Bollettino
Ah, pity the poor right wing draft dodgers. Deprived of their share of military glory, and forced to take on domestic tasks, such as bringing down a 100 grand on that first job, and fighting real hard, and successfully, at the office, to be promoted over the deadwood, they have longed, longed for their own war -- not one, mind you, where they would have to be consigned to those yucky barracks at the airport and made to eat that yucky army food (puh-leeeze), but an in and out kind of thing -- sort of like an extreme vacation. The newest status symbol isn't climbing Mount Everest any more (with the natives bearing your lap top so you can hook it up and email your friends) -- no, it is going to Iraq and reporting on the "amazing progress" we are making there.
Following in the footsteps of Donny Rumsfeld in Iraq is Max Boot, WSJ author and general authority on all things military. He's at his best telling us how we are in the midst of being stabbed in the back by the media again, while Iraq is going our way! And how did he discover this? By making a tour exclusively with an army unit. A US army unit. Here's some derring do on the part of Monsieur Boot. First, in excited tones, he announces what counterinsurgency is all about:
"The success that both divisions are having is based on a smart counterinsurgency strategy that combines carrots and sticks. Both are careful not to use indiscriminate firepower that would alienate civilians. Their raids are carefully focused so that they hit Baathist safe houses while minimizing inconvenience for and humiliation of the innocent."
Yeah, those innocent. I'm sure they are all psyched about that minimizing of inconvenience and humiliation. Those are bummers, man.
But -- oh joy! -- the second, action part of Boot's exciting Iraqi vacation comes about when he gets to go out with real men! Yes, the boys in the Marine Corps invited him along for a ride. All that working out in the gym in New York has paid off! Here, our great white hunter encounters the little brown enemy himself!
I went with the Marines' Task Force Scorpion on one such raid, in a Sunni neighborhood south of Baghdad. As we drove, three remote- controlled bombs went off on the roadside. Luckily no one was injured; the blasts missed our vehicles. The Marines immediately got out and searched for the perpetrators. One suspect tested positive for explosive residue on his hands. He was plexi-cuffed and stuck in the back of an armored vehicle next to me. A corporal asked me to cover him with a 9-millimeter pistol. I was happy to comply. The next day, the task force caught four suspected Fedayeen who had explosive devices. Through such successes, Scorpion has managed to dramatically reduce terrorism in its area."
This, of course, is a city that the belligerent crowd insists is as safe as D.C. -- you know D.C, the city where they blow up embassies and police stations and shit. Now, Boot's experience seems to be of a dramatic increase of terrorism, since it is happening, on his account, in broad daylight. But why believe your own 5 senses when you can believe the Pentagon! -- think, too, of his trembling excitement, covering the bad guy with a 9-millimeter pistol! Yes indeed, if today's new, free market army could market this as a vacation package for your alpha Wall Street male, we are in business!
Ourselves -- well, LI advises our readers to drain that drop of alpha blood in your veins. It only leads to a lifelong and dubious puerility.
Sunday, September 7, 2003
Friday, September 5, 2003
Bollettino
Stanley Weintraub wrote an indictment of General Macauthur in the nineties that was approvingly reviewed in the military journal, Parameters. The reviewer, General Harold Nelson, USA Ret., former US Army Chief of Military History, wrote:
"I next felt the need for a book such as this when we taught case studies in senior leadership at the War College in the 1980s. MacArthur's "genius" was predictably discovered by enthusiastic students each year, and the Inchon operation was inevitably--and appropriately--cited as key supporting evidence. Professor Weintraub does a fine job laying out the importance of MacArthur's intractable commitment to that operation as the main reason it was tried. He spares no praise where praise is deserved. But he goes beyond Inchon, questioning MacArthur's insistence on subsequent amphibious operations against the east coast of the Korean peninsula--a decision that removed combat forces from the pursuit following the liberation of Seoul and weakened UN forces available in North Korea when the Chinese intervened. He also reminds us that MacArthur surrounded himself with "yes men," was terribly vain, and pushed the careers of undeserving subordinates--hardly the traits one would seek in an ideal senior leader.
I next needed this book when I was Chief of Military History for an Army Chief of Staff who was pledging "No more Task Force Smiths." I could dig out the necessary facts and figures on the undermanning and lax training of the Occupation Forces in Japan from James Schnabel's Policy and Direction: The First Year. But that official history put most of the blame on Washington--both the politicians and the Pentagon generals. Weintraub reminds us how much MacArthur was to blame, not only with his hands-off approach to day-to-day issues related to readiness, but in the bluff and bluster he put into his briefings when men such as Army Chief of Staff General Joseph Lawton Collins came to visit his command. Schnabel emphasizes the optimistic reports Collins filed when he returned to Washington. Weintraub reminds us that Collins had been a major when MacArthur was Army Chief of Staff, and that General of the Army Omar N. Bradley, ostensibly MacArthur's boss as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had been promoted to lieutenant colonel during those years. He also reminds us that MacArthur "never materialized at field exercises, where pampered and poorly trained garrison soldiers could not figure out how to erect tents, break down a rifle, assemble chow wagons, or maintain themselves in any way without indigenous assistance." Thank God the Army wasn't saddled with any superannuated five-star generals unwilling to be team players when we were saying "No more Task Force Smiths."
Well, one wonders what the future historian will say about Donald Rumsfeld. The Macarthur comparison is apt -- the same vanity, the same play to a certain reactionary crowd, the same court behavior. The yes men, now, are the strategists like Wolfowitz and Feith. And the same utter contempt for anyone who contradicts the faith. One of the many disturbing things about the long Democrat somnolence is that there are no cries for Bush to fire Rumsfeld. Surely if ever a man deserved to be fired, it is a man who has taken upon himself to usurp the function of the state department; whose personal pique at our Atlantic allies is now costing us perhaps an extra billion dollars per week, and probably more; whose ingenuity in stirring up the Macarthur strain in our culture has proven wholly pernicious to any sensible discussion of American interest and strategy in Iraq.
Rumsfeld and his minions are uncomfortably caught between their propaganda and reality. The official line is that the occupation is on course. If that official line were right, Rumsfeld's plan -- diminishing the US troop committment ot 30,000 this month -- would have been implemented. But even the most delusional Pentagon player has dropped that item from the agenda. The other reality -- the financial one -- is looming. No doubt Bush's speech will gingerly prepare the ground for the 60 billion dollar request from Congress. Again, if the progress were 'remarkable" -- as Rumsfeld likes to say -- the oil revenues would already be flowing in at the estimate the Pentagon liked to give in the pre-war period. That estimate was widely accepted at the time -- a sign of that the Pentagon's delusions had become the establishment's -- but it is now obvious that they were nearer lies than mistakes.
