jérôme
i am thinking of you & yr family this night
i too feel a proximity indeed an intimité with the other posters though we are connected only by words & wires
in the same week as the beslen crisis i found out that i had diabetes type 1 & up to this point i have never been limited by my health & i have lived a tough life
with the announcement of the diagnosis – all went in turmoil – materially & metaphysically – you are brought back to yourself
as you are broguht back to yourself & your family & that intimité which has to be fought for also
the suddeness of events both in our intimate lives & that of the world hurtles at a shocking pace – a relentless surge it feels sometimes but what we are doing here & at moa & in our lives i hope brings us back to be better as people as activists as communicators
you have given a great deal here over the last six months – you have given of yourself & when things happen like the sickness of your child – the whole damn circus seems very cruel, needlessly cruel
as you know jérôme, i do not believe in god or gods but as an old althusserian i believe in people & i believe in their absolute & magnificent mystery that is based in their materiality
& i believe from that materiality comes miracles – & i think if you concentrate the efforts of your heart as i know you must – there will be hope for your child & his & your futures
your gift of giving here – is i imagined lived in your life & that will go to your family & that will create the miracles
on hearing the news of my diagnosis – which is evidently rare in a person of my age & habitudes – i felt defeated – constrained – as if in a certain sense – the life before the diagnosis had no limit & that since the diagnosis – the insulin injections themselves constituted a limit, a constraint
as in your moment with your child – in the middle of the worlds crisis – you feel so angry, so dark & you turn against yourself – at least that’s what i felt – but that is a useless & sordid path & one must walk quickly away from that path
& one way of walking away from that path is our ‘devoir’ to others whether it is our family our our community
no it does not make us feel immediately better & no it does not change the material conditions in the first instance – but change it does & often, most often for the better
because we are capable of transformations, incredible transformations
i know that is true of you
& your family
toute ma force et tendresse jérôme
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 17 2004 21:59 utc | 3

Please read and comment Jérôme´s post at the Whiskey Annex.
—
A essential impression on the war on Iraq from Salon:
Turning point A journalist who was embedded with the U.S. Marines in Fallujah explains how the Bush White House lost the key battle of the Iraq war.

Posted by: b | Sep 17 2004 22:10 utc | 5

The posts go on, the war goes on, the world goes on and we all keep on trying to keep going on. As a parent who’s whole life at 63 revolves around seeing my progeny making it and procreating and continuing keeping on, my heart bleeds from your wound.
I have loved your communications and friendship albeit cyber. My thoughts and heart are with you and yours. May grace lighten your load.
For what it is worth I will share some of your heartbreak and worry.

Posted by: Juannie | Sep 17 2004 23:14 utc | 7

@Koreyel:
Of course it’s true. No intelligence whatsoever. If the Iraqis were historically inventive, they could probably smuggle 20-30 Trojan Horses into the Green Zone too.

Posted by: Subotai | Sep 18 2004 2:30 utc | 9

@sukabi
Is the flag ‘backwards’ on soldiers’ sleeves?
By Lisa Burgess
Stars and Stripes European edition
Saturday, February 28, 2004 ARLINGTON, Va.
Why do American soldiers wear the U.S. flag insignia “backwards” on the right shoulder of their utility uniforms, with the canton (the rectangle with the stars) on an observer’s right? It’s a question that soldiers hear frequently as they travel through civilian airports, or talk to members of other services. And it does look “wrong,” because U.S. federal code calls for the canton to always be positioned to the left. The soldiers aren’t wrong, however, and neither are their tailors, Lt. Col. Stanley Heath, an Army spokesman, explained in a Friday telephone interview. The Army actually has two authorized flag patches, one to be worn on the left shoulder, with the canton facing left, and another “reverse field” patch worn on the right, with the canton facing right. The two different orientations are mandated because Army regulations call for the flag “to be worn so that to observers, it looks as if the flag is flying against a breeze,” Heath said. What does a stiff wind have to do with this custom? In fact, the rule is a nod to the U.S. Army’s early history, when wars were fought as a series of carefully choreographed battles — two armies meeting on a field, clashing head-on until one side emerged victorious. In those battles, both mounted cavalry and infantry units would always designate one soldier as “standard bearer,” to carry the Colors into the fight. As the standard bearer charged, his rapid forward momentum would cause the flag to stream back. And since the Stars and Stripes is mounted with the canton closest to the pole, that section would always be forward. So if a soldier is charging into the battle, the flag would give the appearance of forward motion. For the right shoulder, the flag only appears “backward.” And that’s why soldiers wear the flag patches on the right shoulder “backward.” Because retreat in battle, as any soldier will tell you, is not the Army way.

