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iraq
The first two posts are from Riverbend, a young Iraqi woman blogger. She has increasingly longer periods of time between posts which worries her readers but she is still well, physically, as of the last post.
The Rape of Sabrine...
by Riverbend
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It takes a lot to get the energy and resolution to blog lately. I guess it’s mainly because just thinking about the state of Iraq leaves me drained and depressed. But I had to write tonight.
As I write this, Oprah is on Channel 4 (one of the MBC channels we get on Nilesat), showing Americans how to get out of debt. Her guest speaker is telling a studio full of American women who seem to have over-shopped that they could probably do with fewer designer products. As they talk about increasing incomes and fortunes, Sabrine Al-Janabi, a young Iraqi woman, is on Al Jazeera telling how Iraqi security forces abducted her from her home and raped her. You can only see her eyes, her voice is hoarse and it keeps breaking as she speaks. In the end she tells the reporter that she can’t talk about it anymore and she covers her eyes with shame.
She might just be the bravest Iraqi woman ever. Everyone knows American forces and Iraqi security forces are raping women (and men), but this is possibly the first woman who publicly comes out and tells about it using her actual name. Hearing her tell her story physically makes my heart ache. Some people will call her a liar. Others (including pro-war Iraqis) will call her a prostitute- shame on you in advance.
I wonder what excuse they used when they took her. It’s most likely she’s one of the thousands of people they round up under the general headline of ‘terrorist suspect’. She might have been one of those subtitles you read on CNN or BBC or Arabiya, “13 insurgents captured by Iraqi security forces.” The men who raped her are those same security forces Bush and Condi are so proud of- you know- the ones the Americans trained. It’s a chapter right out of the book that documents American occupation in Iraq: the chapter that will tell the story of 14-year-old Abeer who was raped, killed and burned with her little sister and parents.
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Maliki's Reaction...
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I hate the media and I hate the Iraqi government for turning this atrocity into another Sunni-Shia debacle- like it matters whether Sabrine is Sunni or Shia or Arab or Kurd (the Al Janabi tribe is composed of both Sunnis and Shia). Maliki did not only turn the woman into a liar, he is rewarding the officers she accused. It's outrageous and maddening.
No Iraqi woman under the circumstances- under any circumstances- would publicly, falsely claim she was raped. There are just too many risks. There is the risk of being shunned socially. There is the risk of beginning an endless chain of retaliations and revenge killings between tribes. There is the shame of coming out publicly and talking about a subject so taboo, she and her husband are not only risking their reputations by telling this story, they are risking their lives.
No one would lie about something like this simply to undermine the Baghdad security operation. That can be done simply by calculating the dozens of dead this last week. Or by writing about the mass detentions of innocents, or how people are once again burying their valuables so that Iraqi and American troops don't steal them.
It was less than 14 hours between Sabrine's claims and Maliki's rewarding the people she accused. In 14 hours, Maliki not only established their innocence, but turned them into his own personal heroes. I wonder if Maliki would entrust the safety his own wife and daughter to these men.
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What Iraq Tells Us About Ourselves
By Col. W. Patrick Lang, Jr.
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In the four years since the United States invaded Iraq, it’s become clear that our campaign there has gone terribly awry. We invaded Iraq with too few troops; we destroyed the Iraqi civil administration and military without having a suitable instrument of government ready in the wings; we expelled from public employment anyone with a connection, no matter how tenuous, to the Baath Party—which included most people who could be described as human infrastructure for Iraq. The list of errors goes on and on. Even the vice president acknowledges that “mistakes were made” (although, presumably, not by him).
But how did the highly educated, wealthy, and powerful American people make such a horrendous, catastrophic series of blunders? As Pogo, the cartoon opossum, once famously said, “We have met the enemy and he is us!” Yes, that’s right: We, the American people—not the Bush administration, nor the hapless Iraqis, nor the meddlesome Iranians (the new scapegoat)—are the root of the problem.
It’s woven into our cultural DNA. Most Americans mistakenly believe that when we say that “all men are created equal,” it means that all people are the same. Behind the “cute” and “charming” native clothing, the “weird” marriage customs, and the “odd” food of other cultures, all humans are yearning for lifestyles and futures that will be increasingly unified as time and globalization progress. That is what Tom Friedman seems to have meant when he wrote that “the world is flat”—that technological and economic change are driving humankind toward a future of cultural sameness. In other words, whatever differences of custom and habit that still exist between peoples will pass away soon and be replaced by a world culture rather like that of the United States in the 21st century.
