Life During War

Improvised Explosive Device

2008-08-12T22:17:00.004-05:00

It's curious that the roadside bombs responsible for about a third of U.S. casualties in Iraq are called improvised explosive devices (IEDs) by the military, but the improvised explosive devices used by Ted Kaczynski, Timothy McVeigh, Eric Rudolph, and at the World Trade Center in 1993 are called bombs.

The IEDs in Iraq are typically devised from disassembled warheads or mines -- gadgets designed to explode. On the other hand, McVeigh, the ’93 WTC bombers and others used ANFO, a homemade explosive mixture of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and fuel oil, detonated with a makeshift mechanism.

No mincing words about it. A bomb is a bomb whether here or there. Calling it an IED masks its meaning, much as collateral damage does for civilian deaths. No, we aren’t being bombed to pieces in Iraq. Yes, there are some IED casualties. Doesn’t that sound better?

Wheel Life Follies

2008-08-04T20:44:00.002-05:00

I stepped out of the Metro station onto Farragut Park, and as I strike up my cigarette I notice a cop car with its lights on stop in the middle of the eastbound side of K Street. Then another police car, also with its lights flashing, pulled into 17^th Street and stopped. Across the park, more flashing lights. I looked around the corner up the street, and there are still more police cars, lights flashing, block intersections for several blocks.

Cool. It’s a motorcade. This form of spontaneous street theater occurs frequently in Washington. It turned out to be Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, I later learned.

There is a hierarchy of motorcades in D.C., ranging from extravaganzas stretching for blocks to comparatively dinky police-car escorts.

The big enchilada, of course, is the presidential motorcade. You can always tell when Bush is moving because the white Secret Service helicopter is up. Washington is unlike most American cities – well, for many reasons, not the least of which is the lack of aircraft flying overhead. The airspace is restricted. No news or police helicopters, no aircraft of any kind fly over D.C.. Planes flying in and out of Reagan National follow a gut-wrenching curved flight path over the Potomac running South and West of the city.

If you hear a helicopter in Washington, it’s either the Secret Service or Marine One, which passes by often. A couple of times interceptor jets have screamed overhead when aircraft penetrated the airspace. Usually DC is free from the noise of aircraft unless the President is on the move.

Nothing compares with a presidential motorcade. All the intersections are blocked along the route. Sometimes I’ll notice police cars pre-positioned at several intersections and get the sense that something is up. Sure enough, on cue they’ll turn on their lights and pull into the intersections to stop traffic. The white helicopter is up. There are snipers on the rooftops. The cops order everybody to stop crossing the street and to stay on the sidewalk.

The roar of Harley Davidson motorcycles fills the air. And then the SUVs, one after another – one of them with the rear window open. There’s an SUV bristling with antennae, which presumably is a communications vehicle. In another SUV, a guy stands up through a sunroof holding a video camera – a press vehicle? More SUVs, a few panel vans looking heavily armored, containing god knows what kind of weapons or equipment. An ambulance, a police car, and more motorcycles.

There are two presidential limousines in the motorcade, one of them presumably a decoy. Once I was looking into the sun as the limousines went past me, and I could clearly see Bush talking on the phone in the back seat. The first limo had no passenger in back.

Cheney’s motorcade is only slightly less showy – no helicopter, a handful fewer motorcycles and SUVs, surprisingly no ambulance. Still an impressive display of force. Sometimes I’ll see a police car followed by a few SUVs and a sedan or limo and another police car, running red lights but without blocked intersections, which probably indicates a cabinet-level position, perhaps Secretary of Defense or Secretary of State. Smaller diplomatic motorcades may be four or fewer cars. If your in-town car is a red Grand Marquis rented at Dulles, you might want to skip the motorcade altogether. That’s just pitiable.

For weeks I’ve been seeing an unusual motorcade – one police car, four SUVs, a shuttle-like bus, and another police car. Three or four times a week, they’d speed down 17^th Street. It was the short bus that piqued my curiosity. What could it be, a group of VIP conventioneers?

Last week I found out. It’s the Obama motorcade. The short bus is for the press.

The first time I saw Obama was June 26, the evening before his joint appearance in Unity, New Hampshire, with Hillary Clinton. Obama and Clinton, along with their staffers and money people, met at the Mayflower to begin healing primary-campaign wounds.

Working near the Mayflower, and not far from the White House, we see this sort of thing pretty often. The Mayflower is a landmark, where foreign heads of state and diplomats stay, where K street lawyers make deals in the lounge, where Linda Tripp convinced Monica Lewinsky to keep evidence over lunch, where Elliott Spitzer spent $4,800 on a hooker. That kind of place.

During lunch one day last week Obama was back at the Mayflower. I hung out with people in front of National Geographic for a while, then gave up and had to go back to work. Damn the luck, I later heard from others in my building that Obama walked around the street-side of his vehicle and waved to the crowd.

Time of Disillusion

2008-05-30T17:58:00.002-05:00

What a gift, to paraphrase Robert Burns, to see ourselves as others see us.

The most disheartening aspect of this political season has been the revelation that Bill and Hillary Clinton are all the things that right-wingers have been saying for years: opportunistic, dishonest, manipulative. The scales fell from my eyes in December 2005, when Hillary Clinton co-sponsored an anti-flag burning law -- an obvious pandering of a red-meat issue. The disappointment was profound.

I can empathize with Repubs who are puzzled or shocked by Scott McClellan's book. The lies leading us into a reckless and unnecessary war, catapaultin' the propaganda, conspiring to blow a spy operation for political purposes, the partisan politicization of federal agencies, the culture of incompetence....It's all true.

My illusions were shattered. Their illusions have shattered the country.

Life During War 5/30/08

2008-05-30T06:08:00.002-05:00

Life During War 5/29/08

2008-05-29T05:13:00.003-05:00

Life During War 5/28/08

2008-05-28T08:20:00.001-05:00

Life During War 5/27/08

2008-05-27T08:22:00.001-05:00

For Demonstration Purposes

2008-05-24T20:05:00.004-05:00

Fifth Anniversary

2008-03-19T22:11:00.006-05:00

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

2008-03-13T18:59:00.005-05:00

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

2008-03-02T18:01:00.004-05:00

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

2008-02-02T15:53:00.002-05:00

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

2007-12-19T21:46:00.000-05:00

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.

To Oh-Oh-Seven

2007-11-02T19:01:00.000-05:00

The leg’s in the smoker and the Juice is on ice
Gore rests on laurels at Vick’s dog fights
Goodbye Fredo, fade-out Sopranos
Pootie YouTube nappy-headed hos
Bubble bursts, bridge falls down
Six entombed underground
Surges, purges, foot-tapping urges
Castro’s not dead, but Ladybird is
Helmsley’s pooch, Gere’s smooch
Lindsay’s hooch, Britney’s cooch
Blackwater wildfire Dick’s cousin Obama
They don’t have maps! Hey, remember Osama?
Hillary, Rudy, Mitt, and Fred
Tainted toothpaste, toys with lead
Pet food cavemen quagmire in Iraq
Shit meet fan: Turks attack
Phony soldiers man-sized safes
Leave her alone! Scooter’s walk chafes
Monks riot, lawyers in tear gas mist
General Betray Us, Bonds’ asterisk
Bernanke iPhone Iran bombing any day
Don’t tase me bro! I’ve never been gay.
None too soon this year will be through
We’re kicking ass whoop-dee-damn-doo.

Citizen X, 2007

Is Dick Cheney Demented?

2007-08-21T10:53:00.001-05:00

The question is not posed maliciously, but out of genuine concern for the health of the vice president and the country.

My 85-year-old father has vascular dementia, what used to be called senility. Over the years, he had numerous small strokes and transient ischemic attacks (TIAs).

Dementia is a slow and insidious process. My father never fell ill, never took time off work, never had any obvious signs of stroke such as sudden paralysis. Nobody knew how bad things were until a magnetic resonance image showed his brain pockmarked with dead areas.

Small arteries in the brain gradually lose their flexibility and become narrowed by atherosclerotic plaque. Blood clots can form on inflamed arterial lining, or travel from elsewhere within the circulatory system, and block a vessel. When it happens in the coronary arteries, it’s a heart attack. In the brain, a stroke.

Deprived of oxygenated blood, the function of the brain nourished by that artery is instantly lost – motor control, sensation, memory, cognition.

I’m hardly the first person to suggest that something is seriously wrong with Cheney’s mind. Several people who have known the vice president for a long time have observed marked changes in his personality and character.

In an October, 2005, article in New Yorker, former national security advisor and close Bush family insider remarked on the anomalous character Cheney has become. “I consider Cheney a good friend – I’ve known him for 30 years,” Scowcroft said. “But Dick Cheney I don’t know anymore.”

“Is the vice president losing his influence, or perhaps his mind?” posed Jim Hoaglund in the March 8 Washington Post, quoting a European statesman who has known the vice president for many years: “What has happened to Dick Cheney?”

Michelle Cottle probed Cheney’s medical history in the New Republic last March. She quotes DC insiders who openly ask, “What is wrong with Dick Cheney?”

Dick Cheney has a complex medical history that includes four heart attacks, his first when he was only 37 years old. In 1988, after his third heart attack at age 47, Cheney had quadruple bypass surgery. He had a stent placed in a coronary artery in the fall of 2000, a repeated angioplasty procedure the following spring, and had a cardioverter/defribrillator implanted in June of 2001.

Mental impairment is common after bypass surgery and cardiac interventions such a angioplasty. A Duke study published in the February 8, 2001, New England Journal of Medicine found that 42% of people who have undergone coronary artery bypass surgery have measurable cognitive decline within 5 years

There is evidence that Cheney has heart failure and peripheral artery disease, both of which have a risk of throwing clots and other cardiovascular complications. In March of 2007, it was reported that Cheney has deep vein thrombosis.

In the June 2004 issue of The Atlantic, Howard Markel described the assessment of seven cardiologists given Cheney’s anonymized medical history. “It’s a testament to medical science that he’s alive,” said one.

I’m aware that right-wing pundit Charles Krauthammer, who was a practicing psychiatrist, has already given Cheney a clean bill of health. I consider this about as reliable as former GOP senator Bill Frist’s assessment of Terri Shiavo.

To somebody who has seen dementia up close, the signs and symptoms are unambiguous.

Cerebrovascular disease can cause varying degrees of hemiplegia – weakness or paralysis on one side of the body. Neurological deficit can be subtle. Mild muscular weakness may be noted by asymmetry of the mouth when a person speaks or grimaces:

Paranoia and suspicion are common features of dementia. According to a recent Washington Post profile, Cheney invented his own secrecy classification and has a man-sized safe in his office.

The demented person may become disoriented and confused. For example, he may be uncertain whether he works in the executive or legislative branch of government. One approach is to affix labels to objects around the home and workplace. A sign on his desk that says, “You work here” may be helpful.

The demented person may be forgetful, and may embark on ill-conceived action that is inconsistent with previous, less impaired behavior:

Poor impulse control is another common feature of dementia. The demented person may act in a manner that is shocking or inappropriate for the social context, such as blurting out, “Go fuck yourself.” However tempting, responding in kind is unproductive.

It is important to remember that these behaviors are the product of a diseased mind. As NY democratic Rep. Charles Rangel said about Cheney in 2005, “"I would like to believe he's sick rather just mean and evil.”

War Dance

2007-04-28T16:13:00.000-05:00

George Bush, April 25, 2007

"...believe me, no one suffers more than their president and... and, uh, I do."

Laura Bush, April 25, 2007

Pedestrian encounter

2007-04-24T23:30:00.000-05:00

Went out for coffee this afternoon and lingered around 17th & L smoking a cigarette. Strolling down the sidewalk is Donald Rumsfeld, talking to a man in a brown suit carrying a briefcase, followed by two steps by a much taller, bulkier guy who is obviously security. Probably leaving the Mayflower, adjacent to my office.

Rumsfeld looks shorter than I expect, squinting the way he does and gesticulating as he talked to his companion. I search my mind for something to say. I was tempted to say, "Donald Rumsfeld!" but he probably knows who he is. I couldn't say nice to meet you, because that isn't true.

It isn't every day that you get to see a war criminal walking down the street. As he crossed 17th I thought of Marathon Man, when Christian Szell is recognized in New York's diamond district. "Szell...Szell...," says an old woman on 47th Street. "Murderer! Murderer!"

It's sort of like a golf clap. It only works if others join in.

STFU

2007-03-22T23:42:00.000-05:00

The trial of Scooter Libby is long over, and right-wingers just can't let it go.

The reptilian Robert Novak still wonders aloud whether Valerie Plame was really covert. Fox News' Brit Hume accused Plame of lying under oath in her testimony before Congress. Although lacking first-hand knowledge of the facts of the case, dour lawyer Victoria Toenging can't bring herself to call Plame covert and insists that she didn't meet the narrow definition of covert agent in the Intelligence Identities Protection Act (IIPA).

Freepers won't budge from their talking points: There was no underlying crime; Plame was not covert; she was a low-level paper-pusher yet finagled a junket to Niger for her husband; everybody in Washington knew she was a spy; she blew her cover when she walked into work.

Enough already.

Recently I listened to the podcast of PBS's terrific series News War. Lowell Bergman interviewed David Szady, the FBI's assistant director for counterintelligence from 2002 to 2006 -- during the Plame investigation.

Whenever there is a leak of classified information, the aggrieved agency must answer 11 questions posed by the Department of Justice before an investigation is launched. You can read the list of questions here.

The questions are aimed at determining whether the information was properly protected, whether its release affected national security, whether it was declassified before release, and so on. One of the questions is whether the information is true:

LOWELL BERGMAN: The information has to be accurate?

DAVID SZADY: Yes.

LOWELL BERGMAN: So when the government announces a leak investigation and it comes to your office, it's confirming that the...that the report in the newspaper, for example, or on television, was true?

DAVID SZADY: Yes. Indirectly, yes.

LOWELL BERGMAN: That's one way to fact check.

Obviously, DOJ isn't going to waste FBI resources tracking down sources of information that is false or insignificant. So at least four well-informed sources believed that a crime occurred by the release of Plame's identity: CIA, DOJ, FBI, and Fitzgerald.

Was her identity classified? Yes. Was she covert? Yes. Had her name been declassified before being released? No. Was national security harmed by the disclosure? Yes.

Regardless of whether it met the narrow definition of the IIPA, it was not a good thing. The White House blew the cover of a CIA operative working on WMD, during wartime.

The Libby trial showed in no uncertain terms that Joseph Wilson was targeted for daring to call attention to the Bush administration's lies. Either Plame's cover was blown deliberately, or Bush & crew are criminally incompetent and cannot be trusted to properly handle classified information. The only question is why Rove, Libby, Armitage and the rest of them still have their security clearances.

"Hey rule of law!"

