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Surviving in Iraq

Monday, April 30, 2007

I saw this video on Firedoglake, and I thought it would be a good idea to spread it around. A woman in Iraq reports on life.

[googlevideo]http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=891513925297288257[/googlevideo]

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Turning back the clock in Groton

Monday, April 30, 2007

I’m sure I’m not the only Grotonite who has noticed the undeveloped land so incongrously tucked between the library and North Road, across the street from Fitch Middle School and a stone’s throw from the Dairy Queen. It looks like an old farm and I’ve always thought that it was a miracle that it had survived, un-raped, as long as it has. It looks like it will be reverting to its former life and, at least for a while, it will remain undeveloped.

A certain stretch of Route 1 in Poquonnock Bridge is known for a Dairy Queen, gas stations, mobile homes and the offices of lawyers and architects.

But a farm?

It wasn’t so strange in 1784, when Silas Burrows built a house on farmland on Fort Hill Road, long before the commercial district existed.

Now, one of Silas’ descendants, Warren Burrows, is returning the land to an earlier time, cultivating a small, sustainable farm he is calling the Groton Family Farm across from Fitch Middle School.

…

Burrows envisions sheep, goats and a llama grazing in the 4-acre field. He would also grow strawberries, melons, pumpkins and vegetables to sell at local farmers’ markets in Mystic and New London, along with eggs and wool.

His goal is to join the home-grown, organic food craze that’s growing in popularity. The land has never been touched by pesticides or herbicides, he said, making it near-organic.

I know next to nothing about farming, but I’ve always thought that the land in that area would have been the most desirable farmland. It’s flat as a pancake and was probably some sort of alluvial plain, where the soil would have been richer and less stony than, for instance, at my house, which was also a farm in the 18th century. Of course, I could be completely wrong about that.

Right now, the only farm left in Groton is Whittles, which I believe confines itself to apples and pumpkins, though they sell other stuff at their farm stand.

Here’s hoping Dr. Burrows will be successful, and that we’ll be buying Groton grown produce this summer or next.

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Batting Zero

Monday, April 30, 2007

Today we learn that the vaunted reconstruction projects in Iraq are falling apart due or working incorrectly. This has nothing to do with terrorism or destruction by our “enemies”, whoever they may be. It has everything to do with incompetence and corruption. A sample:

The dates when the projects were completed and deemed successful ranged from six months to almost a year and a half before the latest inspections.

But those inspections found numerous instances of power generators that no longer operated; sewage systems that had clogged and overflowed, damaging sections of buildings; electrical systems that had been jury-rigged or stripped of components; floors that had buckled; concrete that had crumbled; and expensive equipment that was simply not in use.

Curiously, most of the problems seemed unrelated to sabotage stemming from Iraq’s parlous security situation, but instead were the product of poor initial construction, petty looting, a lack of any maintenance and simple neglect.

A case in point was the $5.2 million project undertaken by the United States Army Corps of Engineers to build the special forces barracks in Baghdad. The project was completed in September 2005, but by the time inspectors visited last month, there were numerous problems caused by faulty plumbing throughout the buildings, and four large electrical generators, each costing $50,000, were no longer operating.

At the same time we hear that a consensus is building that Iraq is not comparable to Vietnam, because it’s far worse. Not worse in terms of death yet, but worse in its long term effects:

“In terms of the consequences of failure, the stakes are much bigger than Vietnam,” said former defense secretary William S. Cohen. “The geopolitical consequences are . . . potentially global in scope.”

About 17 times as many U.S. troops died in the Vietnam War — the longest war in U.S. history — as have been lost in Iraq, the nation’s third-longest war. Also, despite widespread public dissatisfaction with the Iraq war, the debate over it has not convulsed American society to the extent seen during the Vietnam conflict. However, Vietnam does not have oil and is not in the middle of a region crucial to the global economy and festering with terrorism, experts say, leading many of them to conclude that the long-term effects of the Iraq war will be worse for the United States.

“It makes Vietnam look like a cakewalk,” said retired Air Force Gen. Charles F. Wald, a veteran of the Vietnam War. The domino theory that nations across Southeast Asia would go communist was not fulfilled, he noted, but with Iraq, “worst-case scenarios are the most likely thing to happen.”

