell, spreading the light of democracy and freedom and liberty to the oppressed Iraqi people. Well, since the elections there have already happened and things have gotten substatially worse, the mission must be redefined yet again. Now it is to "deal with terrorism and extremism abroad, so we don't have to face it at home."

Forgetting for the moment that, according to the CIA's recent report, our invasion of Iraq has itself created more terrorism and extremism in the region than there ever was before, I have elected to examine this new "mission" more closely. When asked to define the make up of the terrorist insurgency we face in Iraq, Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld identified 3 groups:

Former elements of Saddam's regieme ("the Ba'athist Dead-enders")
Criminal elements ("Remember, Saddam emptied the prisions right before we rolled into town....")
Foreign Fighters (Jihadists)

If we are to take this as accurate, then I highly doubt that the terrorists and extremists we must deal with before they come to us are members of the first 2 groups. It seems to me that Saddam's former pals' main goal must be to regain power, something that will certainly not be achieved by coming to the US and blowing themselves up in a food court. And the criminal element we are to believe is fighting merely because they are a criminal element. If that is true, then it is surely much easier to pull off whatever turns them on within the chaos of Iraq itself.

That leaves the Jihadists. So let's restate the mission using what we have learned:

"We are in Iraq because if we don't fight the jihadists there, we will have to fight them here."

The intelligencia among you will surely spy numerous problems with the mission when it is stated this way. It requires that we believe the jihadists would much rather pour into Iraq and fight our well equipped military rather than strike our relatively unprotected citizens spread all across the globe. While this in itself is certainly a stretch, it also flies in the face of the President's own reasoning. From his speech:

"The terrorists who kill innocent men, women, and children on the streets of Baghdad are followers of the same murderous ideology that took the lives of our citizens in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania."

If we follow this line of logic then to these terrorists, killing the citizens of Iraq is just the same as killing Americans. If this is true, then just how is it that these men, women, and children came to be seen on par in the jihadists' eyes with Americans? Or is the jihad now to "just kill anyone you can find?"

Clearly the shifting reasons/circular logic ploy creates significant problems for itself when questions are asked.

Furthermore, if our mission is now to fight jihadists overseas before they come to our shores, what about all those clever jihadists that aren't pouring into Iraq? 15 of the 19 hijackers that allegedly perpetrated 9/11 were from Saudi Arabia. What about all the jihadists there? Or in Syria? Or Egypt? Or Iran? Or is our mission merely to defeat the ones who obligingly traveled to Iraq to get blown up by a US tank?

My point is that by outlining our mission in such mind-bogglingly vague language we have allowed the President to set for us an impossible goal. It is absolutely inconceivable that our armed forces could possibly defeat all of the "terrorists" abroad. Not only are they spread throughout dozens of countries, but each one we kill creates a recruiting opportunity for bringing in many more. The War on Terror, much like the War on Drugs, is not a war that any sane person would think could be won with any finality. It is merely a pretense to funnel monies and power to certain areas without requiring further justification.

I also submit to you that by intentionally setting up an impossible goal for our military forces, President Bush has deliberately undermined (through the inevitable demoralization of soldiers fighting a war they cannot win, a war without end) our war on terror. O'Reilly, Hannity, and Limbaugh all agree that anyone who undermines our war on terror should be labeled a traitor and treated as such.

Well......?

Ouch!

Gary Kamiya over at Salon.com rips FOX News a new one in a manner of which I can only dream. This is a must read.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/06/29/aruba/


You may have to get a "Salon Pass" to read the entire article, but it only consists of having to sit thru a 30 second commercial for a new show on Comedy Central. The brilliance of the article is well worth the 30 seconds spent.

Be Very Afraid, Redux

Hot off the AP wire:

2 men were just apprehended by Mexican border agents near the border of California. No big deal, you say? This must happen all the time, you say? Well, what if I were to tell you that the 2 men in question just happen to be.... Iraqi??? Are you afraid now? No? That proves nothing, you say? Let's hear their side of it, you say? Just because they are from Iraq doesn't necessarily make them a threat, I mean after all most of the "terrorists" we are currently fighting in Iraq are called "foreign fighters" because they aren't even from Iraq, you say????

Well, my overly complacent friend, just take a gander at the transcript of a conversation that just occurred on that Beacon of Truth, FOX News, right after it hit the AP wire:

"Host Martha MacCallum: We have General Scales back with us for some analysis. General Scales, what does it say to you that these 2 Iraqis have been taken in?

Maj. General Bob Scales, US Army (Ret.): Well, Martha, I think what it says is, it reinforces what the President said last night. That this is a global war on terrorism. There are no borders, there are no front lines, no peaceful or secure areas... I mean, who knows what the motives of these 2 were? I don't think their motives were terribly peaceful or benign. And what it tells us is that certainly the insurgents, the bad guys, consider us to be their global enemy, and they're going to do everything they can to strike us anywhere they can, even if it's in our own country. People should be very aware that this is not just a diversion from the Middle East. This is the Middle East taking the war to our own country."

Well if that insightful analysis based on absolutely no information other than "2 Iraqi nationals apprehended by Mexican authorities near California border" doesn't instill the required terror in you, then you might as well go back to giving Osama a foot rub because the terrorists have obviously already won.

Count de Money!

I sat down to watch the President's speech last night with a great deal of anticipation. This speech had been touted as an opportunity for Mr. Bush to give us the straight facts about Iraq, the situation on the ground, and the strategy for success and withdrawal. It was also advertised as an arena for the President to speak to and possibly convert those Americans who have begun to feel and express (rather vocally) doubts and misgivings about the war's justifications, costs in treasure and blood, and management from the get-go. I count myself as one of those people, so you can imagine my excitement: the President was going to be speaking to me!

As I pressed play on my DVR (I had recorded the actual broadcast, both so my wife could watch it with me, and so I could back up and listen to importants parts a second time - just to make sure I'd heard it right.), I also took up pen and paper. On the pad I had written 4 entries: terrorist(or terror), Freedom, Liberty, and 9/11. My plan was make a tick beside each entry every time it was mentioned in the speech. If I were still in college, I would have made a drinking game out of this idea and I hope to God that on some campus someone did.

Here are the final tallies from the 28 minute speech:

"Terrorist(s)" or "Terror": 34

"Freedom": 21

"9/11": 6

"Liberty": 2

Now I'm not sure what the results of my non-scientific sociopolitical pseudoexcersise actually mean, but I do know this: the "terrorists" are who we're supposed to be afraid of. That is the whole reason for calling them terrorists. They are the reason for the Patriot Act, the TSA, the Dept. of Homeland Security, the war in Afgahnistan, the war in Iraq (apparently), and thousands of other minute and nuanced changes in our lives. The President's speech was 3,695 words long. Trust me, I know. That means every 108 words (or once every 49 seconds) Mr. Bush reminded us (covertly or overtly) of those that should scare us. No other word of substance (disregarding conjunctions, pronouns, and the word Iraq(i)) came even close to that count.

These speeches are carefully crafted, especially this one. Some pundits were proclaiming at the beginning of the week that this was the "most important speech of the Bush presidency!" The overwhelming use of these fear-inducing reminders can only indicate that this "opportunity for the President to speak to the American people" was never intended to give us straight facts, or explain to us what the real situation was, or answer any of the questions that have been raised throughout this war's execution.

It was intended to scare us back into our holes.

The boogeymen are still out there, and they mean to do us harm, and you better have some plastic sheeting and some duct tape ready because the terrorists hate your freedoms. Well that's a swing and a miss, Mr. President. I really don't think that tact will work anymore.

One more telling statistic before I dutifully go make sure my duct tape hasn't hit its expiration date: out of 3,695 words....

"victory" was only used once.

A Memory Hole 2-fer!

I came across some very interesting quotes today:

"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the president to explain to us what the exit strategy is."

"I think it's also important for the president to lay out a timetable as to how long they will be involved and when they will be withdrawn."

These were spoken back in 1999, regarding President Clinton and our then 2 month old adventure in Kosovo. The bold and insightful speaker of these quotes? It was none other than presidential hopeful George W. Bush!



"People lack confidence in the credibility of our government. Even our allies are beginning to suspect what we say. It’s a difficult thing today to be informed about our government even without all the secrecy. With the secrecy, it’s impossible. The American people will do what’s right when they have the information they need."

“Accurate judgment is predicated on accurate information. Government has an obligation to present information to the public promptly and accurately so that the public’s evaluation of Government activities is not distorted. Political pundits speak of the ‘credibility gap’ in the present administration. Indeed, this appellation is so widespread that it has become a household word.”

