A day in the life of Baghdad, with decades to come

I didn't have such a great day, really -- my husband left today for a three-day roadtrip and I hate it when he is out of town. Then I forgot about the road construction on my way to work and so had to backtrack and take a detour which made me late. Then at the presentation I went to this morning they didn't call a coffee break. Getting back to the office after lunch, I got a phone call asking why the heck I hadn't yet finished revising a web page (answer: I'm DOING IT NOW! I had to STOP doing it to answer the phone! Oh, well...) -- and then, of course, I couldn't get it finished before I had to leave for a co-worker's retirement party. Just one of those ho hum days.
Then tonight I read Riverbend's description of the daily grind in Baghdad these days, and I didn't feel so bad anymore at all --

The electrical situation differs from area to area. On some days, the electricity schedule is two hours of electricity, and then four hours of no electricity. On other days, it’s four hours of electricity to four or six hours of no electricity. The problem is that the last couple of weeks, we don’t have electricity in the mornings for some reason. . . . Detentions and assassinations, along with intermittent electricity, have also been contributing to sleepless nights. We’re hearing about raids in many areas in the Karkh half of Baghdad in particular. On the television the talk about ‘terrorists’ being arrested, but there are dozens of people being rounded up for no particular reason. Almost every Iraqi family can give the name of a friend or relative who is in one of the many American prisons for no particular reason. They aren’t allowed to see lawyers or have visitors and stories of torture have become commonplace. Both Sunni and Shia clerics who are in opposition to the occupation are particularly prone to attacks by “Liwa il Theeb” or the special Iraqi forces Wolf Brigade. They are often tortured during interrogation and some of them are found dead. There were also several explosions and road blocks today. It took the cousin an hour to get to work . . . he has to navigate between closed streets, check points, and those delightful concrete barriers rising up everywhere . . . The least pleasant situation is to be caught in mid-day traffic, on a crowded road, in the heat- waiting for the next bomb to go off. What people find particularly frustrating is the fact that while Baghdad seems to be falling apart in so many ways with roads broken and pitted, buildings blasted and burnt out and residential areas often swimming in sewage, the Green Zone is flourishing. The walls surrounding restricted areas housing Americans and Puppets have gotten higher- as if vying with the tallest of date palms for height. The concrete reinforcements and road blocks designed to slow and impede traffic are now a part of everyday scenery- the road, the trees, the shops, the earth, the sky… and the ugly concrete slabs sometimes wound insidiously with barbed wire.

Riverbend continues to describe what is now happening in the Green Zone and what Iraqis think about it:

A friend who recently got involved working with an Iraqi subcontractor . . . inside of the Green Zone explained that [the Green Zone] is a city in itself. He came back awed, and more than a little bit upset. He talked of designs and plans being made for everything from the future US Embassy and the housing complex that will surround it, to restaurants, shops, fitness centers, gasoline stations, constant electricity and water- a virtual country inside of a country with its own rules, regulations and government . . . welcome to the Republic of the Green Zone . . . if you could see the bases they are planning to build- if you could see what already has been built- you’d know that [the Americans] are going to be here for quite a while. The Green Zone is a source of consternation and aggravation for the typical Iraqi. It makes us anxious because it symbolises the heart of the occupation and if fortifications and barricades are any indicator- the occupation is going to be here for a long time. It is a provocation because no matter how anyone tries to explain or justify it, it is like a slap in the face. It tells us that while we are citizens in our own country, our comings and goings are restricted because portions of the country no longer belong to its people. They belong to the people living in the Green Republic.