Posted by: Pat | Sep 18 2004 6:31 utc | 11

jérôme, a wise man once said to me “peace isn’t shelter from the storm , it’s shelter in the storm” I wish that for you.
Because They Own Your Body; Because They Own Your Life
Universal National Service Act of 2003 and House Bill H.R.163:
The Service Act of 2003 – Declares that it is the obligation of every U.S. citizen, and every other person residing in the United States, between the ages of 18 and 26 to perform a two-year period of national service, unless exempted, either as a member of an active or reserve component of the armed forces or in a civilian capacity that promotes national defense.
Amends the Military Selective Service Act to authorize the military registration of females.
To anyone who will be between the ages of 18 and 26 during the next 5 years: if you think that College will exempt you from being drafted, think again. If this bill becomes a law, your induction into the military would be delayed no longer than the end of a current semester.
The SSS has already recruited 2000 “Selective Service System Local Board Members”, who are — to put it more succulently– the people who will decide who goes to war. While they deny that they are moving towards reinstating the draft, the memory hole has recovered the SSS’s erased “Defend America” website. You can be the judge.
Why isn’t anyone talking about this bill? Charles Pena, senior analyst with the Washington-based Cato Institute said, “I don’t think a presidential candidate would seriously propose a draft — but an incumbent, safely in for a second term — that might be a different story.”
Mr Pena continued, “When you crunch the numbers, you understand why you hear talk about a draft. You only have to look at troop levels to realize we don’t have the numbers to do the job in Iraq properly.”
Of course, the SSS, DOD, and Pentagon all insist that none of this has anything to do with reinstating the draft. But they haven’t commented on it for a year. The situation in Iraq has gotten signifigantly worse since November 2003. I think we need to all be thinking very carefully about this.
And if that isn’t enough to let you know that you and yours are a tool to the Government how bout this:
Does the U.S. Chamber of Commerce support any limits at all on the use of schools for advertising or marketing? wait there’s more : The U.S. Chamber of Commerce says that its conference on “business-education partnerships” is to help create “opportunities for companies seeking to improve their support for K-12 education.”
While nearly all would agree that most schools need more “support,” much of what is called “business-education partnerships” really is plain old corporate marketing, sometimes dressed up with nominal gifts; or else it is public relations, in using schools to boost a corporation’s sagging public image.
Regrettably, in the last fifteen years, corporations have increasingly rejected the notion of philanthropy, in which they give money to schools because it is the right thing to do. Instead, business groups like yours are touting “business-education partnerships” which often involve using schools as public relations props or as marketing arenas to address a captive audience of children. The purpose is not so much to improve education, as it is to increase the sales of junk food and drinks such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi. It is the opposite of philanthropy, but it seems to be the dominant model for so-called “business-education partnerships.”

Posted by: Anonymous | Sep 18 2004 6:57 utc | 13

@Sukabi
The Stars and Stripes article refers to the “reverse field” patch as an Army one. The medics in the photo aren’t wearing Army BDUs; I believe they’re Marines.
I don’t know when the patch was changed.

Posted by: Pat | Sep 18 2004 7:03 utc | 15

The flag patches are not worn on both shoulders. The right shoulder is for combat patches and troops deploying to a theater sew the flag onto that shoulder, although by Oct of next year all Army soldiers, deployed and not, will have the reverse field patch on the right shoulder. Supposed to be a reminder to all that “we are an Army at war,” whether “back home” at Ft. Hood or the Pentagon, or in lovely Kabul or Tikrit.
I don’t know in what cases the flag patch would be worn on the left shoulder; perhaps in operations other than war.
My husband doesn’t wear a uniform on deployment so I’m really not up on these things.

