The Dish

Andrew Hagan reminisces:

I have to tell you it wasn’t really the library that made me a writer. That dubious accolade must surely go to the film of Doctor Zhivago. My brothers and I were always hanging around our house at night looking for things to burn, but this night I found myself watching Dr Zhivago. There’s a scene in that movie when Omar Sharif comes gliding down the stairs in a flowing dressing gown, Omar Sharif, you know, following his rather impressive moustache down the stairs. Well, he arrives in this room – a giant study, you know, French windows, flowery armchairs, the lot. He sits down at this elegant ecritoir and looks out of the windows, where he sees, in quick succession, a host of daffodils, a bank of snow, a full moon and a herd of deer. (God bless Hollywood.) Anyhow, I’m watching this with wide eyes. Next thing he lifts up a feather pen and – without any ink blotches or crossings out or mistakes, and it takes him about 3.4 nanoseconds – he writes the ‘Sonnet to Lara’.  After which he goes upstairs and goes to bed with Julie Christie. I remember watching that very closely and thinking, "I could do that."

It took sanctions and Saddam twenty years to extinguish Iraq’s economic growth. The 2003 invasion was merely a punctuation point in collapse. Here’s an in-depth survey. One fascinating nugget observed by the Arabist is the following:

Throughout the 1990s, most of Iraq’s oil was transported in relatively small tanker trucks — to Jordan and Turkey with dispensation from Washington and undercover to Syria and the Gulf. As the pipelines to Turkey and the Gulf were turned back on in 2003, most of these truckers — many of whom had close ties with, and indeed colleagues in, neighboring countries — were out of a job. Hence, it is not surprising to learn that pipeline attacks "are now orchestrated by [insurgents and criminal gangs] to force the government to import and distribute as much fuel as possible using thousands of tanker trucks."

What exactly the diverse and fissiparous insurgency really is will probaly only be known by future historians. In this, as in so much else, Iraq is essentially a mystery.

What was the head of Central Command’s response to news that torture, rape and murder had been widespread at a major detainee center under his command in Iraq? Launch a massive investigation to find out what had gone wrong? Find and punish every commander in the chain of command for some of the most appalling violations of humane warfare in U.S. history? Nah. Once a tightly controlled investigation had been issued – an investigation specifically denied the power to seek responsibility up the chain of command – president Bush’s top military aide in Iraq had the following encounter with the report’s author, general Taguba:

A few weeks after his report became public, Taguba, who was still in Kuwait, was in the back seat of a Mercedes sedan with Abizaid. Abizaid’s driver and his interpreter, who also served as a bodyguard, were in front. Abizaid turned to Taguba and issued a quiet warning: "You and your report will be investigated."

"I wasn’t angry about what he said but disappointed that he would say that to me," Taguba said. "I’d been in the Army thirty-two years by then, and it was the first time that I thought I was in the Mafia."

That’s because Taguba, tragically, was indeed working for a commander-in-chief whose illegal torture regime required the same levels of violence, lawlessness and inhmanity as the mob. More on this expose of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld war crimes tomorrow.

(Photo: Alex Wong/Getty.)

Bethel, Alaska, 4.45 pm.

For an interactive gallery of Dish readers’ window views across the world, click here.

And autumn came so soon. Matt revisits some neocon gloating.

Say what you want about Ron Paul’s supporters, but they sure are enthusiastic.

Misty Irons explains:

It is rare to find an author who is willing to be so plainly truthful about the danger of hope. That once you begin to believe in your own dignity and worth, that you deserve to be loved and valued and cared for like anyone else, this ratchets up the stakes to the point where you can no longer accept anything less, and there is no turning back. Maybe that’s why people are inclined to take the easier, safer route of learning contentment in a kind of moderate degradation, where the risks are fewer and the disappointments less devastating.

What some people call "the homosexual agenda" I see as a daring movement to ratchet up the stakes to where there is no turning back. And the gay marriage movement is about as high as you can take it.

A major witness to this White House’s direct link to Abu Ghraib and the torture regime has come forward. And he couldn’t have better credentials: General Antonio Taguba. More on this tomorrow, but for now: don’t miss the piece. Money quote:

During the next two years, Taguba assiduously avoided the press, telling his relatives not to talk about his work. Friends and family had been inundated with telephone calls and visitors, and, Taguba said, “I didn’t want them to be involved.” Taguba retired in January, 2007, after thirty-four years of active service, and finally agreed to talk to me about his investigation of Abu Ghraib and what he believed were the serious misrepresentations by officials that followed. “From what I knew, troops just don’t take it upon themselves to initiate what they did without any form of knowledge of the higher-ups,” Taguba told me. His orders were clear, however: he was to investigate only the military police at Abu Ghraib, and not those above them in the chain of command. “These M.P. troops were not that creative,” he said. “Somebody was giving them guidance, but I was legally prevented from further investigation into higher authority. I was limited to a box.”

Justice is coming.

(Photo: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty.)

As long as a French president can get completely shit-faced at lunch with the Russian president, I feel relatively secure the world isn’t coming to an end: