Late in February, U.S. Army generals in Iraq started asking military historians and archivists to dig up official records from the 1970s involving the withdrawal of troops from Vietnam. The generals were especially interested in the nitty-gritty of pulling out procedures for disposing and transferring military property, for example, and the precise sequence of demobilization. The message was explicit: we’re going to be staging another withdrawal soon, from Iraq; once it begins, it could spin easily out of control; so we need a plan for an orderly exit now.

Given the article's title, "Hunkering Down: A guide to the U.S. military's future in Iraq", I confess I'm already confused. What's the story Kap, military hunkering or withdrawing?

Oh, I think we're well beyond the Cold War now. These are the Bad New Days, Kap, and Iraq is not exactly West Germany. What's more, this is hardly news. But I'm not criticising Kaplan. I think he's dead-on. He's just a few years, one premeditated invasion, and several thousand deaths too late. But it's about time for the right wingers, the democratizers, the WMD-ers, to own up that they were sold a pack of lies and--credulous or not--shipped it right on out the door to the public.

There’s nothing provisional about these places. They’re often referred to as "enduring bases," and there are plans to keep them operating, in American hands, even if all our combat regiments go home. The Pentagon is requesting $348 million in emergency funds this year for further base construction, beyond the billions already spent.

And so we are operating in an odd state of limbo. It’s clear that we’re getting out of Iraq, and soon, yet it’s equally clear that we’re staying, in a fairly big way. We are simultaneously engaged yet disengaging, hunkered down yet packing up.

Because... because the invasion and occupation of Iraq has been on the books for over a decade, right?

Here’s the little secret that explains the contradiction, understood by all involved: whatever factions end up running the Iraqi government, they’ll need--and want--the U.S. military to stick around for many years. This is true no matter what the political mood is stateside.

Waitaminnit... that's it?! That's the secret?! The poor bastards surfing the Hell Tectonics of Iraq want the USA to stick around a while? I bet they do. But I'm not so sure about that "whatever factions" bit, either. Frankly, day-to-day events in Iraq indicate that several factions don't want the USA to stick around. Or anyone else for that matter.

I think it's safe to say that the faction that most wants to see the USA maintain a military presence in Iraq is... the USA. Well, certain factions within the USA anyway. This is true no matter what the political mood is stateside, to borrow a phrase from Kaplan. I'm sure readers of The Atlantic are by now well familiar with Forward Operating Bases and can suss out for themselves that these installations were on the drawing board for some time. Kaplan seems to understand this as well:

But if things fall apart, the political trick will be to make a case that the mission still makes sense. It would be hard to justify a massive force that just sits there, But an argument could be made for a stripped-down core of 30,000 troops... The United States would be foolish to get militarily involved in an ethno-regional conflict, but it could help deter or mediate one--and having some troops on the ground, and planes in the air, creates diplomatic leverage. But if this becomes a new rationale for military presence, it can work only as one piece of a larger diplomatic initiative. And it would be best to make contact and establish routines with all the bordering nations now, while we are still merely concerned about the dangers and not yet ravaged in the storm.

Indeed. Would that others had been so farsighted. Something Robert Fisk said a while ago comes to mind:

We didn't invade for weapons of mass desturction, because there weren't any. We didn't want to help the Shiites, because we had asked them to rise up in 1991 and sat back while they were all massacred. Clearly, we wouldn't have invaded Iraq if its chief export was cauliflower or carrots. So the oil dimension has to be there. But I think there is something else, too. I was down that horrible Highway 18 in Iraq... I was standing by the roadside and the road started to move. I thought, "My God, it's an earthquake." ... Coming up the highway was an American infantry division. Thousands and thousands and thousands of soldiers, Abrams tanks, Bradley armored vehicles, transporters, truck after truck with the infantry, all wearing shades, rifles pointing out the side like porcupines. It took almost an hour to pass and all the time the ground shook. I remember thinking that 2,000 years ago, a little bit to the west fo where I was standing, we would have been feeling the vibration of centurions' feet... I began to wonder, then, when I saw this massive armored centipede, whether it didn't also represent the visceral need to project power... We can go to Baghdad, so we will go to Baghdad. We can go to Tehran. We can go to Damascus. We will, because we can.

That is part of the way in which a neoconservative thinks. It's easy to sneer at the Cheneys and the Wolfowitzes and the Feiths and the Perles, but we should spend a lot more time examining what their motives are and what makes them tick, because this projection of power is much more important than we realize. Possibly, it's almost as important as oil.

I think it's safe to say that the faction that most wants to see the USA maintain a military presence in Iraq is... the USA. Well, certain factions within the USA anyway. This is true no matter what the political mood is stateside, to borrow a phrase from Kaplan.

Demon Talk - Skewgee Edit

We invite others to have a go: Demon Talk

Now that we've remembered how to type and how to run microphones and mixing boards, the Ritual Reality blog and Radio Sub Rosa pirate mindcasting are in full effect.

Update: Apparently, Skewgee is not a Canadian at all. (See Comments below.) I must have confused him with our other fan. However, this being the WorldWideWeb, I suspect that had I described him (or her) as a hyper-intelligent Shetland pony typing with prehensile ears, the response would have been, "Though it's true I'm a pony, I am not from Shet... Land."

- Justice Louis D. Brandeis

Everyone should pay heed to the words of Justice Brandeis. No one will, of course. At least not the people who matter; the people who issue orders from the Pentagon or those who declare murderous fatwas from the far-flung redoubts of the Baluchistan and the Hindu Kush. I'm sure almost everybody else understands these words. But we don't make the headlines. We're inconsequential. We die, but our opinions don't matter.

There's a troublesome phrase in the final clause of Brandeis's statement. "...well meaning but..."

Well meaning? Today a small cell of absolute maniacs attempted to detonate a series of bombs in London. The timing, placement and intent of those bombings was virtually identical to the bombings in London just two weeks ago. Both incidents mirror the bombings last year in Madrid and, if recent reports are accurate, forecast similar attacks in Italy. How can the phrase "well meaning" apply to anyone who would commit these acts?

"Let the mighty eagle soar...

Soar with healing in her wings
As the ground beneath her sings
Only God, no other kings
Let the might eagle soar"

That's an original tune by Attorney General John Ashcroft. You should hear him sing it. One can almost hear the ground beneath--or more to the point, the people who live on the ground beneath--wondering aloud, "Oh, so it's healing in those wings."