Posted by: Pat | Sep 18 2004 7:34 utc | 17

@sukabi
Doubtless there are plenty of Iraqis, Afghans, and other Muslims who see it as a satanic symbol no matter which way the flag is facing.

Posted by: Pat | Sep 18 2004 8:45 utc | 19

Assaults continue on Ramadi, Fallujah; U.S. snipers hit ambulances
Sep 14 – In incidents reminiscent of last April’s fighting in Fallujah, the general director of Ramadi Hospital reports that US forces targeted civilian ambulances and medical teams in the Sunni city west of Baghdad, killing ambulance drivers and medics

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 18 2004 10:19 utc | 21

What about the Rapture
At http://www.tompaine.com/articles/journalism_under_fire.php is Bill Moyers’ 9-11-04 speech that includes an explanation of the Rapture, a belief held by Bush or that he is playing to.
It involves chaos. Could be that chaos everywhere is Bush’s intent. That would explain his dismantling everything that holds things together. Administration lying is useful in promoting chaos.
Some blog commenters say that Bush is seeking chaos intentionally in Iraq. I think at the beginning of W’s administration Nelson Mandela asked Bush I to intervene with W because W was “spreading chaos.”
If the Rapture is what’s running things then the chaos is by design, with the added benefit that it lines cronies’ pockets for the here and now. I don’t know.
Moyers:
“How do we explain the possibility that a close election in November could turn on several million good and decent citizens who believe in the Rapture Index? That’s what I said—the Rapture Index; Google it and you will understand why the best-selling books in America today are the 12 volumes of the “Left Behind” series that have earned multi-millions of dollars for their co-authors, who, earlier this year, completed a triumphant tour of the Bible Belt whose buckle holds in place George W. Bush’s armor of the Lord. These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the l9th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative millions of people believe to be literally true.
“According to this narrative, Jesus will return to earth only when certain conditions are met: when Israel has been established as a state; when Israel then occupies the rest of its “biblical lands;” when the third temple has been rebuilt on the site now occupied by the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa mosques; and, then, when legions of the Antichrist attack Israel. This will trigger a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon during which all the Jews who have not converted will be burned. Then the Messiah returns to earth. The Rapture occurs once the big battle begins. True believers ‘will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts and frogs during the several years of tribulation which follow.’
“I’m not making this up. We’ve reported on these people for our weekly broadcast on PBS, following some of them from Texas to the West Bank. They are sincere, serious and polite as they tell you that they feel called to help bring the Rapture on as fulfillment of biblical prophecy. That’s why they have declared solidarity with Israel and the Jewish settlements and backed up their support with money and volunteers. It’s why they have staged confrontations at the old temple site in Jerusalem. It’s why the invasion of Iraq for them was a warm-up act, predicted in the 9th chapter of the Book of Revelations where four angels “which are bound in the great river Euphrates will be released “to slay the third part of men.’ As the British writer George Monbiot has pointed out, for these people, the Middle East is not a foreign policy issue, it’s a biblical scenario, a matter of personal belief. A war with Islam in the Middle East is not something to be feared but welcomed; if there’s a conflagration there, they come out winners on the far side of tribulation, inside the pearly gates, in celestial splendor, supping on ambrosia to the accompaniment of harps plucked by angels.
“One estimate puts these people at about 15 percent of the electorate. Most are likely to vote Republican; they are part of the core of George W. Bush’s base support. He knows who they are and what they want. When the president asked Ariel Sharon to pull his tanks out of Jenin in 2002, more than one hundred thousand angry Christian fundamentalists barraged the White House with e-mails, and Mr. Bush never mentioned the matter again. Not coincidentally, the administration recently put itself solidly behind Ariel Sharon’s expansions of settlements on the West Banks. In George Monbiot’s analysis, the president stands to lose fewer votes by encouraging Israeli expansion into the West Bank than he stands to lose by restraining it. “He would be mad to listen to these people, but he would also be mad not to.” No wonder Karl Rove walks around the West Wing whistling “Onward Christian Soldiers.” He knows how many votes he is likely to get from these pious folk who believe that the Rapture Index now stands at 144—just one point below the critical threshold at which point the prophecy is fulfilled, the whole thing blows, the sky is filled with floating naked bodies, and the true believers wind up at the right hand of God. With no regret for those left behind. (See George Monbiot. The Guardian, April 20th, 2004 .)”
the URL for the Monbiot article is http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1195727,00.html.
The Rapture Index–today at 151–and other Rapture-related program activities are at http://www.raptureready.com

Posted by: emereton | Sep 18 2004 18:57 utc | 23

The message was intended:
Telegraph reports: Secret papers show Blair was warned of Iraq chaos (free reg. req.)

