The Terrible Cost of Bush Administration Lies About Iraq

"Bush Lied, People Died," the protesters' say. Have you ever wondered precisely how many people die every time George Bush lies?

The Center for Public Integrity assembled a prodigious compilation of 935 out-and-out falsehoods uttered by George Bush and seven senior Administration officials in the two years following September 11, 2001.

Based on the detailing of these lies, Lynn Kendall has done the math: Each Bush lie about Iraq has killed four American soldiers and wounded 31. Each Administration attempt to deceive us killed 86 Iraqi citizens at a bare minimum [1] Every eight lies kill a journalist. Every untruth that passed their lips cost US taxpayers more than half a billion dollars.

I mourned when Slobodan Milosevic died — because it meant that he couldn't be George Bush's cellmate when Bush is finally brought to justice, as I so fervently hoped.

[1] Kendall uses the Iraq Body Count, a summation of deaths reported in media reports, hospital and morgue data, and government figures, which is guaranteed to be undercounting violent death in Iraq. A recent survey published in the New England Journal of Medicine counts 150,000 violent deaths, almost twice the IBC number; a study published earlier in The Lancet estimated 650,000 excess deaths from all causes, including war-related disease and malnutrition, almost 8 times the IBC number.

Bush's Secret Plans for Massive Escalation in Iraq

Hearst Newspapers' Stewart M. Powell is reporting that the Bush Administration is developing plans to double the number of combat troops in Iraq by December:

Bush could double force by Christmas

Stewart M. Powell, Hearst Newspapers Tuesday, May 22, 2007

05-22) 04:00 PDT Washington — The Bush administration is quietly on track to nearly double the number of combat troops in Iraq this year, an analysis of Pentagon deployment orders showed Monday.

The little-noticed second surge, designed to reinforce U.S. troops in Iraq, is being executed by sending more combat brigades and extending tours of duty for troops already there.

The actions could boost the number of combat soldiers from 52,500 in early January to as many as 98,000 by the end of this year if the Pentagon overlaps arriving and departing combat brigades.

Separately, when additional support troops are included in this second troop increase, the total number of U.S. troops in Iraq could increase from 162,000 now to more than 200,000 — a record-high number — by the end of the year.

The numbers were arrived at by an analysis of deployment orders by Hearst Newspapers.

This additional escalation in boots on the ground in Iraq, despite the current overextension of American armed forces, will be obtained by further extensions of duty tours by currently deployed units and overlapping the tours of duty of the units rotated in to take their place. This approach to extending combat manpower is the moral equivalent of a big-box retailer like Wal-Mart juicing its cash flow by delaying payments to its creditors — who have no recourse if they wish to continue doing business with the giant customer on whom their own livelihood depends. It would be the moral equivalent, that is, if it weren't for the fact that more boots on the ground in Iraq means more American deaths for no good purpose except perhaps to gratify the President's ego.

What Bush Says to Americans ... What They Hear

Swopa at Needlenose has this to say about how Bush's skills as a communicator impact American's understanding of the war in Iraq:

It's kind of like the famous "Far Side" cartoon I've posted above — the Shrub-in-Chief goes around shouting, "Democrats are traitors because they want to override my presidential powers and help the terrorists by bringing our troops home from Iraq!"

But all the folks at home hear is "Democrats... want to... bring our troops home from Iraq!"

And they think to themselves, hey, that sounds like a pretty good idea to us.

(via Atrios)

Turkey Attacks Kurds, Prepares to Invade Iraq

The Associated Press's Selcan Hacaoglu is reporting that Turkish military forces have begun large-scale attacks on Kurdish rebels in southeastern Turkey and that Turkish military chief General Yasar Buyukanit has asked the government for authority to enter Iraq in force to fight Kurdish rebels there.

Juan Cole notes a Financial Times report on hightened tension between the Turkish military and Iraqi Kurds, but the FT report quotes Gen. Buyukanit as saying he hadn't yet requested authorization to invade.

The only argument for keeping a US military presence in Iraq that had any credibility at all was the claim that a US pullout would provoke a wider war. Well, the war is just about to get wider regardless.

McCain's Baghdad Market Stroll Evokes Memories of the 1980s

Talking Points Memo's David Kurtz described John McCain's April Fool's Day stroll through a Baghdad marketplace (guarded by a company of heavily-armed US troops, overseen by helicopter gunships) as John McCain's "Dukakis-in-a-tank moment."

Kurtz is somewhat wrong. It wasn't McCain's Dukakis-in-a-tank moment...

... it was his Joe Isuzu moment.

Iranian Action in Shatt al-Arab *Not* a Crisis

Skippy points us to Demosthenes at Shadow of the Hegemon, who in turn points us to Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan. Quoth Ambassador Murray:

British Marines Captured By Iranians

The capture of British Marines by Iran has happened before, then on the Shatt-al-Arab waterway. It will doubtless be used by those seeking to bang the war drum against Iran, though I imagine it will be fairly quickly resolved.

Before people get too carried away, the following is worth bearing in mind. I write as a former Head of the Maritime Section of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.

The Iranians claimed the British soldiers had strayed into Iranian territorial waters. If they had, then the Iranians had every right to detain them for questioning.

The difficulty is that the maritime delimitation in the North West of the Persian Gulf, between Iraq, Kuwait and Iran, has never been resolved. It is not therefore a question of just checking your GPS to see where you are. This is a perfectly legitimate dispute, in which nobody is particularly at fault. Lateral maritime boundaries from a coastal border point are intensely complicated things, especially where islands and coastal banks become a factor.

Disputes are not unusual. I was personally heavily involved in negotiating British maritime boundaries with Ireland, France and Denmark just ten years ago, and not all our own boundaries are resolved even now. There is nothing outlandish about Iranian claims, and we have no right in law to be boarding Iranian or other shipping in what may well be Iranian waters.

The UN Convention on the Law of The Sea carries a heavy presumption on the right of commercial vessels to "innocent passage", especially through straits like Hormuz and in both territorial and international waters. You probably won't read this elsewhere in these jingoistic times but, in international law, we [i.e. the Royal Navy — AB] are very probably in the wrong. As long as the Iranians neither mistreat our Marines nor wilfully detain them too long, they have the right.

I was wondering why this incident wasn't receiving much attention after the news first broke. Ambassador Murray's explanation explains why, and is in fact very reassuring.

Iranian Forces Capture British Sailors

The Associated Press reports frightening news indeed:

(03-23) 10:15 PDT DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) --

Iranian naval vessels on Friday seized 15 British sailors and marines who had boarded a merchant ship in Iraqi waters of the Persian Gulf, British and U.S. officials said. Britain immediately protested the detentions, which come at a time of high tension between the West and Iran.

In London, the British government summoned the Iranian ambassador to the Foreign Office: "He was left in no doubt that we want them back," Britain's Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said after the meeting.

