@alabama
I get your point: you don’t want the military conflict to widen. Neither does, I gather, the DoD.
The conflict is wider than is often admitted and does already, in fact, include Syria and Iran, albeit within Iraq – inevitable, really, when one thinks about it.

Posted by: Pat | Sep 6 2004 18:04 utc | 103

anna missed on Kerry:
I think, that in the end, he will assume the challenge, and will ‘come out swinging’. That he will lay bare the true face of the whole argument, if not for the good of the country, then for the sake of historical precedent; and if not for those two, he’ll do it for himself.
I’ve come to the conclusion that the only way Kerry can win now, and even this is doubtful, is to draw a line in the sand: Get out of Iraq by such and such a date.
He’s done that now:

“We want those troops home, and my goal would be to try to get them home in my first term,” Kerry said, speaking to a fellow Vietnam War veteran in the audience of his campaign event.
Faulting Bush on almost every aspect of his move toward war, Kerry said the United States is carrying the burden in casualties and cost. He called the president’s coalition “the phoniest thing I ever heard.”
“This president rushed to war without a plan to win the peace, and he’s cost all of you $200 billion that could have gone to schools, could have gone to health care, could have gone to prescription drugs, could have gone to our Social Security,” he said.

So the gauntlet in the shape of an olive branch has finally been thrown.
Better late than never.
Not only has Kerry no secret plans to attack Iran.
He is aiming to get out of Iraq.
America has a sharper choice now.
And I hope Kerry keeps linking the war choice with social security solvency.
He needs to force this issure on Americans: You are giving up any sense of future financial security in your old age so that Bush can run this unwinnable war into the unforseeable future.
Show Americans some true cost accounting.
Let them choose between the fear of eating out of a dumpster at 80 or giving Iraq backs to Iraqis ASAP.

Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 6 2004 19:46 utc | 105

there are these three images/memories/texts -that i am meditating on today in the thick of it
the first, long day’s journey into night – america opened up in all its melancholy. the tyrone family. all lost inside a once grande house that is falling down as they speak. father , the pretender who keeps on pretending & preetending to what light there is – that he keeps turning off & apoligising for doing so. the mother, memory which does not want to remember whatever is left to rememberwaiting for her laudanum/morphine. the boys, one poisoned by his terrible knowledge & the youngest tubercular who has absorbed this sickness – that is the empire being emptied of everything except the awful meaning (full) moments of a destiny that has already been articulated between son & father
the second, the beautiful & haunting voice of james agee reading from his magisterial text ‘let us now praise famous men’ – recounting the voices of the sharecroppers before they & their children sleep – a list so profoundly melancolic & so full of love gone wrong – that remembering it – breaks my heart. & agee who with his immense heart drank to death incapable nor wanting to live out his destiny in america. that first novel death in the family speaks still of both character & metaphor of america
the third, the film – adapted for screen by james agee i think – ‘then night of the hunter’ – charlie laughtons extremely bleak love song of america – with the patriarchy dead & gone – men not good for anything but theft & murder – the best of life a crude cartoon & wildlife documentary – the worst – expressionist fiming of the absence of desire, death under water, men calling their wives ‘mother’ & wanting, longing for simple stories – stories that can keep their dread away – but dread walking through them to dread’s mother lillian gish – a mother duch who has swallowed dante whole & knows before lacan that the secret(in this case money) is in the sex of the doll
whatever brech taught laughton he transmuted it into a vision of america that is the reality today- where killers & thieves dominate policy & that the friends of killers & thieves prolong the agony with repitition
& what is common to the three. howling. howling. howling.
what dos passos & dreiser suggested, what melville incarnates as told by his jewish biographer – that the poison of this culture was strong – too strong for it to live out its destiny with honour
o’ neill crying for a conclusion that finally could be found only in abstinence & absorbing taoism to get him through the days
& dashiel hammet trying to distance himself from that darkness but in the end only notating it in his investigation into the squalor that passed for success. hammet battered by his time in prison for not naming names for which eli kazan was honoured & articulated his shame through the unheard of voice of marlon brando
& karl malden, an america that howls even here & howls throughout the only film of brando one eyed jacks – a western that he places so close to the sea you know he wants to drown & wants it all to be washed away
howling
thes images staying with me today while another seven american soldiers dead – another fifty iraquis dead, palestinians waiting to be murdered by israeli armed forces – afghanistan close to collapse. egypt & pakistan on their last legs & if they are smart – the iranians preparing for war
& on fox new they are howling
& on cnn nbc abc they are howling
howling
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 6 2004 20:06 utc | 107

