by the way, i recommend a girl from zanzibar, the book i finished the other night and mentioned here. now i'm reading queen city jazz.
after a few books of "mainstream fiction" and non-fiction i always get to urge to return to my roots and geek out with some sci-fi

n.b.c. is reporting that the u.s. military had to divert resources from the war against al-qaeda when we invaded iraq.

that's funny, because president bush (see the 7th paragraph in the link) and vice president cheney (3rd paragraph ) both specifically said this wouldn't happen.

go read the latest installment of salam pax's article in "the guardian"

okay, really. that is my last post today

happy birthday cathy!!!

now update your fucking blog

my cousin's comic book came out today. (he co-wrote it with his fiancée)

if you don't buy it the terrorists have won

in my daily surfing, i’ve been reading about the so-called “flypaper” theory. that is, one of the latest post-hoc justification for the war in iraq. the theory is attributed to andrew sullivan. sullivan came up with this theory to defend the president when he was criticized for his “bring it on” comment. sullivan described what later was coined the flypaper theory as follows:

Being based in Iraq helps us not only because of actual
bases; but because the American presence there diverts
terrorist attention away from elsewhere. By confronting
them directly in Iraq, we get to engage them in a military
setting that plays to our strengths rather than to theirs'.
Continued conflict in Iraq, in other words, needn't always
be bad news. It may be a sign that we are drawing the
terrorists out of the woodwork and tackling them in the open.

the beauty of this theory for pro-invasion types is that the continuing attacks of u.s. troops are now neatly explained away as “all part of the plan.” the flypaper theory essentially allows us to survey the carnage and say we meant for this to happen all along.

on its face, this theory is so flimsy and seems like such an obvious a post-hoc attempt to justify the chaos we have created in that country. but now i am disturbed to see that the theory seems to be catching on. as the new york times reported earlier this week:

Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, commander of coalition ground
forces, told CNN that "we still have a long way to go" before.
eliminating resistance Iraq had become "a terrorist magnet,"
drawing some anti-American extremists from abroad to
"a target of opportunity."

then glenn reynolds took that quote as a confirmation that the flypaper theory is correct. while tom tomorrow dismisses it as nothing more than
“a bedtime story for Bush sycophants” that is not an actual policy of anyone in power in the bush administration (and i think he’s right about that), bloggers on the right for some reason are taking this as if it were a logical reason not only for the war, but also for the u.s.’ continued engagement in iraq. perhaps that only shows how desperate they are for some justification, any justification, in the face of mounting american casualties.

the objections to the flypaper theory are obvious, but, to do my very small part to explain to the other side why the theory is such crap, here are some of the major flaws that pop immediately to mind:

(1) the theory was never mentioned by the bush administration in the months and weeks leading up to the war. (i challenge anyone to find anyone in the administration floating such a theory prior to may 1, 2003) the fact that bush and co. never used this as a justification is even more remarkable when we consider just how many justifications they did use with the public.

so even if it wasn’t mentioned prior to the war, what if the flypaper theory was the real reason bush pushed for an invasion. in my mind that makes it worse. if it’s the real reason for the invasion, than bush hid the real reason for invasion from the american public. the flypaper theory does not save the bush administration with the current allegations that it misled the american public, it makes it worse.

(2) the flypaper theory is an endorsement for the ongoing deaths of american soldiers. after all, the theory means that the u.s. is intentionally putting american soldiers in harms way so that they can be attacked. the attacks are not an unfortunate side effect of the policy, but rather the whole point for our invasion in the first place.

consider this: what if bush had secretly contacted osama bin laden after the 9-11 attacks and said “look, these attacks on u.s. soil are no good. if you want u.s. blood, fine. how about if we send you one young american a month to be executed and in return you stay out of north america.” if the flypaper theory is correct, we are effectively doing that now by going into iraq. it’s the is functionally equivalent to throwing virgins into a volcano to appease the gods. and just as effective.