2007-03-20T18:22:00.000-05:00

Friday follies

2007-01-05T17:50:00.000-05:00

What better way to spend a lunch hour watching a protest in front of the American Enterprise Institute, around the corner from the office at M and 17th Street. At a confererence inside, hawks chicken and otherwise issued a report calling for the deployment of a "large and sustained surge" of U.S. troops to Iraq. Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman were among the headliners appearing in support of the report.

Outside, several hundred people at the protest organized by MoveOn. Must have been a few hundred people walking in a light drizzle. They chanted:

John McCain, John McCain
Escalation is insane

and

John and Joe, John and Joe
Escalation's not the way to go

As people mill about, they were joined by a chorus of LaRouche supporters. Wait, what?

That's the National Geographic building across the street. And who should I run into but my friend, The Architect?

Guerrilla warfare

2006-11-17T22:10:00.000-05:00

Former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld embodied this administration's haughty detachment from reality. When the occupation of Iraq soured, Rumsfeld refused to acknowledge the evolving situation. Peter J. Boyer's excellent profile in the November 20 issue of New Yorker, Rumsfeld quibbled over the nature of the conflict facing American troops:

In a remarkable exchange with reporters at a Pentagon briefing in late June [2003], a reporter read Rumsfeld a dictionary definition of “guerrilla war” and asked why he was so reluctant to name it as such. “Can you remind us again why this isn’t a quagmire?” the reporter asked. Rumsfeld replied, in his best vice-principal tone, as if patronizing a particularly dull student, “I guess the reason I don’t use the phrase ‘guerrilla war’ is because there isn’t one, and it would be a misunderstanding and a miscommunication to you and to the people of the country and the world.”

He explained that the disturbances in Iraq were being caused by looters, criminals, remnants of the regime, foreign terrorists, and Iranian agents. “Doesn’t make it anything like a guerrilla war or an organized resistance. It makes it like five different things going on that are functioning much more like terrorists. . . . Now, that is not—it doesn’t fit that word. So, I think, that if one analyzes what is going on in that country, they would find a different way to characterize it. I know it’s nice to be—have a bumper sticker, but it’s the wrong bumper sticker.”

At this, the reporter pulled out the official Defense Department definition of “guerrilla war” (“I knew I should have looked it up!” Rumsfeld said. “I could die that I didn’t look it up!”): “ ‘Military and paramilitary operations conducted in enemy-held or hostile territory by irregular, predominantly indigenous forces.’ This seems to fit a lot of what’s going on in Iraq.”

To which Rumsfeld replied, “It really doesn’t.”

The Sword of Damocles

2006-10-26T20:12:00.000-05:00

What is the most visited site in Washington, DC? The Smithsonian’s Air & Space Museum? The Museum of American History? The Capitol?

None of the above. Union Station is by far the busiest place in DC, with more than 29 million people walking through the marble Beaux-Arts landmark annually.

I go through Union Station twice a day, from train to subway, marveling every time at the beautiful barrel-vaulted gold-leafed spaces. Mr. Smith arrived in Washington here. Train 173 crashed into the station here. Hannibal Lecter met Agent Starling here.

People comforted that the U.S. hasn't seen a domestic attack since 9/11 are deluded by a false sense of security. When terrorists failed to bring down the World Trade Center in 1993, they waited eight years to finish the job. They are determined, calculating, and patient.

Meanwhile there was Aum Shinrikyo's sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway in 1995, attacks on the Moscow metro in February and Madrid communter trains in March of 2004, the coordinated attack on London's transit system in July of 2005, and the series of bombings on trains in Mumbai on July 11, 2006.

It's the sort of thing one can't help but think about, and I'm not the only one. A colleague at work confessed that she panics when the Metro stops dead beneath the Potomac coming in from Virginia, which the subway does often, wondering if it's another attack. I carry a flashlight, hankerchief, and bottle of water in my backpack at all times.

I think about this daily, because Union Station is a prime location for a terrorist incident. My intent here isn't to give anybody ideas. It's obvious to any casual observer. I hope that by discussing these things, steps could be taken to prevent a catastrophe.

An incident at Union Station would cripple not only the District of Columbia, but affect the entire East Coast.

Union Station serves the north-south Amtrak line, and is the terminus for commuter trains into Virginia and Maryland. About 30,000 people, myself included, ride Maryland's MARC lines, which are mainly used to commute to and from Washington. About 15,000 commuters take Virginia Rail Express each weekday.

Union Station is also on the Red Line, Metro's most heavily traveled route. The DC Metro system boasts the longest escalator in the western hemisphere, and stations so deep that one is accessible only by elevator.

The system serves two airports -- BWI and National -- and thousands of people carry backpacks, carry-on bags, and often large suitcases. Every day, Union Station and it's rail and subway tributaries are teeming with tens of thousands of people carrying luggage.

What could be inside those bags?

When there is a bomb scare, which happens now and then, the commuter trains are swept and hundreds of people are herded onto the platform. During the evening rush hour, this is a huge crush of people. We're sitting ducks for deadly intentions.

Aside from paralyzing the DC and regional transit systems, if the breeze is right a biological or chemical or dirty device could direct a toxic cloud over some of the most important real estate in town.

CLICK FOR FULL SIZEGiven its vulnerability to Washington and the people who work there, how is the security at Union Station? Not good enough, and certainly not as visible or rigorous as what I've seen in New York, Boston, Los Angeles, or in Europe.

Sure, there are video cameras all over, which aren't much of a deterrent and only tell you what happened after the fact. They didn't stop a deranged guy with a gun from running through four floors of the Capitol until he was cornered and tackled by staffers in the flag office, although the Capitol Police assured the press that they watched the whole thing on video.

Law enforcement officers often walk through Union Station with dogs, more for show than detection.

A considerate terrorist would put a device in the new blast-resistant trash receptacles (left) that have recently been installed all over the place. These containers are designed to deflect a blast upward (right). Some security experts suggest that if explosive were actually detonated the receptical would act like a mortar, propelling the heavy lid up to the concrete ceiling, which can and has collapsed in the past.

The peculiar device to the right is a sniffer machine, more accurately a chemical/biological detector. Back during the first Gulf War, the military equipped vehicles with cones to filter air as they travelled through Kuwait and Iraq. Paper filters were removed from the samplers and taken to a laboratory for mass spec/gas chromatography, which would reveal whether troops were exposed to a chemical or biological agent. This same technology was deplayed for the 2000 Winter Games in Salt Lake City.

The obvious problem with this approach is that you don't get a warning in realtime, but only learn what happened in the past. The easiest way of thwarting the sniffer is simply to pull the electrical plug.

Realtime chem/bio detectors exist, and have been installed in Senate and House office buildings. If they are deployed in Union Station as well, why waste resources sending a guy to collect paper filters from this thing? It's difficult to have a lot of confidence in Incompetence, Inc.

I don't know all the answers. I'm not a security expert. But I do know that we deserve better than half-assed 15-year-old technology.

Lex Luthor's Mail

2006-09-22T17:45:00.000-05:00

What would people think of super-villain and global menace Lex Luthor shopping at their nice suburban supermarket? Even nefarious criminals need to buy toilet paper and laundry detergent.

That could be him pushing the cart with the sticky wheel, clipping coupons, squeezing the bread to make sure it's fresh, squinting to read expiration dates. He doesn't look so evil in person.

Talking Points

2006-09-13T07:45:00.000-05:00

My eye was drawn to a letter to the editor in yesterday’s Baltimore Sun (third one down):

President strives to protect us all

The U.S. government has no more urgent and basic obligation than to protect the American people in time of war.

In his Sept. 6 speech, President Bush outlined the steps the United States is taking to detain and question the world's most violent terrorists and also announced needed legislation to bring these terrorists before military tribunals ("Bush says CIA has prisons overseas," Sept. 7).

The secret CIA prisons whose existence the president acknowledged are a necessary tool to keep us safe from these dangerous terrorists.

Yet time and time again, some Democrats in Washington have continued to question why our government needs tools such as these tribunals to prevent attacks on American soil.

They have questioned the terrorist surveillance program by the National Security Agency and tried to kill the much-needed Patriot Act.

The terrorists in U.S. custody are dangerous murderers who would kill again and again if set free.

It is vital to fully support our intelligence agencies and military and see that they have every necessary means to combat this threat.

Al Eisner
Wheaton

The language of the letter was curious. It was very slick rhetoric. Almost too neat. I ran key phrases through Google and quickly found a September 6 posting on Talking Points Memo that excerpted an email from Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman:

It's very simple. Our government has no more basic obligation than to protect the American people in a time of war. Today, President Bush outlined the steps America is taking to question and detain the world's most violent terrorists, and announced legislation to try these terrorists before military commissions.
Read the President's speech and watch the video.
Because of interrogation programs by the CIA, our nation has gained invaluable intelligence that has saved American lives. Interrogations of terrorists including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, have led to the arrests of al Qaeda operatives planning to carry out attacks inside the United States and revealed the terror network's plan to obtain biological weapons. In one chilling interrogation, Mohammed described instructing his operatives to set off explosions in buildings at points high enough to prevent those trapped from escaping out of the windows.
These new revelations are a clear reminder that the threat is real, and that we must pursue victory in this war with all our might. Because a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year put the CIA's interrogation program at risk, the President is sending legislation to Congress to specifically authorize the creation of military commissions to try these suspected terrorists for war crimes. When this legislation is passed, the people our intelligence agencies believe orchestrated 9/11 can face justice.
Watch key excerpts of the President's address and write a letter to the editor on these important efforts to keep Americans safe.
Time and time again, some Democrats in Washington have questioned why our government needs tools like these to prevent attacks on American soil. They have questioned the terrorist surveillance program, and bragged about "killing" the Patriot Act. The #2 Democrat in the Senate even likened America's interrogation practices to those in Nazi or Soviet concentration camps.
Americans now have the facts about these vital efforts to prevent future attacks. The terrorists in American custody are not just innocent bystanders. They are dangerous murderers who would kill again if set free. Take a stand and ensure our military and intelligence agencies continue to have every tool they need to fight this threat.

I contacted Franz Schneiderman, the Sun’s letters editor, to bring this to his attention. He asked me to send him the link to Talking Points Memo, which I did. Later in the afternoon, he wrote back:

Yes, I see. The letter must have been derived from that memo indeed. We do watch out for the mass-mailed ones from poltical organization but this one didn't have the obvious earmarks and the formatting those usually come with... Thanks for letting me know, though of course it's not like we can un-publish the letter now.

We are living in a state of war, with a dishonest and manipulative government, a piggish do-nothing Congress, and media that are asleep at the switch. No wonder citizens are disgusted and fed up.

On primary day, Baltimore’s only daily paper runs unattributed verbatim GOP talking points from the RNC chairman, and it merits a shrug.

Half-baked patriotism

2006-09-03T21:33:00.000-05:00

There it was at the supermarket, a display of holiday baked goods. I whipped out the phone camera and framed a vision of frosting in red, white and blue.

The store manager was at my side. "Can I help you?"

"Just taking a picture," I said, snapping one shot and angling my phone for another.

"Any particular reason why?" he asked.

"I like the cake," I said, snapping another image, then raising the camera to get a wider shot.

"This is private property," he said. "We don't allow taking pictures."

"Those cakes have American flags on them," I wanted to say. "People will cut into the flag, eat the flag, and then shit out the flag of the United States of America. Isn't that a desecration? "

"Really? I never heard of such a thing," I said. I flipped the phone closed, slipped it into my pocket and walked away.

Flights of fancy

2006-08-15T12:52:00.000-05:00

Flying cross-country out of LA on the day liquids are banned from aircraft. Discarded sodas and water bottles fill bins next to the curbside check-in and throughout the airport.

At security: shoes off, laptop out of backpack. Into a clear plastic bag go cell phone, keys, watch, belt, sunglasses, gum with foil packaging, memory stick. Place all items flat on the conveyor belt.

Millionaire men with aides to carry their bags, who have reserved spaces at National airport, traveling on government planes or private aircraft and able to bypass security altogether, decide how the rest of the country travels.

No water or drinks, no shampoo or hair gel, toothpaste, perfume, hand lotion, lipstick, sunscreen, nasal spray -- no liquids or gels of any kind.

Chertoff says that the American people are very understanding and willing to tolerate a little inconvenience for their security.

Shuffling barefoot, clutching our drooping pants and what remains of our dignity, we meekly agree.

Ahead of me a man has a stick of deodorant seized from his carry-on bag. The TSA officer wags it in his face disapprovingly, as though something shameful.

Confused grannies in wheelchairs being frisked. In the glass box a toddler no more than 3 years old standing perfectly still, arms outstretched, solemnly looking up at the uniformed officer waving an un-magical wand over her body.

Is our children learning?

Yes, our children is learning to assume the position.

After my arrival at my destination, I stood in the damp night air outside the terminal. Flipping the backpack off my shoulder, I fished through the contents – stapler, eye drops and various crap – and found my cigarette lighter. Inhaling the smoke deeply, I pondered the meaning of it all.

Insurgency / insurgent

2006-07-04T09:23:00.000-05:00

The people the US is fighting against in Iraq and Afghanistan are called many things, most often insurgents or terrorists. Rebel is also apt, but nobody uses it.

In a speech on the Iraq war at the U.S. Naval Academy on November 30, 2005, Bush unveiled rejectionists and saddamists. The only earlier uses of saddamists I could find referred to members of the deposed Iraqi regime, i.e. those pictured on the notorious playing cards, and not to loyalists or sympathizers. Saddamists no doubt resonates with Bush's political base because it sounds like sodomists.

An insurgency is an armed rebellion against an established, recognized government. As an occupying force that illegally invaded a sovereign nation, the U.S. can hardly be regarded as the legitimate government.

In another time on these shores, people took up arms against the established, recognized government, We call them patriots.

During the 1980s, the U.S. supported and armed rebels fighting the Sandinista Nicaraguan government, many of whom were CIA-trained death squad members engaged in sabotage, assassination, bombings, and other acts considered terrorism. But we called them contras.

It all depends on what side you're on.

Fourth of July

2006-07-04T09:20:00.000-05:00

Big bother

2006-07-02T13:14:00.000-05:00

Security measures of the DC Metro apparently include keeping passengers annoyed and in motion.

Thought I was going to get arrested at the Union Station subway station the other morning. With $1.15 remaining on my fare card, decided to add $20 so there wouldn't be any problems on the way home. Swipe my card at the add fare machine, take the receipt, and on my way.

Waved the fare card over the reader, and in that moment the gate slid open I glanced down at the display, which said $ 1.15. But there was a space between the dollar sign and the 1.

I paused to think. Was the display broken and missing a digit, or was my card short $20? No way am I going through again just to check the balance.

"The track is that way," said a cop in camo, gesturing toward the escalators. My hat probably threw him off. "That way," he repeated, not at all helpfully.

I walked to the nation manager's glass-walled booth, where a tall man stood wearing a high-visibility vest, holding out my fare card.