It is hard to imagine any "progress" in Iraq as long as it is in the hands of Donald Rumsfeld. It isn't that LI expects Bush to replace him with Susan Sontag. But McCain would be nice.
Of course, given Bush's feeling about McCain, Sontag might be more likely.
Unfortunately, the editorialist's well meaning opinion, that we should be sending more troops to Iraq, is like so many editorialist's opinions: a blandness wrapped around a hollowness. What are these troops to do? If there is a real guerilla war happening in Iraq -- and by now, I think it is obvious there is one -- the troops should be smothering the resources that sustain that war. That means sealing the borders, and it means interdicting the network of small internal forces. To do that wouldn't just require a little increase in American forces -- it would probably take at least 300,000 more.
No, Iraq is not going to regain its sovereignty with 400,000 or even 100,000 American troops roaming around in it. Perhaps a multi-national force would have squelched the beginnings of the guerilla war, but it seems to me that that force is going to face the same problem that the American forces face presently.
The only force that can really face the guerillas is an Iraqi force. The number of soldiers needed to deny insurgent groups resources is about equal to the number disbanded at the end of the war by Rumsfeld's deputy, Bremer. Bremer's decision, a compound of ignorance and hubris, is now blowing back on us. The idea that we are going to change the direction of Iraq in D.C., which is still current in both the belligerent and anti-war camps in this country, is simply false.
It hurts to agree with retired military men -- especially when they have names straight out of Doctor Strangelove -- but the WP article on the coming request for 50 to 60 billion dollars (which will undoubtedly mean 70 to 80 billion dollars -- it is how the Bush administration does its money) ended with these two grafs.
"In a sign of growing friction between Bush and the military establishment, retired Marine Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper, a Gulf War commander, said in an interview during the meeting in Arlington that he is hearing an unprecedented amount of concern among retired officers over how the Bush administration has handled Iraq.
"Their criticism focused on Rumsfeld, he added."I've never seen so such discontent among the retired community," Van Riper said. Last week, he said, he was at a breakfast with eight retired generals at which one asked about Rumsfeld, "When are they going to get rid of this guy?""
Indeed.
PS -- The Boeing vote has been delayed, per our post on Darleen Druyun. The WP has reported that an alternative lease plan is being considered.
Stanley Weintraub wrote an indictment of General Macauthur in the nineties that was approvingly reviewed in the military journal, Parameters. The reviewer, General Harold Nelson, USA Ret., former US Army Chief of Military History, wrote:
"I next felt the need for a book such as this when we taught case studies in senior leadership at the War College in the 1980s. MacArthur's "genius" was predictably discovered by enthusiastic students each year, and the Inchon operation was inevitably--and appropriately--cited as key supporting evidence. Professor Weintraub does a fine job laying out the importance of MacArthur's intractable commitment to that operation as the main reason it was tried. He spares no praise where praise is deserved. But he goes beyond Inchon, questioning MacArthur's insistence on subsequent amphibious operations against the east coast of the Korean peninsula--a decision that removed combat forces from the pursuit following the liberation of Seoul and weakened UN forces available in North Korea when the Chinese intervened. He also reminds us that MacArthur surrounded himself with "yes men," was terribly vain, and pushed the careers of undeserving subordinates--hardly the traits one would seek in an ideal senior leader.
I next needed this book when I was Chief of Military History for an Army Chief of Staff who was pledging "No more Task Force Smiths." I could dig out the necessary facts and figures on the undermanning and lax training of the Occupation Forces in Japan from James Schnabel's Policy and Direction: The First Year. But that official history put most of the blame on Washington--both the politicians and the Pentagon generals. Weintraub reminds us how much MacArthur was to blame, not only with his hands-off approach to day-to-day issues related to readiness, but in the bluff and bluster he put into his briefings when men such as Army Chief of Staff General Joseph Lawton Collins came to visit his command. Schnabel emphasizes the optimistic reports Collins filed when he returned to Washington. Weintraub reminds us that Collins had been a major when MacArthur was Army Chief of Staff, and that General of the Army Omar N. Bradley, ostensibly MacArthur's boss as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had been promoted to lieutenant colonel during those years. He also reminds us that MacArthur "never materialized at field exercises, where pampered and poorly trained garrison soldiers could not figure out how to erect tents, break down a rifle, assemble chow wagons, or maintain themselves in any way without indigenous assistance." Thank God the Army wasn't saddled with any superannuated five-star generals unwilling to be team players when we were saying "No more Task Force Smiths."
Well, one wonders what the future historian will say about Donald Rumsfeld. The Macarthur comparison is apt -- the same vanity, the same play to a certain reactionary crowd, the same court behavior. The yes men, now, are the strategists like Wolfowitz and Feith. And the same utter contempt for anyone who contradicts the faith. One of the many disturbing things about the long Democrat somnolence is that there are no cries for Bush to fire Rumsfeld. Surely if ever a man deserved to be fired, it is a man who has taken upon himself to usurp the function of the state department; whose personal pique at our Atlantic allies is now costing us perhaps an extra billion dollars per week, and probably more; whose ingenuity in stirring up the Macarthur strain in our culture has proven wholly pernicious to any sensible discussion of American interest and strategy in Iraq.
Rumsfeld and his minions are uncomfortably caught between their propaganda and reality. The official line is that the occupation is on course. If that official line were right, Rumsfeld's plan -- diminishing the US troop committment ot 30,000 this month -- would have been implemented. But even the most delusional Pentagon player has dropped that item from the agenda. The other reality -- the financial one -- is looming. No doubt Bush's speech will gingerly prepare the ground for the 60 billion dollar request from Congress. Again, if the progress were 'remarkable" -- as Rumsfeld likes to say -- the oil revenues would already be flowing in at the estimate the Pentagon liked to give in the pre-war period. That estimate was widely accepted at the time -- a sign of that the Pentagon's delusions had become the establishment's -- but it is now obvious that they were nearer lies than mistakes.
It is hard to imagine any "progress" in Iraq as long as it is in the hands of Donald Rumsfeld. It isn't that LI expects Bush to replace him with Susan Sontag. But McCain would be nice.
Of course, given Bush's feeling about McCain, Sontag might be more likely.
Unfortunately, the editorialist's well meaning opinion, that we should be sending more troops to Iraq, is like so many editorialist's opinions: a blandness wrapped around a hollowness. What are these troops to do? If there is a real guerilla war happening in Iraq -- and by now, I think it is obvious there is one -- the troops should be smothering the resources that sustain that war. That means sealing the borders, and it means interdicting the network of small internal forces. To do that wouldn't just require a little increase in American forces -- it would probably take at least 300,000 more.
No, Iraq is not going to regain its sovereignty with 400,000 or even 100,000 American troops roaming around in it. Perhaps a multi-national force would have squelched the beginnings of the guerilla war, but it seems to me that that force is going to face the same problem that the American forces face presently.
The only force that can really face the guerillas is an Iraqi force. The number of soldiers needed to deny insurgent groups resources is about equal to the number disbanded at the end of the war by Rumsfeld's deputy, Bremer. Bremer's decision, a compound of ignorance and hubris, is now blowing back on us. The idea that we are going to change the direction of Iraq in D.C., which is still current in both the belligerent and anti-war camps in this country, is simply false.
It hurts to agree with retired military men -- especially when they have names straight out of Doctor Strangelove -- but the WP article on the coming request for 50 to 60 billion dollars (which will undoubtedly mean 70 to 80 billion dollars -- it is how the Bush administration does its money) ended with these two grafs.
"In a sign of growing friction between Bush and the military establishment, retired Marine Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper, a Gulf War commander, said in an interview during the meeting in Arlington that he is hearing an unprecedented amount of concern among retired officers over how the Bush administration has handled Iraq.
"Their criticism focused on Rumsfeld, he added."I've never seen so such discontent among the retired community," Van Riper said. Last week, he said, he was at a breakfast with eight retired generals at which one asked about Rumsfeld, "When are they going to get rid of this guy?""
Indeed.
PS -- The Boeing vote has been delayed, per our post on Darleen Druyun. The WP has reported that an alternative lease plan is being considered.
Tuesday, September 2, 2003
Bollettino
Various conservatives and Bushites have claimed that too much attention has been paid to pot shot casualties in Iraq. Actually, this is not new -- in Frank Bruni's biography of George W., he shows that Bush sr. went on a 'fact finding' tour of Vietnam in the sixties and came back with the same conclusion -- that basically, difficulties in South Vietnam were being exaggerated. Now, partly this is just the prejudiced eye. And partly it is a fact about modern guerilla warfare -- it operates in eerie synch with the everydayness. Because the kind of warfare that finds its main grammatical component in the 'battle' has tended towards total war, those who have been trained in that tradition simply don't understand the partial war of the guerilla. Shops are open in the cities, electricity runs, most of the time. The observer can rent a car, drive around. However, guerilla wars do not bring with them less casualties than total wars. They bring with them a different kind of casualty ratio -- since the aim is to incrementally break the opponents spirit, the means -- the sudden interjection of violence, and the equally sudden disappearance of the guerilla force. While warfare has always produced more wounded than dead, in guerilla warfare, the numbers of the dead can be, for periods of time, nugatory. The thing to look for is an increasing amount of wounded. This is happening.
The Washington Post has a belated piece on the astonishing injury counts US forces are sustaining in Iraq. It was a surprise to me that last week, 55 American soldiers were wounded. That is a major figure -- it is a Vietnam type figure. The whole article, which also discusses how the military is trying to de-emphasize the nature of the violence it is experiencing in this occupation, is definitely worth reading.
Now, onto Titus Andronicus.
There's an article in the NYT outlining the book by Brian Vickers that makes the case for co-authorship in five of Shakespeare's plays. The case seems reasonable, and was reached through the standard textual editing procedure:
"Examining factors like rhetorical devices, polysyllabic words and metrical habits, scholars have been able to identify reliably an author of a work or part of a work, even when the early editions did not give credit."
Reliably, here, is a weasel word, since we are not talking about a procedure that refers to some standard. It isn't as if someone, reading the Two Noble Kinsmen, said, hey, this sounds like Shakespeare, and then the ms was discovered with the Bard's handwriting. Not that there aren't sensibilities so fine that such a thing is unthinkable -- but there's no sensibility so fine that you could use the word "reliable," At this point, we edge into those criminological pseudo-sciences that are so popular on TV, and so pernicious in court. Vicker's procedure builds on itself. In other words, we are talking about connoiseurship, not science. What is unreasonable about the article is the imputation that doubts about the standard textual editing procedure are always motivated by some heady romantic sense of the individual author:
"Professor Vickers's book also gives a good sense of the opposing forces in the co-authorship debate. On one side are scholars who use ingenious methods to dissect a text for clues to co-authorship. On the other are so-called conservators, who ridicule those efforts and want no deviation from the idea that the entire canon was written by a solitary genius."
Actually, you can think that the texts were co-authored from other, extra-textual cues, and still doubt in specific instances that the case for, say, Titus Andronicus being "two-fifths" George Peele are overwhelming. For a discussion of the attribution to Peele, here's a link.
Various conservatives and Bushites have claimed that too much attention has been paid to pot shot casualties in Iraq. Actually, this is not new -- in Frank Bruni's biography of George W., he shows that Bush sr. went on a 'fact finding' tour of Vietnam in the sixties and came back with the same conclusion -- that basically, difficulties in South Vietnam were being exaggerated. Now, partly this is just the prejudiced eye. And partly it is a fact about modern guerilla warfare -- it operates in eerie synch with the everydayness. Because the kind of warfare that finds its main grammatical component in the 'battle' has tended towards total war, those who have been trained in that tradition simply don't understand the partial war of the guerilla. Shops are open in the cities, electricity runs, most of the time. The observer can rent a car, drive around. However, guerilla wars do not bring with them less casualties than total wars. They bring with them a different kind of casualty ratio -- since the aim is to incrementally break the opponents spirit, the means -- the sudden interjection of violence, and the equally sudden disappearance of the guerilla force. While warfare has always produced more wounded than dead, in guerilla warfare, the numbers of the dead can be, for periods of time, nugatory. The thing to look for is an increasing amount of wounded. This is happening.
The Washington Post has a belated piece on the astonishing injury counts US forces are sustaining in Iraq. It was a surprise to me that last week, 55 American soldiers were wounded. That is a major figure -- it is a Vietnam type figure. The whole article, which also discusses how the military is trying to de-emphasize the nature of the violence it is experiencing in this occupation, is definitely worth reading.
Now, onto Titus Andronicus.
There's an article in the NYT outlining the book by Brian Vickers that makes the case for co-authorship in five of Shakespeare's plays. The case seems reasonable, and was reached through the standard textual editing procedure:
"Examining factors like rhetorical devices, polysyllabic words and metrical habits, scholars have been able to identify reliably an author of a work or part of a work, even when the early editions did not give credit."