Iraq is worse than Vietnam “in so many ways,” agreed Andrew F. Krepinevich Jr., a retired Army officer and author of one of the most respected studies of the U.S. military’s failure in Vietnam. “We knew what we were getting into in Vietnam. We didn’t here.”

…
In strategic terms, the Vietnam conflict was understood even by many of its opponents as part of a global stance of containment, a policy that preceded the war and endured for 15 years after Saigon fell, noted retired Army Col. Richard H. Sinnreich, a veteran of two Vietnam tours of duty. “I’m not sure we can count on a similarly prompt strategic recovery this time around,” he continued. “Bush’s preemption strategy was controversial even before Iraq, and the war itself has been so badly mismanaged that even our allies doubt our competence.”

Gary Solis, who fought as a Marine in Vietnam and more recently taught the law of war at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, said he is hearing more such discussions. “Most of my military acquaintances agree that the issues in our departure from Vietnam will pale beside those that will be presented by an Iraq withdrawal,” Solis said.

This set me to thinking about the widely debated question of whether Bush has a solid lock on the title of Worst President Ever. It is hard to imagine that anyone could not only be so wrong about everything, but could also make every facet of every disastrous policy come out so wrong. In the case of Iraq, the situation is so bollixed up that it is impossible to even define success, never mind achieve it. For the first time we are fighting a “war” in which we unable to identify the enemy. Still, the fact that the war was a disastrous mistake didn’t necessarily preclude them from doing a competent job at putting up buildings. But that was far beyond them, as has been any other tangible success (other than lining the pockets of their friends, and maybe that’s the point) in any other policy area.

Will future historians be able to find anything of any consequence in which Bush has been successful by any reasonable measure? I admit to bias, but I can’t think of a thing.

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Another installment of “Things you couldn’t make up”

Saturday, April 28, 2007

From Thinkprogress:

Former U.S. AID director Randall Tobias, who resigned yesterday upon admitting that he frequented a Washington escort service, oversaw a controversial policy advocated by the religious right that required any US-based group receiving anti-AIDS funds to take an anti-prostitution “loyalty oath.”

Aid groups bitterly opposed the policy, charging that it “was so broad — and applied even to their private funds — that it would obstruct their outreach to sex workers who are at high risk of transmitting the AIDS virus.” But President Bush wouldn’t budge. He signed a 2003 National Security Presidential Directive saying prostitution “and related activities” were “inherently harmful and dehumanizing.”

Several groups and countries had their funding cut due to the policy. Brazil lost $40 million for “one of its most successful anti-AIDS strategies, persuading sex workers to use condoms or other measures to stop spreading the disease.”

During an “Ask the White House” online chat in 2004, Tobias defended the policy, saying the U.S. was “partnering with communities” to begin “fighting sex trafficking and prostitution, while still serving victims of these activities.” Tobias added that he was overseeing several “highly successful” relationship programs “aimed at men and boys to help them develop healthy relationships with women.”

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Follow up-please

Saturday, April 28, 2007

This post at Atrios, along with this article from the San Franciso Chronicle to which it links, bring to mind a problem with our discourse that seems so easily fixed in one case, and hard in another. As a lawyer I find it particularly grating. One might call it the case of the missing followup.

In the article an anonymous (they’re always anonymous) Democratic consultant:

But one key state Democratic strategist, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of concern for riling the netroots crowd, warns that such efforts are potentially positive and negative.

Netroots commentary can frequently be intensely personal, even “totally mean and irrational,” the strategist said, with some bloggers finding power in their ability “to assassinate political characters online.”

“It’s amplified by the anonymity, and it can be scary that it’s so irresponsible,” the insider said. “And it’s pulling the mainstream media in that direction.”