(3) the theory assumes that the people who are attacking u.s. troops are terrorists who would otherwise be attacking americans elsewhere. there is no basis for believing this. indeed, this assumption directly contradicts the administration’s current insistence that all of the attacks are coming from iraqis loyal to the former regime. in all of the reported arrests of alleged al-qaeda members around the world in the past two years, i have yet to hear of any who were iraqi, they seem to be from all over the rest of the arabic world. maybe there have been some iraqi al-qaeda members that i have not heard about, but it is pretty clear that most members of al-qaeda are not from iraq. on the other hand, all of the attackers whose capture or death has been reported to date have been iraqis. while there have been plenty of reports that foreign fighters are wandering in iraq, no proof that any of the attacks have come from them has surfaced. so where are all the non-iraqi terrorists? apparently this flypaper isn’t doing a good job of attracting them.

(4) the theory directly contradicts any humanitarian justification for being in iraq. if that is why were are there, we cannot be trying to improve the lives of iraqis, we need their society to remain in chaos for this to work. if a free peaceful democratic iraq emerges, our flypaper will lose its stick. the only way to keep it working is to keep iraq a mess.

(5) we already had a perfectly good piece of flypaper flapping around the region before we invaded iraq. remember afghanistan? u.s. troops are still there. if the flypaper theory really worked, iraq is completely superfluous.

(6) this is somewhat of an extension of #4 above, but this theory means the u.s. cannot leave iraq. flypaper only stops flies for as long as it is hanging on the wall. assuming the theory is correct, if we ever try to pull troops out of iraq the terrorists will no longer be attracted to the troops there and will swarm over to somewhere else. so we have to stay there. indefinitely. currently that costs $3.9 billion a month, not to mention the human costs of the soldiers who are taking those bullets for us over there. ironically, if the flypaper theory is true, it means one criticism of the war in iraq is dead-on correct. we have no exit strategy.

(7) the flypaper analogy also is based on another assumption commonly made around conservative circles theses days. the best explanation for it i have seen was in a comment by andrew brown to this essay on billmon’s blog:

The maddest, saddest thing about the neocons is that they
believe that 'terrorism' is an ontological category, not a
tactic. So they reckon there is a fixed number of terrorists,
and, once they are all dead, there won't be any more. But it
doesn't work like that. For every civilian you kill, you make
another two terrorists. And the more you kill, the more there
will be. The British know this. the French learned it in
Algeria. Even the Israelis know it now. But Bush and his
voters are going to have to learn it all over again, very slowly,
very painfully; and the whole damn world will pay the price this
time.

the flypaper theory also rests on this fallacy; it assumes that there are a fixed number of terrorists that can be attracted to iraq which means that there will be less terrorists elsewhere in the world. it ignores the effect that u.s. occupation of iraq will have in creating terrorists, not only in iraq, but all over the world. some of those people enraged by the u.s. occupation may travel to iraq to attack u.s. troops, many more will probably go for easier targets–an embassy or mcdonalds closer to their home. a third group may even decide to take it to the source–attack people in america. the u.s. occupation of iraq can act as a powerful recruitment tool for new terrorists and these new terrorists will not necessarily feel like restricting their attacks to americans in iraq. (note: a version of this argument with a better analogy was made by joshua marshall)

as i said, these are just the one’s that pop immediately to mind. (see also leah’s discussion at atrios)

i'm mulling over changing templates again. if i do it, it will be my third in this blogs brief existence. i'm moody that way. assuming i actually get around to it, should please those who have bitched about this template. the problem is, the more bells and whistles i add to this thing (comments, site counter, etc) the more i would have to mess with the code when switching over to a new template.

okay, i got a spare moment while the ice cream is congealing. (mmm) at least enough time to tell all of you to go read this essay over at the billmon's whiskey bar.

well... what are you waiting for? go!

busy again, but not with work. i am about to finish a girl from zanzibar, plus i want to make ice cream tonight so i can quickly eat it before next week (when my annual no caffeine month begins), plus i am behind in my arabic studies again. all of that means blog-neglect. sorry. (i had a good ole fashioned political rant worked out in my brain too, but i' afraid it will have to wait)

has the bush administration jumped the shark?