Reliably, here, is a weasel word, since we are not talking about a procedure that refers to some standard. It isn't as if someone, reading the Two Noble Kinsmen, said, hey, this sounds like Shakespeare, and then the ms was discovered with the Bard's handwriting. Not that there aren't sensibilities so fine that such a thing is unthinkable -- but there's no sensibility so fine that you could use the word "reliable," At this point, we edge into those criminological pseudo-sciences that are so popular on TV, and so pernicious in court. Vicker's procedure builds on itself. In other words, we are talking about connoiseurship, not science. What is unreasonable about the article is the imputation that doubts about the standard textual editing procedure are always motivated by some heady romantic sense of the individual author:
"Professor Vickers's book also gives a good sense of the opposing forces in the co-authorship debate. On one side are scholars who use ingenious methods to dissect a text for clues to co-authorship. On the other are so-called conservators, who ridicule those efforts and want no deviation from the idea that the entire canon was written by a solitary genius."
Actually, you can think that the texts were co-authored from other, extra-textual cues, and still doubt in specific instances that the case for, say, Titus Andronicus being "two-fifths" George Peele are overwhelming. For a discussion of the attribution to Peele, here's a link.
Sunday, August 31, 2003
Bollettino
In January, Counterpunch's co-editor, Jeffrey St. Clair, wrote an article about Darleen Druyun. Druyun was an acquisitions official for the Air Force. She called herself the Godmother of the C-7, a Boeing aircraft that was perfectly expensive and unnecessary, and thus just the thing to order 100 billion dollars worth of. Except that 100 billion dollars is nothing if you can maximize it by, say, renting the aircraft to the Pentagon. As St. Clair pointed out, Druyun, who served under Clinton as well as Bush, did her best for Boeing. In my father's house are many rooms, Jesus said; a similar principle holds for Boeing with regards to Defense Department employees. As St. Clair reported, Druyun cashed in her chips, resigned from the Pentagon,and floated into a perth at Boeing:
Now she's [Druyun's] stalking bigger game: missile defense, a multi-billion dollar bonanza for defense contractors, with Boeing at the head of the trough."Ms. Druyun is now officially an employee of the company whose interests she so ardently championed while she was supposedly representing the interests of the taxpayers," says Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight. "This is one of the most egregious examples of the government revolving door in recent memory."Of course, plucking operatives from the halls of the Pentagon is nothing new for Boeing. Over the years, the company has festooned its corporate board and the halls of its lobby shop with a bevy of top brass.Recently, Boeing's board has boasted both former Defense Secretary William Perry and John M. Shalikashvili, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 2001, Boeing also hired Rudy de Leon, Clinton's Deputy Secretary of Defense, to run its Washington office. Although De Leon is known as a proud hawk and a masterful dealmaker, his hiring may have been a rare misstep for Boeing, since congressional Republicans howled that the company should have picked one of their own from the Pentagon's rolls.
Druyun's patriotic work in behalf of Boeing is now getting a little scrutiny. The story is in U.S. News, it is in Forbes, and it is in the Washington Post. Alas, the WP, DC's paper, is so weak about it that their report misreports Druyun's name, Darleen, as "Darlene." The deal of spending an extra 5 billion dollars renting supplier planes from Boeing through a financial entity controlled by Boeing has aroused the curiosity, and even the wrath, of a Senate Committee chaired by Bush's nemesis, Senator McCain. The committee has released certain documents:
"The documents also illustrate the integral role that Darlene Druyun, now a senior Boeing executive, played in formulating the lease deal while she was the Air Force's principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition and management. In one exchange Boeing officials questioned how a change in the lease terms could provide Druyun "political cover. She apparently understands that this may not be the best business case.
"Committee investigators want to know whether Druyun improperly told Boeing that its competitor, Europe's Airbus Industrie, had submitted a bid of $5 million to $17 million lower per plane. An April 2002 e-mail exchange between two Boeing officials, which said Druyun had given the information to Boeing, was turned over to the Defense Department inspector general's office, a congressional source said.Boeing denied that it received proprietary information, and a spokesman for the inspector general's office declined to comment on whether it had begun an inquiry. Aircraft prices are widely available on the Internet, and the e-mail was distributed after the Air Force announced that it would negotiate a deal with Boeing, so the information did not help formulate their initial bid, industry officials said."
A story in Forbes about this same incident refers to US News, which has gone to some length to report on what should be a major scandal. Still, even the US News dares not tell the public what St. Clair revealed in January -- that not only are we dealing with greedy pigs, but that the greedy pigs are selling low quality goods. In other words, the aircraft could potentially endanger the lives of the soldiers this administration loves to death -- when it is photo op time.
Here's how stinky the deal is:
"Such complicated financing was alien to Air Force officials. Boeing's documents make clear that in crafting the financing plan, the Air Force played student to its contractor. "The USAF clearly does not understand financing and has asked for our help to educate them (in layman's terms)," wrote Robert Gordon, the vice president of Boeing Capital Corp., in an E-mail message in December 2001. Indeed, Gordon noted, an Air Force general "made a special comment to thank Boeing for all its work over the past months to try and help this leasing proposal make sense" to the government.
Investigators with the Commerce Committee, however, are not as awestruck. They are examining the financial vehicle that's the linchpin of the deal. "It's an Enron-like entity," says McCain. For one thing, U.S. News finds, there is a built-in conflict of interest in the arrangement because, documents indicate, it gives Boeing oversight of its own deal. Boeing and the Air Force have sold the deal to Congress as a way to save money, but lease terms mean it's impossible to say today how much the government will pay tomorrow. Actual lease payments will be set as planes are delivered, and if interest rates rise more than expected, the government's costs will go up. Boeing's price will also be adjusted up for inflation; Boeing says that's standard procedure. One clause requires the Air Force to pay more if its new tankers spend too much time in the air; the Air Force says the service has negotiated far more flight hours than it will use. Still, Boeing and the Air Force can't shake the criticism that taxpayers are the losers. Last week, the Congressional Budget Office weighed in, saying that leasing the 100 planes will cost as much as $5.6 billion more than if they had been purchased. Boeing rejects the findings as flawed."
According to Druyan's official biography, she started out in D.C. as the procurements person for NASA. In other words, she's been raised in the finest school of boondoggling in the country. A natural, then, to suck up the gravy at Boeing. While it is nice that the mainstream press is coming to this story at the last minute, we do wonder why they couldn't have leaped in January. Or would that have sounded, hmm, unpatriotic?