Tony Blair was warned a year before invading Iraq that a stable post-war government would be impossible without keeping large numbers of troops there for “many years”, secret government papers reveal.
The documents, seen by The Telegraph, show more clearly than ever the grave reservations expressed by Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, over the consequences of a second Gulf war and how prescient his Foreign Office officials were in predicting the ensuing chaos.
…
Mr Straw predicted in March 2002 that post-war Iraq would cause major problems, telling Mr Blair in a letter marked “Secret and personal” that no one had a clear idea of what would happen afterwards. “There seems to be a larger hole in this than anything.”
Most of the US assessments argued for regime change as a means of eliminating Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, Mr Straw said.
“But no one has satisfactorily answered how there can be any certainty that the replacement regime will be any better. Iraq has no history of democracy so no one has this habit or experience.”
…
They told the Prime Minister that there was a risk of the Iraqi system “reverting to type” after a war, with a future government acquiring the very weapons of mass destruction that an attack would be designed to remove.

Posted by: b | Sep 18 2004 21:31 utc | 25

On Bernhard’s Secret Papers and Blair, plus Bush’s intentional chaos in Iraq and elsewhere:
My response is Well, Duh.
How can one even now continue to treat Bush’s and Blair’s excuses for invading as any more than a bullshit line. Most of us knew at the time that they were bullshit lines, meant as sloppy verbal cover for an invasion that had no semblance of legitimacy.
That all were such suckers and let them do it is the scary part. You cannot say now that “Gee we didn’t know. Look here’s some evidence I just found that shows they weren’t being honest!”
They should have been strung up by the balls then and the same is true now, squared. I want to suggest a more severe punishment but in the interest of civility…

Posted by: rapt | Sep 18 2004 22:36 utc | 27

Stanley Kober at the Cato Institute:
The Bush administration’s doctrine of preemption is based on the assumption that American power is irresistible. That assumption is now being challenged, just as it has been challenged when it was asserted by other great powers throughout history. Like Napoleon, the Bush administration launched a preventive war and now finds itself confronting a hostile population resisting occupation. Allies are defecting as casualties mount. Victory appears increasingly uncertain.
Yet even if the U.S. ultimately prevails in Iraq, the aura of invincible American power has been shattered. The unexpected difficulties encountered in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the stress on American military forces, undermines the threat to use those forces again, which is the very basis of our superpower status. “U.S. rulers are often liable to overestimate their own strength, and underestimate the challenges and problems they face,” China’s People’s Daily noted last May. “They can be described as `the higher they climb, the harder they fall.'”
Ironically, a war that was supposed to cement America’s military superiority is now being viewed as an example of American weakness. It is an outcome the proponents of preemption never envisioned. They wagered the cards of Providence, but Providence is not being as obliging as they had hoped.
It rarely is.
Bill Kristol at the Weekly Standard:
Come home, America! Kerry will bring our troops home from this latter-day quagmire. Yet to come home from Iraq, to withdraw from Iraq, would be to surrender to the terrorists against whom we’re fighting.
Now, Americans don’t like the prospect of surrendering to terror. That’s why Kerry trails in the presidential race. But it isn’t over. Kerry could still win the election if he convinces the American people that we are losing the war in Iraq, that Iraq is hopeless. So the best thing the Bush administration can do over the next six weeks is explain the importance of Iraq in the war on terror, and explain that we are on a path–a difficult path–to victory in Iraq.
But the key, of course, is not just to convince the American people that we’re winning the war in Iraq. It is to make sure we’re doing everything we can to win the war. The terrorists have every incentive to make October miserable for American and allied troops in Iraq, and for that matter for American and other civilians. The administration therefore needs to be on the strategic offensive–and while that can include tactically defensive and operationally quiet maneuvers, it would be good for the strategic offensive to be visible. The American people will accept casualties if we are on a course to victory. They will rebel at casualties taken if we seem to be in a preelection defensive stall. Trying to play it safe in Iraq over the next month is politically and strategically dangerous. Let Kerry make the case for an America that comes home. Let Bush lead an America that fights and wins.
–William Kristol
[Did you get that? In order for Bush, during this campaign season, to reassure Americans that we are on “the strategic offensive” – “the path to victory,” as it were – the strategic offensive needs to be visible, needs to get on the nightly news and the front pages of the morning papers. This means, of course, that it’s not a strategic offensive serving a valid military objective, but rather a strategic offensive serving a domestic, political one. Ring any bells? Marine Gen. Conway might say, “Blow it out your ass, Bill, you grinning sack of shit.” These people throw away lives as if they were nothing. NOTHING. That Bill has the confidence to say aloud what used to be discreetly kept from the public, just goes to show in what deep, deep trouble we are in.]