The point is this: a fraction of a fraction of a fraction carried to nine decimal points of the population is responsible, directly responsible, for this mayhem. The rest of us are just caught in the crossfire. The rest of us don't generate the headlines in the morning papers or the lead story out of the mouths of talking heads. We just consume the information. And we fear.

The only power anyone holds over us is the power we give away.

This approach was so successful that weeks and months flew by with nary a hint of progress. We learned to avoid each other at social events -- I personally haven't seen our ace audio engineer The Safety Wolverine in weeks -- and, when circumstances conspired to bring us face to face, we distracted one another with small talk and protracted bar tab negotiations. Left to our own devices, we could keep this up forever.

Then...

The other night Slack and I met at Junior's Tavern -- a local watering hole with a gravitational field so powerful that doctoral candidates and aspiring musicians alike are simply absorbed into terry cloth rags and wrung out in the morning -- in order to hold some High Level Talks. (Numerous calls to The Safety Wolverine went unanswered and unreturned, likely due to the miracle of Caller ID.)

"Why not," Slack proposed, his pupils rapidly assuming the size and shape of wraparound sunglasses, "kick this out to the world-at-large? Slap it up there, as is, and let the goddamn world mix it."

"That's demon talk, Slack," I replied. "Demon talk."

Join us, citizens. Listen, contribute, and collaborate.

On the subject of when, why and how the United States decided to attack Iraq, American citizens' recent seeming lack of interest has been a puzzle to many in the rest of the world. As the Bush administration's stated reasons for war shifted, ebbed and flowed, many simply went with the flow, finding each succeeding reason -- well, reason enough.

American citizens' recent seeming lack of interest? I seem to recall being very interested in why the mainstream media seemed uninterested in challenging BushCo's stated reasons for war before the goddamn war. Yes, plenty of journalists and even some editors spoke out. But, by and large, while the evidence of a premeditated determination to invade Iraq had been around for some time, not many media outlets chose to dig too deeply or make much noise. In essence, American citizens were conditioned not to think about it while being simultaneously bombarded with savage and thoughtless warmongering from the likes of Judith Miller and Willaim Safire, to name but a pair. Whenever serious questions arise, the media rushes to allow equal time, what The Daily Show's Jon Stewart aptly described as "Well, that's the Left and the Right and we've had that discussion," noting that this isn't journalism, it's reporting.

When the so-called Downing Street memo came up in a question directed to British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush at their joint news conference in Washington, the two leaders answered in such a way as to spur headlines like the one on Page 1 of Wednesday's Star Tribune: "A joint denial of Iraq memo." People who've paid casual attention to news of the secret document might variously assume now that Bush and Blair had dismissed the memo as a forgery or denied that its contents were true -- or both. A careful reading of the two men's words, however, shows that they denied much less than one might think; it also brings up pertinent questions that the president should be pressed to answer.

The memo is actually the minutes of a meeting of Blair and his highest officials on July 23, 2002, eight months before the invasion of Iraq. Leaked to the Sunday Times of London, it was printed on May 1. The memo contained this description of what was said by Sir Richard Dearlove, or "C," the head of Britain's foreign intelligence service: "C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam [Hussein], through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." [Ibid]

The Washington Post seems downright baffled that this revelatory document is still generating interest while missing the irony that the American press is at pains to avoid the subject altogether:

More than a month after its publication, the so-called Downing Street Memo remains among the top 10 most viewed articles on The Times of London site.

It's not hard to see why this remarkable document, published in The Times on May 1 (and reported in this column on May 3), continues to attract reader interest around the world, especially with British Prime Minister Tony Blair visiting Washington Tuesday....

The story attracted some news coverage in the United States, but not much. Last month, the Chicago Tribune concluded that "the Downing Street memo story has proven to be something of a dud in the United States.

The Washington Post

Something of a dud? Or just too hot to handle? When the subject comes up, Administration and Republican party officials are allowed to skate like so many Brian Boitanos. The Washington Post again:

On Sunday, "Meet the Press" host Tim Russert asked Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman about the memo. Mehlman said "that report has been discredited by everyone else who's looked at it since then."

When Russert noted that the authenticity of the report has not been discredited, Mehlman said "I believe that the findings of the report, the fact that the intelligence was somehow fixed have been totally discredited by everyone who's looked at it."

Mehlman referred specifically to the Senate Intelligence Committee's July 2004 report on pre-war assessments of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction which concluded that the Bush administration's findings were "overstated" and "not supported by the underlying intelligence reporting." The report attributed the mistakes to "group think" in the intelligence community, not to pressure from the administration officials.

Really?

A Senior Pentagon policy maker created an unofficial "Iraqi intelligence cell" in the summer of 2002 to circumvent the CIA and secretly brief the White House on links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'eda, according to the Senate intelligence committee.

The allegations about Douglas Feith, the number three at the Department of Defence, are made in a supplementary annexe of the committee's review of the intelligence leading to war in Iraq, released on Friday.

According to dramatic testimony contained in the annexe, Mr Feith's cell undermined the credibility of CIA judgments on Iraq's alleged al-Qa'eda links within the highest levels of the Bush administration.

The cell appears to have been set up by Mr Feith as an adjunct to the Office of Special Plans, a Pentagon intelligence-gathering operation established in the wake of 9/11 with the authority of Paul Wolfowitz. Its focus quickly became the al-Qa'eda-Saddam link.

On occasion, without informing the then head of the CIA, George Tenet, the group gave counter-briefings in the White House. Sen Jay Rockefeller, the most senior Democrat on the committee, said that Mr Feith's cell may even have undertaken "unlawful" intelligence-gathering initiatives.

The Telegraph

Now, would any of this be of interest to the "average American citizen"? Without coverage, it's a bit hard to say. In a marvelous cart before the horse moment, the Washington Post put it this way:

"We have The Sunday Times to thank for this very important activity. It reminds me of Watergate, which started off as a tiny little incident reported in The Washington Post. I think that the interest of many citizens is picking up," Conyers said.

So is journalistic interest.

Get it? Americans take interest in a story the press has ignored and the press can't really ignore it anymore. In fact, reporters are reporting how remarkable it is that other reporters are reporting about this story. It's as if we're being told: 'Look, media consumers, how can we tell you what to think if you start thinking for yourselves?'

I sense a trend.