(via atrios)

a couple of things have been rattling around the leftish end of blogland for a few days. they're the things that i've been meaning to post about, but haven't because whenever i write a political post it ends up being a long involved thing of tracking down links to back up what i say. because i've waited for so long, most of what i wanted to say has been said elsewhere, and probably better. unfortunately, "elsewhere" does not include any major articles in domestic news sources. as i keep saying, this niger yellowcake thing is significant not because its a huge deal on its own, but is a mere example of what is wrong with the administration--i.e. that they shape the facts to get the results they want.

when the yellowcake story first broke and actually got attention, i was hopeful that this would cause the media to re-evaluate ALL of the things the bush administration said about the war, not just focus on niger thingy. the niger story, after all, was known before the war began, but the media reported that the documents that were the basis of bush's claim were forgeries in minor articles which didn't get nearly the attention of the bush administration's other dubious reasons for war that they were announcing the same time. it wasn't until no w.m.d.s turned up in iraq and joseph wilson wrote an op-ed piece about how the uranium thing was bogus that the story seemed to get legs. i am not sure why, but it didn't get any more attention to other mis-statements/lies/exaggerations in the lead-up to the war, some of which were in the very same state of the union address that is getting all the attention now. (see e.g. this article)

so in the last week there were actually two major bombshells which go to the credibility of the administration. at least they should have been. i have yet to see a front-page article (or indeed any article) from the new york times about them.

1. the bush administration leaked the fact that joseph wilson's wife is a c.i.a. agent and gave her name to the media. this not only has blown her cover in the c.i.a., possibly ends her career and puts lives in danger, leaking her identity also is against the law. more info, and lots of follow-up links on this story is here

2. this one is even more bizarre. for over a year judicial watch has been in a legal battle make the documents from cheney's energy task force be made public. during the clinton administration, judicial watch was thought to be conservative organization, they claimed to be a non-partisan watch-dog organization dedicated to openess in government (kinda like a more conservative a.c.l.u.) but everyone, including me, thought they were just after clinton for partisan political gain. it was the national sport at the time, if you recall.

anyway, we were wrong. bush came into power and judicial watch sued cheney over his energy task force's secret meetings it held back in early 2001, during the california energy crisis. judicial watch relied on a legal precedents from its own case against hillary clinton's health care task force (a case which was cheered at the time by people in the bush administration) to argue that the energy task force's deliberations had to be open to the public. the bush administration fought this case hard, arguing, in effect, that a heretofore unknown form of executive privilege allowed them to keep the documents from the meeting secret. the law was against the administration, but they fought really hard against releasing the documents. which begs the question why they were fighting so hard. i assumed (like many others) it was because the documents would show the kenneth lay (c.e.o. of enron) and others like him were the architects of the bush plan, possibly the authors of the plan. after all, we know lay and other energy company executives were at the white house around that time and the bush energy plan seemed designed to line the pocket of a company like enron.

but it appears that we were wrong again, or at least not totally right. judicial watch managed to get some of the documents (the lawsuit is still pending) and this week announced what they found. rather than enron stuff, the documents included maps of iraqi oil fields and lists of companies which would be interested in extracting oil from those fields. remember, in march of 2001, when the documents are dated, iraq was under u.n. sanctions. aside from the amount administered under the oil-for-food program, iraqi oil was effectively off limits. why would the u.s. vice president be reviewing maps of iraqi oil fields when he drafted the administration's energy policy to deal with an immediate energy crisis? i hate conspiracy theories, but it does make one wonder about the real motive for the war on iraq. the documents are pre-9/11 and the administration has not made any attempts to explain them since they came out. as mano singham asked Can the Real Reasons for War Really be This Crass?"


the first of the above two stories should grounds for the immediate resignation of someone important and both stories should be major news items as each raises further questions concerning the credibility of this administration. as i noted above, others have discussed this in more depth than i have, but i feel like we have to keep discussion of both of these things going so they don't just end up in the memory hole

happy birthday alex!