To be blunt, our foreign policy tends to be predicated on the notion that everyone wants to be an American. In the months leading up to the start of the Iraq War, it was common to hear seemingly educated people say that the Arabs, particularly Iraqis, had no way of life worth saving and would be better off if all “that old stuff”—their traditions, social institutions, and values—were done away with, and soon. The U.S. Armed Forces and U.S. Agency for International Development would be the sharp swords of modernization in the Middle East.
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Rice tells Iraq U.S. patience is limited
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Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed support for a nascent Baghdad security plan during an unannounced visit to the capital Saturday, but she reminded Iraq's leaders that Americans were growing increasingly frustrated with the unyielding lethality and cost of the war.
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This is so typical of the delusional leadership we have. What are the Iraqis going to do? We created this mess, not the Iraqis. Imperiously delusional.
David Horsey
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The British retreat from Iraq brings peril for U.S. troops
Vice President Cheney says the British are leaving southern Iraq because things are going so well. In the real world, Basra is a mess.
by Juan Cole
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Tony Blair's announcement that Britain would withdraw 1,600 troops from southern Iraq by May, and aim for further significant withdrawals by the end of 2007, drew praise from U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney. "What I see," said Cheney, "is an affirmation of the fact that there are parts of Iraq where things are going pretty well."
In reality, southern Iraq is a quagmire that has defeated all British efforts to impose order, and Blair was pressed by his military commanders to get out altogether -- and quickly. The departure has only been slowed, for the moment, by the pleas of Bush administration officials like Cheney. And far from the disingenuously upbeat prognosis offered by the vice president, the British withdrawal could spell severe trouble for both the Iraqi government and for U.S. troops in that country.
The British helped provide the security that allowed private supply convoys bearing fuel, food and ammunition to travel from Kuwait up through Shiite-held territory to the U.S. military's forward operating bases in and around Baghdad and in Anbar province. Col. Pat Lang, a retired senior officer with the Defense Intelligence Agency, has pointed out that if Shiite militias began attacking those trucks, American troops in the center-north of the country would become sitting ducks for the Sunni Arab guerrillas.
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US commanders admit: we face a Vietnam-style collapse
Elite officers in Iraq fear low morale, lack of troops and loss of political will
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An elite team of officers advising the US commander, General David Petraeus, in Baghdad has concluded that they have six months to win the war in Iraq - or face a Vietnam-style collapse in political and public support that could force the military into a hasty retreat.
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book recommendation
Imperial Life in the Emerald City:
Inside Iraq's Green Zone
by Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Even though I should know better, part of me wants to believe that those involved in occupation of Iraq have at least just the teensiest, weensiest bit of a clue. Silly me. The book can boiled down to one word: clusterfuck. Here is the website for the book:
Imperial Life in the Emerald City:
Inside Iraq's Green Zone
Which includes an excerpt:
Excerpt
Chapter 1
Versailles on the Tigris
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UNLIKE ALMOST ANYWHERE else in Baghdad, you could dine at the cafeteria in the Republican Palace for six months and never eat hummus, flatbread, or a lamb kebab. The fare was always American, often with a Southern flavor. A buffet featured grits, cornbread, and a bottomless barrel of pork: sausage for breakfast, hot dogs for lunch, pork chops for dinner. There were bacon cheeseburgers, grilled-cheese-and-bacon sandwiches, and bacon omelets. Hundreds of Iraqi secretaries and translators who worked for the occupation authority had to eat in the dining hall. Most of them were Muslims, and many were offended by the presence of pork. But the American contractors running the kitchen kept serving it. The cafeteria was all about meeting American needs for high-calorie, high-fat comfort food.
None of the succulent tomatoes or the crisp cucumbers grown in Iraq made it into the salad bar. U.S. government regulations dictated that everything, even the water in which hot dogs were boiled, be shipped in from approved suppliers in other nations. Milk and bread were trucked in from Kuwait, as were tinned peas and carrots. The breakfast cereal was flown in from the United States–made-in-the-USA. Froot Loops and Frosted Flakes at the breakfast table helped boost morale.
When the Americans had arrived, there was no cafeteria in the palace. Saddam Hussein had feasted in an ornate private dining room and his servants had eaten in small kitchenettes. The engineers assigned to transform the palace into the seat of the American occupation chose a marble-floored conference room the size of a gymnasium to serve as the mess hall. Through its gilded doors, Halliburton, the defense contractor hired to run the palace, brought in dozens of tables, hundreds of stacking chairs, and a score of glass-covered buffets. Seven days a week, the Americans ate under Saddam's crystal chandeliers.