Next thing you know, Americans might get interested in another aspect of this story that our media are ignoring. The war before the war:

Britain and the US carried out a secret bombing campaign against Iraq months before the tanks went over the border in March 2003. Michael Smith pieces together the evidence

Page by relentless page, evidence has been stacking up for many months to show that - despite Tony Blair's denials - the British government signed up for war in Iraq almost a year before the invasion. What most people will not have realised until now, however, was that Britain and the US waged a secret war against Iraq for months before the tanks rolled over the border in March 2003. Documentary evidence and ministerial answers in parliament reveal the existence of a clandestine bombing campaign designed largely to provoke Iraq into taking action that could be used to justify the start of the war.

In the absence of solid legal grounds for war, in other words, the allies tried to bomb Saddam Hussein into providing their casus belli. And when that didn't work they just stepped up the bombing rate, in effect starting the conflict without telling anyone.

The main evidence lies in leaked documents relating to a crucial meeting chaired by the Prime Minister in July 2002 - the documents which supported the Sunday Times story, published during this past election campaign, about how Blair promised George W Bush in April that year that Britain would back regime change....

Donald Rumsfeld had ordered a more aggressive approach, authorising allied aircraft to attack Iraqi command and control centres as well as actual air defences. The US defence secretary later said this was simply to prevent the Iraqis attacking allied aircraft, but Hoon's remark gives the game away. In reality, as he explained, the "spikes of activity" were designed "to put pressure on the regime".

What happened next was dramatic. In September, the amount of ordnance used in the southern no-fly zone increased sharply to 54.6 tonnes. It declined in October to 17.7 tonnes before rising again to 33.6 tonnes in November and 53.2 tonnes in December. The spikes were getting taller and taller.

In fact, as it became clear that Saddam Hussein would not provide them with the justification they needed to launch the air war, we can see that the allies simply launched it anyway, beneath the cloak of the no-fly zone.

New Statesman

When the provocation did not incite the desired response, i.e., Iraq did not retaliate, the administration was forced to rely solely on the intelligence they'd been distorting all along. The propaganda machine was slammed into overdrive. Why? The War On Terror? The threat of WMD? How about the culture of conspicuous consumption that rules the military industrial complex and the petroleum industry?

MOYERS: Let me come back to your first concern. I mean, why aren't these military budgets not watched as carefully by the Defense Department as a corporation? Why isn't the Department of Defense being held accountable?

SPINNEY: Well, you raise a very good point. The President is holding education people accountable for standards. He says, "I want to have measures, performance measures for accountability." He also has tried to do the same for foreign aid if you recall.

Over in the Pentagon, we're not holding people accountable.

I think basically here is you have in Congress the oversight committees for defense, which are essentially the armed services committee. And the defense appropriations subcommittees in both houses are so tied in to the Pentagon and the defense contractor base that essentially oversight has been displaced by what some of us call overlook. They're basically watching the money flow out the door and encouraging it to go.

And basically it's in members of the Senate Armed Services Committee's best interest to keep the money flowing. It's in the Pentagon's best interest to keep the money flowing.

MOYERS: Because?

SPINNEY: It's in the defense contractors' best interest to keep the money flowing. Because it's the military industrial Congressional complex and this is their way of life. They live on the money flow.

MOYERS: The military industrial Congressional complex?

SPINNEY: Right. Which I believe was a term that Eisenhower considered using in his speech, but he dropped the reference to Congress.

MOYERS: He talked about the military industrial complex. But you say Congress is the driving force here?

SPINNEY: I don't think there's any simple villain that you can point to and say, "If we fix this, everything's gonna change. In my opinion it's the product of a long-term evolution that occurred in the 40 years of Cold War. If you think about it those 40 years were a very unique period in our nation's history. Now what happened was during that period the different players in the military industrial Congressional complex basically fine-tuned their bureaucratic behavior to exist in that environment. It was almost like this self-contained environment in which a peculiar evolution took place....

And one of the most pernicious effects of this trend was the gradual build up of what an anthropologist might call habitual modes of conduct. Sort of almost like an innate response of threat inflation. We literally exaggerated a threat to jack up the budgets.

Please read the complete transcript of Bill Moyers's interview with Pentagon insider Chuck Spinney. Then take a nice long walk and think it over.

Leave it to BushCo, then, to turn back the clock into the middle of the Twentieth Century.

Ever since the terror attack of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has gradually done away with all the nuclear brakes that characterized American policy during the Cold War. No longer are nuclear bombs considered "the weapon of last resort." No longer is the nuclear bomb the ultimate means of deterrence against nuclear powers, which the United States would never be the first to employ....

Remember the code name "CONPLAN 8022." Last week, the Washington Post reported that this unintelligible nickname masks a military program whose implementation could drag the world into nuclear war.

CONPLAN 8022 is a series of operational plans prepared by Startcom, the U.S. Army's Strategic Command, which calls for preemptive nuclear strikes against Iran and North Korea. One of the plan's major components is the use of nuclear weapons to destroy the underground facilities where North Korea and Iran are developing their nuclear weapons. The standard ordnance deployed by the Americans is not capable of destroying these facilities.

The quote is from the Isreali paper Haaretz. The source link seems to be out of order, but the above selection should suffice.

Nuclear deterrence is arguably effective against nation states. But how on earth does this policy deter terrorists? For that matter, how on earth would another wave of proliferation deter states from aiding and abetting free radicals in their pursuit of nuclear weapons?

The spectacular failure of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference was predictable at the outset and is overwhelmingly attributable to the nuclear policies of the Bush administration and its unwillingness to accept US obligations for nuclear disarmament under the treaty. The Bush administration simply does not seem to understand that it cannot go back on previous US commitments under the treaty and continue to promote nuclear weapons in its own arsenal, while exhorting other nations to forego their nuclear options.

The treaty is crumbling under the double standards of American policy. It may not be able to recover from the rigid and do-as-I-say, not-as-I-do positions of the Bush administration, which are viewed by most of the world as high-level nuclear hypocrisy.

Common Dreams

Ah, but hypocrisy is in the eye of The Beholder:

Seize your armor, gird it on
Now the battle will be won
Soon, your enemies all slain
Crowns of glory you shall gain

From "Soldiers of the Cross, Arise"

"The top-level government memo marked "SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL," dated eight months before Bush sent us into Iraq, following a closed meeting with the President, reads, "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy." (Greg Palast, writing for Buzzflash)

Back to Feith's comments in the New Yorker:

"The main rationale was not based on intelligence. It was known to anyone who read newspapers and knew history. Saddam had used nerve gas, he had invaded his neighbors more than once, he had attacked other neighbors, he was hostile to us, he supported numerous terrorist groups. It's true that he didn't have a link that we know of to 9/11.... But he did give safe haven to terrorists....

