As you can see, covering the Iraq beat is the sort of job that can "make or break" a career in journalism. How hard could it be to turn that gig into gold? Talk to some people, dig up the story, oughta be a piece of cake. But as we see in the blogging world, a smidgeon of success doth quickly a swelled head make. And for the crime of hubris the gods punish swiftly and harshly.

Homeward Bound

That would be Geraldo Rivera, who got himself tossed out of the action today. He's allegedly being escorted back to Basra to be frog-marched onto the first ship headed back to the States.

We were at a dinner party last night, and after the main event, everyone retired for after-dinner drinks to the family room, where a large-screen TV was on in the background. Suddenly, there's Geraldo, positioned in front of a squad of bored, pissed-off troops whose facial expressions plainly said, "I can't believe they're making us stand here behind this numchuck." We all started laughing and jeering at the spectacle, talking about how Rivera represents all that is wrong and twisted in this world.

So it comes as no surprise to hear he screwed up this assignment. According to what I caught this morning, he was being filmed and while on the air he directed the camera down at the ground, where he drew a line in the sand, saying something like, "This is Baghdad, and right now we're here, and we're headed over to here..."

He should've known better, after all, according to his bio over at FoxNews:

Rivera is a veteran foreign correspondent who has been on the frontlines in virtually every international conflict since 1973. He has expertise in the Afghanistan region, covering the international drug wars of tribal territories in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. His vast war experience...

You First

No way would I hand out one of these to somebody.

It's a "courtesy card," the brainchild of the nice people over at Civil City, who want to make this a more polite world in which to live. Works like this: You see someone behaving badly in public, doing something rude and obnoxious. You walk up, clear your throat, and then behave badly yourself by handing 'em one of these cards. It directs them to Civil City's Website where they are given a gentle comeuppance for their behavioral frippery. Here are some typical offenses:

1. Talk on cellphones too close to others
2. Litter
3. Hog seats on bus/train
4. Drive recklessly
5. Use bad language in public
6. Honk horn unnecessarily
7. Loud or missing mufflers
8. Not clean up after pets
9. Smoke in non-smoking areas
10. Ignore customers

4:27:38 PM       

In its highest form, we call it the "Jedi Mind Trick," at its most prosaic, it's called the "Gypsy Switch," but by any name the goal is the same, get the Trojan Horse into the city gates. It's nature's way of equalizing the game, and we're seeing it in Iraq as ragtag bands of defenders confuse and confound a technically superior force with psychological tactics of misdirection. Maybe we should take a hint here.

And We Are

The Rand Corporation, a Pentagon policy think-tank, has released a paper titled the Joint Doctrine for Military Deception. The idea is that nature abounds with examples of mind beating musclepower, and as the authors put it, "deception is an adaptation as valuable as armor, speed or firepower."

I don't know if I like the idea of our government figuring this stuff out, since it's the ace-in-the-hole we were counting on to subvert our own authorities, but there you have it. If you want to check the document out, it's available online here, in PDF format. It's astonishing to see them quoting from Sun Tzu's Art of War, as this makes you wonder just how far behind the power-curve of prevarication we actually are.

I make the enemy see my strengths as weaknesses and my weaknesses as strengths, while I cause his strengths to become weaknesses and discover where he is not strong...I conceal my tracks so that none can discern them; I keep silence so that none can here me.
—Sun Tzu

The Wisdom of the Rustics

James Doran, a writer for the London Times, wondered what the average American was thinking about the war, and he came up with an interesting angle: Ride a Greyhound bus and talk to passengers. He came up with some fascinating material, like this quip from rider Benjy Garcia:

Why is my country bombing these poor people?

The Blabbermouth

Yeah, it's a free country, but we're at war and we've got people dying for reasons that still haven't been adequately explained. Lotsa people have ideas about this, of course, and the justifications range from oil, to terrorism, to stability overseas. But so far, the guy who should be making this crystal clear is too busy cracking jokes at MacDill Air Force Base. Here he is thanking Col. Tanker Snyder:

He told me that was his given name, Tanker. (Laughter.) That's a heck of a name, Tanker. (Laughter.) One of the problems with being the President is you always end up being the last guy here. (Laughter.)

Yesterday, Republican congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen termed Arnett's remarks as being "Kafkaesque" and "just crazy." So NBC promptly fired Arnett this morning, and we caught him on the Today show, weeping and mewling over the wreckage of his career. Word on the street is that "he'll never work again," and some people are avidly trying to dig up his home address for reasons that can only be guessed at.

"I want to apologize to the American people for clearly making a misjudgment," the New Zealand-born Arnett said. He said he would try to leave Baghdad now, joking "there's a small island in the South Pacific that I've inhabited that I'll try to swim to."

Mugabe's Law

It's rough. Really rough. A Zimbabwean Minister of Parliament named Job Sikhala, known as the "roaring lion" for his speechifying and rhetoric, has been coordinating a viable challenge to the corrupt regime of Robert Mugabe. Considering that the country is a dictatorship, this might have been somewhat imprudent. He's talking now about his arrest two months ago, which led to an eight-hour interrogation and torture session at the hands of the police.

Two men took turns to beat the soles of his feet with wooden planks. "They then applied electric shocks to my genitals and tongue," Mr Sikhala said yesterday. "The more I cried, the more they inflicted the pain, saying I had not cried enough. They would at times apply the electric shocks to my genitals, tongue, toes and fingers at the same time."

This Guy Is Toast

We covered the story about Columbia University's Nicholas De Genova a few days ago. In this followup article, we discover that he's in really big trouble. The backlash against his publically expressed desire for "a million Mogadishus" is so severe that he's hiding out at home with the blinds drawn, curled up in a fetal position and praying to whatever heathen god he holds supreme. Turns out he's been controversial in the past, too, as this quote suggests:

In April 2002, at a pro-Palestinian rally at Columbia, De Genova said: "The heritage of the victims of the Holocaust belongs to the Palestinian people. The state of Israel has no claim to the heritage of the Holocaust."

Mondo Freako

Sorry to put up so much craziness this morning. So chill out with the kittens singing the Vines' Outtathaway. This is so strange, it's actually quite infectious.

10:04:57 AM