This one goes alllll the way back to the early 1970's, and was spoken regarding the then current Vietnam debacle. The speaker? A much younger and far more naive Donald Rumsfeld!

Props to DailyKos and The Voice of Reason for digging up these pearls of wisdom!

The Overlooked Throng

While discussing my recent musings, someone asked me why I was so down on the coverage of the missing girl in Aruba. I felt that my reasonings deserved some further explorations, and those explorations will be be regurgitated forthwith.

Acccording to the White House Conference on Missing Children in 2002, more than 258,000 children go missing each year in the US. Of that number, around 200,000 are "abducted by family members who are seeking to interfere with a parent’s custodial or visitation rights." I'll eliminate them from my calculations for the purpose of this rant essay. That leaves 58,000 or so that are "are abducted by non-family members, often in connection with another crime." Some quick division reveals a number of 159 kids that are abducted each and every day. The girl in Aruba disappeared on May 31. Can you see where I'm going with this?

Allow me to do the math for you. 4,452 children have disappeared in the US since May 31. During that time, I have seen news reports on 6 missing children. However, the kid Brennan Hawkins was known to be "lost in the woods" and therefore does not count towards the 4452 number, which concerns abductions only. Neither does Luke Sanburg who winesses saw fall into the Yellowstone River. And the 3 kids in New Jersey, as it turned out, locked themselves in a trunk and were not abducted either. So that leaves one. One abduction (and I think we can safely assume by this point that the girl in Aruba has been abducted or worse) out of 4452 that is even covered by the national media. On to my point.

I just checked the top-of-the-hour Fox newscast . The girl in Aruba is still their top story. 28 days later, and with virtually no progress in the case other than a few arrests and then releases due to lack of evidence, this is still the equivilent of front page news to Fox (and CNN too, which I'll get to in a second...) Why?

The cynical side of me says it's becasue she is a pretty young blonde girl, and that if she were 300 pounds and acne-ridden we would not be seeing these endless photo montages every 15 minutes. While this is most assuredly true, I don't think it is the real reason. My conclusion is that Fox News, an obvious proponent (some might say "mouthpiece") of the current administration, finds itself with perilously little to cheer about in the current climate. A short list of items they cannot touch, due to their remarkably poor reflectivity on the Bush administration, includes:

Iraq
Social Security
The Economy
The War on Terror
Guantanamo Bay
Abu Ghraib
The Housing Bubble
The Patriot Act
Stem Cell Research
The Downing Street Memo
The Hunt for Osama
The Bolton Nomintion
Yesterday's Plutonium Decision
The National Debt

... and those are just off the top of my head. It is becoming harder and harder to put a positive spin on any of these topics. The solution? Missing cute girls in exotic locales, shark attacks, and Michael Jackson. Unfortunately the Jackson affair ended rather abruptly, and the shark attacks are not just dependable enough.

Lest you think I am engaging in FOX bashing, let me assure you that I find CNN no better. However I think that the reasoning is different at CNN. The latest figures show CNN's ratings in a serious slump. FOX currently enjoys a viewership 3 times larger than CNN. So, I'm certain that there are a couple of employees at CNN whose sole job is to watch FOX and see what they are doing, so CNN can do it too. This sort of "dog chasing its own tail" scenario helps no one, and it is to the inestimable detriment of the American people who so desparately need to know.

You want to know what is really going on? Go here. But I warn you: not only will you be required to think and digest some pretty important information, you will also become woefully uninformed on the latest events in Aruba.

The Even Newer Pearl Harbor

"It’s absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we’ll get hit again and we’ll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States."
Dick Cheney in the run-up to the 2004 election

"What the Vice President was saying was whoever is elected will face the possibility of a terrible attack. The question is whether or not we have the right policies in place to protect the country."
VP Spokesperson Anne Womack about 2 hours later


A recent survey of "experts" put the chances of a WMD attack somewhere in the world over the next 5 years at 50%. Since this survey was commissioned by the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I'm going to assume that "the world" means "The United States of America". I personally predict that there will be a "terrorist" attack on US soil much, much sooner than that.