I don't think the rationale hinged on the existence of stockpiles.... There's a certain revisionism in people looking back and identifying the main intelligence error and then saying our entire policy was built on error."

Feith's logic is completely circular. It doesn't matter so much that the intelligence was in error. It's that it was presented as fact--yellow cake, aluminum tubes, mobile bioweapons labs--and sutured with egregious fearmongering--condi rice's famous "smoking gun/mushroom cloud", powell's speech to the UN Security Council, Judith Miller's precious, unsubstantiated reporting for the NY Times.

Palast: "The memo, uncovered this week by the Times, goes on to describe an elaborate plan by George Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair to hoodwink the planet into supporting an attack on Iraq knowing full well the evidence for war was a phony....

Here's more. 'Bush had made up his mind to take military action. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.'

Really? But Mr. Bush told us, 'Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.'"

It seems Mr. Feith is the one doing the revising. Goldberg writes: "The case against Iraq, [Feith] argues today, was only partly about WMD."

Chillingly, it would appear that the invasion of Iraq hinged not on oil alone, or spreading democracy, or removing a brutal dictator. Not WMD, but W's MD. Making war for the sake of war. And it seems it's the Bush administration who sleep peacefully at night, with flowers in their minds.

With no end in sight, the draining Iraq War has already trumped much of the rest of the Bush administration's aggressive foreign policy (especially in Asia) and has left the administration thoroughly distracted when it comes to whole regions of the world. As Chris Nelson of the Washington-insider Nelson Report put matters this week:

"All this by way of saying that we can now see even more clearly than before the import of Secretary of State Condi Rice's extraordinary interview last week in the Wall Street Journal. The former Soviet expert repeatedly made clear that the entire focus of Bush Administration policy is and will continue to be on the Middle East. All responsibility for coming up with a solution to the North Korea problem Rice cheerfully consigned to China."

The war in Iraq has also left the Middle East increasingly destabilized; oil prices on the rise; the dollar undermined; and the U.S. military desperately overstretched, if not incapable of dealing with other major global challenges. No wonder the President clutched the hand of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah the other day down in Crawford. He needs whatever help he can get.

Tom Dispatch

- President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Bulgaria's Defense Ministry said the helicopter was downed by missile fire and the victims included a three-member Bulgarian crew.

A Toronto-based charter company said there were two bodyguards from Fiji on board, while Bulgaria's Transport Ministry said they were from the Philippines.

The Philippine mission in Baghdad said it had no information that any of its nationals were on the helicopter.

The six Americans worked for security contractor Blackwater USA, the U.S. Embassy said. The North Carolina-based contracting firm provides security for State Department officials in Iraq.

Two U.S. military officials in Baghdad initially said the helicopter was contracted by the Defense Department, but the U.S. Embassy later said that was untrue. It gave no information on the contractor.

It was unclear whether the civilian employees of Blackwater were under contract to the Pentagon or the State Department, U.S. officials in Washington said....

The deaths touched off a Marine assault on insurgents in the city.

Source

According to Global Security.org there are at least 30 military facilities currently operating in occupied Iraq under the auspices of allied forces. Their layout suggests a "strategic crescent", from the northeast around Mosul down to the southeast, Basrah and the Persian Gulf. Months ago Global Security reported on the establishment of at least a dozen facilities that had all the hallmarks of permanent installations. Combine those with the sprawling twenty-first century air base in Qatar and you see the true scope of the empire's ambitions in the region. But Iraq is far from stable and the exact aims of the administration seem murkier now than ever.

The occupants of the helicopter were private military contractors--who are paid many times more than most members of the actual military--and their bodyguards. This helicopter was privately chartered, presumably at significant expense. The expense is even more significant when one considers Federal Reserve Chairman Allen Greenspan's testimony today before the House Budget Committee that federal budget deficits were really, really out of control.

You cannot continuously introduce legislation which tends to expand budget deficits because down the road the impact of an ever-rising deficit, especially as a percent of the GDP, creates some significant weakness in the structure of the economy... Addressing the government’s own imbalances will require scrutiny of both spending and taxes. However, tax increases of sufficient dimension to deal with our looming fiscal problems arguably pose significant risks to economic growth and the revenue base.

Source

Greenspan's subsequent remarks appeared to suggest that cutting Social Security benefits was the answer, though he later denied that was his intention. The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) were all over that one: "Social Security should not be a resource for negotiators over the federal budget deficit," AARP CEO William Novelli said in a statement.

Novelli is absolutely correct. The argument over crazy deficit spending begins and ends with military operations, their scope, their aims and their outcomes. But you won't hear Greenspan touching that one any time soon. Oil is too important, or rather, control of oil is too important. As it is, Americans have no idea what's going on but they do know the price of gasoline is really, really out of control.

For anyone concerned about rising gasoline prices or, maybe, just maybe the connection between those prices and deficit spending, I suggest taking a look at the BBC documentary Why We Fight.

Why We Fight

Then maybe take a look at this:

Over A Barrel

The doubling of child malnutrition in Iraq is baffling

By Terry Jones

A report to the UN human rights commission in Geneva has concluded that Iraqi children were actually better off under Saddam Hussein than they are now.

This, of course, comes as a bitter blow for all those of us who, like George Bush and Tony Blair, honestly believe that children thrive best when we drop bombs on them from a great height, destroy their cities and blow up hospitals, schools and power stations.

It now appears that, far from improving the quality of life for Iraqi youngsters, the US-led military assault on Iraq has inexplicably doubled the number of children under five suffering from malnutrition. Under Saddam, about 4% of children under five were going hungry, whereas by the end of last year almost 8% were suffering.

These results are even more disheartening for those of us in the Department of Making Things Better for Children in the Middle East By Military Force, since the previous attempts by Britain and America to improve the lot of Iraqi children also proved disappointing. For example, the policy of applying the most draconian sanctions in living memory totally failed to improve conditions. After they were imposed in 1990, the number of children under five who died increased by a factor of six. By 1995 something like half a million Iraqi children were dead as a result of our efforts to help them.