Interesting.
Sky 1, is showing a 911 conspiracy show at the moment. I’m not watching, but my right-wing brother is texting me saying “ARE YOU WATCHING?”
Murdoch?

Posted by: Cloned Poster | Sep 6 2004 20:45 utc | 109

Question: At what level of debt overload does the grip of the empire become weaker? When will the US begin to get difficulties financing their monstrous military machine? And would they take to looting to keep it up?

Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 6 2004 23:07 utc | 111

@ Fran | September 6, 2004 01:55 AM In re: Abortion.
The biggest hero/heroine at the tent revival is the filthiest scumbag(ette) who says “Hello, Jesus”. Anything Bush did pre-salvation only makes him better now to the fanatics.

Posted by: beq | Sep 6 2004 23:37 utc | 113

Amen, Clueless Joe, Who do you want to spend eternity with? Wild beasts care more for each other than born again idiots.

Posted by: born okay the first time. | Sep 7 2004 0:45 utc | 115

anna,
That was me with the unintentionally unsigned double post at 3:48.¹
I am curious–do you regard Kerry’s remarks today as verification of your quoted paragraph?
I think so.
And I think Kerry drew some blood from Bush’s lip today.
As here is the Infallible Pope Pious the Bush, clearly feeling the sting:
On Iraq, “suddenly he’s against it again,” Bush said. “No matter how many times Senator Kerry changes his mind, it was right for America and it’s right for America now that Saddam Hussein is no longer in power.”
Kerry is starting to show some differentiation…starting to accelerate the anti-war movement of the 2000s, via a call for an timed withdraw.
As was once noted at the Whiskey bar: This is Vietnam over again, but this time, dosed out on speed and steroids.
¹ For some reason when I do a preview the nick and addy are being erased.

Posted by: koreyel | Sep 7 2004 2:20 utc | 117

A bit more on Kerry’s Sunday comments, from the Monday NYT:
Asked his timetable for pulling troops out of Iraq, Mr. Kerry told a few hundred people in Canonsburg, Pa.: “My goal would be to get them home in my first term. And I believe that can be done.” He said he would make it clear that “we do not have long-term designs to maintain bases and troops in Iraq.”
Mr. Kerry has said he could replace most, but not all, American troops with foreign forces within four years by offering new inducements to other countries.
“When they talk about a coalition – that’s the phoniest thing I ever heard,” Mr. Kerry said of the current array of foreign soldiers deployed in Iraq. “You’ve got 500 troops here, 500 troops there, and it’s American troops that are 90 percent of the combat casualties, and it’s American taxpayers that are paying 90 percent of the cost of the war.
*Kerry’s making a mistake by insisting, as he has before, that Americans can be replaced with foreign troops. He’ll be called on it. “500 troops here, 500 troops there” may not sound like much to us – or to Kerry – but to countries without (a) a vital stake in the outcome in Iraq and, more importantly, (b) the resources to undertake large-scale, indefinite military commitments there, 500 is indeed a lot. Sometimes any number is too much, as increasing pull-outs by OIF participants, due to security and other concerns, illustrates. Soon enough, it will be just US, UK, and Italian troops: the Bitter End Trio.
We must ask what could possibly induce other countries, even if they were able, to relieve us of any of the burden of providing 90% of the casualties in and 90% of the cost of a war that is not their’s. If you’ve got any brilliant ideas, e-mail the Kerry campaign. They’re going to need them.
And don’t be suckered by mentions of NATO by either campaign. It can’t even provide the troops required for its current mission in Afghanistan; Iraq is well beyond its means.
Out in four years? All right then, I wanna see the outlines of a plan. Otherwise you’re just blowin’ smoke up my skirt.