Red and white linens covered the tables. Diners sat on chairs with maroon cushions. A pleated skirt decorated the salad bar and the dessert table, which was piled high with cakes and cookies. The floor was polished after every meal.
A mural of the World Trade Center adorned one of the entrances. The Twin Towers were framed within the outstretched wings of a bald eagle. Each branch of the U.S. military–the army, air force, marines, and navy–had its seal on a different corner of the mural. In the middle were the logos of the New York City Police and Fire departments, and atop the towers were the words thank god for the coalition forces & freedom fighters at home and abroad.
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Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Inside Iraq’s Green Zone
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RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN: This is a book that attempts to shine a light on a whole other set of fiascos in the American effort to occupy Iraq. You know, we all know now about the disastrous consequences of failing to send enough troops there to stabilize Iraq after the U.S. invasion, the Pentagon's failure to anticipate the growth of the insurgency.
But what I write about is the whole other litany of mistakes that were made by American civilians who were there, from Ambassador Paul Bremer on down. It’s a series of what I think are blood-curdling stories: the people who showed up in Iraq, a country with 40-50 percent unemployment, and said, ‘Hey, this place needs a flat tax. It needs tariff reduction. It needs all sorts of other neoconservative economic solutions. It needs all of its government-run industries to be privatized’; the people who showed up and said, ‘There are traffic jams here. We’re going to fix that by giving them a new traffic law’; the people who showed up and said, ‘They need new intellectual property laws. They need new laws governing the types of seeds their farmers can plant’; the sort of crazy micromanagement that took place there.
Meanwhile, the more important tasks of actually rebuilding the country, of trying to find sustainable ways to increase electricity generation, to rebuild shattered hospitals and schools, to provide clean drinking water. All of those vastly more important tasks were sort of relegated, because the folks who came there saw Iraq as a terrarium for a number of neoconservative policies that they were never able to implement here in the United States.
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Truly a horror show.
rummy and the mess we're in
Tomgram: Roger Morris, Donald Rumsfeld's Long March
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At a press conference at NATO Headquarters in Brussels in June 2002, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld famously said: "Now what is the message there? The message is that there are no 'knowns.' There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we don't know we don't know. So when we do the best we can and we pull all this information together, and we then say well that's basically what we see as the situation, that is really only the known knowns and the known unknowns. And each year, we discover a few more of those unknown unknowns."
Strangely enough, Rumsfeld's own career, which catches so much of the political history that has led us into our present catastrophe, qualifies -- or at least did until today -- as either a "known unknown" or even one of those mystifying "unknown unknowns."
Every now and then, we need a little history to make sense of our world. But perhaps, in this case, "little" isn't the most appropriate word. Roger Morris, a member of the National Security Council under Presidents Johnson and Nixon (he resigned in protest over the invasion of Cambodia) and bestselling author of biographies of Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, and the Clintons, explores both the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns of Donald Rumsfeld's emblematic history and legacy, of his long march to power, and what he did with that power once it was in his hands. Morris' two-parter on Rumsfeld's legacy will be posted this week at Tomdispatch.com and, long as it is, it is actually a miracle of historical compression, packing into a relatively modest space an epic history none of us should avoid. Call it a necessary reckoning with disaster.
Donald Rumsfeld himself may be front and center, but the supporting cast of rogues -- Dick Cheney, George Bush, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Robert Gates, and so many others -- makes this a summary meditation on some of the most costly lessons of our times. As a prophet, Rumsfeld may not have been exactly Delphic. "I can't tell you if the use of force in Iraq today would last five days, or five weeks, or five months," he said in an interview on November 14, 2002, "but it certainly isn't going to last any longer than that." Nonetheless, he remains an emblematic figure of our age. If you don't understand him, you can't fully grasp the unprecedented ruin which is American foreign policy today. It's not something I often say, but this is simply a must-read.
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Tomgram: Roger Morris, The Rumsfeld Legacy
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Here's a classic Rumsfeldism: "We do have a saying in America: if you're in a hole, stop digging ... erm, I'm not sure I should have said that." In Part 2 of his historical excavation of the life and world of Donald Rumsfeld (not to speak of the worlds of both President Bushes, the neocons, the U.S. military, the GOP, and an indolent media), Roger Morris, already deep in that hole, just keeps digging away. In doing so, he offers us the rest of Rumsfeld's long march to power, his lasting legacies, and the costly lessons of this comeback kid. So much that went unheeded in the years in which Rumsfeld once again scaled the heights of power is now, thanks to Morris, compactly on the record.