The U.S. Navy, which operates off the Iraqi coast along with British forces, said the British sailors appeared unharmed and that Iran's Revolutionary Guard naval forces were responsible.

Britain's Defense Ministry said the British Navy personnel were "engaged in routine boarding operations of merchant shipping in Iraqi territorial waters," and had completed a ship inspection when they were accosted by the Iranian vessels. The British sailors were assigned to a task force which protects Iraqi oil terminals and maintains security in Iraqi waters under authority of the U.N. Security Council. ...

The U.S. Navy said the incident occurred just outside a long-disputed waterway called the Shatt al-Arab dividing Iraq and Iran. It came as the U.N. Security Council debates further sanctions against Iran over its disputed nuclear program, and amid U.S. allegations that Iran is arming Shiite militias in Iraq. ...

The Britons were in two boats from the frigate H.M.S. Cornwall during a routine smuggling investigation, said the British Defense Ministry.

According to a statement from the U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain and operates jointly with the British forces off the coast of Iraq, the British sailors had just finished inspecting the merchant ship about 10:30 a.m. "when they and their two boats were surrounded and escorted by Iranian vessels into Iranian territorial waters."

The Iranian vessels were apparently not regular Iranian Navy vessels but instead operated by the Republican Guard.

The last thing the region needs is hotheaded yahoos handing George Bush a casus belli on a platter.

PTSD, Women Soldiers, and Photography

The New York Times Magazine's cover story last Sunday was "The Women's War," by Sarah Corbett, about women who had been deployed to Iraq, combat, sexual harassment and rape, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Accompanying the story are pictures of the veterans Corbett interviewed, photographed by Katy Grannan.

Lindsay Beyerstein noticed something interesting about Grannan's photographs: they appeared to Lindsay's eye to use the conventions of pinup photography, incongruously sexualizing the presentation of these disturbed war veterans.

I thought Lindsay was on to something, and I was really interested in what my friend Laurie Edison would have to say. So I got out of my chair with my laptop and showed it to Laurie's blogging partner, our own true Debbie Notkin. They were interested indeed, and the next day they wrote about it together on Body Impolitic. Laurie and Debbie noted the sexualization in some of the pictures, and noted that in others women were represented as taking care of children or working in a kitchen. They add that, quickly googling for images of men accompanying accounts of PTSD, one finds headshots or battlefield scenes.

Lindsay responded with another post. So did Lynn Kendall, who explains the meaning of finding sexiness in PTSD-suffering women.

I don't have much to add here, except that the conversation is as thought-provoking as its subject is disturbing.

Richard Thompson Guest-Blogs at Huffington Post

Guitar god Richard Thompson has a guest blog entry up at the Huffington Post — indeed, it's been up since the beginning of February — complete with an MP3 of his song "Dad's Gonna Kill Me," about western soldiers' experience as occupiers in Iraq.

(via Lindsay Beyerstein)

Let's You and Him Fight

Want to know why the Democrats backed down on Iran in their military spending bill? It's because of pressure from the Israel hawks of AIPAC. The San Francisco Chronicle buried the lede in a report by Edward Epstein on AIPAC's annual policy conference in Washington. Epstein leads out by describing how House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was booed by conferencegoers when she denounced the Iraq war. Scroll down past the booing and past the standing ovation given to Minority Leader John Boehner to find this tidbit:

Aides to top House Democrats said the lobbying group helped force the elimination of a provision that would have required President Bush to return to Congress for a separate vote of authorization before launching any military operation against Iran.

What No Republican Wants to Hear

If [New Hampshire State Republican Party Chair] Fergus Cullen has the courage of his convictions, he should go enlist, because they're having trouble meeting their quota. He's young, he's single and he's healthy. If he needs to know where the recruiters are, call me.

— US Representative Carol Shea-Porter (D-NH)

(Amusing though this is, doesn't urging your political enemy to place himself in mortal danger to fight a pointless and hopeless war under the command of a malign incompetent qualify as eliminationist rhetoric?)

(via Atrios)

House Minority Leader Insists 'Aristotle Was Belgian!'

House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said, with his mouth, on the floor of the House of Representatives, in the course of the debate on the non-binding resolution against escalating troop levels in Iraq, "We didn't start this war; they did."

No doubt the honorable gentleman from Ohio is greatly concerned about the prospect of al Quaeda and the London Underground joining forces. His speech clearly indicates that he thinks its time that America remembered the central message of Buddhism.

<sagan>Billions and Billions....</sagan>

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Federal Reserve sent record payouts of more than $4 billion in cash to Baghdad on giant pallets aboard military planes shortly before the United States gave control back to Iraqis, lawmakers said Tuesday.

The money, which had been held by the United States, came from Iraqi oil exports, surplus dollars from the U.N.-run oil-for-food program and frozen assets belonging to the ousted Saddam Hussein regime.

Bills weighing a total of 363 tons were loaded onto military aircraft in the largest cash shipments ever made by the Federal Reserve, said Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

"Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone? But that's exactly what our government did," the California Democrat said during a hearing reviewing possible waste, fraud and abuse of funds in Iraq.

On December 12, 2003, $1.5 billion was shipped to Iraq, initially "the largest pay out of U.S. currency in Fed history," according to an e-mail cited by committee members.

It was followed by more than $2.4 billion on June 22, 2004, and $1.6 billion three days later. The CPA turned over sovereignty on June 30.

The Reuters report says "more than $4 billion." If the reporter had bothered to add up the reported numbers, perhaps they would have written "$5.5 billion"

In fact, the size of that shipment of cash makes me want to raise my extended pinky to the corner of my mouth, while I repeat, "five point five BILLION DOLLARS" in my best Dr. Evil voice.

As a poker player, I am not immune to what Phil Hellmuth describes as an occupational hazard of poker players: a disregard for cash that borders on contempt. Nonetheless, the idea of pallets and pallets of shrink-wrapped bundles of $100 bills on military transport planes being flown to Baghdad is the stuff of caper-movie dreams. Where is Danny Ocean when we need him? Heck, even the good ship Serenity and her plucky crew ought to have been able to intercept some of that cash.

(via Josh Marshall)

Malaise Speech

When he made his speech about sending more US troops to Iraq this evening, Bonnie Prince Georgie looked as if he's finally realized that, unlike every other failure in his long career of failure, this time there is no one waiting in the wings to bail him out.

That should give his poll standings a shot in the arm!

Sick to My Stomach

This video of American soldiers taunting Iraqi children with a bottle of water has been just about everywhere I go on the Internet, and it seems to make everyone angry.

If you had ever lived for weeks on end in a very hot place where such bottles of water were all there was to drink, if you had ever stood in the back of a pickup truck and handed out such bottles to thirsty strangers, well, then, maybe you might find that this video makes you particularly angry.

