Tuesday, June 14, 2005
A few funny searchesSomehow google pointed these searchers to Broken Windows. Go figure! 9:42:35 PM | "vegetables that are out of the ordinary" "dog bit by buck moth caterpillar" "funky love bus" "growing lizard 600%" "killed with a fork" "mormons gone wild" "sharoz sex" (?! What on earth is that?) "ghost tlacolula" "yatbonics" "snug harbor ghosts" "military men naked" "essays: an event that changed my life" "Who is responsible for broken window on golf course" "gangs concrete poems" "jesus malverde" (many many many times, including for his picture) "love blogs broken" "sinaloa weddings" "Mexican trespassers" "murder at a store in New Orleans during Mardi Gras" "what to do in lafayette la when sitting at home bored on friday night" and the ever-present "broken window picture" 
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Why the Downing Street Memo is importantMark Danner, in the June 9 issue of the New York Review of Books, explains why the Downing Street Memo isn't old news at all: 6:20:23 PM | [...]
What the Downing Street memo confirms for the first time [my emphasis] is that President Bush had decided, no later than July 2002, to "remove Saddam, through military action," that war with Iraq was "inevitable" -- and that what remained was simply to establish and develop the modalities of justification; that is, to come up with a means of "justifying" the war and "fixing" the "intelligence and facts...around the policy." The great value of the discussion recounted in the memo, then, is to show, for the governments of both countries, a clear hierarchy of decision-making. By July 2002 at the latest, war had been decided on; the question at issue now was how to justify it -- how to "fix," as it were, what Blair will later call "the political context." Specifically, though by this point in July the President had decided to go to war, he had not yet decided to go to the United Nations and demand inspectors; indeed, as "C" points out, those on the National Security Council -- the senior security officials of the US government -- "had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusi-asm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record." This would later change, largely as a result of the political concerns of these very people gathered together at 10 Downing Street. [...] [...] Foreign Secretary Jack Straw got to the heart of the matter: not whether or not to invade Iraq but how to justify such an invasion: "The
Foreign Secretary said he would discuss [the timing of the war] with
Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind
to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. 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."
Given that Saddam was not threatening to attack his neighbors and that his weapons of mass destruction program was less extensive than those of a number of other countries, how does one justify attacking? Foreign Secretary Straw had an idea: "We
should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the
UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal
justification for the use of force."
The British realized they needed "help with the legal justification for the use of force" because, as the attorney general pointed out, rather dryly, "the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action." Which is to say, the simple desire to overthrow the leadership of a given sovereign country does not make it legal to invade that country; on the contrary. And, said the attorney general, of the "three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or [United Nations Security Council] authorization," the first two "could not be the base in this case." In other words, Iraq was not attacking the United States or the United Kingdom, so the leaders could not claim to be acting in self-defense; nor was Iraq's leadership in the process of committing genocide, so the United States and the United Kingdom could not claim to be invading for humanitarian reasons. This left Security Council authorization as the only conceivable legal justification for war. But how to get it? [...] Here the [U.N.] inspectors were introduced, but as a means to create the missing casus belli. If the UN could be made to agree on an ultimatum that Saddam accept inspectors, and if Saddam then refused to accept them, the Americans and the British would be well on their way to having a legal justification to go to war (the attorney general's third alternative of UN Security Council authorization). Thus, the idea of UN inspectors was introduced not as a means to avoid war, as President Bush repeatedly assured Americans, but as a means to make war possible. War had been decided on; the problem under discussion here was how to make, in the prime minister's words, "the political context ...right." The "political strategy" -- at the center of which, as with the Americans, was weapons of mass destruction, for "it was the regime that was producing the WMD" -- must be strong enough to give "the military plan the space to work." Which is to say, once the allies were victorious the war would justify itself. The demand that Iraq accept UN inspectors, especially if refused, could form the political bridge by which the allies could reach their goal: "regime change" through "military action." But there was a problem: as the foreign secretary pointed out, "on the political strategy, there could be US/UK differences." While the British considered legal justification for going to war critical -- they, unlike the Americans, were members of the International Criminal Court -- the Americans did not. Mr. Straw suggested that given "US resistance, we should explore discreetly the ultimatum." The defense secretary, Geoffrey Hoon, was more blunt, arguing "that
if the Prime Minister wanted UK military involvement, he would need to
decide this early. He cautioned that many in the US did not think it
worth going down the ultimatum route. It would be important for the
Prime Minister to set out the political context to Bush."