"The absence of evidence is not necessarily the evidence of absence" is another infamous Rumsfeldism. How true. And in Rumsfeld's absence, the evidence of how he changed our world for the worse will be with us to consider for years to come. So, if you missed it, check out "Sharp Elbows," the first part of "The Undertaker's Tally," and then settle in for the sequel, the one you thought you knew until you read "The Power and the Glory." Read it and remember, the bell tolls for thee.
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photography
Nancy Davenport
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thanks to Conscientious
israel/palestine
Facing Mecca
by Uri Avnery
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Must a Native-American recognize the right of the United States of America to exist?
Interesting question. The USA was established by Europeans who invaded a continent that did not belong to them, eradicated most of the indigenous population (the "Red Indians") in a prolonged campaign of genocide, and exploited the labor of millions of slaves who had been brutally torn from their lives in Africa. Not to mention what is going on today. Must a Native-American - or indeed anybody at all - recognize the right of such a state to exist?
But nobody raises the question. The United States does not give a damn if anybody recognizes its right to exist or not. It does not demand this from the countries with which it maintains relations.
Why? Because this is a ridiculous demand to start with.
OK, the United States is older than the State of Israel, as well as bigger and more powerful. But countries that are not super-powers do not demand this either. India, for example, is not expected to recognize Pakistan's "right to exist", in spite of the fact that Pakistan was established at the same time as Israel, and - like Israel - on an ethnic/religious basis.
SO WHY is Hamas required to "recognize Israel's right to exist"?
When a state "recognizes" another state, it is a formal recognition, the acknowledgement of an existing fact. It does not imply approval. The Soviet Union was not required to recognize the existence of the USA as a capitalist state. On the contrary, Nikita Khrushchev promised in 1956 to "bury" it. The US certainly did not dream of recognizing at any time the right of the Soviet Union to exist as a communist state.
So why is this weird demand addressed to the Palestinians? Why must they recognize the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish State?
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Apartheid Looks Like This
Another small indignity at an Israeli checkpoint
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The scene: a military checkpoint deep in Palestinian territory in the West Bank. A tall, thin elderly man, walking stick in hand, makes a detour past the line of Palestinians, many of them young men, waiting obediently behind concrete barriers for permission from an Israeli soldier to leave one Palestinian area, the city of Nablus, to enter another Palestinian area, the neighboring village of Huwara. The long queue is moving slowly, the soldier taking his time to check each person's papers.
The old man heads off purposefully down a parallel but empty lane reserved for vehicle inspections. A young soldier controlling the human traffic spots him and orders him back in line. The old man stops, fixes the soldier with a stare and refuses. The soldier looks startled, and uncomfortable at the unexpected show of defiance. He tells the old man more gently to go back to the queue. The old man stands his ground. After a few tense moments, the soldier relents and the old man passes.
Is the confrontation revealing of the soldier's humanity? That is not the way it looks – or feels – to the young Palestinians penned in behind the concrete barriers. They can only watch the scene in silence. None would dare to address the soldier in the manner the old man did – or take his side had the Israeli been of a different disposition. An old man is unlikely to be detained or beaten at a checkpoint. Who, after all, would believe he attacked or threatened a soldier, or resisted arrest, or was carrying a weapon? But the young men know their own injuries or arrests would barely merit a line in Israel's newspapers, let alone an investigation.
And so, the checkpoints have made potential warriors of Palestine's grandfathers at the price of emasculating their sons and grandsons.
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book recommendation
Palestine:
Peace Not Apartheid
by Jimmy Carter
Jimmy Carter's book actually soft pedals the situation in Palestine a little but it does end up putting the failure for peace squarely in the hands of the Israelis. There are a number of other books in my book list that are better written and go into much more detail but none have the name behind it that Jimmy Carter's does. He has brought Israel's subjugation of the Palestinians into the view of the American public. And lets not forget that it was Jimmy Carter that was instrumental in getting Egypt and Israel to sign a peace agreement.
Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid...Jimmy Carter In His Own Words
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JIMMY CARTER: Some people have said the title is provocative, and I accept that categorization, but I don't consider the word "provocative" to be a negative description, because it's designed to provoke discussion and analysis and debate in a country where debate and discussion is almost completely absent if it involves any criticism at all of the policies of Israel. And I think the book is very balanced.