Posted by: Pat | Sep 7 2004 5:53 utc | 119

Two other good Op-Eds today:The Boston Globe has James Carroll on Iraq The unwinnable war

GEORGE W. BUSH finally told the truth. It happened last week when he said of the war on terrorism, “I don’t think you can win it.” We know it was the truth because of the way it embarrassed him, because of the way his handlers immediately required him to repudiate it and because the mass of Republicans were deaf to it.

David Ingnatius at the WaPo finds a spot-on analogy: A Copernican Foreign Policy

The Ptolemaist in me wants to tell the rest of the world to go to hell. In economic, military and political terms, the United States is the center of the universe …
One of John Kerry’s strengths in this presidential campaign is that he’s a Copernican. He understands that however powerful and important the United States may be, it isn’t the fixed center of the world. There are other nations, traveling in their own orbits — with their own cultures, traditions and values — which must be taken into account.

Posted by: b | Sep 7 2004 9:01 utc | 121

Boy, Digby is on a real drive today about Bush’s alcoholism and Cocain use – the whole blog is worth reading:here

Posted by: Fran | Sep 7 2004 14:55 utc | 123

Fran…just don’t click on the bush nose video.
It is enough to make one ill.
Or…suggest that the word rhinotillexomania be altered to read rhinotexasomania.

Posted by: koreyel | Sep 7 2004 16:10 utc | 125

@Fran:
Thanks for the great links today. I liked Krugman on Myths especially. Am in the process of reading the rest.
@B:
That Kerry is a Copernican is one of the reasons why this election is so very important for both the world and America.
@Fran and Koreyel:
Since you brought up the subject of tea and Rhino-probes, you have opened the door for a little story:
J.P. Morgan had one of the finest probes of that type in history–and he was somewhat sensitive about it. No medical treatment for the condition was available in his time.
When one made Morgan partner, it was customary for the new partner to invite Mr. Morgan over for tea.
Dwight Morrow’s turn came, and Mrs. Morrow worried very much what her little daughter would make of Morgan’s nose. Coached the little girl very well.
Tea party is going well, Mrs. Morrow’s pouring, daughter is standing by with the sugar bowl. Mrs Morrow looks Morgan in the eye and asks:
“Mr. Morgan, will you have nose with your tea?”

Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 7 2004 18:38 utc | 127

Some more information about my link above from Puritan News. We have a saying here that translates more or less like this: “the apple doesn’t fall far from the stem”. Looks like it proves correct again.
THE CRIMINALITY OF GEORGE BUSH SR.
Well, this is it for tonight.
CORRUPTION IN HIGH PLACES III : SKULL AND BONES SOCIETY

Posted by: Fran | Sep 7 2004 19:14 utc | 129

& hawthorne howled
so too hart crane howled along with lowell who howled though thr long nights of his art
& dorothy parker howled
obviouslly ginsberg howled but so too merwin & bly levertov & rich
howling is at least a major voice of america
jelly roll, charlie christian, robert johnson, blind willie mctell, cisco houston, paul robeson & phil och all howled
they sang the voice of america
hank williams howled, jimmy rodgers howled, jimi hendrix howled – the young man jimmy webb who wrote the moon’s a harsh mistess howled
janis joplin she howled
though he canadian glen gould howled for america
even & perhaps especially liberace howled
when nabakov became the liberace of literature – he did so for america & he howled all night long chasing after butterflies to cut his cries
faulkner – that great gent – did nothing other than howl
america is the wolf howling while we cry like bears
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 7 2004 22:40 utc | 131

@ remembereringgiap:
me too. wow. aroooOOOOOooooooo…..