i was playing with my site meter this morning. as i was browsing through the referring pages, i noticed that several viewers were referred to my site by a search engine after searching for "uday qusay hussain." when i originally wrote the 7/23/03 entry i misspelled "hussein" as "hussain." i tend to do that (i don't just mean spelling mistakes in general, which i also have a chronic problem with. i also have a specific problem with the name hussein in all its spelling variations since i know two people with that last name, each spelling it slightly differently than the former iraqi leader. arabic transliteration is a messy thing) a day or two later, i glanced at my blog, noticed the mistake, and corrected it. even though corrected, the old version lives on in the google database (i'm not sure why that is, but i've noticed that phenonmenon previously) and so even today, i keep getting referrals thanks to my hussain spelling in a prior version of this blog

anyway, it occurred to me that i actually gained viewers by spelling hussein wrong. i'm not sure if more viewers is something i actively want to try to attract, but if it, is maybe using common misspellings is the way to go. after all, there are probably millions of sites that wrote about uday and qusay hussein, among such a large group i have no chance of standing out. but among the "hussain" references, i am one of the proud few. the trick is coming up with a misspelling that is both uncommon enough that i end up being one of the few sites that uses it, yet common enough so that lots of search engine users make they error when typing their search fields.

meanwhile, someone else using a german search engine found my site while searching for "gay arabic." i'm guessing this wasn't what he (she?) was looking for.

p.s. any errors in this post are intentional

i'm way behind. i had all this stuff that i thought about writing here. now i doubt that i will get around to it.

i definitely don't feel like it now.

so there

i'm back from albany. long day (woke at 3 am, spent 4.5 hours on various trains to make a morning arb. in albany. then after a few hours there, i turned around and did the same thing backwards.) the one good thing was the nostalgia from my college days i got by looking out the window between nyc and poughkeepsie. that ruined fort on the island is still there, and still ruined. west point still looks impressive on the bluff across the water. plus the whole area is just so beautiful. it definitely beats the first (and last) train i took through jersey

meanwhile, my friend aaron emailed and alerted me to more interesting thoughts (i.e. stuff i agree with) about uday/qusay at counterpunch and democracy now!

also, why is the u.s. so sure this will decrease the number of attacks on u.s. forces in iraq? that's what they keep saying but by my count the deaths have increased not decreased since the assassinations. the way the administration repeats over and over that these attacks are from saddam loyalists, even though there is no evidence of that, just shows how clueless they are about how to stop the attacks.

yet another thing: brooke notes the double standard in releasing the photos of uday and qusay's bodies when our coalition partner previously said that releasing photos of war dead violate the geneva convention

i've gotta get some sleep

off to albany tomorrow for an arbitration. its gonna be a long day

i think it's time for me to comment on the deaths of uday and qusay hussein. most of the county seems to be basking in the awe of the u.s. military these days and their assassination seems to have done wonders for the stock market too. yesterday the janitor where my wife worked poked his head into her office and said "this is good for this county."

i couldn't disagree more. this news, once again, makes me feel embarrassed to be an american, not proud. i never used to feel embarrassed for who i am, for i am thoroughly american. but since 9-11 that's exactly how i’ve felt, embarrassed. when i talk to people in other countries and identify where i am from, i feel like apologizing. i never used to feel that way. even when i hated what my government was doing, i never felt like apologizing for who i was. this time around, it goes beyond mere dislike of our political leaders. a line has been crossed.

the problem comes down to this: the u.s., at least the part i identified with, is supposed to be about the rule of law, the constitution, the bill of rights, etc. the idea that even the worst people have rights and the implicit acknowledgment that our government sometimes might be mistaken.

we don't stand for any of that anymore. now we not only don't support the development of international standards of law or the permanent international criminal court, but our government seeks to undermine the court by penalizing other countries that cooperate with it. the government arbitrarily detains people, refuse those held access to the court system, hold them in total secrecy, and plans to try detainees in secret military tribunals . All of these things fall below international standards of human rights. this country used create the international norms, now we flout them.

after world war two, the u.s. could have taken the defeated nazis and summarily executed them. we did not. It wasn’t because we had any doubts about how bad the nazis were, but our leaders decided that individual officers deserved the right to defend themselves in an open public trial. some nuremberg defendants were acquitted, some were not, but there was an open process that attempted to give the accused a fair chance of establishing his innocence. those trials are the intellectual ancestors of the international criminal court that our country now undermines.

as for uday and qusay, our government had them surrounded and cordoned off the neighborhood around them the night before the surprise raid began. we may never get all of the facts, but it seems to me that we could tried to get to take them alive, but chose to kill them instead. as lambert over at eschaton wrote earlier today "The Manuel Noriega option was possible— Bush and his gang decided not to take it." we really could be better than this. no matter how bad uday and qusay were, why did they deserve worse than the nazis? and just to bury any shred of hope we may still have that the u.s. stands for anything like the rule of law the killing of uday and qusay probably violated the executive order banning assassinations

i am not sorry they are dead. but i am ashamed that we killed them.