Interest-Based Conflict Resolution, Worldwork, and the Strife in Iraq

I - Introduction

The elections held in Iraq on Sunday, January 31, 2005, hold out the promise that a peaceful government and society will emerge from the present violent situation under American occupation. In spite of this promise, though, now that the elections have concluded, the divisions in Iraqi society remain deep, and the cycle of violence continues. (Cole, 2005b)

In this essay I summarize my understanding of the violent conflict in Iraq, and describe how the fulfillment of the promise of peace might be approached by two schools of conflict: interest-based conflict resolution, as advanced by the Harvard Negotiation Project (Fisher et al., 1991); and worldwork, as developed by Arnold Mindell (Mindell, 1995, 2002) and his colleagues.

II - Conflict in Iraq

Three ethnic groups make up the bulk of the population of Iraq: a majority of Shiite Muslims throughout the country but concentrated in the south around the city of Basra; Kurds who live in the northeast, concentrated around the cities of Kirkuk, Mosul, and the border with Turkey; and a minority of Sunni Arabs, some scattered throughout the country, with most concentrated in the so-called "Sunni Triangle" in the vicinity of Baghdad. A small Turkmen minority also inhabits the Kurdish areas.

Prior to the American invasion in 2003, Saddam Hussein headed the Sunni-dominated, secular Ba'ath Party, which controlled the government and maintained power along Stalinist lines. In recent decades, Iraq has fought a bloody but inconclusive war with its neighbor Iran, and suffered a painful and humiliating defeat by the American-led allies in the Gulf War. Saddam Hussein's ruling government bloodily put down uprisings by Iraq's Kurdish and (in the aftermath of the Gulf War) Shiite populations. After the Gulf War, the Kurds had been living in semi-autonomy under the protection of American air power.

The invasion of 2003 quickly led to American control of Baghdad and British control of Basra. Although direct military engagements between the invaders and regular army forces ended at this point, an insurgency built around Ba'athist internal security forces has been waging a "fourth-generation-warfare" guerilla campaign (Hammes, 2004) against the American and British occupation forces and the interim government installed by the occupiers.

Factions working to shape the course of Iraqi society either through political activity or armed struggle include (Cole, 2004):

• Shiites led by Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who is working through the political system for resolution of Iraq's future. Militant Shiite followers of Moqtada Sadr seek to secure their future through force of arms

• Kurdish nationalists, working both politically and militarily for autonomy and/or independence for Iraqi Kurdistan under such leaders as Massoud Barzani and Jalad Talibani.

• Sunni Arabs, feeling disenfranchised by the majority-rule electoral process demanded by Sistani and the Shiite majority, wishing to keep their stake in Iraq's government and natural resources.

• Ba'athists fighting to expel the invaders and restore the secular Iraqi state that existed prior to the invasion.

• Radical Islamists such as Abu Musab al-Zarqawi who are in the short term also fighting to repel the invaders but may also be working for the larger al Qaeda program of renewing Islam and uniting the Islamic world, possibly through restoring the caliphate in Baghdad.

• Americans and their allies. America's stated motivations for the invasion have changed over time, and it is not clear where American interest really lies, beyond access to the output of Iraq's oil fields. American leaders describe their hopes for a liberal secular democracy. America's critics fear the aim is really a colonial possession laid open for economic exploitation.
  

Other countries in the region have a stake in Iraq's future: Israel is concerned about its own security, and viewed the previous Ba'ath regime under Saddam Hussein as a significant threat. Turkey is greatly concerned that an independent Kurdistan on its borders could be used as a staging area for a Kurdish insurgency within its own borders. Iran could well share the same concern, and in addition would be well-disposed to a Shiite-run neighbor.

Modern-day Iraq is the location of the valley of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the birthplace of Western civilization. The sites of the oldest cities in the West are here. The oldest known written story (the Epic of Gilgamesh) was written here, as were the oldest known written laws (the Code of Hammurabi). Baghdad
was the capitol of the empire of the Abbasid caliphs during the flowering of Islamic culture, before its conquest by the Seljuk Turks. Babylon and Baghdad are important locations in contemporary Christian mythology of the Apocalypse and the ending of the world. (Lavender, 2003)

III - Interest-Based Conflict Resolution

Interest-based conflict resolution is an approach to making agreements that is based on rational analysis in consensus reality. Fisher et al. (1991) lay out four principles of reaching good agreements: (1) separate the people from the problem; (2) focus on interests rather than positions; (3) invent options for mutual gain; and (4) insist on objective criteria. The second principle is what gives the interest-based approach its name, and it is the essence of the approach.

Positions are rigid demands, e.g.: "American forces must be withdrawn from Iraq," "The city of Kirkuk and the surrounding oil fields are to be part of the integrated Kurdish canton," or "Iraq must remain a unified country under a single government." It is difficult to shift or change a bargaining position – and perhaps that's the point, to make it difficult to give ground in the negotiation.

To focus on interests is to look at what purpose a supposed negotiating position actually serves: to be free from the intimidation and threat of violence by foreign troops, for example, or to not be cut off from economic resources.

An interest-based approach to the situation in Iraq would involve bringing together representatives of the various factions, persuading them to put aside or work separately on grievances and emotional issues, and encouraging them to work together on finding ways to meet the needs of all the factions together. This requires getting the participation of all the factions.

The proportional representation of the elections, exacerbated by Sunni Arab abstention from voting, appears to have resulted in a parliament dominated by Shiites and Kurds (Cole, 2005a). The parliament may therefore not be the right forum for this purpose. Mediators hoping to help Iraq find a comprehensive solution to its divisions and strife would face a major challenge in getting the Sunni Arab community to constructively engage with the Shiite- and Kurd-controlled new government.

IV - Worldwork

Among the ways worldwork differs from the interest-based approach to conflict two stand out. One is the domains in which the two approaches work; another is the means by which the approaches operate.

The domain of the interest-based approach is consensus reality: it is a very rational framework for dealing with conflict. While its proponents stress the importance of the emotional dimension of conflict and negotiation, solutions are found through analysis, and their value is judged by "objective" criteria. In worldwork, in contrast, participants' emotions, feelings, and dreams are necessary parts of the solution as well as being dimensions of the problem. One might go so far as to say that worldwork is dreaming-based conflict resolution, in contrast to interest- or needs-based conflict resolution.

While worldwork and process work can be brought to the bargaining table as part of participants' or mediators' sensibility (analogous to a metaskill), the primary arena of worldwork is the group process that takes place in an open forum (Mindell, 2002).

(In the jargon of process work, "group process" has two distinct meanings. One is the interaction that unfolds in any group of people, whether the group is negotiators at a bargaining table, worshippers praying in a mosque, passengers on a bus, friends talking over coffee, or any other group of people interacting for any reason. The other meaning of "group process" is the specific format for group interaction practiced by process workers.)