Posted by: Pat | Sep 19 2004 1:01 utc | 29

i detest the corrupt facilty of p j o’ rourke to spill ink over those who shed blood. writers like him are a dime a dozen – he has given nothing at all to this world except the coarse laughs of men & women who should know better
someone who has lived deeply, a faulkner or an agee has a right to irony but this two bit scribbler, this bastard child of hunter s thompson, this scribe fro rolling stone & atlantic who has given laughs to those who do not deserve them & i remind you of brechts dictum – he who laughs has not yet heard the terrible news
it has not surprised me that charlatans whether it is jim jones in guyana or an embedded ‘reporter’ in iraq – the real damage of the left in the last thirty years has been the space allowed to petty criminals like him
i have read mr o’ rourke since that time – & like most cruel people – he chooses easy targets, he has nothing new to say & he is congenitally incapable of offering anything of substance except for sneers
i think i am a tolerant man but i cannot tolerate fools – the great gore vidal can write in one sentence what it takes o’ rourke ten books to say & he says it again & again & again like the tired comic he is – but even as comedy it is paltry stuff – but yes he is right for the bush imperium – shallow laughs for cruel, shallow people
& like king leopold of belgium before him these people can never hide their greed for money & their lust for power – even if that power is to be a commentator in journals that are neither more or less than a very modern & very american form of prostition – his masters – the waughs i would imagaine, the taki’s, the jackanapes who piss ink into the urinal of their empty culture
& as i sd some time ago – america will find its own stalingrad in iraq & like the nazis before them they will pour more & more of their countrymen into a trap that will become all enveloping – that may swallow a generation whole – the very anarchy of the resistance – makes it clear that in the future, the immediate future ;- they will create a frightening solidity – that will kill young men & women who do not deserve to die in a war for oil, for the men who laugh off their sacrifice & that the cheneys’s of this world surely do, they have no respect for the other – their own goals are too important – as the prick cheney actually sd – he has other priorities – oh george might cry into the beer he keeps hidden from his assasin wife laura – but he will cry for himself – this man who can discern no difference between managing a sports team or running a country. no these sadist, as others who are borne to cruelty, it is inherent in their pathologies, they think only of themselves
& writers like o’ rourke, who would shit his pants if he was confronted really with the horror of this world outside of a bar – will always enjoy sitting at the table of the tyrants
he is not the first he will not be the last mr william shawcross & mr bob woodward – both scribblers who claim high & loft aims are redused to caricatures in the sixth circle of hell
satire in the hands of a defoe is something to behold, even a l f celine has his moments in castle to castle (a novel i would suggest has very close parallels with the current administration) but the sneers of o’rourke are not even worth the spit that falls from my lips
i have often wondered at the ultrademocracy of the left & libertarians who allow the small minds whether it is an ayn rand or o’rourke to speak their darker sensibilities
oh you will say – there goes that old stalinist rgiap again but of this absence of tolerance i am proud
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 19 2004 1:16 utc | 31

