Month: June 2005

My main employer, the Sunday Times, scores another huge scoop with this leak on how British ministers were told in July 2002 that since an “illegal war” was already inevitable, it was “necessary to create the conditions” which would make it legal. I wish I were surprised. I distinctly remember telling my London editors that summer that of course the decision for war had already been made. Wasn’t that obvious to everyone at the time? I guess not among the British public.

The broader argument of this post by Wretchard at Belmont Club is worth debating. The tectonic shifts in global politics – the slow demise of Chirac and Schroder, the resilience of Bush and Blair, the potential for reform at the U.N. – may well be connected. But Wretchard assumes this part of the equation as well: “the defeat of the Iraqi insurgency.” Excuse me? There’s a difference between some positive developments and the alleged defeat of an insurgency that seems far from deflated. Greg Djerejian brings a dose of reality to the analysis. The truth is that we are in the early stages of a long, long war of attrition in Iraq. It’s still winnable, but the odds are against us. Greg actually gets incensed by some of the pro-Bush reflexive commmentary in the blogosphere on this and contends it doesn’t help at all. No shit, Sherlock:

This is why I am so incensed by the too rosy assessments of the state of the war effort (especially by smart people like Wretchard who should know better). Adults need to stop scoring this like a parlor game. Criticism = treacherous disloyalty to POTUS. Praise = omniscient Rummy rules us happy serfs so wisely! As a Bush supporter, let me give my level-best, most honest criticism here. We never put enough troops in theater and barely have enough there now. We are resource-constrained, and doing the best we can short of increasing the size of the military (which is getting increasingly problematic) or re-instituting the draft (not kosher in the era of Paris Hilton and the Apprentice). What’s the best way forward? If we could scrap a few more battalions together to go into Anbar Province that wouldn’t be a bad start. Short of marching into Teheran or Damascus (the height of folly), we also need to continue to move towards better securing each of those long borders (today, more Syria’s as Sunnis are our biggest challenge; tomorrow perhaps, Iran’s, as the Shi’a might become more problematic if we are seen to be overly protecting the Sunni in the future) using every single rational means conceivable and at our disposal.

The trouble is: we haven’t committed enough resources to succeed quickly; and we may not have the political backing at home to succeed in the very long term. The first task for the administration is to level with the country about this. But they’d rather spin.

Their bravery continues to impress. Some great photo-coverage, and much other bloggy insight and news not found elsewhere, can always be found here.

An interesting visual parallel.

THE POPE IN CONTEXT: A helpful and balanced response to Pope Benedict’s recent speech on the family can be read here. It’s by the invaluable Catholic journalist, John Allen.

A grisly but important story in the NYT today about the effects of smoking crystal meth on your teeth. Here’s an obvious ad campaign directed toward image-conscious gay men tempted to try meth. Let’s have lots of posters with photos of beautiful men smiling with rotten teeth. It’s worth trying.

EMAIL OF THE DAY: “Your attention to the Koran abuse is entirely well placed. But let’s try to keep it in perspective. 15,000,000 Iraqi Shiite MOSLEMS are now able to practice their religion freely after years of repression. Just after the overthrow of Saddam, Iraqi Shiites (who are Moslems) celebrated Ashura for the first time in, oh, about 20 years. On the balance, what we have done to help the practice of Islam far exceeds what was done at Guantanamo. And remember, the people who are most angry with us never raised their voices when Saddam restricted the observance of most of the Moslems in his country.” This is absolutely true, and it’s why I still support the liberation of Iraq. And it’s why it’s so distressing to see such good undermined by such stupidity.

WHOPPER OF THE DAY: “He had accumulated many weeks of leave and had decided to resign and take the summer off to spend the time with his family,” – Bush administration statement on the resignation of Philip Cooney, a petroleum lobbyist with no scientific training who had edited government reports to remove references to the posited link between greenhouse gases and global warming.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “I would rather you commit suicide than have you leave Love In Action wanting to return to the gay lifestyle. In a physical death you could still have a spiritual resurrection; whereas, returning to homosexuality you are yielding yourself to a spiritual death from which there is no recovery.” – John Smid, Director, Love In Action (LIA), San Rafael’s “ex-gay” organization. The quote is denied by Smid, but asserted by a former inmate of the “Straight Camp” run by Smid who said Smid told him exactly that. Smid runs “camps” where gay kids and teens are sent by their parents for compulsory “re-orientation” toward heterosexuality. Here’s one note from one of the persecuted children, writing home:

I haven’t been on a computer, phone, nor have I seen any friends in a week almost– Soon. Soon, this will be all over. My mother has said the worst things to me for three days straight… three days. I went numb. That’s the only way I can get through this. I agree, if you’re thinking that these posts might be dramatized.. but the proof of the program’s ideas are sitting in the rules. I pray this blows over. I can’t take this… noone can… not really, this kind of thing tears you apart emotionally. To introduce THIS subject… I’m not a suicidal person… really I’m not.. I think it’s stupid – really. But.. I can’t help it, no im not going to commit suicide, all I can think about is killing my mother and myself. It’s so horrible. This is what it’s doing to me… I have this horrible feeling all of the time… I wish this on no person…

To my mind, this is child abuse. What we need are some really dedicated Act-Up types to find these places and liberate the kids. But you can send your moral support to the abused kid here. Blogs can be oases of freedom in totalitarian societies, and also in fundamentalist boot camps.