Worldworkers in Iraq would hold and facilitate group processes, seeking to engender in the participants awareness and understanding of each other, across whatever divisions there are between them. Some of these group processes would be open forums, with participation by anyone who cared to attend; others might be facilitated for government officials and/or community leaders. The goal would be to grow awareness among the populace and leadership alike. Worldwork doesn't explicitly work towards comprehensive solutions, so much as it spreads understanding so that the people involved can find such solutions more effectively, solutions that work on dreaming and essential levels as well as in consensus reality.

It would be an ambitious project indeed to get as many as one person in every thousand in Iraq to attend an open forum. If it could be done, though, it could result in a significant change in the country's political and emotional climate.

Another difference between worldwork and the interest-based approach is the attitude towards personality in the course of negotiation. The interest-based approach calls for dealing with emotional and psychological issues separately; even in a formal setting, far outside the group-process format. A process-oriented approach would tend to integrate working on psychological issues with working on ones Fisher, et al. (1991) would call "substantive."

V - Discussion

The interest-based approach of Roger Fisher and William Ury does not stand in opposition to worldwork. The interest-based approach is geared specifically to the negotiating table or the political caucus, focused on reaching agreement. Worldwork aims at sharing understanding on deep, meaningful levels. A worldworker at a bargaining table could do a lot worse than to apply the interest-based approach while cultivating awareness of roles and polarizations, signals, rank, and states of consciousness. Process work adds to the repertoire of the conflict resolution professional.

With respect to Iraq, the sad truth is that outside help is almost certainly not going to be effective, whether it is a cadre of professional mediators or of worldworkers who offers it. Unless the answer to Iraq's troubles comes from Iraq, the many Iraqi peoples have every reason to reject it as being imposed through foreign domination.

References:

Cole, Juan, 2004: "Welcome to the quagmire," Salon, March 19, 2004, http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/03/19/iraq/.

———, 2005a: "Religious Shiites claim victory", Informed Comment, February 2, 2005, http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/religious-shiites-claim-victory-abdul.html.

———, 2005b: "Guerrillas kill 11 as Mosul & Ninevah demonstrate," Informed Comment, February 3, 2005, http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/guerrillas-kill-11-as-mosul-ninevah.html.

Fisher, Roger, William Ury, and Bruce Patton, 1991: Getting to yes: negotiating agreement without giving in, 2nd ed., Penguin Books, New York, New York.

Hammes, Thomas X., 2004: The sling and the stone: on war in the 21st century, Zenith Press, St. Paul, Minnesota.

Lavender, Rick, 2003: "Armageddon? some say war means end is near", The Times, March 30, 2003, Gainesville, Georgia.

Mindell, Arnold, 1995: Sitting in the fire: large group transformation using conflict and diversity, Lao Tse Press, Portland, Oregon.

———, 2002: The deep democracy of open forums, Hampton Roads Publishing Co., Charlottesville, Virginia.

Eyewitness in Fallujah

The BBC has published a report from Fadhil Badrani, their stringer in Fallujah:

A row of palm trees used to run along the street outside my house - now only the trunks are left. The upper half of each tree has vanished, blown away by mortar fire. From my window, I can also make out that the minarets of several mosques have been toppled. There are more and more dead bodies on the streets and the stench is unbearable....

I tried to flee the city last night but I could not get very far. It was too dangerous....

It is hard to know how much people outside Falluja are aware of what is going on here. I want them to know about conditions inside this city - there are dead women and children lying on the streets. People are getting weaker from hunger. Many are dying from their injuries because there is no medical help left in the city whatsoever. Some families have started burying their dead in their gardens.

(via Scratchings)

This Age Wanted Heroes

Shut up. Listen. There is something calling, Paulinka. If you still retain a shred of decency you can hear it – it's a dim terrible voice that's calling – a bass howl, like a cow in a slaughterhouse, but far, far off... It is calling us to action, calling us to stand against the calamity, to spare nothing, not our blood, nor our happiness, nor our lives in the struggle to stop the dreadful day that's burning now in oil flames on the horizon. What makes the voice pathetic is that it doesn't know what kind of people it's reaching. Us. No one hears it, except us. This Age wanted heroes. It got us instead: carefully constructed, but immobile. Subtle, but unfit to take up the burden of the times. It happens. A whole generation of washouts. History says stand up, and we totter and collapse, weeping, moved, but not sufficient. The best of us, lacking. The most decent, not decent enough. The kindest, too cruel, the most loving too full of hate, the wisest, too stupid, the fittest unfit to take up the burden of the times. The Enemy has a voice like seven thunders. What chance did that dim voice ever have? Marvel that anyone heard it instead of wondering why nobody did anything, marvel that we heard it, we who have no right to hear it – NO RIGHT! And it would be a mercy not to. But mercy ... is a thing ... no one remembers its face anymore. The best would be that time would stop right now, in this middling moment of awfulness, before the very worst arrives. We'd all be spared more than telling. That would be best.

(Tony Kushner, A Bright Room Called Day)

Surprise!

John Solomon of the Associated Press sez:

The FBI has begun investigating whether the Pentagon improperly awarded no-bid contracts to Halliburton Co., seeking an interview with a top Army contracting officer and collecting documents from several government offices.

The line of inquiry expands an earlier FBI investigation into whether Halliburton overcharged taxpayers for fuel in Iraq, and it elevates to a criminal matter the election-year question of whether the Bush administration showed favoritism to Vice President Dick Cheney's former company.

Isn't it curious quite how many of the October Surprises are breaking our way?

(Via Talking Points Memo

Dick Cheney Plays Poker

If ESPN's coverage of the WSOP were like Fox News, we's see more final tables like this one:

Poker With Dick Cheney

Transcript of The Editors' regular Saturday-night poker game with Dick Cheney, 6/19/04. Start tape at 12:32 AM.

The Editors: We'll take three cards.

Dick Cheney: Give me one.

Sounds of cards being placed down, dealt, retrieved, and rearranged in hand. Non-commital noises, puffing of cigars.

TE: Fifty bucks.

DC: I'm in. Show 'em.

TE: Two pair, sevens and fives.

DC: Not good enough.

TE: What do you have?

DC: Better than that, that's for sure. Pay up.

TE: Can you show us your cards?

DC: Sure. One of them's a six.

TE: You need to show all your cards. That's the way the game is played. ...

Read the rest

(I've seen this going the rounds on email, with attribution trimmed off. Thanks to 14cyclenotes for the link to the original.)

Steadfast and Unwavering

Here are the editors of The New York Times:

It's hard to imagine how the commission investigating the 2001 terrorist attacks could have put it more clearly yesterday: there was never any evidence of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, between Saddam Hussein and Sept. 11.

Now President Bush should apologize to the American people, who were led to believe something different.

And here is George Bush himself, as quoted by Reuters:

"The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al-Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda," Bush told reporters after a meeting with his Cabinet.