The Guardian

Mr. Jones is no stranger to The Absurd. If you were born somewhere in mid-60s America and raised by Monty Python's Flying Circus re-runs on PBS, you might even swear that he had a hand in inventing The Absurd in much the same way that, say, Hugo Ball and his cohorts invented Dada. But delivering capital-A Absurd is no easy thing, namely because there is so much damn material. Amateurs believe they can simply point in the general direction and expect The Credulous to figure it out for themselves. The true master holds up a mirror for us to see the sheer absurdity in the world rampant behind our backs. And then there's someone like Mr. Jones, passing out tickets to a hall of mirrors where you get to see not only what's going on back there, but also what's being done In Your Name.

"Remedies to Judicial Tyranny"

Shudder.

Sounds ominous, doesn't it? If genuine Judicial Tyranny were afoot, I'd be terrified and positively clamoring for a remedy. But it's only the poster for the latest production by The Sound of One Right Wing Flapping comedy revue:

Conservative leaders meeting in Washington yesterday for a discussion of "Remedies to Judicial Tyranny" decided that [Justice Anthony M.] Kennedy, a Ronald Reagan appointee, should be impeached, or worse.

Phyllis Schlafly, doyenne of American conservatism, said Kennedy's opinion forbidding capital punishment for juveniles "is a good ground of impeachment." To cheers and applause from those gathered at a downtown Marriott for a conference on "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith," Schlafly said that Kennedy had not met the "good behavior" requirement for office and that "Congress ought to talk about impeachment."

Next, Michael P. Farris, chairman of the Home School Legal Defense Association, said Kennedy "should be the poster boy for impeachment" for citing international norms in his opinions. "If our congressmen and senators do not have the courage to impeach and remove from office Justice Kennedy, they ought to be impeached as well."

Not to be outdone, lawyer-author Edwin Vieira told the gathering that Kennedy should be impeached because his philosophy, evidenced in his opinion striking down an anti-sodomy statute, "upholds Marxist, Leninist, satanic principles drawn from foreign law."

Washington Post

Three giants of American Comedy; Schlafly, Farris and Vieira. First there's Schlafly's brilliant turn as the finger-wagging school marm, chiding Justice Kennedy for being naughty, i.e., performing his job as if he has a mind and opinions of his own. Then there's Farris and his brilliant dystopian satire about the perils of accepting the relevance of interational norms. Finally, Vieira brings down the house by simultaneously invoking the revenants of the Cold War and equating them with even older superstitious twaddle about Satan. Who even thinks about Satan anymore? Brilliance!

Shouts of "Encore!" ring through the hall.

Schlafly called for passage of a quartet of bills in Congress that would remove courts' power to review religious displays, the Pledge of Allegiance, same-sex marriage and the Boy Scouts. Her speech brought a subtle change in the argument against the courts from emphasizing "activist" judges -- it was, after all, inaction by federal judges that doomed Schiavo -- to "supremacist" judges. "The Constitution is not what the Supreme Court says it is," Schlafly asserted.

Waka Waka Waka!

Dr. M. Bacchus Stern, longtime Ritual Reality supporter and expert on all things even remotely funny, was moved to tears by the performance. Writing for a small but select group of Terribly Clever People, Dr. Stern astutely dissected the social subtext of Schlafly's comedic coup de grace.

Dr. Stern: Since it obviously wasn't invited to this pow-wow, I asked the Constitution for a response. Article 3: "The judicial Power of the United States shall be vested in one supreme Court" and "The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority."

You have to admire Ms. Schlafly's audacity. She simultaneously preys on her constituents' fears that the Constitution is being inexorably undermined by a radical, godless judiciary while clearly demonstrating that no one, not even Ms. Schlafly herself, has read the damn thing recently.

That, my friends, is the very definition of A Tough Act To Follow. Yet the show's emcee, former representative William Dannemeyer (R-Calif.), proved he was up to the task. After intoning the Sacred Unction to Our Lobbyists and Special Interests, Dannemeyer had one final zinger:

"[America's] principal problem [is not Iraq or the federal budget but whether] we as a people acknowledge that God exists," he thundered. The hall eruptued in rapturous applause, leaving Dannemeyer to bask in the irony that many of his fellow Americans would never again doubt God's existence if, at that very moment, an absurdly outsized God-like fist crashed through the ceiling and punched him right in the fucking balls.

Rumors of a national tour are swirling like mad. Sources close to this writer indicated that negotiations were already under way for confessed Pro-Life serial bomber and murderer Eric Rudolph to join up as the opening act.

Mr. Jones explains:

In the UK there may now be 3.6 million children living below the poverty line, and 12.9 million in the US, with no prospect of either government finding any cash to change that. But surely this is a price worth paying, if it means that George Bush and Tony Blair can make any amount of money available for bombs, shells and bullets to improve the lives of Iraqi kids. You know it makes sense.

Oh, damn, I'm sorry. That didn't explain a fucking thing. Please stand by while we sort out the problem.

Given this nation's vast technological, monetary and intellectual resources, these operations should should be the very core of American foreign policy. This is the topic of a couple of earlier posts here at Ritual Reality. The point here is not to criticise the effort. But the following Pacific News Service article from January 19, 2005, points to some ulterior motives for BushCo:

Wolfowitz served as assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs from 1982 to 1986, and as ambassador to Indonesia during the Reagan administration's final three years. He was the primary architect of U.S. policy toward the resource-rich country in the 1980s. During his tenure, U.S. support for the TNI peaked despite, among many crimes, the military's illegal occupation of East Timor, which resulted in the deaths of over 200,000 people.

Since then -- through involvement in the corporate-funded U.S.-Indonesia Society and various positions in academia and the executive branch -- Wolfowitz has continued to exert influence on Washington's relations with Jakarta. Throughout, he has championed policies that undermine democracy and human rights in the sprawling archipelago, a country with the world's largest Muslim population....

...Even in early 1999, when it looked as if Indonesia might consider leaving East Timor, Wolfowitz argued against U.S. policies promoting such a scenario. Employing language long utilized by Jakarta, he predicted that if Indonesia were to withdraw, East Timor, due to tribal and clan-based tensions, would descend into civil war. Only the TNI had prevented such an outcome, according to Wolfowitz....

...Following the TNI's massacre of hundreds of peaceful pro-independence demonstrators in East Timor's capital in November 1991, for example, U.S. support for the TNI came under strong attack in Congress, eventually leading to some limits on military ties....

In Jakarta on Jan. 16, Wolfowitz claimed that weak ties with the TNI exacerbate Indonesia's problems, and that the way to promote the TNI's efforts to make itself more professional and accountable is to increase U.S. military sales and training.