In January, Counterpunch's co-editor, Jeffrey St. Clair, wrote an article about Darleen Druyun. Druyun was an acquisitions official for the Air Force. She called herself the Godmother of the C-7, a Boeing aircraft that was perfectly expensive and unnecessary, and thus just the thing to order 100 billion dollars worth of. Except that 100 billion dollars is nothing if you can maximize it by, say, renting the aircraft to the Pentagon. As St. Clair pointed out, Druyun, who served under Clinton as well as Bush, did her best for Boeing. In my father's house are many rooms, Jesus said; a similar principle holds for Boeing with regards to Defense Department employees. As St. Clair reported, Druyun cashed in her chips, resigned from the Pentagon,and floated into a perth at Boeing:
Now she's [Druyun's] stalking bigger game: missile defense, a multi-billion dollar bonanza for defense contractors, with Boeing at the head of the trough."Ms. Druyun is now officially an employee of the company whose interests she so ardently championed while she was supposedly representing the interests of the taxpayers," says Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight. "This is one of the most egregious examples of the government revolving door in recent memory."Of course, plucking operatives from the halls of the Pentagon is nothing new for Boeing. Over the years, the company has festooned its corporate board and the halls of its lobby shop with a bevy of top brass.Recently, Boeing's board has boasted both former Defense Secretary William Perry and John M. Shalikashvili, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In 2001, Boeing also hired Rudy de Leon, Clinton's Deputy Secretary of Defense, to run its Washington office. Although De Leon is known as a proud hawk and a masterful dealmaker, his hiring may have been a rare misstep for Boeing, since congressional Republicans howled that the company should have picked one of their own from the Pentagon's rolls.
Druyun's patriotic work in behalf of Boeing is now getting a little scrutiny. The story is in U.S. News, it is in Forbes, and it is in the Washington Post. Alas, the WP, DC's paper, is so weak about it that their report misreports Druyun's name, Darleen, as "Darlene." The deal of spending an extra 5 billion dollars renting supplier planes from Boeing through a financial entity controlled by Boeing has aroused the curiosity, and even the wrath, of a Senate Committee chaired by Bush's nemesis, Senator McCain. The committee has released certain documents:
"The documents also illustrate the integral role that Darlene Druyun, now a senior Boeing executive, played in formulating the lease deal while she was the Air Force's principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition and management. In one exchange Boeing officials questioned how a change in the lease terms could provide Druyun "political cover. She apparently understands that this may not be the best business case.
"Committee investigators want to know whether Druyun improperly told Boeing that its competitor, Europe's Airbus Industrie, had submitted a bid of $5 million to $17 million lower per plane. An April 2002 e-mail exchange between two Boeing officials, which said Druyun had given the information to Boeing, was turned over to the Defense Department inspector general's office, a congressional source said.Boeing denied that it received proprietary information, and a spokesman for the inspector general's office declined to comment on whether it had begun an inquiry. Aircraft prices are widely available on the Internet, and the e-mail was distributed after the Air Force announced that it would negotiate a deal with Boeing, so the information did not help formulate their initial bid, industry officials said."
A story in Forbes about this same incident refers to US News, which has gone to some length to report on what should be a major scandal. Still, even the US News dares not tell the public what St. Clair revealed in January -- that not only are we dealing with greedy pigs, but that the greedy pigs are selling low quality goods. In other words, the aircraft could potentially endanger the lives of the soldiers this administration loves to death -- when it is photo op time.
Here's how stinky the deal is:
"Such complicated financing was alien to Air Force officials. Boeing's documents make clear that in crafting the financing plan, the Air Force played student to its contractor. "The USAF clearly does not understand financing and has asked for our help to educate them (in layman's terms)," wrote Robert Gordon, the vice president of Boeing Capital Corp., in an E-mail message in December 2001. Indeed, Gordon noted, an Air Force general "made a special comment to thank Boeing for all its work over the past months to try and help this leasing proposal make sense" to the government.
Investigators with the Commerce Committee, however, are not as awestruck. They are examining the financial vehicle that's the linchpin of the deal. "It's an Enron-like entity," says McCain. For one thing, U.S. News finds, there is a built-in conflict of interest in the arrangement because, documents indicate, it gives Boeing oversight of its own deal. Boeing and the Air Force have sold the deal to Congress as a way to save money, but lease terms mean it's impossible to say today how much the government will pay tomorrow. Actual lease payments will be set as planes are delivered, and if interest rates rise more than expected, the government's costs will go up. Boeing's price will also be adjusted up for inflation; Boeing says that's standard procedure. One clause requires the Air Force to pay more if its new tankers spend too much time in the air; the Air Force says the service has negotiated far more flight hours than it will use. Still, Boeing and the Air Force can't shake the criticism that taxpayers are the losers. Last week, the Congressional Budget Office weighed in, saying that leasing the 100 planes will cost as much as $5.6 billion more than if they had been purchased. Boeing rejects the findings as flawed."
According to Druyan's official biography, she started out in D.C. as the procurements person for NASA. In other words, she's been raised in the finest school of boondoggling in the country. A natural, then, to suck up the gravy at Boeing. While it is nice that the mainstream press is coming to this story at the last minute, we do wonder why they couldn't have leaped in January. Or would that have sounded, hmm, unpatriotic?
Tuesday, August 26, 2003
In Shestov�s In Job�s Balance, there is an essay on Tolstoy�s latter writings. LI wants to say there is a brilliant essay on Tolstoy�s latter writings, but one of the effects of the essay is to cast in doubt such unthinking terms as �brilliant.� It is just this kind of flattery, that critical blank of praise, which is a way of turning the reader aside, keeping him from entering the empty room at the heart of the heart of it all. Modern criticism, after all, originated in the royal courts, or at best among the circle around powerful families in Italian city states � and it still retains a lot of the courtier�s arts. Why else do critics feel called upon to praise, to like, or to dislike? It is a way of reconstituting the circle around the patron.
So I won�t say use the word "brilliant." I will say this: Shestov is a philosopher � and hence, a writer of death threats. This essay is one of them.
He quotes a letter written to Tolstoy by Dostoevsky�s official biographer. It is a scalding passage, and I�m going to quote it in full:
There is a firmly established tradition in literature, which is to show to the reader only the good side of a great man's existence. The "lower" truths are of no use to us; what can we do with them? We are convinced that truths are not necessary to us for their own sakes, but only in so far as they can help us to action. This is the position taken up, for example, by Strakhov in writing Dostoevsky's biography, as he himself admits in a letter to Tolstoy which was only published in 1913.
"All the time that I was writing I had to struggle against a feeling of disgust which kept rising in me. I tried to stifle my evil thoughts. Help me to get rid of them! I cannot look upon Dostoevsky either as a good or a happy man. He was malicious, envious, and debauched. Throughout his whole life he was a prey to passions which would have rendered him miserable and ridiculous if he had not been so clever and so wicked. I remembered these feelings vividly while I was writing his biography. In Switzerland once he treated his servant so abominably in my presence that the man could stand it no longer and cried out, "But I am a man too!" I remember how these words struck me as reflecting the ideas of a free Swiss on the rights of man, and addressed to one who was for ever preaching to us about humanist feelings. Such scenes occurred frequently, he was unable to control his bad temper. Many times I answered his ravings with silence, when he burst out suddenly and often perversely, like an old woman; but once or twice I did break out and say very disagreeable things to him.