"This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al-Qaeda. We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda," the Republican president said.

It is said among election-watchers that one of the qualities of George Bush admired by his supporters is his determination to be steadfast and unwavering, when others might shift their ground.

Can this quality be taken too far? Here's the Times again:

Mr. Bush is right when he says he cannot be blamed for everything that happened on or before Sept. 11, 2001. But he is responsible for the administration's actions since then. That includes, inexcusably, selling the false Iraq-Qaeda claim to Americans. There are two unpleasant alternatives: either Mr. Bush knew he was not telling the truth, or he has a capacity for politically motivated self-deception that is terrifying in the post-9/11 world.

(Times editorial via Eschaton)

"The Turkey Was for the Centerpiece...."

According to the Washington Post, the turkey platter that George Bush showed off to soldiers during his hit-and-run photo op in Baghdad on Thanksgiving was a decoration, not intended to be served or eaten.

In the most widely published image from his Thanksgiving day trip to Baghdad, the beaming president is wearing an Army workout jacket and surrounded by soldiers as he cradles a huge platter laden with a golden-brown turkey.

The bird is so perfect it looks as if it came from a food magazine, with bunches of grapes and other trimmings completing a Norman Rockwell image that evokes bounty and security in one of the most dangerous parts of the world.

But as a small sign of the many ways the White House maximized the impact of the 21/2-hour stop at the Baghdad airport, administration officials said yesterday that Bush picked up a decoration, not a serving plate.

Officials said they did not know the turkey would be there or that Bush would pick it up. A contractor had roasted and primped the turkey to adorn the buffet line, while the 600 soldiers were served from cafeteria-style steam trays, the officials said. They said the bird was not placed there in anticipation of Bush's stealthy visit, and military sources said a trophy turkey is a standard feature of holiday chow lines.

Deeper in the article are choice paragraphs that reveal perhaps too much about the patronizing contempt for the American public held by Bush's handlers:

White House officials do not deny that they craft elaborate events to showcase Bush, but they maintain that these events are designed to accurately dramatize his policies and to convey qualities about him that are real.

"This was effective, because it captured something about the president that people know is true, that he really cares about the soldiers and gets emotional when he sees them," Mary Matalin, a former administration official, said about the trip to Baghdad. "You have to figure out how to capture the Bush we know, even if it doesn't come through in a speech situation or a press conference. He regularly rejects anything that is not him."

To tell the truth, we need to lie. Isn't that rather like destroying the village in order to save it?

(via Talking Points Memo)

Whose Journalists are Nastier: Britain or the USA?

Kevin Drum at Calpundit is uncharacteristically upset about the Independent's headline for their story on Bush's hit-and-run visit to Baghdad yesterday: The Turkey Has Landed.

But honestly, writes Kevin, what were they thinking? As the cover of Counterpunch or some Bay Area alt weekly, sure. But on the front page of an allegedly serious broadsheet?

You ain't seen nothin' yet. Newsday, Long Island's daily tabloid, puts the Independent to shame for partisan headlining:

AWOL on Air Force One.

("AWOL" is the sobriquet that Skippy the Bush Kangaroo is promoting for our commander-in-thief, as a reminder of Bush's desertion from his National Guard unit.)

Who would have thunk that a sober paper like Newsday would out-nasty a feisty British political paper?

(Thanks to Skippy for the Newsday headline)

Strategic Hamlet

U.S. forces seal off Saddam's birthplace, suspected base of assaults on coalition forces

KATARINA KRATOVAC, Associated Press Writer
Friday, October 31, 2003
©2003 Associated Press

Facing an increasing tide of attacks, American soldiers Friday cordoned off the village where Saddam Hussein was born, suspecting this dusty farming community of being a secret base for funding and planning assaults against coalition forces.

"There are ties leading to this village, to the funding and planning of attacks against U.S. soldiers," said Lt. Col. Steve Russell, a battalion commander with the 4th Infantry Division, which is based in nearby Tikrit.

The operation began before dawn with hundreds of U.S. troops and Iraqi police. They erected a fence of barbed wire, stretched over wooden poles, and laid spirals of razor wire around the village, a cluster of mud-and-brick homes set in orchards of pears and pomegranates about six miles south of Tikrit.

Checkpoints were set up at all roads leading into the village of about 3,500 residents, many of them Saddam's clansmen and distant relatives.

It appeared the operation was not aimed at catching Saddam but at identifying those who live here and making sure that outsiders are quickly spotted. All adults were required to register for identity cards that U.S. officials said would allow them "controlled access" in and out of the village.

(Thanks to The Whiskey Bar for the story tip)

Got It in One!

In Baghdad Burning last Friday, we find a quote from Paul Bremer, the US satrap in Iraq, that surfaced on the BBC:

“[Iraq] is not a country in chaos and Baghdad is not a city in chaos.”

Where is this guy living? asks Riverbend, the blog's author. Is he even in the same time zone???

In fact he's not. Paul Bremer, the man charged with restoring order and democracy to Iraq, is on vacation in Vermont.

Iraqi Cards

Bill Chen writes on the ba-poker mailing list:

Just saw on CNN here that the three of hearts has been caught. I know we caught the queen of spades and several hearts recently. Know how close we are to shooting the moon?

We Live in the Future

Patrick Nielsen Hayden points us to this picture of an Iraqi in Basra handing a flower to a British soldier. The picture is as heartwarming as it is transgressive. Did you ever think you would live to see the day?

San Francisco, March 20, 2003 (Part II)

The restaurant Debbie proposed was the Magic Grill, at the corner of Ellis and Mason. As we walked up Market, we saw eight police officers mounted on horses, passing us in the middle of the street. The seemed to be a bad sign to us - mounted police are serious trouble in crowd situations, should things get violent.

We got to the restaurant a few minutes after 10. The TV was on, above the cash register, and was showing CNN's coverage of the newly begun bombing attack on Baghdad. We ordered breakfast, and ate it, talking about what we had seen and what it meant. I said that, based on what I had seen along Market Street, the size of the protest was larger than I had dared to hope. Deb expressed surprise at this. She marveled, instead, at how long it was lasting.

Debbie works in an office at Sixth and Market, and she had always planned to spend at least some time at her desk that day. I wasn't sure whether I would stick around in the city or head for home, but I would let her know what I wound up doing (and whether I got into trouble).

We left the restaurant and walked towards Market. The intersection at Sixth was open to cross-traffic. We spotted the mounted police again, coming back down the street. They turned off onto Fifth Street. Debbie guessed that they were carrying out some kind of flanking maneuver, and would be coming up on another street into the press of a crowd holding an intersection, perhaps the one that was gathered where Fourth, Geary and Kearney streets connected at Market.

