Fifth Anniversary

For a couple of weeks now there has been a line of strikers across the street. yelling and banging on drums for hours at a time. I'd nearly gotten used to the din. This morning, no sooner had I arrived at the office when the disturbance from the street was louder than usual. I leaned over to peer out the window, saw a circle of nine people linked together in the middle of 17th and L Street, and went back outside.

Others milled about, including women on stilts dressed in all black. A lot of people were dressed in black. Crowds began to gather on the sidewalks, holding up cell phones.

Cars honked and tried to get around the protesters. It didn't take long for a cop to show up and divert traffic. And then more cops.

The police arrived in waves over a period of 10-15 minutes-- motorcycle cops, two groups on mountain bikes (DC police in blue, Park Service in white), and in due time the riot truck and the helicopter.

That's a Smith & Wesson law enforcement special, son.

Actually, I thought the cops were pretty reasonable, all things considered. Code Pink rolled a pink bed down the sidewalk and into the street. The cops told them to keep it on the sidewalk. Fair enough, if you have to push a pink bed around.

I went back to work and watched now and then from my window. Within an hour the group had been cut apart and hauled away, traffic returned to normal.

After noon I went for a walk by the White House and found another hooded protester protesting the treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo.

There was a couple nearby taking pictures of each other, so I asked if they wanted a photo together. Rather than stand together with the White House as the backdrop, they stood to the right of this guy. "Do you mind?" the woman asked the protester. "Not at all," he said from beneath the hood, his hands remaining behind his back. "Be my guest."

It was surreal. I wish I had a copy of that image -- the tourists next to a protester in orange.

The orange jumpsuit is a fashion you see in DC more often than you might expect. I wonder if they're reenforced in the knees.

On the way back to the office I swung through MacPhearson Square, where festivities were scheduled for 2 in the afternoon. The area was already happening.

The Granny Brigade knitted furiously in dissent.

Along the way I picked up a couple of signs for souvenirs, a nice yellow "USA Out Of Iraq" placard and a smaller blue peace sign. I tucked them under my arm and noted the time. Almost 1 p.m. Time to head back.

By then the cops completely encircled MacPherson Square. They stood shoulder-to-shoulder on K Street, backed up by a row of motorcycles and lines of cars, lights flashing everywhere. An officer with a bullhorn announces that anybody who steps off the sidewalk into K Street will be arrested.

For the first time, I realize that by coincidence I'm wearing my black button-down dress shirt and the same black hooded sweatshirt that I wear every day -- dressed in black like everybody else -- and carrying anti-war signs. "Officer," I said, trying my friendliest face, "Can I just cross the street? I need to get back to my office."

He just started at me. Hard. I gestured to the mob of thousands behind me. "I'm not with them. I don't know these people."

"Where is your office?" he asked. I pointed across K. "I suggest you walk a couple of blocks down the street and then cross," he said.

And that's what I did -- just my personal policy to not argue with people with guns.

Street Theater

When the weather is nice I like taking a walk during the lunch hour. I don't know what it is about this intersection, but it's great for spotting people -- Donald Rumsfeld a couple of times, Tom Ridge, Helen Thomas, Ted Koppel. Last week I watched Sam Donaldson lurch across the street to pick up his sandwich at Potbelly.

I'll often loop through Farragut Park to Lafayette Park to see what's going in in front of the White House, listening to my iPod. Usually there's a good mix of tourists, protesters, press and various law enforcement types. A lot of high school groups. When I see people taking pictures of each other, I often offer to take their picture together in front of the White House.


I pick up random snippets of history from guides conducting tours. (When a Marine guard is posted at the North door of the West Wing, that means the President is at the White House).

I don't know why, but I instinctively look both ways whenever I step onto Pennsylvania Avenue even though the street has been closed to traffic for years.

One day last week there were Park Service cops on horseback and bright yellow-clad Secret Service on mountain bikes forming a line half-way through Lafayette Park, keeping everybody a half-block further away from the White House than usual. Marine One was lifting off on the South lawn. The cops never say that the park is open again. They just turn away and saunter off.

Last Tuesday I stroll around, and the whole park is closed. People lined up on H Street to see what's going on. I had a cigarette while listening to a podcast. When the all-clear was given, the cops broke their ranks and walked or rode away. Tourists began to filter through the park to the White House. Concepción Picciotto, who has been living across the White House in protest for the last 27 years, struggled with her bicycle and rambunctious11-month-old American terrier. A Secret Service agent, himself on bike, started to roll Picciotto's bicycle back to her plastic and cardboard shelter. It was an awkward arrangement, so I took the bike for her. "And they say chivalry is dead," the agent he said to me from behind darkened lenses. "I don't know, it isn't doing so well," I replied.

Later I learned that another small plane had entered restricted airspace and the Capitol had been evacuated. So that's what it was about.