Secondly, the words “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid” were carefully chosen by me. First of all, it's Palestine, the area of Palestinians. It doesn't refer to Israel. I’ve never and would imply that Israel is guilty of any form of apartheid in their own country, because Arabs who live inside Israel have the same voting rights and the same citizenship rights as do the Jews who live there.
And the next word is “peace.” And my hope is that the publication of this book will not only precipitate debate, as I’ve already mentioned, but also will rejuvenate an absolutely dormant or absent peace process. For the last six years there's not been one single day of good faith negotiations between Israelis and their neighbors, the Palestinians. And this is absolutely a departure from what has happened under all previous presidents since Israel became a nation. We’ve all negotiated or attempted to negotiate peace agreements. That has been totally absent now for six years. So “peace.”
And then the last two words, “not apartheid.” The alternative to peace is apartheid, not inside Israel, to repeat myself, but in the West Bank and Gaza and East Jerusalem, the Palestinian territory. And there, apartheid exists in its more despicable forms, that Palestinians are deprived of basic human rights. Their land has been occupied and then confiscated and then colonized by the Israeli settlers. And they have now more than 205 settlements in the West Bank itself. And what has happened is, over a period of years, the Israelis have connected settlements with highways, and those highways make the West Bank look like a honeycomb and maybe a spider web. You can envision it. And in many cases, most cases, the Palestinians are prevented from using the highways at all, and in many cases, even from crossing the highways.
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Norman Finkelstein vs. Gil Troy On Jimmy Carter's Controversial Book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid"
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Controversy continues over Jimmy Carter's recent book "Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid." We host a debate on the former president's book with two leading scholars: DePaul University professor Norman Finkelstein, author of "Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History" and McGill University professor Gil Troy, author of "Why I Am a Zionist: Israel, Jewish Identity, and the Challenges of Today."
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where does the time go?
Let me think. I was getting ready to pick up Zoe when I last posted. I've been at a dead run ever since. She arrived at 10:30 Monday night. She was in good spirits and we made the midnight boat back to the island. Tuesday I collapsed and slept most of the day. Wednesday I spent making 5 days worth of camera strap orders. It started snowing as I started the straps and there was two inches when I went out to go to the post office. I backed my car out of the driveway and the snow was too slippery to turn the car so I quickly drove back into the driveway and parked. Thursday the snow melted enough to deliver the straps and then I worked on getting a web site done by this weekend. Friday it was more work on the website but I can't get hold of the customer to get the information to finish it.
I think it was Monday that I got a call from the trucking company that Griff's painting had arrived and we had 48 hours to pick it up. Tuesday Katie's boyfriend Colby picked it up in his pickup. When he got there one side of the crate had been holed. He got them to open it up and the painting was covered in a blanket and plastic and all was well. Then, on the way back to the island, his voltage regulator went out. He finally made it back to the island late and left the painting at his apartment. Katie went over to Colby's Wednesday to open it up. She was blown away. It's bigger than I thought. The width is almost as tall as she is. All the paintings by my grandfather that my family has are studies and are not as well finished as this portrait is. I can't wait to see it.
I also ordered the rest of the equipment I need to give me a three stobe lighting kit. I saw my friend Vern at Payless (the local supermarket that is the social center of South Whidbey) tonight. He is going to get me some 1/8" plywood for my 5x7 case, I already have the foam on the way. He also has a table saw that we can cut it up with. He also has a shop that has more than enough room to use as a studio. Possibilities...
Now maybe I will get some of those links up.
more to come
There are more links in the que but I have to pick up Zoe at the airport in 7 1/2 hours and I've got a bunch of housecleaning to do. At least all the furniture that needed to be moved got moved. Tomorrow...
plamegate
Scotter Libby's trial has gone to the jury. The firedoglake crew has been in the courtroom for the trial. Their comments are interesting as to what happens next if Scooter is found guilty. Be sure and watch the videos. And stay tuned to firedoglake for the latest developments.
Big Close
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The courtroom was packed today and the theatrics did not disappoint. Patrick Fitzgerald came right out and said that Shooter had his dirty fingerprints all over the crime. As Marcy noted in the liveblog:
There is a cloud over the VP. He wrote those columns, he had those meetings, He sent Libby off to the meeting with Judy. Where Plame was discussed. That cloud remains because the defendant obstructed justice. That cloud was there. That cloud is something that we just can't pretend isn't there.