We hurried to that intersection, anxious about possible police violence. The situation there was calm, people holding the street, A line of a few police officers presenting a token barrier between the street and the sidewalk. I kept looking down Fourth Street, waiting for the appearance of the riders, but they never came.

Debbie said goodbye, and headed off to her office, while I remained watching the development of the situation at this intersection. A phalanx of police jogged up along Fourth Street, then deployed into the intersection, herding people with their riot sticks held in both hands. They were not gentle. One of the people was a man carrying a large video camera on his shoulder. "You can't do this!" he screamed at the police. "I'm a member of the press! Brutality! Brutality!"

The cameraman, once on the sidewalk, continued to make a scene. "I'm calling your boss and telling him what you did," he yelled. He then pulled out a cell phone and made a show of calling the Hall of Justice and complaining about the treatment he had received. He described himself repeatedly as a "member of the press" but never identified what, if any, media organization employed him or ran his reports.

A man threaded his way through the crowd; he wore large stickers on his chest, back and arm that showed a red cross and the word "MEDICAL". He shouted, "Where is the person who was injured? I'm a physician!" A woman waved; she was standing on the street side of the BART station entrance in front of the Old Navy storefront. The medic squeezed between the people and went to take care of her. I couldn't see at all clearly what the trouble was, but he eventually tied an ice pack to her arm and led her out.

The police commenced the long, tedious process of arresting the people sitting in the streets, cable-tying their hands behind their backs and leading or carrying them away. (By now, the hard-core passive resisters were long since arrested, and most arrested demonstrators were led away.)

The crowd applauds the demonstrators as they are taken away, one by one. And the crowd taunts and jeers at the police: "How does it feel to work for the most corrupt police department in America?" (Not hardly; not even the most corrupt in the state!) "We don't have no steak fajitas!" (referring to a violent incident last November and its subsequent bungled coverup, which resulted for indictments for senior police leadership). "You guys are worse than the cops in New York! I'm from New York, and I know!" (Tompkins Square Park? Abner Louima? Give us a break.)

Another bunch of demonstrators came walking down Market Street to the intersection. They approached the line of police that separated the sit-in being arrested from the open street. A person with a bullhorn led the rest in chanting slogans, and also announced, "Come to Civic Center at noon. Rally at noon at Civic Center." After a couple of minutes facing the line of police, they withdrew.

The last sitting demonstrators were removed, and the police opened the intersection. "Come to Civic Center" people called. I checked the time on my cell phone; it was noon. I headed for Civic Center Plaza to check out the rally.

I followed the streets north of Market to get there, in a bit of a zig-zag. While walking along Taylor Street towards Market, in the heart of the Tenderloin, I passed two police officers wearing not riot gear but regular uniforms. They appeared to be walking a regular beat, talking to people on the sidewalk, sticking their heads into bars to see what was happening, and so on. I found it oddly reassuring to see that routine community policing was happening while the response in force to the demonstrations was taking place.

Civic Center held a crowd of people, but it wasn't jammed. I found a place to sit on the grass, near where a Buddhist peace group was sitting in meditation. I was impressed that they could do so, for the speechmaking through a PA system was remarkably loud, echoing off of the surrounding buildings. I rested for a while, half listening, half just enjoying being off my feet.

At 12:45 PM I decided that I had been in the sun long enough, and that nothing was really happening here. I walked out of the plaza towards the Civic Center BART station. The Asian Art Museum, newly reestablished in the old library building, appeared to be having some sort of opening celebration: there was a line of well-dressed people waiting to get inside. The sight made for an odd juxtaposition with the anarchy of the streets and the plaza.

As I walked toward the BART station, my phone rang: It was Debbie, telling me that "something [was] happening at Sixth and Market" and that she going down from her office to look at it closely. I told her that I'd try to meet her there.

Once on Market, heading down towards Sixth Street, I encountered some friends: Laurie, Shayin, and Marlene headed the other way. I told them where I was heading and what Debbie had told me about it. Laurie told me that they knew something was happening there, and that they might be checking it out later. We separated.

As I was walking along the sidewalk, a phalanx of police jogged down Market Street, passing me and going through the Seventh Street intersection, presumably going to whatever was happening at Sixth. I hurried after them. As I approached the corner, I called Debbie. She told me that the police had just told the people in the street that they weren't allowed to leave, and were getting set up to arrest them. The police I had seen moving ahead were standing in formation just to the southwest of the intersection.

As I made my way along the sidewalk on the northwest side of Market, approaching the corner, the police standing in formation suddenly deployed. A line of them cut across the sidewalk behind me. An officer shouted "You are not allowed to leave here!" I was caught between two lines of police with no apparent way out of the trap in which I found myself. I virtually certain that I had just been arrested.

I called Debbie once more, and quickly explained my situation. She was philosophical. I got off the phone and waited. A woman tried to walk past the police who had cut us off from the rest of the sidewalk; they gently but firmly barred her way. There was an officer wearing a cap rather than a riot helmet, holding a bullhorn — perhaps a lieutenant. I was nerving myself to approach him to ask him if I and the other people here were in fact under arrest, when he turned and pointed up Golden Gate Street, and announced through his bullhorn that we could leave the way he was pointing if we did not wish to be arrested. I took advantage of the reprieve, and walked up Golden Gate. I called Debbie yet again, and told her of my escape.

I turned onto Jones street and walked once more towards Market, which I was able to cross. I made my way yet again towards Sixth Street. Another double line of police prevented access to the intersection. I could see Debbie on the opposite corner. I called her once more, and told her I could see her, and waved at her. She said she thought she could get to me. She crossed Sixth by moving southeast past the end of the police line, but she couldn't get past the double cordon on the south corner.

The police finished taking the handful of sitting demonstrators into custody, though, and the double cordon suddenly lifted. Debbie and I were reunited. We talked about what had been happening and what each of us had seen. Laurie, Marlene, and Shayin joined us. We talked and watched the scene for some minutes. The police formed up into phalanxes. Some jogged away, others waited for their next deployment.

That next deployment came suddenly: a line across Market Street facing southwest. More police showed up to join them, filling in the line, until the officers were standing shoulder to shoulder.

The line of officers begain to advance up Market. We ducked into a storefront to get out of their way. The store's bemused owner, came up front and looked out at what was happening.

The line of police reached the storefront. The officer at the very end told the shopkeeper to drop his store's shutter. We couldn't stay there, so we got back onto the sidewalk trying to hurry to stay ahead of the police sweep. It seemed like something bad was going to happen.

What happened was this: the rally in Civic Center Plaza had evidently ended, and a significant crowd of people had marched through UN Plaza and had turned onto Market Street, heading straight towards the line of police, who were now holding position. At the head of the marchers was a line of safety monitors wearing day-glow open-weave vests, like those worn by road construction crews. The marchers came up to the police line and halted. There was lots of noise: chanted slogans, drumbeats, whistles, horns blown, cheering. But there was tension in the air, and it grew thicker with each passing minute.