After the shock of the events of September 11, 2001 wore off and I had digested and come to terms with my desire for some revenge of the ass-kicking kind, I should have felt a natural desire to more thoroughly examine the events of that fateful day. But my marked propensity to doubt & question had been buried under an avalanche of patriotism, righteous indignation, and propaganda. Well, the plucky little guy was recently excavated from his icy tomb by the snuffling St. Bernard of indefatiguable curiousity.

In the weeks since, I have devoured just about everything I could get my hands on regarding the technicalities and actual events of 9/11. I read the 9/11 commision report cover-to-cover. I tracked down and read the FEMA report on the World Trade Center. I even watched the recent NIST presentation on new Fire Saftey Regulations based on what they had learned from the collapse of the towers... I feel I have a pretty complete grasp on the official story.

But during my search for answers, I also came upon another story. A competing theory, if you will. One that stated that the current Administration either directly caused, or allowed to happen, those catastrophic and catalyzing events for their own insidious purposes. Never one to just ignore information, I began to educate myself on that theory as well. I watched "Confronting the Evidence, a Call to Reopen the 9/11 Investigation", and "Hijacking Catasrophe". I even watched "911 - In Plane Sight" one night. I also found copies of and read David Ray Griffin's 2 books "The New Pearl Harbor" and "The 9/11 Commision Report: Omissions and Distortions", and Eric Hufschmid's extensivly researched "Painful Questions: An analysis of the September 11th attack". I've also visited just about every serious website out there promoting or debunking these theories.

My point is, I am now probably about as well versed as you can get on both the official story and the competing theories. At the end of my journey I have found myself reaching a conclusion that I never would have expected on September 12, 2001. As much as I really want to, I'm not sure that I can buy the Government's story; and the implications of that are both tragic and horrifying.

The reason behind this piece is not to convert you to my line of thinking. You would probably need to digest the same amount of information that I have to convince yourself, and that is an undertaking you must do on your own. If you care to, the internet is a great place to start. I also highly recommend reading the books I have mentioned supporting both theories.

But that is neither here nor there.

The events of September 11th resulted in a great number of after effects. We went to war in Afgahnistan and Iraq as a direct result. We created the Department of Homeland Security, the TSA and the highly dubious & comical Color-Coded National Terrorism Threat Level Chart. But indulge me while I zero in an 2 other effects. President Bush's approval rating, which had seen a steady decline from a 65% in March of 2001, was languishing at around 50% by September of 2001. Immediately following the attacks, it skyrocketed to 90%. Higher than his dad during the first Gulf War. Higher than Harry Truman at the end of WWII. In fact, it was the highest ever recorded. The other effect was that, regardless of Karl Rove's recent assertions to the contrary, dissent utterly vanished. The American people were scared to death, the Congress was shocked numb, and it gave the President a rubber stamp and a blank check to do whatever he thought was necessary.

But those days seem awfully far away now. And with our President's current approval rating hovering in the low 40's and facing mounting dissent from both parties on the domestic and foreign fronts, I bet he truly misses those halcyon days of yore. What to do, oh what to do?

How about what worked last time?

Here's how I think it will go down, bearing in mind certain restrictions that the players have inadvertantly placed upon themselves. A so-called "dirty bomb" goes off in a relatively small town somewhere in the extreme northern part of the country. The town can't be too big because too many casualties will create too many angry families with bothersome questions and irritating demands for investigations. I think it will be a northern town because then the story can be something about slipping across the Canadian border "through a forbidding stretch of mountains" or some such. If they come in through the Mexican border then the Administraion catches even more flack about not closing it down earlier. As far as I know, nobody is complaining too loudly about the Canadian side of things.

The bomber turns out to to be a Syrian or Iraninan national, "with close ties to al-Qaeda", possibly sent with the blessing of one of those governments, and the radioactive material is traced back to a North Korean reactor. More casualties arise among the repsonding rescuers, because nobody suspects radiation yet and nobody brings a Geiger counter. By the time the hazmat guys arrive in their sealed up white suits, Fox News has helicopters and telephoto lenses on the scene to get the great video from a safe distance. Luckily the fallout is contained, because the bomb went off "in a relatively isolated area... imagine if this had been in downtown Chicago, or even New York!" they'll intone. The CIA starts reporting that they are picking up "increased chatter" about multiple other US cities. The threat level color goes to red, or purple, or whatever the highest one is. An audio tape of Osama surfaces promising that "the devastation of Mooseteeth, North Dakota is only the beginning of a new wave of terror that will sweep across the lands of the infidels!" The CIA announces that they are 100% certain the tape is authentic. Bush makes a solemn speech. Cheney and Condi do the news shows.