I recognize that my view is probably somewhat biased in favor of the prosecution, but really I don't see how anyone could have watched the proceedings today and come away with the conclusion that the defense was anything other than a chaotic mess. Marcy and I agreed that Wells sounded like he was a used car salesman trying to fob off a junker he had no faith in, and for my part I'm guessing that much of the defense was crafted by Scooter Libby calling up in the middle of the night and helpfully saying, "make sure you say this tomorrow, Ted."
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What’s It All About, Alfie?
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There is a tendency in the blogosphere to camp out in the weeds when covering the CIA leak case, and we forget that most people's eyes glaze over when we start talking about what CIA briefer was copied on what memo on which day. With the close of the Libby trial, I'd like to step back and start trying to define what the important, overarching narratives to emerge from the case actually are:
1. The administration lied us into war and tried to abuse its power to punish the whistleblower who told the American public the truth.
2. Scooter is the firewall to Shooter.
3. Dick Cheney, Scooter Libby and other members of the administration conspired to keep federal investigators from uncovering their crimes.
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photography
Daniel Gustav Cramer
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thanks to Conscientious
russia
Russia could help Saudi Arabia with nuke energy - Putin
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Russian President Vladimir Putin said today that Moscow would consider helping Saudi Arabia with a possible atomic energy programme and that he hoped to build stronger ties with Muslim countries.
"Russia is willing to look into cooperation opportunities in the area of atomic energy," Putin told Saudi businessmen, speaking through an Arabic interpreter.
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thanks to Culture of Life News
The west may yet come to regret its bullying of Russia
Putin has no interest in a new cold war and is struggling to modernise his economy. Yet he is rebuffed and insulted
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Countries too have feelings. So I am told by a Russian explaining the recent collapse in relations between Vladimir Putin and his one-time western admirers. "We have done well in the past 15 years, yet we get nothing but rebuffs and insults. Russia's rulers have their pride, you know."
The truth is that Putin, like George Bush and Tony Blair, has an urgent date with history. He can plead two terms as president in which he has stabilised, if not deepened, Russian democracy, forced the pace of economic modernisation, suppressed Chechen separatism and yet been remarkably popular. But leaders who dismiss domestic critics crave international opinion, and are unaccustomed to brickbats. Hence Putin's outburst at the Munich security conference this month, when he announced he would "avoid extra politesse" and speak his mind.
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photography
Candid Man
The secret snaps of Sammy Davis Jr.
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Chameleon, voyeur, outsider—Sammy Davis Jr. used his camera to create one of the greatest unknown picture archives in show-business history. Here, a glimpse of the previously unpublished images, from the new book Photo by Sammy Davis, Jr.
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Lauren Bacall, Betty Grable, and Marilyn Monroe taking a break
on the set of How to Marry a Millionaire, 1953.
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thanks to RangefinderForum.com
support the troops
Soldiers Face Neglect, Frustration At Army's Top Medical Facility
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Behind the door of Army Spec. Jeremy Duncan's room, part of the wall is torn and hangs in the air, weighted down with black mold. When the wounded combat engineer stands in his shower and looks up, he can see the bathtub on the floor above through a rotted hole. The entire building, constructed between the world wars, often smells like greasy carry-out. Signs of neglect are everywhere: mouse droppings, belly-up cockroaches, stained carpets, cheap mattresses.
This is the world of Building 18, not the kind of place where Duncan expected to recover when he was evacuated to Walter Reed Army Medical Center from Iraq last February with a broken neck and a shredded left ear, nearly dead from blood loss. But the old lodge, just outside the gates of the hospital and five miles up the road from the White House, has housed hundreds of maimed soldiers recuperating from injuries suffered in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The common perception of Walter Reed is of a surgical hospital that shines as the crown jewel of military medicine. But 5 1/2 years of sustained combat have transformed the venerable 113-acre institution into something else entirely -- a holding ground for physically and psychologically damaged outpatients. Almost 700 of them -- the majority soldiers, with some Marines -- have been released from hospital beds but still need treatment or are awaiting bureaucratic decisions before being discharged or returned to active duty.
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thanks to Huffington Post
Not Acceptable
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How dare Brit Hume of Faux News sit on the Sunday program yesterday and accuse Rep. Jack Murtha of not understanding the reality of things on the ground. Rep. Murtha visits Walter Reed on a weekly basis, and he regularly meets privately with the brass at the Pentagon and asks them to be honest — really honest — about how things really are, not just the current public PR Snow Job.