The key negotiation in view at this point, in other words, was not with Saddam over letting in the United Nations inspectors -- both parties hoped he would refuse to admit them, and thus provide the justification for invading. The key negotiation would be between the Americans, who had shown "resistance" to the idea of involving the United Nations at all, and the British, who were more concerned than their American cousins about having some kind of legal fig leaf for attacking Iraq. Danner goes on to talk about the negotiations between Bush and Blair for UN involvement and the subsequent problems they faced at the UN when Saddam accepted the inspectors in and they found nothing. The administration, led by our own little Darth Vader, Cheney, worked to "undermin[e] the credibility of the United Nations itself" by discrediting the inspectors, insisting that they weren't finding weapons because they were incompetent, not because Saddam had none. There's more, of course. Unfortunately, much of the press has completely ignored the Downing Street Memo, telling us it's "old news" and insisting that the American people don't care about it: In
the end, the Downing Street memo, and Americans' lack of interest in
what it shows, has to do with a certain attitude about facts, or rather
about where the line should be drawn between facts and political
opinion.
Indeed. Unfortunately, though, there are no longer facts in our spin-crazy world. So far this month, thirty-nine soldiers have died in Iraq. For nothing more than a bit of "fixed" intelligence. Talk about wrong. I don't know if it's possible to find a way out of there if we can't even face the facts of how we got into this war to begin with. Imagine being led into a labrynthine mansion, blind-folded, then being asked to find the front door from the middle of the house. We're in the middle right now, and since we don't want to know how we got there, we'll never find the door. We've got to see reality for what it is, and since the present is made up of the past, that means facing our past with some courage, as Tobias Wolff might say. We've got to ask the tough questions. Too many lives are at stake not to. Edited Post: Sorry about all of the wierd characters in original post. I forgot to check over it before sending it off into cyberworld. I have to remember that cutting and pasting from the web invites ghosts in the posts...
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Praying at the graves of al qaeda "martyrs"From the Chicago Tribune: 9:52:10 AM | NEAR KHOST, Afghanistan -- Some men want to walk
without crutches, and some women want to get pregnant. A few Romeos
stand in front of the graves and ask for love. Others pray for the
souls of the dead.
Everyone has a wish at this Al Qaeda cemetery. [...] The men buried here at Martyrs shrine and another shrine nearby were killed in late 2001 during the U.S.-led war against the Taliban. On the second night of Ramadan, the fasting month for Muslims, U.S. forces bombed a mosque in the southeastern town of Khost. Dozens of Taliban and Al Qaeda members were killed. The mosque has been rebuilt, light green and peach, with large windows and a sunlit prayer room. But the two shrines for the dead and another in eastern Afghanistan have turned into pilgrimage sites, almost tourist attractions featuring Al Qaeda dead. [...] The shrines show the logic of some people in the new Afghanistan, particularly those in the south and southeast, where the influence of the Taliban and Al Qaeda has been strongest. Those who come here do not necessarily support terrorists. Many say they do not hate the Afghan government or the U.S. forces. They welcome the upcoming elections and do not want war. But these people are often desperate, for whatever reason, and they believe the dead men might help them. The visitors call the dead "martyrs" and the U.S. forces who killed them "infidels." But they mean that in the nicest way. They see no contradiction. What comes from decades of war and violence: a plea to the dead for help.
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Last update: 8/24/05; 8:18:07 PM .