ONE MORE THING: check out jeanne d'arc's reaction to the news of their death over at body and soul
TWO MORE THING: check out an iraqi's take on the whole thing at salam pax

u.s. deputy defense secretary paul wolfowitz, architect of the american invasion of iraq, said the following yesterday "I think all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq"

of course, irony is dead after 9-11

in another brilliant plan to help reduce this country's dependance on foreign oil, congress has cut funding for bike paths and other pollution-free forms of transportation.

another quick blog from work. i couldn't resist putting this article up:

UPDATE: i was trying to make the article a block quote rather than appear as just regular type, but i seem to have deleted the text of the article and blogger ate my earlier saved version of this post. i could go back to the link and cut and paste the text back, but i'm just too damn lazy. click the link yourself if you want to read the exciting story of the underwear of death.

have i gotten moody here or what?

this is exactly what i wanted to avoid when i started experimenting with a blog. i just got home, i'm hot, tired, wanna call out "hey kool aid!" but i'm afraid that i will have to pay to fix the wall, and yet i feel obligated to blog tonight when i just don't feel like it. has the blogging mood passed? is this the end of our hero? or is he just hot and tired and kool aid-less. i would guess the latter.

but hey, tonight is not a total loss. at least i re-enabled the fiendish link since sarah finally caved in.

sean-kelly has been around the world. bastard!!!

but then, i shouldn't really complain as he has been emailing uzbek advice as he's travelled. (which i really really appreciate)

so now it looks like bush won't put british citizens before the military tribunals. maybe not australians either. this means, literally, a person's life or death may depend on where they happen to have been born. (britain has no death penalty) the difference in treatment for brits and aussies is attributed to the fact that the british and australian governments are close allies in the war against terror. i wonder what the government of pakistan is thinking when they read that? i don't have a list, but i bet there are more pakistanis in guantanamo than the number of british and australians combined. the musharraf government has stuck its neck out to appear to be a good u.s. ally. so has kuwait and at least 12 kuwaitis are currently detained by the u.s. what about the saudis? (who are not good allies in my opinion, but the official bush party line is that they are) it seems to me that the difference in treatment is not dependant on how good of any ally the country is, but rather whether or not it is a developed country, or has a muslim majority. i don't think i'm going on a limb here, i am sure the average pakistani will notice this too.

things like this make me wonder why so many americans think foreign policy is bush's strength. to me, he seems totally inept. by rewarding britain and australia, he will probably piss off virtually everyone else. when we act like this the appropriate question is not: "why do they hate us?" but "why does anyone like us?"

on a related note, other countries won't contribute troops to bring iraq under control without a u.n. mandate. anyone remember after september 11th when we had the goodwill of virtually every other nation on earth? over 100 countries offered support in afghanistan. is there any way a president could do worse on the foreign policy front than to lose that kind of international support in less than 2 years?

the festival is not over yet, but i think i'm done. its been a busy week. last weekend, we went to the grand canyon of pennsylvania, not to be confused with the grand canyon of arizona. no one would, actually. but it was pretty and i got to do a 30 mile bike ride along pike creek (the understudy for the role of the colorado river). after that the week has been a blur of arabic, gay movies, a game of settlers of catan and work-related business. this morning i wasted a bunch of time on friendster trying to make sure i had more friends than the person who invited me. of course, that just means that this weekend will be even more busy, trying to catch up on all the things i neglected all week.

"line-by-line and word-by-word"

check out this from the official white house site

blogging from work. i am too busy to do this, but i feel compelled to repost what i just read over at atrios' blog--this block quote written by eric alterman:

It is almost too ironic to point out, for instance, that when the
administration (in the form of Rice, Tenet, Cheney, and Powell)
attempts to pooh-pooh the Niger lie by saying it was “technically
correct” — they did not have sexual relations with that country
— or was just one small piece of a larger case, that virtually
every aspect of their case was a lie. The WMD threat was a lie.
The al-Qaida connection was a lie. The promise of democracy
and human rights was a lie. And as today’s front page
Washington Post story indicates, they got stuck
with the stupid Niger tale because everything they had been
saying about nukes was a lie, too. “But a review of speeches
and reports, plus interviews with present and former
administration officials and intelligence analysts, suggests that
between Oct. 7, when President Bush made a speech laying
out the case for military action against Hussein, and Jan. 28,
when he gave his State of the Union address, almost all the
other evidence had either been undercut or disproved by U.N.
inspectors in Iraq.” (And this to say nothing of the apparently
clueless Bush who somehow forgot that it was he who ended
the inspections regime, not Saddam.)

sorry i don't have the time to post my own thoughts, but this is pretty much on the mark anyway and i got work (and gay films) to do

i'm back, but no time for a real post. check out this list of twenty lies about the war and this about the overstated iraq-al qaeda links

blogging will be slow for the next week or so. i leave tomorrow for central pennsylvania and will be there for the weekend. next week, my work will get busy with a few federal court hearings and an arbitration. aside from work, there's the gay and lesbian film festival, plus the usual arabic study group.

to hold you over in my absence, read salam pax's article in "the guardian" or ishtar, a blogger in basra (published in both english and arabic--if only someone could teach me how to switch to arabic script and back again in a single post!)

have a good week. i am sure you will survive without me.

i just added two new links demosthenes and ignatz. i don't know why i didn't find them before

oops! and i just noticed my "the film movement link" didn't work. its fixed now

i think i'm slipping in my ability to keep my worlds separate. on the one hand i have Real Life. where i work as a lawyer, type with capital letters, and use a different name than "upyernoz." on the other is this one, a semi-anonymous somewhat ranting life online.

so today at work in Real Life, i requested an extension of a particular deadline from the national labor relations board. the n.l.r.b. has an e-filing system, so i requested my extension online. to request an extension, i had to fill in case identifying information, as well as my name, firm, business address, phone number, etc. all of that i did with no problem. in the "email" blank, however, i put my "upyernoz" email address rather than my more boring work handle.

i find out if the extension is granted within the next 2 days

hug-a-jew explained

this has been mentioned in several other blogs i read, but this is pretty shocking

yesterday bush gave a speech on gorée island, the place where a million africans were loaded into ships and sent to the americas for a life of slavery centuries ago. before he arrived, residents of the island were rounded up and detained in a football stadium on the other side of the island. meanwhile, bush condemned slavery. "We never want to see him come here again" said one resident. (actually, i feel the same way here in the u.s.)

for those of you who will protest that forcing residents out of their homes and detaining them is a legitimate security precaution, nothing like this happened in 1998 when the last u.s. president came for a visit. "When Clinton came, he shook hands, people danced" said the former mayor.

a catholic writes about honesty and the bush administration

via tripp (or rather, AKMA's post in tripp's comments. fix your link tripp!)

question for the day:

remember earlier in the year, when the u.n. inspectors were in iraq? the inspectors wanted to speak to iraqi scientists about the country's weapons program, but the iraqi government would not let them be interviewed without a government minder present. bush argued that showed saddam had something to hide and that the presence of a government agent would only intimidate the witness and assure that the inspectors' investigation could not discover the truth.

fast forward to the present. the 9-11 commission (an entity that bush originally was against creating, only relenting after embarrassing news stories were published about it), now wants to interview u.s. government officials about intelligence failures leading up to 9-11. the bush administration, however won't allow witnesses to be interviewed "without the presence of a government colleague."

so, like with the iraqi inspections, does this mean that the bush administration has something to hide and that the administration is trying to assure that the commission does not discover the truth?