But he always got the better of ordinary people, and the worst of it was that he enjoyed it and never genuinely repented of his bad behaviour. He liked wickedness and gloried in it. Vistovatov (a professor of Dorpat University) told me how he had boasted to him of having seduced in her bath a little girl who had been brought to him by her governess. Among the characters of his books, the ones most like him are the hero of The Notes from Underground, Svidrigailov, and Stavrogin. Katov refused to publish one of the scenes with Stravrogin (the rape, etc.), but Dostoevsky read it aloud here to a large company of people. With all this, he was inclined to sickly sentimentality, and exalted humanitarian dreams, and it is these dreams, his literary gifts, and his tenderness of heart which endear him to us. In fact, all his novels are an attempt to exonerate their author; they show that the most hideous villainy can exist in a man side by side with the noblest feelings. This is a little commentary to my biography; I could describe that side of Dostoevsky's character; I remember many other incidents even more remarkable than those which I have quoted; my story would have been more genuine; but let the truth perish; let us go on exhibiting the beautiful side of life, just as we always do on every occasion."
I do not know if in the whole of literature there are many documents more valuable than this. I am not even sure whether Strakhov himself really understood the meaning and significance of what he admitted to Tolstoy. Many men in recent times have declared that a lie is better than the truth. Oscar Wilde and Nietzsche have said it, and even Pushkin declares that "The lie which elevates us is dearer to us than a legion of base truths ". But they were all addressing the reader, teaching him. Strakhov is quite simply and sincerely making a confession, and this gives his words a special force and significance. It is probable that this letter produced a great impression on Tolstoy, who was just then finding the burden of the conventional lie very hard to bear, and burned with the desire to purify himself by a full confession. For he himself was one of the priests of the supreme lie, and how beautiful and beguiling that lie was!�
The supreme lie is a certain form of literature, which reflects a certain form of life. This life is, for lack of a better term, ultimately hedonistic. Life is about happiness � about the world we share with others -- not about death. Death, Shestov thinks, is the collapse of the world we share with others into the terrible singularity of the world we can�t share with others � the world of the self that smothers us. Shestov choses to make his point about Tolstoy�s uneasy consciousness of this second world by concentrating on one of his fragment � a little known story entitled, after Gogol, Diary of a Madman.
�Among Tolstoy's posthumous works there is a short, unfinished story called The Diary of a Madman. The subject is very simple. A rich landowner, having learned that an estate was for sale in the province of Penza, makes up his mind to go down, have a look at it and buy it. He is very pleased about it; according to his calculations, he will be able to buy it at a very low figure, almost for nothing. Then, suddenly, one night at an hotel on the way, without any apparent reason, he is seized by a horrible, insufferable anguish. Nothing in his surroundings has changed, nothing new has happened, but until now everything had always inspired him with confidence, everything had seemed to him to be normal, necessary, well - regulated, soothing; he had felt the solid earth beneath his feet and reality on all sides of him. No doubt, no questions! Nothing but answers! Then suddenly, in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, everything is transformed as though by a magic wand. Peace, answers, the solid earth, consciousness of right, and the easy feeling of lightness, simplicity and certainty which springs from this � all suddenly disappear. Around him are nothing but looming questions with their inevitable train of importunate anxiety, of doubt, and senseless, gnawing, invincible terrors. The ordinary means by which these painful thoughts are usually routed are completely ineffectual.
"I tried to think of things which interested me; of the acquisition of the estate, of my wife. Not only did I find nothing pleasant in these thoughts, but they were all as nothing to me. The horror of my wasted life overshadowed everything. I tried to go to sleep. I lay down, but no sooner was I on my bed than terror roused me again. And anxiety! An anxiety like one feels before one is going to be sick, but it was moral. Fear, anguish - we think of death as terrible, but when we look back upon life, it is the agony of life which overwhelms us! Death and life seemed in some way to be confounded with one another. Something tore my existence to rags, and yet could not succeed in tearing it completely. I went once more to look at my fellow-sleepers; I tried again to get to sleep; but terror was ever before me, red, white, and square. Something was tearing, but it still held."
Thus Tolstoy pitilessly strips himself before our eyes. There are few writers who show us truths like these. And if one wants, if one is able to see this truth - for even naked truth is not easy to see - then a whole series of problems arise which are out of all relation with our ordinary thoughts. How are we to apprehend these groundless terrors which so suddenly appeared, red, white, and square?�
Next post, if we can do it, will explore just that question.
So I won�t say use the word "brilliant." I will say this: Shestov is a philosopher � and hence, a writer of death threats. This essay is one of them.
He quotes a letter written to Tolstoy by Dostoevsky�s official biographer. It is a scalding passage, and I�m going to quote it in full:
There is a firmly established tradition in literature, which is to show to the reader only the good side of a great man's existence. The "lower" truths are of no use to us; what can we do with them? We are convinced that truths are not necessary to us for their own sakes, but only in so far as they can help us to action. This is the position taken up, for example, by Strakhov in writing Dostoevsky's biography, as he himself admits in a letter to Tolstoy which was only published in 1913.
"All the time that I was writing I had to struggle against a feeling of disgust which kept rising in me. I tried to stifle my evil thoughts. Help me to get rid of them! I cannot look upon Dostoevsky either as a good or a happy man. He was malicious, envious, and debauched. Throughout his whole life he was a prey to passions which would have rendered him miserable and ridiculous if he had not been so clever and so wicked. I remembered these feelings vividly while I was writing his biography. In Switzerland once he treated his servant so abominably in my presence that the man could stand it no longer and cried out, "But I am a man too!" I remember how these words struck me as reflecting the ideas of a free Swiss on the rights of man, and addressed to one who was for ever preaching to us about humanist feelings. Such scenes occurred frequently, he was unable to control his bad temper. Many times I answered his ravings with silence, when he burst out suddenly and often perversely, like an old woman; but once or twice I did break out and say very disagreeable things to him.
But he always got the better of ordinary people, and the worst of it was that he enjoyed it and never genuinely repented of his bad behaviour. He liked wickedness and gloried in it. Vistovatov (a professor of Dorpat University) told me how he had boasted to him of having seduced in her bath a little girl who had been brought to him by her governess. Among the characters of his books, the ones most like him are the hero of The Notes from Underground, Svidrigailov, and Stavrogin. Katov refused to publish one of the scenes with Stravrogin (the rape, etc.), but Dostoevsky read it aloud here to a large company of people. With all this, he was inclined to sickly sentimentality, and exalted humanitarian dreams, and it is these dreams, his literary gifts, and his tenderness of heart which endear him to us. In fact, all his novels are an attempt to exonerate their author; they show that the most hideous villainy can exist in a man side by side with the noblest feelings. This is a little commentary to my biography; I could describe that side of Dostoevsky's character; I remember many other incidents even more remarkable than those which I have quoted; my story would have been more genuine; but let the truth perish; let us go on exhibiting the beautiful side of life, just as we always do on every occasion."