"Excuse me….

"Did you go through the gate?" he barked at me. "You have to go through the gate."

"I was just…"

"You have to go through the gate," he insisted. "Did you go through the gate?"

I stared at him. Hard. I tried to muster an expression that said, "Did you just fart?"

"A-yes," I said slowly and deliberately, adopting an accent like Borat's cousin from Kazakhstan. "I did went in gate. Kind please check card balance?"

He took my card, eyeing me suspiciously. I stared back blankly. He swiped the card over the reader. "Twenty dollars, fifteen cents," he grouched.

Almost made me mad enough to taunt him with my bagel.

Falling down

2006-06-14T18:46:00.000-05:00

As I left the Metro station the other day, an older woman behind me tried to negotiate between two traffic cones covering ill-fitting grates on the sidewalk, caught her foot on a crack, and did a face plant onto the concrete. Her nose bloodied, I gave her a napkin packed with my breakfast.

The next morning, outside the Metro station, there was another cone covering the edge that tripped the woman up, creating a barrier stretching half across the sidewalk.

With enough cones, we could make this city safe.

Dear Tourists

2006-06-08T18:35:00.000-05:00

Welcome to the District of Columbia – the nation’s capital, the city of monuments, the people’s city.

Don’t miss the waterslide down from the top of the Washington Monument. Well worth the extra $3.50.
After visiting the Treasury building, they give out samples just like the Hershey’s tour. Let the kids keep the $1s and $5s; go for the big bills.
Few people know that George Bush plays checkers against all comers in Lafayette Park during lunch on Fridays. Wagering is not allowed.
If you whisper a secret into Abe’s ear at the Lincoln Memorial, it will come true.

But seriously

2006-06-08T18:33:00.000-05:00

Stand on the right, walk on the left. Ferchristsake.

Authorized use of military force

2006-05-19T23:45:00.000-05:00

For the last five years, the U.S. has been engaged in a global war against terror (GWAR). Technically, it isn't a war. It's an authorized use of military force.

The U.S. Constitution designates Congress to "provide for the common defense" of the nation. Article I, Section 8 gives the legislature the following powers:

To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water;
To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years;
To provide and maintain a navy;
To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces;
To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions;
To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.

The President's role in war-making is defined by the first 34 words of Section 2 of Article II: "The President shall be commander in chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several states, when called into the actual service of the United States."

The United States hasn't declared war in 65 years. FDR signed a declaration of war after the attack of Pearl Harbor in December, 1941. Additional declarations of war were against European nations were promulgated over the next seven months as the U.S. was drawn further into World War II.

America has been involved in several undeclared wars since then. In 1950, President Truman described the U.S. military presence in Korea as a "police action." The Vietnam conflict was never a declared war, and neither were excursions into Lebanon (1982-83), Grenada (1983), Panama (1989), or Somalia (1993).

After the prolonged engagement in Vietnam, Congress passed the War Powers Resolution of 1973 to counter the lack of legislative authority over the military. Under terms of the resolution, the President can introduce the military into hostile situations for up to 60 days unless there is a declaration of war, an attack on the U.S., or a specific authorization of force.

On September 18, 2001, President Bush signed into law the joint Authorization for the Use of Military Force resolution that directed him to "use all appropriate and necessary force" against those responsible for the terrorist acts of 9/11 "in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States."

In October of 2002 Congress passed the Authorization of Use of Military Force Against Iraq, citing a laundry list of trumped-up reasons that have been thoroughly discredited.

The authorization of military force launched the invasion of Afghanistan, the overthrow of the Taliban and persecution of Al Qaida, and the invasion and occupation of Iraq. And are the pretenses for indefinite detainment, circumvention of U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions, kidnapping, torture, domestic spying, and countless transgressions perpetrated in our names.

Life During Authorized Use of Military Force just doesn't have the same zing.

The surveilled life

2006-05-17T19:21:00.000-05:00

With the recent installation of thee new video cameras in the lobby of my office building, I realized that my commute is captured on video from the moment of arrival at Union Station until stepping into the elevator at work.

There are cameras on the platform at the train station, cameras inside the lobby, three cameras on the subway platform, cameras in subway cars, more cameras at the destination platform, several cameras on the street, one camera aimed at everybody walking into the building lobby, and another aimed at everybody going into the elevators.

Around the loading dock and alley of the Mayflower Hotel, where I sometimes have a cigarette, there are at least five security cameras that I've noticed. When I go to Caribou for coffee, I pass at least two cameras on ATMs.

On the street that I live, they have installed red light cameras along almost the entire route from home to the commuter station. In fact, virtually my entire route -- from door to door -- is captured on video except for the segment when I'm on the commuter train.

And they're working on that.

The fabulists' brunch

2006-04-26T22:34:00.000-05:00

Stephen Glass and I nursed cups of coffee at the usual booth when James Frey arrived for our regular monthly brunch at the Denny's on Queens Boulevard in Elmhurst. Traffic flowed through the suburban landscape outside the window. Glass stirred two packets of sugar into his mug as Frey sidled into his seat.

"James! Glad you made it," Glass said. "How have things been since you jumped the couch on Oprah?"

Frey's face was stubbled. He blinked at us with that deer-in-the-headlights look, then broke into a wide grin. "Sometimes you eat the worm, and sometimes the worm eats you," he shrugged.

"Give me a break," Glass said. "Within the week of Oprah, you went from #4 to #3 at Amazon. How many copies of Million Pieces sold last month?"

"Thirteen thousand, four hundred and eighty-two."

"That's still more than most books sell during their entire run," said Glass, lifting his coffee mug in salute. "The wages of sin aren't bad at all, compadre."

A relative newbie, I am privileged to keep such august company as friends. Our monthly get-togethers at Denny's for waffles and pork products -- going on 12 or so years now -- give us a chance to compare notes and hone the craft of confabulation.

Glass's cell phone chirped a reedy version of Jackson Browne's "The Pretender." He flipped it open and listened intently.

"It's Jayson," he told us. "He's held up on patrol with the 172nd Stryker Brigade outside Mosul, and is running late. He says to go ahead and order."

"Poor guy," Frey said. "I hope he has some decent body armor."

Jayson Blair came around the corner, smiling widely. "Ah-ha! Gotcha!" Blair said with a measure of pride, showing how he crinkled cellophane from a cigarette package near his cell phone to create an authentic imitation of static.

After another round of greetings and handshakes, Blair sat and considered his options on the breakfast menu. "So James," he said, "what are you working on these days besides your pallor?"

"Actually, the story of the whole debacle has been optioned by Ron Howard," Frey said. "Will Ferrell signed up to play me on the big screen."

"Really?" Glass asked.

"No," Frey replied.

"Don't sweat it," Glass said. "Who was it that said there are no second acts in life? Don't forget that Clifford Irving did nine more books after The Autobiography of Howard Hughes."

"Speaking of Cliff, I talked with him just the other day," said Bair. "You wouldn't believe what happened to him. He was the victim of black market trafficking in human transplant tissue. He had the misfortune of receiving Peter Jennings' hip, and now has insatiable cravings for back bacon sandwiches."

"Really?" Frey asked.

"No, not really," Blair replied.

"Look over there," said Glass, gesturing towards a familiar middle-aged black woman in a booth across the restaurant. "Isn't that Janet Cooke?" The woman glanced over at our table, then swiveled in her seat to face away from us, focusing intently on her platter.

"You wouldn't believe what happened to me last week," said Frey. "Some punk tried to jack my Land Rover. Put a gun to my head at a red light. I closed the window on his arm, grabbed his gun, and got out to beat the crap out of him. When the cops showed up, I punched one of them too. Took six cops and two tasers to arrest me. Spent three months in jail for that."

"Really?" asked Blair.

"No," said Frey.

"You don't own a Land Rover, do you?" Blair asked.

"No," Frey said. "That was a detail I changed to protect the identity of my car."

Such skill! I can only hope that some work of mine might show some small measure of the talent represented at this table. With these guys in my corner, there's no telling where I'll go.

The waitress arrived at our table with a tray laden with platters. She looked tired and bored, as though her feet ache and the rent's overdue, but managed to smile weakly.

"Who ordered the Moons Over My Hammy," she asked.

"I did!" we piped up in unison, collapsing into laughter.

Up to their old tricks

2006-04-23T13:39:00.000-05:00

There's a story out of New Hampshire that hasn't received the attention it deserves.

On Election Day of 2002, at the end of a close and hotly contested race for U.S. Senate between John E. Sununu, a Republican congressman, and Democrat Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, five get-out-the-vote phone banks operated by Dems and one line sponsored by the Manchester firefighter union were bombarded by nearly 1,000 incoming calls, crippling them for up to two hours.

The calls originated from an Idaho telemarketing firm contracted by a Virginia consulting firm hired by the New Hampshire state GOP. Three people have been convicted of crimes for the scheme, including telephone harassment and conspiracy:

Allen Raymond, former president of GOP Marketplace, a Virginia-based Republican consulting firm;

Chuck McGee, former executive director of the New Hampshire Republican party;

James Tobin, former northeast political director of the Republican National Committee and Bush's New England chairman for his 2004 reelection.

On election day of 2002, during the thick of the phone-jamming, Tobin made nearly two dozen calls to a number in the office of Ken Mehlman, then-director of White House political affairs. Mehlman is now RNC chairman.

At first, the White House refused to identify who the number belonged to. Mehlman subsequently said that Tobin and other local GOP operatives spoke with Alicia Davis, the White House official in charge of the northeast. Davis is now mid-Atlantic director of the RNC.

It gets better. The money trail for the $15,600 phone-jamming campaign leads back to none other than Tom Delay, Jack Abramoff, and an Indian tribe that was an Abramoff client. One has to wonder why an Indian tribe would make a donation to a state political organization when New Hampshire has no Indian tribes. It isn't as though they could seek a casino in the state.

Tobin was represented by Williams and Connolly, the top-drawer white collar criminal law firm. Legal bills have reportedly topped $2.5 million and may be as high as $6 million -- generously paid by the RNC even though it isn't obligated.

Some suggest that the RNC is paying the legal fees out of loyalty. Others suggest that the national GOP organization is desperate to protect itself and prevent disclosure of potentially embarrassing documents and information. Justin Rood asks why the GOP is diverting a lot of money to defend patently illegal conduct in an election year where it faces the loss of several seats in Congress.

In his New York Times commentary, Adam Cohen drew strong parallels to Watergate; the return of a "second-rate burglary," the return of high-priced lawyers, the return of "follow the money," and the return of asking "what did they know, and when did they know it?"

It's like deja vu all over again. And hardly surprising since Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove learned his political craft at the knee of Watergate era dirty trickster Donald Sengretti.

Democrats filed suit in federal court in an attempt to compel the GOP and the White House to answer questions about the phone-jamming incident. This story is far from over, and worth paying attention.

Betsy Devine has been covering the case closely, and has posted an excellent timeline. Wikipedia has detailed information about the phone-jamming scandal. Read more about James Tobin at SourceWatch.

Long War

2006-04-18T22:03:00.000-05:00

President Bush slipped a curious expression into the 2006 State of the Union address that received little public notice. "Our own generation is in a long war against a determined enemy," he told the nation.

The reference to a "long war" was a subtle way to introduce the public to the idea of an open-ended conflict against a vague but omnipresent threat to security. This is the American way of life from now on, folks. Get used to it.

The expression is also found in the recently released 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review Report, which begins with a frank statement: "The United States is a nation engaged in what will be a long war."

Long war has particular historical significance. Originally the Long War referred to the conflict between the Habsburgs and the Ottoman Empire between 1593 and 1606. In his well-regarded 2002 book, The Shield of Achilles, Philip Bobbitt used the Long War to designate the series of conflicts between world superpowers stretching from 1914 to 1990, including both World Wars, the Bolshevik revolution, Spanish Civil War, conflicts in Korea and Vietnam, and the Cold War. Bobbitt's Long War ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union and reunification of Germany.

This war, the global war on terror, is different. We're told this again and again. Previous wars were against nations and identifiable armies. This isn't a war against Islamic fundamentalism, it's a war against violent extremism. A war against a concept -- like the war on drugs, the war on cancer, and the war on poverty.

How do we know when it's over? When there is no more violence? When there is no extremism? There can never be an armistice, truce or peace pact. War without end. Long indeed.

Bad samaritan

2006-04-16T19:52:00.000-05:00

The evening train was held up at New Carrollton while EMS was dispatched to attend to a passenger in distress in a rear car. We sat there 15-20 minutes. The guy across from me suggested we carry the passenger onto the platform so we can get on our fucking way.

As the conductor walked back I asked whether somebody needed first aid.

"You a doctor?" he asked.

I said no, but I stayed at a Holiday Inn Express last night.

Screwing the pooch

2006-04-14T19:05:00.000-05:00

Nobody's perfect.

So those trailers weren't mobile bioweapon labs, although Bush and crew continued to insist they were for months despite having definitive proof to the contrary. Curveball threw a curveball.

The aluminum tubes weren't for enriching uranium. There weren't tons of nerve agent and chem-bio weapons. The drone planes didn't have the range or configuration to pose a threat. That memo suggesting they wanted to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger was a crude forgery.

Mistakes happen. That's why pencils have erasers.

What I'd like to know is this: were any claims made as a basis for the Iraq war correct?

So we weren't greeted as liberators, met by cheering crowds throwing flowers. There weren't enough boots on the ground to maintain security, and they didn't have enough armored vehicles and body armor to do the job safely. The insurgency was unanticipated. Disbanding the Iraqi military turned out to be a bad idea. Oil revenue won't pay for the war. We can't rebuild the nation. The new Iraqi government, if and when there is one, won't be our flavor of democracy. The mission was not accomplished.

Oh yeah, and Saddam isn't responsible for 9/11. The guys who are haven't been caught yet.

Have these miscreants done anything right?

Mmmm...brisket

2006-04-12T18:37:00.000-05:00

Watched a seder on a premium cable channel. It was pay-per-jew.

Who am us, anyway?

2006-04-11T21:23:00.000-05:00

My purpose in creating Life During War was to document daily routines in and around a likely ground zero during a period of national insecurity. At first I had the delusion that like-minded people would gather and talk. But it's mostly me, and that's cool too.

Who I am is really immaterial. I could be anybody. Just another cog that keeps the big machine running.

I'm not introspective by nature, not inclined to share the minutiae of my life. I didn't want to be part of an echo chamber or just provide a lot of links to sites and news sources. There's already plenty of that.

I wanted to create original stuff. some serious and some silly -- observations, interpolations, thoughts, cryptic messages found while commuting, occasional dog poop reports.

To reward visitors -- and there are a few -- I've decided to launch a recurring feature I'm calling The Infidel's Lexicon, a glossary to post-9/11 terminology. Look for new additions once a week or so.