Now, I am not going to argue that there are no irresponsible bloggers, though I would maintain that there are fewer on the left than the right (at least proportionally), but it seems to me that the obvious follow up to a question like this would be: “who are you talking about-give me an example”. I have a feeling that, like the Georgia Congressman who couldn’t recite the 10 Commandments he wanted posted in public buildings, that strategist would be unable to give a concrete example, and if he could it would be an isolated comment or an obscure blog. It’s not just Democrats that do this, and it’s not just bloggers that are the targets. Bush is a past master at attributing statements to unnamed Democrats, and he is never asked to specifically identify the (often non-existent) people to whom he alludes.

Maybe politicians can get away with making these sort of statements because there is some sort of tacit agreement between politicians and the media that they will never explicitly call each other on these fact free statements. I have yet to hear of a politician respond to one of those “some say” questions (e.g., Some say that you, John Edwards, are displaying insatiable ambition by running for President when your wife has cancer) by asking the interrogator to identify some of the sayers. Why, for instance, didn’t Edwards ask Katie exactly who those people were? He was a litigator-would he ever let an opening like that go by in a courtroom (Okay, I know the old saw about not asking courtroom questions when you don’t already know the answer, but in real life you often have to take a deep breath and do it). This seems so very odd, because if the standard response to such a question were: “Oh really, who are you talking about”, some of the sillier questions might stop.

This problem could be easily fixed if only, depending on the interrogator, the media person or the politician would follow up.

The more intractable problem involves those cases in which the media person speaks for him or herself. The comment about bloggers is a good example. The same type of statement has been made by media types about us horrible bloggers. In that case, there’s no one to follow up, even in theory. If a media person wants to dismiss bloggers as a bunch of pre-pubescent kids living in their mom’s basement eating ice-cream sandwiches” there’s no one in a position to follow up and point out how fact free that is.

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More on Limbo, short this time

Saturday, April 28, 2007

I am indebted to a commenter with the appropriate name of Gloria, who directed me to this site run by some Catholics who agree with my alarm at the passing of limbo. According to them, and I most humbly agree, the abolition of limbo is heresy, just one of many that they have documented:

All Heresies from Benedict XVI used in past Heresy of the Week columns are found in the Heresies of Benedict XVI File. Other past Heresies of the Week are probably found in either the Heresy of the Week Archive or the “Some of the Recent Articles” section.

That’s right, they feature a heresy of the week, and have a whole raft of them on Benedict. And no, unlike my post, this is no joke. These folks take no prisoners. Their argument on Limbo is here, and while I agree with them that Benedict is a heretic, I must sorrowfully condemn them as heretics as well, since they appear to reserve Limbo to babies only, meaning, basically, that all non-Catholics go to Hell, unless they manage to live a sinless life, original sin excepted. Now, I’m as ready to condemn sinners to burn until the end of time as the next guy, but I really think it’s a bit harsh to make someone with a few venial sins burn even after the end of time. No, I insist that Limbo is also for the goodly heathens, like Socrates and the other guys in Dante’s poem. So I must, unfortunately, condemn the good folks at the Most Holy Family Monastery to Hell as heretics of the highest order, right along with Pope Benedict. It’s beginning to look like Hell is going to be so jam packed with Catholics that the rest of you will have to beat down the door to get in.

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Bill Moyers reports on media complicity in selling the war

Thursday, April 26, 2007

I just finished watching Bill Moyer’s Journal, in which he chronicles the media’s failure to do its job (with some honorable exceptions) during the run up to war. What I found interesting was the excuses so many of them made: that the information wasn’t out there, or if it was, that the political momentum toward war was irresistible, and that saying anything critical of the war would have left them too exposed to a mindless juggernaut of public opinion that would have crushed them.

As to the first argument, it’s total nonsense. The information was out there. The second argument is nonsense as well, but its one that many people have a tendency to accept, because we have talked ourselves into believing that there was overwhelming public support for the war at the time it was started.

That’s just not true. There was a great deal of skepticism in the country prior to the initiation of hostilities, as well as a desire that inspections be allowed to run their course. The degree of skepticism was remarkable, given the fact that the average American was relentlessly exposed to pro-war propaganda, and to very little skeptical reporting. Had reporters done their jobs, there is every reason to believe that the number of Americans opposing the war would have been even higher. After the war started, of course, public opinion solidified behind it so long as things were going well. That was to be expected, as was the gradual and steady disilllusionment once the scope of the much predicted disaster became clear.