Posted by: beq | Sep 8 2004 1:20 utc | 133

OPEC President: World is Oversupplied with Oil
“OPEC President Purnomo Yusgiantoro said the world is oversupplied with about 1.5 million barrels of oil a day, and falling prices in the futures market suggest an easing of concern over supply disruptions,” Bloomberg News reports. “He declined to say whether the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, the producer group that supplies about a third of the world’s oil, still intended to raise production quotas to meet actual output at its meeting this month.”
In “OPEC Is No Friend of Ours,” Jerry Taylor, Cato’s director of natural resource studies, writes: “OPEC apologists contend that the cartel assists in stabilizing oil prices. The record, however, suggests otherwise.
“… If OPEC disappeared tomorrow, oil prices would drop to somewhere around $8 a barrel and gasoline prices would almost certainly be south of $1 a gallon. A price collapse of that magnitude would do more for consumer welfare and the overall health of the American economy than almost anything that’s been put on the table by President Bush or his Democratic Party rivals. Accordingly, the OPEC cartel should be resisted, not embraced, and policy should aim at undermining it, not propping it up.”
[Haven’t read the above-mentioned Taylor’s report yet, available at their website. Will do later today. 8 dollars for a barrel of oil? Less than a dollar a gallon for gas? I do believe I was in high school last petrol prices were that low.]

Posted by: Pat | Sep 8 2004 12:02 utc | 135

& to be abundantly clear – nearly all thes artis/singer including women possess a real masculinity – they take their responsibility seriouslly & with muscularity they sing their hearts & it is not so strange to find in their lives that there is an essential ‘manliness’ about them especially in their capacity to help others
& when you think of the political elites & especially those of bush – what is evident is their essential effeteness – they are not men – not men you would ever trust with your intimité – where on a bad day i would have told hank williams or jimmy web everything
the culture of dominance is a culture of impotence – of emasculation – of absence & of absences – it is sexless – its culture speaks of it all the time – ms jacksons tits – but there is no real sex to be had – it is not sexy in any sense – i ask the poster to imagine a long night with a cheney, a richard perle or a rumsfield but only nightmares can come from that
to be essentially sexy you need a heart & they don’t have them
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 8 2004 12:13 utc | 137

From a May, 2002, article by Cato’s Jerry Taylor, “The Saudi’s Con Game”:
Cartel watchers realize that excess production capacity is absolutely necessary to sustain bargaining power within OPEC. Without the ready Saudi threat of flooding the market, cartel members would have an almost irresistible incentive to cheat on their agreed-upon production limits. Accordingly, spare Saudi production capacity is the main thing that keeps the OPEC cartel afloat and international price wars over oil from starting.
So, does a well-functioning cartel really serve to stabilize prices? In the past several years world oil prices have bounced around between $10 and $35 a barrel, which doesn’t suggest a great deal of stability. In fact, the cartel makes prices more unstable than they otherwise would be. That’s because higher prices and higher revenues enable cartel members to withstand financial pressure to cheat on their production quotas, which promotes still higher prices. Lower prices, on the other hand, strengthen the need for cash, which weakens the resistance to quota cheating and promotes still lower prices. Thus, market movement in either direction tends to speed-up-not slow-down-the velocity of price movement, making markets less rather than more stable. Indeed, the oil price explosions faced over the past 30 years have been unrelated to scarcity and entirely due to the cartel.
Summarizing the record of the past 30 years, Adelman concluded in his magisterial book Genie Out of the Bottle: World Oil Since 1970, “we look in vain for an example of a government that deliberately avoids a higher income. The self-serving declaration of an interested party is not evidence.” OPEC’s long record of huffing-and-puffing over Israel — and related promises of more oil in exchange for support of the Palestinian cause — has simply served as a useful cover for production decisions that would have been made regardless. But if the West thinks that crossing Persian Gulf suppliers will result in economic retaliation — or that reduced support for Israel will translate into lower oil prices — so much the better from the Saudi perspective. That policymakers have never noticed the lack of relationship between American foreign policy in the Middle East and Saudi oil-production decisions is a mystery to me.
The bottom line is that the Saudis, no matter what they might like us to believe, are not doing us any favors by selling us oil at $24 a barrel that, without the collusion, would probably go for no more than a third of that. Threats that the Saudis might turn hostile if we don’t change course in the Middle East are laughable — they went hostile a long time ago.
[Sorry, rgiap. Oil is a cold subject and Hank Williams never, that I am aware, wrote a song about it. Please, continue.]