The Infidel's Lexicon

2006-04-11T21:22:00.000-05:00

Language is a tool of propaganda.

It's worthwhile to give thoughtful consideration to some of the phrases and expressions that have become part of the post-9/11 vernacular. This is a new era, with a curious Orwellian argot that influences public discourse in subtle and profound ways.

Why are the bombs killing American soldiers in Iraq called improvised explosive devices, but the improvised explosive devices used by Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City and Robert Rudolph at abortion clinics and Atlanta's Olympic Centennial Park called bombs?

How fine is the distinction between insurgent and patriot? What exactly is waterboarding or extraordinary rendition?

Once a week or so, I'll pick a word or phrase that's come to my attention and use it as a point of departure for an exploration into its definition and meaning.

And the first entry is....

Force drift

2006-04-11T21:21:00.000-05:00

Force drift: The observed tendency among interrogators who rely on force to employ techniques of increasing intensity, resulting from the misguided belief that if some force is good then more force is better. Left unchecked, the force applied to an uncooperative prisoner tends to escalate and could reach the level of torture.

That's the view of Alberto J. Moro, who as general counsel of the U.S. Navy wrote a 22-page memorandum documenting his futile effort to warn higher-ups at the Pentagon about potentially criminal abuses of detainees at Guantanamo and other military prisons.

The story is told in Jean Mayer's superb piece "The Memo" published in the February 27, 2006, issue of the New Yorker and now available online. Moro's declassified memo is here (PDF document, 3.3 Megs) and makes compelling reading.

On December 2, 2002, defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved a list of interrogation techniques that include the use of stress positions, hooding, isolation, deprivation of light and auditory stimuli, physical contact, waterboarding (simulated drowning), the use of "detainee-individual phobias" such as the fear of dogs, and dressing detainees in female underwear.

Moro warned that the absence of clear boundaries for prohibited treatment was likely to lead to abuse. Authorized methods used excessively or in combination can easily rise to the level of torture. At the very least, they constitute cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment, which are prohibited under the Geneva Conventions and U.S. law. Indeed, there have been numerous documented cases of beatings and at least 98 deaths among detainees.

Rumsfeld did little to curb the potential for abuse, seeming instead to give a green light to interrogators in a handwritten notation on the December 2 memo that said, "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to 4 hours?"

Moro argues that Rumsfeld's note could be interpreted "as a coded message, a written wink-and-a-nod to interrogators to the effect that they should not feel bound by the limits set in this memo."

To date, nobody above the lowest front-line personnel has been held accountable for the promulgation and implementation of this policy.

Death and life

2006-04-06T14:15:00.000-05:00

I’ve been away from blogging for the past month or so because most of my thoughts have been consumed with the sudden and bloody deaths of two close friends.

You’ve heard the expression that a friend helps you move, but your best friend helps you move a dead body? Jon was that kind of friend. I’d known him since the age of 13.

Charlie was an exotic dancer. That’s Jon and Charlie’s dog that I photoshopped in the mugshot.

Jon and Charlie were two of the most loving, happy, and brilliant people I know.

Or at least I thought so.

Their murder and suicide are deeply unsettling. I’ve acquired police reports, investigator reports and autopsy reports. I’ve spoken with their neighbors and located siblings. I’ve listened to the 911 call over and over.

All this stuff will probably come out in some form or another. I’m still in the information gathering stage and have barely begun to ruminate. I may mention Jon and Charlie in this blog now and then.

In many respects, Jon was the reason why I began Life During War. The precipitating factor was a desire to return a gesture in kind to the White House. But the idea of creating a blog was the result of our discussions leading up to the 2004 presidential election. Jon challenged me to examine facts and my own values and beliefs. He made me think. Life During War is basically my side of the argument.

Now all I have are unfinished conversations.

When dancing is outlawed, only outlaws will dance

2006-04-05T18:25:00.000-05:00

A New York Supreme Court judge ruled that there is no Constitutional right to dance. I'll stop dancing when they pry my feet from my cold, dead fingers.

First they came for people who hum;
I did not speak out because I know all the words.
Then they came for the mimes;
I did not speak out because nobody likes mimes anyway.
Then they came for the air guitarists;
I did not speak out because I can't play air guitar.
Then they came for the rappers;
I did not speak out because I am not a rapper.
Then they came for me
And there was no one left to tango.

Shoe, meet the other foot

2006-03-03T19:27:00.001-05:00

Officials discovered an elaborate surveillance system in security-sensitive areas of the Guam airport. Nobody knows how long the hidden fingernail-size cameras and listening devices have been there, or who was doing the snooping, or why. Customs and airport security people are investigating, as is the FBI since Guam is a US territory.

"I didn't even know the cameras existed," said Rick Blas, director of the Guam Customs and Quarantine Agency. "You wouldn't even think of it. I am just shocked."

The story in Pacific Daily News.

"Hey America!"

2006-02-27T22:00:00.000-05:00

Of course the ports deal matters, both in a practical sense and as a symbol. Letting a foreign nation where two of the 9/11 hijackers are from operate six of the country's most important ports? What could go wrong?

As it is, only about 1% of shipping cargo containers are inspected. And even that is by fairly superficial means. There are gaping holes in our security, and the ports are one.

You can see this one coming: Nobody envisioned that terrorists would use cargo containers to conceal an attack.

If somebody wanted to know the ins and outs of shipping, working for the port operator is an ideal situation. No, they aren't directly involved in security or inspection. But it provides opportunity to learn the systems, to identify weaknesses and vulerabilities, to put components into position.

But we'll still be in charge of security, the administration says. This from the top-notch "slam dunk" people who had us welcomed as liberators in Iraq, and got the Gulf Coast back on its feet after Katrina, and....oh. Right.

It means even more as a symbol. We're told that we're in an unprecedented global war on terror, an era so extraordinary that our mutual security depends on the detention of more than 90,000 (mostly innocent) people; snooping on American citizens; suspension of the 8th and 14th Amendments; kidnappings and torture. We're scanned and searched at the airport, taking off our shoes and grasping our jeans to keep them from falling down.

You're either with us or you're with the terrorists, Bush told us. "We will pursue nations that provide aid or safe haven to terrorism," he said in an address to a joint session of Congress on September 20, 2001, while the World Trade Center was still smoldering.

That was then. This is now. Let an Arab nation operate our ports? Sure, why not?

You gotta wonder: Why would Bush go to the mats over the ports deal? Why threaten his first veto?

Why is it so important?

He says that it send a message to allies in the war on terror.

What message does it send to the rest of us?

George Bush eats kittens!

2006-02-16T23:52:00.000-05:00

I'll tell you why this administration is so despicable.

I can forgive a few personality flaws -- invading a sovereign nation on false pretenses, engaging in torture lite, snooping on other people's phone calls, pathological lying -- but there are limits to decency.

Sure, Dick Cheney will shoot you in the face on a whim. Just because he can. Okay, fine.

But some things are way over the line. What got me into this state?

George Bush eats kittens!

I don't mean that he gives kitties a tongue bath or affectionate nibbles. George Bush eats kittens! Fur, bones, guts and all!

George Bush eats kittens!

Republicans are very scary people. They have laser eyes and want to rip your still-beating heart from your chest. Not cool.

Democrats are frightening too, but in a different way. They're more like your wacky aunt who giggles too loudly, or the guy wearing four sweaters who scribbles fervently in a mail order catalog in front of Caribou.

But Republicans, man, they want a leader who eats kittens. They're some crazy mofos.

What's the frequency?

2006-01-26T20:04:00.000-05:00

Nearly threw a punch at a commuter on the train the other evening.

The train was packed as usual, standing room only. There were perhaps a dozen or more of us jammed together at the end of the car. I had a spot at the top of the steps.

Nearly the entire way from Union Station to the first express stop at BWI, one voice pontificated loudly on why George W. Bush is the Greatest President Ever.

Tall guy. Quintessential blue suit. Refined features. Pudgy. Frat boy. Heard him that he is a former Navy guy, now with a contractor assigned to federal jobs. He looked like any number of people who work for beltway bandits, perhaps in defense or homeland security, one of those companies bellying up to the federal trough.

For a good 20 minutes he prattled on, parroting the GOP talking points:

Thank god there's as real man in the White House. Kicking Saddam's ass was the right thing to do. The war is going swimmingly well. Nobody should criticize the government unless they served in the military. Joe and Valerie Plame are traitors trying to make a buck.

Torture is good. What's wrong with torturing somebody who wants to kill us? They ought to put a gun to a terrorist's head, and if he doesn't talk blow his brains out. I guarantee the next one will talk.

Dan Rather is a weasel who deserved what he got. He never admitted that the military records were forged...

That was my breaking point. "What about the Niger memo? The White House knew that it was a forgery, and they've never come clean about it," I said. "The whole war was based on lies and forgeries."

He shot me a look. "Didja ever hear of bad intelligence?

Oh please, I snorted. Do you think Dan Rather personally aquired those documents?

Him: "Baa...baa....baa...."

"Think what you want about Dan Rather," I said. "He stepped up to the plate and accepted responsibility, apologized, and resigned. What has Bush done? Shouldn't the President at least meet the same standard of integrity as a news anchor?"

The guy never had a chance to answer. He got off the train at BWI. Good riddance.

Fucking asshole. He's probably snooping on my cell phone calls now.

Enemy of the State

2006-01-10T23:19:00.000-05:00

The case of Jose Padilla should be of grave concern to every American.

Also known as Abdullah al-Muhajir, the 35-year-old Brooklyn native was locked up for more than three years at a military prison in South Carolina -- for most of that time without criminal charges, without access to a lawyer, without contact with his family.

Padilla was detained on May 8, 2002, at Chicago's O'Hare airport upon his arrival on a plane from Pakistan. According to reports, he was detained on a warrant issued in New York as a material witness to the attacks of 9/11.

After having him in custody for a month, then-Attorney General John Ashcroft dramatically announced the capture while on a road trip to Moscow, calling Padilla a "known terrorist" who met with Al Qaeda and was "exploring a plan" to build and detonate a radioactive dirty bomb.

The apprehension of Padilla "disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot," Ashcroft said, although no other conspirators who may have been involved in a plot have ever been named or described.

Bush's strategy was to detain Padilla indefinitely in a legal oblivion by declaring him an "illegal enemy combatant," and as such not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions.

Facing an imminent review by the Supreme Court, and a possible smackdown on its fascist practices, the Bush administration scrambled to transfer Padilla out of military custody with charges that he "conspired to murder, kidnap and maim people overseas."

No further mention of dirty bombs, no mention of attacks within the U.S., no mention of meeting with Al Qaeda, no mention of 9/11.

Granted, Jose Padilla may not be a nice person. The media invariably describes him as a former gang member. Padilla was also a small-time criminal, and spent time in prison. He may even have committed crimes and deserves to stay in jail. That isn't the point.

All American citizens have fundamental rights guaranteed by our Constitution -- even unpleasant people we don't like; habeas corpus, due process, counsel with an attorney, the right to hear charges confront the evidence and witnesses against us.

If Padilla committed a crime, he should be charged and have his day in court. That's what any of us expect as a basic right.

Padilla is not the only American citizen held in this Kafkaesque legal limbo. Louisiana-born Yaser Hamdi, another enemy combatant, was captured in Afghanistan. Reports indicate that there may be 200 or more Americans in similar circumstances.

The true tests of the Constitution are the objectionable cases. Polite chit-chat doesn't need First Amendment protection, offensive speech does. The important cases are always extremes that test and explore limits -- gun owners and bible thumpers and marching Nazis and porn peddlers and intelligent designers. These are the cases that define the rights and liberties of every citizen.

If Padilla can be declared a national security risk and detained incommunicado for more than three years -- without charges, without a lawyer, without due process -- then so can any citizen. Maybe you, but mostly I'm thinking about me.

Defending the rights of Padilla defends the rights of us all.

Bad and Badder

2005-12-22T18:14:00.000-05:00

My dog's appetite for destruction continues.

Recently she chewed up another cell phone, another TV remote control, two books, three flashlights, and chocolate coins wrapped in gold foil. Wouldn't it be cool if she pooped golden nuggets?

Fellow travelers

2005-12-16T19:13:00.000-05:00

Stood near the liquor store at Union Station while Rob bought his usual afternoon beer for the commute home. Three Transportation Security Agency dudes and a bomb-sniffing dog strolled past. TSA is spending a few days riding public transit in several cities to see whether they can flush out terrorists. Somewhere in the crowd is an undercover agent, watching to see if anybody flees.

Welcome aboard, boys. No eating or drinking on the Metro, or else there could really be trouble.

Out to Lunch

2005-10-22T23:03:00.000-05:00

Emails between FEMA staffers during the Katrina disaster speak volumes about the people leading this country.

A 12-year FEMA veteran, Marty Bahamonde was the agency's only staffer in New Orleans when Katrina hit.

On Tuesday, August 30, Department of Homeland Security chief Mike Chertoff designated FEMA director Mike Brown the principal federal official in charge of the Katrina response.

The full text of the emails, excerpted here with typos corrected, is at the New York Times website.

From: Bahamonde, Marty
Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2005 4:40 PM
To: Michael-Heath1@dhs.gov
Subject: Re:

There are currently 2000 inside the dome with about 300 special needs….Medical staff at the dome say they expect to run out of oxygen in about two hours and are looking for alternatives. There are still lines outside the dome waiting to get in….

From: Bahamonde, Marty
Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2005 4:46 PM
To: Passey, David
Subject: Re: Checking in

Issues developing at the Superdome. 2000 already in and more standing in line….The medical staff at the dome say they will run out of oxygen in about 2 hours and are looking for alternative oxygen…

From: Bahamonde, Marty
Sent: Sunday, August 28, 2005 6:28 PM
To: Wing, Deborah
Subject: NOMS Resource Status Report

Everyone is soaked. This is going to get ugly real fast. Everyone here at the EOC is very concerned with what might happen [at the Superdome].

From: Taylor, Cindy
Sent: Monday, August 29, 2005 1:38 PM
To: Rule, Natalie; Widomski, Michael; Andrews, Nicol D - Public Affairs
CC: Passey, David; Hudak, Mary
Subject: Updates from Marty and Beeman

From Marty (New Orleans)
- 17th Avenue Canal levee (running along border of Orleans and Jefferson Parishes) broke through with water flow "bad" into New Orleans side
- City will have feeding/sheltering issues with population at Superdome (est. 12K)
- North side of city under est. 11' water in heavy residential area
- Estimate 30,000 tourists in city holed up in hotel rooms
- Charity Hospital - all windows out; basement flooded, no power; have not been able to reach other 27 hospitals for capabilities
- Early estimate that power will be over a month to restore - main hubs out of commission

From: Bahamonde, Marty
Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2005 7:02 AM
To: Nicol.Andrews@dhs.gov; Marty.Bahamonde@dhs.gov
Subject: Re: Site Search

What is happening with [Mike Brown] travel this morning? When is he coming to New Orleans? The area around the Superdome is filling up with water, now waist deep. [Brown] can land and do a presser but then have to leave. There will be no ground tour, only flyover.