But there is no evidence that the TNI has changed or is willing to do so. Human rights groups report continuing widespread military atrocities -- especially in Aceh and West Papua. Meanwhile, Jakarta has not held any political or military personnel responsible for the myriad crimes committed in East Timor or elsewhere.

As before, Paul Wolfowitz's recipe for U.S.-Indonesia relations will not bring about democratic reform, but will only make Washington complicit in the TNI's war crimes and crimes against humanity.

WestPaupua.com

Business as usual.

"Death to America" to perhaps "Death---But Deliver the Goods First."

Yes, The Good Book advises to "turn the other cheek" and "do good to them that hate you." But enough is enough. Have we not heard? Muslims hate America and Americans. Their goal is to kill Americans, Christians, and Jews. We don't have to guess about that. They've so stated.

The American people experienced several devastating hurricanes last year. Billions were lost as were many lives. Could anybody tell us how much aid was sent to stricken Floridians from Indonesia and other Muslim countries? none!

But, more importantly, did it ever occur that we don't have $350 million to give? At last report the US is running a multibillion deficit and trillions in debt.

I'm angered that Americans are giving aid and comfort to the enemy as are many other Americans, I'm quite sure. [emoticon: red-faced self rightoues indignation]

wrz - location USA

Provo Daily Herald, reader comments, January 5, 2005

The above comment appeared in response to an article in the Provo Daily Herald (Utah). Provo sits in the heart of what must be one of the reddest counties in one of the reddest states in the West, if not the country. The sentiments are disturbing, even dismaying, but not entirely surprising. More of the same followed. There is no dance more treasured by those born to easy priviledge then the Lockstep Continuum. Just keep moving, do what everyone else is doing, and don't ever look as contented as you really feel.

"I would not give the Muslims one dime!!

Yours Truly, Every american who died in 9-11 and the Iraq war." -- bird

"Don't worry, wrz, if the Al Qaeda is there, as it seems that they are, they'll take the aid and spit on it first, and then they'll use the cans to make improvised explosive devices to kill our American soldiers in Iraq.

Hey, haven't you heard that President Bush caused these tsunamis? He shifted the tectonic plates with his own hands. Gosh, what power is ascribed to George Walker Bush.

And we wonder why our world is headed toward destruction. Hey, I'm surprised we've made it this far." -- SilentReader

Tempted to agree, over here. With attitudes like this, well, we are all our own worst enemies.

One intrepid soul pointed out that the LDS Church is providing, literally, boatloads of aid in conjunction with Islamic Relief Worldwide. The accompanying comment: "Man, stuff like this must really make your head explode..."

A sample response: "I assume that you refer to the church giving aid. That does not upset me in the least. That is the way it should be.

That being said, where in the U.S. constitution does it say that our government has any right to give away tax payer money, especially to outside interests - of any kind? Just curious...."

Notice the caveat "the church". No mention of Islamic Relief Worldwide. The LDS Church is, of course, the predominant religious faith of Provo and Utah county in which it sits. There's no need, in other words, to describe what church you mean. Charitable works by other faiths don't really bear mention. But the comments about constitutional law or mandate are especially troubling. This is a, after all, the same people who will tell you that the Constitution of the United States of America was crafted by Christians and therefore imbued with divine properties right up there with the Bible, the Book of Mormon, and The Work and the Glory. (Utah inside joke. Look it up.) But we'll leave that little contradiction right where it is.

It's easy to chalk up such spiteful views to insular communities where homogeneity is valued above all. Living in a slightly more cosmpolitan community a bit north of Provo, it's easy to believe that hateful attitudes may go underground but only rarely atrophy and vanish. They seep into the ground, into the watertable, collect in thinktanks and then emerge in times of grave crisis, erupting like boils across the landscape. In the Bad New Days there are those with not only the interest but the power to sow divisiveness and reap conflict. This is bloodsport. On the one hand, it is abhorrent to witness this emerging crypto-fascism. On the other, at least we can get a good look at its purveyors. One of them is David Holcberg, of the Ayn Rand Institute:

Our money is not the government's to give.

As the death toll mounts in the areas hit by Sunday's tsunami in southern Asia, private organizations and individuals are scrambling to send out money and goods to help the victims. Such help may be entirely proper, especially considering that most of those affected by this tragedy are suffering through no fault of their own.

The United States government, however, should not give any money to help the tsunami victims. Why? Because the money is not the government's to give.

Every cent the government spends comes from taxation. Every dollar the government hands out as foreign aid has to be extorted from an American taxpayer first. Year after year, for decades, the government has forced American taxpayers to provide foreign aid to every type of natural or man-made disaster on the face of the earth: from the Marshall Plan to reconstruct a war-ravaged Europe to the $15 billion recently promised to fight AIDS in Africa to the countless amounts spent to help the victims of earthquakes, fires and floods--from South America to Asia. Even the enemies of the United States were given money extorted from American taxpayers: from the billions given away by Clinton to help the starving North Koreans to the billions given away by Bush to help the blood-thirsty Palestinians under Arafat's murderous regime.

Free Republic

So you see, everyone is an enemy or a potential enemy. No mention is made of the billions in aid and arms sales to Israel, which daily carries out some of the most draconian, murderous and racist policies on the planet. Those are tax dollars, as well. Oh, and there's that small matter of God Only Knows How Many Billions And Counting tax dollars are being spent slaughtering the people of Iraq.

However, Mr. Holcberg almost gets it.

"This is why Americans--the wealthiest people on earth--are expected to sacrifice (voluntarily or by force) the wealth they have earned to provide for the needs of those who did not earn it. It is Americans' acceptance of altruism that renders them morally impotent to protest against the confiscation and distribution of their wealth."

Close. I bet most Americans are "morally impotent to protest against the confiscation and redistribution of... wealth" when they see the horrifying reality and aftermath of a disaster of, yes, Biblical proportions. Suddenly, being asked to part with a little wealth doesn't seem so immoral. Mr. Holcberg stresses it's the Principal- er, principle of the thing.

"It is past time to question--and to reject--such a vicious morality that demands that we sacrifice our values instead of holding on to them."

Again, he's so close to sounding like a human being, it's tempting to root for him. Maybe we can help a little...