Now just consider the implications of this description.
Ever since the Downing Street Memos were leaked, people around the progressive blogosphere have been asking why the Bush administration wanted so badly to go to war in Iraq that they "fixed" the intelligence and the facts to promote the war.
Well, I think I may have figured it out, and no wonder there is no exit strategy.
They're not leaving. They never intended to leave.
Even the original Iraq War resolution quoted by Digby in the above link says as much in its final Whereas paragraph: "Whereas it is in the national security interests of the United States to restore international peace and security to the Persian Gulf region . . . " And maybe this is what Condi was referring to this weekend when she said that the Bush administration had told everyone long ago that America had made a "generational commitment" in Iraq.
I think the Bush administration wants the American military to stay in Iraq for decades, like they have stayed in Germany for the last 60 years, in permanent, fortified military bases in Iraq and in the region. Secure in these bases, with their air superiority and weapons superiority and easy access to America's own weapons of mass destruction, the American military could make damned sure that no anti-American government could ever again take root anywhere in the Middle East, so that never again would such a government threaten the stability of US oil supplies, bully Israel, or destabilize the region.
It won't work, of course -- none of the Bush administration schemes work because they are ideological rather than realistic, poorly planned, and incompetently executed. The bases will, in themselves, destabilize the region, just as resentment of the US bases in Saudi Arabia was the motivation for 9/11. A permanent American military presence in the Persian Gulf would bankrupt the US, undermine any local government which cooperated with the US, and ensure that America and all things American would continue to be hated and despised by millions of people throughout half the world. Not to mention how questionable it is that China and Russia would be willing to put up with such a nearby threat either. But this won't stop the Bush administration from trying.

Rigging the mid-term vote

What's Their Real Problem With Gay Marriage? answers my question from a few days ago, about where the next anti-gay marrage votes will be held to make sure that Republicans win the midterm congressional elections in 2006 -- : "There are grass-roots battles going on now in Pennsylvania, Maryland, California, Alabama, Tennessee, North Carolina, Florida, South Dakota, Arizona, Washington, Indiana, Iowa and Minnesota. In May, conservative groups in California and Arizona announced petition drives that would force a referendum in those states."
If the Democrats expect to take control again of the Senate or the House in 2006, they had better get busy -- there will be lots and lots of Christian Right voters turning out -- they love Bush now and they will love him then, too.

The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation

RossK made a comment in Comments about some cross-border minutemaidman group being trained with powerpoints.
And that reminded me of this -- The Gettysburg Powerpoint Presentation.

And now please welcome President Abraham Lincoln. Good morning. Just a second while I get this connection to work. Do I press this button here? Function-F7? No, that's not right. Hmmm. Maybe I'll have to reboot. Hold on a minute. Um, my name is Abe Lincoln and I'm your president. While we're waiting, I want to thank Judge David Wills, chairman of the committee supervising the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery. It's great to be here, Dave, and you and the committee are doing a great job. Gee, sometimes this new technology does have glitches, but we couldn't live without it, could we? Oh - is it ready? OK, here we go:

Speaker Notes [Transcribed from voice recording by A. Lincoln, 11/18/63] These are some notes on the Gettysburg meeting. I'll whip them into better shape when I can get on to my computer: Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on a great battlefield of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field as a final resting-place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead who struggled here have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us--that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion--that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.

Everything that is wrong with powerpoints is shown in this presentation -- its author Peter Norvig writes in a related essay: "Imagine a world with almost no pronouns or punctuation. A world where any complex thought must be broken into seven- word chunks, with colorful blobs between them . . . "

Best.

In the United States, the "liberal" media is still alive, hiding on the editorial cartoon page. Here's a sample from Slate for this week:

Clay JonesThe Freelance-Star, Fredericksburg, Virginia


Steve Greenberg The Ventura County Star, CA


Don Wright, The Palm Beach Post, FL


Steve Benson, United Media

Jimmy Margulies, New Jersey -- The Record

Its the wrong war, in the wrong place . . .

I always read Stirling Newberry's posts on The Blogging of the President because I always learn something.
And when I read his writing, I also find that he articulates my own incoherent thoughts -- the ones I didn't know I was thinking until I read his writing (get it? got it? good)
Here is his latest "The Wrong War":