Then they wait for the tide to turn back their way. The President's legacy is saved, he'll go down as a "tough fighter, that stayed the course when weaker members of Congress were calling for withdrawals." The public, their thirst for revenge reinvigorated, now backs the finishing off of every terrorist in Iraq, or Syria, or Iran, or anywhere else it's necessary. This is truly a war of ideologies, us against them. "Remember Mooseteeth!!" the bumper stickers will cry...


Cynical? Yes. Effective? Highly. Scarily possible? Absolutely.

One of the first directives police follow when investigating a crime is to figure out who gained the most from it. Apply that reasoning to 9/11 and see what you think...

I have to go now, there are some nice men from the FBI at the door. My what lovely suits they ha

Fortified with Irony

One of the events that never fails to bring a smile to my face is when the media reports on the media. Nothing is more chortle coaxing than watching someone with a microphone stand amidst the choas outside the Michael Jackson courthouse or the Terry Schiavo house-of-comfortable-resting, sadly commenting on the "media circus" that seems to have sprung up around our lone and intrepid reporter who is just there to cover the story.

So you can surmise my delight when Brigitte Quinn intoned on Fox Live: "When we come back, the Natalee Holloway case.... what is it about this story that has so thoroughly gripped the nation? We'll talk to our panel of experts and find out!" My sides were already preparing for the ache.

As it turns out, their panel of experts consisted of Tony Trupiano, a "syndicated talk show host", Michelle Malkin, a "syndicated columnist", and Kinky Friedman, a "musician, author". Now I must confess ignorance as to who any of these people were, but Mr. Friedman had arrived wearing a rhinestone studded black cowboy hat and chewing on a large unlit cigar. My interest piqued, I looked him up on Amazon and found out that he is the author of "17 mystery novels whose main character is... Kinky Friedman." Hmmm...

Well, Brigitte called them experts and she's the Fox Live anchor so she must know what she is talking about.

Brigitte starts off with a few mentions of how Fox has been all over this disappearance from the very beginning and it just seems like people can't get enough of the case. Now, I'm wondering how exactly it is that the good people at Fox know this. I seriously doubt they are doing any cold calls or polling to find out what their audience wants to see reported. I checked their web site and there is no poll for "Which Fox Story are YOU Sick Of?"

So imagine my utter amazement when she throws it over to Tony, who promptly says that his audience has been calling in to say they could care less about this story, that it is only of interest to the girl's family and maybe some people in her hometown. It is a shame she got herself disappeared, and he has sympathy for her parents, but that's where it ends. Whaaaa...?

This is clearly not the answer Brigitte expected. So she tries Michelle. My jaw drops a little further as Michelle agrees with Tony, and goes on to say that she receives email from her readers, "some of Fox's core viewers", featuring words like "overkill" and "enough already".

With one more bullet in the chamber, Brigitte gamely asks Kinky's opinion. He pulls out his cigar long enough to say, "I'm fascinated by this story. But you need a Miss Marple or a Lt. Columbo down there, somebody with brains running the whole thing..."

...

So while I did not get the guffaws out of this exchange that I was so looking forward to, I did come away with one prediciton: the 18th mystery novel will revolve around Kinky Friedman solving the disappearance of a hot blonde girl in an exotic island locale.

You heard it here first, folks!

The Real Deal

Before you waste time digesting my daily drivel, do yourself a favor and go read Billmon's brilliant "O'Reilly Factor" post on his blog. My cap is well and truly doffed.

Maybe it's just me...

I do not claim to be a master of political strategy. I'm not a master of political anything. But as a citizen of this country, I retain certain priveledges, one of which is going "Huh???" when one of our public figures plunges off the metaphorical deep end.

Karl Rove's inflammatory remarks yesterday serve as one example. Widely considered to be the de facto tactical genius of the political realm, Karl appears to me to be more like the unruly children at a fancy dinner party: better seen, but not heard. Actually, not seen either. Like when you set up the childrens' table in the basement. So they can play. Anyway...