It is past time to question--and to reject--such a vicous amorality that demands we sacrifice our empathic understanding of the human condition in order to bomb everyone not like us. It is time to reject the fearmongers and racist trash that bristle at the thought of aiding and abetting an enemy they allow others to define for them. It is time to reject the idea that a $27M advance warning system was too expensive for a region where Indonesia alone spends upwards of $1 billion on defense, mostly from America and its allies. It is time to reject the idea that the world's wealthiest nation can spend $40M on the inauguration of its President but some of its wealthiest and most priveleged citizens agonize over whether $35M should be wasted on people dumb enough to be born poor, brown, and Muslim. Our Enemy.

[emoticon: ashen-faced shame]

The death toll in South and Southeast Asia from an earthquake off Indonesia is nearing 24,000. And Indonesia's vice-president said early Tuesday the number of dead in his country alone may eventually top 25,000.

CBS News

The Diego Garcia naval base is located at "7 degrees south latitude off the off the tip on India," according to the official military website. That particular expanse is known as the British Indian Ocean Territory. That curiously dated designation, an anachronism from the Auld Empire, is entirely apt. Not much has changed. The United States Navy operates Diego Garcia by virtue of a lease from the British. The base represents just one example of the "special relationship" between the two imperial powers and it also symbolizes the persistent attitude of colonial militarism.

Diego Garcia stages support missions for the occupation of Iraq and God Knows What Else. In February 2003 the AFP reported that the U.S. air force "has built climate controlled shelters in Fairford, England and the British island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean to be able put the bombers nearer to Iraq." Climate controlled shelters, mind you. Not the sort of thing you want getting washed into the coral beds by tsunamis.

Dispatches from the areas devestated by this tragedy all stress that no warning system exists that could have prevented the massive loss of life. Even nations who have deployed sensor bouys and other monitoring equipment along their Pacific Rim waters hadn't yet thought to employ the same measures for the Indian Ocean. Nothing was done to mitigate the potential disaster. And the United States, with all its vast resources and technical acumen, is clearly not in the business of protecting anything but its strategic interests. With billions of dollars of equipment at its disposal, the military's response to potential aid is tepid at best:

A Navy official says three P-3 Orion aircraft have been deployed to Thailand. The aircraft are geared for survey work. A spokesman says they don't engage directly in search and rescue operations, but they are an invaluable resource for such missions. Their crews can spot people stranded in the tidal wave area and can even drop life rafts to them.

Navy officials say cargo flights may be initiated later -- to bring in food, water and other supplies. Officials say the State Department is now mulling the possibility of using military transport planes to bring American tourists back home, but no decision has been made yet.

Associated Press

The military is not in the business of mitigating or responding to natural disasters. While the military certainly can and does provide support for relief and recovery efforts, their primary role is killing people. Or liberating people, if you prefer. But the following official Mission Statement for Diego Garcia presents a clear dilemma for anyone who wonders whether we couldn't spare a couple billion dollars, here and there:

One Island

Strategically located in the middle of the Indian Ocean

Operationally invaluable

Environmentally pristine

One Team

US Navy, Air Force, Army, Merchant Seaman, Civilian, Contract employees, and UK military, working in unison to …

Enhance quality of life

Preserve the environment

Ensure mission success

One Mission

Support…

For the strategically essential missions of our deployed units For the readiness of our organic strategic deterrence capabilities. For the needs of our Sailors, soldiers, airmen, Marines, merchant seaman, and civilian contract employees.

US Navy

One island. One team. One mission. Pity, no one has yet formulated the strategic vision that counts every person as an inhabitant of Spaceship Earth. Intelligence agencies receive images of 1-meter resolution from reconnaissance satellites but...

Officials in Thailand and Indonesia conceded that immediate public warnings of gigantic waves could have saved lives. The only known warning issued by Thai authorities reached resort operators when it was too late. The waves hit Sri Lanka and India more than two hours after the quake.

But governments insisted they couldn't have known the true danger because there is no international system in place to track tsunamis in the Indian Ocean, and they could not afford the sophisticated equipment to build one.

Associated Press

Apparently, the trucks, tanks, and planes these same governments have purchased from the USA over the years didn't come equipped with AM radios.

Hundreds of U.S. soldiers had just sat down for lunch in their giant mess hall tent.

It was about noon Tuesday when insurgents hit their tent with a suspected rocket attack.

Soldiers were knocked off their feet and out of their seats. A fireball enveloped the top of the tent, and shrapnel sprayed into the men. Twenty-four people were killed.

Amid the screaming and thick smoke that followed, quick-thinking soldiers turned their lunch tables upside down, placed the wounded on them and gently carried them into the parking lot.

"Medic! Medic!" soldiers shouted.

Medics rushed into the tent and hustled the rest of the wounded out on stretchers.

Scores of troops crammed into concrete bomb shelters outside. Others wobbled around the tent and collapsed.

"I can't hear! I can't hear!" one female soldier cried as a friend hugged her.

Near the front entrance to the chow hall, troops tended a soldier with a gaping head wound. Within minutes, they zipped him into a black body bag. Three more bodies were in the parking lot.

Source

Who we call statesmen are often as not thieves. Who we call statesmen are often as not vandals. Who we call statesmen are often as not mass murderers, and who better to out them for what they are than those of us who have been held closest to their criminal hearts in their time of need." -- Stan Goff

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A portrait of President Bush using monkeys to form his image that was banished from a New York art show last week amid charges of censorship was projected on a giant billboard in Manhattan on Tuesday.

"Bush Monkeys," a small acrylic on canvas by Chris Savido, created the stir last week at the Chelsea Market public space, leading the market's managers to close down the 60-piece show....

The original picture will be auctioned on eBay, with part of the proceeds donated to parents of U.S. soldiers wishing to supply their sons and daughters with body armor in Iraq.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld came under fire from soldiers in Kuwait earlier this month who complained that they had to use scrap metal to armor their vehicles.

"Many of my friends are over in Iraq," Savido said in a statement.

...This is the ugly reality that National Guard Spc. Thomas Wilson was apparently trying to convey to Donald Rumsfeld in Kuwait last week. There is no front line in Iraq. Or, to be more precise, the front line is wherever the insurgents decide it is. And very often they decide it should be trucks and unarmored Humvees at the back of supply lines—what used to be known, in other wars, as the rear area. Because the insurgents present a 360-degree threat, the most vulnerable units are often the ones the Army pays the least attention to: poorly equipped National Guardsmen or reservists in supply and transport companies. During a Q&A while the Defense secretary was stopping off in Kuwait, Wilson asked Rumsfeld: "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles?"