Today the block of K Street between 14th and 15th was blocked off, cop cars and vans all up and down the block and around the corners. The windows in front of the ATM vestibule at the Wachovia Bank are blown out, glass all over the sidewalk. Some poor schmuck left his briefcase at the money machine, and the bomb squad blew it up.

How was your lunch?

Soundtrack of the War

New uncensored images from Abu Ghraib were recently released, documenting the depraved and savage conditions that our government has wrought.

Over at imeem.com, somebody put together a songlist of music used during "enhanced interrogation," often at loud volume for hours or days at a time. The songs were identified through various accounts from the press and the military.

Just as Hendrix's cover of All Along the Watchtower is used in films to set the mood of Vietnam, this music will be the soundtrack for movies about Bush's war.

Snow Job

On the Real Time with Bill Maher broadcast January 11, 2008, former White House spokesperson Tony Snow had this to say:

When it comes to the war, everybody….It’s great to be a back seat General. Everybody gets it wrong at the beginning of a war…

[Bush] ended up trusting the people in charge. If they made wrong decisions, that’s something you learn from. Yes, I know people died. On the other hand, you can sit around and be snarky. You can sit around and second-guess. If you’ve got the way to win on the ground right now, please dispatch it. Love to hear it.

This recurring challenge ran like a leitmotif through the 2004 and 2006 elections – Well, what’s your plan? Do you have a strategy for success?

I’ll take that. Let me explain what happened, as I see it:

American was walking down the street one day when some evil people smacked us in the head with an ice ball. A nasty one, packed tight with a rock in the middle. It hurt a lot and drew blood. America was angry.

George Bush went tearing off down the sidewalk, huffing and puffing that he’d get the person responsible for this, dead or alive. On the sidewalk was a pile of dog shit. George ran directly towards it. Some of us said, “George, that looks like a pile of shit. Stepping in that isn’t a good idea.”

But no, he ignored everybody who voiced contrary advice, called them traitors and haters, and did it anyway. He didn’t just step in shit, he stomped on it with both feet. Wiggled it between his toes. Smeared it all over.

He made a big mess. In other words, he’s a big mess-maker.

And then George stands there, splattered with shit from head to toe, and has the unmitigated gall to say, “Well, how would you clean up this mess?”

Facepalm. Those who opposed this war are accused of second-guessing by people who never did any first-guessing from the outset. There never was a Plan B for Iraq because they didn't even have a Plan A.

Here’s what you do, Tony. You start by taking command away from the idiots responsible for the worst military and foreign relations blunder in American history. You stop following people who led the country into shit. You stop listening to people who lied, people who were horribly wrong time after time. And you hold them accountable for their lies and crimes.

That’s how it starts. It will take a long, long time to clean up this shit. The stains will never come out. But it starts by recognizing and admitting that the present course is wrong.

Pants on Fire

Stepped out of the Metro and saw a fog machine at the curb, spewing out puffs of vapor. Another bioterrorism test? No, they’re filming a Coca Cola commercial at the corner of Connecticut and 17^th Street.

Democratic strategist James Carville encounters former GOP senator Bill Frist at a hot dog stand, no doubt teaching the world to sing in perfect harmony. Extras walk back and forth on the sidewalk.

Not long after arriving at the office, there are sirens in the street. Peering out the window, I see two fire trucks southbound on 17^th, escorted by two black SUVs – Secret Service vehicles. There’s a two-alarm fire at the Old Executive Office building, smoke pouring out of third-floor windows.

The guy doing front desk security says that we have the smell of smoke in the upper floors of the building. I tell him that the destruction of evidence probably got out of hand.

Around lunch time, I strolled over to the massive granite building just to check out the scene.

At 12:30, White House spokesperson Dana Perino held a press briefing during which she took issue with a New York Times article about the destruction of video tapes documenting the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” of suspected terrorists.

Perino – who recently admitted to achieving her post unaware of the Cuban missile crisis -- objected to a subhead that said “White House Role Was Wider Than It Said,” specifically the use of the word “it.”

“Well, the subhead of the newspaper indicated that the White House -- well, it says the White House role was wider than it said, implying that I had either changed my story, or I or somebody else at the White House had misled the public,” she said.

In a statement, Perino said the inference of an effort to mislead the public is “pernicious and troubling.”

She didn’t say that the substance of the subhead is untrue, or that the article is factually incorrect. Just that the White House hasn’t said anything publicly about the matter at all, so “it” said nothing. Sure enough, the Times obliged by changing the subhead.

Of all the lies, falsehoods, duplicity, manipulations and deceptions perpetrated by this administration – the Iraq war, the war on terrorism, the outing of Valerie Plame, the existence of clandestine prisons violating international and US law, even blatant out-in-the-open lies like Bush’s firing of Rumsfeld – this is the line Perino draws in the sand.

Pernicious and troubling are a good way to start describing it.