Here's some reality, Brit: take some of your big time newsboy paycheck and donate it to help the families of soldiers and the soldiers themselves. Volunteer some of your time at a local VA hospital. Volunteer some time helping to do repairs at the home of a widow of one of our soldiers killed in combat — because she can't afford to call a plumber to come and fix her problem.
But if you aren't doing any of these things, if you are not getting up off your pampered ass and actually DOING tangible things to help our troops and their families? Then your opinion is meaningless to me, Brit. I live in West Virginia, surrounded by the families and friends of folks who have served in and out of Afghanistan and Iraq. I see the cost of George Bush's failures every single day.
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This is in Spanish but the pictures need no elaboration.
Esas imágenes que los Estados Unidos no quieren ver
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thanks to Yolanda Flanagan
STATEMENT BY DAVID CLINE, PRESIDENT OF VETERANS FOR PEACE
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Today we are involved in a continuing military conflict in Iraq. Veterans For Peace questions the wisdom and the necessity for this military adventure and believes our troops should be brought home now.
We also insist that the men and women serving in uniform receive the medical care and assistance they need. In Iraq, many GIs have suffered severe wounds, in fact the numbers are so great that the current administration has tried to misrepresent and hide these casualties from public consciousness.
Many soldiers will come back suffering from the emotional wounds of war trauma. We can expect many others to come back sick from the use of Depleted Uranium munitions and other deadly military toxins found on today’s battlefields.
It is the grossest hypocrisy to wave yellow ribbons and say you “support the troops”, then cynically cut the very hospitals that the wounded and disabled will need. It is betrayal to those warriors who fought in this nation’s past wars. It is shameful and it is unacceptable.
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thanks to Yolanda Flanagan
Long Iraq Tours Can Make Home a Trying Front
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In the nearly two years Cpl. John Callahan of the Army was away from home, his wife, he said, had two extramarital affairs. She failed to pay his credit card bills. And their two children were sent to live with her parents as their home life deteriorated.
Then, in November, his machine gun malfunctioned during a firefight, wounding him in the groin and ravaging his left leg. When his wife reached him by phone after an operation in Germany, Corporal Callahan could barely hear her. Her boyfriend was shouting too loudly in the background.
“Haven’t you told him it’s over?” Corporal Callahan, 42, recalled the man saying. “That you aren’t wearing his wedding ring anymore?”
For Corporal Callahan, who is recuperating at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and so many other soldiers and family members, the repercussions, chaos and loneliness of wartime deployments are one of the toughest, least discussed byproducts of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and loved ones have endured long, sometimes repeated separations that test the fragility of their relationships in unforeseen ways.
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photography
ARMED AMERICA
Portraits of Gun Owners in their Homes
[more]
thanks to Neatorama
middle east
Going Nowhere Fast
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"Are you on the road, or in the ditch?" Back when I covered labor negotiations 30 years ago, that was the question reporters would ask to get a sense of how contract talks were going. The phrase came back to me last weekend as I listened to a series of relentlessly negative presentations at a conference here on America's relations with the Muslim world.
We are in the ditch in the Middle East. As bad as you think it is watching TV, it's worse. It's not just Iraq but the whole pattern of America's dealings with the Arab world. People aren't just angry at America -- they've been that way to varying degrees since I first came here 27 years ago. What's worse is that they're giving up on us -- on our ability to make good decisions, to solve problems, to play the role of honest broker.
Let's start with some poll numbers presented at the Doha conference by Shibley Telhami, a University of Maryland professor and a fellow of the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution, which co-sponsored the conference with the Qatari foreign ministry. The polling was done last year by Zogby International in six countries that are usually regarded as pro-American: Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
In these six "friendly" countries, only 12 percent of those surveyed expressed favorable attitudes toward the United States. America's leaders have surpassed Israel's as objects of anger. Asked which foreign leader they disliked most, 38 percent named George Bush; Ariel Sharon was a distant second at 11 percent; and Ehud Olmert was third with 7 percent.