Rumsfeld's initial response was testy. "You go to war with the army you have," he barked. Wilson's question, it turned out, had been planted by a reporter embedded with Wilson's 278th Regimental Combat Team, which was about to head into Iraq in a long convoy of unarmored vehicles. But Wilson's brave words brought applause and shouts of approval from the other 2,300 soldiers in the hangar at a base in Kuwait.

Newsweek

Newly Obtained FBI Records Call Defense Department’s Methods "Torture," Express Concerns Over "Cover-Up" That May Leave FBI "Holding the Bag" for Abuses

NEW YORK -- A document released for the first time today by the American Civil Liberties Union suggests that President Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq. Also released by the ACLU today are a slew of other records including a December 2003 FBI e-mail that characterizes methods used by the Defense Department as "torture" and a June 2004 "Urgent Report" to the Director of the FBI that raises concerns that abuse of detainees is being covered up.

"These documents raise grave questions about where the blame for widespread detainee abuse ultimately rests," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. "Top government officials can no longer hide from public scrutiny by pointing the finger at a few low-ranking soldiers"...

The two-page e-mail that references an Executive Order states that the President directly authorized interrogation techniques including sleep deprivation, stress positions, the use of military dogs, and "sensory deprivation through the use of hoods, etc." The ACLU is urging the White House to confirm or deny the existence of such an order and immediately to release the order if it exists. The FBI e-mail, which was sent in May 2004 from "On Scene Commander--Baghdad" to a handful of senior FBI officials, notes that the FBI has prohibited its agents from employing the techniques that the President is said to have authorized.

ACLU

"We" are at war with the army we have. However, "we" are not in a war anyone in his or her right mind would want or wish for. Only the most callous and amoral leaders drive young men and women into the teeth of an unjustified conflict where they are asked to live with split second decisions about identifying innocents from insurgents. In Iraq today, Britain's Prime Minister declared that the attack in Mosul was part of a struggle between democracy and terrorism. That's easy for him to say. What about the struggle between occupation and sovreignty?

What is so terrifying about questioning the role of the American government in their actions and position taken in the world? This is what we call the Fifth Estate -- to monitor those whom we have chosen for office and demand that they be held accountable for their actions and also to demand that the media fulfill their true role and choose journalism over reporting. This is true in the abuses at Abu Ghraib, with every death of an Iraqi civilian, and with every death of a member of the armed services. It's time to start seeing the quag for the mire and pursue every instance of hellish, reality-based criminal behavior up to the masterminds. All the way to the top.

When we find the actions of our country despicable, it is our duty to call attention to their deviation from what we hold true and dear. Politicians who hide behind the myth of patriotism, security and fear should be chased from the shadows of their own lie and made to stand accountable for their choices and actions.

Iraq is a mess. It is our duty to demand that those with power stand accountable for their choices in manufacturing a cause for war which now, in the echo of all these lives lost, is finally revealed for the lie that it always was.

Maybe the writing is on the wall for Donald Rumsfeld but marching him out the door is only one small step in examining the deep and systemic problems that plague us. We have to remember who actually owns this frightful machine, grind all the gears, and slam it into reverse.

There's a few different themes running through the Radio Sub Rosa programs. One that I'm always harping on is summed up with the following statement from the opening track of Emerald Empire:

Why are spending all this money to build things for the sole purpose of blowing things up when we could be using all this money to build things

As I grew older his other work began to perplex and then trouble me. One night at a restaurant I noticed my father lost in thought, eyes fixed in a thousand yard stare, utensils and food forgotten. I asked him if he was okay. He composed himself immediately and said, "Sorry, it's those damn missiles." I asked what he meant and he replied, "I was thinking of something I need to work out. I've been stuck on it for a week." Those "damn missiles" were, as I recall, the MX system, the "Peacekeeper." I also remember him showing me a long, threaded shaft he'd brought home. He explained the shaft, one of four, was attached to a motor that would turn it at high speed and extend a missiles thrust cone in less than a second just prior to ignition.

"What for?"

"So we can place them on tractor trailers or a train car. The cone collapses and takes up much less room. Then it's raised into firing position and the cone extends like that." He snapped his fingers.

He rarely brought his work home because so much of it was secret. I both admired his work and abhored it. The latter started getting to me in my teens and I even had nightmares of the nuclear apocalypse. In one, my father got the whole family to safety by placing a call on a phone I'd never seen in the house before. That was telling. As time went on I had a growing sense of just what kind of secrets my father worked on. I remember being conflicted when seeing or reading reports of massive demonstrations in West Germany (there were two Germanies then, of course) over the proposed deployment of a new American missile system there. That was the first I'd heard of the Green Party. It was also, I think, my political awakening.

These days, long retired near the end of his life, my father agrees with me that far too much is spent on defense. He calls the original "Star Wars" system a waste of resources and feels the new efforts are much more about dominating the weaponization of space than about defense. In other words, a good offense is the best defense. He calls Bush and his War Cabinet "zealots" and fears a century of warfare with the Islamic peoples. The Cold War he viewed as necessary because he held deep-seated animosity for totalitarian systems. He views the war in Iraq as the unnecessary and rash action of a superpower that could and should be policing the world, not destabilizing it.

I remember as discussion we had sometime after the Soviet Union imploded. I told him about an idea I had for truly transforming the American presence in the world by channeling the "peace dividend" we were promised into something evolutionary. The idea was a fleet of ships for global humanitarian relief and natural disaster response and recovery operations. I suggested developing powering them with gradually cleaner and cleaner propulsion systems and some hi-tech wind power gadgets I'd read about. To my surprise, my father not only agreed with me but added, "And my company could be used to develop those." I found hope in that--an old cold warrior and patriot seeing the chance to transform his industry and maybe the world.

That was the time to make the term Realist mean something other than a person who only sees the world as a dangerous place. There is danger in the world, of course, and dangerous people. But nothing in the post-Cold War world suggested America was prepared to admit, let alone confront the potential fallout of questionable and coercive policies from decades of the standoff with Soviet militarism. Now we have more fear, more coercion, and double doses of jingoism. The Kneejerk Yankee Doodle in the White House considers himself a Realist. His cyclopian vision of the world's dangers are not only terrifying in themselves. They are an insult to people like my father who truly believed a better world was possible and hoped to contribute through astonishing advances in technology and communications, even if some of those developments were frightening beyond reason. It was believed the Cold War should be won and the peace kept.

It's time again to redefine a Realist as someone who isn't afraid to evolve.