From: Bahamonde, Marty
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 11:20 AM
To: Michael.D.Brown@dhs.gov
Subject: New Orleans

Sir, I know that you know that the situation is past critical. Here are some things you might not know. Hotels are kicking people out, thousands gathering in the streets with no food or water. Hundreds are still being rescued from homes.

The dying patients at the DMAT tent being Medivac. Estimates are that many will die within hours. Evacuation in process. Plans developing for dome evacuation but hotel situation adding to problem. We are out of food and running out of water at the dome….

From: Worthy, Sharon
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 2:27 pm
To: Valerie.Smith@dhs.gov
CC: Natalie.Rule@dhs.gov; Andrews, Nicol D - Public Affairs; Cindy.Taylor@dhs.edu
Subject: Scarborough

….[I]t is very important that time is allowed for [Mike] Brown to eat dinner. Given that Baton Rouge is back to normal, restaurants are getting busy. He needs much more than 20 or 30 minutes. We now have traffic to encounter to get to and from a location of his choice, followed by wait service from the restaurant staff, eating, etc. Thank you.

Sharon Worthy
Press Secretary

From: Bahamonde, Marty
Sent: Wednesday, August 31, 2005 2:44 PM
To: Taylor, Cindy; Widomski, Michael
Subject: Re: Scarborough

OH MY GOD!!!!!!!! No won't go any further, too easy of a target. Just tell her that I just ate a MRE and crapped in the hallway of the Superdome along with 30,000 other close friends so I understand her concern about busy restaurants. Maybe tonight I will have time to move the pebbles on the parking garage floor so they won't stab me in the back while I try to sleep, but instead I will hope her wait at Ruth's Chris is short….

Cone of Uncertainty

2005-10-04T20:42:00.000-05:00

katrina rita foo-fie-fema
refugee evacuee
death live on teevee
superdome astrodome
splintered debris once was home
river rivera cooper primavera
o'brien o'brien somebody's crying
waders looters cops with badges
trent lott's porch
get off your asses
nagin chertoff brownie rove
divine retribution from above
disadvantaged disenchanted
dislocated and decanted
waveland toxic blanco biloxi
heck of a job
warning ignored
working very
well for them

Citizen X, 2005

A hard rain

2005-09-26T18:15:00.000-05:00

Another lunchtime protest at the White House.

I was drawn outside by the persistent buzz of the white helicopter that usually signals a motorcade. Squinting down Gucci Gulch, I discerned what appeared to be activity several blocks away around 15th street, with police cars blocking the intersection and a stream of people headed south. I walked two blocks to Lafayette Park where activities were in full swing.

Oh goodie, the coda of a weekend of protest. Travel had prevented me from attending the marches and protests over the weekend of September 24-25, which brought out hundreds of thousands of people, who shared the city with the National Book Festival and a convention of Segway enthusiasts.

On Monday, full-immersion theatre played out in Lafayette Park, along Pennsylvania Avenue, and on the White House property.

Barricades had been erected in front of the White House, behind which rows of police cars and motorcycles were parked. For the first time, uniformed Secret Service lined up along the inside of the White House fence, standing about 20 feet apart. Dozens of police cars ringed the park and adjacent streets, which years ago were closed to local traffic.

Several hundred people involved in Code Pink were gathered to present a million reasons for ending the war in Iraq. Members of Code Pink wore pink slips of paper pinned to their clothing, print outs of email describing the many ways this country has strayed from the path of decency and humanity.

Theirs was an unsanctioned gathering, without a permit. The civil disobedience was a refreshing reminder of an earlier era, heightened by protest music performed by a sidewalk folkie trio. The woman singing sounded remarkably like Joan Baez.

On a patch of lawn in the middle of the park was a group of frolicking anarchists. Dressed mainly in black, they were apparently bike-riding vegans there to engage in some bizarre street theater.

Over my shoulder, I heard some vague rants over a megaphone. Then the anarchists began wrestling, pouncing on one another in turns, tickling and trying to remove each other's shoes. Whatever meaning there may have been to their antics escaped me. But it was fun to watch.

A 20-something woman with curly shoulder-length hair began talking to me. She said she was from Georgia. "I'm keeping an eye on my mother," she told me. "I'm worried about her. I was arrested once before, but that was a nice suburban jail. I don't want us in the DC jail."

I told her that the police have to issue a warning before arresting you. If they say to move, I'd be inclined to move.

"They don't want anybody standing still in front of the White House," she told me. "You have to keep moving, or they'll arrest you."

People held up signs. Some chanted, "Make levees not war," which is a pretty decent chant if you ask me. Three people dressed like Abu Ghraib prisoners sat at the curb in front of the White House.

We were joined by an older woman, a retired librarian and social worker from Pullman, Washington, in her 70s. She told me about recently getting arrested after some sort of demonstration in Boise, Idaho.

"I was standing in the street, and a cop told me I was trespassing," she said. "He gave me five seconds to move. I was naive and asked who owned the street. But before I knew it, my hands were behind my back."

Rows of city cops on motorcycles streamed back and forth through the crowd at irregular intervals. Uniformed officers mingled in the crowd. There were dozens of reporters, people with video and still cameras, recorders with microphones.

"Did you see the anarchists wrestling over there a little while ago," the older woman asked. "It was girl on boy, girl on girl, girl on boy and girl...it was pretty wild."

I admitted that I had observed.

"Is the Secret Service in the park?" the young woman asked me. I told her she could count on it.

"That guy with the camera?" she asked.

Maybe, I said. Who knows? Maybe me. Maybe even you, cadet.

"They infiltrate groups and cause trouble," said the older woman. "Maybe him over there," she said, pointing to a man with a military bearing and a grey crew cut, wearing a dark suit with a lapel pin who later identified himself as a Green Party representative from Virginia.

A large group of Code Pink women sat in a circle, holding hands and sharing words of inspiration while media hovered around the periphery. In the street, a knot of anarchists had bandanas over their faces. Some wore goggles, as though girded for a watergun fight. I leaned in, trying to hear what they said, but could only make out what sounded like "Hnagga odno cops!"

In the midst of the madness strolled a tourist family, a couple in their 30s and their three fair-haired children. The boys appeared to be pre-teens, and the youngest in a stroller no more than three years old. The father, in sports shirt and baseball cap, clutched a map of the Mall area. His wife was on her cell phone. They were wide-eyed, taking in the extraordinary scene.

Shortly after noon, about a dozen U.S. Park Police on horseback lined up shoulder to shoulder at the eastern edge. A Secret Service panel van rolled down Pennsylvania Avenue, stopping near the southwest corner of the park. It's the show of force.

A Secret Service agent rolled by on a white mountain bike, wearing a white polo shirt and sports shades. The bike was labeled US SECRET SERVICE on the main tube, which I thought was pretty cool. I was about to ask him where I could get a bike like that when Code Pink began to make their move.

Hoisting a long banner, they snaked onto Pennsylvania Avenue and stood in front of the White House, singing an politically updated version of "American Pie."

Some women removed their tops and exposed themselves to the White House. "Breasts not bombs," they said. Now that's a message that a person can embrace.

When people sat and Code Pink was determined to remain until Bush accepted their petition, I began to contemplate the effect my arrest might have on the rest of my afernoon and decided that it might be time to head back to the office. Besides, I'd smoked my last cigarette.

I started to walk north back through the park, but noticed the tourist family near the barricade in Pennsylvania Avenue. I walked over to the guy, whose face was beaming. "This is really something," he said to me.

"Yeah, democracy in action," I said. "Look, things could change here very quickly. This might not be a good place for little kids." I pointed out the mounted cops, the Secret Service riot wagon. There were no busses yet, but a definite feeling that things are building up.

"You think so?" he said. "Good point." And quickly the family steered away towards 15th street.

I walked back through the park, past the anarchists, two of whom were playing croquet. As I approached the northern side, two streams of marchers poured towards me, led by Cindy Sheehan. Thousands of people -- chanting, banging on drums, Buddhists ringing a bell -- flowed past on their way to the White House.

I crossed the street, walked up 17th, stopped for a cup of coffee, and headed back to the office. By the time I returned, news of the arrests already made Drudge. About 370 people were arrested, starting with Cindy Sheehan.

Another fine mess

2005-09-22T14:02:00.000-05:00

Do I detect a trend?

"We had a hope the Iraqis would rise up and become part of the solution… We just didn't know [about the insurgency]."
Gen. Tommy Franks, August 2, 2004

“I don’t know of any reporting that anyone saw that anticipated an insurgency of this level, and I just have never seen anything like that.”
Colin Powell, December 21, 2004

"What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground…We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."
"Senior official," August 14, 2005

"The collapse of a significant portion of the levee leading to the very fast flooding of the city was not envisioned."
Michael Chertoff, August 31, 2005

"I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees."
George Bush, September 1, 2005

The Bush administration is doing for incompetence what Bill Clinton did for blowjobs; make it fashionable, and also raise dry cleaning costs.

This is a perfect opportunity to go with the flow. Try these on for size:

"Officer, I never planned for my car to go 45 miles per hour over the speed limit."

"The deadline was not realistic given the unreality that dominated when the assignment was given."

"Your honor, nobody anticipated that when I punched the guy he would actually strike back."

"When I wrote the check, I did not envision that the money was not in the bank."

"I thought more beer would be the solution to my lack of sobriety. I didn't know about intoxication."

Fifteen minutes of blame

2005-09-08T19:39:00.000-05:00

One of the benefits of working within blocks of the White House is moseying over now and then. So I moseyed over during lunch to observe a protest for Katrina evacuees organized by MoveOn.

A pudgy, perspiring man in a blue blazer named Trevor acted as emcee, shepherding the media through the planned events. The protest was scheduled for 1 pm, beginning in Lafayette Park across Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House.

The MoveOn press release promised "excellent visuals," and indeed there were. But perhaps not what MoveOn intended.

Colorful posters printed on heavy coated card stock were stacked in the park. Some said SHAME while the others said HELP HURRICANE VICTIMS.

I wondered why the posters said HURRICANE rather than KATRINA. Had they been prepared in advance for just such an occasion? I imagined a warehouse somewhere with posters for various contingencies: HELP EARTHQUAKE VICTIMS, HELP SMALLPOX VICTIMS, HELP FAMINE VICTIMS.

The media turnout was pretty good, with a half-dozen video cameras and twice as many still photogs, AP, Reuters, the St. Petersburg Times, Washington Post, and a television crew from Italy.

As luck would have it, another protest was scheduled at the same time. A few dozen feet away, a substantial crowd gathered around a platform where speakers condemned the genocide in Darfur, where 400,000 people have been killed.

Trevor didn't have a PA system, and tried to speak loudly over the noise.

Of all the days!

Trevor said that three Katrina evacuees -- Iona Renfroe, Christine Mayfield, and Michelle Augillard -- were available for interviews after the protest. All happen to be MoveOn members. The organization handed out bios of the evacuees, which makes interesting reading.

Mayfield's bio quotes her: "I think that people are right in saying that this would not have happened to white people." "It is inhumane to have treated citizens of the United States like they were treated," reads Augillard's bio. "This is a direct slap in the face to Americans. What happens if there is a next time?"

Reporters gathered around a media liaison to get on the evacuee interview list. Pen and paper in hand, I identified myself as a reporter with a prominent hardware publication and asked for some face time to discuss power tools.

As Trevor explained how the protest would go, the Darfur crowd began their march, chanting loudly:

One, two, three, four
Stop the killing in Darfur

And then:

George Bush
Break the silence
Protect the people
Stop the violence

I looked through Lafayette Park and tried to pick out the Secret Service. A little game I like to play. With hundreds of protesters in front of the White House the FBI was probably there too, to photograph crowds if for no other reason. Secret Service is always in the park and around the White House, even if you don't notice them. If you doubt it, do something funny at the fence. You'll be smacked down before taking another breath. They come out of nowhere.

The white SUVs and vans on Pennsylvania Avenue are a given. Since no civilian traffic is allowed on the street anymore, all vehicles in the vicinity are assumed to be law enforcement. The bicycle couriers? Possibly. I've seen plainclothes cops looking like bike couriers swoop into Farragut Park. A block away, the park is a popular gathering place for couriers. Bicycle messengers blend in very well with the area.

The athletic-looking woman apparently listening to music on the bench? Those two lawyers deep in conversation? The tourist in a Gap t-shirt and shades wandering around and looking for the right camera angle of the White House? The jogger with the fanny pack and earphones? Who knows.

It was near impossible to hear over the Darfur chants, so I wandered through the crowd and struck up conversations while the evacuees spoke. I sought out others from the Gulf Coast, but met nobody else from the affected areas.

Near me, a uniformed Secret Service in black commando fretted over an unattended camera tripod. Nothing unattended is allowed in Lafayette Park, which is why Concepcion Picciotto (left) has lived in front of the White House in a hand-made plastic tent for the last 24 years. Connie seemed to enjoy the attention from like-minded people.

The Darfur protesters marched along Pennsylvania Avenue for a while, returned to their platform and eventually dispersed, some drifting to our crowd. People held up posters and faced the White House. That's right -- give them a clear, steady view of your face.

The Katrina evacuees read their statements and responded to questions from reporters. Then the mass of people -- protesters, media, curious tourists -- flowed into Pennsylvania Avenue. People chanted, "Shame on Bush! Shame on Bush!" which evolved into "Fire Brown! Fire Brown!"

Honestly, neither were as catchy, informative, or as compelling as the Darfur chants. I guess nobody had time to write a clever chant.

As I began to leave and return to the office, I heard a loud, shrieking female voice in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue. I couldn't quite make out what she was saying at first, so I walked closer. Was it an anguished, grief-stricken victim?

I saw a woman in a purple jacket, her body quivering with rage. "Damn you! Supporting the president's great, but supporting the people and the Constitution is more important," the woman in purple screamed. "The Constitution and the babies who died is more important than any president and you know that in your heart."

She was inches away from another solitary 50-something woman holding a sheet of paper handwritten with ballpoint pen:

support our president
love our people

A handful of reporters circled the sign-holding woman, peppering her with questions. What's your name? Where are you from? Why are you doing this?

She said her name is Clarice McMillan, of Alexandria, Virginia, and spelled her name.

"She was just upset," McMillan said. "It's okay. I can understand that people get emotional."

The screeching woman was comforted and led away, still shaking in anger.

"We need you to move back," another MoveOn supporter told McMillan. "You're in the way."

McMillan stood her ground, meekly peeking behind her sign while reporters asked questions. Why are you doing this?

"I support the president," she said. "I don't say that he does everything right, but nobody does."

MoveOn supporters grouped around and taunted McMillan and the reporters.

"Don't talk with her."