We all sat down to watch a movie this evening and all through the movie I kept thinking about Bill Kristol and what he wrote (it’s somewhere in a post above this). What he’s calling for – I’ll put it the way my husband put it – is the assassination, the destruction by treachery, of US troops in the advancement of an electoral campaign. A “visible” strategic offensive choreographed for the voters back home, so that they might know that George W. Bush is “on a course to vicory.” And he’s calling for it openly.
Have we hit rock bottom yet? Because if this isn’t rock bottom, I really, really don’t know what is. What bothers me far more than that this administration is unpredictable enough to swing in just about any direction in any given week – and take the shockingly abominable advice of Kristol and others – is that Kristol could come right out and say it in the first place and the reaction, the outrage, just isn’t there. 48 hours later and not a peep from anyone. ANYONE. If I were on the half-baked, half-assed (it’s so like Iraq and Afghanistan in that way, you know) Kerry campaign, I’d have taken Kristol’s words and had some suitably bloodthirsty surrogate beat the Republicans black and blue with them. It doesn’t matter that Kristol isn’t a member of the administration. I’d tie him around their scrawny, yellow necks. He’s a member of the party’s new intellectual leadership. He’s a neocon thug, a monster in jacket and tie, whose words have influence and indicate direction. My God, that man appears regularly on Fox news. You know Fox news – the station with all the flags and noisy patriotism and war boosterism. The station that supports our troops without ever showing you the faces of the fallen or telling you their goddamned names or where they were from or how far they’d gotten in life. Fox news, that sick cartoon of television journalism.
If this isn’t as bad as it gets, I don’t care to look down.

Posted by: Pat | Sep 19 2004 6:02 utc | 33

The governors of Virginia, West Virginia, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, Colorado, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, New York, Texas, Nebraska, Vermont, Massachusetts and California as the Nevada Department of Corrections have been attacked by letters that go up in flames when opened.
Twenty of the fifty governors of the United States are attacked within one week. Only some local newspapers carry the story. Terrorism is the US No. 1 problem?
MercuryNews

Posted by: b | Sep 19 2004 9:16 utc | 35

Paranoia really seems to be reigning over big parts of the US. Here Raeds story, seems he was applying for a visit in the US. He brings up a fact I have forgotten.
After some days of work on my Visa to the States, people in the organization that invited me changed their minds.
Why?
Because they think I am “anti-Semitic”
:*)
How can I be “anti-Semitic” when I am Palestinian?
I mean… I AM Semitic…
Fun Fact of the Day:
Arabs ARE Semitic
Another Fun Fact:
When you search for the meaning of Semitic in the dictionary, you’ll find “Arabs and Jews”.
here the rest

Posted by: Fran | Sep 19 2004 9:54 utc | 37

alabama,
thank you & a little note of information – o’ rourke’ is considered the great american satirist of the late twentieth century. owes his early credibility to a connection with hunter s thompson & a desire by those on the left & liberals to be ridiculed by a bully. i think he was a columnist with rolling stone in the first instance -being impressed with his alcahol & drug intake
he had many fans – but i was never amongst them – i like my humour a little more layered & perhaps a little crazier than that – robin williams – for example is at his best a love filled man who explodes in front of you – there was courage in his work. there is no courage of course in o’rourke
theres’ a certain kind of humour this century which is essentially cruel, which targets simply, which celebrates a nietzshean misanthropy
to paraphrase a great mayakovskian poem to the poet yesenin, who had suicided -that to be cruel is easy, it does not take talen or courage – but to love the people, fundamentally is a constant & quotidian work – that is fragile by its very nature
they are bullies & they have no heart
they have dollars & the sad influence of their ejaculations
@pat, as with alabama, your posts are so precise sometimes – when your really speak – i am touched by them though i know we must be on opposite sides of the bridge
still steel
(i suppose o’rourke would see his influences as mencken, groucho marx or dorothy parker but really alabama he is but a pimple somewhere up their ass)

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 19 2004 12:31 utc | 39

& a desire by those on the left & liberals to be ridiculed by a bully.

Ain’t it the truth.
Truly, what my “Ready. Aim. Focus.” post was teasing at… and truly, what this Ben Sargent potical cartoon is pointing at.

Posted by: koreyel | Sep 19 2004 15:56 utc | 41

@Fran 12:15
Looking at that truck graveyard I can tell Mercedes, Scania and probably a Renault or MAN. New investment and equipment that needs to be bought: in Sweden, Germany and France.

Posted by: b | Sep 19 2004 18:07 utc | 43

blackie
what we are witnessing is the most corrupt & inept empire since caligula
vision in america(even within their own inherently sadistic constructs) left when j k galbraith lost his way
that generation, studs terkel, howard zinn ,will not come again because that kind of wealth is not being cultivated & if truth be the way perhaps it really never was & that people like that were exceptions
is it not an irony that in all the human, physical & social sciences – the genius of america was always proudly of the left or extreme left
perhaps that time has gone & gone forever & alll you can expect of “excellence’ today is the incomppetentent middle management of a jay garner or a bremer, the polemical stupidities of a kristol, perle or wolfowitz or the take it & run economics of the prick cheney
they are incapable of benevolance
still steel

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 19 2004 20:57 utc | 45

Just got back from an Oktoberfest in a nearby town. It was pleasant enough – no real German beer, though the wienerschnitzel and wurst were very nice – but what we really wanted on a sunny, breezy, late-summer day was just a quiet beer garden in a park someplace, maybe one we could ride our bikes to and sit reading the Sunday papers with tall glasses of weizen. Ah, memories.
I turned to my dad and asked if he thought, thirty years from now, American towns and cities would be holding Iraqi-American festivals. If, thirty years from now, American servicemembers and their families would be vacationing at Basra and living in the suburbs of Baghdad. Would the mayors of Talil and Samarra give yearly speeches to the local Iraqi-American Friendship Clubs, recalling the liberation of Iraq and extolling the virtues of alliance and cooperation and cultural exchange? Would U.S. troops stationed there go out on huge, two-week-long, yearly maneuvers in the Iraqi countryside – er, desert? Would American children be graduating from John H. Abazaid High School in Ramalla, as I graduated from Alexander M. Patch High School in Vaihingen, Germany?
He just laughed.

Posted by: Pat | Sep 20 2004 3:30 utc | 47

Bush will lose if, and only if, the people who put him in office decide to take him out, and I’d like to believe that something of the sort is currently in the works, if only because (1.) high-profile military figures are going public, commenting on (2.) the leaked (very timely, this!) July intelligence estimate, even as (3.) high-profile Republican senators speak out against the Administration, while (4.) Kerry agrees to focus the rest of his campaign on Iraq, and (5.) Jim Baker agrees to let Bush hang out to dry through three (3!) 90-minute-long debates. As always, the Plame thing ought to go public fairly soon, more TANG material is forthcoming, and who knows what Kerry’s planning to do in NYC tomorrow and Tuesday, even as Bush pretends to be an international leader at the Waldorf-Astoria?

Posted by: alabama | Sep 20 2004 5:20 utc | 49

Sean-Paul Kelley at the Agonist:
Iraq Update September 20
Sean-Paul Kelley | San Antonio | September 19
The Agonist – The United States currently has three options before it in Iraq. The situation is grim. Reconstruction and nation building have not come off as quickly as we lead ourselves to believe. Whatever the rationale for the war was in the beginning it has now evaporated like water in the Iraq desert. Whether we wish to admit to the truth or not Iraq has become the central front in the war on terror. We are now engaged in a struggle that will determine the course of American foreign policy for at least a generation. The stakes are grave. Each option should be weighed on its strategic merits and demerits. Domestic political considerations, as much as possible, should not be a factor. I am advocating no particular option. I am simply attempting to dissolve the fog which lay before us.[…]

Posted by: Pat | Sep 20 2004 5:56 utc | 51

Pat,
But the reckoning is surely coming. We have to flush out at least Fallujah and Ramadi soon – or lose the ability to hold national elections in January (if we haven’t already).
Flush out of whom? The Iraqi citizens? Because that is what it will end up being – the resistance are Iraqi’s, at least the majority of them. And then the other question, who says that there was ever an election planned and the election talk isn’t just smoke an mirror?