inquiring minds wanna know

an interesting read: a conservative's take on the w.m.d. issue (doug bandow works for the cato institute)

as i wrote before, i think the big lie was about saddam's alleged ties to al-qaeda. it was the alleged saddam-osama connection, and not the w.m.d. issue that, i think, got most americans to support an invasion. even now, 52% believe the u.s has found clear evidence that saddam worked with al-qaeda, when, in fact, no such evidence has ever been disclosed to the public. (contrast this with the situation after u.s. troops entered kabul and paraded reporters through several al-qaeda safe houses. the fact that this has not happened in baghdad speaks volumes). while the w.m.d. issue and saddam's alleged violation of u.n. security council resolutions is what bush used as a legal justification for an invasion, i believe the average american was thinking of striking back against the 9-11 perpetrators, not the sanctity of international law

still, it is interesting to watch the bush administration flail about trying to explain away what is becoming increasingly evident; the fact that bush lied about iraq's attempts to acquire nuclear materials during his state of the union address. seriously, read the transcript in the "flail about" link. its fun to imagine ari squirm


on a related point, does it bother anyone else that bush never takes questions from the press? clinton seemed to have press conferences every other second. when was the last time you saw bush at a free form press conference with reporters shouting out questions?

the last bush press conference was hardly free form. it was on march 6, 2003, shortly before the war began. the conference was notable for several reasons beyond the fact that bush rarely gives them. first, bush had a list of who he would call on, he did not call on any reporters who were not on his list

second, at a time that there was serious anti-war protests throughout the united states, bush got surprisingly easy questions about iraq. third, several commentators noted that bush appeared to be answering the questions with pre-prepared answers, rather than speaking off the cuff. finally, and most surprisingly, bush seemed to make a freudian slip during the press conference, saying "this is [] scripted".*

whether or not you believe the 3/6/03 conference was "scripted," it does make me wonder why bush is not willing to be questioned by reporters. doesn't he feel capable of defending his own policies? i suspect that, his handlers at least, think not. but what does that say about his competency as a president? interestingly, in the past two days 2 new york times columnists have noted that bush does not answer questions about his policies from the press. william safire approves of the practice (see the third to last "nixon answer" in the column). nicholas kristof does not. i find it hard to image how anything but kristof's view is compatable with democracy.



*i chose this link because it includes a link to the official white house transcript, an mp3 audio clip, and a video clip of the "this is a scripted..." moment in the press conference.

this actually makes me feel a little better.
(via nathan newman)

oh, and happy birthday yebee! (if you ever read this, that is)

i bought my ticket to tashkent today. i will be there in less than 2 months.

of course, that's what i said last time too

i'm not always a fan of maureen dowd, her columns are often seem to much like inside-the-beltway catiness (is that a word?) for my tastes. but today's column, applying the attention deficit disorder criteria to bush's foreign policy is pretty much on target.

another hot day. i was going to try to get out and ride my bike today. its been a while (i wasn't allowed to exercise after my oral surgery--don't ask me why), but i really don't tolerate the heat well. maybe i will see capturing the friedmans instead.

in this morning's new york times there's an article about the pentagon's plan to create more of a military presence in africa. the plan is to increase american bases or access to bases in a dozen or so african countries (3 of the 4 i have visited. oddly, the one that does not seem to be on the list is kenya, the site of several terrorist attacks attributed to al qaeda. but maybe that's because kenya already provides the u.s. military with a lot of access to its bases).

anyway, according to the article, one of the concerns is that the u.s. fears that the empty sahel and sahara regions that cut across africa, for centuries a lawless area and haven for smugglers, is becoming fertile ground (though "fertile" is an odd word to use for this region) for al qaeda.

when reading the article i had a flashback to my time in mali it was mid-October 2001, about 5 weeks post-9/11. afghanistan was being bombed by american forces. though this had been going on for about 2 week, i had little access to news sources so had only heard rumors, many wildly exaggerated, about what was happening there. that is, until i reached timbuktu. timbuktu was the most remote feeling place i have ever been. however, it had the best internet access in the country. when i got to timbuktu, i planted myself at a computer surrounded by malians in traditional garb (next to me was guy in bright blue tuareg robes and a turban surfing through porn sites) and got myself back up to speed on world events.

as i left the internet site, i met a guy named issa. issa wanted to talk about 9/11 with me. he may have lost a friend in the terrorist attack (according to issa, an american stayed with him in timbuktu for about a month a year or so earlier. at the end of the american's stay, they would email each other every day. this american told issa at some point that he worked "on the 100th floor" of the world trade center. after 9/11 issa wrote him an email to ask if he was okay, but didn't get a response. 5 weeks later, when i spoke with issa, he had concluded his friend had died). issa, this young muslim kid from the middle of the sahara, was really rooting for the americans to blow the hell out of afghanistan to avenge his friend's death. i ended up arguing the other side with him on several points. moments like that remind me that the political views of the people of the world are much more complex than we are sometimes led to believe.