So folks like Dan Rather and Bob Simon of CBS are a bit disingenuous when they excuse their lack of public skepticism by citing their fear of getting ahead of the curve. They helped create a curve that only barely existed, and helped prevent a highly skeptical public from being even more skeptical. When the existence of skeptics was acknowledged, they were dismissed and derided.

The Beltway folks believe we’re stupid, and conduct themselves accordingly. We see it now as they convince themselves that Harry Reid blundered when he said what everyone knows: that we’re losing the war. They believe the public will turn on him, and, once again in service to their Republican masters, they’re doing their best to make that happen, but the people feel differently.

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Housekeeping details

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

This new blog site, besides being far easier to manage than I thought (though I’m still working out the bugs) allows for other contributors to easily log on and put up stuff of their own. So far I’ve got at least one person who has expressed a willingness to contribute, but so far nothing concrete. Anyway, if you someday see a post by someone else (and hopefully I’ve set things up so it will be somewhat obvious), don’t be surprised.

Tomorrow we have a meeting of the Groton Democratic Town Committee, after which my wife and I must be off to New London to meet our eldest, who will be arriving on an energy saving train. No posting tomorrow.

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New Real Estate

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

I haven’t seen anything about this in the U.S. Press, though maybe I’ve just missed it, so I’ll pass it along just to spread a little cheer. According to the Independent, there is some new ocean front property available in Greenland:

The map of Greenland will have to be redrawn. A new island has appeared off its coast, suddenly separated from the mainland by the melting of Greenland’s enormous ice sheet, a development that is being seen as the most alarming sign of global warming.

Several miles long, the island was once thought to be the tip of a peninsula halfway up Greenland’s remote east coast but a glacier joining it to the mainland has melted away completely, leaving it surrounded by sea.

Shaped like a three-fingered hand some 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle, it has been discovered by a veteran American explorer and Greenland expert, Dennis Schmitt, who has named it Warming Island (Or Uunartoq Qeqertoq in Inuit, the Eskimo language, that he speaks fluently).

The US Geological Survey has confirmed its existence with satellite photos, that show it as an integral part of the Greenland coast in 1985, but linked by only a small ice bridge in 2002, and completely separate by the summer of 2005. It is now a striking island of high peaks and rugged rocky slopes plunging steeply to a sea dotted with icebergs.

…

But it is only one more example of the disintegration of the Greenland Ice Sheet, that scientists have begun to realise, only very recently, is proceeding far more rapidly than anyone thought.

The second-largest ice sheet in the world (after Antarctica), if its entire 2.5 million cubic kilometres of ice were to melt, it would lead to a global sea level rise of 7.2 metres, or more than 23 feet.

That would inundate most of the world’s coastal cities, including London, swamp vast areas of heavily-populated low-lying land in countries such as Bangladesh, and remove several island countries such as the Maldives from the face of the Earth. However, even a rise one tenth as great would have devastating consequences.
…
Until two or three years ago, it was thought that the break-up of the ice sheet might take 1,000 years or more but a series of studies and alarming observations since 2004 have shown the disintegration is accelerating and, as a consequence, sea level rise may be much quicker than anticipated.
…
A study last year by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the California Institute of Technology showed that, rather than just melting relatively slowly, the ice sheet is showing all the signs of a mechanical break-up as glaciers slip ever faster into the ocean, aided by the “lubricant” of meltwater forming at their base. As the meltwater seeps down it lubricates the bases of the “outlet” glaciers of the ice sheet, causing them to slip down surrounding valleys towards the sea,

The latter process, if I recall correctly, was described by Al Gore in “An Inconvenient Truth”.

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Catholics on the Court

Wednesday, April 25, 2007

I’m so confused. As I said a few days ago, I have a theological degree from Our Lady of Sorrows Grammar School, but even I can’t figure this out. When John Kerry was running for president, Catholic Bishops pretty much threatened him with excommunication for his views on abortion. They made it clear that they expected Catholic politicians to adhere to Catholic Doctrine in matter of public policy:

Sen. John Kerry’s defiance of his Church’s condemnation of abortion and approval of gay marriage is not only a problem for him and Catholic bishops, but for individual Catholics as well, according to a leading Catholic layman and editor.