Posted by: Fran | Sep 20 2004 6:26 utc | 53

@Fran
I believe he means flush out the insurgents. Problem is, the insurgents are protected by the inhabitants who are not direct members of the insurgency.
A few months ago, it would have been possible to do a cordon and search of Falluja. Evacuate women, children, the old and the infirm. Make known the consequences of deciding to stay. Then sweep the place. (I don’t mean kill everyone left.)
The elections are important because the introduction of democracy is the only objective (rationale) left for OIF. Well, removing Saddam was an objective, but that’s been achieved. So what’re we hanging around for? To make registered voters of everyone. It’s very important to the administration domestically, and we can’t get away (if we are to get away at all) with postponing elections in Iraq for any length of time. The Iraqis, I think, have given up on improving security and economic situations. The elections are a different matter, with a different psychology behind them. We have to get this one out of three. Bush has to be able to say “See? We did it. Mission accomplished.”
But who says anyone in Falluja or Ramdi has to vote?

Posted by: Pat | Sep 20 2004 6:57 utc | 55

Oh, and one other thing, Pat: if ever we “flush out Fallujah,” I’d like to see Andrew Sullivan, Kevin Drum and Josh Marshall “embedded” with the first wave of American Liberators. Better yet, I’d like to see them escort our Marines in broad daylight down the back alleys of Fallujah. Their files would make for a splendid read……

Posted by: alabama | Sep 20 2004 7:11 utc | 57

Their files would make for a splendid read……
Posted by: alabama | September 20, 2004 03:11 AM
LOL. Yes they would, wouldn’t they?

Posted by: Pat | Sep 20 2004 7:51 utc | 59

@Fran
You can separate locals who lead, organize, supply, actively collaborate, and shoot from those who are sympathetic or ‘agnostic.’ But a successful resistance movement does indeed rely upon significant tolerance by the local population.

Posted by: Pat | Sep 20 2004 8:17 utc | 61

my guess is, 5 months after 1st fallujah, 2ed fallujah goes as unexpected due to steep learning curve + infiltration of all levels of new iraqi army = corresponding counter attacks on known weak links removed from fallujah say, green zone,supply lines,oil lines, etc. showing lumbering giant to be blind to where enemy actually is, convincing more population to get behind the ultimate winner, as elections fade away.
2ed fallujah operation, likely big booby trap

Posted by: anna missed | Sep 20 2004 8:44 utc | 63

A useful quote:
“(T)here are no secret rooms where you open the door and step inside and find nothing but competence.”
The Interrogators, by Chris Mackey and Greg Miller

Posted by: Pat | Sep 20 2004 10:42 utc | 65

late response…
RGiap wrote: .. is it not an irony that in all the human, physical & social sciences – the genius of america was always proudly of the left or extreme left ..
What you say is very true of social / human science in the US, today it is in catastrophic shape. The shame is that US criteria and grip are affecting many world-wide, through funding mechanisms, the slashing of public education and research, economic imperatives (so called), the IMF, etc. Many just bow down to the American way, or what is called for or required by them. Exactly why and how this happens is interesting to analyse — I have no three-line summing up.
Kate wrote: Don’t kid yourself. The so-called aura of invincible power was pulervised in Vietnam. (…)
I am no historian and am a rooted-in-the-present sort of person. In Europe – particularly in Switzerland, which has always been very pro-US, a legacy of Cold War anti-communism, vanished today – the perception that the Vietnam War was hopefully the ‘last’ misguided US colonial-type adventure was very common. US interventions in Grenada, Panama, (etc. the list is too long..), as well as the recent Gulf War I, and the disgusting Yugoslav mess were often either unknown, ignored, or accepted, even supported (Gulf War I, ex-Yugoslavia.) So that perception held, until Iraq, as it was taken for granted that the US would kick ass somewhere, that they did so in Afghanistan seemed natural.
Historically you are probably right – however the perception of the world, blinkered by its own head-in-the-sand mechanisms, says that Iraq is a step down from Vietnam. The straw that breaks the camel’s back. Or something. Bush makes a ready scapegoat.

Posted by: Blackie | Sep 21 2004 18:24 utc | 67