I looked up Market Street and tried to guess how many people were there. My best (untrained) estimate was something on the order of three thousand marchers.

The tension grew. This was the kind of situation that could end in violence, either by a cop losing his cool and starting swinging, or by a demonstrator losing his cool and throwing things at the cops. It didn't look good, and we were right in the middle of it.

To my complete and total surprise, and to the discomfiture of the police, the marchers turned around and withdrew! I have never seen anything like it. The line of safety monitors quickly ran to the side and towards the other end of the march. Space opened up between the marchers' rear and the line of police. Most importantly, though, the thread of serious violence had dissipated.

After a couple of minutes of confusion, the police began to advance once more. The marchers had come to another halt — perhaps they had encountered another line of police in the other direction (I never saw one way or the other). People milled around, confused. Debbie and I and our friends thought it would be a very good idea to get out of there, if we could. We made our way through the crowd across Market to Jones Street, and went around back up to Sixth.

Debbie wanted to go back to her office briefly to pick up her things, and I went with her. I sat on a couch by her cubicle while she attended to a last-minute job that had been left on her desk. When she had finished, we went once more into the unruly streets.

It was more of the same — demonstrators holding intersections, police arriving, demonstrators being arrested, demonstrators moving on to another intersection — but the energy level seemed to be flagging. Or perhaps it was our own energy level. We walked towards Civic Center and watched for a while as the troop of mounted police we had been seeing all day faced across McAllister Street, confronting a line of demonstrators lined up across Leavenworth. That situation was actually quite calm, so we moved back towards Market. Another group arrest was in progress at Jones and Market. We watched as a young man tried to run through the line of police blocking the curb. An officer grabbed him. The sergeant shouted, "Let him go, let him go!" and the officer released the young man. The young man seemed determined to get into trouble, as rather than fleeing he went back into the intersection.
Two officers detained him, and he made a substantial fuss. "I'm not resisting, I'm not resisting," he yelled as he was marched along, his hands cuffed behind his back.

Our own energies were flagging. It was 3:00 PM, and we had both seen enough. Supposedly there was to be a rally at Hallidie Plaza, where Powell Street meets Market, at 5:00 PM, but I had been on my feet for eight hours, and we were both ready to go home. We made our way to the BART station without incident, and took the next train.

San Francisco, March 20, 2003 (Part I)

My partner Debbie and I left our house at 6:30 AM to walk to the Ashby BART station, and immediately encountered neighbors from up our street, also obviously heading for demonstrations. We walked and talked together, but just a little bit too slowly for we missed the 6:40 train, and had to wait fifteen minutes for the next one. The train was not full. A significant fraction of the passengers were obvious demonstrators.

We got out at the Embarcadero station, and were on the street at about 7:15. We walked along Market Street towards where Sutter and Sansome streets intersected. We passed a line of empty Muni buses as we approached, a sign that the street blockages had already begun.

We had chosen this intersection because acquaintances of ours, fellow participants in a weekly workshop that had met the night before, had told us that this was where their affinity group was acting. And there they were: two lines of people seated in the street, their arms encased in tubes connecting them. More people sat in the street, blocking access to the chained lines of demonstrators. A line of police officers in full riot gear stood between the sidewalk and the demonstrators, but there were not enough of them to deny access to the street in anything more than a token manner.

Another two lines blocked off the other end of the intersection. The people we knew were chained across Market Street in the further line, at the southwest end of the intersection, and it was to them that we made our way.

Anger was in the air, and tension - the authorities could not possibly remove this human obstruction without either the cooperation of the chained demonstrators or using some sort of heavy equipment. But it was also festive. A brass marching band, about a dozen strong, came by and performed. A lot of people had drums and whistles. People in the open intersection danced to the music.

The organizers had set up a loudspeaker, and a young woman was speaking to the crowd through a wireless microphone. It was mostly slogan-chanting: "Stop the war against Iraq; the world says no!" "The People united will never be divided!" (I had always heard this in the past as "defeated", not "divided".) "Ain't no power like the power of the people, 'cause the power of the people don't stop!" and so on.

At the other end of the intersection, where the demonstrators appeared to come from one of the more hard-core radical elements behind the organized anti-war movement, a common slogan was "No justice, no peace!" I thought this was the wrong slogan for the moment. This particular slogan usually is meant as a kind of bargaining threat: if you don't give us justice, we won't give you peace. At this moment, though, peace is one of our demands. The most charitable interpretation of the slogan now is one of description of our predicament, in that we have neither justice nor peace; but I don't think this is what the chanters had in mind. These demonstrators had placed a sign reading "Free Palestine", with a Palestinan flag design, n the front window of the empty bus at the head of the queue of stopped buses.

Looking up and down Market Street, I could see blockages at other intersections, in both directions. The woman with the microphone told of closures at Van Ness and Fell streets, at the corner of Powell and Bush (this inspired a mocking cheer), and at the Federal Building. It began to be clear that more was happening than in this particular location. As yet, I had no real indication of how big things had gotten, as a demonstrator's announcement had to be considered hearsay, little better than rumor.

A phalanx of police officers arrived in formation from the southeast along Market. The woman with the microphone invited the people on the sidewalk to show their support by standing in the street by the chained and seated demonstrators. I got off the sidewalk in response, but Debbie asked me something I couldn't hear. I returned to the sidewalk to speak with her; she wanted to know what I wanted from her in case I was arrested. I answered, "Bail me out...," and we began to discuss the implications.

The police suddenly moved into the intersection, along the edges at the sidewalk. They quickly and effectively cleared the street of people, herding them with their riot sticks held in both hands like bumpers, leaving only the chained demonstrators and the people seated alongside to shield them.

One officer lost control, and began swinging his riot stick, beating the person who was trying not to be herded. The crowd roared. People took snapshots and recorded the beating with video cameras. I began to shout at the offending officer and the other police, "The whole world is watching! The whole world is watching!" The crowd took up the chant. The beating victim escaped to the sidewalk. The police fell into position in lines on either side of the street, along the sidewalk, to stand between the crowd and the seated and chained demonstrators. Out of breath, I stopped chanting, and discovered that the woman with the microphone had taken it up and was continuing to chant along with the crowd. The moment passed, and the situation evolved into the next phase of quiet stability.

Now began the long, slow process of arresting people and taking down the chain of demonstrators. People on the sidewalks were deemed legal; people in the street were violating the law and considered under arrest. A fire engine approached along Market from the southeast. Another phalanx of police in riot gear marched onto the scene. The police took one demonstrator at a time out of the group, secured his or her hands with plastic cable-tie handcuffs, and walk or drag him or her to the holding pen that had been set up on the corner where Sansome met Market. Many of the demonstrators resisted passively, requiring that at least two officers drag them - typically a third would carry the demonstrator's feet.