Posted by: Pat | Sep 8 2004 12:41 utc | 139

I’m sorry, koreyel, how precisely does oil consumption – as opposed to the consumption of, say, water or cotton or pork or poly-vinyl-urethane or coal or precious metals – qualify as an addiction?
It’s a serious question. I’m missing something.

Posted by: Pat | Sep 8 2004 14:19 utc | 141

rgiap
Your posts made me remember, though twas not your intent, one of the greatest challenges – nay, frustrations – in life: Making the feeling that one gets from one’s encounters with things good and powerful last.

Posted by: Pat | Sep 8 2004 15:54 utc | 143

To understand oil as an addictive substance requires, I think, an historical critique of energy consumption. Illich’s analysis of “energy slaves” as a substitute for human slavery might be a good place to start (“Energy and Equity” iirc). To consume fuels of some sort for cooking, for staying warm in winter, for making pottery, for smoking meat and fish, etc. is a long human tradition, just as it’s a long human tradition to ferment the juice of whatever’s handy and make some kind of tipple. Many cultures/people can handle their tipple all right, and integrated it into a healthy community life. However, alcoholism as an addictive behaviour pattern does exist, is well-attested, and causes harm; and imho petro-addiction also exists and is a major cause of various kinds of harm in our contemporary world.
An America in which the average person is said to walk less than one mile in an entire year — where people use their cars to drive down their driveways and pick up the mail in the mailbox — where children are ferried two blocks to school in 6000 lb SUVs — where motorised tie racks, garden hose reels, etc. are viable consumer goods — is an America aspiring to the indolent lifestyle of kings and pharaohs, supported by an infinite supply of energy slaves. This I would call addiction: the teenager who whines that he “can’t walk” three whole blocks, the American family that drives its 4 bikes on the back of its SUV 10 miles round trip to go for a 2 mile ride in a park; the American who easily racks up 20,000 Frequent Flyer miles every year, the 3-person family living in a 5000 sq ft home with 3 freezers and 5 TVs… in consumer culture there is no such thing as “enough”. The very daily fabric of many people’s lives has become dependent on consuming a hugely disproportionate amount (globally speaking), and an ever increasing amount, of a finite resource. (cf Affluenza, Shovelling Fuel for a Runaway Train, Luxury Fever and other critiques of the “infinite consumption” culture).
We can consume anything in quantities or in ways that match the pattern of abuse/excess/harm that we call ‘addiction’ — be it alcohol or other drugs, food, sex, or energy. The main qualities of addiction are that: (a) the consumption is excessive, and returns are diminishing so that more and more must be consumed to get the same thrill, (b) there is harm to self and others, and that harm is staunchly denied, (c) the desperate need for the consumable causes a rotting of moral fibre such that the addict is willing to sacrifice probity, honour, ideals in order to feed the habit.
I think we can see the pattern of excess in ever-escalating energy consumption as a marker of “affluence” [imho actually of laziness and stupidity, but that’s a minority opinion] in American consumer culture; in the staunch denial of harm (environmental damage, toxicity, global warming, road danger and vehicular manslaughter, etc); and in the amount of power and criminal behaviour permitted to the “dealer” (the oil cartels and oil-mafia families like the House of Bush and the House of Saud, not to mention the House of Rice, the House of Cheney, the House of Lay and many others). America’s smash-n-grab raid on the gas station that is Iraq very much resembles, to this jaundiced eye, a similar attack by any junkie on any ready source of drug money in any grimy inner city on Earth.
Consuming water can also take a similar path when water is scarce enough to be valuable and is squandered by an affluent few as a means of displaying status. We might say that in this case it’s the display of status that’s addictive, not the water itself; perhaps the same is true of petroleum, since (except for a few loonie gas-fume sniffers of school age) no one really drinks or snorts the stuff direct. But as a metaphor, addiction seems to me a fairly good fit for the dysfunctional relationship currently obtaining between Americans and other G7 dwellers, and the fossil fuel on which their profligate lifestyle is based. Like winos struggling in the gutter over the last of the bottle, we seem ready to humiliate ourselves and roll in any dirt, not to mention gouge the other guy’s eyes out and kick him in the kneecaps and nuts, in order to get that last gulp. It’s a pathetic [imho] and degrading spectacle.