. . . the cost of Vietnam was not merely the cost of the [Vietnam] war, but the cost of the [Six Day] war that occured because the United States did not have deterent capabilities. There is a vital reason why many military planners do not favor using military capacity at every opportunity: namely, the threat is often more powerful than the realization. A nation at peace can threaten many nations with attack. A nation at war cannot . . .
The US . . . is bogged down [in Iraq]. . . at the very moment that the next war is taking shape. The next war is over the control of Weapons of Mass Destruction and the means to deliver them . . . The players in this next war are China, North Korea, India, Pakistan and Iran. The consequences of failure to contain proliferation could quite well be as severe as the failure to contain the 1967 tensions in the middle east. Military force is an essential component of state craft. Most specifically, correctly understanding that the military instrument is both blunt, and easily tangled in the weeds. The great statesmen are great because of their understanding that avoiding unnecessary wars is as important as fighting necessary ones.
Vietnam was an unnecessary war, Iraq was an unnecessary war. It is a matter of when, not if, the lack of US strategic flexibility because of Iraq will be exploited. Just as it was a matter of when, not if, the US quagmire in Vietnam was to be seen as a chance to be exploited by the Soviet Union and the Arab states of that time. It might well be that those who seek to use this gap will be mistaken, and they will pay heavily for their folly. That will be very cold comfort in the new geo-political environment that the attempt will bring on.

I would only add one point to Stirling's comment -- the world has been better off over the last century because the United States could speak softly but carry a big stick. We needed the US to persuade bullies to back down, to settle potentially disruptive disputes, and to quietly shift the balance of power toward the rule of law.
The US didn't always do the right thing, of course, but the world always knew that it COULD act if it wanted to.
Not anymore, unfortunately. The US administration now speaks loudly -- Bolton bullying, Condi whining, Rummy pontificating, Bush lecturing, Cheney lying -- but Iraq has shown the world that the US doesn't have much of a stick to wave around anymore. It's very sad, and scary too.

I read the news today, oh boy

Things move so quickly down the Kos front page that you may miss this one -- Daily Kos :: The Downing Street Minutes may be old news
All I could think, after reading it, was "what a waste!"

Wanker

Same-sex bill will be put off until the fall, PM indicates
So it looks like we will all have the pleasure of listening to Harper crow all summer about how he "stopped" the gay marriage bill. Wanker.
And it's Paul Martin's fault. There is absolutely no excuse for this, Paul.
You had the votes. "Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe and NDP Leader Jack Layton both said Mr. Martin is to blame for the continuing delay over C-38 and both said they would agree to sit until the legislation is approved. 'That Mr. Martin would say it's up to Stephen Harper whether or not human rights are finally, after so many years, extended to lesbians and gays . . . talk about an abdication of leadership,' Mr. Layton said. 'That means that all of his song and dance and expensive advertisements that he ran in the election meant nothing.'"
You had support for this across the country. Your civil rights argument had convinced hundreds of thousands of people, who believed that Liberals would stand up for everyone's civil rights. More fools we, I guess.
What you didn't have, Paul, are the guts to stare down those turncoats in your own party. You cannot strike a bargain with these people -- they will NEVER be satisfied with the bill no matter how many ammendments are made. Here's Tom Wappell today - "the battle is beginning to be joined and the other side will do everything it can to ensure that an opinion that views homosexuality as anything but normal is bigotry." Well, Tom, homosexuality IS NORMAL. Anyone who thinks homsexuality is not normal is ipso facto A BIGOT.
And this is the kind of person that our Prime Minister thinks he must listen to now. Wanker.

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?

Terry Moran vs. Scott McClellan on 'Last Throes' of Insurgency in Iraq
Read this whole transcript, where Moran tries to pin down Cheney's last throes" remark. And here's the best question of the bunch: "Is there any idea how long a 'last throe' lasts for?"