The one quote of his speech before the fund-raiser for the Conservative Party of New York State that everyone seems to remember is this:

"Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers"

As my friend from Chile likes to say, que??!?

Now, this Einstein of politics surely knows that not only is this statement blatently false, but will be proven so within minutes of its utterence. So why say it? Why even put it out there? Is it to work the "liberals" into such a lather over his comments that they take their eyes off the prize? Is it to reshape the debate into "What Karl Rove said..." instead of "What George Bush did..."? And who does this sort of nonsensical and divisive trash play to anyway? Reportedly the audience erupted into cheers after that statement. Who are these people? Is the Conservative Party of New York State so slobbering drunk on Chateau de Demagogue '57 that their first response to such absurdity is "Yeah, you tell 'em Karl!" Is that the state of the Great Experiment after 200+ years of patriotism, hard work, and countless selfless sacrifices?

Is there no calm voice of reason and sanity with a spare rail on which to perch this clown for his ride out of town?

Also, I pondered something else as I tried to fathom the depths of the Machiavelli of Mayhem's mind. He states that conservatives "prepared for war". What war? I surely hope he is not referring to the War on Terror, which so far has utterly failed to bring in "dead or alive" the arch nemesis we were presented with, despite Porter Goss' recent boast in Time Magazine that he has an "excellent idea where bin Laden is". If you can't dig the most wanted man on the planet out of a cave after nearly 4 years and a bottomless well of money's worth of effort, then perhaps your preparations and your preparers need to be assessed. With hot pokers.

And it obviously was not the War in Iraq, which clearly contained very little preparations at all beyond "Shock and Awe" and "Operation Topple the Statue". If Mr. Rove wants to claim ownership of the current debacle by right of conservatives "preparing for war" then perhaps he should be assessed as well. With hotter pokers.

So I can only assume that they were preparing for some other War. One so brilliant in its conception and thourough in it's preparations that they can't even tell us about it yet. The newspaper is still pasted to the storefront windows. But keep watching this space, because it's coming soon! It's gonna change everything, just wait and see! Your life will never be the same!

Personally I suspect that by "preparing for war", what he really meant was preparing like Americans did in the 50's. With a nice bomb shelter in the backyard with food and water and air and a color TV and a deck of playing cards. For playing some hot poker.

Sigh.




PS. $10 says Karl has some sort of groovy escape capsule that he can retire to when it all hits the fan that will rocket him to safety as he lives out his days in the secret base on the far side of the moon. Now that's prepared!

Can't they please just come home?

I was all set to fill this space with a "freedom isn't free" piece about how many of the Current Administration's planners and executers of the war in Iraq either never served in the military, or served as little as humanly possible due to friends in high places. Then I was going to launch into a tirade on how many of the most vocal war supporters in this country are certainly of age to serve right now, and with the various military branches falling woefully short of recruiting goals month after month then it might be time to for them to put their money where their collective mouths are. In fact there is a brilliant effort underway right now by patriotboy called Operation Yellow Elephant which is attempting to convince members of the College Republicans to do their duty and sign up. As you would expect their success rate is: nil.

Anyway, that is what I was going to write about. Then I came across this picture taken in Iraq on June 11, 2005:





Goddammit.


That pretty much sums it up right there. One more father/son/husband won't be coming back, but the hits just keep on coming!

Can someone smarter than me please tell me why all these people (Iraqi, American, British, Human) are being shredded? Why are all the people who love them's lives being irrevocably altered? I know it used to be because Saddam helped al-Qaeda pull off 9/11. Then it was because Saddam had all these terrible weapons and could launch them at us in under 45 minutes and would do it at the drop a hat if he felt like it. Then it was because he had ignored UN resolution 1441 and wouldn't let inspectors look in the fridge of one of his palaces. Then it was to spread the light of democracy to the downtrodden Iraqi people. Well what is it this week? If the reasoning can shift around so much, doesn't that sort of indicate that there was another reason other than the ones we've been given all along? One that we never would have gone for, so they have to just keep throwing obfuscations at us, a new one as each previous one gets batted down?

Last week our Vice President said quite plainly in an interview that the insurgency is in its "last throes" and that this would all be over soon. Then we have Condi telling us this week that they've been saying "all along" that the war in an Iraq was a "generational commitment". Today we have Rumsfeld telling Congress that any sort of talk of a plan for withdrawal is a "serious mistake" that would be a "lifeline to the terrorists", and then right behind him was the testimony of General John Abizaid, the top commander in Iraq, telling us that the insurgency is a strong now as it was 6 months ago. Then, the icing on the cake is the leaked classified CIA report that states Iraq has become a far better urban training ground for those who wish to do us and others harm all over the world than Afgahnistan ever was. Despite this leaked report being splayed all over the papers, when pressed on it by Wolf Blitzer in an interview today, Dick Cheney responded "That report is classified. I don't discuss classified documents."

Who is in charge? Who is telling us the truth? Who has a plan? Why are we where we are now? Why did we go in the first place, and why can't they all just please come home?

The type of warfare that is being fought over there now is of the very lowest tech. Car bombs and people with explosives tied to their waist just waiting for the right moment to push the button do not need to be countered by stealth bombers and cruise missles. We are being outclassed by a type of warfare for which we are utterly unprepared, and our army is utterly unsuited. I see no reason why we cannot begin a strategic withdrawal by replacing equal numbers of our troops with Iraqi troops as they emerge from all this training we are supposedly giving them. Yes we screwed up, yes we made a mess of things, yes it would have been better to just blow up Saddam's limo with a Predator drone if it was so important to get him gone, but I think the time has come to face the fact that our presence is no longer part of the solution, but part of the problem.

on Relevance

As more citizens begin to get that nagging feeling that things are not so rosy, that perhaps there are some pressing issues about which they should be informed, that creeping and natural curiousity of "Whatever happened about Tom DeLay" or "What's the deal with this 'Downing Street Memo' I hear the guys at the office talking about?", they are going to want some answers. And our great and lofty Mainstream Media seems to have forgotten the very reason they exist in the first place: because of the public's desire to know. The audience does not exist at the whim of the players, but quite the opposite. And I believe that the public, in general, wants to know more than "the latest on that missing girl in Aruba" or "what's next for the runway bride?" or "you'll never guess how Tom Cruise is professing his love this week! We've got it, after the break!"

I for one see an interesting side effect occuring. The media (TV media especially), like Dr. Frankenstein, is largely falling victim to its own creation. By breaking everything up into bite sized chunks & playing on the short attention span of its viewers, it has created an audience that is always looking for the next thing. However, this effect seriously undermines the media's attempt to keep singular stories in the news. 3 weeks after her disappearance, the girl in Aruba is still Fox News' top story.

Do they not see the contradiction here? The short attention span theater they have created is poorly suited for such drawn out episodes. In short, their attempts to distract the population by overloading them with information has only succeeded in producing their biggest fear: an audience that demands more information.

And they will get it.

When the major players of TV, Radio, & Print are endlessly rehashing the same 6 largely inconsequential stories, the peoples' thirst for knowledge, be it innate or created, will drive them to the only other viable outlet: the internet. Which, luckily, not only caters to the attention span challenged, but also renders the chances that the news you are presented with is true, or at least justifiable.

After all, verification is only a mouseclick away.

A Minifesto

The reasons behind the Poisoned Keyboard are legion. I shant bore you with them all. Suffice it to say, my beleaguered wife will appreciate my choosing an outlet for my rants insightful observations, and I will feel better doing something a little more effective that pointing out what I feel is obvious to the afore mentioned long suffering spouse. How effective remains to be seen, but Martin Luther's brilliant work in the medium of ink, paper, and door remains influential 488 years later. While I surely do not place myself at his level or in his company, the changes he wrought began when he picked up a pen. Well, welcome to the 21st century, Marty.

Within these writings you will probably find everything you already know. If I inform or educate, then yay for me. If I screw up, call me on it. If you disagree, let me know. In the end we are all cut from the same bolt of fabric, and I am no better or worse than you. I just see things a little differently.

You may also find that I will devote some article space to ridiculing those TV commercials I deem particularly insipid and uninspired. In the real world I work on film crews that churn out these blights on our culture, although the creative content decisions have been long finalized by the time I am hired on the job. I therefore feel qualified to critique some of the entries in the Incessant 30-Second Film Festival of the Banal that assaults us everytime we get within earshot of a TV. I'll even link to them when possible so you can join me in the Great Mocking.

So, thanks for spending a part of your day following my ramblings. I hope to make it worth it for both of us. Welcome aboard.