anyway, at one point, we were wandering the sandy streets and issa, lowered his voice and pointed out some guy down the road. the guy was dressed in a robe and turban, like more than ½ of the people i saw on the streets. in fact, he looked no different from a native timbuktuian to me. issa warned me not to talk to that guy. "people always come to timbuktu to hide," he told me. "in the last week, people have been coming from afghanistan to hide from the americans." i looked at the robed guy down the street and realized i would not be able to tell him apart from any other random person i saw, but we walked on and it never came up again. i wasn't sure whether to believe issa, about the alleged taliban or al qaeda guy who he pointed out or his friend who allegedly worked in the w.t.c. still, timbuktu is a great place to hide, that is, if you're able to get there. the place where the sahel meets the sahara really feels like the farthest place from everywhere.

so now, almost 2 years later, i guess the pentagon has finally noticed.


there was another article from the n.y.times this morning that got my attention, this one about reactions in britain and australia to the bush military tribunal plan. i even wrote a letter to the editor of the times about one portion of the article. we'll see if anything comes of that.

happy sarah?

religious fun for the fourth of july!

lightning strikes preacher who asks for sign
god flips off the hubble telescope

the u.s. is still at war says one general, thus resolving the paradox i mentioned yesterday.

the article also mentions that the u.s. government is offering a $25 million bounty for saddam hussein. when i read that one though occurred to me: iraq is filled with lots poor desperate people, plus a bunch of saddam hussein doubles.

that's all for now

this latest quote from our idiot president is really too much. soldier's die and, referring to their attackers, bush says to "bring them on." i realize he's just trying to pretend he's tough, but its pretty insensitive to the families of the daily casualties from iraq. at least senator lautenberg has called bush on this

the real problem with this administration is that he's in a logical bind with these continuing attacks in iraq. on the one hand, bush announced that iraq was liberated and the war was over, on the other hand, he has been attributing all of the attacks on american soldiers to "baathist loyalists" or "holdovers from the old regime."

it can't be both. if the enemy is still fighting, then the war is not over. if the war is over and the baathists are defeated, then this is a new problem that has to be addressed. by claiming the war is over, yet attributing the attacks to the old problem, the administration is both patting itself on the back for a victory it may not have won and ignoring new problems by calling them something that, in effect, has already been addressed. (of course the fact that these attacks continue show that the problem has not been addressed. but we're not supposed to notice these things)

in my opinion, the people who attack u.s. soldiers are probably a mix of people. some baathists may be fighting on, but there are also plenty of others who are armed and motivated to attack americans in iraq, including, average frustrated iraqis, islamic fundamentalists, local nationalists, and foreigner fighters who have flooded into iraqi lately from across the muslim world. to attribute all of these attacks, or even a majority, to the baath party is simple-minded and ignores the complexity of the situation (but ignoring complexity is what this administration does best).

(sorry i didn't put any links into that rant. normally I'm better at citing things, but it takes a lot more time to do those kinds of posts and i gotta run to gigantic)

blogging from the office. a first for me.

i am the only one here. i would be home, except that i am seeing gigantic tonight at a theater which is only a block or so from my office, so i figure i might as well stick around and get stuff done. and i will too, after a quick experiment with how my moody work computer deals with blogger.

there haven't been posts lately because i've been busy. every day this week i've been occupied with something after work (monday arabic, but monday is always arabic. tuesday i helped someone move. and now gigantic). and the weekend before that was busy too. my political posts tend to take longer, so they have kinda fallen by the wayside lately.

nevertheless, i seem to have succeded in pissing off sarah today. not that its all that hard, but everyone's gotta have a hobby.

tomorrow i get my stiches out in my mouth. my dedicated readers will fondly remember the explicit still-under-the-influence-of-the-anesthesia post in which i described my oral surgery last week. well, tomorrow is day 8 post-op and so i get to go back the the oral surgeon and have him poke around in there again. hopefully that means the bandages and stiches will be removed, and more imporantly (again assuming it looks okay) i can finally eat solid foods again. mmm, solids. i've been dreaming about them all week