Right to the heart of the matter

CBC had a good story on tonights news summarizing the Downing Street Memos and covering today's Washington hearings. As is usual with the CBC, the story was an excellent summary about what is happening and why people should care. Here's the led: "Senior Democrats are calling for a full investigation into a memo that appears to accuse U.S. President George W. Bush of misleading Americans into backing the war with Iraq. Bush has always maintained that "the use of force has been and remains our last resort." But the memo, called the Downing Street Memo, could be the first documentary proof that Bush deceived the American people."
There -- does everyone get it now?
Joe Conason does. In Salon today, he briskly dispatches any lingering media excuses for not covering the Downing Street Memos, in A press coverup: "How foolish and how sad that all these distinguished journalists prefer to transform this scandal into a debate about their own underachieving performance, rather than redeem mainstream journalism by advancing an important story that they should have pursued from the beginning . . . they are proving once more that their first priority is to cover their own behinds. "
Then he proceeds to briskly dispatch any lingering public belief that the DSMs are not newsworthy: "Deciding what constitutes news is a subjective exercise, of course, with all the uncertainty that implies. Yet there are several obvious guidelines to keep in mind . . . a classified document recording deliberations by the highest officials of our most important ally over the decision to wage war is always news. A document that shows those officials believed the justification for war was "thin" and that the intelligence was being "fixed" is always news. A document that indicates the president was misleading the world about his determination to wage war only as a last resort is always news. And when such a document is leaked, whatever editors, reporters and producers may think "everyone" already knows or believes about its contents emphatically does not affect whether that piece of paper is news."
And he ends with a brisk summary of all of the columns and editorials and opeds which appeared across the US in the months before the Iraq War, which yap-yap-yapped about how poor widdle hard-working Bush was trying with all his might to avoid going to war.

Just how unprincipled can they both be?

Not much time to post on this story now, but here's how it looks to me:
In order to stop same-sex marrige, the Conservatives are willing to support the NDP budget, which they said before was just soooooo terrible as a Canadian economic issue.
And in order to implement the budget, the Liberals are willing to stop same-sex marriage, which they said before was just soooooo important as a civil rights issue.
What are you both thinking?
Is governing Canada some kind of f*cking CONTEST? Just to see which of you can be more corrupt and unprincipled than the other?
A pox on you both!

Oh. My. God.

The people I thought were wingnuts -- the hysterical vaccines-cause-autism writers on the medical newsgroups I read in the late 1990s - were RIGHT.
And the coverup has been going on for years.
Robert Kennedy writes in Salon that there is credible and substantive evidence that the explosion in childhood autism. as well as in speech delays, ADD and hyperactivity, is being caused by a mercury-based preservative used in childhood vaccines. The preservative is particularly devastating to brain development in infants and small children. Since 1991, when the CDC and the FDA had recommended that three additional vaccines laced with the preservative be given to extremely young infants -- in one case, within hours of birth -- the estimated number of cases of autism had increased fifteenfold, from one in every 2,500 children to one in 166 children.
The link between neurological disorders and this ingredient has been suspected in the past, but the studies cited were ones which did not show links. The ones that did, as described in this article, were suppressed.
And it isn't even a necessary ingredient for the vaccine itself. Single-dose vaccines don't use this preservative, but the cheaper multiple-dose vaccine packaging needs a preservative to prevent contamination from multiple needles.
Read the article -- Deadly immunity -- and weep.

No news is bad news

At Gitmo, still no day in court
Well, now that the Jackson trial is over, the media are looking around for another trial to cover. So its about time the media noticed that the US military has been ignoring an order of the US Supreme Court for the last year.

WWWA-TV

Rapidly spreading around the progressive blogosphere are references to "WWWA-TV" and you may be wondering what it means.
Well, it stands for "Where the White Women At?" television, as defined byThe Poor Man in a blockbuster story about a merger of NBC and CNN into WWWA.

The new network will consist of a WWWA channel, as well as WWWA Headline News, which will deliver all day's key missing white women developments every half hour. Most of WWWA's time will be devoted to covering current missing white women, but there will also be talk shows where groups of white men get together to discuss the significance of the day's missing or imperilled white women. Additionally, there are plans for a game show, hosted by Tom DeLay and James Dobson, where family member compete in trivia contests and gross-out physical challenges in order to determine whether or not their comatose white women relatives are kept on life support. For his part, FOX president Roger Ailes said the deal was no threat to his network. "WWWA will probably become the public's most trusted source for white women news, but we at FOX view this as an opportunity. While WWWA is focused on white women, we will be able to satisfy the public's curiousity about shark attacks, babies falling down wells, and celebrity murders, as well as the latest stories of Beloved Leader's brilliant triumphs over terrorists, Frenchmen, and their villianous Democrat allies.