Every time a demonstrator was walked or dragged away, the crowd applauded. I remarked to Debbie that it was rather like the final table of a major poker tournament, where the players are applauded by those remaining, and the spectators, as they bust out.

At length, the unattached, seated demonstrators had been hauled off, and firefighters wielded saws to cut the pipes and chains joining the rest. We were afraid, as we watched, that someone's arm would be cut by the saws, but both the demonstrators and the authorities were in fact quite careful. The pipes were long enough that there was plenty of room to cut without getting near anyone's arm; and the firefighters took advantage of this. One by one, the pipes were cut, and then the chains inside them, and another demonstrator was taken away. "This is what democracy looks like!" chanted the woman with the microphone, as the saw cut through the pipes, orange sparks spraying onto the street.

The woman with the microphone, who had continued to speak, chant slogans, and sing to the crowd while all this was going on, remarked on how nice it was of the police to hold the intersection for us, doing a much better job than we could ever do.

Debbie chatted with one of the police officers in the line in front of us on the sidewalk. He said he was actually having a good time, that he was glad everyone was behaving themselves and being respectful. (He must have a thick skin, because he surely heard the anti-cop jeering that came from time to time from the crowd on the sidewalk.) He didn't like it, though, he said, when people had to be dragged away instead of walking.

The line of demonstrators was completely removed at last, and the police and firefighters moved on to the twin chains at the other end of the intersection. There the chained protesters lay flat on their backs to interfere with the cutting procedure.

And while all this was going on, people had gathered the street outside of the police line where the arrests were taking place. When the last chained protesters were removed, the police lined up to sweep the street and began to advance. The people in the streets fell back and returned to the sidewalk.

At this point it was about 9:00 AM. Debbie and I were both feeling like we should see what else was going on, so we walked up along Market Street, towards the next occupied intersection, at Montgomery and Post streets. There, the streets had been obstructed with overturned trash cans and newspaper racks. A group of six demonstrators had their hands linked together in the same pipes into a ring, and were dancing in a circle in the middle of the street. A planter holding a small evergreen tree had been dragged into the middle of the street. At Sutter and Sansome there had been no evidence of blocked traffic, except for the empty buses. Here, however, Montgomery Street was filled with cars trapped by the action, waiting for the time that the intersection could be cleared and they could drive on through. Debbie and I encountered our friends Laura and Michelle, and we all discussed what we had been doing and seeing.

Further up the street, where Geary, Kearny, and Third streets met, a large truck stretched all the way across Market Street. We couldn't tell if it were trapped there, or whether the driver had deliberately stopped it there as part of the action. We walked up to see, and saw that the police had just finished clearing obstructions, and the truck was ready to go. The driver looked philosophical, still no indication of whether he was there by choice or by circumstance. As he drove off, some of the people on the sidewalk shouted to the driver, "You are a hero!" indicating that they, at least, thought that he had blocked the street intentionally.

After walking back towards Montgomery, where the ring of chained people had disappeared but protestors still held the intersection, we parted company with Laura and Michelle. Debbie proposed having breakfast at a coffee shop she liked, and I liked the idea. The others demurred at the idea of spending money in the city on a day that was supposed to be anything but "business as usual". We each draw our own lines where we think they belong.

Protest creates gridlock on SF streets

Excellent coverage in the SF Gate of the demonstrations and direct actions in San Francisco on the morning after the beginning of the war, written by Nanette Asimov, Kevin Fagan, Jim Herron Zamora, Matthew B. Stannard, Chronicle Staff Writers:

12:30 P.M. PST -- Waves of anti-war protesters made good on their promise to disrupt downtown San Francisco this morning, as they occupied intersections throughout the Financial District, South of Market and Civic Center, preventing buses and cars from navigating the streets.

Demonstrations began with sunrise and heated up rapidly after 7 a.m., as groups of protesters fanned out to locations they had selected over the previous several weeks.

As of 3:00 PM, protest actions were still going on, and portions of Market Street remained closed to traffic. Organizers' leaflets promised more rallies and actions continuing around the clock.

Eyewitness report to follow.

Waiting for the 6,000-Pound Precision-Guided Shoe to Drop

My sense of how the world works tells me that the attack will begin at or shortly after 5:00 PM PST today. The air assault for the Gulf War began at about 1:00 or 2:00 PM PST, as I recall, but despite the Shrub's bluster I don't see any percentage in commencing operations earlier than the expiration of the deadline, even though Saddam Hussein has already rejected the Shrub's ultimatum.

The lesson I personally learned from the Gulf War is that CNN Is Not My Friend. One can make oneself completely crazy by compulsively following the news coverage waiting for the war to start, not to mention the continuous coverage of the actual combat, all of it full of fear and alarm but conveying only the sketchiest factual information. But I want to know when the attack begins.

My compromise right now is to keep KPFA on the radio. Bless them, they have been playing their regular music programming (although now, at the noon hour, they've put on the radio equivalent of a talking-heads show). I'm confident that they will give me the information I need when I need it, but not make me crazy in the meanwhile.

There's nothing quite like kicking ass in a poker game to get your spirits up. I spent about forty-five minutes on PokerStars, playing in a couple of high-low-split seven-card stud games, at the 1-2 and 2-4 level. One rocket scientist in the 1-2 game called me a "fool" for jamming with my low lock into an obvious high hand when we were head-up. (What part of "freeroll" don't you understand?) And while he was carrying on about how I was only feeding the rake Albert Einstein went to town with the starting hand of (7d 10c) 7c. He backed into his flush to win half a pot; I was completely out of the hand. With enemies like these, who needs friends?

But it was in the 2-4 game that made my hour. I was dealt a pair of aces with a suited baby kicker in two consecutive hands. The first time, my aces were hidden, and I got three-bet by the bring-in when I reraised another ace's raise. I capped the third-street betting, and I caught another low card in my suit on fourth, and got four bets into the pot from the other three players. The outcome of the hand was that I made my flush and an eight low, but a better low took the low half, so I had to settle for doubling up. The second time, it was the same story, except that I kept catching low, finishing with a single pair of aces (losing to two pair) but a 65 for low, splitting another huge pot. Yeah, I got lucky, but the real luck was getting that kind of action for my good hands. Between the two games, I made $120 in three quarters of an hour — small beer at real stakes, but at the 2-4 level it's a pretty serious win.

So I logged off and went downstairs to change the laundry, and by the time I came upstairs again I was really feeling my oats, feeling my strength. These are dark times, and I'm going to need all the strength I can get, once the storm breaks. Why bother joining what sounds to me like a chorus of impotent liberal dittoheads who trash Nader voters and planners of direct actions? I can express my rage productively, at the poker table!

The Lamps Are Going Out

The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.

(Sir Edward Grey, British Foreign Secretary, August 3, 1914)