I do not know if in the whole of literature there are many documents more valuable than this. I am not even sure whether Strakhov himself really understood the meaning and significance of what he admitted to Tolstoy. Many men in recent times have declared that a lie is better than the truth. Oscar Wilde and Nietzsche have said it, and even Pushkin declares that "The lie which elevates us is dearer to us than a legion of base truths ". But they were all addressing the reader, teaching him. Strakhov is quite simply and sincerely making a confession, and this gives his words a special force and significance. It is probable that this letter produced a great impression on Tolstoy, who was just then finding the burden of the conventional lie very hard to bear, and burned with the desire to purify himself by a full confession. For he himself was one of the priests of the supreme lie, and how beautiful and beguiling that lie was!�
The supreme lie is a certain form of literature, which reflects a certain form of life. This life is, for lack of a better term, ultimately hedonistic. Life is about happiness � about the world we share with others -- not about death. Death, Shestov thinks, is the collapse of the world we share with others into the terrible singularity of the world we can�t share with others � the world of the self that smothers us. Shestov choses to make his point about Tolstoy�s uneasy consciousness of this second world by concentrating on one of his fragment � a little known story entitled, after Gogol, Diary of a Madman.
�Among Tolstoy's posthumous works there is a short, unfinished story called The Diary of a Madman. The subject is very simple. A rich landowner, having learned that an estate was for sale in the province of Penza, makes up his mind to go down, have a look at it and buy it. He is very pleased about it; according to his calculations, he will be able to buy it at a very low figure, almost for nothing. Then, suddenly, one night at an hotel on the way, without any apparent reason, he is seized by a horrible, insufferable anguish. Nothing in his surroundings has changed, nothing new has happened, but until now everything had always inspired him with confidence, everything had seemed to him to be normal, necessary, well - regulated, soothing; he had felt the solid earth beneath his feet and reality on all sides of him. No doubt, no questions! Nothing but answers! Then suddenly, in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, everything is transformed as though by a magic wand. Peace, answers, the solid earth, consciousness of right, and the easy feeling of lightness, simplicity and certainty which springs from this � all suddenly disappear. Around him are nothing but looming questions with their inevitable train of importunate anxiety, of doubt, and senseless, gnawing, invincible terrors. The ordinary means by which these painful thoughts are usually routed are completely ineffectual.
"I tried to think of things which interested me; of the acquisition of the estate, of my wife. Not only did I find nothing pleasant in these thoughts, but they were all as nothing to me. The horror of my wasted life overshadowed everything. I tried to go to sleep. I lay down, but no sooner was I on my bed than terror roused me again. And anxiety! An anxiety like one feels before one is going to be sick, but it was moral. Fear, anguish - we think of death as terrible, but when we look back upon life, it is the agony of life which overwhelms us! Death and life seemed in some way to be confounded with one another. Something tore my existence to rags, and yet could not succeed in tearing it completely. I went once more to look at my fellow-sleepers; I tried again to get to sleep; but terror was ever before me, red, white, and square. Something was tearing, but it still held."
Thus Tolstoy pitilessly strips himself before our eyes. There are few writers who show us truths like these. And if one wants, if one is able to see this truth - for even naked truth is not easy to see - then a whole series of problems arise which are out of all relation with our ordinary thoughts. How are we to apprehend these groundless terrors which so suddenly appeared, red, white, and square?�
Next post, if we can do it, will explore just that question.
Monday, August 25, 2003
Bollettino
WP's article, today, on the death of writing systems is a bit incoherent.
The article's theme is hearteningly democratic. A writing system -- for instance, Sumerian cuneiform -- dies out because there are too many restrictions on its use. That, at least, is the finding of a certain group of scholars:
"The collaboration among Houston, University of Cambridge Egyptologist John Baines and Assyriologist Jerrold S. Cooper of Johns Hopkins University began at a meeting that Houston hosted earlier this year to discuss the origins of writing. What resulted was "Last Writing," an essay on script death published recently in the British journal Comparative Studies in Society and History. Its basic conclusion: Writing systems die when those who use them restrict access to them."
. But its instances seem to cast that theory into doubt. Since "Both Egyptian and cuneiform survived for 4,000 years, a millennium longer than the Latin alphabet that Westerners use today, and both died in the early centuries of the Christian era after long declines," one has to wonder whether the extinction thesis of restricted use -- with its implication of rarity of users -- is a prime cause, or the result of some other factor. If, in fact, the long decline is defined, in fact, by rarity of users -- so that, by definition, access to the writing system is restricted. For if the Egyptian system lasted 4,000 years with the same level of restriction over time -- that is, with about the same number of rare users -- then it's death is not due to the restriction of access, but is caused by some concerted attack, conceptual, linguistic, or otherwise, on those users. If it had more users in the course of its functioning, and less users over time during its decline, this would essentially make the WP assertion nonsensical. It is like explaining that fire burns because it is hot.
In evolutionary terms, one has to wonder about the counter-case: what benefit accrues to the system by restricting access? It might be that the initial flood of Greek culture into Egypt, after Alexander's invasion, would have displaced even a more widespread writing system -- and that the very restrictedness and prestige of the welders of the older system preserved it.
So, given these weirdnesses in the article, we looked around to see if we could find other reports on Houston, Baines and Cooper's study. Here's the Brigham Yount U. news release (Houston is a BYU scholar):
"Changes in writing systems mirror larger changes that take place, not because of technological 'advances,' but because of feelings about the associations of past kinds of communication,� said Stephen Houston, Jesse Knight university professor of anthropology at Brigham Young University. �This is a new take on communicative 'technologies' -- that they are completely saturated with cultural values and conditioned by history.�
"Houston, a Maya expert, was joined by Oxford Egyptologist John Baines and Johns Hopkins� Jerrold Cooper, who studies cuneiform. Their study is reported in the new issue of Comparative Studies in Society and History, published by Cambridge University Press.
This a brilliant paper by three experts in two ancient scripts of the Old World and one of the New,� said Michael Coe, professor emeritus of anthropology at Yale and author of the bestselling Breaking the Maya Code. �Until now, no one has analyzed the deaths of these scripts from a comparative perspective. As for the Maya writing system itself, only Stephen Houston could have covered such a complex subject in such a convincing way. This is probably the world's most difficult script, and Professor Houston has been in the forefront of its ongoing decipherment.�
Here, there's no mention of restriction of access. In other words, the progressive thesis, which is what the research tends to dispute, is sustained, under a different form, by the WP article, in contradiction to the very study upon which it is reporting. A Derridean would expect no less. Because the writers of the WP article can't give up the thesis that writing systems "progress," with those that are technologically superior succeeding those that are inferior, the WP article distorts the whole point of the Houston, Baines and Cooper study.