He says Catholic priests should refuse to give Holy Communion to Kerry even if their bishops have not specifically warned the senator that he is not to receive Communion.
That demand of excommunication for Kerry is made by Deal Hudson, editor of Crisis magazine, the nation’s leading intellectual Catholic journal.

…

“It’s in the hands of his ordinary [bishop] – and when his ordinary has spoken and said that politicians should refrain from communion, he’s alluding to the fact that someone like Sen. Kerry should not consider themselves part of the Catholic community.”
…
St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke has specifically warned Kerry to avoid receiving communion when visiting his archdiocese. In Kerry’s home archdiocese, without mentioning him by name, Boston Archbishop Sean O’Malley has said that Catholic politicians who do not vote in line with Church teachings “shouldn’t dare come to Communion.”

…

Asked if he believed that the bishops individually or together should tell renegade Catholic politicians such as Sen. Kerry that they must not receive communion and that they are excommunicating themselves by so doing, Hudson said: “I think that it’s what’s happening, little by little. When a bishop says that someone should refrain from receiving communion without using the word excommunication, he’s implying it. I think they are beginning to speak up, and Kerry’s ordinary has spoken up, although he hasn’t specifically mentioned Kerry as has Archbishop Burke. (Emphasis added)”

Well, that’s all perfectly reasonable.

Here’s where I get confused though. Apparently, when anyone suggests that Catholic politicians are “vot[ing] in line with Church teaching”, just like the Bishops expect, they are anti-Catholic bigots. Witness the reaction to Rosie O’Donnell’s recent statements:

“You know what concerns me?” O’Donnell asked last week on ABC’s “The View.” “How many Supreme Court judges are Catholic?”

“Five,” said host Barbara Walters.

“Five,” O’Donnell said. “How about separation of church and state in America?”

which drew this reaction:

The comments sparked immediate outrage. Nationally syndicated radio talk show host Laura Ingraham has led the battle against O’Donnell, urging listeners to e-mail ABC to protest what she calls O’Donnell’s “anti-Catholic bigotry.”

“‘The View’s’ Rosie O’Donnell continues on her tear down the path of the Rich and Unhinged, this time with an anti-Catholic rant against the Supreme Court,” Ingraham wrote on her Web site. “Could she ever get away with denigrating the Muslim faith this way?”

Witness also (from the same article) the reaction to this cartoon from the Philadelphia Inquirer:

f550ede3-efac-472f-99e6-06ce49f2162a.gif

Joseph Cella, president of the Catholic-based organization Fidelis, called the cartoon “venomous, terribly misleading and blatantly anti-Catholic.”

“The Supreme Court did not ‘follow marching orders’ from the Vatican or the bishops in the United States,” Cella said. “Instead, the court deferred to deliberative judgment of the people’s elected representatives protected by the Constitution.”

If Catholic Bishops demand that Catholic politicians vote in a manner consistent with Church teaching then it cannot be anti-Catholic to state or imply that a Catholic politician is doing just that. Not unless it is anti-Catholic to accuse someone of being a good Catholic.

In the case of Antonin (“fool for Christ“) Scalia and Clarence (just plain fool) Thomas, both of whom are reputed members of Opus Dei (as is Alito and probably John Roberts), it’s a joke to contend that Catholicism has nothing to do with their votes. You don’t join Opus Dei because you want to have a few drinks with the guys.

The Catholic Church has come a long way. In 1960 it was the Catholic candidate that upheld the separation of Church and State. Now the Church demands that Catholic politicians take their marching orders from the Church. It can’t complain when people assume that maybe that’s exactly what some of them are doing.

Note: It is apparently impossible to conclusively confirm that any of the justices are members of Opus Dei, since it is a secret society and no one in the Senate has the good sense to ask questions of nominees about membership in this society. Nonetheless, there is good reason to believe that the four named Justices are members.

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