"This sucks."

"Why are you supporting her? The story is over there [pointing to the White House]. This is bullshit."

"They're looking for a scoop. But it's poop. It's a poop scoop." [note to MoveOn: potential chant talent here.]

None of the reporters responded to the MoveOn supporters.

I wanted to say something, though, about respecting others and their views, about how the greatest test of the freedom of speech is protecting ideas that are objectionable. First I thought that I'd be preaching to the choir. Explaining tolerance to liberals? Then I realized I'd just be wasting my breath.

Drowning our sorrows

2005-09-05T20:17:00.000-05:00

SOURCE: FARK.COM, ARTIST UNKNOWN
The tragic and avoidable loss of life wrought by Katrina brings into sharp focus the failures of this administration. Our government doesn't give a shit about we, the people.

Over the last five years the Bush administration has put incompetent political cronies into key positions in charge of homeland security and disaster preparedness, dismantled the former Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and slashed funding for levee improvements around Lake Pontchartrain.

We've spent $200 billion on a pointless, misbegotten, illegal, and immoral war halfway around the world. We're building infrastructure that's desperately needed right here at home. The National Guard of Louisiana and Mississippi are over there while their homes were destroyed and their families riven apart.

Are we safer today? Ask the bodies floating in the fetid water of New Orleans.

Bush has the audacity to tell Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America on 9/1, "I don't think anyone anticipated the breach of the levees."

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff repeated the lie on CNN two days later. Prior to joining Homeland Security, Chertoff was a private practice attorney specializing in estate planning.

Everybody anticipated the breach of the levees except, apparently, the people in charge of responding to the disaster.

The scenario was the subject of a five-part series published in July 2002 in the Times-Picayune, an October 2001 article in Scientific American, and a disaster response exercise with participants from FEMA and other federal agencies, as well as state and local officials, held in July 2004.

No, this one was right out of the playbook. As an intelligence failure, it ranks up there with "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Within the U.S."

Nobody holds Bush responsible for the weather. But he certainly is accountable for the response to Katrina. To be sure, there is enough blame to go around. There were failures at all levels of government. But when it the scale of the catastrophe became apparent and that the states were unable to cope, the failure to timely provide such basic lifesaving needs as water is simply inexcusable.

On NPR's All Things Considered of 9/1, Chertoff insisted to host Robert Siegel, "I have not heard reports of thousands of people in the convention center who do not have food and water."

Ferchristsake, Chertoff. We'd been seeing these desperate people at the convention center on television. We watched people die. How can you be so incredibly out of touch?

Yes, Katrina affected a wide area. That doesn't excuse doing nothing. Yes, it was an overwhelming worst-case scenario. That doesn't excuse doing nothing. Perhaps local and state officials could have done some things differently. That doesn't excuse doing nothing.

True to form, the Bush administration jumped into swift action to shift blame onto others, with FEMA director Michael Brown on 9/1 referring on CNN to "...those who are stranded, who chose not to evacuate, who chose not to leave the city..."

Many people remained because they lacked money or transportation, or to stay with an elderly or disabled family member, or to keep watch on their property. But many of those who chose to remain are doctors, nurses, firefighters, and cops. These are the ordinary heroes who -- had they died -- would be memorialized with misty-eyed sentiment and magnetic ribbons. But while they're in the throes of saving lives, bagging patients by hand for hours in the darkness, risking a stand against anarchy, going without food and water? Screw 'em, it's their own fault for staying. Is that right, Mr. Brown?

Under Bush's leadership, the mission and focus of FEMA has changed dramatically. The agency was subsumed under the Department of Homeland Security. Its focus has shifted from disaster preparedness, response, and coordination to terrorism.

Bush's first FEMA director was Joe Allbaugh, who was national campaign manager for Bush-Cheney 2000 and campaign manager for Bush's first run for Texas governor. Brown had been Allbaugh's college roommate. Prior to heading FEMA, Brown had been fired from the International Arabian Horse Association, where a colleague described his performance as "a fucking disaster."

Five years and tens of billions of dollars spent for homeland security, and what do we get?

As New Orleans, so goes the rest of the nation. There are 15,000 miles of levee protecting communities throughout the nation. According to Jeff Mount, flood control expert at University of California , Davis, there are two kinds of levees -- those that have breached and those that will breach.

Whether we're talking about the New Madrid fault or the San Andreas fault, or the volcanic caudera beneath Yellowstone, or tornadoes, or some godawful unthinkable event like the ones we've had to think about in recent years, we need an effective federal disaster agency. Natural disasters are a fact of life. And now we have to think about bioterror or a repeat of 9/11.

We have been lulled into a false sense of security. The world has seen how vulnerable we truly are, unable to mount an effective response.

It will happen, whatever it is. Will that be you or me holding up a "HELP ME" sign or pushing a dying relative in a shopping cart?

Michael Brown is a tool who should be held accountable for his incompetence, as should Chertoff and Bush. When we have recovered somewhat, and the shock has worn off, and the dead have been counted, the tragedy of Katrina will be remembered as one of this nation's most appalling failures.

New Orleans will be back. I was just there a couple of months ago, spending several days at the convention center. Had I known it would be my last time in a while, I would have paid more attention.

One of those things

2005-08-30T20:57:00.000-05:00

Some people say the glass is half empty, some people say the glass is half full, and some people say "Why the hell is there water all over the floor?"

"Hey, Cindy Sheehan!"

2005-08-25T23:21:00.000-05:00

Mixed messages

2005-08-22T23:15:00.000-05:00

On the first day back at work after Bush's second inauguration, riding on the Metro, written on the back of the seat in front of me in black marker: "expect resistance."

Days later, a young woman sat on a plastic milk crate at the top of the Metro escalator holding a sign that said, "I love you."

According to a note floridly scrawled in three colors on the shelter at the commuter train station, Rachel and Tim will be together 4-ever. I wish them the best.

For the duration of the trip to Washington, the digital sign on the train says, UNIT OK 663901.

The Death of Jean Charles de Menezes

2005-08-21T13:25:00.000-05:00

The ability to make light of the death of Jean Charles de Menezes belies a horror that grows deeper as details of the incident emerge.

On the morning of July 22, de Menezes left his flat, which happens to be located in the same housing block where Hamdi Isaac lived. Isaac was suspected of involvement in a failed subway attack the previous day. The building was under intense surveillance, but the officer assigned to a video camera who could have identified Isaac was in the bathroom when de Menezes left the building.

De Menezes, a 27-year-old electrician, left the first floor flat he shared with two cousins, walked through a playground, and caught a bus to the Stockwell subway station. He boarded a subway car, where within seconds he was assaulted by a team of officers, held down and shot seven times in the head at point-blank range.

Witnesses said that the suspect looked "South Asian," wore a bulky jacket with wires visible, and ran through the subway station before jumping over the turnstile. Police initially issued a statement saying that "his clothing and his behavior at the station added to suspicions" of de Menezes.

No less than the chief of the London police declared that de Menezes was "directly linked" with "terrorist operations."

Not a word of any of it was true.

Immediately, some things about the incident didn't add up. Cops wasted no time releasing subway surveillance images of the four men suspected of responsibility for the July 7 bombings, which killed 54 people and injured more than 700. Where was the image of de Menezes? If the cops genuinely believed de Menezes was carrying an explosive device, why did they allow him onto a bus and into a subway station?

If the first victim of war is truth, its second victim is innocence.

De Menezes wasn't wearing a bulky jacket in warm weather (it was 65 degrees F that morning, but that's beside the point). He wore a light denim jacket. De Menezes walked at an ordinary pace through the subway station, pausing to pick up a newspaper, and passed through the turnstile. The guy with a bulky jacket and dangling wires who ran and jumped over the turnstile? Those were cops.

At least two cops boarded the train. One barked an order at de Menezes, who stood up but apparently made no threatening gesture. No doubt he was startled and confused, as anybody would be in similar circumstances. One cop tackled de Menezes, throwing him back into the seat. While one cop restrained de Menezes, a second reached forward, his gun about a foot away from his skull, and fired seven times.

To be sure, the cops were on edge. We've all been on edge since September 11, 2001. In London, the cops were trying to prevent another subway bombing.

What is most disturbing is the lack of shock over de Menezes' death. Many people seem to think that the sacrifice of innocent life is a fair trade for security. The irony of that concept is mindboggling.

Shooting "suicide bombing" suspects in the head is now standard operating procedure for many police departments in the U.S. and Great Britain. This is the approach recommended by the International Association of Chiefs of Police in a recent advisory.

What have we become if summary public execution is not only regarded as acceptable, but even necessary?

A Duty-Dance with Death

2005-08-15T23:53:00.000-05:00

Rows of evening commuters settled in with cell phones and newspapers as the express train slowly lumbered out of Union Station. Rob sat across from me in his usual seat, fiddling intently with his iPod. The train gently swayed as the clattering wheels gained speed.

Around us sat the regular 435 crowd -- Close-Standing Man, with high water pants and a habit of invading personal space; Gregarious Guy, obese and overly friendly, loudly holding court at the far end of the car; the Furtive Novelist, who darts through crowds and makes copious notes on pieces of paper folded into a old book; Wild Bill, bearded in a style that hasn't been seen since the Civil War; the Bridge Bunch, playing cards on a briefcase perched on their knees.

Unfolding the Post, I turned first to the corrections and then to the obituaries. Reading the paper begins with a refreshing whiff of honesty, a candid public accounting of errors. Then there's a list of people who don't give a shit about it anymore.

The train rocked back and forth, trundling through wastelands north of the District. I'd just begun reading a Style story about a guy who wrote a musical about his experience being mauled by a bear, when the lights and air conditioning suddenly blinked off.

Rob tugged at his earphones and rolled his eyes upward, trying to sense change in speed that indicates a more serious problem.

"Not a good sign," I said.

"I don't think we're slowing down," Rob said. "The engine is still running."

"Who kicked out the cord?" said a voice from several rows back, eliciting a chorus of polite laughter.

Within minutes the lights and air conditioning came back on, filling the car with a comforting hum as people returned to their distractions.

"Close call," I said. "You never know about these trains. Amtrak treats the commuter service like a bastard stepchild. The track maintenance sucks."

Rob sipped the can of beer he had wrapped in a brown paper bag. "All it takes is a slight breeze for the pantograph to lose contact with the power line," he said. "Then the trains don't run at all. Snow or ice on the tracks I can understand, but wind? Ferchristsake."

"People are finally hearing about how bad the commuter trains are. They're so much worse than the Metro," I said. "I've got to put something about this in my blog. Trains can be stuck for hours. Like that 428 train last summer I heard about, when it was so hot. People say the cars were roasting. They were locked in during the heat…"

"I was there," said a voice from across the aisle.

A rumpled figure slumped in the far window seat. I hadn't noticed him before, thinking at first that he might have boarded at New Carrollton. But the express doesn't stop until BWI Airport, so he must have been sitting there since Washington.

He appeared to be in his late 50s, pale hairless arms peeking out from a short sleeve shirt, pudgy fingers folded on his lap. A cap was pulled down low, shading his eyes. His face, what I could see of it, was creased and weary.

The man had the appearance of a cog that keeps the machinery of government running, a drone relegated to the fluorescent bowels of the federal bureaucracy.

Maybe he was a itinerant network administrator, or an information specialist. Perhaps he was a displaced academic eking out a living as a subcontractor for a beltway bandit, grinding out proposals or fiscal analyses. It was difficult to envision him as anything but a repulsive non-person.

I looked at Rob. "What did he say?"

"He said he was there," Rob said.

"He must be listening to music," I said. "Anyway, it was goddamned hot, and people were locked inside the cars until…"

"I was there," the man said.

I examined the man closely. His eyes appeared closed, as though asleep or deep in thought. He didn't seem to be breathing, so still that I couldn't tell if he was dead or alive.

Rob served as an interpreter. "Where was he?" I asked.

"I don't know," Rob said. He leaned toward the man across the aisle. "Where were you," he asked.

"The 428," the man said.

"He said he was on the 428," Rob told me.

"He's just echoing things that we say," I said.

"Oh," said Rob.

"I was on that fateful 428" the man across the aisle said. "It was Friday, August 9 -- a blistering afternoon with all of the mugginess you expect from a reclaimed swampland. There were more than 800 souls on that seven-car train. When we left Union Station, none of us could have imagined the harrowing ordeal that lay ahead.

"The 428 isn't my usual train, but I left the office early to get a head start on the weekend. Half of Washington must have had the same idea. That train was packed. Every seat was filled, with people sitting on the steps. Standing room only, all the way down the aisle.

"It wasn't long before the first hint of trouble reared its ugly head. I'm not a superstitious person, but sometimes I think that train was just ill-fated. Bad juju. The lights flickered before we'd even left the station yard. As you note, my friend, this is often a bad omen. Most of the time, it's nothing. But this time, it was a flicker of hell.

"Somewhere around Odenton, the train stopped dead on the tracks. Just stopped. After a period of time, word filtered through the train that a fuse had blown. Since the power was out, the PA system didn't work. We were given very little information, and had no idea how long we'd be sitting there.

"The afternoon sunlight blazed through the windows. Heat inside the car shot up like a pressure cooker. Within minutes, the temperature was over 100 degrees.

"The train was stifling. There was no escape. Stepping out onto the tracks was out of the question. The conductors wouldn't even open the doors. Too much liability. So we remained locked in, and waited. Minutes slipped into an hour, and an hour turned into two.

"Waves of despair passed through the car as people received news of dinners gone cold, appointments missed, dates stood up. Children not picked up at daycare. It was an unmitigated disaster. I have TiVo, and that may be my saving grace.

"Men clawed at their neckties. Women tugged at damp straps and panty hose. Hair wilted. Sweat spots blotted through dress shirts. Rivulets of sweat poured down faces. It was like roasting in an oven. I craned my neck around to see who was the weakest, wondering how much longer until we devolve to depravity. The car smelled of perspiration and stale coffee breath.

"After two hours, the conductors came around and opened an emergency exit window, letting a fresh air waft into the car. Though saved from the brink of heat stroke, our ordeal was far from over.

"Eventually another train engine arrived to push us. We limped slowly toward the BWI station. That's when the storms moved in.

"The sky darkened angrily as we approached BWI. Knots of dark grey clouds appeared overhead. And then the heavens opened, unleashing a torrent of rain. Fat drops splatted against the window.

"The platform was already full when we arrived at the BWI station. They had to put us onto another train. We were forced off the train, herded like cattle onto the crowded platform.

"But there was nowhere to go. People huddled under the narrow awning to take shelter from the furious downpour. Some tried holding newspapers over their head. It was futile. Many of us were soaked to the skin. Not only that, but briefcases and backpacks were soaked too. And shoes.

"Moments earlier we had been begging for water. Now we were getting drenched. That's one of the cruel ironies of this 30-minute commute that turned into a hellish three-hour nightmare. We were wet for the rest of the ride," the man said in a low whisper. "And very tired."