Posted by: DeAnander | Sep 8 2004 16:55 utc | 145

Is oil a commodity or a drug?
Is marijuana a drug or a commodity?
Can black crude be addictive to a culture?
Are all addictions necessarily bad?
Hmmmmm…
I wish we could have started a new thread on Pat’s great question.
It really derserves its own space.
Now remembereringgiap and DeAnander have spun the querry through their unique minds…
Maybe DeAnander’s answer to Pat could be repackaged as the start of a new thread?

Posted by: koreyel | Sep 8 2004 17:21 utc | 147

From al Jazeera:
OPEC may set new target range for oil prices
9/8/2004 8:03:00 AM GMT
Source: Reuters
OPEC may decide on a new target range for oil prices next week, it would like to see oil prices falling down to $30 a barrel from current high levels, the head of the producers’ cartel said on Wednesday.
OPEC president Purnomo Yusgiantoro, who is also the oil minister for Indonesia, said that crude prices, which reached record levels close to $50 a barrel in late August, increased by $10 to $15 a barrel due to political risks and other factors.
“What we see is the political premium between $10 and $15 per barrel,” Purnomo said at the World Energy Congress in Sydney. “If you remove the non-fundamentals, then we hope the price will go down to a level of $30 per barrel.
“The price should not be what it is today,” he added.
The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) – which controls more than 50 percent of world crude exports – will meet in Vienna on Sept. 15 to revise output policy.
Purnomo said that OPEC’s 11 members might consider a change in the oil price target of $22 to $28 a barrel at next week’s talks.
Under an informal price band mechanism, OPEC can increase or reduce oil production if the price of a reference basket of seven crude grades goes outside of the target range for a specific number of trading days.
The basket price has been above the upper $28 limit since late last year as oil prices have increased due to soaring demand and tight supplies, which did not allow a leeway for any hiccup in the supply chain.
On Monday, OPEC’s reference crude oil price finished at $38.66 a barrel after hitting more than $43 late last month. U.S. light crude was trading at $43.25 a barrel, a little over $6 below the all-times- high at $49.40 on Aug. 20.
Some OPEC countries — Venezuela, Libya, Nigeria and Iran — have said that the target set for prices in March 2000 should be changed to reflect new market conditions. Qatar was cited on Saturday as saying that $25 to $30 was a fair price.
“… We realize that between 2000 and now there has been the change of inflation and the depreciation of the U.S. dollar, so there has to be a different price range today,” Purnomo told a news conference.
“There are proposals that have been submitted to us. If you will wait until next week, we hope to get a good decision to provide the public with a new range of oil prices, but today we still are using $22 to $28 per barrel,” he said.
The cartel is producing about 30 million barrels daily – the highest output production since the late 1990s – to try to cool world prices, which have increased more than 40 percent since the end of last year.[…]

Posted by: Pat | Sep 8 2004 18:10 utc | 149

& a paranthetic note
other poster here know i am not a follower of conspiracies – the current group of dullards is incapable of a concerted & concentrated conspiracy
but
i have thought since the kidnapping of berg & underlined today with the french & italians kidnapped – to follow the old intelligence equation – whom does it serve?
& it is apparent to me that it serves not at all the resistance – especially thekidnapped from thosee populations of italy spain & france who are massively opposed to the war
& it is frighteningly similar to methods used in latin america, the phoenix programme in south east asia & the thing the ex cia man mcgovern describes in africa
i am reminded in those countries of the killing of the american nuns in el salvador, the americans germans italians spaniars who were assasinated by pinochet in sept 11 1973 – the methodologies of that time seem very close to the kidnapping in iraq
a real resistance has everything to lose by kidnapping & it aids also in the criminilisation of the resistance but above all i see no benefit in either long or short term – even for fanatics
the only fanatics it serves are inntelligence communities in united states
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 8 2004 22:28 utc | 151