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thanks to War and Piece
book recommendation
Midnight for Charlie Bone
(The Children of the Red King, Book 1)
by Jenny Nimmo
Now we can't be spending all out time reading heavy and weighty tomes. I'm a fan of good children's books, which extends beyond Harry Potter. While we wait for the last Harry Potter book to come out this summer, there is Charlie Bone. Zoe turned me on to these. Of course there are more than one. Five to be exact. Not quite up to Harry Potter but still great fun. Fun enough to have to read the other four. From Wikipedia:
Children of the Red King
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The story begins with eleven-year-old Charlie Bone making a birthday card for his loner friend, Benjamin. He intends to put a photograph of Benjamin's dog onto the card, but when he opens the envelope from the photo developer, he finds a picture of a man cradling a baby. He begins to hear static noises, followed by voices out of the photo. Later that day Charlie's great-aunts, Venetia, Lucretia and Eustacia Yewbeam, and his grandmother Grizelda Bone, test Charlie to see if he is magically endowed. When they find out that he can hear voices from photographs, they send him to Bloor's Academy. However, Bloor's Academy isn't all that good, considering Manfred Bloor (a hypnotist) and his great grandfather, Ezekiel Bloor (an evil, flawed magician). But soon with the help of his new friends, he begins to discover the secrets of himself, the academy, and his father.
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the worst
America's Worst President?
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USA Today founder Al Neuharth once chastised Senator Hillary Clinton for stating that George W. Bush's presidency was one of American history's worst. Neuharth promptly made his own list of worse presidents.
Now, he has recanted and offered a mea culpa:
I remember every president since Herbert Hoover, when I was a grade school kid. He was one of the worst. I've personally met every president since Dwight Eisenhower. He was one of the best.
A year ago I criticized Hillary Clinton for saying "this (Bush) administration will go down in history as one of the worst."
"She's wrong," I wrote. Then I rated these five presidents, in this order, as the worst: Andrew Jackson, James Buchanan, Ulysses Grant, Hoover and Richard Nixon. "It's very unlikely Bush can crack that list," I added.
I was wrong. This is my mea culpa. Not only has Bush cracked that list, but he is planted firmly at the top. | |
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Sincere Idiot, Persistent Ass, Incompetent President
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"Please tell me what one word best describes your impression of George W. Bush. Tell me just the ONE best word that describes him."
That question - asked periodically by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press - is always a polling goldmine. The newest results, just out, do not disappoint.
Incompetent comes in first, just as it topped the list in March 2006. But a year ago, Good held the number two spot; this time, it's Arrogant.
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odds and ends
It's been a strange week and a half. Zoe has been in Florida for for two weeks of intense physical therapy for her pain. She is done and waiting to fly back tomorrow. I'm very proud of how she did. It wasn't easy. She will be writing about it when she gets back. The house has been empty without her.
There have been some furniture moving projects that have needed to be done and I've been working on those. Exchanging matresses, moving my very big desk to the basement and replacing it with a smaller desk, and moving a dresser across the bedroom. Sort of a 3 dimensional spatial puzzle. It's mostly done. My old desk was one of those big metal office desks. I had delusions of taking it apart to make it easy for me to move but the screws had achieved unity with the desk. Fortunately I have son and he has friends. Robby and Mouse got it down into the basement without any personal physical damage. Many thanks to them! The desk will become my workbench.
I've also worked on putting a battery powered strobe kit together after reading the Strobist. This will solve my lighting problems and do it for a very reasonable price. It helped that I already had some of what I needed. I will have more on that when it's all together.
Griff's painting is finally on the way to Seattle. Here it is on the truck last Monday. It should be here the first part of the week. I did the arranging but it was my daughter Katie that did the buying and she is excited to have a painting of her great grandfather.
When oportunity knocks it's best to answer the door. A friend, Vern, had a 2 1/4" square folding camera that had a frozen focus. My folder, an Agfa Isolette II, has a bad bellows and I've missed it. Vern paid $70 for it which is a low price but didn't want to spend money on it since he had another just like it and he isn't one to take things apart. He knew that I'm not afraid to repair things (aprehensive, maybe) so he said to make an offer. I offered $30 and he accepted. It's the holy grail of folders, a Super Ikonta B.
There it is with a new gordy strap. The focus isn't actually frozen just really stiff. I ran a test roll through and had to exhibit self control not to load another roll in it. It was fun to shoot but I don't want to have any of the focus gears to slip a tooth. There are several pages on the web showing how to relube everything. This is an early 532/16 made in 1937. 70 years old and still a great user. My friend Blaine has said that if he goes out with only one camera, it is his Super Ikonta B. I can see how that could be.
Zeiss Super Ikonta B
Zeiss Super Ikonta B
Zeiss 532/16
Rebuilding the Super Ikonta
Zeiss Ikonta B (Pre War) Rangefinder Adjustment
Zeiss Ikontas
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