Then the man fell silent. For a few moments Rob and I looked at each other, waiting to see if there was more to the story. There wasn't.

Rob sipped his beer.

"So," I asked Rob, "any plans with the kids this weekend?"

Monkey business

2005-08-04T18:52:00.000-05:00

President Bush endorses teaching "intelligent design" -- creationism in disguise -- alongside evolution in public schools. Bush says that people "ought to be exposed to different ideas" so they can make up their own minds.

Great idea, but it doesn't go far enough.

Such a curriculum would be incomplete without theories about the world being supported on the back of a turtle, which appear in Native American and Hindu cultures, among others. Or the African story about the earth being formed by the deity Obatala using sand, seeds, a chicken, and a cat. Or the Siberian tale of Buga creating the first people out of iron, fire, water, and earth.

They're all just theories, right?

Astrology should be taught with astronomy, health classes include sections on homeopathy and faith healing, and all English classes teach ebonics as well.

It's important for kids to learn about December 7, 1776, when the Germans bombed Pearl Bailey.

Running for your life

2005-08-01T17:14:00.000-05:00

One or two shots to the head to stop a terrorist suspect may be understandable. Perhaps three or four. But five…six…seven shots to the head?

Immediately, authorities said 27-year-old Jean Charles de Menezes was a subway bomber, later claiming that he was "closely tied" to the terrorists who committed those heinous acts. He wasn't.

Witnesses described de Menezes as "South Asian." Actually, he was Brazilian. It was suggested that he was in Great Britain illegally, and that isn't true either.

They say he jumped over a turnstile. Somehow I have my doubts about that too. Where are the video stills?

With minutes to catch the evening commuter train, I trot from the Metro through Union Station, backpack bouncing on my back. I hope nobody thinks I look too Arabic or South Asian or Brazilian.

Rove Over

2005-07-15T18:06:00.000-05:00

Source: Fark.com, artist unknown

Some call him Bush's Brain. The president's pet name for him is Turd Blossom. Karl Rove embodies everything that is evil and corrupt about this administration. He is a hack who put spiteful gutter politics ahead of national security.

Rove has a distinguished career as a weasel. He is the Jedi master of dirty tricks. According to the fascinating Bush's Brain (both a book and a film), Rove once bugged his own office and blamed his opponent. He invited the homeless to an opponent's fundraiser dinner. All is fair in getting your guy elected.

Nothing uttered by Rove is to be believed. He is a chronic liar. How do I know he's a liar? In the July Vanity Fair, Rove is quoted saying that Bush is "the best-read person I ever met."

Once upon a time, people cared about even the appearance of impropriety. This is an administration that says, "Fuck appearances."

Out of his head

2005-06-28T20:41:00.000-05:00

Hi, I'm James. Call me.

Say hello to a guy who calls himself indrax. A colleague recently pointed me towards an article about Bill Gates watching pirated videos, and the comments of indrax caught my eye:

Copying isn't stealing, copyright law is itself immoral. We have a basic human right to copy information. Published information can not be owned.

I can fully defend these points and more. It is not a rationalization, it is a very solid philosophical argument.

Ordinarily, I let stuff like this slide. But once in a while I enjoy mixing it up with a particularly loudmouthed PETA member or homeopath, or in this case a crank who doesn’t believe in intellectual property rights.

This bozo indrax takes the cake. He makes all sorts of wild-ass statements, like (all typos and grammatical errors are his):

Copying isn't stealing, copyright law is itself immoral. We have a basic human right to copy information. Published information can not be owned.

Copying harms no one, there is nothing immoral about it.

Artists should be paid for their work, for making art, not for makng copies. Copyright encourages artists to become publishers instead of artists.

When you make a copy, you are producing something of value, a copy, you are performing the work of publishing. Nothing is taken from anyone, and there is no reason you should not derive benefit.

I oppose copyright law as unjust because there is no true right to control information

And then he goes on to issue challenges:

I argue about copyright a lot…every time I disprove one of their arguments they switch to another one, desperately trying to find something that will back up their opinion.

…I have a single clear argument based on human rights and economics.

I can fully defend these points and more. It is not a rationalization, it is a very solid philosophical argument.

He even eggs on somebody who dares to disagree with him:

Come on, at least try to back up your view.

You can almost see him rubbing his hands together, gleefully saying, “I will bring you to your knees with the awesome power of my intellect!”

Indrax threw down the gauntlet. I picked it up.

So on indrax’s blog, I challenged his points, starting with the claim that copying is a basic human right and integral to free speech. His response was that it’s human nature to copy, and therefore a basic right. Get that? Copying is a right because we can, and we can because copying is a right.

Listen to some of this nonsense of indrax’s:

First, we have a basic human right to copy information. Repitition is simply what we do. Further, because we have real property rights, we are free to do as we wish with the property we own, such as computers and CD's.

Second, the ability to be copied is inherent in the nature of information. This is very important. You want to sell me an apple without selling me the seeds, telling me I can't plant my own tree. With information, the apple IS the seeds. This leaves you in the position of selling seeds which may not be planted. What are you selling?

Any model which treats information as property will lead to absurdities, because the concept of property was never designed to work with copiable things, let alone the retention of 'ownership' after sale.

In short it is not property because my recieving it takes nothing from you. I could copy your words a trillion times and it would do you no harm at all. Real property must be protected because this is not the case for it. If a million people cut accross my lawn, then I no longer have a lawn. The damage by any one individual is small, but real. The damage from copying is zero.

Indrax has a lot more to say about apples. I don’t know what his problem is with fruit:

Let me explain the apples: You are selling information, information is inherently copiable, in the same way that seeds are inherently plantable. You can use almost any apple to produce more apples. Apples are property, and when you buy an apple, you can do what you want this it.

Then he seems to get frustrated with apples, even though he was the one who brought them up:

The grown apples in my analogy do not represent derivative works, they are near perfect copies of the original apple. I notice you focus on the apples, but ignore the point about information, It is inherently copiable. what you are selling is something by by its very nature, can be used to produce copies of itself. Trying to deny that nature is like selling an apple, but prohiting use of the seeds.

I would wear out my typing fingers (okay, wear out the mouse button from cut-and-pasting) to share all the supremely stupid things indrax comes up with:

The first ammendment says nothing of 'creative expression' it talks about freedom of speech, and of the press, which sounds to me like a photocopier.

Get that? Using a photocopier is creative expression. That means that functionally, operationally, there is no fundamental difference between Stevie Wonder’s work and what indrax does by burning a disc.

As I see it, I could copy your work a hundred billion trillion times, and have no impact on you at all.

Copyright is not required to have a financial incentive for writing, creating art is a service, the market will find a way to pay artists, because the market wants art created.

The issue IS about what's in my head, freedom is not freedom to merely hum a song, freedom is the freedom to create and publish derivative works.

Ha ha ha. His freedom includes taking stuff that belongs to other people. What a maroon.

If I have some information that you created, my copying and distributing it in no way affects your ability to use it.

I can say anything I want, including things you said before.

How’s that for audacity? His freedom of speech includes all of my speech too. And also the works of Kurt Vonnegut, Stephen Jay Gould, and the Beatles. Wow. Just wow.

Indrax also apparently has some kind of fixation on Superman, which seem to be part of a fetishistic fantasy:

I am not free to make and publish my own serious creative works featuring superman…Superman is a part of our culture, He has a deep psychological resonance in millions of people, but we are very limited in how we can express our selves about him

Moreover, copying information is about as basic as eating. It is integral to thought and communication. This is why the superman thing is important.

Indrax is like a child playing with action figures, telling each of them who they are and what they should be doing:

selling copies is not the work of a photographer.

Pay artists for creating art, and pay publishers for copies

Indrax for musicians to keep making new music, writers keep making new writing, photographers keep taking new pictures. What is his role in all of this?

I want to copy, and sell the copies.

That’s right, he wants to be a parasite who makes a buck off other people’s work.

Indrax has all the answers – what people’s jobs are, what their relationships with other people should be, how creative people should value their work, and even how much is proper for somebody to earn:

A film that costs 80 million dollars to make should be sold for oh, maybe 120 million

A word about indrax. He’s a 27-year-old doofus from Buffalo, NY (my hometown!) who may or may not live in his mother’s basement. He has a number of blogs, mostly on crappy writing and other half-baked ideas. One of indrax’s blogs is particularly amusing, in which he invites people to call him on the pbone:

We can talk about whatever you want, I can give you a mini-interview if you like.

I'll post my impressions about the conversation right on this blog….You'll be famous!

To date, it doesn’t appear that anybody wishes to call indrax. I wonder why.

I’m not a psychiatrist, and I don’t play one on television, but it is my opinion that indrax has a narcissist personality. A narcissist personality is enamored with the brilliance and infallibility of his own thinking. A narcissist will never, ever admit that he’s wrong. Even when confronted with misstatements, lies, and contradictions, he will bend facts and definitions, performing extraordinary feats of rationalizing contortion just to prove hat he is true and consistent.

In the fetid mind of the narcissist, he is always right and you are always wrong.

The narcissist thinks that rules don’t apply to them, or that they can operate with a different set of rules than everybody else. They say one thing and do another, happily oblivious to the hypocrisy.

Sigmund Freud traced much of personality to defecation and toilet training. Some babies don’t want to give up their shit and are “anal retentives” who grow up to be private, reserved control freaks. Then there are the “anal expressives” who are proud of their shit and want to share it with everybody. These people grow up to be expressive, creative people.

Some people are still struggling with toileting issues. They never matured past that point, personality-wise. You can imagine the effect if those infantile urges interfere with your daily life. This is one of the issues addressed by psychoanalysis.

Indrax likes to rub his shit all over his body. In a metaphorical sense, you know. Since I haven’t met him, I don’t know for a fact that he smells like shit.

But that’s just my opinion, and not even really my opinion anymore since according to indrax you can’t own published words and his speech includes all of my speech. So they’re really his words.

And here’s what happened: Somebody – certainly not me – duplicated indrax’s identity and has started posted comments in various online forums.

Brilliant! By indrax’s own reasoning, he hasn’t lost a thing! He still has his identity; the other is just a copy.

What does indrax do when his information is copied? He claims property ownership rights and censors the speech of another person. All that bullshit about published information not being owned, how information cannot be controlled, about the basic human right to free speech – right out the window.

This is MY blog. WAHHHHHHH!!

What a wanker.

In any event, for a hilarious textbook case of a narcissist fruitcake in action, check out this thread:

Some of you regulars may already know the password. I intend to test out indrax’s model and sell access to the thread. You tell me what it’s worth to you to read it, and you can have it. I don’t care if it’s twenty-five cents, a dollar, ten bucks or a hundred. But please, no less than a nickel. That just gets to be a pain in the ass. I think quarter is a reasonable minimum, but I’m not putting pressure on anybody. This is a free market.

It’s very, very important for this page to stay out of the hands of indrax. The whole point of this performance is to take control of the information away from him. He can’t even see it. It doesn’t belong to him anymore.

Oh, and some false statements may be modified or deleted by the powers vested in me by Blogger and/or its computers.

Have fun!

The Republican mandate

2005-02-27T15:25:00.000-05:00

In consideration of the welfare of me and my
family I have decided to return to private life.
jeffgannon.com
2/9/2005

I'm baaaaaaack!
jeffgannon.com
2/17/2005

Right wing studmuffin James Guckert, aka Jeff Gannon, had the opportunity to slink off into a well-deserved obscurity. According to his relaunched website -- I refer to jeffgannon.com, not hotmilitarystud.com or militaryescorts.com -- his lawyers have advised him not to discuss "allegations about my personal life."

The most serious allegations aren't about Guckert's personal life. The issue isn't whether he's gay. If it were just a matter of a secretly gay right wing activist promoting an anti-gay agenda, that would just be garden variety GOP hypocrisy, of which there is no shortage in Washington.

First of all, an alleged $200 per hour escort is by definition a professional. Prostitution is a crime. The big questions are about Guckert's professional life.

As a journalist, how does Guckert reconcile his male escort business with his anti-gay coverage?

Calling Guckert a journalist may be charitable. He reportedly took press releases from the White House and GOP and ran them verbatim with his byline. That isn't journalism, that's plagiarism.

So there are questions for Talon News Service, the publisher of a plagiarist. Were they aware that he was plagiarizing? Did they know that one of their "reporters" is also allegedly a prostitute?

And of course there are many questions for the White House. As Gannon, Guckert was called upon numerous times by Scott McClellan and George W. Bush. Out of 2,000 members of the White House press corps, why do they know the first name of a prostitute plagiarist with no real journalism experience?

Did the White House have a partisan ringer in the press gallery to ask softball questions at press briefings, or does it only look that way?

How did an inexperienced, uncredentialed hustler using a pseudonym get through one of the most secure facilities in the country? Why were the FBI, White House press office, Secret Service, etc., unaware of what a handful of bloggers learned in a matter of hours? Cripes, he was within feet of the President.

It appears that Guckert has reactivated his site, now a sort of blog, and reclaimed the public spotlight in order to establish some journalism cred. Guckert is also involved in the Plame affair. He reportedly saw the classified memo revealing Valerie Plame as a CIA operative. If Guckert is actually a political operative and not really a legitimate journalist, should he be entitled to the protections that shield a reporter's sources?

If Guckert can do it, so can I. After all, I'm a blogger with no formal journalism training, using a pseudonym, who also maintains another embarassing web site. I intend to attend a White House press briefing and ask some of these questions. I'll let you know how it goes.

GUCKERT LINKS

America Blog
Daily Kos
dKospedia
Media Matters
The Nashua Advocate

Hello SkyNet

2005-01-29T20:44:00.000-05:00

Check out V-MADS, the Vehicle-Mounted Active Denial System. It's a "nonlethal" weapon in development by the military to control hostile crowds, slated for deployment in Iraq.

V-MADS uses a focused microwave beam to "induce an intolerable heating sensation" on the skin. It is effective at ranges of a kilometer, and can be made autonomous.

Great, a self-guided vehicle that can burn your ass from two-thirds of a mile away. Coming soon to a Blue state neighborhood near you.

Usual suspects

2005-01-25T23:11:00.000-05:00

Several years ago, during the reign of Bush 41, I hosted a friend from out of town, an emergency physician. After picking Mikel up at the former National Airport, I had to run an errand to an office located in the Watergate, another notorious DC landmark.

Driving these crazy streets, I overshot my destination and pulled into the driveway of the Saudi Arabian embassy across the street from the Watergate to turn around. Two armed guards at the gated drive snapped to attention and moved towards our car, hands on their lowered weapons. We threw our hands into the air.

"Just turning around," I meekly offered while slowly rolling in reverse. Got our asses away from there, exhaled, and laughed. "I guess they don't cotton to a couple of bearded Jewish guys in a compact car," Mikel said.