VIRUS UPDATE: This past first week of meds has not been as side-effect-free as I’d hoped. Most afternoons leave me drained and needing sleep for a couple of hours. It may be just an adjustment, and I’m free of diarrhea and nausea. Yay! But I said I’d keep you posted. So here it is.

Greg Djerejian reads the tea-leaves. My bet is that Gitmo will be closed within a year.

GULF STREAM: An emailer suggests one more pee possibility:

I gather from the photograph that the air vent is the grate on the lower left. Imagine if you will a soldier from inside walking to the nearest exit, not even stepping outside, he just props the door open slightly, he’s not even cognizant of the air vent, and he relieves himself. I can visualize the arc of the stream, he’s a kid, it’s hot in Guantanamo and he’s drinking lots of fluids, he pisses like a racehorse. It’s not an obvious truth but a strong gust of wind, a westerly, could have lifted his urine and splattered it across a detainee’s cell. Keep in mind, the detainee was probably situated as close to the vent as possible to take advantage of the breeze. And he, the detainee, like you, the slightly histrionic journalist, was incensed and viewed the splatter of piss as a deliberate insult. Word then spreads among the detainees. The easiest thing to do is to reassign the guard. What are you going to do to convince detainees it was an accident, wait for the winds to shift and try for a reenactment? Next time you’re in Aruba, take a piss into a headwind.

Okay. More plausible than the official version.

No, it won’t happen. My old friend Alan Duncan knows he has a very distant chance. But it does say something that an openly gay man can run for the leadership of the British Conservatives. Can you imagine that ever happening among Republicans?

“I couldn’t agree more with your comment on ‘secularism gone nuts,’ and hope nobody complains about my Virginia license plate. It reads 16 EZK 49 for the Biblical definition of the sin of sodomy (Ezekiel chapter 16, verse 49): “Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister Sodom, pride, fulness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.” Who knew so many Republicans are sodomites??”

As you know, I’m a secularist and believe religion is best kept to the private sphere. But this kind of suppression of religious belief is truly noxious, and merely gives the religious right more grist for paranoia.

LIBERTY BEFORE DEMOCRACY? A tweaking of the Bush doctrine.

CAVUTO: Not only knee-pads but several contributions to the Bush campaign, up to $2000 in 2002. Here, here, and here. Hey: fair and balanced.

LOWER OFFICER STANDARDS: The military, facing a recruitment crisis, is lowering standards for officers, allowing people who have committed minor crimes. Obvious commentary from a retired army officer here.

THE ANSWER, MY FRIEND: Thanks for all your theories about the military pee blowing in the wind. Just to recap, here’s the official description of what happened:

The guard had left his observation area post and went outside to urinate. He urinated near an air vent and the wind blew his urine through the vent into the block. The Sergeant of the Guard (SOG) responded and immediately relieved the guard. The SOG ensured the detainee received a fresh uniform and a new Koran. The Joint Detention Operations Group (JDOG) 2 commander reprimanded the guard and assigned him to gate guard duty where he had no contact with detainees for the remainder of his assignment at JTF-GTMO.

Here’s a useful picture of what we might be dealing with. A little pee splatter is not uncommon. But there are many places to take leaks. I’ve taken advantage of trees, bushes, dark urban corners, alleys, and all sorts of places in my time. But I tend not to pee near an air-vent that leads directly into a someone’s living quarters. I don’t scout around for a basement apartment, look for an airvent and pee just nearby. Even if I did, and some pee drifted in the wind into an open air-vent, what are the chances that even a small amount would make it on to an individual inside? If I were a soldier and this was an absurd mistake, I can see being disciplined. But I don’t see why I’d be forbidden access to any detainees for the rest of my time in Gitmo. The obvious truth is that a guard decided to humiliate a Muslim prisoner by pissing on him through an airvent. The military cannot say that because the story would then read: Koran not flushed, but pissed on. So they came up with the magic pee, whose ability to swerve left then right into the designated wind vent rivals the smartest of smart bombs. Our military sure is high-tech these days. And no, this isn’t a huge deal. It’s just a petty lie that makes us suspect bigger ones.

An emailer informs me:

Your reference to Jesus’ closes friend as a ‘former prostitute’ I assume is Mary Magdalene. Please know there is nothing to suggest she was a prostitute. Even the Vatican, many years ago, acknowledged the mistake of previous teaching. The assumption of sexual sin when women are described in the Bible as sinners is evidence of the patriarchy that continues today. I’ve heard it preached about the woman at the well, the woman who anointed Jesus and Mary Magdalene, all being guilty of sexual sin or being prostitutes. There are no facts in evidence to support that. The woman at the well, having five husbands, could just as easily been her first four died and she was handed off to brothers as property – the custom in those days. There have been other suggestions that the five husbands stood for five different iterations of God in Samaritan culture…etc. In future writings when you mention Mary Magdalene, don’t fall into the trap of a centuries old mistake. Give her a break. She’s had the worst press of anyone in the Bible.

Point taken.