Beautiful

Canadian military marks first gay marriage

Two servicemen . . . exchanged vows May 3 at the chapel at Canadian Forces Base Greenwood, N.S., in front of 45 friends and a United Church minister. Lt.-Cmdr. David Greenwood, the base's head chaplain, helped arrange the ceremony but couldn't preside over it since he is an Anglican. "I think there was a sense that many people thought they would never have seen something like this in their lifetimes - and not in a negative way, but in a positive way," Greenwood said Tuesday from his base office. "So they might be able to provide some comfort and solace to someone who might be in fear or in peril." The couple, one a sergeant and the other a warrant officer who are both in their late 30s, approached the chaplain about the possibility of holding the ceremony on the base. They went through a marriage preparation course and a United Church minister was found to conduct the service.
Greenwood said there was no resistance by military or religious officials to the wedding. He added it was simply a matter of time before someone made the request. "It was something that I was very proud to be able to be involved in," he said after describing a service that included scriptural readings, gospel music and an exchange of rings.

So I guess now the sky will be falling in Canada any day now - fire and brimstone will rain down from the heavens, and the booming wrath of God will . . . 0ops, sorry, this happened more than a month ago - I guess I missed the thunderbolts.
Never mind.

Gay Americans -- get here as fast as you can

I think all gay people in the US had better move to Canada as soon as they can.
I was doing some searching tonight to find out how many anti-gay marriage initiatives are going to be on the 2006 mid-term ballots. Now, maybe I didn't look hard enough, but it surprised me that I could not find any list on pro-democratic sites, though there was mention of 10 or 15 state initiatives. As you will recall, the 11 anti-gay initiatives in 2004 got Christian activists out to the polls all fired up: this won the election for Bush and Republicans. They all passed by a significant margin. So I do not doubt that the Republicans are already planning that any states where they are vulnerable to Democratic challengers in 2006 will also feature an anti-gay ballot initiatives. I just hope the Democrats are organizing to deal with this.
Anyway, back to my warning. While searching, I noted a chilling new article from the Southern Poverty Law Centre which argues that targeting and demonizing gays has been a deliberate focus of the Christian Right over the last 30-years. Its not just gay marriage -- it is the gay person's right to live in the United States that they are attacking, or to live at all. The article describes Christian 'reconstructionists' as wanting the death penalty for homosexuality. "Ten Commandments" judge Roy Moore is quoted in a 2002 custody decision, describing gays as "abhorrent, immoral, detestable, a crime against nature . . . [t]he State carries the power of the sword, that is, the power to prohibit [homosexual] conduct with physical penalties, such as confinement and even execution. It must use that power to prevent the subversion of children toward this lifestyle."
Here are some other recent statements by so-called Christian leaders:
"Homosexuals . . . want to destroy the institution of marriage. It will destroy marriage. It will destroy the earth." "Our great nation is under violent attack from within. We are now at the 11th hour, a point of no return." "What's at stake here is the very foundation of our society, not only of America but all Western civilization." "I've never seen a man in my life I wanted to marry. And I'm gonna be blunt and plain: if one ever looks at me like that, I'm gonna kill him and tell God he died."
Alternet reprints this LA Weekly article The New Blacklist about the anti-gay boycotts and how they connect to the whole Christian Right agenda. It quotes investigative journalist Chip Berlet's summary of these connections:

What's motivating these people is . . . an incredible dread, completely irrational, of a hodgepodge of sexual subversion and social chaos. The response to that fear is genuinely a grassroots response, and it's motivated by fundamentalist Christian doctrines like Triumphalism and Dominionism, which order Christians to take over the secular state and secular institutions. The Christian right frames itself as an oppressed minority battling the secular-humanist liberal homofeminist hordes . . . The re-election of Bush was a sort of tipping point for these people, who take it as a mandate from God -- they see that the leadership of America is within their grasp, and when you get closer to your goal, it's very energizing. It reaches a critical mass, in which the evangelicals feel they have permission to push their way into public and cultural policy in every walk and expression of life.

All together now, everybody sing --
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword;
His truth is marching on.