5 5 5

That evening, Mikel and I walked along the fence on the east side of the White House on Madison Place, which is no longer open to the public. Today, except for Pennsylvania Avenue, you can't get within a block of the White House on foot.

Through gaps in the tall shrubbery we saw the well-manicured property and that familiar gleaming ivory building. We strolled past the visitor's entrance and stopped at a gated drive gaving us a good view of the southeast corner of the White House.

There, in the middle distance, were several dark-suited men and one very lively Springer Spaniel.

"Look, it's Millie," said Mikel.

"The first dog," I remarked.

We stood with our faces against the heavy gate watching the dog play, presumable with highly trained Secret Service agents.

To my left, from within the thicket of foliage bordering the driveway perhaps five feet away on the inside of the fence, came a distinct rustling sound. Not movement, more like somebody shifting position. I peered into the shadows, unable to discern any shapes.

There it is again. We walked away.

"Did you hear that?" I whispered.

"Was there somebody standing next to us on the other side of the fence?" Mikel asked. "That's fucking creepy."

Got to feel sorry for the guy whose job it is to stand in a bush.

Party politics

2005-01-20T17:28:00.000-05:00

Champagne? Check. Confetti? Check. Signed loyalty oaths? Check. Humvee-mounted Stinger anti-aircraft missiles? Check. Contempt for rights and justice? Check.

Let's roll.

Burning desires

2005-01-18T20:02:00.000-05:00

Great, just what we need -- a crank in a van at 15th and Pennsylvania Avenue, threatening to blow up himself and the White House on the eve of an inauguration with the tightest security in history.

Screwing up rush hour.

Dramatic gestures at the White House are a traditional means of drawing attention. Somehow I doubt Lowell Timmers bargained for an indefinite sojourn at Gitmo.

People have flown a plane into the White House, brandished and fired weapons, and set themselves on fire. Leaping over the fence is a perennial favorite, greeted with a swift smackdown.

It's enough to make you long for the days when a guy just wanted to sit in his tractor in a pond on the Mall for a few days.

Timmers, dude -- good luck with the immigration thing.

Here's looking at you

2005-01-17T10:16:00.000-05:00

The Washington Metro, which runs the subways, is using a wonderful new system of "behavioral profiling" in which cops stop and question people if they avoid eye contact, look around more than other passengers, loiter, move too quickly through stations, stand too close to others, stand too far away from others, carry suspicious items, or have suspiciously empty arms.

I feel safer already.

Area of refuge

2004-12-11T13:06:00.000-05:00

Attending a regional wrestling meet at George Meade Senior High School on the grounds of Fort Meade, home of the National Security Agency.

The NSA is so secret that until a few years ago the government denied that it existed. They said NSA stood for No Such Agency. Its mission is global electronic eavesdropping and cracking codes. In vast bombproof, secure, subterranean facilities, the NSA has acres of the world's most powerful computers humming 24 hours a day deciphering signals intelligence and codes.

Today NSA has a cryptology museum and gift shop open to the public.

We like the museum, where they have Enigma machines, encryption and decryption devices, spy artifacts, and supercomputers. Standing by the familiar blue curved contour of a Cray among a half-dozen computers on display, one day I asked a museum docent, retired from the agency, about the power of today's technology if these supercomputers are so obsolete that they're museum pieces.

"That's classified," he said. "I'll you this much; the fastest, most powerful computer you can imagine? It's beyond that."

NSA is Maryland's largest employer. Living in the region, you often meet people who work for Food and Drug Administration, departments of Defense or Education, or some other branch of government. The Social Security Administration is another large employer. I've worked with a former White House staffer and a former Assistant Secretary of Health. But in nearly 25 years in the area, I've never met anybody who admitted working for NSA. Not once.

Fort Meade is an Army base. Driving through a gate in the razor wire-topped fence, a sign informs me that all vehicles subject to search. The high school is ringed by a perimeter of concrete bollards. "Area of refuge" reads signs on the wall beside a cluster of squares painted on the cement at the sheltered front door.

The gym is a cacaphony of voices, buzzers and noise. It smells of sweat. Teenage boys pair off on mats for rounds of mano a mano competition.

"They're all military kids at this school," says my son after pinning his opponent to win the first round.

I'm at the nexus of a global electronic vacuum cleaner, and nobody can get a signal on their cell phones from inside the gym. I think the school may be shielded.

The known unknown

2004-12-09T20:03:00.000-05:00

The question may have been planted, but the cheers were not.

Rumsfeld -- and our government -- should be asked the hard questions. And our troops putting their lives on the line deserve answers.

Why, after nearly two years and tens of billions spent on the "war against terror" do soldiers lack basic needs such as adequate armor?

"It isn't a matter of money, it's a matter of physics," Rumsfeld replied in typically oblique fashion.

Physics? How do these guys get away with dishing up such bullshit?

According to a story at Bloomberg.com, the sole source of Humvee armor plating is ready, willing and able to increase production by 22% -- but the Pentgon hasn't asked.

Rumsfeld says that even a heavily armored tank can be blown up. It's true that no amount of armor will protect a Humvee against an RPG. But armor can make a fatal attack survivable.

Our soldiers, and their families, deserve no less.

Killing time

2004-12-04T01:28:00.000-05:00

Riding down the elevator in my building after work, a woman I never met before remarked on my hat, a souvenir from a recent visit to the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas, the former book depository building where Lee Harvey Oswald allegedly shot John F. Kennedy.

"Been there," she said.

"I've been to the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where King was killed," I said. "And I've been to the old Pan American Exhibition building in Buffalo, where McKinley was shot." I thought a moment and added, "I'm through Union Station every day. James Garfield was shot there."

The woman nodded. Pause. "And Ford's Theater," she said.

"Yep, been there too. A few times."

We were silent for a few moments. My mind drifted to the time I attended a conference at the Washington Hilton up Connecticut Avenue in the late 80s, crossing the street and recognizing a familiar curved brick wall, stepping over the curb and looking down at my feet, seeing the storm drain where James Brady lay crumpled with a bullet in his head...

"The Ambassador Hotel," the woman said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"In Los Angeles. I was there, where Bobby Kennedy was killed in '68."

I nodded. The elevator doors opened and we went our separate ways.

Homeward bound

2004-11-29T19:43:00.000-05:00

Approaching on the Thruway from the East, a sign greets traffic whizzing through the chilly drizzle -- "Buffalo: An All-American City."

My hometown of Amherst is a bucolic suburb northeast of the city. Amherst is comfortably middle class, with 88 percent of its 116,000 residents describing themselves as white. For six of the past seven years, Amherst was designated as the nation's safest city in City Crime Rankings. It's a nice place to live and a great place to eat.

Incorporated in 1818, the town is named after Lord Jeffrey Amherst, America's first bioterrorist.

In one portrait, Amherst stands beneath a dark and foreboding sky, gazing moodily toward the west, daydreaming of conquest and genocide:

Commander-in-chief of British forces in North America during the French and Indian War, Amherst held the country's indigenous people in contempt. Amherst believed that the best way to control Indians was with strict regulation and punishment rather than "bribery" with provisions. In a letter, Amherst wrote

...it would be happy for the Provinces there was not an Indian settlement within a thousand Miles of them, and when they are properly punished, I care not how soon they move their Habitations, for the Inhabitants of the Woods are the fittest Companions for them, they being more nearly allied to the Brute than to the Human Creation.

In the summer of 1763, with weapons and gunpowder provided by disgruntled French insurgents, Indians staged an assault that overtook four forts in what became known as Pontiac's Rebellion. Amherst was so infuriated that he directed a colonel under his command "to try Every other method that can serve to Extirpate this Execrable Race."

Delaware Indians were invited to a peace-making meeting at Fort Pitt on the Pennsylvania frontier. Smallpox had broken out at the fort. "Could it not be contrived to send the Small Pox among those disaffected tribes of Indians," Amherst asked the colonel. "We must on this occasion use every stratagem in our power to reduce them."

Amherst ordered that two blankets and a handkerchief from smallpox victims in the fort's infirmary be given to the Indians as a gesture of goodwill. By the spring of 1764, smallpox was raging among the Indians.

My hometown.

Sources:
Jeffrey Amherst and Smallpox Blankets
Morgan Quinto Awards
Town of Amherst, New York
PBS's History of Biowarfare
Lord Amherst Motor Hotel

Flying

2004-11-22T23:05:00.000-05:00

What I want to know is, if airliner seat cushions are such great floatation devices, how come you never see anybody take one to the beach?

Under the gun

2004-11-21T21:27:00.000-05:00

Last spring I took the family to the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Bethesda, located beneath the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology on the grounds of Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Built to withstand a nuclear blast, AFIP is a windowless building with massive vault-like doors.

The medical museum has been a perennial DC favorite for generations, where you can see pieces of Abraham Lincoln's skull and James Garfield's spine, the pickled leg of an elephantiasis victim, conjoined twins and ancephalic babies floating in formaldehyde, and all sorts of morbid curiosities.

They don't have Dillinger's penis. That's folklore.

Back to our visit. It was a beautiful mild day when we pulled up to the Georgia Avenue gate. Walter Reed is a medical center, but it is also a miltary base. The medical museum is open to the public. Like much of DC, Walter Reed is sporting new security measures -- tire spikes and bollards, large concrete planters, two armed military police at the gatehouse.

One soldier approached the driver's window and requested my license. Another soldier stood several feet in front of the car, on the passenger side, with his assault rifle leveled at us. I handed my license over to a young guy who until a few weeks or months earlier was probably a high school teacher in Des Moines.

I eyed the second soldier uneasily as he kept his weapon trained on us while my name or the license plate was run through a computerized database. This did not sit well with me. You don't point a weapon at somebody unless you intend to shoot.

How threatening could we be -- an ordinary couple with two teenage children? Was it necessary to have the weapon raised and aimed? Several uncomfortable minutes elapsed. I wanted to say, "Ferchristsake please lower the fucking weapon. This is my family, my kids."

But I didn't. Another indignity tolerated. Took my license as we were cleared to proceed to the parking lot, and visited the medical museum beneath the bomb-proof building.

It was cool.

Criminal mischief

2004-11-18T22:47:00.000-05:00

Those of us who work in the District of Columbia are accustomed to armed officers of various agencies greeting the commuter trains and mingling on the subway platforms, chem-bio sensors in the stations, surface-to-air missles on the Mall, black vans with darkened windows parked at street corners with the motor running. It becomes habitual to keep moving along, don't let your eyes linger.

Every day we are vividly reminded of the risks we face doing our daily routines. You're taking your life in your hands just going to work. It isn't the terrorists I worry about so much as public transit agencies. I'm convinced they're out to get us.

Weeks ago, 20 Metro passengers were injured when one subway car violently kissed another. At my station, a 400 square foot chunk of ceiling collapsed during the start of rush hour. I've lost track of the number of people injured or maimed by the Metro's escalators, which are more often than not kept out of service as a public health measure.

This is the Metro system of the nation's capital, where they know how to help commuters deal with a crumbling infrastructure. They arrest you.

They'll arrest you for talking too loudly on your cell phone at an outdoors station, even if you're pregnant, and they'll arrest you for chewing the last bite of your candy bar. In 2000, Metro cops handcuffed a 12-year-old girl for eating a french fry.

I worry about slurping coffee puddling on the lid, wonder whether the act of putting gum in my mouth will attact law enforcement scrutiny.

Not long ago, a wheelchair-bound commuter with cerebral palsy cursed when he was unable to find a working elevator to exit the subway system. Metro cops gave him a ticket.

Your government, at your service.

Prelude to tomorrow

2004-11-14T03:17:00.000-05:00

I'm a skeptic who holds no currency in quackery or new age nonsense. So it was really just an amusing curiosity when I began hearing about John Titor a couple of years ago.

Titor is either elaborate hoax or a soldier from 2036 sent back in time to correct an error in Unix that eventually causes a Y2K-like crisis. Titor showed up in some discussion forums in November, 2000, and over a five-month period of time said some provocative things about what supposedly lay ahead.

According to Titor, civil war begins festering in the U.S. in 2004-2005, leading to an escalation in 2008 that ultimately results in nuclear war.

"You will be forced to ask yourself how many civil rights you will give up to feel safe," Titor allegedly wrote nearly a year before 9/11. "The conflict was not about taking and holding ground it was about order and rights. They were betting that people wanted security instead of freedom and they were wrong."

For details about Titor and discussion about his hoax/prophesies, look here and here.

Of course it's all baloney.

Isn't it?

Bad dog

2004-11-12T01:19:00.000-05:00

My dog has eaten a pair of shoes, two pair of sandals, three remote controls, a kazoo, my cell phone (the third time was the charm), five ink pens, and a wallet. Yesterday she ate Silly Putty. I wonder if her poop will bounce.

Responding in kind

2004-11-11T00:17:00.000-05:00

The tone of public discourse has been set.

Months before the election, ever since Dick Cheney's foul-mouthed outburst, I decided to stand in front of the White House on election night holding up a sign bearing a few choice words of my own -- "Bush/Cheney: Go Fuck Yourselves."

The plan was to walk over to the White House, maybe four blocks away from my workplace, after polls closed at 7:00. I'd stand in Lafayette Park across Pennsylvania Avenue, a place known for dissent, protest and free expression.

I'd follow the rules -- holding poster board and not a prohibited stick, keep moving so I'm not blocking a sidewalk, and following any reasonable demand of law enforcement officers.

Family and friends advised against it. My mother and older brother were certain I'd be arrested, charged with disorderly conduct or disturbing the peace. Expect to spend a night in jail with a couple hundred of your best friends, my brother told me. The cops will use some sort of Catch 22 to arrest you, he said, like telling you to get rid of the poster board and then charging you with littering when you try to put it in the trash bin. There are no trash bins in front of the White House, I told him. Well, there you go, he said.

My sweetie insisted that you can't say "fuck" in public. It isn't a word you see in the newspaper, she said. The Washington Post used the word when reporting on Cheney's exchange with Patrick Leahy, I replied. You're not the Washington Post, she said.

That much is true. I'm not the Washington Post. I'm a citizen, and last I checked there are still a few shreds of the 1st Amendment remaining. I've been subjected to some of the sleaziest, most devious, hateful and invidious politics in memory, and I have something to say in reponse -- "Bush/Cheney: Go Fuck Yourselves." It's something I have to get off my chest.

On election night, a few people mingled in Lafayette Park with uniformed Secret Service officers. Tourists snapped photos in front of that familiar edifice. It was a scene much like any day, perhaps with more foot traffic than usual at this late hour.

I held up my sign, designed with one tactical compromise. Rather than use poster board, which seemed inclined to invite law enforcement attention, I wrote my message on a Post-It note.

It was the message that mattered, not whether its intended recipients read it. I never expected Bush or Cheney to walk out on the White House lawn to read my sign. It was something that had to be said, and I said it.

I feel better.