Hmm. One could make extensive analogies to other WP distortions, of late, about Middle Eastern cultures. But one won't.
WP's article, today, on the death of writing systems is a bit incoherent.
The article's theme is hearteningly democratic. A writing system -- for instance, Sumerian cuneiform -- dies out because there are too many restrictions on its use. That, at least, is the finding of a certain group of scholars:
"The collaboration among Houston, University of Cambridge Egyptologist John Baines and Assyriologist Jerrold S. Cooper of Johns Hopkins University began at a meeting that Houston hosted earlier this year to discuss the origins of writing. What resulted was "Last Writing," an essay on script death published recently in the British journal Comparative Studies in Society and History. Its basic conclusion: Writing systems die when those who use them restrict access to them."
. But its instances seem to cast that theory into doubt. Since "Both Egyptian and cuneiform survived for 4,000 years, a millennium longer than the Latin alphabet that Westerners use today, and both died in the early centuries of the Christian era after long declines," one has to wonder whether the extinction thesis of restricted use -- with its implication of rarity of users -- is a prime cause, or the result of some other factor. If, in fact, the long decline is defined, in fact, by rarity of users -- so that, by definition, access to the writing system is restricted. For if the Egyptian system lasted 4,000 years with the same level of restriction over time -- that is, with about the same number of rare users -- then it's death is not due to the restriction of access, but is caused by some concerted attack, conceptual, linguistic, or otherwise, on those users. If it had more users in the course of its functioning, and less users over time during its decline, this would essentially make the WP assertion nonsensical. It is like explaining that fire burns because it is hot.
In evolutionary terms, one has to wonder about the counter-case: what benefit accrues to the system by restricting access? It might be that the initial flood of Greek culture into Egypt, after Alexander's invasion, would have displaced even a more widespread writing system -- and that the very restrictedness and prestige of the welders of the older system preserved it.
So, given these weirdnesses in the article, we looked around to see if we could find other reports on Houston, Baines and Cooper's study. Here's the Brigham Yount U. news release (Houston is a BYU scholar):
"Changes in writing systems mirror larger changes that take place, not because of technological 'advances,' but because of feelings about the associations of past kinds of communication,� said Stephen Houston, Jesse Knight university professor of anthropology at Brigham Young University. �This is a new take on communicative 'technologies' -- that they are completely saturated with cultural values and conditioned by history.�
"Houston, a Maya expert, was joined by Oxford Egyptologist John Baines and Johns Hopkins� Jerrold Cooper, who studies cuneiform. Their study is reported in the new issue of Comparative Studies in Society and History, published by Cambridge University Press.
This a brilliant paper by three experts in two ancient scripts of the Old World and one of the New,� said Michael Coe, professor emeritus of anthropology at Yale and author of the bestselling Breaking the Maya Code. �Until now, no one has analyzed the deaths of these scripts from a comparative perspective. As for the Maya writing system itself, only Stephen Houston could have covered such a complex subject in such a convincing way. This is probably the world's most difficult script, and Professor Houston has been in the forefront of its ongoing decipherment.�
Here, there's no mention of restriction of access. In other words, the progressive thesis, which is what the research tends to dispute, is sustained, under a different form, by the WP article, in contradiction to the very study upon which it is reporting. A Derridean would expect no less. Because the writers of the WP article can't give up the thesis that writing systems "progress," with those that are technologically superior succeeding those that are inferior, the WP article distorts the whole point of the Houston, Baines and Cooper study.
Hmm. One could make extensive analogies to other WP distortions, of late, about Middle Eastern cultures. But one won't.
Sunday, August 24, 2003
Bollettino
The NYT has a nice story about the peaceful coexistence between Americans and Iraqis in the city of Diwaniya
"As the area around Baghdad endured a week of repeated violence, a happier scene unfolded in this city, a two-hour drive to the south.
American soldiers, without helmets or flak jackets, attended graduation ceremonies of the Diwaniya University Medical School. At ease with the Iraqi students and their parents, the American marines laughed, joked and posed in photographs. One by one, the students walked up to thank them, for Marine doctors had taught classes in surgery and gynecology and helped draw up the final exams.
"We like the Americans very much here," said Zainab Khaledy, 22, who received her medical degree last Sunday. "We feel better than under the old regime. We have problems, like security, but everything is getting better."
In goes on in this vein for quite a while, making Diwaniya seem like a candidate for Forbes One Hundred Best Cities to Work In. No attacks on friendly American GIs, no anti-American grafitti on the walls, the lion lying down with the lamb, etc.
Yet according to Spanish new agencies, the a military base located in this 'relatively peaceful' city in which Spanish soldiers are being trained was attacked just two days ago. 19 mortar shells were lobbed into the camp. Perhaps the NYT reporter doesn't pay attention to the papers owned by the NYT Company, because the story is up on the International Herald Tribune website. Alas, it is in pdf. Still, it does make you wonder who is in wonderland, here. At the very least, I think that the editors of Forbes would hesitate to recommend a city as Great to Work In that was subject to occasional mortar bombardments.
The NYT has a nice story about the peaceful coexistence between Americans and Iraqis in the city of Diwaniya
"As the area around Baghdad endured a week of repeated violence, a happier scene unfolded in this city, a two-hour drive to the south.
American soldiers, without helmets or flak jackets, attended graduation ceremonies of the Diwaniya University Medical School. At ease with the Iraqi students and their parents, the American marines laughed, joked and posed in photographs. One by one, the students walked up to thank them, for Marine doctors had taught classes in surgery and gynecology and helped draw up the final exams.
"We like the Americans very much here," said Zainab Khaledy, 22, who received her medical degree last Sunday. "We feel better than under the old regime. We have problems, like security, but everything is getting better."
In goes on in this vein for quite a while, making Diwaniya seem like a candidate for Forbes One Hundred Best Cities to Work In. No attacks on friendly American GIs, no anti-American grafitti on the walls, the lion lying down with the lamb, etc.
Yet according to Spanish new agencies, the a military base located in this 'relatively peaceful' city in which Spanish soldiers are being trained was attacked just two days ago. 19 mortar shells were lobbed into the camp. Perhaps the NYT reporter doesn't pay attention to the papers owned by the NYT Company, because the story is up on the International Herald Tribune website. Alas, it is in pdf. Still, it does make you wonder who is in wonderland, here. At the very least, I think that the editors of Forbes would hesitate to recommend a city as Great to Work In that was subject to occasional mortar bombardments.
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